The Air We Breathe or Christian Hot Air?
Scrivener debates O’Connor
Glenn Scrivener wrote an excellent book, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality, which argues that the Western values we often take for granted originate in the Christian story. It’s a book I frequently cite in my apologetics class. Recently, he appeared on Justin Brierley’s new show, Uncommon Ground, to debate his thesis with atheist philosopher Alex O’Connor, host of the Within Reason podcast. I found the discussion interesting but felt it ended in a tie because they both effectively debated the historical evidence for and against Christianity’s influence on Western culture. I believe that what was missing was an extended discussion of the metaphysics behind these “Christian” values.
O’Connor argued that many of the values associated with Christianity actually predate both Christ and the Biblical canon. He acknowledged that, although Christians may have refined, formalized, and institutionalized these pre-Christian ideas, their primal origins remain obscure. Is Scrivener justified in claiming that Christianity is the air we breathe when many people throughout history caught a whiff of it before Jesus even appeared? Scrivener partially addressed this concern by emphasizing the importance of the opening chapters of Genesis in establishing an image-bearing anthropology that allows for the appearance of “Christianity” before Christ, but I felt this was not sufficiently explored.
Houston, we have a problem!
If you conducted a man-on-the-street interview and asked people whether they think something is wrong with the world, I suspect you’d hear a resounding yes! If you pressed them further and asked them to identify the problem, they’d give a variety of responses, including global warming, poverty, homelessness, and pollution. They might even get more specific and blame Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, or Labor. Ultimately, however, their answers would simply be veiled attempts to avoid the uncomfortable truth that the problem “passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”[i]
Acknowledging that the world has a problem and scapegoating humanity has historically led people throughout history to try solving it by controlling, transforming, or eliminating humans. This strategy has mostly been a fool’s errand, devised and executed by fools to manage foolish behavior. Our inability to govern human morality from the ground up has caused us to look to the heavens for a universal, objective, top-down solution that bypasses the human heart and penetrates the soul. Interestingly, the only faith tradition that has enough moral oxygen to make the air we breathe life-giving on a global scale is Christianity. To better understand why, we need to start at the beginning.
Once upon a time…
If Scrivener is correct and the greatest story ever told has provided the metanarrative for freedom, kindness, progress, and equality, then we need to read it from cover to cover. I think part of the problem with the discussion was that they spent most of their time arguing about the plot conflict and the resolution, and forgot that it all began with a once upon a time – And God said…
While O’Connor would likely question the veracity of the Judeo-Christian origin story, I believe he underestimates the remarkable uniqueness of the opening chapters of Genesis within the religious landscape of the Ancient Near East (ANE). God created an ethical universe by speaking “good” things into existence and arranging them in a rhetorically “very good” way. God established a moral infrastructure, a natural law, by which image bearers could assess cultural corruption. Unlike the gods of the competing regional ANE myths, who created the universe using methods that both believers and nonbelievers would consider undignified, such as sexual promiscuity, celestial infighting, or divine dismemberment, the God of the Bible simply spoke a very good world into existence, and no gods were harmed in the process.
The Biblical account of the creation of the universe and the fall of man sets the stage for a profound overarching story that remains surprisingly relevant today. Most people are not interested in Sumerian or Egyptian creation myths because they are disconnected from 21st-century life. However, Genesis remains a topic of discussion in scientific, sociological, and psychological circles. Jordan Peterson’s popular lecture series on Genesis is a prime example of its metaphysical importance. The reason we still talk about Genesis is that it is still talking about us. We can doubt the literal existence of talking snakes and magical fruit, but as a foundational metanarrative, it remains unparalleled.
The first three chapters of Genesis establish the altitude that atheist Stephen Pinker sees the better angels of our nature soaring towards. They explain why O’ Connor bristles every time he’s pricked by a thorn or thistle in the wilderness. And they justify Joni Mitchell’s plea to get ourselves back to the garden.
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden (Woodstock by Joni Mitchell)
Voice Recognition Software
God hovered over chaos, formed His thoughts, and spoke them into existence. He then created image-bearing beings equipped with divine voice-recognition software who not only understand what He said but are obsessed with scientifically parsing His words. Although it remains a mystery how divine speech could create a universe, it serves as a powerful metaphor familiar to all humans who communicate with one another by transforming their immaterial thoughts into physical sound waves and then having those thoughts reappear in their listeners’ minds.
The first breath
The second chapter of Genesis elaborates on the idea of bearing God’s image by describing how the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). It seems that from the very beginning, we have been breathing divine air, which explains why the world has been influenced by Christian principles even before Jesus or the biblical canon appeared.
The Bible describes Jesus as the Creator of the world, who was with God from the beginning. Colossians 1:17 states that all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 1 Corinthians 8:6 says Jesus is the one through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
John 1 depicts Jesus as the creating Word: All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Since a word requires inhalation and exhalation, we might reword John’s verses like this:
In the beginning was the Breath, and the Breath was with God, and the Breath was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (My rewording of John 1:1-5)
Is it possible that Jesus was the Breath that not only gave life to humans but also became the light of men, enabling them —past, present, and future—to expose moral darkness?
Adam’s initial breathing, however, grew shallower in the wilderness, leading to more coughing and sputtering than actual inspiration until Jesus ascended into heaven and the promised Holy Spirit arrived, filling civilization’s sails with enough air to institutionalize, formalize, and put Christian values into practice.
Law unto themselves
O’Connor’s concern about Christian ideals that predate Christ wasn’t an issue for St. Paul, who pointed out that Gentiles without any Judeo-Christian background already had a natural law written on their hearts. I would argue this is because we are all image bearers who intuitively know that the world is fundamentally “very good” but has since fallen on hard times.
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. (Romans 2:14-15, my emphasis)
O’Connor argued that God painted Himself into a corner by creating a very good world and then littering the pages of scripture with genocide, slavery, and conquest. A situation he finds morally impossible to defend, leading him to put God on trial and hold Him accountable — but ironically, finding that the only book that justifies his outrage is the Bible.
More than a feeling
O’Connor knows that the world has fallen short of an ideal, but, finding God logically problematic, surprisingly explains human morality by appealing to emotivism.
“Emotivism is a meta-ethical theory that interprets moral judgments as expressions of emotion or attitude rather than as descriptions of objective moral facts.” (Philopedia)
O’Connor is a brilliant thinker, but his appeal to emotivism suggests he has abandoned his modernist sensibilities and adopted a postmodern epistemology where truth is based on feelings. I would be quite concerned if our ethics were determined by an emotional mob mentality, because if you have ever attended a World Cup soccer match, you realize what a dangerous idea that is. O’Connor may want to avoid discussing the objective nature of ethics by appealing to a shared “ick” factor, but even his emotivism is more than a feeling because it assumes a shared disgust that sounds like a universal, objective response to an earthly particularity. Why would most people have the same gut reaction? What do humans share that makes our collective blood boil? It seems to me that emotivism, rather than eliminating the Christian story, actually supports it by suggesting we all have an internal disgust meter finely calibrated to a “very good” standard.
Cherry picking
I agree with O’Connor that taking verses out of the Bible to defend Christian morality is problematic because he can also find verses that contradict those ideas. O’Connor argued that if the Bible is so revolutionary, then why didn’t God just condemn something like slavery with a clear statement instead of letting it fade away gradually due to changing cultural pressures? I think Glenn responded well by arguing that Christianity began in a specific time and place, with certain cultural expectations, which required gradual change so those ideas would percolate slowly rather than be rejected immediately because of their challenging counter-cultural demands. St. Paul also suggested Christianity is a gradual process of mind renewal requiring testing over time.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)
Alex himself has shifted his views on veganism and morality, which I believe he would characterize as a gradual process rather than a sudden Damascus Road experience. The Bible makes it clear that our relationship with God will take time, be worked out with fear and trembling, and often involve more wrestling than revelation.
Conclusion
It seems to me that Christianity, as Scrivener has noted, is the air we breathe, but it’s air we’ve been inhaling since God first breathed into Adam. Humans have been doing “Christian” things since the beginning, but only with the arrival of Christ and the subsequent coming of the Holy Spirit have we been able to take a deep enough breath to change the world.
[i] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Gulag Archipelago
God's Screenplay 