Apologia Winter/Spring 2019

Winter/Spring 2019, Volume 13, Issue 1

Noncombatant Immunity: A Christian Defense

by Luke Dickens ‘18

p. 2

p. 16

p. 30

Scientism and Faith

Selfishness and Humility in the Book of Esther

A Catholic Case for Tradition

Cecelia Zugel ‘21

Maura Cahill ‘20

An Interview with Dr. Ian Hutchinson

A Letter from the Editors

Humans disagree. A great deal. As creatures who have access to different sorts of information, and who are endowed with the rational faculties necessary to form more complex beliefs from that information, it seems inevitable that humans should differ on important subjects. In the face of this disagreement, how should we proceed? It feels tempting, on the one hand, to lean steadfastly against one’s own knowledge and to argue stubbornly from that most trusted vantage point. As students, we’ve all seen that classmate who seems to foolishly overstep the clear boundaries of his actual knowledge and valid argumentation into something distinctly outside his expertise or into the ridiculous. It also feels tempting, on the other hand, to call every difference of opinion an adherence to “one’s own truth.” Those who maintain this relativistic outlook show the same wish to cling to their own knowledge as the foolish overstepper: after all, if no one else’s “truth” can be called wrong, neither can yours.

Twelve years ago, Andrew Schuman ‘10 founded The Dartmouth Apologia during orientation week of his freshman year, in large part to combat the prevalent notion on campus that “Christian” and “unintelligent” were essentially synonymous terms. The Apologia, and many journals of Christian thought like it that now exist across the country and internationally, serve to articulate Christian perspectives in the academy: to earn and maintain a respected seat at the academic table. Today, twelve years later, we believe that our biggest challenge in gaining a real hearing at this table is no longer the staunch anti-theist raising his voice, louder and more aggressively, over ours; rather, our biggest challenge today in getting a real hearing is the polite smile accompanied by the words, at once accepting and deeply dismissive, “That is your truth.” Today, we find that the prevalent relativistic culture concerning truth on our campus and beyond inhibits genuine consideration of ideas that differ from one’s own just as much as outward assertion of one’s own knowledge, if more insidiously: on the surface, no one is wrong and everyone is right, but my application of the label “yours” to a viewpoint you articulate seems to grant me permission to avoid considering whether it has enough validity to ever be “mine,” too.

We, the staff of the Apologia, do not claim to have all the answers. We do not seek to proselytize but to discuss: to join with anyone who searches for truth and authenticity in an aim to find it, together. As our founder Andrew Schuman wrote twelve years ago, this is a journal of seekers. We link arms in a genuine search for truth. We believe that this truth can be found in God, and we aim to articulately share this perspective and its details in the academic community. Critically, as a vital part of this discussion, we each strive to listen—to really listen—to all perspectives that differ from our own. We then are able to exploit the best part of the academy: we draw from these different perspectives, backgrounds, and disciplines—these different fragments and facets of reality—to try to assemble a fuller view that will bring us closer to Truth.

We warmly invite you to join us in this discussion.

Jeffrey Poomkudy Editor-in-Chief

Submissions We welcome the submission of any article, essay, or artwork for publication in The Dartmouth Apologia.

Submissions should seek to promote respectful, thoughtful discussion in the community. We will consider submissions from any member of the community but reserve the right to publish only those that align with our mission statement and quality rubric. Email: The.Dartmouth.Apologia@Dartmouth.Edu Front and back cover image

by Kevin Soraci ’18

Hailey Scherer Managing Editor

Letters to the Editor We value your opinions and encourage thoughtful submissions expressing support, dissent, or other views.

We will gladly consider any letter that is consistent with our mission statement’s focus on promoting intellectual discourse in the Dartmouth community.

Winter/Spring 2019, Volume 13, Issue 1

Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Poomkudy ’20 Managing Editor Hailey Scherer ’20 Editorial Board Jake Casale ’17 Margaret Cross ’19 Hyemin Han ’20 Miles Temel ’20 Business Manager Peter O’Leary ’19 Production Manager Kristi Williams ’20 Production Staff Luke Dickens ’18 Maura Cahill ’20 Michael Steel ’21 Eli Boardman ’22 Photography Joshua Tseng-Tham ’17 Tanner Riley ’22 Contributors Joshua Tseng-Tham ’17 Chris Kymn ’18 Brett Seeley-Hacker ’18 Micah Taylor ’21 Cecilia Zugel ’21 Advisory Board Gregg Fairbrothers Eric Hansen, Thayer James Murphy, Government Lindsay Whaley, Classics Special thanks to Council on Student Organizations The Eleazar Wheelock Society

Apologia Online Subscription information for the journal or bi-weekly blog is available on our website at dartmouthapologia.org.

Past issues of the journal are available online for archival viewing.

The opinions expressed in The Dartmouth Apologia are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the journal, its editors, or Dartmouth College. Copyright © 2019 The Dartmouth Apologia.

INTERVIEW: 2

Scientism and Faith: An Interview with Dr. Ian Hutchinson Jeffrey Poomkudy ’20

ANXIETY AND FAITH 10 IN HEIDDEGGER AND KIERKEGAARD Chris Kymn ’18

MAKING YOUR MARK 16

Selfishness and Humility in the Book of Esther Cecilia Zugel ’21

NONCOMBATANT IMMUNITY 22 A Christian Defense Luke Dickens ’18

A CATHOLIC CASE 30 FOR TRADITION

The Role of Authority in Biblical Inquiry Maura Cahill ’20

T

he Dartmouth Apologia exists to articulate Christian perspectives in the academic community.

A JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Mirac

Axon Highway by Tanner Riley, Ralph Imondi, and Linda Santschi, et al., 2016

Conversation with Ian H. H

2 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter/Spring 2019

acles and Science

Hutchinson conducted by Jeffrey Poomkudy

[ Winter/Spring 2019 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 3

Ian H. Hutchinson is Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His primary research interest is plasma physics, especially the magnetic confinement of plasmas (ionized gases): seeking to enable fusion reactions— the energy source of the stars—to be used for practical energy production. Following undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge, his graduate studies, as a Commonwealth Scholar at the Australian National University, involved experiments on one of the earliest tokamaks to operate outside the Soviet Union. After groundbreaking research (1976-9) on MIT’s earliest major tokamak experiment, he worked on a different confinement configuration, the Reversed Field Pinch, with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. He returned to MIT in 1983 as a member of the Nuclear Engineering department faculty. He directed the Alcator project from 1987 to 2003, and served as Head of the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering from 2003 to 2009. He has also written and spoken widely on the relationship between science and the Christian faith. His most recent book, Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles? An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science, was released in 2018.

Q: What is your faith background?

A: To make a long story short, I didn’t grow up a Christian. Well, I wasn’t completely ignorant of Christianity—I had studied the New Testament for academic purposes in my high school. When I went to Cambridge University, which is where I did my undergraduate studies, I had two close friends who were Christians, whose intellect, personality, and lives I enjoyed and admired. As a result of that, I started to take Christianity much more seriously. I hadn’t believed it, but I began to take it seriously.

They invited me to go to a series of lectures by a speaker called Michael Green, who was a very popular Christian speaker in the United Kingdom in those days. I was struck at the time by two things which I had never really thought about. First of all, that actually the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite good. I came to see that that was true, and I still believe that. Secondly, that Christianity isn’t so much of a theory, belief structure, or tradition—it’s a call to a personal relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. That also came to me as a new idea.

In the course of the few weeks in which these lectures were taking place, I came to realize that I sort of did believe the story of the Gospels. Not beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it seemed pretty reasonable to me. I realized, based on what I’d been hearing, that to go further than that would take more of a step of faith and actually a step of commitment. It was at that time, one evening, in my student dorm in Cambridge that I knelt and asked God for forgiveness and pledged to become a follower of Jesus Christ. I have been ever since. Many decades now.

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Q: Throughout your career, you’ve been an outspoken critic of scientism. What do you think is problematic about that sort of philosophy? Do you think “scientistic” thinking poses any problems for us today?

A: Scientism is, in short, is the belief that all real knowledge comes from science. It’s a viewpoint which is very often not explicitly explained or advocated, but it is a kind of background belief which is extremely common in the academy in the West today and in society as a whole. I think it’s simply a mistake. I think it’s a dreadful mistake. But it became important to me to understand it better when I realized that scientism is actually one of the most important underlying causes of the tension between science and religion, and specifically between science and Christianity—because I think it’s the case that religious beliefs and the truth of Christianity cannot be established by science. And so, if science is the root of all knowledge, then one might conclude, if one subscribed to scientism, that Christianity is not knowledge—that it’s not true.

But that thinking is based on a mistake. There are many other things other than religion that cannot be established by science, and that doesn’t mean that they are bereft of knowledge. On the contrary, if you think about a discipline like history—what historians know—they almost all know not because of science, but because of other means of investigation that bear no relationship to the way we find out about the natural world: through repeatable experiments, observations, and the description of the results of those observations and experiments with a sort of crisp clarity.

So scientism is, in fact, just a ghastly intellectual error.

Bryant Pond by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2018

As long as it’s maintained, it puts pressure on religion, but it does so in an unjustified way. In fact, scientism is one of the main legs on which the anti-theists of this century rest their case. People like Dawkins and Sam Harris and so forth subscribe to scientism. They don’t necessarily subscribe to it explicitly, but they subscribe to it implicitly, in the ways that they write and in the ways that they argue, because their arguments largely

There are actually 223 questions altogether, but one of those questions is: Can a scientist believe in miracles?

The reason why this question makes it into the title of the book is that it’s an extremely important question when you’re talking about the relationship between Christianity and science. Christianity itself is centrally dependent upon the most important miracle, which is what the Apostles staked their claims on when they

I’m a scientist, so I know quite a lot about the laws of physics, and I find them very compelling and very well established, but nothing in science can prove that those laws are inviolable. consist of accusations that religious knowledge is not found by science and that therefore it isn’t knowledge.

But the same argument, although they don’t apply it, would apply to history or the knowledge of music or jurisprudence or philosophy for that matter.

Q: My next question is related to a book of yours that just came out, Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles?: An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science. Do you think you can answer the book’s titular question?

A: The book is about all the questions that I have been asked at Veritas Forums, at which I’ve spoken for something like the past 25 years. I transcribed all the questions from forums that were video or audio recorded, which became an interesting sample of the kinds of questions about science and faith that young people in universities these days ask.

went out and took the Gospel to the earliest people whom they evangelized. The miracle is that Jesus had risen from the dead.

So if a scientist can’t believe in miracles, then I would argue a scientist can’t actually become a Christian.

So, it’s actually a central question for Christianity and science. The quick answer to the question is yes, scientists can believe in miracles. The supposition that scientists cannot believe in miracles is probably largely based on the view that science has discovered lots of natural laws—laws of physics, if you’d like. An additional view is that those laws are inviolable—that it is impossible that those laws should be broken or that anything in the events of the world should not obey those laws.

I’m a scientist, so I know quite a lot about the laws of physics, and I find them very compelling and very well established, but nothing in science can prove that those laws are inviolable. And in fact, it is not the case

[ Winter/Spring 2019 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 5

that you have to believe in inviolable laws in order to be a scientist. In fact, many of the great scientists of history, like Boyle and Newton and Galileo and Maxwell and Faraday and Dalton and many others, did believe in miracles because they were Christians and believed in the resurrection. So it’s clear that it’s perfectly possible for a scientist—not just a workaday scientist like me, but a great scientist of history—to believe in miracles.

And the reason logically why it’s possible is that while science does describe the world insofar as it is reproducible in terms of these reproducible laws, it does not establish that absolutely everything in the universe obeys those laws all the time, because science is unable to investigate unique events. Because

to give us that faith, and there are of course many people who are not people of religious faith who are excellent scientists. But it’s still the case that science bases its whole practices on the belief in a powerful and consistent and intelligible universe, and the study which springs from that understanding still goes on today under that same rubric. So a quick answer is no.

Miracle belief is not a science stopper.

Q: What do you think is the relationship between faith and science? Are they compatible, and do you think science can inform faith?

A: Yes. I think faith and science are consistent, and I also think that they inform one another. Before

...it’s still the case that science bases its whole practices on the belief in a powerful and consistent and intelligible universe, and the study which springs from that understanding still goes on today under that same rubric. science depends upon repeatability, and unique events don’t have repeatability, science is, in a certain sense, powerless to prove the presence or absence of a miracle.

Q: Isn’t belief in miracles a kind of science-stopper?

Does it lead us to be ineffective scientists?

A: The quick answer is obviously not, because, as I just said, many of the greatest scientists of history did in fact believe in miracles. So it’s simply not true historically that belief in miracles has been somehow debilitating towards the practice of science.

And certainly folks like me, who believe there are such a thing as miracles, naturally aren’t looking every moment for a miracle. I mean, it has to be the case that miracles are relatively rare, otherwise natural science the way we practice it couldn’t work. But saying something is rare isn’t the same thing as saying that it never happens, and it’s important to draw that distinction.

So the idea that religion generally, or belief in miracles, is actually a discouragement to science is in fact probably the opposite of what is true. A good case can be made that the reason why natural sciences and modern science as we know them grew up in the West in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was actually because of a biblical worldview: a belief in creation as being the rational creation of an intelligent God, and the world as comprehensible, was an underlying article of faith for many of the earliest scientists.

Today, we no longer rely on religious reasons

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I say something about that, it’s probably best to say something about what I think faith is.

We’re often invited by people of a skeptical viewpoint to regard faith as some kind of believism— the notion that you’re basically believing in things that you know ain’t so or that are contrary to evidence. That is a pathetic caricature of what is meant by faith.

Faith has three strands of meaning. One is belief in propositions—quite often, propositions which aren’t proved. Another involves trust: we have trust, or faith, in a person or a thing. For example, an airplane. The third strand of meaning is that we have certain loyalties to someone. We put our faith in something, and we act in faith toward that ideology or ideal or person in whom we are exercising faith. Faith has those three strands of meaning, and when it comes to the Christian faith, the emphasis isn’t so much on believing propositions: it’s on trust in God and in Christ and in loyalty towards that, towards them. It’s important to think of faith in those three ways and not to just take a narrow view and regard it as belief in unprovable propositions.

Let me talk about the Christian faith, and I think perhaps your question was getting at the question of theology. Is theology informed by science? I think the quick answer is yes. I’ve already given you an argument which says science was affected by theology historically in the development of modern science as we know it.

I think it’s commonplace for most people to realize that certain aspects of theology have been affected by science. It was once the case that Christians believed that the sun orbits the earth. Actually, it wasn’t just

Christians—it was everybody in society prior to the sixteenth century that thought that the sun goes around the Earth. Well, now we know that it’s the other way around—that the Earth orbits the sun and the sun appears to go around the Earth because the Earth is rotating on its axis. Clearly, that corresponds to a correction if you like in the cosmology that was widely accepted by Christians that science brought about.

In the time when that change was taking place, there were various claims made by people interpreting the Bible that it couldn’t be that the Earth goes around the sun because in the Psalms it says, “The earth is firmly established and cannot be moved,” and so forth.

Clearly, science has influenced our interpretation of the Scriptures so that today no one would offer that as a reason to disbelieve in the current Copernican understanding of the solar system. Maybe there are some people who are sufficiently ignorant that they would offer it as a reason, but no one with any intelligence would offer that as a reason because we have realized that the Psalms were using the language of description and of appearance. We shouldn’t turn to that type of language for some kind of cosmology.

other words, they’re not at war with another. There are certainly from time to time tensions that arise, but to regard them as being perpetually at war is simply a mistake. I like to think of them as being brothers.

Maybe siblings have tensions and arguments within the family, as well as helping one another and supporting one another, but to focus on just the arguments between brothers or between siblings is to misunderstand the relationship between them. Similarly, to focus on the tensions that exist from time to time between science and Christianity is to misunderstand their relationship.

Q: Shifting gears here a little bit: what is your understanding of the scientific veracity of the Bible?

Is the Bible plausible, given our understanding of science today?

A: Yes, thanks for the question. I personally take a high view of the Scriptures. I think that all Scriptures are inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, and correction. So, anyone who’s a Christian who wants to understand their faith and understand God should pay serious attention to the Bible, study it, and get to know what it says to them and to all people.

If you approach the Bible thinking the Bible is going to teach you science, it isn’t—it was never intended to.

Theology is influenced by science and science is influenced by theology. Actually, their mutual interaction is not at all compelled to be negative. In

But the Bible is a complicated book. It’s actually full of different types of literature. It has history, it has religious instruction, theology, prophecy, songs,

Butterfly by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2014

[ Winter/Spring 2019 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 7

poetry, letters, biography—all kinds of different types of literature. But the one type of literature that is not in the Bible is modern scientific literature. The Bible was not written when science as we know it today even existed. If you approach the Bible thinking the Bible is going to teach you science, it isn’t—it was never intended to. It’s very important to come to the Bible understanding what the Bible is trying to get at and recognizing that the Bible is not trying to teach us cosmology in the sense that we apply it to scientific cosmology today.

So, when we read of seven days of creation, this is not intended by the original authors to be a history of how God created the Earth. Instead, it’s essentially a celebration. It’s a kind of liturgy, that is expressing, for the people of Israel, the significance of the God with whom they were dealing. That God, their God— Yahweh—was not just some kind of tribal deity like the gods of the people around about them. But that God, if he’s God, is the creator of everything. In other

he was a creeping plant with green leaves. We have to apply interpretation to almost every part of the Bible because that’s the way language works. It works through metaphor and story and so on. And so we shouldn’t try to make the Bible into a scientific description of a creeping plant with green leaves. That’s foolishness.

Q: What about stories that seem to be implausible given our current scientific understanding, such as Jonah spending three days and nights in the belly of a whale?

A: Well, I would say that there are certain events that are contrary to our understanding of science. There are in the Bible descriptions of things that, in the normal course of scientific events, couldn’t take in place, and some of these are simply miracles. And we know, for example, that people who are crucified don’t rise from the dead on the third day. That’s scientifically impossible. But we as Christians assert that (and the

People knew in the first century that people who were crucified didn’t rise from the dead on the third day. That’s why it was a miracle. words, the Book of Genesis, in my view, is teaching us that God is the creator—and that’s the most important thing about it. If you look at the way that the first chapter of Genesis is constructed, it’s constructed in such a way that it places participants in creation in relationship to one another and to God in a way that is descriptive of their roles, not of the history.

So, what a Christian should be doing when they come to the Bible is trying to understand what the Bible was meant to say by its authors and by the people to whom it was originally written. And be very careful projecting backwards our own concerns and the way we think today onto the Bible, as if the Bible ought to be some kind of scientific dissertation about how natural history developed. I don’t think that’s what the purpose of the Bible is.

So, I get lots of questions in my various talks about the Bible and how I understand various things.

Sometimes those questions just simply assume that the Bible is full of errors and inconsistencies.

Actually, I don’t think the Bible is full of errors and inconsistencies, but I do think that the Bible is very varied literature. We ought to approach it with an intelligent view of interpretation. Interpretation is a vital part of our understanding of the Bible, and we shouldn’t adopt some kind of literalistic view. There is no such functional literalistic view of the Bible. When Jesus said, “I am the true vine,” he wasn’t saying that

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evidence for it is really quite good) we understand this as being a situation in which God allowed the universe to proceed in a way different from the normal course of events that’s been established by science.

And of course, there’s nothing really, in a certain sense, different in our modern view of [these cases] from the view that people would have had in the first century. I mean, people knew in the first century that people who were crucified didn’t rise from the dead on the third day. That’s why it was a miracle. So it’s not that this is a contradiction with science, it’s a contradiction with the normal course of the world, whether it’s understood through modern science or not.

And similarly, people knew in those days that people are not swallowed by big fishes and then vomited up three days later in the normal course of events, and so the story of Jonah is clearly a story that couldn’t have happened in the normal course of events.

I wouldn’t offer an authoritative interpretation of the Book of Jonah, although it’s certainly the case that the Book of Jonah is more about questions of justice and forgiveness and repentance than it is about whether people can be swallowed by whales or not.

I think to focus on Jonah and the fish is missing the point of the Book of Jonah, but I don’t say one way or another whether it happened because I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody else knows. We do know that it’s

contrary to the normal course of events. What we don’t know is whether that miraculous event was crucial to God’s plans. I don’t think it’s very profitable to look at the Book of Jonah and either to assert that it had to be that Jonah experienced this or that in a particular way, or that it couldn’t possibly be that Jonah was swallowed by a fish. I don’t think either of those two situations are particularly helpful in this case.

Q: My last question relates to your own work.

How has your work in your lab studying physics specifically informed your understanding of God and Christianity, and affected your spiritual life?

A: I think my faith and my scientific work have definitely influenced one another. I think my faith has influenced my science with respect to things like choice of research problem that I pursued. The fact that I’ve pursued something which has the potential to be important and contribute to human welfare is something that I’m happy about. I think I would have been unhappy to have been in other areas of science which were developing other, potentially less advantageous things. But I think that scientists are not in some special place with respect to their faith, either positive or negative. Scientists qua scientists are not more able or less able to be serious disciples of Jesus. If we’re Christians, whatever our field of endeavor is, we are called to be followers of Jesus, putting Jesus as Lord of our lives and seeking to live out the call that he has given us individually. And that is certainly what I have tried to do.

One of the things that I’ve tried to do while I’ve been in the sciences is not to divorce my Christian discipleship from my science. And so there are ways in which being a disciple of Jesus has helped me to be a better scientist. Science isn’t all just about intellectual endeavor and solving equations—a big part of science is getting along with other people, working in teams, and organizing big experiments. And those are skills that I learned much more in church than in the lecture theater. I think, during my life, the interaction between my faith and my work have been constructive in both directions. And far from being at war with one another or somehow in contradiction with one another, I find that being a follower of Jesus and being a scientist is mutually supportive.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Nervous Heart by Tanner Riley, Ralph Imondi, amd Linda Santschi, et al., 2016

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Anxiety & Faith

Anxiety by Edvard Munch, 1894

IN HEIDEGGER AND KIERKEGAARD

by Christopher Kymn

W

hat does it mean to be human? In part, this meaning comes from humans being the kind of being that finds things to be meaningful. While a rock could not care less if it were kicked into the street, a person would find the same deeply disturbing. We often cannot help but view things as meaningful, whether it be a particular pen, a nostalgic song, or a valued friendship. Even when we do not care about certain things, that we can care is significant.

Emotions are one way that we meaningfully respond to the world. For example, the joy of spending time with friends is an experience that reveals how valuable they make our lives.

We may not even realize, consciously, that we are experiencing joy; we may be so immersed in reveling that we forget the fact that we

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experience joy. Yet upon proper reflection, the experience seems to show us that there are some experiences that are meaningful and that they are meaningful for us.

I will not argue the above point in detail, but the main intended takeaway is that analyzing emotions can help us understand what it means to be human, as they reveal the very kinds of experiences that can be meaningful. Indeed, two philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Søren Kierkegaard, use the emotion of anxiety to reveal something about the human condition.i While their accounts lead to similar diagnoses of what anxiety is, they disagree on the proper treatment of the dilemma anxiety poses. In short, they agree that anxiety is a disruption of ordinary meaning, in that it reveals meaning as

groundless (a term that will be explicated further later). Their accounts differ, however, on the proper response to anxiety. While Kierkegaard’s account emphasizes faith, Heidegger’s does not.ii I leave it up to the reader to decide for herself whether their accounts are useful in

method of analyzing what the phenomenon means.iii For example, a conceptual analysis may read as follows: English declarative sentences have a two-part structure, consisting of a subject and a predicate. The conceptual analysis is non-empirical, as its truth is not determined

Anxious and Alone by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2015

Heidegger and Kierkegaard would emphasize that the object is frightening only because it threatens my future, which is a relevant component of my personhood. describing her own personal experiences, but I aim to inform this evaluation by showing that there are meaningful ways to interpret anxiety; I furthermore aim to show that these interpretations can lend credibility to faith, which requires a personal commitment to make life meaningful and moreover benefits from a Christian perspective.

Before addressing anxiety more specifically, it will be helpful to distinguish how Heidegger and Kierkegaard’s philosophical methods for understanding anxiety might differ from a purely psychological or physiological method.

One way to understand emotions is to treat them as a matter of cause-and-effect: discussing, for example, which stimuli prompt certain emotional responses, or which neurotransmitters correlate with a given emotion. While these methods are empirical, analyzing data in the natural world, Heidegger and Kierkegaard are performing a conceptual analysis, proposing a

by looking at examples of sentences. Rather, it is a logical prerequisite to empirical inquiries: to analyze sentences, we need to know what counts as an example of one.iv The conceptual analyses of Heidegger and Kierkegaard use emotion as a way to reveal something about the self. There are two points to consider here. First, we can recognize that only some entities have emotions.v A powerful robot with advanced sensory and reasoning capacities would avoid things that bring about its demise, but it might not be wired to fear its demise. Second, emotions reveal more about the self than they do about the rest of the world.

This point may seem counterintuitive; after all, it seems that fear is about a scary object, such as a snake or forest fire. Against this, Heidegger and Kierkegaard would emphasize that the object is frightening only because it threatens my future, which is a relevant component of my personhood. So if I fear a snake attacking

[ Winter/Spring 2019 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 11

me, it shows I value what I may lose—it reveals something I value, or an aspect of the self.vi Fear and anxiety are usefully contrasted.

On the one hand, both are often unpleasant to experience; on the other hand, Heidegger and Kierkegaard claim that anxiety is often misinterpreted as fear.vii The difference between them is that while fear seems to be about an object (fear is fear of something), anxiety is not about anything else at all. For example, I fear taking a test if I anticipate negative consequences from doing poorly, whereas I am anxious if I question why I should take the test at all. There are of course different ways that anxiety can feel, whether it takes the form of a crippling stress or a lackadaisical ennui.

The central revelation of anxiety is this feeling of meaninglessness. Kierkegaard compares the occurs not just when having a particular episode feeling of anxiety to the dizziness of looking of anxiety—even when in a good mood, we may question if some supposed goodness is really into an abyss. He writes: valuable. Nothing said here criticizes a person Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. for experiencing a certain level of anxiety—the He whose eye happens to look down capacity to experience anxiety is perfectly general, into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy.

But what is the reason for this? It is just and it reveals an important characteristic of the as much in his own eye as in the abyss, human condition. In fact, lacking the capacity for suppose he had not looked down.viii to experience anxiety might itself be a danger, The dizziness arises from the difficult as such a person might mistake meaning when freedom of choosing amongst several life- there is none to be found.xi Anxiety is often altering commitments.ix For example, consider uncomfortable, and one strategy to cope with it a college student who is struggling over what is to deny it was ever experienced. For example, major to choose and worried over making the one could make oneself so busy such that wrong decision. Seeing herself as an open- contemplating the meaning of life never occurs. minded person, she might feel overwhelmed However, to Heidegger and Kierkegaard, this by the number of possible majors to choose strategy just amounts to running away from the from. Whereas fear is often due to the lack of problem. We cannot show how things are really control in a situation—grizzly bears would not meaningful until we take seriously that they be feared if easily detected and eluded—anxiety might not be.

In Being and Time, Heidegger’s magnum is an experience of too much freedom to decide.

But this freedom, in the face of anxiety, can be opus, anxiety plays an essential role in paralyzing: why should I choose one possibility, uncovering the condition of Dasein, Heidegger’s rather than another? Why is taking the test really term for the kind of being that can question any better than just sleeping in? Anxiety makes the meaning of its own being.xii It is worth the choice appear to us as if it were meaningless.x noting that Heidegger’s account of anxiety The challenge, therefore, is how to avoid borrows directly from Kierkegaard’s, both the dilemma of nihilism, in which nothing in terms of its structural similarity and in is valuable at all, and defend the meaning of direct acknowledgment in a footnote.xiii That ordinary encounters from anxiety’s suggestion Heidegger’s response is structurally similar to that they lack a deeper foundation. The dilemma a Christian thinker’s might not be surprising

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Single Path by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2015

given his earlier interest in theology. While he attended seminary schools, he gave up on the goal of becoming a priest before writing Being and Time.xiv Heidegger’s method of responding to anxiety, in a word, is authenticity.xv Roughly, authenticity recognizes the groundlessness of projects but denies that this groundlessness presents a challenge to seeing things as meaningful. Rather, authenticity recommends that we should carry on with the things that seem meaningful to us, such as engaging in projects and helping others, without duping ourselves into thinking that the project requires an ultimate basis to be meaningful.xvi Arguing against Heidegger, one could deny that projects really are groundless and that some ways of living are justifiably better than others. Against this critic, Heidegger might allege that these supposed justifications themselves rely upon unjustified premises that are implicit within societal norms. Seen in this light, authenticity is the appropriate response to such groundlessness.

It is ultimately unclear what authenticity constitutes for a particular individual. This ambiguity can be seen as a benefit to Heidegger’s theory as it does not claim to tell us what to do.

In another sense, however, it can be seen as a deficit, as it makes it difficult to determine how a concrete individual can live authentically. The concern is not quite that I do not know whether to judge if others are authentic, though this may also be true. Rather, the concern is primarily first personal: beyond knowing not to fall into certain traps, how can I be more authentic in a concrete way?

Kierkegaard’s discussion of anxiety differs from Heidegger’s in an important way.

Heidegger’s discussion is systematic, attempting an interpretation of what it means to be Dasein, and conducting a phenomenological analysis to supplant that investigation: he aims to show that anxiety is a constitutive part of Dasein.

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, conducts a dogmatic discussion. His primary goal is not to explicate the self, but rather to connect anxiety to sin, a relation that he does not attempt to

prove by means of logical analysis. Still, there are worthwhile reasons to believe in his method and his connection of anxiety to sin.

In response to anxiety, Kierkegaard develops the notion of the leap of faith.xvii Minimally, the leap of faith is best understood as the making (and continual renewal of ) a world-defining, concrete commitment.xviii A commitment is worlddefining when it defines the values on which it makes sense for me to act. A commitment to memorize the digits of pi is almost certainly not world-defining, since very few life choices, if any, depend on this hobby. On the other hand, a commitment to fight global warming is worlddefining, since taking it seriously requires not only certain work but also a certain lifestyle that bears on ordinary decisions. A commitment is concrete when it is devoted to a specific project.

For example, a commitment to fight global warming by developing a type of alternative energy technology is concrete.

By calling this form of commitment a leap of faith, Kierkegaard emphasizes that the commitment being made is ultimately unjustified: it is not made on the basis of some rational calculation. Kierkegaard nevertheless exists that the leap of faith is a better response to anxiety than other candidate responses. For example, suppose one’s reaction to anxiety was to make all decisions on the basis of whatever maximized her personal happiness. This response has some practical deficits, due to cognitive limits of persons to achieve their happiness, but more importantly, it fails to justify why one’s personal happiness resolves the meaninglessness surrounding anxiety. Religious commitments, on the other hand, directly attempt to provide a way of life that provide better prospects for a leap of faith.

To understand the type of religious project at stake here, it is worth visiting a distinction Kierkegaard makes. Kierkegaard distinguishes Religiousness A from Religiousness B.xix Religiousness A is a sort of intellectual surrender to God that annihilates one’s own will in favor of subservience to God’s will. The problem with Religiousness A, according to Kierkegaard, is

[ Winter/Spring 2019 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 13

that it attempts to create a secure intellectual foundation for theology when no such thing can be guaranteed. In attempting to secure a position of invulnerability from anxiety, it denies the freedom of the individual. Kierkegaard’s preferred alternative, Religiousness B, emphasizes the personal responsibility in living out one’s religion. Religion should not be seen as merely some algorithm that determines every particular decision an individual will make. Rather, it provides goals on how to live a meaningful life, with individuals facing choices on what those goals entail for their particular cases.

The leap of faith, according to Kierkegaard, is best exemplified in terms of a Christian way

Stained glass window depicting Adam's Original Sin by Selbymay, 2013

Original sin helps to explain why we are saddled with anxiety, because it shows our dilemma as a synthesis of physical and psychical being.

In other words, we have both a body and a mind but are neither just a body nor just a mind. of life.xx Kierkegaard draws from the Genesis account to argue that anxiety is inextricably tied to sin.xxi Original sin helps to explain why we are saddled with anxiety, because it shows our dilemma as a synthesis of physical and psychical being.xxii In other words, we have both a body and a mind but are neither just a body nor just a mind. This duality makes us capable of anxiety, since we have the freedom to decide amongst possibilities but also realize we are subject to physical laws and eventual death. This predicament is unique to humans, according to Kierkegaard, as he claims that neither other animals nor angels are saddled with anxiety.xxiii Moreover, he argues, the fall from the Garden of Eden reveals this predicament to us and makes of self-conscious of it. Christianity, then, provides a framework for understanding the predicament that every human undergoes.xxiv Interpreters claim that nothing compels the leap of faith to be a specifically Christian leap of faith.xxv This claim seems consistent with Kierkegaard’s thought anyway, as he stresses that his discussion is dogmatic. Nevertheless,

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the above discussion of original sin shows one benefit of adopting the Christian perspective; a second benefit is that the Christian perspective provides concrete examples on how to live out one’s faith, even in the face of adverse circumstances. For example, Abraham faced the difficult choice of whether or not to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Job decided to believe in God in spite of his colossal suffering.xxvi Both of these examples are cited by Kierkegaard in other works, and they point to his use of his biblical study in understanding his faith.xxvii Notably, Kierkegaard claims, “With the help of faith, anxiety brings up the individuality to rest in providence.”xxviii There are two claims worth elaborating upon here. First, the prospect of providence implies that faith is in some way associated with the divine. Indeed, Kierkegaard describes faith as a “gift from God” which requires an individual commitment to be fully realized.xxix Second, anxiety is itself responsible for the prospect of providence. Recall that anxiety reveals our freedom and the endless possibilities we can choose from. While this can

be a distressing revelation, that freedom allows us to choose faith, i.e. to choose to make a worlddefining concrete commitment. Providence, perhaps, allows us to see this choice in a less distressing way, since we have divine guidance, through the concrete guidance of the Bible, in our choice.

Thus, Christianity can serve as a guide to individual choice, accepting the cost that the leap of faith leaves nothing guaranteed. It therefore provides more concrete guidance on how to live than Heidegger’s does, through the Bible and a tradition of believers, without suggesting a rational basis for that guidance.

Granted, this is not to suggest that all forms of Christian thought align with Kierkegaard. After all, he is critical of a religious understanding that mirrors what he calls Religiousness A. Religious truths should not be treated like certain obscure mathematical truths that seem irrelevant to daily life; rather, accepting religious truths requires a personal commitment to uphold their values.

Heidegger and Kierkegaard show that there is a philosophically fruitful way to investigate anxiety. Kierkegaard shows how anxiety can be fruitfully addressed by the leap of faith and a Christian perspective. Kierkegaard’s Christian perspective, in its connection to sin, provides an account of why we are saddled with anxiety and how we can understand it through study of the Bible. If nothing else, Kierkegaard shows us just how important our specific, concrete commitments are in curating our lives.

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. James MacQuarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962); Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton: Princeton, 1980). To be technically precise, however, neither author might endorse the term ‘emotion’ to describe anxiety. For Heidegger at least, the technical term is Befindlichkeit. ii Hubert Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, “Kierkegaard, Division II, and Later Heidegger,” Being-in-theWorld: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I, Hubert Dreyfus (Cambridge: MIT, 1991): 299. Following this article, I focus on Heidegger’s exposition of anxiety as developed in his most well-known book, Being and Time. However, as the authors note, Heidegger revisited and revised his account of anxiety in later publications (Dreyfus i.

and Rubin, 336). The evolution of Heidegger’s views is an interesting topic but unfortunately outside the scope of this present discussion. iii.

Heidegger, 179; Kierkegaard, 14. iv.

Heidegger, 75. Kierkegaard presents a different argument for why psychology is not sufficient for analyzing society: anxiety is conceptually tied to sin, but sin is not properly analyzed by psychological investigation. See Kierkegaard, 14. v.

Kierkegaard, 43. vi.

Heidegger, 180. vii.

Heidegger, 230; Kierkegaard, 42. viii.

Kierkegaard, 61. ix.

While both Heidegger and Kierkegaard agree that anxiety reveals the world as meaningless, only Kierkegaard explicitly discusses the connection between freedom and anxiety. In fact, freedom is not an important concept for Heidegger in Being and Time. Therefore, the exposition of anxiety as connected to freedom should be attributed only to Kierkegaard. Apart from this point, most of the discussion on anxiety thus far I take to be shared by both authors. x.

Heidegger, 393 xi.

Kierkegaard, 157. xii.

Heidegger, 226. xiii.

Heidegger, 492. xiv.

Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, (New York: Other, 2016): 143. xv.

Heidegger, 235. xvi.

Heidegger, 434. xvii.

John Caputo, How to Read Kierkegaard, (London: W.W. Norton, 2007): 71. xviii.

Dreyfus and Rubin, 297. xix.

See footnote 44 for Dreyfus and Rubin, 297. xx.

Dreyfus and Rubin, 297. xxi.

Kierkegaard, 32. xxii.

Kierkegaard, 43. xxiii.

Kierkegaard, 155. xxiv.

McDonald, William. “Søren Kierkegaard.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017 (accessed 7 October 2018), <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ kierkegaard/>. xxv.

Dreyfus and Rubin, 298. xxvi.

Genesis 22 (NABRE); Job 42 (NABRE) xxvii.

McDonald. xxviii.

Kierkegaard, 161. xxix.

McDonald.

Christopher Kymn ’18 is from Palos Verdes, California. He recently graduated from Dartmouth with majors in Computer Science and Philosophy modified with Neuroscience.

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Ester y Mardoqueo escribiendo la primera carta del Purim by Aert de Gelder, 1675

Comparing Selfishness and Humility as Vehicles for Positive Impact and Recognition in the Book of Esther

by Cecilia Zugel

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any of us—especially as college students—are concerned with making our marks on the world. Whether it be founding a successful startup, doing research to help find a cure for a disease, charming others with our performances, or simply providing for our families, we each have a dream of how we might impact the people around us and be remembered in a positive light for our accomplishments. These twin goals—making a positive difference in the world and being remembered or recognized for that difference—constitute the heart of what it means to make our marks.

Of course, achieving this feat is more easily said than done. Many become entangled in overthinking the steps necessary to reach the ultimate goal, and still others experience anxiety and frustration as the events of their lives inevitably stray from their own plans for themselves. While attempting to understand how to best make our marks, Christians and non-Christians alike can learn from the examples of characters in the book of Esther, who impacted their world in countercultural ways.

The book of Esther follows a young Jewish orphan as she becomes a Persian queen and saves her people from genocide.i After Esther proves to be the most beautiful and charming virgin in the kingdom and King Xerxes crowns her his queen, her cousin and guardian Mordecai injures the pride of Haman, a royal official.ii Haman then declares that he will kill all of the Jews as retribution for Mordecai’s actions.iii However, through several unexpected twists, Mordecai and Esther both contribute to the salvation of the Jewish people and to the downfall of Haman. In doing so, they make their

perhaps all-too-familiar notion, the book of Esther suggests that success in making one’s mark depends on humility rather than self-centered thinking. Through the experiences of the characters in Esther, readers can see that those who are successful in making a positive impact on the world and in being remembered for it also courageously humble themselves in the face of danger—while those who think only of their own lives fail to make their marks. The humble Mordecai and Esther both succeed in making their marks on their society, while Haman proves to be a selfish character and fails to have a positive impact or to be remembered for any good deeds. Each figure has a choice to respond to his or her situation either humbly or selfishly, and the consequences of his or her actions impact the rest of his or her life. Through the examples of Mordecai, Esther, and Haman, we see how humility can empower each of us to make our own marks on the world.

I. Mordecai In the beginning of the book, Mordecai, Esther’s cousin and caretaker, is faced with a decision to either act selfishly or to courageously and humbly obey God. When King Xerxes elevates the royal official Haman to a seat of high honor, the king commands that all who see Haman kneel down before him.v God commands that Mordecai should not idolize any person or thing above the Lord, so when he sees Haman, Mordecai must make a difficult decision: Mordecai would be sinning if he were to obey King Xerxes in kneeling before Haman, because Mordecai would be idolizing Haman, showing him the type of honor that is only due to God; on the other hand, if Mordecai refuses

The book of Esther suggests that success in making one’s mark depends on humility rather than self-centered thinking.

“

marks on society; their success is recognized every year in the Jewish Purim celebration.iv Remembered annually for their remarkable story, Esther, Mordecai, and Haman have become centuries-old examples of people who either succeeded or failed in making their mark.

Today, there seems to exist a widespread sense that making our mark depends on a rock-solid sense of selfassurance and expert control over every aspect of our lives. Many of us believe that in order to succeed, we must make our own special moments or be ready for them when they come, out of our own agency alone.

This understanding requires that we turn our focus inward, attempting to force our own legacy out into the world by the sheer power of our own mental, physical, or emotional strength. Contrary to this

to kneel, he could be severely punished—even to the point of death—for his disobedience to the king’s earthly authority.vi With this dilemma in mind, Mordecai must weigh the importance of his own safety as it compares to the importance of obeying God’s command and decide whether he will think of himself and try to save his own life or willingly and humbly sacrifice his own safety to adhere to his belief in God. Though Mordecai risks being harshly disciplined by the king for his refusal, he sets his own interests aside and humbly obeys God’s command not to idolize or kneel before anything but God.vii As a result of Mordecai’s courageous humility, God works in his favor. When Mordecai refuses to kneel and pay Haman honor, Haman becomes so “enraged” that he decides to “destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews.”viii Had

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The Punishment of Haman by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1508-1512) photographed by Andrew Graham-Dixon, 2009

Mordecai simply kneeled before Haman in an effort to save himself, the official may not have become angry with Mordecai and plotted to kill all of the Jews in the first place. However, the Bible says that if Mordecai had acted selfishly instead of following God’s will, God would have refused to give him help.ix Because Mordecai chooses to be humble, God looks favorably upon him.x While Mordecai’s decision to humbly obey God in the face of frightening possible consequences

altogether, accruing more power than Haman ever previously possessed and utilizing that power to help his people.xiii When Esther reveals Haman’s scheme and Haman is executed, King Xerxes elevates Mordecai to a position of remarkable legal power to help the Jews. xiv In response, Mordecai promptly enables his people to fight back against those who have oppressed them.xv Additionally, Mordecai retains his new position as one of the king’s officials even after the immediate threat

Because Mordecai humbly obeys God and refuses to kneel before Haman, Mordecai is able to make his mark on the world by producing a better outcome for himself and the Jewish people than if he had been selfish. incites Haman to mass murder, it also ensures that God will defend Mordecai and redeem the situation to create a positive outcome for Mordecai and the oppressed Jews.xi Because Mordecai humbly obeys God and refuses to kneel before Haman, Mordecai is able to make his mark on the world by producing a better outcome for himself and the Jewish people than if he had been selfish.xii Though Mordecai’s humility and selfsacrificial attitude initially causes the Jews’ plight, his altercation with Haman ultimately serves to better the situation of the Jewish people. As a result of Haman’s plot against the Jews, Mordecai displaces Haman

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to his people is gone.xvi As a result, the Jewish people gain a new advocate in the king’s court and Mordecai lives out the rest of his days in peace, happiness, and power, widely recognized for working “for the good of his people.”xvii Because Mordecai chooses to obey God, refusing to bow to Haman even in the face of possible punishment, Mordecai becomes instrumental in saving the Jews and helping to better their circumstances.

Mordecai thus makes his mark and is remembered even today.

II. Esther When Haman hatches his plans for genocide,

Esther, like Mordecai, must also decide whether to bravely obey God or to selfishly attempt to control her own earthly fate despite God’s commands. When Mordecai finds out about Haman’s plans, Mordecai asks Esther to approach the king on behalf of their people.xviii To agree with Mordecai’s request would be for Esther to obey God, who commands that she “rescue” the powerless “from the hand of the oppressor.”xix However, visiting the king without being summoned is punishable by death; if she does what Mordecai asks, she risks her life.xx She must choose either to preserve her own earthly existence by keeping quiet about Haman’s murderous plans, or to courageously set aside her fear for her life and decide to humbly obey the will of God. Esther bravely chooses to obey God by approaching the king, which proves to be the decision that allows her to make her mark on the world. Instead of killing Esther, the king calmly agrees to meet with her.xxi On the other hand, if she had chosen to “remain silent” out of her own self-interest, the text tells us that “relief and deliverance for the Jews” would have arisen “from another place” and Mordecai and Esther’s family would have “perish[ed].”xxii Though Esther’s humble

obedience in visiting the king requires immense courage, it turns out to be a choice that is instrumental in saving Esther, Mordecai, and the Jewish people as a whole.

Like Mordecai, Esther chooses to obey God and ends up making her mark on the world as a result, impacting an immense number of people because of her humble obedience to God’s command. When Esther approaches the king, he promises to give her anything that she might request.xxiii As a result, she is able to sentence Haman to death for his crimes and enable the Jewish people to fight back against their oppressors.xxiv Esther positively influences Persian policy in order to save the Jewish race from annihilation and goes down in history as a heroine of her people.xxv Esther’s courageous choice to stand up for her people, obeying God’s command for her despite the danger she herself faces, allows her to become her best, most influential self, instead of dying as a result of her own selfishness.

III. Haman Haman also faces a difficult decision when Mordecai refuses to bow to him. Haman could choose

Esther’s courageous choice to stand up for her people, obeying God’s command for her despite the danger she herself faces, allows her to become her best, most influential self, instead of dying as a result of her own selfishness.

Esther Accuses Haman (Est. 7:1-10) by Gustave Doré, 1866

to continue with his life, refraining from lashing out against Mordecai.xxvi Ideally, Haman could even take this moment to realize that it is better to be humble than self-important, and begin to reshape his character and conduct, no longer seeking to be honored by all.xxvii Haman could choose to humble himself, an act that would require a shift in his worldview, or Haman could continue to attempt to force everyone to bow to him.

Unlike Mordecai and Esther, Haman chooses a path of prideful selfishness, seeking to control the elements of his life and bend them to his own will, ultimately aiming to exterminate the Jewish race. His choice to act in this way seems to serve him to his advantage for a few days, but it harms him in the long run.xxviii If Haman had humbly chosen to consider the lives of others instead of trying to force them to glorify him, the Bible says that God would have given him “grace.”xxix However, because Haman chooses selfish pride and attempts to kill all of the Jews in order to avenge Mordecai’s wrongs against Haman’s image, Haman and his sons are hanged for his crimes against

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the Jewish race.xxx Haman decides to be selfish instead of humbly accepting Mordecai’s actions and pays for his wrong choice with his life.

When Haman chooses prideful selfishness, his own attempts to gain power and influence work against him, and he dies humiliated instead of making his mark on the world.xxxi First, he experiences extreme humiliation because he is prideful enough to believe that he is “the man the king delights to honor” when the king actually wants to honor Mordecai.xxxii Due to his blindly self-centered attitude, Haman accidentally enables Mordecai to be exalted and eventually rise to power at the king’s side.xxxiii In addition, Haman’s plot to harm the Jews and assert his power over them eventually results in Haman’s hanging on his own gallows—which, ironically, he built only because he was so focused on killing Mordecai.xxxiv Haman’s selfish wish to be honored and worshipped by all results in the exact opposite of what he wanted: he does not live a life of honor or achievement, nor is he remembered in a positive light by others, but instead watches as his own plans unfold ironically against him as he is embarrassed and executed.

IV. Humility and Making Your Mark Through the lives of Mordecai, Esther, and Haman, we are reminded that self-centered thinking often leads to the opposite of what we aim for—Haman only considered himself and his image, pridefully seeking to control every aspect of his life through his own power alone, and he ended up dying because of it.

Meanwhile, Esther and Mordecai were able to make a positive impact and be remembered for their good deeds by humbly setting aside their own self-interest and obeying their higher power instead. Esther and Mordecai displayed courageous humility even when they found it difficult; as a result, they were able to save many people from destruction and received great personal rewards. In addition, they are still remembered as heroes of the Jewish race today.xxxv On the other hand, Haman chose to be selfish and tried to control the people around him; as a result, his entire life unraveled before he could attain honor or power, or even help others in a noticeable way. These examples reveal that, in each person’s quest to make her mark on the world, humility can make the difference between being forgotten and making a positive and indelible impact on the world.xxxvi

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Queen Esther by Edwin Long, 1878

Esther 1:1—10:3 (NIV).

Esther 3:1-5 (NIV). iii.

Esther 3:6-9 (NIV). iv.

Esther 1:1—10:3 (NIV); Veronika Bachmann, “The Esther Narratives as Reminders—For Jews and For Christians,” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 47, 1 (2014): 118. v.

Esther 3:1, 2 (NIV). vi.

Exodus 20:3-6 (NIV). vii.

Exodus 20:3-6 (NIV). Though Esther 3 does not specifically explain why Mordecai does not kneel, it is important to note that Mordecai tells those curious about why he “refuse[s] to comply” that he is a Jew {Esther 3:6 (NIV)}. This reference to his race after his refusal to bow to the haughty Haman is reminiscent i.

ii.

of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who are also identified as Jews after they refuse to worship a false God {Daniel 3 (NIV)}. Mordecai acts much like the three men, who neglect to kneel to an important figure—though theirs is made of gold whereas Mordecai’s is an actual person—even though a royal decree obligates them to. In both passages, the men’s Jewishness is specifically identified as the trait that makes them different from those who kneel and worship the figures; as such, I would attribute both refusals to obedience of Exodus 20:3-6: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

For examples of the severe punishments the king could dole out at any given time, see Esther 3:23 or 4:11. viii.

Esther 3:2, 5, 6 (NIV). ix.

Proverbs 3:34 (NIV). x.

Proverbs 3:34 (NIV). xi.

Proverbs 3:34 (NIV). xii.

Esther 3:2, 5, 6, 5:9-8:2, 10:1-3 (NIV). xiii.

Esther 3:2, 5, 6, 5:9-8:2, 10:1-3 (NIV). xiv.

Esther 8:2 (NIV). xv.

Esther 8:2, 7-12 (NIV). xvi.

Esther 10:1-3 (NIV). xvii.

Esther 10:1-3 (NIV). xviii.

Esther 3:1—4:8 (NIV). xix.

Jeremiah 22:3 (NIV). xx.

Esther 4:11 (NIV). xxi.

Esther 5:2-5 (NIV). xxii.

Esther 4:14 (NIV). xxiii.

Esther 5:2-5 (NIV). xxiv.

Esther 7:1-10, 8:5-11 (NIV). xxv.

Esther 5:1-8, 7:1—10:3 (NIV). In fact, Esther’s courage and positive influence is still celebrated today in the Jewish Purim festival {Esther 9 (NIV); Bachmann, 118.} xxvi.

Esther 5:10 (NIV). xxvii.

For information on God’s command that people be humble, Micah 6:8 contains one of the most famous calls for humility in the Bible. xxviii.

Esther 3:1-15, 5:9-14, 7:1-10, 9:7-10, 13, 14 (NIV). xxix.

Proverbs 3:34 (NIV). xxx.

Esther 9:25 (NIV). xxxi.

Nicole Hochner, “Imagining Esther in Early Modern France,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 41 3 (2010): 770; Bachmann, 123; Esther 3:1-15,

5:9—7:10 (NIV) xxxii.

Esther 6:6 (NIV). xxxiii.

Esther 6:7-11, 8:1-2, 10:1-3 (NIV). xxxiv.

Esther 5:14, 7:1-10 (NIV). xxxv.

Bachmann, 118. xxxvi.

I’d like to give credit to Bachmann, whose essay was the first to get me brainstorming about Esther’s actions as examples of great humility. Additionally, I am so thankful for my wonderful editor, Hyemin Han ’20, who worked closely with me as I wrote this article and pushed me to think and write more seriously and critically with each successive draft.

I would also like to thank Hailey Scherer ’20 and Jeffrey Poomkudy ’20 for all the hard work and encouragement they put into helping both Hyemin and me as we edited the final few drafts together.

Finally, a huge thank you to my family and my boyfriend for being willing to take the time to help and support me in every way that they could as I worked, reworked, and sometimes struggled through writing my first-ever Apologia article. Without them and God, this essay would not have made it here to the journal!

Cecilia Zugel ’21 is from Haymarket, Virginia. She is a prospective double major in English and Film, with a minor in Linguistics.

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Noncombatant Immunity:

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A Christian Defense

by Luke Dickens

Atomic bomb blast at Bikini Island courtesy of Museum of Photographic Arts Collections, 1946

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Atomic Bomb-Nagasaki, 1945 courtesy of the National Museum of the U.S. Navy, 1945

“The civilian has been pronounced dead. His death, which was yet only faintly audible in 1940, sounded loudly for all at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan.” i

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odern warfare has threatened to obliterate the distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The international outrage provoked by actions such as the chemical attacks in Syria suggests that the death of this distinction is not a matter to be celebrated. Many will condemn blatant violations of noncombatant immunity, but often for different reasons. Some claim that intentionally targeting noncombatants is always unacceptable; on the other hand, many others offer conditional defenses of noncombatants. Such a conditional defense might hold that noncombatants should not be targeted because their deaths would not serve a legitimate military purpose or because they happen to be on “our side.” Yet if targeting noncombatants accomplishes an apparently higher end—such as ending a war more swiftly and thereby saving countless more lives—fewer people side with noncombatants. This phenomenon is well illustrated by a poll conducted in 2015 by the Pew Research Center, which found that 56% of Americans believed that the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified.ii The decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains the subject of a fierce and ongoing debate.

Strangely, people with similar worldviews often take different sides in this debate; Christians are no exemption to this peculiarity. Many Christians have defended the bombings as justified actions that

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saved lives, while others have published scathing condemnations of the bombings.iii That Christians disagree on the morality of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reflects a deeper doctrinal disagreement on the question of noncombatant immunity. As a Christian deeply bothered by the lack of doctrinal unity on this important matter, I wish to argue for the following position: it is morally impermissible to intentionally kill noncombatants. I believe that a proper understanding of Christian ethics renders this conclusion unavoidable for professing Christians.

Mounting a compelling defense of Christianity—one that would ground elementary Christian beliefs that are requisite to a Christian defense of noncombatant immunity—is beyond the scope of this article.

Therefore, this article will presuppose basic Christian beliefs in order to make the following argument: P1) It is morally impermissible to commit an evil act so that good may come from it.

P2) Intentionally killing noncombatants is an evil act.

C1) Therefore, it is morally impermissible to intentionally kill innocent noncombatants.

The first premise (P1) is quite uncontroversial among Christian theologians and ethicists. Christians believe that the highest end that human beings can pursue is the glory of God, as evidenced by the New

Testament exhortation to “do all to the glory of God.”iv Hence the Westminster Larger Catechism asserts: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and to fully enjoy him forever.”v To glorify God requires one to acknowledge God as the only being worthy of worship and to joyfully worship him. Accordingly, Christians believe that when they earnestly strive to serve and enjoy God, God is glorified. Although it may seem counterintuitive, God can also be glorified through human shortcomings. For example, God’s power and grace are made manifest through human

Romans, Thomas Aquinas notes: “For just as it is not correct to deduce truth from falsity, so it is wrong to reach a good end through evil means.”x John Calvin echoes this conclusion in his commentary on Romans, writing, “Now the answer to this [Paul’s question] is evident, —That evil cannot of itself produce anything but evil.”xi How then could God be glorified through human weaknesses? Because such failings provide God with the opportunity to exercise his power and grace to bring good out of evil. In other words, God is not glorified by humanity’s evil actions, but is rather

Evil actions are no less evil because they happen to give God the occasion to bring more glory unto himself. weaknesses.vi This is why the Apostle Paul could faithfully say: “where sin increased, (God’s) grace abounded all the more.”vii These teachings prompted some Pharisaical opponents of early Christianity to accuse Paul and other apostles of preaching a doctrine of cheap grace: that Christians ought to sin so that God would be glorified.viii Paul confronts these charges in the Book of Romans, asking, “Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound?” to which he emphatically responds, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”ix In his commentary on the book of

glorified by his providential work to overcome those evil actions with good. Evil actions are no less evil because they happen to give God the occasion to bring more glory unto himself. It follows that it is morally impermissible to commit an evil act so that God may be glorified. Furthermore, if consciously intending the highest end—glorifying God—cannot justify an evil action, then consciously intending a lesser end will likewise be unable to justify an evil action. This line of reasoning entails P1: it is morally impermissible to commit an evil act so that good may come from it.

It is necessary to explain what is meant by

Victory memorial stained glass window in the camp chapel...Marines Corps landing, Pacific Theatre, World War II photograph by SGT Reginald D. Brooks, window completed 1945

[ Winter/Spring 2019 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 25

Armenian woman kneeling beside dead child in field "within sight of help and safety at Aleppo" by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, circa 1915-1919

“noncombatants” and “intentionally killing” before mounting a defense of P2. To argue for noncombatant immunity from biblical principles, one must define a noncombatant in such a way as to make it roughly interchangeable with an innocent. In ordinary discourse, an innocent is an individual who is not guilty of a specific wrongdoing or wrongdoings. In the context of war, an innocent is someone whose moral desert is not the same as that of the principal participants in the war, i.e. the rulers/elites promoting it and the soldiers fighting it; in other words, while the

there is a philosophically significant distinction between the foreseen and intended consequences of an action.xiii This distinction can be elucidated through the following thought experiment. Suppose a general is considering whether to order a drone strike that would kill a dangerous terrorist. The terrorist’s death would contribute to the safety of the citizens in the general’s country—a very desirable goal. The drone strike is a means to accomplish an end—the terrorist’s death— which in turn is a means to the end of promoting national security. However, since this terrorist always

Christians believe that the highest end that human beings can pursue is the glory of God. architects and executors of an unjust war are widely considered legitimate targets, innocent individuals are not legitimate targets. Therefore, a noncombatant can be defined as such a person, i.e. someone who deserves not to be intentionally targeted in the prosecution of a war.xii Having clarified the meaning of noncombatants, it is necessary to perform a similar exercise for “intentionally killing.” Not all wartime actions that result in noncombatant deaths qualify as instances of “intentionally killing.” Quite often noncombatants are killed as a tragic but unintended consequence of attacks on legitimate military targets. In other words,

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keeps a cage of civilians in his immediate vicinity to ward off drone strikes, a drone strike would not only kill the terrorist, but also the caged civilians. These two outcomes—the death of the terrorist and the death of the caged civilians—are distinct in that the former is intended by the general whereas the latter is merely foreseen. The civilian deaths are not causally related to the death of the terrorist; if the civilians were liberated prior to the drone strike, the drone strike would have the same intended outcome—the death of the terrorist.

This suggests the following definitions for intended and foreseen consequences: an intended consequence of an action is either the chosen end of that action or

something that must occur for the action to achieve its end(s), and a foreseen consequence of an action is neither the chosen end of that action nor something that must obtain for the action to achieve its end(s).

Therefore, “intentionally killing” noncombatants occurs when such deaths are the intended consequence of the attackers’ actions.

Vindicating noncombatant immunity is no easy task. On the one hand, the Sixth Commandment states: “You shall not murder.”xiv Yet anyone familiar with the biblical accounts of the Israelite conquest of Canaan knows that God commanded the Israelites to decimate to entire cities. Furthermore, there have been plenty of times throughout the history of Christianity when Christians condoned or participated in the slaughter of noncombatants. For example, Pope Innocent III commissioned the bloody Albigensian Crusade to kill hundreds of thousands of Cathar heretics, and Puritan colonists indiscriminately massacred members of the Pequot tribe during the Pequot War.xv Finally, many theologians, including Saint Augustine, have argued that intentionally killing noncombatants during a war can be justified under certain circumstances.xvi It is necessary to examine each of these issues—the Old Testament historical record, the legacy of Christian violence, and the inconsistency of theological attitudes toward protecting noncombatants—in order to elucidate the appropriate posture in Christian ethics toward the intentional killing of noncombatants.

The Conquest of Canaan is a sobering account of violence, in which God commands the Israelites to

Joshua Burns the Town of Ai by Gustave Doré, 1866

take possession of Canaan and devote its inhabitants “to complete destruction,” which is what the Israelites proceeded to do.xvii Anyone familiar with the details of this account could hardly be faulted for declaring this historical episode inconsistent with a principle of noncombatant immunity. However, noncombatant immunity is perfectly consistent with the Conquest of Canaan for the following reason: the Conquest of Canaan was an instance of divine justice, whereas noncombatant immunity is a legal precept that applies to earthly justice and earthly actors.

Christians recognize a distinction between the authority to execute justice that God reserves for himself and the authority to execute justice that God has delegated to earthly governments. According to Christian belief, God, a sinless and perfectly just being, possesses authority over all of his creation. This authority entails the ability to justly punish sinners for their sins, condemning unrepentant sinners to eternal damnation in hell.xviii Therefore, since every Canaanite was a sinner, God could justly condemn them to death if he so chose. That God happened to designate the Israelites as the actors who would carry out his divine justice on the Canaanites does not entail that the Israelites could usually employ such methods against their foes. On the contrary, when the Israelites laid siege to any city outside the land of Canaan, they were commanded by God to spare the noncombatants of the city and refrain from employing starvation tactics against that city.xix God’s extraordinary command that the Nation of Israel visit divine justice upon the Canaanites temporarily privileged the Israelites with a degree of authority that they otherwise lacked; therefore, P2, a principle of noncombatant immunity that concerns how nations ought to behave in the ordinary scheme of things, is not invalidated by the Conquest of Canaan.

Violence throughout church history does not pose a steep challenge to noncombatant immunity.

Clearly, Christians have condoned and participated in the slaughter of innocents and noncombatants throughout history. However, citing such violent acts to discredit P2 is a classic case of the red herring fallacy: the veracity of moral assertions has nothing to do with the frequency with which those assertions are upheld or disregarded. While violence throughout church history attests to inconsistent attitudes toward noncombatant immunity and a failure to translate beliefs into practice, it does not prove that there are no biblical grounds for a principle of noncombatant immunity.

The most daunting challenge to noncombatant immunity comes from the works of Saint Augustine and other theologians who believed that there were certain

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circumstances under which noncombatants could be justly killed. Augustine and some of his predecessors maintained that the rightness or wrongness of an action derived from the dispositions leading an actor to act, and not from anything inherent to the action itself.xx This argument can be defined as the nonintrinsic objection: it is not intrinsically evil for earthly authorities to intentionally kill noncombatants. If this objection were true, then it would be possible for a soldier to justly kill noncombatants provided that he was motivated by virtuous rather than vicious dispositions.

Furthermore, many medieval theologians believed there was such an intimate relationship between individual and social morality that “an unjust nation (would) not be characterized by the presence of a just citizenry.”xxi This notion will be defined as the collective moral guilt objection: the moral guilt of a nation that initiated an unjust war precludes the innocence of its individual constituents. If noncombatant immunity is to be preserved, then these both of these objections must be addressed.

The Bible makes clear that “there are certain things forbidden whatever consequences threaten.”xxii In other words, some actions, such as adultery and murder,

biblical principles concerning what earthly authorities may and may not do; accordingly, the non-intrinsic objection fails to undermine noncombatant immunity and can thus be discarded.

The collective moral guilt objection challenges noncombatant immunity in that it proposes that there are no innocents at all in the country at fault; if there are no innocents in that country, then nobody—not even people traditionally considered noncombatants— is exempt from being targeted. However, proponents of the collective moral guilt objection must support their claims: they must show why everyone in the enemy nation is “guilty.” They could claim that anyone who materially contributes to the enemy’s war effort is thereby guilty; however, this claim does not collectivize moral guilt far enough, because it cannot condemn as guilty the swathes of children and elderly persons who do not contribute to their nation’s war efforts. Similarly, it will not do to note that everyone in the enemy nation is a sinner, as such an allegation is equally applicable to one’s own nation; furthermore, governments only have the authority to punish people for certain egregious sins. It is impossible to blame every constituent of an enemy nation without lowering the threshold of guilt

An intrinsically evil action is an action that is wrong regardless of the circumstances in which it was performed or the intentions of its actor. are intrinsically evil. An intrinsically evil action is an action that is wrong regardless of the circumstances in which it was performed or the intentions of its actor.

The Old and New Testaments unwaveringly affirm that it is intrinsically evil for any earthly authority to intentionally kill innocent individuals. In Exodus 23, the context in which the command to “not kill the innocent and righteous” is given implies that it applied to the civil and religious authorities of the Kingdom of Israel, and not merely individual Israelites.xxiii God refused to pardon Manasseh, a wicked king of Judah, when he legalized infant sacrifice and “filled Jerusalem with innocent blood.”xxiv As for the New Testament, Romans 13:3 states that rulers appointed by God “are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad,” which implies that the coercive authority of the state may not be used indiscriminately.xxv In the same vein, the Apostle Peter claimed that governing authorities are supposed “to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.”xxvi The Old and New Testaments confirm that respecting this distinction between the innocent and the guilty is a fundamental function of government.

The non-intrinsic objection is incompatible with

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to a point where being guilty no longer entails worthy of being targeted. Fittingly, the famous Protestant Just War theorist Hugo Grotius dismissed claims of collective moral guilt: “Nature doth not allow Retaliation, unless against the personal Offenders; neither is it enough to pretend, that the Enemies are but one entire Body engaged against us.”xxvii The arguments above demonstrate from a Christian perspective that it is morally impermissible to intentionally kill noncombatants. It entails that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the My Lai Massacre, and every past violation of noncombatant immunity amount to nothing less than moral atrocities. As people called to “abhor what is evil,” Christians must unwaveringly condemn violations of noncombatant immunity, repent of Christian complicity or participation in such atrocities, and work toward preventing their occurrence in the future.xxviii Richard Shelly Hartigan, The Forgotten Victim: A History of the Civilian (Chicago: Precedent Publishing, Inc., 1982), 1. ii.

Bruce Stokes, “70 years after Hiroshima, i.

opinions have shifted on the use of atomic bomb,” Pew Research, 4 August 2015, accessed 9 October 2018, <http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2015/08/04/70-years-after-hiroshima-opinionshave-shifted-on-use-of-atomic-bomb/>. iii.

Bryan Fischer, “A Christian View of Hiroshima,” American Family Association, 31 May 2016, accessed 3 September 2018, <https://www.afa.net/the-stand/ faith/2016/05/a-christian-view-of-hiroshima/>. iv.

1 Thessalonians 5:22; 1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV). v.

The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, A1. vi.

2 Corinthians 12:9 (ESV). vii.

Romans 6:21 (ESV) viii.

ESV Study Bible, notes on Romans 3:5-8. ix.

Romans 6:1-2 (ESV). x.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, “Commentary on Romans,” Aquinas Study Bible, accessed 3 September 2018, <https://sites.google.com/site/ aquinasstudybible/home/romans/st-thomas-aquinason-romans/chapter-1/chapter-2/chapter-3>. xi.

John Calvin, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1999), 69. xii.

Richard J. Arneson, “Just Warefare Theory and Noncombatant Immunity,” Cornell International Law Journal vol. 39, no. 3 (2006): 664. xiii.

G.E.M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy Vol. 33, No. 124 (1958): 9. xiv.

Exodus 20:13 (ESV). xv.

Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language: Third Edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 211; Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2012), 31. xvi.

Richard Shelly Hartigan, “Saint Augustine on War and Killing: The Problem of the Innocent,” Journal of the History of Ideas vol. 27, no. 2 (1996): 203. xvii.

Deuteronomy 20:17 (ESV). xviii.

Romans 6:23 (ESV). xix.

Deuteronomy 20:14,19-20 (ESV). xx.

Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Reevaluation (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 92. xxi.

Hartigan, “Saint Augustine on War and Killing,” 202. xxii.

G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy nol. 33, no. 124 (1958): 8. xxiii.

Exodus 23:7 (ESV). xxiv.

2 Kings 24:4 (ESV). xxv.

Romans 13:3 (ESV). xxvi.

1 Peter 2:14 (ESV). xxvii.

Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. Richard

Tuck (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), 3.11.16.2. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/grotius-the-rightsof-war-and-peace-2005-ed-vol-3-book-iii>. xxviii.

Romans 12:9 (ESV).

Luke Dickens ’18 is from Fortson, Georgia. He is a double major in Economics and Philosophy.

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A

CASE FOR CATHO the Role of Authority

by Maura

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O L I C T R A D I T I O N: y in Biblical Inquiry

aura Cahill

Barcelona Cathedral, Spain by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2018

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T

he concept of authority—what it is, who has it, and who should have it—never fails to incite debate, particularly within the Western individualistic paradigm. Those skeptical of authority view it as oppressive, while supporters of authority believe it to be a prerequisite to social stability. Within philosophical contexts, the concept of authority comes into play in epistemological debates, which ask: “How do we know what we know?” Indeed, authority plays a central role in understanding and legitimizing knowledge. Proponents of authority in epistemology cite it as a tool to fill in the gaps of non-expert understanding, whereas skeptics of authority cite its tendency to overstep its boundaries and supplant rational exploration of beliefs. As in other domains, authority is contentious issue among different Christian worldviews.

While scholars may rationally disagree about the proper size and influence of authority, they cannot dispute its prevalence in society. For many, the pursuit of truth depends on subconscious appeals to external authorities, especially in areas in which they have little expertise. For example, while people may not have the time or ability to learn the complexities of astrophysics, they believe that other galaxies exist because they trust the conclusions of the scientific community. Likewise, when people seek certified physicians to diagnose illnesses or trust scientific information in peerreviewed journals, they rely on authority to recognize truths that may not be self-evident. The social order often depends on truths established by authority.

For many Christians, understanding faith— which transcends the senses—requires an authority to recognize non-obvious truths. Authority shapes Christians’ understanding of doctrine, which in turn shapes their religious identity. This subject has tremendous consequences: as the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Europe demonstrate, the question of the legitimacy of certain religious authorities has shaped the history of the world, prompting the formation of debates and councils to determine which doctrines align with Christian orthodoxy. As illustrated by the Protestant Reformation, during which Christian groups challenged the legitimacy of papal authority and broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, religious disagreements have often underpinned by different understandings of what constitutes proper Christian authority. During the Reformation, two dominant paradigms emerged: the Protestant paradigm of sola

scriptura and the Catholic adherence to both Scripture and Tradition.

According to sola scriptura, the Bible is the only infallible and divinely-inspired ecclesiastical authority for Christians.i While Catholicism recognizes the importance of Scripture, it also maintains that the Magisterium—the teaching body of the Catholic Church, made up of the bishops and and the pope— is an infallible interpreter of Scripture under certain circumstances. Catholics believe that the Magisterium is inextricably linked to Scripture insofar as it plays a crucial, complementary role in interpreting and understanding it. In other words, the Catholic Church views Tradition and Scripture as two facets of one divine truth. Whereas Protestants will be more likely to defer to the Bible alone when contemplating the divine, Catholics will accept both the Bible and the Church’s authoritative interpretation of it.

In the modern world, many Americans have not paid much attention to justifications of the Catholic reliance on Tradition, which may seem undemocratic, anachronistic, or oppressive. After all, individualism is the dominant ethos in the United States, and the individualist understanding of authority conforms well to a Protestant paradigm that treats authority skeptically. This article aims to provide a different perspective by articulating and defending the Catholic paradigm of authority, particularly in its relationships to Scripture and to questions of orthodoxy.

The Nature of Belief Many devout Christians recognize the importance of authority because it is inherently connected to questions about the content and interpretation of the Bible. Unlike Muslims, who view the Quran as the literal word of God, or Mormons, who believe that the Book of Mormon was revealed directly to Joseph Smith, most Christians recognize the Bible as a compilation of divinely inspired texts. The Bible is commonly understood as an essential collection of writings that provide religious truths and moral guidelines. Written by man, it is considered to be divinely inspired rather than directly given or revealed.

Both Catholics and Protestants recognize these truths as the framework for Christian belief and orthodoxy. However, the importance of the Bible to Christian orthodoxy has not stopped Christians from interpreting the Bible differently, both individually and among denominations.

The Catholic position argues that differences in

Authority shapes Christians’ understanding of doctrine, which in turn shapes their religious identity.

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biblical interpretation stem from competing notions of what constitutes religious authority. As previously mentioned, the Protestant paradigm maintains that all essential Christian doctrine can be found in the Bible—a belief known as sola scriptura. While many adherents of sola scriptura deny the interpretative authority of the Church hierarchy itself, they do not reject religious epistemological authority outright. In fact, a careful examination of religious practices reveals that most denominations implicitly recognize some sort of external authority in biblical interpretation.

One example of this phenomenon occurs within the context of the Protestant debate over the legitimacy of infant baptism. The infant baptism debate pits those who support baptizing babies (e.g.

Lutherans and Presbyterians) against those who restrict baptism to professed believers (e.g. Baptists and Pentecostals). Because there exists no explicit affirmation or denunciation of infant baptism in Scripture, many Protestants implicitly refer to early church traditions or to their own sources of authority, such as denominational founders or sect leaders, when engaging in this debate. In an oral debate between prominent Protestant theologians R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur, for example, Sproul points to biblical passages to support infant baptism while MacArthur does the same to argue against the practice. However,

they reference other sources of authority to back up their respective positions.ii Presumably, according to MacArthur, since the Bible does not explicitly describe infant baptism, it must be forbidden. MacArthur, who purports to rest his case on the Bible alone, nevertheless references a “voluminous amount of literature on the subject,” appealing to an extra-biblical hermeneutic when he refers to “the Calvinistic principle of Scripture: if Scripture does not command it, it is forbidden.”iii R.C. Sproul counters that Scripture does not explicitly prohibit infant baptism, and therefore the case for infant baptism comes by making inferences from what Scripture has explicitly proclaimed.iv Sproul references several specific writers—including John Calvin and New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann. While both debaters quote from Scripture (and even use the same passages), the exegesis of such passages differ. Although they would not claim to appeal to external authority directly, MacArthur and Sproul implicitly recognize some kind of authority beyond personal exegeses. Thus, a belief that the Bible can be read in total isolation from an external authority cannot be upheld because drawing from some external authority is necessary to clarify, at the very least, theological issues which the Bible does not explicitly address.

Renouncing external sources in the adoption of sola scriptura proves not only theoretically

A belief that the Bible can be read in total isolation from an external authority cannot be upheld.

Explorations at the Gutenberg Museum by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2017

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impossible, but also practically problematic. As some Protestant thinkers have acknowledged, the rejection of a “rule of faith”—that is, a mechanism for upholding orthodoxy—often results in an inordinate individualism which distorts Scripture. In a critique of modern American Protestantism, influential evangelical theologian Stanley Hauerwas worries that, “individualism—the conceit of self-sufficiency—has thoroughly corrupted American Christians’ ability to interpret Scripture.”v In a profile of Hauerwas, Baptist writer John Shelton commends Hauerwas’s criticism of the evangelical preoccupation with individualism.

Shelton, together with Hauerwas, claims that faithful biblical interpretation must be bound by tradition.vi In summarizing Hauerwas’s critiques, Shelton argues that in early Christian debates on heresy, both sides used the Bible to make their arguments; however, only the rule of faith passed down by the Apostles enabled the formation of established doctrines like the Trinity.vii More extreme adherents of sola scriptura, who may be called followers of solo scriptura, claim that tradition serves no function because the Holy Spirit reveals biblical truths to any sincere believer through a reading of Scripture alone. However, this belief contradicts the historical development of Christianity: as Hauerwas and Shelton argue, the maintenance of faith was only made possible due to a “pattern” handed down through time and sustained by the Apostles.viii The alternative to acknowledgement of this “pattern,” as recognized by both Catholic and Protestant thinkers, is a Christianity without the “rule of faith,” which is the only mechanism that can prevent confusion and

he or she has received this truth. While sola scriptura ultimately operates on the principle that individuals are authorized to receive religious truth, the Catholic approach demands criteria to determine who possesses legitimate authority.

It is important to note that many adherents of sola scriptura do not agree with the characterization that their position is individualistic. Dr. Keith Mathison of the Calvinist-influenced Reformation Bible College, for example, claims a distinction between adherents of sola scriptura and adherents of solo scriptura.x According to Mathison, a claim to sole reliance on the Bible and personal judgement in determining matters of faith may be classified as solo scriptura, as previously mentioned. He exposes this belief as a modern and individualistic distortion of sola scriptura, which acknowledges the support of secondary authorities and traditions deemed to be in line with Scripture.

Mathison recognizes that Scripture provides no mechanism for interpretation of itself and thus requires some person or persons to interpret it.xi Sola scriptura, argues Mathison, is the correct Protestant position, and the Catholic argument against sola scriptura is a straw man critique of solo scriptura.xii However, as Catholic writer Brian Cross observes in his article “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority,” when sola scriptura is properly considered, it ultimately boils down to the subjectivity of solo scriptura.xiii Cross reiterates Mathison’s qualification of sola scriptura: “Whereas solo scriptura rejects the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, sola scriptura

The post-Reformation proliferation of Christian denominations... suggests that the abandonment of the “rule of faith” has had real historical consequences. doctrinal chaos.ix The post-Reformation proliferation of Christian denominations—some of which have developed vastly different conclusions about basic Christian beliefs and practices such as infant baptism— suggests that the abandonment of the “rule of faith” has had real historical consequences.

Which Authority?

Because Christians must appeal, whether consciously or subconsciously, to some existing tradition or authority in order to practice their faith without embracing individualism in biblical exegesis, it is necessary to determine how authority is manifested and which authorities are legitimate. If a Christian claims to possess the truth, he or she must justify how

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affirms the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, except when they teach something contrary to one’s conscience, as informed by one’s own interpretation of Scripture.”xiv The problem with sola scriptura, notes Cross, is the final caveat.

Whereas solo scriptura purports to be a direct refutation of secondary authorities, sola scriptura indirectly subscribes to the same principles of individualism because it allows the individual to submit only to the authorities with which he or she agrees. In effect, circular reasoning ensues as the individual chooses the correct interpreter of the Bible according to his or her interpretation of the Bible. Without explicit criteria for authority, Cross argues, the Protestant paradigm in practice results in submission only to the particular

Salzburg Cathedral, Austria by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2018

The Protestant paradigm in practice results in submission only to the particular institution, congregation, denomination, or other authority which is agreeable to the individual. institution, congregation, denomination, or other authority which is agreeable to the individual.xv Thus, sola scriptura only shifts the problem of subjective authority and ultimately leads to the same difficulties as its supposedly more extreme counterpart, solo scriptura.

If the latter position implies refusing to submit to any authority beyond one’s individual interpretation of the Bible, the former circles back to the same problem of subjectivity. In the sola scriptura example, there is no way to determine objective truth if the choice of authority is arbitrary. Because sola scriptura allows for subjective recognition of authority, the individual person is ultimately the sole interpreter of scriptural truth under this view.

Unlike sola scriptura, the Catholic paradigm offers a solution to the arbitrary selection of authority because it recognizes a concrete definition of what constitutes the Church.xvi The proponent of sola scriptura may argue that because humans are imperfect beings, it is unreasonable to expect a human institution to understand the complex truths of Christianity, and so the individual interpretations implicit in the Protestant paradigm are the humblest and most reasonable attempts at living out Christianity. In response, the Catholic Church argues that Christ laid

the foundations for an institutional Church in order to correct for human error. In both Catholicism and Protestantism, “the church” is considered to be the Body of Christ, the living and physical manifestation of Jesus on earth. However, unlike many Protestant denominations—which have varied perceptions of what the term “church” means in tangible terms— Catholics believe that Christ passed down his legitimate authority through an apostolic lineage.xvii Because the Church’s authority is ultimately derived from Christ’s authority, the notion of tradition in the Catholic paradigm is radically different from tradition as understood in the Protestant paradigm.

While tradition in the Protestant paradigm vests ultimate authority in texts, the Catholic paradigm understands authority to be derived from persons; such authority manifests most perfectly in Christ, through the Incarnation. Christ desired his people to remain united, and so, according to Catholics, he instituted the Apostles as the first bishops and chose Peter, whom he called the “rock upon which he would build [his] church,” as the first pope.xviii Since the time of the Apostles, that authority has been passed down through the teaching authority of the Church, or the Magisterium, in what Catholics term apostolic

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Reliance on persons in authority, unlike reliance on text as an authority, enables humans to engage with truth through both faith and reason. succession.xix The Church acts as an means through which authority is passed down from person to person in a stable and traceable manner. Reliance on persons in authority, unlike reliance on text as an authority, enables humans to engage with truth through both faith and reason.xx Because texts cannot interpret themselves, textual authority requires the use of human reason to determine truth. Thus, apostolic succession provides a reliable framework through which authoritative personhood is passed down and maintained.

Because it rejects the idea of apostolic succession, the Protestant position has no conclusive markers of what constitutes “the church.”xxi Some Protestant traditions claim that “church” refers to all baptized Christians, but this term has few practical implications and does not delineate authority. Both Protestantism and Catholicism affirm the Holy Spirit’s guidance in biblical interpretation, but only Catholicism provides a method for correcting human errors in judgment caused by irrationality or the distorting effects of sin.

The theory of apostolic succession provides a structure for maintaining orthodoxy that the Protestant paradigm lacks due to sola scriptura’s inevitable reduction to the subjectivity of solo scriptura. The theory of apostolic succession provides a framework

for maintaining orthodoxy, whereas in principle Protestantism has no such method for determining truth beyond individual and secondary authorities.

While the Catholic paradigm claims authority through apostolic succession, Protestantism cannot fundamentally separate authority from the individual.

Catholic Tradition Manifested in History The theories of apostolic succession and reliance on tradition are both supported by Scripture and rooted in the history of the pre-New Testament early Church. In the earliest years of Christianity, Christ’s Apostles and disciples preached the story of Jesus of Nazareth orally and through letters. The Gospels and epistles, as well as the Acts of the Apostles and Revelation, were composed independently during the first few centuries, but as Christianity expanded, the earliest Christians relied on teachings received directly from the Apostles whom Jesus had chosen to lead the Church. Paul testifies to a commitment to Tradition in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 when he says, “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.”xxii Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 11:2, he says, “I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions, just as I handed them

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, France

by Joshua Tseng-Tham, 2015

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on to you.”xxiii In his letters, Paul emphasizes adherence to the teachings of the Apostles beyond the written word, as they are handed on.

The primacy of the Apostles in the early Church does not exclude the possibility of disagreements among them; in fact, the disagreements in the early church illustrated the necessity of authority. The first major dispute in the Church, for example, manifested at the Council of Jerusalem (c. 50 AD), in which early Christians determined the position of non-Jews within the faith.xxiv The Council of Jerusalem was the first of many ecumenical councils in which the early church separated right doctrine from heresy; many strains of Protestantism accept the authority of these councils, which clarified major teachings of the Church.

Apostolic succession maintained tradition prior to and during the establishment of the Biblical canon, or books included in the Bible, at the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 414. While the early Church certainly referenced Scriptural texts to reach their conclusions, they also relied heavily on Tradition and knowledge passed on through the Apostles, which they interpreted through the authority vested in them through the Church. At the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.), which occurred decades before the Bible was officially compiled, leaders of the Church affirmed the divinity of Christ, along with other central tenets of the faith that constitute the Nicene Creed, a declaration of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.xxv The Case Against Sola Scriptura As this article has illustrated, while sola scriptura indicates belief in the Bible as the only primary basis of the faith, it is inevitable that most Christians will refer to secondary authorities in their quest for biblical truth. At the same time, because of the lack of criteria for authority, sola scriptura naturally reduces to the subjectivity of solo scriptura and the prioritization of the individual. On the other hand, the Catholic belief in apostolic succession emphasizes the authority of persons rather than that of texts alone and is therefore more internally consistent than its alternative, sola scriptura. If apostolic succession is a vital component of authority, then we would expect that the interpretation of Scripture would not exist in isolation, and that the Church’s oral tradition would be equally authoritative.

Thus, Catholic doctrine regarding subjects like the status of Mary and the existence of Purgatory is supported by the testimony of the early oral Church and can be supported by modern Christians. In the present world, just as in the early Church, authority is still necessary for a proper understanding of Christianity, not only for the determination of basic doctrine—which must be continuously interpreted and affirmed—

but for rightly applying Christian principles in the face of rapidly changing social norms. Despite the importance of individualism to the American ethos, religious individualism in the form of sola scriptura can limit rather than facilitate adherence to objectivity.

Therefore, authority in the Catholic context should not be viewed as oppressive, but rather as a stabilizing force and facilitator of historical continuity, unity, and orthodoxy in the Christian world. i.

Brian Cross, “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority,” Called to Communion (November 4, 2009). ii.

R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur, “Baptism Debate,” Ligonier Ministries National Conference (1997). Debate. iii.

MacArthur and Sproul. iv.

MacArthur and Sproul. v.

John Shelton, “Stanley Hauerwas: Modern American Puddleglum,” Mere Orthodoxy, 8 May 2018 (accessed 8 October 2018), <https:// mereorthodoxy.com/stanley-hauerwas/>. vi.

Shelton. vii.

Shelton. viii.

Shelton. ix.

Shelton. x.

Bryan Cross, “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority,” Called to Communion (November 4, 2009). xi.

Cross. xii.

Cross. xiii.

Cross. xiv.

Cross (emphasis mine). xv.

Cross. xvi.

Cross. xvii.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 77-79. xviii.

Matthew 16:18 (NABRE). xix.

Catechism, 784. xx.

Ray Stamper, “The Catholic and Protestant Authority Paradigms Compared,” Called to Communion (June 24, 2012). xxi.

Cross. xxii.

2 Thessalonians 2:15 (NABRE). xxiii.

1 Corinthians 1:12 (NABRE). xiv.

Acts of the Apostles 15 (NABRE). xxv.

Catechism, 168-175.

Maura Cahill ’20 is from Manasquan, NJ. She is majoring in English with a minor in Government.

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RETRACTION NOTICE The following article has been retracted from the digitally published Winter/Spring 2019 issue of The Dartmouth Apologia at the request of the author: Value Systems and Self-Judgement: Mental Health and Japanese Society “I asked the Apologia team to retroactively omit this article from the digital version of this issue. I have issues with the argument I made, both from a quality perspective and a values perspective. The article relies heavily on personal anecdotes, and I now believe some of my argument’s foundational premises to be incorrect.”

-Micah Taylor ’21

A Prayer for Dartmouth This prayer by professor of religion Lucius Waterman appears on a plaque hanging outside Parkhurst Hall.

O Lord God Almighty, well-spring of wisdom, master of power, guide of all growth, giver of all gain. We make our prayer to thee, this day, for Dartmouth College. Earnestly entreating thy favour for its people. For its work, and for all its life.

Let thy hand be upon its officers of administration to make them strong and wise, and let thy word make known to them the hiding-place of power. Give to its teachers the gift of teaching, and make them to be men right-minded and highhearted. Give to its students the spirit of vision, and fill them with a just ambition to be strong and well-furnished, and to have understanding of the times in which they live. Save the men of Dartmouth from the allurements of self-indulgence, from the assaults of evil foes, from pride of success, from false ambitions, from hardness, from shallowness, from laziness, from heedlessness, from carelessness of opportunity, and from ingratitude for sacrifices out of which their opportunity has grown. Make, we beseech thee, this society of scholars to be a fountain of true knowledge, a temple of sacred service, a fortress for the defense of things just and right, and fill the Dartmouth spirit with thy spirit, to make it a name and a praise that shall not fail, but stand before thee forever. We ask in the name in which alone is salvation, even through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

The Reverend Lucius Waterman, D.D.

Artist Statement

The Nicene Creed The Dartmouth Apologia invites people from all intellectual, philosophical, religious, and spiritual backgrounds to join in our discussion as we search for truth and authenticity. We do, however, reserve the right to publish only that which aligns with our statement of belief.

We, the members of The Dartmouth Apologia, affirm that the Bible is inspired by God, that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, and that God has called us to live by the moral principles of the New Testament. We also affirm the Nicene Creed, with the understanding that views may differ on baptism and the meaning of the word “catholic.”

We [I] believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We [I] believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We [I] believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

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The inside back cover image draws inspiration from several sources. The composition is a direct reference to Francisco de Goya’s 1814 work, The Third of May, 1808, a painting which illuminates the horrors of combat in the context of the Peninsular War. Goya’s masterpiece depicts a group of captives held at gunpoint, presumably to be slaughtered.

Without weapons, the captives appear to be innocent, the scene thereby resonating with the theme of this issue’s cover article. The black and white color scheme casts a solemn tone upon the cover image and subtly alludes to the horrifying black and white images of the aftermath of WWII nuclear warfare in Japan.

Given the brutal nature of these underlying references, the imagery and figures are depicted in a playful, cartoony language to render the cover and theme a bit more accessible to the viewer. The final inspiration is the recurring biblical motif of the sheep being led to the slaughter. Isaiah 53:7: “He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter”. Embodying innocence, the lamb is led to its death- through the imagery of the lamb and the collaboration of these inspirations, the stage is set for the theme of the cover article: a Christian defense of noncombatant immunity.

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