Greetings from Yale.
It’s 1:42 am Eastern Standard Time, but I don’t have class until 11:35 tomorrow morning, so with the help of my faithful friend Starbucks Coffee, I’ll jot down some thoughts about God, school, and Aristotle that I hope you’ll find at least somewhat interesting.
Contrary to my expectations, Yale is not a God-forsaken spiritual wasteland. God, it turns out, touches even the faraway, ivy-wrapped, neo-Gothic bastions of liberal academia. Which, of course, should not surprise me—yet of course, it did.
Speaking of where God touches: assume that God exists outside of space. Then when we say God is omnipresent, we really do not mean that he exists in every space of our world. Rather, we mean that God accesses and orders every space of our world. The same goes for time (but only if you think that God is entirely outside of time. That discussion, it turns out, is very open, very nuanced and largely over my head).
God also dwells in his children, and, again to my surprise, a good number of his children dwell at Yale. Enough that you probably couldn’t count them on all your fingers and toes. One of them is my philosophy professor Gregory Ganssle, whose specialty is the philosophy of God and time and whose insights influence much of what I’m writing here.
Commercial break: That same professor recently published A Reasonable God, a philosophical defense of Christianity against atheism. Though I haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.
Lately I’ve taken to referring to God as “the Unmoved Mover.” He cannot be moved, yet he causes movement: powerfully, invisibly, undeniably. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8, ESV).
The term “Unmoved Mover” comes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in which Aristotle started with his bewilderingly obtuse theory of change and, following a bit of a logical tangent, ended up accidentally reasoning his way to the existence, and almost the very nature, of God.
I have never seen my class so desperately engaged as on that afternoon when we were confronted with the logic of God’s reality. The Unmoved Mover was moving. Professor Ganssle took a long series of questions, ranging from curious to highly skeptical. Of course, philosophically speaking, no argument for the existence of God is irrefutable, because no philosophical argument is irrefutable, period. But truth in light of reason (as Augustine would say) comes very close.
I was once afraid that reading the Bible academically would threaten what I believe. But if truth in light of reason brings us closer to reality, it follows that putting the ultimate Truth, the Word, in light of reason brings us closer to the reality of God. So, when fifteen students and a professor sit around a table and examine the Bible in a literature class, God’s glory is revealed. Theology begins to make sense; God’s nature proceeds necessarily from his actions. Even if the approach is utterly secular. Even if the weekly lecture was spiteful to the point of illogicality. Even if the presentiments are decidedly anti-Christian. If you honestly search the text—even as small part of the text—you can’t avoid its author for long.
But there’s a catch: not everyone reads the Bible, much less studies it. I thank God for my Christian friends here, for my church and Bible study; I thank God that his Word pierces like a double-edged sword through any depth of academic hostility; and I thank God that he penetrates all and moves all according to his will. But the overwhelming majority of Yale is lost—brilliant, motivated, and often fervently curious—but lost nonetheless.
I was talking to a very good friend a while ago, and as is typical of conversations at Yale, ours took a powerful tangent. Here’s a rough outline:
Humanitarian projects in Africa > poverty and civil unrest in Africa > genocide > machetes > decapitation > Did you know that your brain works for two minutes after your head is severed from your body? > final thoughts when dying > heaven > the plan of salvation.
Now, this friend has a remarkable (and often disconcerting) way of asking exactly the right questions. When I had finished explaining salvation, she said, very simply and honestly: “Why has no one told me about this before?”
I’ll end with that. It’s a question for which the best answer is action, not words, anyway. Thanks for reading, and when you pray to the Unmoved Mover, please praise him for moving at Yale.
Rebecca Smith
What a joy for Northside Church to participate in the Snohomish Kla Ha Ya Days Festival July 17-18. Under the leadership of Rafe and Christine Samonte, Northsiders handed out hundreds of free balloons and water bottles with invitations to Northside. Many people also took free Bibles and other information about our church. The best part was the chance to engage people in conversations about their spiritual life. Some people had no idea what a Bible was. Some people had been away from church and been thinking about returning to church. Others were new to the area and looking for a new church home. All in all, many seeds of the gospel were planted. Many thanks to all of you who prayed and participated. Let’s pray that many of the seeds planted result in salvations and new members in God’s Kingdom!
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