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The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World

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In the final paragraph of The Consequences of Ideas, RC Sproul writes: "We need to reconstruct the classical synthesis by which natural theology bridges the special revelation of Scripture and the general revelation of nature. Such a reconstruction could end the war between science and theology." Though a dizzying number of syntheses have been proffered in recent years, William Dembski's The End of Christianity is a watershed in Christian theological thinking, a landmark contribution that looks to resolve the science-faith divide with what I will call a particularly evangelical robustness and manifestly high regard for biblical integrity that are all-too-rare in the forum of recent discourse. In this compelling, eminently credible treatise on how God's two primary sources of revelation - the record of Scripture and the record of nature - harmonize, Dembski engages in a deeply probative, carefully thought-through, exceptionally well-reasoned discourse of the kind we're used to encountering in the early Church fathers, and of the sort one would only wish more commonly occupied Church leadership today.

To fully appreciate what I predict will be the rather unique and considerable appeal of Dembski's theological assertions, it's crucial to bear in mind this reality: Evangelical and conservative mainline Christians take the Bible very seriously. For them, it is not merely a book of wisdom, encouragement, and hope, but a peerless communiqué from God to mankind. Divine in ultimate origin, it is absolutely error-free, affirming nothing that is contrary to fact in any category of information, including history and science. Inasmuch as the biblical authors are believed to have been "moved" and "inspired" by the Holy Spirit to write precisely what they did, the Bible serves as the prism through which all truth propositions must be viewed, assessed, and finally judged.

This brings us to the issue addressed by The End of Christianity. The Bible has long been understood by traditionalist Christians as asserting that all evil in the world - not only moral evil (stemming from human misdeeds) but natural evil (stemming from impersonal acts of nature) - is the result of Adam's sin against God ("the Fall"). In this view, the earth and its living populations, as initially created, were completely free of all suffering, death, and danger - until the first man succumbed to temptation and defied the will of God, an act of rebellion that brought divine chastisement upon himself, his future progeny (i.e., all of mankind), and the world over which he had been appointed master and covenant head. Hence, it was Adam's sin that caused the agents of physical suffering and death - including killer earthquakes, tsunamis, cancer, carnivorous activity, etc. - to befall planet Earth and its inhabitants. As disturbing as this scenario might at first seem to the non-Christian, the affirmation of man - and not God - as the culprit for all natural evil, coupled with an understanding of the divine plan of redemption, deliverance, and healing from that evil, has offered tremendous comfort to suffering, sorrowing believers throughout Church history.

This view has, however, been forcefully challenged by modern scientists, who roundly dismiss this Christian chronology and rather assert, based on a myriad of evidences from a variety of disciplines, that life-claiming natural disasters and diseases within the animal world were present and widespread long before the first humans existed. That is, by the time "Adam" arrived on the scene, the earth had already long been filled with suffering and death.

This clash of assertions about the ancient past is today playing out in epic proportions. For Christians, what's at stake is nothing short of the reliability of the Bible, the very character of God, and the Gospel itself. After all, how could a God who from the outset deliberately incorporates life-killing natural disasters and deleterious genetic mutations into the very fabric of His creation - indeed, who makes such "natural evil" the very engine of the development of life and the appearance of humans (as evolutionary theories require) - rightly be called "good," let alone loving or compassionate? And how could Genesis record with any credibility this benevolent God calling such a bloodstained creation "very good"? And if from its opening chapters the Bible so grossly mischaracterizes God and misrepresents Earth's history, how can its assertions about salvation through Christ be trusted? Indeed, to many Christians and skeptics alike, the scientifically-demanded perspective that natural evil has been an integral part of the world from the beginning makes its creator something of a sadist, the Bible patently false in its assertions, and faith in Christ questionable at best and mythological at worst.

Not surprisingly, evangelicals and conservative mainliners have been loathe to embrace these scientific truth claims, and with the preponderance of scientists convinced of their validity, a high-stakes standoff between two apparently warring epistemologies has emerged, a clash that has made a large swath of Americans skeptical of science and at the same time a large number of scientists equally skeptical of Christianity. Among the most vulnerable victims of collateral damage in this war of perspectives are the children of evangelicals who have been trained up by their families and pastors to believe that scientific claims of an ancient earth (which necessitate natural evil before Adam) are heretical and utterly antithetical to claims of Scripture, and that the veracity of the one categorically annuls the other - only to enter university and discover that in fact the empirical evidence for an ancient earth is not only overwhelming but ever-increasing, a sobering and devastating realization that, as the result of lifelong preconditioning, has for many shattered their confidence in the Bible and its Gospel claims.

Fortunately, Dembski, a theologian and professor of philosophy as well as mathematician and statistician, takes his Bible very seriously as well, as richly and reassuringly reflected in The End of Christianity. Its opening chapters deal with the issue of evil, specifically its origin, quality, and implications. The author surveys and rejects various prominent modern theodicies that, in turn: deny that evil actually entered the world through the Fall; admit evil's origination via the Fall but recast the event as positive and even edifying; regard the presence of natural evil rather benignly as simply the necessary cost of God bestowing true freedom upon every element of creation, elements which include the body's cells and the earth's crust. In contrast, Dembski affirms the traditional understanding that all evil of every stripe is indeed a "horrible tragedy" that does trace back to man's first sin, which then "propagates through nature and brings about natural evil" such that "the disordered state of nature mirrors the disordered state of our souls."

As to why a benevolent God "would allow natural evil to afflict an otherwise innocent nature in response to human moral evil," Dembski again upholds the traditional view that God uses natural evil in order "to get our attention, to impress on us the gravity of sin, and, most significantly, to bring us to our senses and thereby restore our sanity." He continues: "The gravity of sin consists in offending a holy God. [...] Because God is all that Christian theology teaches that He is, offending this God is the worst thing imaginable and trumps all the offenses that we commit against each other."

Yet such is the benevolence of God that despite man's (our) culpability for the presence of evil, we do not suffer in isolation, but God Himself joins and commiserates with us in our afflictions through Christ's Incarnation and Passion. Most gloriously, after sharing in human suffering, God ultimately vanquishes it altogether through Christ's Atonement. Thus, Dembski affirms the traditional Christian view that the presence of tragedy within the world was not brought about by a capricious or uncaring deity, but by a loving God who purposed to starkly reveal the depths of our fallen condition, and having done so eternally restore the damaged divine-human relationship.

Having affirmed these pillars of Christian orthodoxy, Dembski then turns to two of the most prevalent science-faith syntheses within modern Christendom: Young- and Old-Earth Creationism, both of which he finds fatally flawed. The former is seen as hinging upon a number of patently untenable scientific positions that manifestly disqualify it. The latter, while agreeing with science in affirming widespread suffering and death within the animal world before the arrival of man, in an effort to stave off any accusations that God is cruel or malevolent refuses to regard this bloody mayhem as truly evil or even morally significant, a stand Dembski sees as injurious to the character of God inasmuch as it "portrays the violence and cruelty of nature as a form of divine self-amusement." Hence, this view is dismissed on theological grounds.

By this time, having made a series of apparently irreconcilable assertions, Dembski appears to have painted himself into an ideological corner. On one hand, he has affirmed the traditional Christian view that man is culpable for all natural evil, an assertion that would appear to refute scientific geologic chronology. Yet at the same time he affirms the scientific claim that natural evil did in fact precede the appearance of man, which would appear to discredit the traditional biblical understanding of man's sin preceding suffering. In fact, this apparent conundrum - namely, how to reconcile two simultaneously asserted, apparently mutually exclusive claims in a way that preserves the integrity of each - precisely mirrors Christendom's current quagmire, and although a flurry of solutions have lately been proffered, to my sensibilities not one of them avoids doing some manner of violence to either Christian fundamentals or scientific integrity, an unfortunate situation that has only served to estrange both Christians and scientists from the other's realm of inquiry.

The End of Christianity looks to resolve this conundrum, and does so refreshingly, with exceptional theological reasoning. Dembski begins by calling into question our core instincts about the workings of cause and effect, namely our underlying assumption that "human sin must precede all appearance of evil in the world; otherwise it cannot be responsible for it," adding that this "may seem axiomatic, but it can be legitimately questioned. Why, in the economy of a world whose Creator is omnipotent, omniscient, and transtemporal, should causes always precede effects? Clearly, such a Creator could act to anticipate events that have yet to happen. Moreover, those events could be the occasion (or "cause") of God's prior anticipatory action." Hence, in Dembski's theodicy, all natural evil is the direct consequence of Adam's sin (per traditional Christian theology), yet God brought these consequences to bear upon creation long before that pivotal event had temporally occurred (a chronology demanded by science). He refers to this as "backward causation" and argues that "we should understand the corrupting effects of the Fall [not just proactively] but retroactively (in other words, the consequences of the Fall can also act backward into the past). Accordingly, the Fall could take place after the natural evils for which it is responsible."

Dembski acknowledges that such a concept strikes us as counterintuitive, but attributes this to our creaturely confinement to space and chronologic time, "embedded as we are in the world's nexus of cause and effect." He goes on to point out that the Bible clearly depicts God as being unbound by time, "declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done," as Isaiah records. In demonstrating the consistency of this line of thinking with theological orthodoxy, he cites the long-held Christian belief that "many an answered prayer requires that God have prepared the answer before the prayer was actually offered," and cites a salient example involving a well-known missionary.

He further buttresses this point by discussing "the saving effects of the Cross, which are held to act not only forward in time but also backward. Christians have always attributed the salvation of Old Testament saints to Christ's sacrifice on the Cross at the hands of the Romans even though Old Testament times predate Roman times by hundreds of years. In this way, an omnipotent God unbound by time makes a future event (Christ's sacrifice) the cause of an earlier event (the salvation of Old Testament saints). Likewise, an omnipotent God unbound by time can make natural evil predate the Fall and yet make the Fall the reason for natural evil." The chapters that follow fascinatingly and compellingly flesh out this view from theological, philosophical, and scientific perspectives.

Dembski then revisits Genesis 1-3 and interprets these widely-debated chapters not through the prism of the chronological time to which we are bound and through which we have traditionally read these texts, but from the vantage point of God's eternal intentions and the non-chronologic time of His realm. What follows is a highly intriguing, well-considered treatise on the implications of Adam being born into a world that is already rife with natural evil, and within which he has in fact already suffered as the result of that evil, evil which stemmed from the sin he has yet to temporally commit. Dembski reasons that inasmuch as it is crucial that when Adam actually does fall from grace it be from a pristine, holistic experiential and spiritual state and not the broken condition that the evil-filled world would have been inflicting upon him since birth (just as it does us today), God's methodology was to remove Adam from the fallen world-at-large, plant him in the paradisiac Garden of Eden ("a segregated area in which the effects of natural evil are not evident"), erase the effects and memory of the fallen world from his being, elevate his consciousness, and breathe into him the breath of life. As for who "Adam" actually was, Dembski stresses that "the theodicy developed in this book is certainly compatible with a literal Adam and Eve. But it does not require a literal Adam and Eve," and proceeds to explain it in a macro-evolutionary context.

The book's closing chapters - Thanking God for All Things and Luminous with Purpose - are welcomingly inspirational, exhortational, and doxological in character.

The obvious product of deep biblical reflection and solidly grounded in well-established traditional theology, The End of Christianity is an incalculably valuable contribution to the forum of Christian thought on the subject of theodicy, and as such, in my view, is a must-read for theologians, pastors, elders, and laypersons alike. No other theodicy that I have studied more uncompromisingly or persuasively or with greater integrity reconciles God's records of Scripture and nature. And perhaps most importantly for evangelicals and conservative mainliners, Dembski's synthesis in no way compromises Christian orthodoxy or paves the way for liberalism. In fact, this premise resonates with such a fundamental simplicity and theological elegance that its emergence rings with an air of inevitability. Indeed, the reasoning found here is not merely Christian but Patristic in quality, scope, and intent. Not surprisingly, in considering The End of Christianity on balance, one has the sense that what has been presented is in reality but a runway, a launch point for far more extensive explorations and discussion yet to be undertaken (and sure to follow). Still, this is a fantastic and powerful starting point, and indeed, my sense is that the ideas set forth here may well be what is more or less commonly believed by evangelicals within a few generations.

In looking ahead to the emergence of a new and successful natural theology and considering its benefits, Sproul closes his own work, The Consequences of Ideas, with these words: "All of life, in its unity and diversity, could be lived coram Deo, before the face of God, under his authority and to his glory." This is indeed the aim - or end - of Christianity, an end which in my view finds robust, even profound furtherance in William Dembski's latest offering.

In The End of Christianity, William Dembski, one of the most gifted Christian thinkers addressing Christianity and science today, tackles one of the most vexed issues facing the Christian worldview: the problem of evil. The result is a clear, challenging, and profound treatise that is equally at home in the Bible, science, theology, and philosophy. Dembski's ingenious approach to explaining natural evil (particularly animal pain and death before the fall) will not convince everyone, but all who read it will benefit from a mind crackling with intelligence, insight, and expertise.

"The End of Christianity" is a new book by William A. Dembski, published in 2009 by B&H Publishing Group. Dembski is a philosophy professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Fort Worth) and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (Seattle). As both a philosopher and mathematician, he is on the front lines of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement among scientists. His list of credentials and accomplishments impresses. With postdoctoral work at MIT, University of Chicago, and Princeton, Dembski has written over a dozen books, appeared on ABC News Nightline, BBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, and Fox News, and been cited by The New York Times and Time Magazine. He was interviewed for the Ben Stein documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

The book's subtitle is "Finding a Good God in an Evil World," and it is a theodicy, attempting to demonstrate that God's goodness is compatible with the existence of evil on earth, or, in other words, "to resolve how a good God and an evil world can coexist" (p. 4). Divided into five sections, it contains twenty-four chapters and 238 pages, including introduction and various indices.

More than mere theodicy, Dembski's goal is to outline a specifically Christian theodicy that defends three particular claims: "God by wisdom created the world out of nothing...God exercises particular providence in the world...All evil in the world ultimately traces back to human sin" (p. 8).

The eye-catching title has nothing to do with Christianity's demise, but, rather, its effect. "The end of Christianity, as envisioned in this book, is the radical realignment of our thinking so that we see God's goodness in creation despite the distorting effects of sin in our hearts and evil in the world" (p. 11).

One might suspect an author trained in mathematics and philosophy should not be the most interesting to read, but Dembski is no dull writer. He excels at casting deep theological and philosophical truths in easy-to-understand, creative, and thought-provoking ways, perhaps even reminiscent of C. S. Lewis.

The initial four chapters treat the topic of evil, and Dembski offers many keen insights. In the face of critics who say Jesus could not fully identify with human suffering, Dembski defends the Cross as far more than the Lord taking a few hours of pain. "In particular, Christ on the Cross identifies with the whole of human suffering, and this includes the ignorance and uncertainty that intensify human suffering" (p. 20). "The extent to which we can love God depends on the extent to which God has demonstrated his love for us, and that depends on the extent of evil that God has had to absorb, suffer, and overcome on our behalf" (p. 23).

Humans are to blame for both the presence of personal sin (i.e. disobedience to God), and the existence of natural evil (e.g. floods, disease, animal suffering, etc.). Says Dembski, "We started a fire in consenting to evil. God permits this fire to rage. He grants this permission not so that he can be a big hero when he rescues us but so that we can rightly understand the human condition and thus come to our senses" (p. 26). Sin forced souls into a state of disorder, which, in turn, came to be reflected in nature (p. 28). The evil and disorder apparent in nature are designed to impress people with the magnitude of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Thus, "humanity must experience the full brunt of the evil that we have set in motion, and this requires that the creation itself fully manifest the consequences of humanity's rebellion against God" (p. 44). It is not that we serve a petty God who holds grudges, but, rather, that we must come to terms with the seriousness and consequences of human sin. "The problem isn't that God can't take it but that we can't take it--in offending God, we ruin the image of God in ourselves and so lose our true self" (p. 45).

Chapters 5-9 deal with creationism from a young-earth and an old-earth perspective. "God gave humanity two primary sources of revelation about himself: the world that he created and the Scripture that he inspired. These are also known as general and special revelation, or sometimes as the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture...We study science to understand the first of these books, theology to understand the second" (p. 71). Further, "God is a God of truth. As the author of both books, he does not contradict himself" (p. 72).

Admitting that "Young-earth creationism was the dominant position of Christians from the Church Fathers through the Reformers" (p. 52), Dembski says he "would adopt it in a heartbeat except that nature seems to present such strong evidence against it" (p. 55). He sees a problem in that today astrophysics and geology posit an age of 13 billion years for the universe, 4.5 billion years for the earth. This model results in a world where animals predated humans by eons, and in which this animal planet was suffering the effects of natural evil. In other words, according to the current climate of accepted science, long before man arrived there were animals eating each other, dying slow deaths, suffering from parasites, drowning, falling in tar pits, etc. If humans are responsible for the existence of all evil on earth, then how could such evil exist before there were humans? The answer to that question is the gist of the book. More on that in a minute.

Young-earth creationists have no dilemma in which the need arises to account for evil before man, since everything was created in the span of six 24-hour days. But Dembski thinks this cannot--at least in the current scientific atmosphere--be made to harmonize with accepted facts of geology and astrophysics. "Christians, it seems, must therefore choose their poison. They can go with a young earth, thereby maintaining theological orthodoxy but committing scientific heresy; or they can go with an old earth, thereby committing theological heresy but maintaining scientific orthodoxy" (p. 77).

Taking young-earth creationists to task, Dembski accuses them of adopting a double standard, appealing to nature's constancy when it helps their case, and denying nature's constancy when it appears to hurt (p. 63). According to him, "Young-earth creationists, it would seem, hold to a recent creation not because of but in spite of the scientific evidence" (p. 70).

Chapters 10-15 are about divine creation and action. Writing on the creation week, he notes, "At the end of the six days of creation, God is exhausted--not fatigued, as we might be, but exhausted in the sense of having drawn out of himself everything needed for the creature to be what it was intended to be" (p. 99). However, Dembski does not take the days of Genesis 1 to be 24-hour days, which brings us to his unique solution.

Chapters 16-20 cover what he calls retroactive effects of the Fall. If, as Christians believe, the efficacy of Christ's blood at the Cross could flow backward in time, as well as forward, then why not also the detrimental effects of original sin? Because God is not bound by chronological time, he could engineer the world to account for sin's consequences, and allow those consequences to begin to play out long before Adam and Eve (who were the reason for sin's consequences) appeared in the Garden of Eden. This intriguing suggesting would allow for an old earth, in which animals and natural evil existed long before humans. Evolution's timetable could fit nicely, and even evolution itself since, as Dembski suggests, it is possible that part of sin's result is that God had man evolve from lower forms, not because it was the original plan, but because evolution would itself be a form of evil brought on by man's sin in the Garden, with God initiating evolution long before the Garden as a response to Adam's sin (which was yet to be committed, chronologically speaking).

As he puts it, "in the theodicy I am proposing, our evolutionary past would itself be a consequence of sin (i.e., evolution would be a retroactive effect of the Fall)" (p. 162). Remember, Dembski is not saying we got here by evolution, but he is saying that, with his proposal, theistic evolution is welcome at the table, along with old-earth creationism (with young-earth creationism seemingly the odd-man-out).

It's a bit of a mind-twister to think about this idea, somewhat akin to figuring out a time-travel plot in a science fiction movie. Writes Dembski, "God is under no compulsion merely to rewrite the future of the world from the moment of the Fall (as assumed by young-earth creationism). Rather, God can rewrite our story while it is being performed and even change the entire backdrop against which it is performed--that includes past, present, and future...In other words, the effects of the Fall can be retroactive" (p. 110). So, in a nutshell, natural evil is chronologically prior to man, but man is logically prior to natural evil.

This proposed solution harmonizes modern scientific belief about the age of the earth with the biblical account of the Fall, thus preserving the doctrine that all evil on earth traces back to man's sin, which is the third plank in Dembski's theodicy. And this, even though the beginning of evil on earth predates the arrival of man. "Young-earth creationism attempts to make natural history match up with the order of creation point for point. By contrast, divine anticipation--the ability of God to act upon events before they happen--suggests that natural history need not match up so precisely with the order of creation..." (p. 137).

But, if he is right, what about the creation account of Genesis 1? Dembski does not want to deny a literal interpretation of Genesis, nor does he want to suggest the day-age theory. He says, "Accordingly, the days of creation are neither exact 24-hour days nor epochs in natural history nor even a literary device. Rather, they are actual (literal!) episodes in the divine creative activity" (p. 142). But if the days are not days as we normally think of days, what are they? "They represent key divisions in the divine order of creation, with one episode building logically on its predecessor. As a consequence, their description as chronological days falls under the common scriptural practice of employing physical realities to illuminate spiritual truths (cf. John 3:12)" (ibid.).

The days of Genesis 1 are, thus, to be taken literally, but not as composed of either hours or eons of time. Rather, they describe chapters of activity by a God unconstrained by chronologic time. Chapter 16 is titled "Chronos and Kairos," taken from two New Testament Greek words, and Dembski uses them to distinguish between two concepts of time. "The visible realm thus operates according to chronos, the simple passage of time. But the invisible realm, in which God resides, operates according to kairos, the ordering of reality according to divine purposes" (p. 126). Again, "Chronos is the time of physics, and physics has only been around as long as the cosmos. But kairos is God's time, and God has been around forever" (ibid.). "Thus God responds to the Fall by acting not simply after it, as held by young-earth creationism, but also by acting before it" (ibid.).

So, the world we inhabit--affected as it is by sin--is greatly marred, for "God himself wills the disordering of creation, making it defective on purpose" (p. 145). But why should the earth and animals suffer the effects of human sin? "The broad principle that justifies linking human sin and natural evil is humanity's covenant headship in creation" (p. 147). Since man is creation's apex, God holds man responsible for the results of his sin on himself, as well as the world. "God's dealings with creation therefore parallel his dealings with humanity" (ibid.)

Refusing to question God's justice in allowing nature to suffer for human sin, Dembski turns it around to suggest it would be unjust if God were to allow man to sin without its consequences coming down on nature. "Sin has ignited a raging fire in our hearts. God uses natural evil to fight fire with fire, setting a comparatively smaller fire (natural evil) to control a much larger fire (personal evil)" (p. 148).

The last part of the book, chapters 21-24, attempt to tie up "Loose Ends." Dembski freely admits that "the present theodicy attempts to make peace between our understanding of Genesis and the current mental environment" (p. 170). The "mental environment" to which he refers is the current conception of a universe that began billions of years ago with a Big Bang.

It is important to note that Dembski himself is not an evolutionist. And, as stated, he is a leader in the field among those in academia subscribing to Intelligent Design. Nor does he deny the verbal inspiration of Scripture. We appreciate his effort to defend God, Christ, the Cross, and the Genesis account of the Fall, as well as the existence and nature of evil. And, to his credit, Dembski rejects process theology, which reduces God's infinity in order to account for the existence of evil (making God himself an evolving, and in some ways helpless, being). Dembski believes in and defends the God of Scripture.

Thus, it is disappointing to see young-earth creationism endure a broadside (albeit a sympathetic broadside) from this proponent of Intelligent Design. Disappointment continues when Dembski writes, "Noah's flood, though presented as a global event, is probably best understood as historically rooted in a local event (e.g., a catastrophic flood in the Middle East)" (p. 170).

Though this review, in the main, describes a thesis of Dembski's with which we disagree, he does offer helpful insights and thought-provoking analyses, especially in Part I ("Dealing With Evil") and Part III ("Divine Creation and Action"). Among many of note who praise the book, Douglas Groothuis, philosophy professor at Denver Seminary, writes, "Dembski's ingenious approach to explaining natural evil (particularly animal pain and death before the fall) will not convince everyone, but all who read it will benefit from a mind crackling with intelligence, insight, and expertise."

In the final analysis, we think Dembski goes too far in an effort to accommodate what parades under the rubric of modern science. His "kairological" interpretation of the Genesis creation account loads the text with more meaning than the language can bear (e.g. "the evening and the morning were the first day...the second day...the third day," etc.), giving rise to this question: If God had wanted to convey the idea of his having created the earth in six 24-hour days, how might God have written that?

Further, Dembski's proposed retroactive effects of the Fall (and even making room for the evolutionary timetable) does violence to the understanding of Bible believers across the centuries. Are we to think that truths as fundamental as the origin of man and earth were necessarily misunderstood by Christians until the advent of modern geology and astrophysics?

We'll continue to occupy and defend our acre where evolutionary theory is untenable, unwelcome, and unable to be harmonized with Genesis. If it comes to a duel between science (or, what passes for science) and Scripture, we defer to the apostle Paul's timeless principle, "let God be true, but every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4). God is the God of true science, and of all knowledge. All truth (i.e. whatever accords with reality) harmonizes with all Scripture (since all Scripture is, itself, true).

But science does not know everything it says it knows. And it is difficult to read some of Paul's statements without the hubris of modern science springing to mind: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" (1 Cor. 1:19-20). "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called" (1 Tim. 6:20).

Dr. William Dembski's book is set to start many heated discussions about such issues as the goodness of G-d, the relevance of evil in the world to G-d's character, and the ultimate origin of man. Some will dismiss this book simply because it deals with questions from a theological perspective. Yes, this is a book about theological questions answered from a theological perspective; if that approach doesn't interest you, then don't bother wasting your time on this book or on this review. Unless you have nothing else to do, that is...then by all means, preoccupy yourself with something that doesn't interest you.

For those who believe in both the existence of G-d and in the existence of Evil in the world, this book provides a good discussion of some major themes in theodicy, as well a providing an original theodicy developed by Dr. Dembski himself. (At least I've never come across it before.) Dr. Dembski deals with questions such as the origin of death, whether or not it is possible to reconcile the existence of death before the Fall with the Biblical record, and whether or not the various forms of creationism (YEC, OEC, TE) resolve the issues in a coherent manner. Dr. Dembski shows the breath and depth of his knowledge in these areas, while giving fair treatment to each of the possible views.

Dr. Dembski's novel paradigm of Kairos vs. Chronos and retroactive effects of the Fall were the most interesting parts of the book for me. The book will be remembered, if for nothing else, by the new theory he puts forth to solve the riddle.

The book is quite readable and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to family and friends. It is just the right length to be a quick read, without being so small that it lacks substance. It gives you enough details and background without giving you too much.

Overall, I think the book is great, even if you don't find the conclusion fully persuasive. I especially appreciate the fact that Dr. Dembski avoids setting up straw-men with dealing with rival views and treats them in a detailed, respectful manner. For example, he is not dismissive of the YEC view of origins (as many are), but tries to fully expound both the strengths and weaknesses of that view in dealing with questions of theodicy and earth history.

Writing to Asa Gray on May 22, 1860, just six months after the publication of his Origin of Species, Charles Darwin stated, "With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice." Thus a big issue that caused Darwin's theological doubt--indeed practical denial--was the problem of pain and suffering.

Enter William Dembski's The End of Christianity. I should begin by saying up front that this was a very rewarding read although not a "light" one. This is tough stuff. That is by no means a criticism. Some things can't--and shouldn't--be simplified. It was C. S. Lewis who reminded us that "It is no good looking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. . . . If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple. Very often, however, this procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity. Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable to a child of six and make that the object of their attack" (Mere Christianity, pp. 40-41). This is precisely what I think Darwin did. Thus, The End of Christianity establishes a theodicy in answer to Charles Darwin's suffering Caterpillars and dreadfully playful cats.

Now dismantling a child's answer to evil (even a childish one proposed by the great Darwin himself) would hardly warrant publication. But there is much more here. I can best approach this by summarizing how I originally handled the question and how this book changed it. I must confess that I dealt with it only half successfully. First of all I've always been an old earth Christian. It's the science that compelled my conviction here not Scripture. But it wasn't just the science. Philosophically "the appearance of age" argument so frequently offered by YECs bothered me; not so much because it didn't comport to the science, but because of the epistemological ramifications of such an argument. If things really aren't what they seem, what does that suggest about God's creation and how we interact with it? If the apparent age is illusory, how do we interact with other aspects of God's creation? Where does the "illusion" or mere "appearance" stop? For that matter, is this the nature described in the Bible? In the end I concluded (perhaps too glibly and with little expertise) that this notion was more suitable for a Buddhist monk than a Christian. Things are what they are; time is what it is. Reconciling an old earth creation with Scripture didn't seem that problematic. After all, if a figurative interpretation of "days" in Genesis was good enough for Augustine it was good enough for me, and I could see no reason to leave Bishop Ussher the sole authority on the matter.

However, there's another resolution to the matter than just favoring one theologian over another. Clement of Alexandria, Origen's teacher, pointed out sometime around 200 AD that creation was not an "in time" event because creation itself established time. In similar fashion Dembski resolves the "YEC/OEC" debate by realizing the trans-temporality of God. Perfect creation, the fall, imperfection, and death are all readily resolved in this provocative book by stepping out of the lockstep chronological world that dominates us conceptually and experientially. Dembski's discussion of chromos and kairos is most helpful in this regard. The strength is that Dembski explicates his position through what I see as a thoroughly even-handed discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of old-earth and young-earth positions showing that in the end neither is the central issue. It was as epiphanal a moment for me as when I realized that the age of the earth simply didn't matter in terms of random selection. As Marcel Schützenberger and Murray Eden demonstrated long ago, you just can't get Darwinian randomness to work whether the earth 6,000 or 4.5 billion years old. There's just not enough time in either case. Actually this epiphany is more powerful because it makes sense of what in my opinion is the most difficult section of the bible, namely, the first three chapters of Genesis.

Dembski correctly locates natural evil in our own sinfulness emanating from our prideful rebellion and fall, precisely what our orthodox forbearers have said all along. Indeed that first act of disobedience "opened the door to Satan to ravage the physical world." Eschewing the popular concessions that typify the theology of modernity, The End of Christianity presents a theodicy without employing the intellectual gymnastics of modifying nature to comport with the theory or by allegorizing Scripture into myth and fable. Dembski's statement that "sin propagates through nature and brings about natural evil," is well said. Indeed "the disordered state of nature mirrors the disordered state of our souls"--no wonder that nature groans! As Dembski says, "It is painful to accept that God is fully responsible for natural evil and that he introduces it in response to human sin." Of course, I completely agree that this "bitter pill" carries with it the "promise of redemption." But once we sinned, how else could God have dealt with us? Indeed how else could He redeem? To privilege our rebellion with perfection and immortality would, in fact, be an abomination contrary to His very nature.

Of course, this book is needed but it will likely not be appreciated in our current "mental environment." We live in a world that increasingly seeks blame everywhere but ourselves, indeed dismisses, ignores, and/or excuses sin itself. This, of course, is the environment that gives free reign to that pride which elicited the fall. We live in a world that exalts human-centered choice and untrammeled "freedom" and then complains about its consequences. It has forgotten Joseph de Maistre's famous observation, "I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be; I know the heart of an honest man; it is horrible." Sadly I have noted this attitude as much from the clergy as from the secular world. Yet in the last chapter, "Luminous with Purpose," Dembski's wife Jana offers the necessary antidote to this poison of the modern and postmodern age (for all the postmodernists attempts at distinctions they are for all intents and purposes two sides of the same counterfeit coin of self-deception). Finding that sense of purpose beyond ourselves in and through the agape love of God is indeed our chief end. The human heart may be horrible but it is redeemable through Christ and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For those who have ears let them hear! Thanks for a wonderful read!

The Creator God who transcends our temporal dimensions has actualized information into all of creation by His intention and design. Understanding that God is the divine Logos, Source and Mediator of all information, is of emerging importance to Christendom, and Dr. Dembski explains it exceedingly well. He also addresses creation age perspectives in relation to theodicy that have divided the church, confirming that God's Word and World are dual revelations without contradiction properly interpreted. Considering God's creative power in a kairological way theodicy is addressed in the context that the Fall of Man retroactively deformed God's "perfect" creation. With foreknowledge of Man's sin God established natural evils such as earthquakes that rendered His creation defective prior to the Fall so that Man might "realize the full extent of their sin" and embrace redemption in Christ. This interpretation of natural evil is subject to a counterpoint. God in His foreknowledge created His natural processes "good" with fixed laws to provide for Man's creation and needs and sufficient for His purposes to deal with the anticipated corruption of nature by the sinful choices of fallen Man. Tectonic plate activity can result in catastrophic destruction of life and property and be perceived as natural evil, but the biodiversity of life on earth was made possible and is sustained by the activity. It is the choice of fallen Man that renders him vulnerable to geohazards, but the geologic processes themselves are not evil. Apart from this interpretive issue the book shows powerfully how God's natural creations are "luminous with purpose" to restore mankind to an intimate association with Him in Truth through Jesus Christ and the Cross. The Christian theology presented by this influential scholar stands on Christology and is a must read.
E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.
Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery, University of Washington (Retired)
Online Instructor of Christian apologetics, Reasons To Believe

This strangely-titled book is a speculative attempt to combine our current scientific understand of the history of planet Earth with an orthodox Christianity. William Dembski begins with a well-written survey and commentary on the current engagement of science and Christianity, including a nice summary of the spectrum of views on the Fall and natural evil.

Dembski's hypothesis is that viewing natural evil as a consequence of the Fall is entirely compatible with mainstream understandings of cosmic and natural history. At the heart of his view is the idea that the effects of the Fall can be retroactive as well as proactive, much as the saving effects of the Cross stretch not only forward in time but also backward, saving, for instance, the Old Testament saints. He suggests that his view is compatible with young-earth creationism, old earth creationism and theistic evolution (evolutionary creationism). Dembski traces the history of his view back to 1846 (J. Jay Dana) and 1851 (Edward Hitchcock)and suggests that it didn't catch on then because no one developed a coherent theory of how God could act across time.

The heart of Dembski's book is Chapter 20, where he finally gets around to discussing his kairological (time measured by purpose) interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and retroactive natural evil. "A kairological reading of Genesis preserves the young-earth creationist emphasis on tracing all evil in the world to human sin: God creates a perfect world, God places humans in that world, they sin, and the world goes haywire." However, "it must also account for how the world could go haywire before human sin. . . . An infinite God who transcends time can redeem a botched performance by acting across time. In particular, God could make effects of the Fall evident in creation so that these effects, though attributable to the Fall, come temporally prior to it. In other words, the effects of the Fall can be retroactive."

In Dembski's own words: "Genesis 1 describes God's original plan for creation. The Fall and its consequences, in subverting that plan through human rebellion, elicits no radically new creative activity from God. . . . God's immediate response to the Fall is therefore not to create anew but to control damage. The challenge God faces in controlling the damage resulting from this original sin is to make humans realize the full extent of their sin so that, in the fullness of time, we can fully embrace the redemption of Christ." To do this, "God does not merely allow personal evils to run their course subsequent to the fall. In addition, God allows natural evils to run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself wills the disordering of nature, making it defective on purpose . . . to bring humanity to its senses by making us realize the gravity of sin."

" If we accept that God acts to anticipate the Fall, then, in the chronology leading up to the Fall, the world has already experienced the consequences of human sin in the form of natural evil. This seems to raise a difficulty, however, because humans who have yet to sin come into a world where natural evil is already raging. . . . The Garden of Eden, as a segregated area in which the effects of natural evil are not evident provides the way out of this difficulty. . . .The drama of the Fall unfolds in a segregated area. Genesis 2:8 refers to this area as a garden planted by God (i.e., the Garden of Eden). Now, ask yourself why God would need to plant a garden in a perfect world untouched by natural evil. Any why, once humans sin, must they be expelled from this garden and live outside it, where natural evil is present?"

I recommend this book for Christians who are exploring ways to integrate an old earth and/or biological evolution with their Christian faith. Though speculative, this is certainly one possible approach.

I have been an ID advocate since its inception and Dr. Dembski was kind enough to even have lunch with me (although it wasn't "free"--pun intended) after a 2-week course he taught years ago on the budding intelligent design movement and the twin aspects of the "Wedge" sides--both the positive (positing evidences) and the negative (epistemic [e.g., alleged demarcation lines defining science]).

I have just read The End of Christianity, and it is painfully obvious that I will have to re-read at it as least two more times. The book is more then intriguing and I have been a follower of Dembski et al. for over ten years. Dr. Dembski does comment that there will be a sequel to the book (page 111), and am I hopeful that he will address this issue which I believe to wreak havoc with his proposed theodicy.

I am unpacking this issue in a public context as this is not the kind of issue typically addressed in popular level books. Specifically, I am referring to Dembski's theory of time, which is not explicitly stated, but obviously seems to be a "static" or "B-theory" of time given the references in his book. This seems to follow from his view that God's eternal nature is timeless or atemporal. Most atemporalists typically hold to a B-theory of time. Whether this is a logical entailment is another issue. However, Dembski's view seems to be supported by his comment that Einstein's remark about the distinction between past, present and future is a stubborn illusion (page 128), which is typical of B-theorists.

The could wreak havoc on Dr. Dembski's theodicy as is it is evident to the initiated. For the reader not familiar with these issues, not only is God timeless, but time is an illusion--there is no such thing as "temporal becoming"--or tense for that matter. Worse yet, the main problem is how is it a timeless God can interact with creatures in time and still remain timeless (this issue here is not unlike the problems that obtain with the failed notion of ET-simultaneity). Dembski offers an atemporal God that remains both extrinsically and intrinsically untouched through causal interactions with mankind. If there is a sequel to this most incredible book, it would be great to see this issue address--even a footnote would suffice.

Moreover, the cosmology of the timeless God conjoined with a B-theory of time usually carries other baggage that does not sit too well within a theistic worldview. And here I am referring to the two major rivals of persistence: three-dimensionalism (3D, endurantism) and four-dimensionalism (4D, purdurantism). Four-dimensionalism also leads to eternalism (i.e., that all moments of time are on the same ontological footing), of which there are two varieties: worm theory and stage theory (which I believe to be more akin to the persistence of persons).

It is somewhat difficult to reconcile Dr. Dembski's theodicy unless he addresses these issues, especially the first issue; namely, trying to reconcile atemporality and a B-theory of time with God's interaction in a "linear time" that Dembski associates with "causal temporal logic," but still remain the God of time of "intentional-semantic logic." Perhaps my questions will be answered after reading this supurb book a second time. Lastly, I believe that (despite the young earth beliefs of those such as Dr. John Mark Reynolds) this book does well to challenge the superficial and offensive beliefs of young earth materials one would find in a church bookstore such as my own. I highly recommend this book and I hope that Dr. Dembski finds this review unoffensive.

[ This book is not calling for the end of Christianity, but looks forward to the end result that Christianity brings upon completion: redemption. And it also offers a defense of the goodness of God during the interim period in which we wait. ]

This book delivers what it promises and much more!

Initially upon reading the book I expected to encounter head on with the theodicy. But instead, Dembski sets the stage:

He talks about Jesus suffering and asks how if Jesus suffered for only a few hours on the cross could he have taken upon the entire suffering of the world. He brilliantly poses the fact that if one day is like a thousands years to God. Then during the time period he suffered, Jesus would have extensive time to experientially encounter all sin of the world (since if you do the math: 24 = 1000 years, then 6 hours = 250 days, then each of those days is a thousand years, etc..)

But this is not the highlight, only the prelude.

Then he asks how can Christian Theology can account for natural evil in the world?
He lists one approach of tracing everything to the fall of Satan. But dismisses that view after some engagement as problematic in some respects.

He then talks about the fact that the traditional view was to trace the problem of evil and the existence of suffering to the fall of human beings. As a result of Adams fall, we brought on as a result our death and the fall of the nature/creation. This was the traditional view, and what he calls the attraction of a young earth.

However the problem comes in that this view is challenged as if the earth is old (as stated by science) then it means there has been natural evil going on long before Adam and Eve actually fell in the garden of eden. This proposes a challenge. Thus if we stay with the scientific findings, which state an old earth, then we have to grapple with this truth. And will resultantly need a new means of explaining the rise of natural evils.

Dembski response is marvelous, though it may not convince all, he states that God being unrestricted by time and having foreknowledge retro-actively applied the results of the fall of man to creation. Or it can be argued that he said that upon man falling, he worked by backwards in time to apply the effect of the fall to creation. Either way interpreted, it is a bold claim.

As we are used to things having a sort of forward causation. I exercise and then get stronger. Not that I am stronger because of exercise I will do in the future. Dembski says that God does this (retroactively applies the effects of sin to the fall of creation ) in order that we can see the devastation that sin causes, and thus will run from our sin to Him.

However he builds his case, by pointing to examples of prayer, in which, if God is to answer it, he must have set the ball rolling ahead of time of the request. And he shows the example of the old testament saints in which salvation is applied retro-actively. So although controversial, it definitely in my opinion seems logically sound, coherent and a definite possibility.

If you get this book along with: The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problems of Evil and If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil you will be on pretty solid grounds in terms of having a excellent reasons as to how both evil and a good and all powerful God can exist.

However the book covers much more in building the case:
1. An Understanding of the young-old controversy.
2. A paradigm of the trinity
3. How God may work in a closed system
4. The various conceptions of time
5. Newcomb's paradox
6. A new reading of Genesis 1 - 3
7. Why we should thank GOD for ALL things

AND much much more

The book is truly a TREAT and WELL WRITTEN!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: DEALING WITH EVIL
1 The Reach of the Cross
2 Evil's Origin
3 Tracing the World's Evil to Human Sin
4 The Gravity of Sin

PART II: YOUNG- AND OLD-EARTH CREATIONISM

5 The Attraction of a Young Earth
6 Nature's Constancy
7 The Appearance of Age
8 Two Books
9 The Problem with Old-Earth Creationism

PART III: DIVINE CREATION AND ACTION

10 The Trinitarian Mode of Creation
11 Information Transcending Matter
12 Logos
13 Being as Communion
14 Creation as Double Creation
15 Moving the Particles

PART IV: RETROACTIVE EFFECTS OF THE FALL

16 Chronos and Kairos
17 Newcomb's Paradox
18 Two Logics of Creation
19 The Infinite Dialectic
20 A Kairological Reading of Genesis 1-3

PART V: LOOSE ENDS

21 What about Evolution?
22 Beyond Genesis 1-3
23 Thanking God FOR All Things
24 Luminous with Purpose

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SOME REVIEWS OF THE BOOK

As his books prove with monotonous regularity, Bill Dembski's brain runs circles around my own (and just about everyone's, I naturally like to believe), but like all the others, The End of Christianity is also intellectually honest, generous, and respectful--and not, I'm convinced, as merely a gambit. Christian readers will find Dembski's theodicy devotionally worthwhile, all of us intellectually so. Nice combination, not easily achieved.

-Mike Bryan is the author of, among other books, Chapter & Verse: A Skeptic Revisits Christianity, and The Afterword, a novel about a new deity

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The End of Christianity is very different from William Dembski's previous books, most notable of which were the academic classic The Design Inference and the popular best seller Intelligent Design. The present book deals with perhaps the most profound question to challenge humankind, the problem of evil. Like everything else Dr. Dembski has written, this book will be controversial. However, the readers of The End of Christianity will be greatly rewarded with a rich intellectual/philosophical/theological feast.
-Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry, University of Georgia

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I am deeply grateful for Dr. Dembski and his work. Theologians have long known that the problem of evil is one of the biggest threats to traditional Christianity. Here Dembski boldly tackles the problem and offers a thoughtful and clearly written approach to it. His overall argument, that all evil can be traced to the fall of man (even in a trans-temporal way), deserves serious consideration. Even if you might find particular points on which to differ with his judgments, you will do well to incorporate his insights into your own thinking. And the final two chapters, on thankfulness and purpose, show that this book supports a vigorous love for God in daily life. Thank you, Dr. Dembski, for using your talents so well!
-C. John ("Jack") Collins, Professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary

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William Dembski is a first-rate scholar who has focused his attention on the perennial challenge to Christianity: Why does God allow such evil and cruelty in the world? While staying well within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, Dembski offers fresh insights that can truly be described as ground-breaking. Whether you end up embracing his solution or not, The End of Christianity is a book all Christians--and even non-Christians--need to wrestle with. We enthusiastically recommend it.
-Josh and Sean McDowell, co-authors of Evidence for the Resurrection and More Than A Carpenter

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William Dembski's profound interdisciplinary expertise in writing about the most contested terrain at the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion is enormously impressive and valuable and puts him in the exalted company of contemporary authorities such as Stanley L. Jaki and Alister McGrath. He knows, and shows, that "the only way to avoid metaphysics is to say nothing," and his work is a noble, tightly-argued protest against both reductive scientism and premature fideism in the interest of reason, truth, and ethics.
-M. D. Aeschliman, Ph.D. (Columbia), author of The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, Professor of Education at Boston University, Professor of English at University of Italian Switzerland

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This book is an example of philosophical theology at its best. It contains fascinating and even exciting new perspectives on the problem of evil. While I am not convinced of every point that the author makes, The End of Christianity should be read by anyone who is interested in a Christian approach to natural and moral evil.
-Stephen T. Davis, Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College

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William Dembski's latest book, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World, shows how the traditional Christian doctrine that sin entered the world through humans is not refuted by the evidence that natural evils (earthquakes, storms, disease, death, etc.) are chronologically much older than humans within the universe. Because time within the created universe need not follow the same order as the logical process of God's creation of the universe, human sin could have caused earlier evil. There are many aspects of the problem of evil left mysterious by this book (and indeed by all other attempts to solve the problem), but I strongly recommend The End of Christianity as a refreshing approach that maintains the traditional theistic doctrines of God's omniscience and omnipotence.
-Don Page, Professor of Physics, University of Alberta, Canada

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Addressing the problem of a perfect God in an imperfect world, this book offers the most coherent answer to this question I've ever read. William A. Dembski has given us a bold and uncompromising theodicy that both confirms Christian orthodoxy and makes peace among our family of believers. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path." This book eschews the "negative path" by launching a peace offensive offering a positive solution that meets the demands of natural and revealed theology. Reconciling the many points of an issue that has confounded generations, this is the most important contribution to the question of God and evil since Leibniz defined it nearly 300 years ago.
- Michael A. Flannery, Professor and Associate Director for Historical Collections, University of Alabama, Birmingham

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Happily, there are many good books being written today. But it is rare, indeed, to find a book that towers over the others in profundity and quality. William Dembski's The End of Christianity is such a book. It is so interesting and well-written that I could not put it down. But more importantly, I have read very few books with its depth of insight, breadth of scholarly interaction, and significance. From now on, no one who is working on a Christian treatment of the problem of evil can afford to neglect this book. It is vintage Dembski and I highly recommend it.
- J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University and author of The God Question



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This is a different book for Dembski. It is more about theology than empirical science, although it does cover science as well. It is also the first book on theology proper that I have ever read if I ignore the pile of "new atheists" books out now, such as Richard Dawkin's previous book (most of these so-called new atheists books I have read). A focus of Dembski's book is on why evil exists if God is good. After the conclusion that evolution created life, and thus no need exists for God, the existence of evil is the most common reason given by atheists from Bertrand Russell to the new batch of atheists such as Christopher Hitchings as to why they do not believe in God. The most common response to this argument is that we have free will, thus free will allows humans to do evil. Most evil, at least today, is due to the evil done by humans. In the last century holocausts, pogroms, and related either directly or indirectly caused the death of close to a billion people. If God stopped all of this evil we would be deprived of free will and would be robots. Is this view valid? Dembski covers it in a fair and balanced way. Professor Dembski also covers the whole creation, Intelligent Design, evolution, short-age, and young-earth creationism, deism, and related issues in some detail. This book will appeal to a wide variety of persons, religious, atheistic, believers, non-believers, and everyone in-between. He covers basic questions everyone asks, or at least should think about.