I found two books by Sam Harris at RU: The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation. As the titles might suggest, Harris is not a fan of religion, especially not in public life. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford and is supposed to be working on another degree in neuroscience or something like that. He is clearly an atheist.

His two books are polemics against the role of religion. He claims that religion has no place in our modern society. Any good things that religion can provide can be found elsewhere and religion itself is the cause of substantial misery in the world.

Ironically, several of his positions I agree with. He is an ethical realist, which means he thinks there is such a thing as right and wrong (or at least good and bad). He contends that Islamic nations cannot develop democracy overnight because of their religion—there is good empirical evidence to support this claim. He argues that religious moderates are straddling the fence and need to choose one side or the other.

But these points of agreement are far removed from his central ideas. Unfortunately, it can be hard to determine exactly what his central ideas are. I could take a month’s worth of posts and critique his arguments page by page. In the interest of time (and my sanity), I will critique only two main ideas.

First, he argues against the existence of God on traditional modernist grounds. He seems to have been steeped in modern philosophy and theology without seriously considering the claims of religion (Christianity in particular). Hence, his attacks on Christianity actually amount to attacks on the religion more than on the faith or the Bible. Sure, he attacks those too, but most of his theological and interpretational arguments attack Catholic doctrines or seem to imply that the Old Testament civil code demands the obedience of New Testament Christians. A student of the Bible would probably think that he hasn’t actually read the Book. As far as his philosophical attacks on theism go, he floats several arguments that are either circular or poorly formed. They are the kinds of arguments that philosophers like Alvin Plantinga simply ignore because they are so bad.

In fact, Harris’s arguments typically aren’t all that great anywhere. His books read like a high school debate—though he gets away with some things that high school debaters can’t. There is little continuity between his points and he can’t seem to follow an argument all the way through. He makes large logical jumps in difficult sections. He also tends to dismiss major objections to his arguments. Almost surprisingly, he does acknowledge some of the problems, but then summarily dismisses them in the same sentence.

For example—and this is the second main idea—he claims that “questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures” (170-171). This standard is old but has been resurrected by some contemporary philosophers. The problem with this standard is the definitions. What is happiness and what is suffering? How do we tell them apart? He doesn’t even address this. But there is another problem. Suppose I find great happiness in killing people. And suppose that I go to somewhere where there is immense suffering. If I kill all of those people, it makes me happy and relieves them of their suffering. By Harris’s standard, my action would be morally defensible. But even Harris doesn’t think that I would be doing a good thing. He admits that this kind of problem is difficult, but then he leaves right there. In his own words: “Admittedly, the problem of adjudicating what counts as happiness, and which forms of happiness should supercede others, is difficult—but so is every other problem worth thinking about” (End of Faith 185). This is hardly an answer, but it illustrates his method of dealing with serious objections to his position.

Harris resorts to the high school tactics when he reaches logical dilemmas like the previous example. Instead of defending his position, he tends to shift the flow of thought to another argument against religion. He appeals to the emotions and prejudices of his audience rather than to the reason he so vociferously endorses.

Alexander Pope said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Sam Harris has learned a little, but has spoken too soon. He could use some more study in the nature of religion and the logic of his own arguments. He conspicuously neglects any serious, conservative modern theologian or philosopher when he generates his ideas about religion. He uses arguments that have been duly addressed already (or simply absurd on their face)¹ as if they are conclusive and beyond dispute. If what he employs is called reason, then let us have faith.

1. For example, he quotes Bertrand Russell on whether Jesus was a good moral example: “ ‘Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Hitler and Stalin and the H bomb.’ This is a devastating observation, and there is no retort to it” (173). It’s nice of Harris to declare that an absurd statement is beyond dispute. back↩

I have read all of the HP books and have thought for some time that the last book would be very important to the moral structure of the previous ones. The seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is one of the better-written of the series. It is long. 759 pages to be exact. It also includes a lot of explanation. In the previous books the explanations can be tedious, but in HP7 they actually advance the story reasonably well. Importantly, however, they also provide some insight into the moral structure of Harry’s world.

Many have critiqued the HP books using an argument that essentially boils down thus: Harry’s world is not like ours. Needless to say, this argument fails to impress. But Rowling’s fantasy world lacks a clear moral standard. In a story about the conflict between good and evil, the absence of a moral center is a serious flaw. Commendably, good wins in the end (don’t worry; I’m not going to spoil the whole plot for you). But it isn’t clear at the end what we mean by “good.”

There are a couple of ways that an author can identify a moral structure. For one, he can explain it directly. This approach rarely works. A more common approach is to create a character who represents good—everything he does is good or is clearly justifiable. It is possible to never have a single good character and to still have a consistent moral standard, but to do so the author must make a consistent judgment about something. Unfortunately, Harry Potter doesn’t do any of these.

In the early books, certain actions were bad and the bad guys were bad because they did them. They employed “dark magic” or the “dark arts” and the “unforgivable curses” among other things. As the series progresses, the “good guys” start employing some of these same things. For example, in the seventh book, a Hogwarts teacher (a good one) uses an unforgivable curse.

In the middle of the series there is also a suggestion that certain kinds of people are bad. They are usually identified by certain attitudes toward other people rather than mere actions. Instead of being bad for using dark magic, they are bad because they try to hurt other people. The Death Eaters operate on this principle.² These people are also bad because of the way they treat those whom they perceive as lower in status (such as house-elves and mixed-blood wizards and witches). Again, however, even the good guys occasionally slip into these mindsets and actions.

A careful reader may suggest that Rowling is trying to introduce moral complexity to the story. The characters can be more realistic if they don’t always act perfectly. Complex characterization is a good thing, especially in a long series of books. However, Rowling has introduced so much complexity that there is no clearly identifiable Good. The good guys do the same things as the bad guys and not all the bad guys are always bad. In fact, even some of the best of the good guys still make (and have made) plenty of mistakes—and not just in ignorance.³

So how does Rowling explain what is good? She doesn’t do it eliminating the bad options—at least probably not. We do not identify good by finding the opposite of evil anyway. Aristotle observed that there are many ways to go wrong; there is the opposite of the good, but there is also the distortion of the good. In fact, the worst evil often employs many prominent features of the good.

In the earlier books, Dumbledore defines the good. But in the last book (spoiler alert), he reveals that he has his share of mistakes and even suggests that he cannot be the standard of good. Rowling leaves a moral vacuum. The one character that was complex enough to define a standard states that he is not good enough. Interestingly, the only “good” person left is Harry. Of course, Harry has messed up a lot. We cannot allow Harry to be the standard because we have no way to determine whether his various actions are good or bad.

In spite of the lack of a clear standard, there are a few implications about what makes people (and their actions) good. Some of them almost seem biblical. Throughout the series the idea of sacrificial love has been significant. Harry is alive because of his mother’s love. At the end of the story, he is willing to sacrifice himself for his friends. This sounds really good. Maybe Rowling is on to something. But the biblical standard is not that we should sacrifice ourselves for our friends—it is that we should sacrifice ourselves for our enemies. There is never restitution or forgiveness in Rowling’s moral world. It isn’t refused, per se, but it is never mentioned either. Harry fights to win, to defeat evil, to save his friends; but that is all.

A thoughtful reader might also observe that the Bible never really explains what evil is. Quite so. The Bible speaks much more about what God is doing about evil.⁴ But in the Bible, God is a rather flat character morally. He never makes a mistake. We can base our entire moral system on His character and actions. We can trust that He is doing all things righteously and in accordance with His perfect wisdom. Harry Potter’s world has no such character. No one knows everything and no one always does what is right. We can understand much from the Bible about the nature of evil by considering what God has done and is doing about it, as well as what He has said about it. Rowling offers us no such standard.

As a story about the fight between good and evil, Harry Potter is fine. The books are entertaining and often quite creative. I am not trying to suggest that I despise them. But Harry Potter’s world is very post-modern. The line between good and evil is very fuzzy in some important places. Some see interesting parallels between HP and the Bible. I tend to think that these parallels might arise from the nature of great stories than from some kind of intentional allusion on Rowling’s part. Rowling’s creative world doesn’t actually use the same moral structure as our world. This feature of her world is not a good reason to reject her books outright, but the discerning reader should take care to recognize the differences and to position his mind accordingly. We can learn some things from the Harry Potter books and even enjoy them, but we must carefully examine what they teach.

I would be very interested in your thoughts and interaction on this topic.

1. It seems, however, that the vast majority of Christians who accuse the HP books of ungodly witchcraft haven’t actually read the books. One could make a very good case that the magic in HP is no different than the magic in any other fantasy. I do not have space to explore this point here, but others have already done so. back↩
2. In book 4 the Death Eaters are introduced as those who would torment anyone without pure wizard ancestry. back↩
3. For an example of a good guy who isn’t really all that good, consider Sirius. The previous books suggest that he was certainly no angel, and the later books confirm it. He was not someone worth imitating, but he is constantly treated as a good guy. back↩
4. For a fascinating exposition of this idea, read N.T. Wright’s little book Evil and the Justice of God. back↩

In 2006, N. T. Wright published Simply Christian. Critics have lauded it as a worthy successor to Mere Christianity. It is. Wright reintroduces many of Lewis’s arguments, but comes at the issues from a different perspective, providing helpful clarifications and some novel thoughts as well.

In fact, the perspective of the book is one of its greatest virtues. Wright, like Lewis, comes at the topic of Christianity in a fairly non-Christian way. The book’s subtitle is “Why Christianity Makes Sense.” It reads like a grand (if brief) tour of biblical theology intended for those who have little knowledge of Christian ideas. Wright tries to demonstrate that Christianity is more than a run-of-the-mill religion, and that it makes a compelling case for belief. However, as Christian readers of Mere Christianity have seen, sometimes a thoughtful examination of Christianity from the outside (or what seems like the outside) can be immensely helpful.¹ By the end of the book, it is sometimes hard to decide who Wright’s intended audience actually is. He still targets unbelievers, but an honest believer will find plenty of food for thought. In fact, if a Christian reader has never considered Wright’s ideas, he might think that Wright is trying to convince him.

Wright begins by addressing four areas that modern ideas of life and the world fail to adequately address. First, we seek justice. We are pained and angered by the success of evil in the world, especially when humans seem to have played no part it (Wright uses the example of the Asian tsunami). We discover that bad things happen all the time and sometimes without explanation. We want someone or something to come and set the world to rights. In fact, we would generally agree on what that might look like, and we all desire it. Why?

The second curiosity is our quest for spirituality. Despite all our advances in science, our desire for something outside the natural world has never been fully suppressed. Even those who have no knowledge of God seem to desire something “out there.” People take up Eastern religions or participate in strange activities to get in touch with a transcendental reality, even if it is only a mirror of their own souls. We want more than this world can give. Why?

Our third desire is for meaningful relationships. We seem to want good relationships, but we are so bad at them. In this chapter, Wright begins to introduce his thesis in earnest. We desire relationships because we were designed to. Why?

Finally, Wright suggests that our love of beauty points beyond this world. We have all experienced something beautiful but found that the experience was hard to express. Our love of beauty cannot be fully explained by any of the various psychological notions that have been current in the last century. Ultimately, we find it hard to explain it at all. Wright says, “Heaven and earth are full of glory, a glory which stubbornly refuses to be reduced to terms of the sense of the humans who perceive it.” Again, we earnestly seek something that seems beyond our capacity to obtain. Why?

Wright proposes to answer the “why” by demonstrating that Christianity makes sense of all these things, and everything else too. In philosophical terms, he proposes a Christian cosmology, a view of the world that explains everything. This project seems like a daunting, but he is up to it. He proposes that we need to rethink many of our ideas about Christianity. Christianity tells the story of a world made very good, just, truly spiritual, favorable to good relationships, and glorious in beauty. But something went terribly wrong² . God is working to fix these wrongs, and He calls us to participate in His work that will one day end in a new creation in which all these things will be restored.

For the Christian (or at least for me), this way of looking at things is hard. It’s too big. It’s like trying to look at a 360 degree landscape all at once. I suspect that we fail to see things this way because it is hard. But we need to try. Many of our petty squabbles over various interpretations and applications might disappear if we could see how they all fit into the big picture.

Wright suggests that there are three ways of looking at the relationship between Heaven and Earth. In this exposition of a Christian cosmology, he adds an extra perspective to Lewis, and I think the expansion is helpful. Option One claims that everything is God in the long run. This is basic pantheism and Lewis treats it well in Miracles. Option Two says that Earth is here and Heaven is there and never the twain shall meet. This is Platonism, and no Christian would accept it on principle; but most of us accept it in practice. We speak of “going to heaven,” which isn’t wrong, but it can obscure what we mean by “heaven.” We talk and act as if there is a great divide between the “spiritual” realm and the “earthly” realm, even though the Bible doesn’t actually separate them so much (and not in the way we usually do).

Option Three suggests that heaven and earth overlap and interlock in many places. This is basically Lewis’s “supernaturalism.” Wright makes this his central idea and pursues its implications throughout the last two thirds of the book. I think he’s on to something, and he demonstrates its far-reaching applications much better than Lewis does.

In the last third of the book, Wright discusses various applications of Option Three. He includes chapters on worship, prayer, the Bible, the church, and the church’s responsibilities in the world. A conservative would probably find many of his suggestions very appealing, but end up mystified by the occasional seeming incongruity. We might need to exercise some humility and let Wright make his case. He comes from a very liturgical tradition and those who prefer less structure might not care for some of his ideas. I don’t have time or space to delve into a thorough discussion of individualism in religion, but it is worth remembering that the New Testament only strongly emphasizes the role of the church, not the individual.

The last chapter is especially interesting to me, since I enjoy studying the relationship of culture and religion. Wright makes the most convincing case I have ever seen for Christian interaction with the world. He isn’t a libertine, but neither is he a Puritan. In fact, if we accept his system of thought, the application to culture is immediate. God is working to bring all the world into subjection to Himself and will one day remake the world. Our job is to work so as to show this world what a New Creation would be like and to invite them to participate in it.

Of course, those familiar with N.T. Wright will wonder how he deals with certain theological issues. He is known for his part in the New Perspective on Paul and for various affiliations with the search for the historical Jesus. He is an Anglican (The Bishop of Durham) and has studied and taught at Oxford. He is a learned man and a prodigious writer. Nevertheless, don’t assume that you are going to disagree with him. I haven’t read enough of Wright to have my own opinions on his opinions, but these are my thoughts on what I have read (his summary in two books): Wright’s approach answers more questions than most. I don’t know that I would agree with him on every point—in fact, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t. But his scheme explains some fundamental questions that often get flimsy answers. Questions like: Why did Jesus have to die? (Because we were sinners.) Why does God care? (Because He loves us.) Why does He love us? (Because He wants to.) The answers in parentheses are not incorrect, per se, but neither are they especially satisfying.

Yes, I know, it’s more complicated than that. And I know that we should not expect to understand every detail of God’s mind. But the Bible was given to us so that we could understand some of God’s mind. It seems that we should at least be willing to see how the Bible addresses these issues—and the biblical answers are much richer than what I gave above.

If this review has done anything, I hope it will encourage you to find Simply Christian and read it—several times. It’s not expensive and it’s fairly short. Wright has a nice style so reading it should not be difficult. But if you are like me, you might find that it will take some time for everything to sink in. It’s worth your time. I fear that many of our debates and much of our effort is wasted on unimportant matters that would receive their proper weight if we would think biblically. Wright’s book can help us to think well and make us better equipped to live as citizens of an eternal kingdom.³

1. Wright himself has reviewed Mere Christianity and his thoughts are quite helpful. back↩
2. Wright doesn’t spend all that much time discussing exactly what went wrong. It isn’t quite in the main of his argument. Another of his books, Evil and the Justice of God, Wright argues that the Bible does not explain evil; rather, it shows what God is doing to fix it. back↩
3. If you want a lightweight introduction to a biblical interpretation that actually appears to include all of the Bible, you might look at a recent book by Thurman Wisdom, Dean Emeritus of the School of Religion at Bob Jones University. His book is called A Royal Destiny and addresses the role of man in God’s kingdom. You can get it from BJU Press. back↩