Critique of Bertrand Russell Essay:"Why I Am Not A Christian"

by

Joseph David Rhodes

A Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment HT3300 Introduction to Apologetics. Professor: Thorvald B. Madsen, Ph.D.

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Spring 2003 Kansas City, Missouri

I. Brief Introduction.

Despite Bertrand Russell's fame and the fact that numerous handbooks and encyclopedias of philosophy tout him as a hero of reason, his pontifical pretensions as an expert in religion should be more critically evaluated than they have been. Granted that he was a whiz at mathematical logic, he really was not a serious student of history nor did he really demonstrate himself to be a qualified authority on the Gospel of Christ. As we shall see, his analysis of Christianity does not reveal a man objectively seeking to know the truth of the primary sources. Rather, he was a highly belligerent protagonist who, in the words of Paul, "suppressed the truth of God" in his conscience and life.

II. Russell's Philosophic Attack On Christianity

Revisited. 1

Immediately in the preface of his now infamous book, Russell spells out his objections to Christianity, and indeed to religion generally. He states his case quite unapologetically:

There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was. This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great religions of the world -- Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism -- both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true. . . . The question of the truth of a religion is one thing, but the question of its usefulness is another. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.2 [italics ours, JR]

Since Russell believed that Christianity, like other religions, is harmful because it is false, we must look to see how he concludes that it is indeed false. But notice, one man feels he can intellectually rule that Christianity is not unique and that it is not true. What are his qualifications for deciding this case? We shall see that his epistemological foundations as well as his moral credentials are quite limited and we are justifiably suspicious of both his arrogant rationalism and his spiritual ability to overcome the vast Biblical and historical testimony to Jesus Christ. Moreover, we shall see that most of his purported logical refutations of arguments for God do not work either.

Russell believed that religious belief sprang from cultural factors and irrational fantasy. He thinks that people simply believe in God because they have been taught from infancy to believe in Him.3 Or, as he says elsewhere: " As I said before, I do not think the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional

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grounds."4 Russell thought that, on the whole, it was fear that grounded religious belief:

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing --fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand . . . In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, with the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, against the opposition of all old precepts. Science can help us get over this craven fear in

which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.5

It also becomes clear that Russell, while doubting the worth on any religion, had particular objections to Christianity grounded on the Bible. He himself also classified his objections as (1) "intellectual,” and (2) "moral."6

. . . .Therefore, I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things; first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality, and secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men.7

Thus, as Russell begins his essay in earnest he starts with the fundamental question of God's existence. His first volley of acidic criticism then comes for the traditional "proofs of God", particularly as they were enunciated by Thomas Aquinas in his medieval Summa Theologiae. Russell remarks wryly, " You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by unaided reason. "8 As has been outlined in Ronald Nash's textbook, Faith & Reason: Searching For A Rational Faith, these "proofs" are known as the Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological Arguments.9 Ironically, while the traditional arguments for God, derived from Aristotle and Aquinas failed to coax Russell to belief, he does not seem to be able to debunk them logically. This is a key point. When Russell debated the erudite Father Frederick Copleston on the BBC in 1948, he clarified his position as follows: "Russell: No, I should say my position is agnostic. . . . [later] Well, I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is."10

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Russell did state in another place more precisely what the content actually was. His position is remotely like that of David Hume's in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (or his Dialogues on Natural Religion). Since God's existence cannot be proven with mathematical or logically certainty, Russell does not believe that we are entitled to believe in God:

The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.11

Russell's rationalism finds its second obstacle in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. He perceives this belief as fundamental to Christian theism (and in a qualified sense, we agree). Russell equates the soul and the mind and his dismissal of immortality comes because he believes that empirical observation makes it impossible; he cannot accept this since " it is rational to suppose that mental life ceases when bodily life ceases. "12

Another part of Russell's objection to immortality is that such a belief "leads to hyper-individualistic Christian ethics, to a breakdown of the natural biological family tie, and to unwarranted superstition. "13 Again, Russell puts forth his bold Naturalism: " I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. "14 Obviously, Russell equated the brain and the mind, for he says, " We cannot suppose that an individual's thinking survives bodily death, since that destroys the organization of the brain and dissipates the energy which utilized the brain tracks."15 Thus, Russell has splendid confidence that man is simply a more highly evolved animal with developed emotional and rational capacities, but certainly not a being with transcendent immortal life.

Finally, Russell objected to the historical and moral arguments for Christianity based on the person of Christ. His rationalism led him to have unbridled confidence in his ability to point out "defects" in Christ's teaching and in his moral character. While he likes Christ's maxim against "turning the other cheek" (Russell was a militant pacifist), he cannot regard Christ " as the best and wisest of men. "16 Yet, he goes on to say:

Having granted the excellence of these maxims, . . . . I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite doubtful that Christ existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands; and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise.17

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Philosopher Russell particularly attempts to establish that Jesus Christ was confused about His own second coming and that this confusion led early Christians to strange and bizarre behavior. Russell contends that Jesus was wrong since " He certainly thought that His second coming would occur in the clouds of glory before the death of all the people living who were living at that time."18

Yet, it is probably not merely Christ's supernatural wisdom that troubled him, or His imminent Second Coming (since Russell doubted his existence!), it was the perfection of Christ's moral character that the Cambridge philosopher thought utterly unacceptable. For Jesus spoke about ultimate "damnation in hell," and of the "everlasting punishment" of unbelievers. This was a serious defect in Christ because Russell terribly disliked the notion of Divine wrath: " I do not myself feel [italics ours] that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching--an attitude not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence."19 In the same essay Russell cites other attitudes of Christ and Scripture texts which he finds objectionable because they may some people unhappy, miserable, or guilty (Cf. pp. 17-18). He comments " I really do not think that a person with the proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world."20

Finally, having demolished God the Father and Christ the Son (at least to his own philosophic satisfaction), Russell turns his analytical guns on the sins of the institutional Christian Church. Once again, assuming his moral ability to judge Christ, Russell feels himself logically justified to negatively evaluate Christians : " That is the idea--that we should all be wicked if we do not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me [italics ours!] the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. "21

Eventually, he reaches a fever pitch:

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminuition of war, every step toward the better treatment of colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.22

Thus, Bertrand Russell's four philosophical objections to Christian belief are: (1). Christianity, like all religion is based on fear and is thus a bad thing; (2). There no rational (scientific) grounds for believing in God or the immortality of the human soul. (3). By humanistic standards, Christ cannot

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be regarded as supremely wise or the best of men. (4). Organized Christianity ("religion") is an obstacle to moral and social progress in the world.

III. An Apologetic-Christian Analysis of Russell's

Objections.

Bertrand Russell was a humanistic rationalist whose skeptical arguments were not simply objective attempts to understand the phenomenon of Christianity, but rather his philosophic moves were those of the self-defensive sinner. But, even if we were to assume that Russell was the most honest of men, and that his logical analyses were pursued for the best of scientific motives, he fails to grasp the true nature of Christian belief and the unique character of Divine revelation.

We should not forget either, that our famous humanist found it quite galling to live in the perimeters of his own confining naturalism. Russell, when everything was going his way, could bravely quip, “ Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation we safely built. ” 23 William Craig has described this attitude well: “ About the only solution the atheist can offer is that we face the absurdity of life and live bravely. ” 24 This writer himself was a student of philosophy in the mid-1970s when Francis Schaeffer described such humanistic views as Russell's (and that of atheistic existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre) as modern man living in a “two-story universe” with the lower story being filled with absurdity and despair while faith-leaping into an upper story where there was meaning, value, and purpose.25 Professor Craig touches on Russell’s inconsistency here in that, while being an atheist (rejecting a purpose for life and an enduring meaning to love) yet, he is, at the same time, an outspoken social critic, fervently denouncing war, and rejecting limitations on sexual freedom: “ Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he therefore found his own views ‘incredible.’ ‘ I do not know the solution, ’ he confessed. "26

But what of Russell’s claim that religion is simply the result of primal irrational fear ? Arnold Weigel shows the weakness of Russell’s argument here, for he commits the “ sociological fallacy” when he attempts to explain the nature of religion merely by its accidental functions in society.27 Russell, in the words of our old philosophy teacher, Mel-Thomas Rothwell, “ tried to pull a fast one,” by substituting the force of a descriptive statement for that of a normative definition.28 So, when Russell asserts that all religious beliefs

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are grounded in fear, he has not actually evaluated the validity of belief, he has only described a condition which sometimes accompanies it. The universality of his claim is initially suspect, but more importantly, he does not distinguish carefully among various kinds of fear, some of which have survival value. During the twentieth century, William James, Elton Trueblood, and Mortimer J. Adler, to name only three individuals, have written much on the value of certain sensitive temperaments to religious truth and insight. While one might not be strongly inclined to build a case for God from experiences and religious convictions alone, neither should faith be classified as childish fear or primitive superstition. Many people in the twentieth century (including Russell at times) have feared a nuclear holocaust. One would be rather foolish to assert that the character of individuals’ fears would disprove the potential existence of a planetary conflagration.

One may wish to grant to Russell that the existence of God cannot be proven mathematically or as an absolutely indubitable conclusion by deductive reasoning. Yet such an objection is really a straw man. Even if Russell had proven that all the traditional “proofs of God’s existence” were fallacious, he has not, as such destroyed the truth or reality of what those arguments reference.29 This is the position of the Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who argues that the reason why humanists and naturalistic thinkers deny knowledge of God is that their cognitive or epistemological dispositions make it impossible; sin has clouded the human mind (our "noetic structure"[Plantinga]) so that unregenerate men deny the truth (Romans 1:20 ff.).30 If man could demonstrate God with his limited and sinful capacities, there would be reason to doubt that it was the infinite, sovereign, and transcendent God of the Bible. Blaise Pascal, who was French Jansenist and an apologist for Christianity in the seventeenth century wrote in his Pensees: " the heart has its reasons which reason does not know . . . . It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. " Perhaps Pascal overstated himself, for reason (even as Luther reluctantly acknowledged) has a role in analyzing revelation and even in spiritual knowledge, but a saving knowledge of the personal God certainly does not come via rationalism. This is why Protestant theologians and philosophers have had problems with the traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic "proofs" for God's being. But, Bertrand Russell would certainly be example of an autonomous man who desired to have a God who would fit his own sinful reason.

On the other hand, sheer rationalism being put aside, Christian apologists in the late twentieth century have argued that atheistic Naturalism cannot stand up against the massive evidences and probabilities that the Universe is not self-caused or self-explanatory. Ronald Nash thus concludes:

. . . Even if we should discover that some--or even all--theistic arguments fail as proofs for God's existence, they may still be useful insofar as they function as evidence or grounds for belief. An argument may provide reasons that support belief, even though they fall short of being a proof. Even if various arguments for God's existence are not sound, they may still draw attention to

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things like order and purpose that compliment and support the believer's conviction that God exists. In other words, even if an argument fails as a proof, it may still function as evidence or a justifying ground that can help trigger belief.31

One problem Christian theologians and philosophers have faced in responding to skeptical worldviews like that of Bertrand Russell is that it has been assumed that one must only trust deductive arguments for theism; inductive arguments have often been suspected since they only lead to a high probability of objective certainty. Atheists ("atheologians") have often scorned the latter type of reasoning while insisting that the deductive case for God is unsound or fallacious. But some very hardworking Christian philosophical apologists in recent times have successfully challenged this rigid and prejudicial stance. For example, the British philosopher Richard Swinburne, admits that there are "valid deductive arguments to the existence of God. . . [but] they start from premises which are far from generally accepted. "32 It is also clear (as Nash shows) that Swinburne's accumulation of inductive evidences are not the "leaky buckets" that atheistic philosophers like Bertrand Russell, and more recently Anthony Flew, would have people believe.33 When people leave the ivory tower of abstract logical speculation and enter the real world of the hard sciences, criminal law, and moral thinking, several consistent circumstantial facts and limited causes are decisive. Lee Harvey Oswald did shoot John Kennedy and George Bush was elected President by a narrow margin in Florida in the fall of 2000. Likewise, the explanatory justification for theism is not based on one narrowly conceived deductive proof, but upon a massive cumulative case derived from true observations about man, the universe, and spiritual experience. Christians believe too, that the Word of God has come among us sinners to interpret these things (Proverbs 8:22 ff.; Isaiah 48:12-17; John 1:1-14,18; Colossians 2:2,3). Here one should heed Professor Nash's important distinction between "scientific" and "personal" explanations (a la Richard Swineburne): " The paradigm of scientific explanation is the way various phenomena are explained in physics. A personal explanation, in contrast, is one where the phenomena are explained in terms of some rational agent's intentional action. One good place to see personal explanations in action is in history."34 Swinburne makes the relevant comparison:

When a detective argues from various bloodstains on the woodwork, fingerprints on the metal, Smith's corpse on the floor, money missing from the safe, Jones's having much extra money to -- Jones's having intentionally killed Smith and stolen his money, he is arguing to an explanation of the various phenomena in terms of the intentional action of a rational agent. Since persons are paradigm cases of rational agents, I will term explanation in terms of the intentional action of a rational agent personal explanation. . . . . when a theist argues from phenomena such as the existence of the world or some feature of the world to the existence of God, he is arguing . . . to an explanation of the phenomena in terms of the intentional action of a person

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[i.e.,God] . . . . A theistic explanation is a personal explanation. It explains phenomena in terms of the action of a person.35

Before proceeding to the crucial matter of the Cosmological evidences for God's reality, it should be noted (in a Francis Schaefferish manner) that Bertrand Russell exhibited a strange contradiction here as elsewhere. According to his own daughter, Katharine (Russell) Tart, Russell remained all his life a passionate lonely man who desperately sought certainty and truth. She provocatively states: " Do we have a free will ? He said 'no' writing philosophy, but acted 'yes' and wrote 'yes' when his moral passions were enraged. Is there progress in the world ? He might say 'no' and make fun of the sillier versions of it, but he acted 'yes' and based his life of hope on it. "36

The classic modern confrontation on the Cosmological argument for God came in the 1948 debate between Father Frederick Copleston and Bertrand Russell broadcast by the BBC. During the course of that debate Russell lodged three objections to the Thomistic form of the argument which Copleston very ably defended.37 Russell's essential objections are as follows:

* There is no intelligible form of necessity other than logical truth.* There is no reason to suppose that any such thing as the "universe"

exists.* Even if there were such a thing as the "universe", our empirical

knowledge gives us no good reason to assume that it has a cause.38

Copleston's reply to Russell's evasions immediately gets to the heart

of the matter:

Well, the series of events is either caused or it's not caused. If it is caused, there must obviously be a cause outside the series. If it's not caused then it's sufficient to itself, and if it's sufficient to itself it is what I call necessary.But it can't be necessary since each member is contingent, and we've agreed that the total is no reality apart from its members, therefore it can't be necessary. Therefore, it can't be . . . . uncaused -- therefore it must have a cause. And I should like to observe in passing that the statement " the world is simply there and is inexplicable " can't be got out of logical analysis.39

Philosopher Robert C. Koons has written that " Almost fifty years

later, Russell's objections seem quite dated, dependent on a form of logical

empiricism that has not weathered the intervening years well. The logic and

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metaphysics of possibility and necessity have proved to be a fruitful and rich

area of investigation. "40 Koons further explains:

Cosmology--the study of the universe as a whole--has matured and gained respectability. The notion of causation has taken root once again within

philosophy, proving to be indispensable to recent advances in semantics, epistemology and cognitive science. The theory reasoning with and about causation has advanced far in recent years, resulting in a growing body of knowledge about so-called 'defeasible' or nonmonotonic inference systems. The time has come to take a new look at the cosmological argument, in light of the recent recovery within philosophy of so much of the classical elements of metaphysics.41

William Craig, who has been cited before, has found the Cosmological Argument, especially in Kalam form (for a temporal first cause of the universe) to be compelling. Craig, a noteworthy Christian theologian and apologist, has brilliantly defended this argument in two of his books and in face-on debate with atheist philosopher Quentin Smith.42 As with Professors Swinburne and Koons, Craig insists that both vigorous philosophical reasoning and scientific evidence establish that the universe began to exist. Thus, his argument may be formulated:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.43

He furthermore states , " Philosophical analysis reveals that such a cause must have several of the principal theistic attributes." Craig is required first to defend the notion of "cause" against Quentin Smith (who reasons much like Bertrand Russell did against Copleston) and the objections of J.L. Mackie to creation ex nihilo (who demands an a priori justification of the first premise). The second premise actually contains three supporting philosophical notions which Craig shows can be scientifically supported by current astrophysics and cosmology. These steps are:

1. An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.2. A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually

infinitenumbers of things.

3. Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.

Professor Craig uses the famous illustration of "Hilbert's Hotel" by German mathematician to reveal to the absurdity of "an infinite number of members. "44 The second point naturally follows, for if the universe never

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began to exist, then the series of events would be infinite, a sheer impossibility. The third point is a necessary logical inference from the first two premises. Our apologist then outlines in another threefold analytic discussion how an actually infinite collection of things cannot be formed by adding one member after another.45 Craig's next move is one of confirmation where he analyzes the recent astrophysical claims raised by Edwin Hubble and others (the "Big Bang Model") to the effect that the universe is finite and has a beginning ( about fifteen billion years ago !?). He cites various astrophysicists (Allan Sandage, P.C.W. Davies, et al.) to arrive at the obvious conclusion: "So what the Big Bang model implies is that the universe had a beginning and was created out of nothing. "46 As Craig demonstrates over and over again, various objections and alternatives brought forward to refute the fact of a beginning for the physical universe themselves fail logically and empirically.47 Stephen Hawking, who brings forth one of these alternatives, is not oblivious to the theistic/atheistic issues involved in his explanations. He acknowledges readily:

The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary . . . has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe . . . . So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end. What place, then, for a creator ?48

Craig does not attempt technical criticism of Hawking's physics or

mathematics, but he does correctly observe that Hawking's quantum cosmology (like B. Russell's objections to the F. Copleston) is rife with unexamined and unproven philosophical assumptions. It is not a realistic scientific explanation of the actual universe; in the end it is an evasion of the obvious implied need for a Creator (Craig also quotes from the late Sir Herbert Dingle that what is mathematically cogent is by no means necessary of physical reality).49 Finally, the notion of the universe's beginning derives formidable confirmation from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which indicates that the total energy of the cosmos is running down; therefore, at some remote point in the past it must have been full potential, i.e., it started.50

The essay may seemed to have strayed from an analysis of Bertrand Russell, but the weakness of his objections to the Cosmological Argument should now be obvious. Craig, Koons, and Swinburne (who represent a contemporary wave of believing scholars) provide ample evidence that the doctrine of special creation makes sense, but only if there is a supernatural or transcendent Creator. Religious options in the world are severely reduced to monotheistic religions, and Christianity stands peerlessly (excepting only Judaism) as an explanation; naturalism and atheism becomes a merely

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subjective rebellion. Correlated to this conclusion is the nature and purpose of life on earth and intelligence in the universe (which links to the Teleological Argument to follow). Scientific evidence here favors the philosophical drift of theism, and the whole theoretical construct of the "Anthropic Principle " (Barr and Tipler, Paul Davies, et al. ) speaks to the magnificent planning and providential care of a Personal Creator and is theologically suggestive of Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8.51 Here again Bertrand Russell's nihilistic picture of the world (on the basis of his now discredited Naturalistic worldview) now appears powerless against the notion of a First Personal Cause. There are those, like Professor Adolf Grunbaum and Richard Dawkins, Russell's spiritual grandchildren who continue to raise objections to the notion of cause (that it is equivocal, and that there is one single conscious Creator/Cause). Yet, Craig shows that, like other kinds of misunderstandings and evasions, Grunbaum's objections are merely a semantic and attitudinal refusal to acknowledge a transcendent cause for the time-bound contingent world.52 All of this shows practically that Bertrand Russell's cocky rebuttal of the Cosmological argument (based on the example of John Stuart Mill) about " Who made God ? " is really an empty endeavor to avoid the testimony of the created world to the "invisible qualities and power of God." (Romans 1:19,20).

The previous discussion leads naturally into Russell's objections to the Teleological Argument, or as it is frequently known today, as "The Argument from Design." In " Why I Am Not A Christian, " he first attacks the belief that "natural law" was the regular expression of God's will, but then he turns to an attack on the notion that design (purpose) in the universe necessitates a Designer. He avoids the parodies of Voltaire about the argument (just barely), but he asserts that because of the Darwinian theory of evolution that we now " understand much better why living creatures are adapted to them environment."53 His key statement is " It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it., and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it. "54

Somehow, ignoring the more obvious logical inferences from Darwinian "struggle for survival," Russell accomplishes (or, imagines that he succeeds) in placing the responsibility for evil and cruelty in the world on God. Somehow, in his mind, if one believed in God's design (even theistic evolution!), God had only managed to produce racism (the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, etc.). Ironically, he seemed depressingly able to accept at that the universe was headed for ultimate death, decay, and dissolution -life was only a transient phenomena. But was his dismissal of design philosophically and scientifically justified ?

We have already seen that Russell's objections to the Cosmological evidences for God do not hold water, but neither does his purposeless naturalistic evolutionism. Not only is there the classic case made for a goal-oriented reality in the Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, etc.), Thomas Aquinas and the Medievals, Leibniz, etc., but the late eighteenth-century

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was marked by the careful argumentation of William Paley (Cambridge: Natural Theology, 1802). William Craig has observed that despite twentieth century snubs, Paley's massive accumulation of catalogued evidences of fortuitous patterns in nature impressed even Victorian rationalists like Leslie Stephen. More importantly, Paley wrote after David Hume's critique of the Teleological Argument and , in many ways, dealt it lethal blows.55 It is also clear from Craig's depiction of his famous "watchmaker argument", that Hume's objections to theistic purpose and design cannot be sustained by what is actually known in the artifices and contrivances of physical and biological mechanisms.56 Craig concludes : " . . . Each machine in the infinite series evidences the same design, and its is irrelevant whether one has ten, a thousand, or an infinite number of such machines -- a designer is still needed. " Richard Swineburne also weighs in against Hume and in behalf of Paley: " The dissimilarities between the natural world and the effects which men produce are indeed striking; but the similarities between these are also, I have been suggesting, striking -- in both there is the conformity of phenomena to a simple pattern of order detectable by men. "57

For the Christian who reads the writings of Russell and other Naturalistic philosophers, it is clear that in the realm of worldviews that there really only exists two ultimate Cosmic creation stories (or in the neutral sense "myths"). The first one is that of the Naturalists who believe that mere chance (or, Chance) explains the origin and causal structure of the universe, that all of physical space-time events and life and consciousness on this earth is the result of a blind, purposeless force. The other view (which some might call "myth", incorrectly) is that from the beginning much more than mere statistical coincidences and mindless necessity has been at work. This view posits a creative intelligence and a personal cause for the physical and living world. For Christians, we are more happily certain and specific: we are struck by the analogy because the universe is designed to reflect the analogs of an Infinite-Personal Mind, our Creator God. But, as Robert C. Koons has perceptively stated:

It is one of the ironies of history that the devotees to the first myth have claimed the authority of Science for their doctrines, attributing all conviction attached to the competing myth to dogma dogma, wishful thinking, and a variety of psychopathologies. In fact, there is nothing especially scientific about the first myth: it antedates science by millennia, being one of the first explanations (or pseudo-explanations) of the cosmos. It is the second myth that has far greater claim to the allegiance of Science, both because it was first formulated at the inception of science in antiquity, and also because it fostered intelligibility of the universe. Pierre Duhem and Alfred North Whitehead have both argued persuasively that it is not an accident that the scientific revolution of the

thirteenth to sixteenth centuries occurred in Christian Europe, where the second myth had become for the first time deeply rooted in a society's worldview.58

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Strict believers in the inspiration of Holy Scripture have always rejected the Darwinist model of science and evolutionary paradigm of biology. But Creationism and Bible beliefs in general were never an optional part of Bertrand Russell's noetic world. Russell displayed his arrogance here in that he made a very bad scientific theory and an ideologically loaded worldview the major basis of his self-defense against God. While Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism held sway in much of the later nineteenth century and, sadly, through the twentieth, noteworthy voices of dissent were sounded. However, until the late 1970s or even the mid-1980s, many of the individual scientists and philosophers (most of whom were Christians) were simply viewed as backward or eccentric "Bible-thumpers "59. Yet, this sporadic dissent became a major wave of published literature and prominent organizations in the 1980s, becoming public about the same time as the cultural revolution and freedom movements in Eastern Europe which overturned Marxism as a politic and a predominant worldview. Creationists in a sense had been "underground" for nearly a century, but with the emergence of the "Intelligent Design" movement, a new breed of scientifically oriented believer in God came out of the closet. Beginning with the research on biological origins by Charles Thraxton, Walter Bradley, Michael Denton, Dean Kenyon, A-E Wilder Smith and others,60 this movement grew and gained intellectual and spiritual allegiance from many diverse fields and personalities. No longer was it merely a question of the Genesis account as science (although many held to this); these scholars began to critique Darwinism on purely factual and methodological grounds and they found it an inadequate framework for biology. Those such as Michael Behe, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson, and Jonathan Wells set forth a positive philosophical and scientific research program which better explained the marvelous complexity and purposefulness of life. William Dembski defines this theory and this approach as follows: " Intelligent Design begins with the observation that intelligent causes can do things which undirected natural causes cannot. Undirected natural causes can place scrabble pieces on a board, but cannot arrange the pieces as meaningful words or sentences. To obtain a meaningful arrangement requires an intelligent cause."61 Morevover, as Dembski and others have admitted, the Intelligent Design movement owes much to the arguments already put forth by William Paley in 1802. This teleological understanding of organisms and living systems which had adherents in the wings of the scientific academy now came more into the mid-stream, effectively challenging the dominance of atheistic naturalism and its Darwinian propagandists. Well-defined observations and rigorous mathematical methods have now been used to detect and interpret features in the world transcending undirected natural causes and to outline informational pathways which are indirect testimony to purposeful mechanisms. Now, Intelligent Design is not specifically a religious view (although it freely allows for it), nor does it presuppose miracles. Yet, it allows for and is consistent with "natural theology" and even revealed

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theology. In essence, according to Dembski and Phillip Johnson, it is a research program which " detects intelligence without speculating about the nature of the intelligence. "62

The key point here is that Intelligent Design entails that naturalism in all forms is taboo. Thus, Russell's confidence in the inviolability of Darwinian evolutionism was misplaced, and his snobbery toward Christians and other theists was another attack on a straw man. He was living with a naturalistic "hangover" (a C.S. Lewis' phrase ) which characterizes those who cannot see the work of God because they will not. And, contrary to the pontifical proclamations of "metaphysical hyper-Darwinists" like Jacques Monod, Sir Richard Dawkins, and Richard Dennett (company the atheistic Russell would have enjoyed), even a limited randomness in nature (mutations, etc.) is not strictly inconsistent with the "non-computable" intentions of a Cosmic intelligence. This has been demonstrated by Harvard and MIT mathematicians at the Wistar Institute and probability theorists such as Hubert Yockey.63 Thus, even molecular biology, theoretical physics, and advanced mathematics testify against the arrogance of Bertrand Russell: " The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction " (Proverbs 1:7, NASB).64

IV. The Historical Reality of the Incomparable

Christ.

Bertrand Russell's greatest error, however, was his shallow dismissal of the historical evidences for the Incarnate Christ. Russell here most clearly reveals his apathy and prejudices: " . . . I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here may I say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, [italics are ours -JR] and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. "65 One should note too that various persons' Christian experience of Christ meant nothing to Russell, and that he totally dismissed the subjective confirmation of faith with smug sarcasm: " I can only speak from observation, not from personal experience. "66 Thus, unlike many liberal and neo-orthodox theologians (e.g., Barth, Bultmann, Tillich), atheist Russell accepts the "Christ event" neither as an objective factual occurrence (Historie), nor as Heilgeschicte,a spiritual "encounter" with a proclaimed past event.67 He is simply ruling out most of the central message of the New Testament (as J. Jeremias, W. Pannenburg, and George E. Ladd might note!) and yet, ironically, he claims to accept the narrative at face value. This is rather odd.

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But Russell, due to his excessive rationalism, adamantly refused to see the actual historical case the New Testament provides for the "objective, historical truth of the resurrection of the Jesus Christ from the dead"; as Paul wrote, " If Christ was not raised, then our Gospel is void and so is your faith" (I Corinthians 15:14).68 Recently, a Christian historian makes this crucial empirical observation concerning Jesus' Messianic claims and the resurrection:

. . . . This Messiah was crucified, an unthinkable occurrence. Had that been the end of Jesus, it is doubtful that messianic assertions would have been made about him, as they undoubtedly were. The "tremendous confirmatory event" of his bodily resurrection coupled with his own messianic/filial consciousness as communicated to his associates inspired the spread to this new faith in Jesus as the Messiah. . . .69

However, the skeptics of Christianity is assert that the Bible, particulary the New Testament, is a historically unreliable source. Yet, numerous cross-examinations of the Gospels, for example, have established to most reasonable minds that they are essentially historical documents. Even a generation ago believers could appeal to the judgments of the those like the late William F. Albright, F.F. Bruce, Birger Gerhardsson, and several other conservative scholars that both the substantial reliability of both the Synoptics and John have been reasonably established against nineteenth-century theological liberalism and radical twentieth century form and literary criticism. But in the 1980s and 1990s in response to Gnostic re-interpretations of Christianity and the so-called "Jesus Seminar" much new work was done toward confirming the historical authenticity and reliability of the records of Christ. Thus Craig Blomberg in a scholarly survey a few years ago suggested that various theories of the New Testament criticism, the formation of the Gospels and Acts, and many questions about the historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives have only strengthened the case for them. He notes, "In every case it has been concluded that an even-handed treatment of the data does not lead to a distrust of the accuracy of the gospels in what they choose to report, even though many might wish they had reported more or related what they did in a more precise fashion. "70 The general consensus is that the Gospels were composed from ca. 55 to 90 A.D. at the latest, and that they were controlled by living eye-witnesses who had known Jesus in the flesh and who had reliable information about the real facts about His life, death, and resurrection. Again, Professor Blomberg suggests that minor discrepancies or even occasional historical "errors" (from the modern perspective) do not place the Gospel in the category of fiction, legend, or myth.71 Finally, the concerted attempts of radical fringe scholarship and media "history" to reinterpret the Gospels in the light of everything from Ancient Cynicism to New Age Gnostic Feminism

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has constituted a weird but totally unsupportable fad of the late twentieth century.72

It is in these ancient records, which are incidentally the best attested documents from the classical world in terms of the textual accuracy and external documentary evidence, that we discover Jesus Christ.73 There we see, as John W. Montgomery has frequently pointed out, "Jesus exercises divine perogatives and claims to be God in human flesh; and he rests his claims on his forthcoming resurrection. "74 One of the key reasons that the unbelieving Jewish Sanhedrin put Christ to death is found in His predictions of His death and resurrection in Jerusalem: " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up " (John 2:19). In Mark 2:1-12 Jesus forgives sins (in one of many examples) which made Him enemies among the Jewish authorities who believed that they controlled God's grace. Then in other passages such as Matthew 11:27ff.; 16:13-17; John 10:30; 12:45; and 14:6-10, Jesus asserts His unique personal relation to the Father. And despite the quibblings of some Biblical scholars about non-normative uses, when the Gospel writers apply Kyrios (the term for "LORD" in the Septuagint [LXX]) to Jesus it is critical as it was translation equivalent to Adonai and Yahweh, the Hebrew designations for Deity.75

Bertrand Russell, naturally, discounted the New Testament reports of the supernatural aspects of Jesus' life, playing off differences between Catholic and Protestant views of providence and natural law.76 Russell's antisupernaturalism has been accepted as a standard a priori of many of his philosophical disciples, but the resurrection event of Christ cannot be summarily dismissed as he imagined. John W. Montgomery, following the lead of C.S. Lewis' Miracles has shown that Russell's arguments depend on the validity of David Hume's objections (based on the "uniform experience of the past") which turn out lack validity.77 Miracles are impossible only if one so defines them (as in the loaded definition "violations of Natural Law ") and refuses to allow impartial study of them.78 But the very existence of Christianity, is as Paul Barnett and C.F.D. Moule proposed, itself a miracle. Even though historical research can never supply more than "probalistic" evidence, many practical decisions in life and most serious moral choices are based on such reasonable risks. True, Christianity is not subject to a geometrical, logical demonstration, yet it is based on fact and its claims for Jesus' person and work are grounded in historic truth. Faith is not a blind leap of ignorance, but it is a risky adventure based on ancient documents of those who personally knew Christ.79 No one is forced to endure this adventure, but there are solid, eternal rewards for doing so (John 14:6; Hebrews 11:1ff.). Russell's prejudices against the existence of God and the miracles and Deity of Christ have no ground if a resurrection occurred on

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Easter, 33 A.D. If that event is historical fact, Jesus Christ's authority over all things is assured (Matthew 28:19-20; John 20:30,31).80

As we pass over this point, we might note that the recent archaeological discovery of the ossuaries of Joseph Caiaphas and James, the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem, together with the New Testament witness and Josephus, should put an end to the claim that Jesus never existed. He did exist, His life was known, and His death is recorded and confirmed in countless ways. The crucial issues are "who" he was and whether or not he rose from the dead. Gary Habermas has carefully analyzed forty-five sources in which eighteen record the resurrection with eleven more provide relevant facts that even critical scholars must acknowledge. Thus, avers Habermas, we arrive at three major categories of strong evidence of the resurrection's historicity.81 Here his summary is useful for drawing this long essay to an eventual conclusion:

(1) First, alternative theories that have been hypothesized by the critics to explain the

resurrection on naturalistic grounds have failed to explain the data and are refuted by thefacts. Combinations of these theories also fail on these grounds . . . . (2) . . . Second, even the accepted historical facts alone provide at least

nine historical evidences for the resurrection, as enumerated above. In particular, that this event was reported early (probably in the AD 30s) by the very eyewitnesses who attested seeing the risen Christ (especially 1 Cor. 15:3ff. and the Acts creeds) is extremely strong evidence in favor of the literal resurrection . . . .

(3) . . . Third, even if we were to utilize only the four minimal historical facts that are

accepted by virtually all scholars who deal with this issue, we still have a significant basis on which to refute the naturalistic theories and provide the major evidences for the resurrection. The primary strength of these four facts is that they have been established by critical methodology and thus cannot be rejected by those who have doubts concerning other issues such as Scripture . . . . In the earliest church, the resurrection served the purpose of confirming Jesus's Christ's message and providing the basis for the truth of the Christian message.82

Bertrand Russell, the never-yielding skeptic still has four lesser grounds for objection to the perfection and wisdom of Christ. These may be listed as follows:

1. Russell severely criticizes the notion of " the immortality of the soul, " because he rejected the notion that man's "mental life" could continue apart from the physical body. (He believed this immortality "natural" to man himself ).2. Russell rejected the "Christian hope" of immortality /resurrection as

being too "individualistic ". 3. Russell rejected the idea that Christ was the wisest and best of men,

because he has reasoned that Christ made two serious moral and spiritual blunders: (1) He miscalculated His second coming; and (2) He believed in hell

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and spoke of the "damnation in hell" of unrepentant sinners, i.e., those who refuse to trust in the Gospel.

4. Finally, Russell's delightfully attacks several moral inconsistencies of the Christian Church and he argues that the Church has historically resisted real "progress" and has not played a significantly positive role in the civilization aspect of the West.

The first point simply reveals that Russell looked at Christianity with a

Greek or Western mindset and did not understand the Biblical-Hebraic understanding of the soul. For the writers of the Bible the "soul" was not simply equivalent to man's "mental life", it was the animating principle of the whole psycho-physical unity of man. Thus from the Biblical viewpoint, mere immortality of the spirit (or an "afterlife") would be insufficient; Biblical writers rejected anthropological dualism because their hope for future life was wholistic.83 Most importantly, for Christian believers, there is no intrinsic nature in man himself which guarantees immortality, it is the gift of God in creation and the guarantee of the Gospel that reassures him of this hope through Jesus Christ.84 From the New Testament perspective man has a foretaste of God's world to come and everlasting life now because Jesus has already conquered sin and death in His resurrection (John 5:26; 6:50; 11:26ff.; Romans 6:6-12; 23). Therefore, contra Russell, immortality is neither a vacuous fantasy nor a natural condition of fallen man, it is a certain future hope squarely grounded in Christ's victory over powers of death and evil - it is gifted to the believer by faith and the new birth (John 3:5ff.; 6:48-58; 17:3; 6:21-22; 8:12-25; I Corinthians 15:20-28; II Corinthians 5:17-18; etc.). Oscar Cullmann, a German New Testament scholar, has correctly called this "conditional immortality" and speaks of Christ's resurrection as the "decisive victory already accomplished . . . but the not-yet-consummated victory at the end [of time]."85 As long as a man lives on this earth, by God's grace he may trustfully decide for this immortality. Yet, at the Final Judgment (Matthew 25; John 5:25-29; Romans 14:7-12; I Timothy 1:8-12; Hebrews 4:27-28; 12:24-29; II Peter 3:10-15; and Revelation 20:11-15), all the dead will be raised and man's eternal destiny fixed. For Christians, the hope is for glorious resurrected bodies (holistic salvation) like that of Christ's own resurrected "body" in a New Creation. Moreover, Paul and the other writers of the New Testament constantly emphasis the corporate social nature of the Church together with its mission and hope; it is not merely an "eternal insurance policy" for individuals, but it leads to a concern for all mankind and the redemptive ethics which affect the world (see, e.g., Mark 9:42-48; Matthew 5:29-30; Luke 17:1,2; Romans 12;1,2; and 14:7ff.). Bertrand Russell clearly did not understand the "Christian hope" nor its ethics, and his anemic broadsides against Christianity here have little relevance. Granted, the future resurrection and New Creation is a matter of faith; yet, it is not blind faith because it is grounded in the certainty of Jesus Christ's historic atoning death for Adam's children and in His certain defeat of death and Sin that brought it into the world.

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Now to Russell's third and fourth objections. As much as Christians love C.S. Lewis, his view that Christ "accomodated" himself to the human ignorance of His times is not the best point of Lewis's famous essay, The World's Last Night86. John Montgomery underscores the point that this would leave much of what Jesus claimed for himself and His teaching vulnerable to attack from disbelief. What Jesus meant in passages such as Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32 must be carefully exegeted in the Greek and its Jewish apocalyptic context must be observed. First, the limitation is one of the Son's yielding to the Father (Acts 1:7,8) and not intrinsic ignorance or error. Secondly, the chief alleged contradiction can be cleared up by closer examination of the statements. It is certainly very reasonable in case of Matthew 16:28 (where Jesus said that some standing there would not taste death until the coming of His kingdom) that our Lord was not explicitly referring to the end-time Parousia but rather His post-resurrection coming in the power on the disciples by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In light of the Greek word heteron (not allon) in John 14:6 and following, it is highly reasonable to think Jesus was here referring to His coming via Holy Spirit with mighty force for the fledgling Church (Acts 2:2, etc.). Other solutions to this Russellian dilemma with both Matthew 16:28 and 24:34 have been proposed by the Greek lexicographers Arndt and Gingrich with their study of the Greek word for "generation", genea.87 The contradiction is more apparent than real, especially in view of the fact that the term "Second Coming" (or "Second Advent") is not found as such in Holy Scripture, which describes several phases of Christ's work on the earth in the past, present, and future. Indeed, about the final or eschatological Coming, Christ said that this was in the "knowledge" or authority of the Father. Russell's citations from the Bible are predictably selective and his negative evaluation of them are in line with his pre-conceived humanistic categories. He did not show himself a careful reader nor interpreter of Christ because his naturalistic prejudices and unregenerate humanistic pride blinded his understanding.

What about Russell's objections to hell ? Arnold D. Weigel (whose 1973 paper we have frequently cited) explains both why humanist Russell could not accept the doctrine of eternal punishment and his illogic in doing so. His argument, summarized, is as follows:

[1.] Russell, however, does not consider . . . [the] important distinction between the ultimate reality of hell and the description of such a place in human terms . . . . From the

Christian standpoint, hell is inevitable for the unbeliever but it is not incredible for the

believer. [See Matthew 13:41-42 and Luke 12:5, n.b., JR]

[2.] . . . .The words which Peter uses [in I Peter 3:9] are " in which spirit"; this would

signify that Christ already possessed his glorious spiritual body when he preached even

(Gk. kai) to " the spirits in prison, " i.e., to the spirits which had hitherto rebelled

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against God and refused to listen to His saving Word. J. H.A. Hart, in The Expositor's

Greek Testament, says the significance of this passage lies in the word "even": Christ

preached "even to the typical rebels who had sinned past forgiveness according to pre-

Christian notions. " In other words, it is only Christ who can speak of "damnation in

hell, " for he alone knows what it is like to be there and he alone has returned to tell

us, to forewarn us to seek repentance and forgiveness.

[3.] Russell says he wishes to take Jesus as he appears in the primary records; what al-

ternative does he have then but to accept Jesus as he truly appears in the Gospels ? . . .

Not without reason,as Philip Schaff has pointed out in The Creeds of Christendom, has the

doctrine of hell been accepted for centuries by the Christian Church.88

We have already shown that Bertrand Russell's attempt to judge God by an external ethical standard (based on naturalism?) is logically invalid. For whatever humanistic canon of reason Russell can set up, the Infinite God and the Resurrected Christ can known down. As the Psalm 2 suggests, God and His Messiah laugh at puny human attempts to dethrone the Almighty. And as St. Paul tells us, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! "89

Finally, we come Russell's weakest link, his bitter moral attack on the inconsistent practices of the organized Christian Church. This criticism is rather self-serving because Russell himself knew his own grievous short-comings and he also should have logically distinguished between the validity of the beliefs of Christianity and the infidelity of certain individuals and groups to those same truths. True enough it is that professing ministers and Christians have been disloyal to Christ by their prostitutions of their calling and shameful lifestyles. But, for example, because Socialism in the last century has been promoted by deception, murder, and persecution, does not invalidate the ideals of socialism, per se. One needs to show that the beliefs or principles necessarily lead to this (which in the case of Russian and Chinese Communism, they have!). The world was imperfect and full of hypocrisy in the Medieval era to be sure, but the humanism of the last century has seen a holocaust in human lives of the hundreds of millions!

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Contrary to what Russell alleges, the Christian Church, particularly Protestantism since the sixteenth century, has greatly affected world

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civilization and brought numerous social and spiritual benefits besides eternal salvation. The late Kenneth S. Latourette, the Yale missionary scholar of Christianity absolutely refutes Russell's charges in his classic, A History of the Expansion of Christianity.90 In an article written several years ago, he noted that never before had the Christian faith been as accepted as it is in modern times.91 Surely, not all the people who have embraced the Christian faith in the last century have not been morally degenerate or intellectually incapacitated ? Evangelists such as Billy Graham, Luis Palau, Ravi Zacharias, and John Stott have had many distinctive conversions and won adherents from many of the intellectual caste. More than that Christian sociologists have marshalled incredible masses of evidence of the moral transformation of societies that are fervently and evangelically Christian.92

Christianity is responsible for founding more hospitals, schools, universities, charitable agencies of mercy, etc. than any other religion or humanistic agency in history. John Wesley and William Wilberforce were fervent Christians against slavery; Martin Luther King, Jr. was a black Baptist preacher who inspired much of the gains of civil rights in the 1960s; William Carey helped to end the evil practices of suttee in nineteenth-century Hindu India; in the twentieth century people like Gladys Alyward, James Elliott, Mother Teresa, and Franklin Graham have brought aid and the Gospel of release and freedom to many in darkness, slavery, and misery. Russell's focus is very narrow and selective. Russell seemed to sense no apparent irony in his own judgment of Christ's wisdom and Christian ethics. The Church has seldom been perfect at her best, yet Russell's arguments fail both empirically and logically to snuff out the fact that the Light of the World shines through her.

V. Christian Supernaturalism vs. Rationalism

Essentially, Bertrand Russell rejected Christianity because he believed strongly in another religion, i.e., rationalistic humanism. This religion emphasized man's native freedom, human love, and scientific knowledge.93 Of course, the assumption that the world exists and that man is really free and naturally oriented toward goodness seems to have escaped the requirement of scientific verification ! Russell appeared to be oblivious to his own faith, but he observed its mottos.94

While most Christians have no problem with the scientific method in normal application nor even with a high view of man's created capacities, the placing of Science in the temple to worship is another matter. Science itself starts with a priori assumptions about reality; it needs faith in the Universe and man's mind to proceed.95 Given its assumption of real time, space, and matter, and the existence of knowing minds it proceeds with

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quantitative analysis and testing of phenomena and empirical situations. But the descriptive statements of science can never become prescriptive values except through philosophical commitments of human persons. The once popularity of neo-Freudianism and the infamous Kinsey reports on American sexual habits are now as passe as the last year's Oprah Winfrey episodes or Larry Springer. Man can make a god out of anything, and turn himself into a devil while proclaiming himself scientific and "enlightened"96. Ironically, most of the witty criticisms which Russell aimed at Christianity can be more readily aimed at the presumptions and the naivetev of contemporary rationalism which believes education will save humanity.

One of the important lessons of the late twentieth century came with the fall of Marxist Socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Like Russell's rationalistic humanism, Marxism is an ideology of humanism and a political faith with fervent devotees. In fact, as George Weigel has pointed out, it is a materialistic atheistic form of the Christian vision of heaven.97 Yet, as Barbara von der Heydt Elliot has eloquently noted : "The reason that Communism collapsed is that Marxism is based on the false premise that the nature of man is inherently good and perfectible through human endeavor, that it is a product of his material surroundings, devoid of transcendence. But a faith without transcendence often produces tyranny. Indeed, the march of Marxism-Leninism became a violent one, with the Gulag used as the last resort to silence those who rejected this worldview."98 While Russell certainly despised Socialism, nearly as much as Christianity, he did embrace as a faith Evolutionary humanism in the tradition of C. Darwin, J.H. Huxley, H.G. Wells et al., the utopian dream that a rationalistic elite could lead the world to a scientific paradise.99

Bertrand Russell, like Nietzsche before him, believed that he could build a new world with the remedies of free education, pacifism, sexual freedom, one-world government [?], and unilateral nuclear disarmament. Yet, he only saw the need to change men's environments, not to change the hearts of men to good.100 Russell ignored the most obviously empirical of all Christian doctrines, as G.K. Chesterton remarked, the doctrine of the wrongness of man. This is the root problem of human beings that rationalists are anxious to avoid. This is the final reason why Bertrand Russell's proposals to improve the human condition fail; he ignores the basic alienation of man from God who made him and who rules the world. It is significant that Russell had a childhood upbringing in Unitarianism which rejects the historic Christian creeds and the deity of Jesus Christ. For the solution both to Bertrand Russell's perplexing philosophical enigmas and his own desires for a truly better world lay not in scientific utopias of the intellectually elite, but rather in the Cross of the One who did actually do something eternal for man's lost condition. It is through faith in this sign that true hope comes, and not the pagan "peace" sign.

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Endnotes For Russell Critique.

Preface to Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (New York: Simon and Schuster Touchstone Books, 1957), p. vii. " I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived. " 2Preface to Why I Am Not A Christian , pp. v and vi. One must give Russell credit here, he shows no tolerance for falsehood, since he thinks Christianity is provably false. 3Preface, p. v. A paraphrase of his comments in the second paragraph .

4Essay, " Why I Am Not A Christian, " p. 19. Arnold D. Weigel has another quotation which is also quite interesting, " There is a second less powerful reason, which is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. " ([Russell],p. 14). This citation is from Weigel's essay, " " A Critique of Bertrand Russell's Religious Position. " In John Warwick Montgomery, ed., Christianity For The Tough-Minded: Essays in Support of an Intellectually Defensible Religious Commitment (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, 1973). 5" Why I Am Not A Christian, " p. 22. This constitutes one of the major concluding paragraphs of Russell's essay and well summarizes both his humanist and his humanitarian impulses. It also reveals his dependence on Voltaire, F. H. Huxley, L. Feuerbach, and F. Nietzsche. Russell failed to notice that he had absorbed the radical skepticism and nihilism of the late 19th century Victorian and European infidelity - he was himself the product of a deliberate rejection of Divine revelation and the Gospel. His was not merely a cool rationalism, it was a passionate disbelief in Deity.6Weigel, Op. Cit. , citing page 23 from his edition. This is also a good summation of the last section of Russell's essay on p. 23, which has the heading, " What We Must Do. " 7" Why I Am Not A Christian, " , pp. 4-5. 8Ibid ., p. 5. This is actually a gross over-simplification of Aquinas and the other scholastics' positions, but that Aquinas and other Christian philosophers believed in the natural revelation of God will be conceded.9(Grand Rapids, Michigan: The Regency Library, 1988), see chapters II-X. To these might be added the "Nomological Argument" (Natural Law in the Universe presupposes a Moral Lawgiver), and the "Moral Perfection Argument, " (every graduation of moral goodness in the Universe posits an " ens perfectissimum " which is the ultimate source of goodness or virtue. See Weigel's list, " Bertrand Russell's Religious Position, " p. 39. The references to Aristotle are found in Richard McKeon, ed. and trans., Introduction to Aristotle (New York: Modern Library, 1947), pp. 243-296; Aquinas' versions of the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments may be found in Anton C. Pegis, ed., Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings (2 Vols.; New York: Random House, 1945), I, 18-24.10Cited from John Hick, ed., Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Second Edition; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970), pp. 282, 292. 11" What I Believe, " an essay first published in 1925, and contained in Russell's collected essays in Why I Am Not A Christian , pp. 48-87. The citation is from pp. 50-51. He remarks in the same place, " God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism. . . . But we in the West have come to think of them as the irreducible minimum of theology. No doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our enemies wicked. But for my own part I cannot see any ground for either. " (Ibid.)12"What I Believe, " pp. 51-53. He further notes, " Metaphysicians have advanced innumerable arguments to prove that the soul must be immortal. There is one simple test by which all these arguments can be demolished. They all prove equally that the soul must pervade all space. But as we are not so anxious to be fat as to live long, none of the metaphysicians in question have ever noticed this application of their reasoning. This is an instance of amazing power of desire in blinding even very able men to fallacies which would otherwise be obvious at once. If we were not afraid of death, I do not believe that the idea of immortality would have ever arisen. " (p. 53). See also Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 110-143.

13Cited in Arnold D. Weigel, " A Critique of Bertrand Russell's Religious Position," p. 40. , cf. " Has Religion Made Contributions to Civilization ? ", pp. 34-35. See also " What I Believe, " pp. 72-74 which is an expansion of the extreme individualistic thesis. 14In " What I Believe, " p. 54. 15"What I Believe, " , p 50. A.J. Ayer has a useful summary of Russell's theory of the nature of the mind based on his primary works in his Bertrand Russell , In Frank Kermode's Series, Modern Masters (New York: The Viking Press, 1972), Pt. IV B, " Russell's Conception of Reality : Mind and Matter, " pp. 112-116. See also his " Mind and Matter, " in Protraits from Memory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 149, cited in A.J. Ayer, pp. 137-138.16" Why I Am Not A Christian, " , pp. 14-15. He likes Christ's words in Matthew 7:1-5 about "not judging" and Christ's words about giving (lending) to one who asks to borrow (Matthew 5:42 and parallels). Why ?17Ibid. , pp. 15-16.18Ibid., pp. 16-17. 19Ibid. 20Ibid., p. 18. 21Ibid., p. 20. 22Ibid, pp. 20-21. 23“ A Free Man’s Worship, “ in Why I Am Not A Christian, p. 107. This whole short essay is a virtual credo of Evolutionary Naturalism and Humanism, see pp. 104-116.24Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics ( Revised Edition; Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994), 64. Craig observes: “ The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy; if he lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent, “ Ibid., 65. 25Cf. primarily F. Schaeffer’s classics, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1971) and He Is There and He Is Not Silent (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1973.) 26Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 66. Craig’s citation if from Bertrand Russell, Letter to the Observer, 6 October 1957. Russell constantly made absolutes out of his relative Naturalistic values, yet he felt compelled to criticize the established traditions of Western civilization and when he decried the evils of Christianity ! 27" A Critique of Bertrand Russell's Religious Position," p. 42. Weigel cites here the standard humanist philosophy text by J.H. Randall, Jr. and Justus Buchler, Philosophy: An Introduction (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1942), p. 271. 28Dr. Mel-Thomas Rothwell (deceased, 1986), Emeritus Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Southern Nazarene University. Professor Rothwell was echoing the perceptive analysis of his instructor at Boston University, Edgar S. Brightman, on this point. See An Introduction to Philosophy (Third Revised Edition; New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1963).29Cf. the statements of Erich Frank, cited by Arnold Weigel, Op.Cit., p. 43: “ . . . The modern philosopher can never cogently prove the existence of God beyond this world . . . If human reason tries to transcend the limits of the perceptible world or mathematics . . . its thinking is bound to get entangled in contradictions . . . Rational conclusions are dependent on certain premises which reason itself is unable to prove. “ Philosophical Understanding and Religious Truth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. 38-40. Frank’s statement itself is a little Wittgensteinian and , perhaps, only half the truth. God’s existence is not disproved by the failure of mere human logic, either.30Cf. Alvin Plantinga, " Reason and Belief in God, " in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 64-66; 72; 89-90, and passim .

Plantinga is one of the most productive of contemporary Calvinist philosopher-theologians, famous since the 1960s for his book God and Other Minds (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1967). Ronald Nash follows his "presuppositionalist" viewpoint and discusses his views on evidentialism and foundationalism in Faith & Reason : Searching For A Rational Faith, chaps. 6-7, pp. 80-102.31Faith & Reason : Searching For A Rational Faith, pp. 101-102. In his stated position here Nash follows the lead of Alvin Plantinga in his many works (see our Bibliography). Nash devotes chapter 8 to a detailed exposition of this position, pp. 105- 120. This writer confesses to not have read much of Plantinga, as he was brought up a Lutheran and early on impressed with the "evidentialist" approach of Lutheran John Warwick Montgomery and the Baptist scholar and philosopher Gary R. Habermas. 32The Existence of God (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 14, cited in Nash, Faith & Reason : Searching For A Rational Faith, p. 116. Nash follows this by stating, " According to thinkers like Swinburne, the proper way to argue for God's existence is to utilize inductive arguments. As Swinburne explains, an inductive argument is " an argument from premisses to a conclusion in which the premisses count in favour of, provide evidence for, the conclusion, without entailing it. " The Existence of God, p. 45, cited in Nash, pp. 116-117. 33Cf. Anthony Flew, God and Philosophy (New York: Dell, 1966), pp. 62-63. Nash discusses Swineburne's key caveat about this on pp. 117-118. 34Faith & Reason : Searching For A Rational Faith, p. 119. It will be seen later that Bertrand Russell displays his intellectual myopeia here to the highest degree in his equation of Christianity with Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Communism (cf. Why I Am Not A Christian , p. xi). On the contrary, Christian philosopher and historian, John Warwick Montgomery remarks that Christianity " is the only religion which purports to offer external, objective evidence of its vitality. All other religions appeal to inner experience without any means of objective validation", The Shape of the Past: Essays in Christian Historiography (" History in Christian Perspective, "; Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, 1962), Vol. I, p. 140. 35Faith & Reason, Ibid. This writer has actually endeavored to read the whole of Swinburne's elaborate treatise where he uses confirmatory logical theory. But much of the 291 page book is difficult because of the symbolic logic and mathematical-like equations. Doubtlessly, Bertrand Russell might have appreciated the logical finesse and rigorous steps of inductive analysis here; the rest of us may have to settle for the Swinburne's more plainly stated summaries in regular English prose , Cf. The Existence of God , chap. 7, pp. 131-132.36Paul C. Vitz, The Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, : The Psychology of Atheism (Dallas, Texas: Spence Publishing Company, 1999), p. 28. 37John Hick, ed., Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Second Edition; Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970), pp. 282-301. 18The writer is here drawing, by permission, from a published paper by Robert C. Koons, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, " A New Look at the Cosmological Argument, " American Philosophical Quarterly 34: 193-212. Permission to use from koons@phi.utexas.edu. 39John Hick, ed., Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion , p. 289. 40" A New Look at the Cosmological Argument, " p. 1. The most sophisticated overall presentation of both the cosmological and teleological arguments are found in William L. Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics , chap. 3, " The Existence of God, " pp. 125. See also his essay, " The Ultimate Question of Origins: God and the Beginning of the Universe, " from Astrophysics and Space Science 269-270 (1999): 723-740. The intermediate source of this writer was the downloaded copy of this same essay from http: //www.leaderu.com offices/billcraig/docs.

41Ibid., p. 2. Dr. Koons has published several articles in philosophy journals and has written two books: Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) and, more recently, Realism Regained (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). One of his fields of expertise is theories of causation.42We are drawing our general thoughts from Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics , pp. 90ff. But one should also see The Kalam Cosmological Argument (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), and William L. Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (A Debate) (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1993). 43Ibid., p. 92 . The next quotation is from the same place. 44Ibid., pp. 94-97. Dr. Robert Koons sketches a similar kind of multi-stepped proof in his paper, " A New Look at the Cosmological Argument, " pp. 8-11.45Ibid., pp. 98-100. Again, he is dealing the objections of J.L. Mackie and responding to questions raised about infinite set theory by Bertrand Russell.46Ibid., pp. 100-102. He writes, " Thus, as astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang theory requires the creation of the universe from nothing. This is because as one goes back in time, one reaches a point at which, in Hoyle's words, the universe was ' shrunk down to nothing at all.' " (p. 102). 47He considers the steady-state model, the oscillating universe ( a view popular with Carl Sagan of "Cosmos"), hot dark matter theories, and cold dark matter theories, etc. on pp. 102-106. On pp. 106-116 he responds to theoretical cosmology in the last two or three decades such as the vacuum fluctuation models (Brout and Spindel), the quantum gravity models (the Hartle-Hawking model) [popularized in the Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time], etc. In the model adopted by Hawking, that the universe did not began to exist, the notion of "imaginary time" has to be introduced into the model.48A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 140-141, cited in Craig, Ibid.49Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics , pp. 110-113. Craig shows that Hawking's theory taken to its logical conclusion undermines the real relations of past, present, and future in the world and history.50Ibid., pp 114-116. Here Professor Craig cites the work of physicist, Beatrice Tinsley, " From Big Bang to Eternity ? " in Natural History Magazine, October 1975, 103-105. 51Ibid., pp. 118-120. The correlations with Biblical revelation is amazing here and seems to be unforced and "natural" in light of the many strands of evidence from the "fit" of the universe to human life and spirit. 52Ibid., pp. 118-122. 53Why I Am Not A Christian, pp. 7-11. Russell's confidence in the scientific credibility of Darwinism and evolutionary progress seems hard to justify in light of his philosophical skepticism about causes and knowledge of the remote past. 54Ibid., p. 10. Perhaps, as Paul Johnson implies, Russell's loose regard for marriage and his predatory sexual practices are evidences of just how much he absorbed of Darwinian thinking and his consistent naturalistic ethics. See Johnson's Intellectuals (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988), pp. 212-222, passim.55Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, pp. 85-86. 56Ibid. Here Professor Craig borrows from the close analysis of Frederick Ferre in his positive Introduction to Natural Theology Selections by William Paley (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), pp. xi-xxxii. 57The Existence of God , p. 150. In drawing these conclusions Swinburne makes a vital distinction between " P-Inductive" arguments which a conclusion probable, and " C-Inductive" arguments which the premisses add to the probability of the conclusion (making it more likely or more probable than it would be otherwise), cf.

pp.-6-8. See also the survey of modern discussions of teleology in Ronald H. Nash, Faith & Reason , ch. 10, pp. 134-142.58" A New Look at the Cosmological Argument," pp. 22-23. This author does not agree, on historical grounds, with Professor Koons that Darwin was a "theist" in any meaningful sense. 59This is in spite of the fact the American Scientific Affiliation, the Creation Research Institute, the Bible-Science Association, etc. had several hundred member scientists with earned M.S. and Ph.D. credentials! This did not matter, because the other viewpoint was the "scientific establishment" at the University and government level. 60Please see the books devoted to this subject listed the bibliography of this paper. 61See " The Intelligent Design Movement, " article for March 1, 1998 at http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3 . See also the Demski's article, " Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information, " a paper delivered at "Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise" : An Interdisplinary Conference at the University of Texas, February 20-23, 1997. Dembski is the author of several books including The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Mere Creation: Reclaiming the Book of Nature (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1998). He has also contributed scores of articles to scholarly journals on the philosophy of science, theology, and mathematics.62" The Intelligent Design Movement, " p. 3. Dembski adds: " Biochemist Michael Behe's 'irreducible complexity,' physicist David Bohm's 'active information,' mathematician Marcel Schutzenberger's 'functional complexity,' and my own 'complex specified information' are alternate routes to the same reality. " (Ibid.). 63Summary of some points in Dembski and in Robert Koons, Op. Cit. ,pp. 23-24.64See also Proverbs 3:19-20 and 8:22ff. The Psalms of Israel in the O.T. are also replete with references to God's eternal wisdom and His design of all things: Psalms 19,71:17-21; 95:1-7; 104; 119; 139, etc. 65" Why I Am Not A Christian, " pp. 15-16. Cited previously on p. 14 of this essay. Russell adds, " I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. . . ."66From a short essay, " Religion and Morals, " written in 1952. This is contained in Why I Am Not A Christian, p. 205 Russell snickers at the connection between faith and morals: " Intelligence is impeded by any creed, no matter what; and kindness is inhibited by the belief in sin and punishment (this belief, by the way, is the only one that the Soviet Government has taken over from orthodox Christianity" (Ibid.) 67Cf. Robert Scharlemann, " Shadow on the Tomb, " in Dialog: A Journal of Theology, I (Spring, 1962), 23 cited in John Warwick Montgomery, ed., Christianity For The Tough-Minded, p. 44. 68See again, John Warwick Montgomery, The Shape of the Past , p. 138. See also the comments of C.F.D. Moule, Greek Classicist and New Testament Scholar at Cambridge in his marvelous monograph, The Phenomenon of the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1967) as well as Gary Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1980), ch. 1," Jesus' Resurrection As History," pp. 21-42.69Paul Barnett, Jesus & The Rise of Early Christianity: A History of New Testament Times (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1999), p.43. See especially his work, Jesus and the Logic of History (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997).70The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Leicester, England and Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1987), ch. 7, pp. 234-235. See also Bloomberg's more recent meticulous and tightly-argued defense of the Fourth Gospel, The Historical

Reliability of John's Gospel: Issues & Commentary (Ibid., 2001). See further the critically sophisticated works of James Charlesworth, Craig Evans, Colin Hemer, and N.T. Wright for representative treatments. 71Ibid. , pp. 235-236 and in the following. This material is also covered in elaborate and painstaking detail in Donald A. Guthrie, New Testament Introduction (The Master Reference Edition, Third Edition; Leicester and Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1990). See also R.T. France and David Wenham, Gospel Perspectives I: Studies of History and Tradition in the Four Gospels (Sheffield: Journal For the Study of the Old Testament, 1980).72See Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also the historical and philosophical analysis of "skeptical" histories of Jesus, Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, Missouri: College Press, 1996).73According Kurt Aland in his recent 27th Edition of the Greek New Testament our present critical text is virtually the reading of the original autographs. Philip Comfort, an American textual critic and Bible translator, has stated, " One can be assured that most of the wording in the text is what the writers of the New Testament actually wrote; and if the editors got it wrong, the correct reading can be found in the critical apparatus ", Essential Guide To Bible Versions (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2000). See the accounts of Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament (Grand Rapids and Leiden, Netherlands: Eerdmans and E.J. Brill Publishers, 1988) and Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament : Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (2nd Edition; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 74The Shape of the Past ,p. 139 Montgomery quotes, for example Mark 2:1-12 on Jesus' forgiveness of sins and John 10:30 where he claims equality with the Father as examples. Montgomery has tabulated key examples from the entire New Testament in his History and Christianity (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1966).75Montgomery, The Shape of the Past, pp. 168-169. On the background for this usage see W.T. Manson, The Servant-Messiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1957) and Martin Hengel, Jesus As the Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion , E.T. (London and Philadelphia: SCM and Fortress Press, 1976).76In "What I Believe, " in Why I am Not A Christian , pp. 54-55.77See the works of William Craig, Norman Geisler, Gary Habermas, Walter Kunneth, George E. Ladd, I. Howard Marshall, and Wolfhart Pannenburg listed in our bibliography where these lines of argument are made in extensio 78Montgomery, The Shape of the Past, p. 139. Cf. also C.S. Lewis's classic Miracles : A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1947).79Read Montgomery's summary of this point in his Shape of the Past, pp. 139-140. 80We have not attempted to provide the entire New Testament case for the resurrection of Christ, by any means. This argument is made in fine philosophical form in Gary R. Habermas's The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ , " Appendix 2: An Apologetic Outline," pp. 275-286. 81The Historical Jesus, p. 253. 82Ibid., pp. 253-255. In 1987, Professor Habermas successfully argued his case against the famous atheist Anthony Flew in Dallas Texas. See Terry L. Miethe, ed., Did Jesus Rise from the Dead ? The Resurrection Debate with Anthony Flew (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).83See James H. Burtress, " Immortality and/or Resurrection, " Dialog: A Journal of Theology , I (Spring, 1962), pp. 46-48; and Claude Tresmontant, A Study of Hebrew Thought, trans., Michael F. Gibson (New York: Deselee, 1960), p. 94ff. See also J.A.T Robinson, The Body, A Study in Pauline Theology (London: SCM Press, 1952), and

Robert H. Gundry's magisterial study, Soma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 84Cf. T.A. Kantonen, The Christian Hope (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg [Fortress] Press, 1945), pp. 27-28. Kantonen's comments here are excellent: " There is no immortality of the soul but a resurrection of the whole person, body and soul, from death. The only immortality which the Bible recognizes is the immortality of a personal relationship with God in Christ, " p. 33 (See also p. 36). 85See Oscar Cullmann's famous work, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead (London: Epworth Press, 1958), p. 48. For a more contemporary perspective see Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983) and Ulrich Wilkens, Resurrection, trans. A.M. Stewart (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1977).86(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959), pp. 98-99. For Montgomery, see The Shape of the Past, p. 175. Helpful too, is the discussion of Brad H. Young, Jesus the Jewish Theologian (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), ch. 22, pp. 243-252.87For geneav vs. gevnesia, ejrcovmenon and hJV parousiva see William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek English- Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, revised by Frederick R. Danker (Third Revised Edition; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2000), pp. 191-3,394-395, 780-781. See further the illustrative comments of R. Gordon Gruenler about the second aorist gejnetai in William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993). 88" A Critique of Bertrand Russell's Religious Position," pp. 52-54. The citation from J.H.A. Hart is from " The First Epistle of Peter," in The Expositor's Greek Testament, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll (5 Vols.; New York and London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1897), V, 68.89Romans 11:33; From the Authorized King James Version (1611) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 Edition).90 (7 Vols.; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937-1945), see especially vol. VII. A Second Edition was reprinted as one volume, The History of Christianity (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953).91"Protestantism's Amazing Vitality, " in Christianity Today, VI (March 2, 1962). This remains true even forty years later in 2003. While there has been a decline of Christian faith in "post-modern" America, there has been a revival of it in Eastern Europe, South America, China, and Africa. 92Alvin J. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization (Grand Rapids, Michigan and San Francisco: HarperCollins/Zondervan Publishing Company, 2001). 93Cf. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959 ( London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 16-17; 376-390.94Ibid., p. 16. There he says, " Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. "95See J.P. Moreland, Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989) and J.P. Moreland, ed., The Creation Hypothesis (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1994). See also Stanley L. Jaki, The Road to Science and the Ways of God (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978).96See, for instance, Anthony Standen amusing classic, Science is a Sacred Cow (New York: Dutton, 1958). More recently, one might see Philip Johnson, Darwin On Trial (2nd Edition; Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1993) and Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth ? How Much We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong. (Washington, D.C.: Regenry Publishing Company, 2000).

97The Final Revolution, Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 11ff. See also Michael E. Jones, " The Untold Story: Religion's Role in Liberating Eastern Europe, " in Michael Bauman, ed., Man and Marxism: Religion and the Communist Retreat (Hillsdale, Michigan: Hillsdale College Press, 1991).98Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful Revolution That Shattered Communism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), Introduction, p. xvii. 99David J. Peterson, Revoking the Moral Order: The Ideology of Positivism and the Vienna Circle. Lanham, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1999. Read also his recent essay, " Bertrand Russell: Prophet of the New World Order, " in the New Oxford Review (June 2000)35-40.100See the comments of R.E.D. Clark about Russell and his circle in Scientific Rationalism and the Christian Faith (London: Intervarsity Fellowship, 1945), pp. 81-82; 87-96. See also the ethical criticisms of Edward J. Carnell, A Philosophy of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1952).