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

by William A. Dembski

Theodicy attempts to resolve how a good God and evil world can coexist. The neo-atheist view in this debate has dominated recent bestseller lists through books like The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens), and The End of Faith (Samuel Harris). And their popularity illuminates a changing mental environment wherein people are asking harder questions about divine goodness. Surprisingly, these books please intelligent design champion William Dembski, because “They would be unnecessary if Christianity were not again a live issue.”Entering the conversation, Dembski’s provocative The End of Christianity embraces the challenge to formulate a theodicy that is both faithful to Christian orthodoxy and credible to the new mental environment. He writes to make peace with three claims: (1) God by wisdom created the world out of nothing. (2) God exercises particular providence in the world. (3) All evil in the world ultimately traces back to human sin. In the process, Dembski brings the reader to a fresh understanding of what “the end (result) of Christianity” really means: the radical realignment of our thinking so that we see God’s goodness in creation despite the distorting effects of sin in our hearts and evil in the world.Endorsements:"The End of Christianity towers over the others in profundity and quality . . . I have read very few books with its deep of insight, breadth of scholarly interaction, and significance. From now on, no one who is working on a Christian treatment of the problem of evil can afford to neglect this book."—J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University and author of The God Question


A thought-provoking and well-worth reading book by a brilliant evangelical thinker on the perennial and puzzling problem of how to explain physical evil in the world before the Fall. I could not put it down. It has so much intellectually stimulating material in it.


—Norman Geisler

"Believers have badly needed the kind of compelling case for biblical theodicy provided in Dr. Dembski's new book-grounded, as it is, not in traditional philosophical arguments (often not merely obtuse but irrelevant in today's scientific climate), but in intelligent design, of which Dr. Dembski is the world's foremost academic proponent."


—John Warwick Montgomery

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


—Josh and Sean McDowell, co-authors of Evidence for the Resurrection and More Than A Carpenter

Genres: Theology, Christian, Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

A mathematician and philosopher, Dr. William Dembski has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned a B.A. in psychology, an M.S. in statistics, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. He is the recipient of a $100,000 Templeton research grant. In 2005 he received Texas A&M’s Trotter Prize.

Dr. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, engineering, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of over twenty books.

His most comprehensive treatment of intelligent design to date, co-authored with Jonathan Wells, is titled The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems.

As interest in intelligent design has grown in the wider culture, Dr. Dembski has assumed the role of public intellectual. In addition to lecturing around the world at colleges and universities, he is frequently interviewed on the radio and television. His work has been cited in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, including three front page stories in the New York Times as well as the August 15, 2005 Time magazine cover story on intelligent design. He has appeared on the BBC, NPR (Diane Rehm, etc.), PBS (Inside the Law with Jack Ford; Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson), CSPAN2, CNN, Fox News, ABC Nightline, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

“God’s dealings with nature parallel his dealings with humanity.”

Interesting. Entertaining. But not compelling. Dembski deconstructs many historic and current theodicies (reconciliations of God’s goodness and the existence of evil) and creates his own, pivoting on the retroactive tainting of creation by human disobedience, AKA The Fall. He takes on both classic and neo-atheists, young and old-earth creationists, and even classical philosophy. He’s better at disassembling than building.

Of course, the Judeao-Christian God could act retroactively. “God doesn’t live in time. He invented time for us,” said Gerri Dickens. And the redemption bought at the cross is explicitly applicable to those who died before Jesus, but possible doesn’t mean necessary and sufficient. Like all logical proofs for or against the existence of God, Dembski’s fails.

Dembski like many others in this debate equates “evil” with all disasters. I’m not so sure. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and the like are bad. They are destructive and deadly. But are they evil? I’m not sure. To me evil implies intent. So far as Demski’s thesis this is mere quibbling, but if we get sloppy with our terminology soon we can’t communicate.

He raises one interesting issue late in the book: the problem of good. If the existence of evil somehow proves there is no God, what does the existence of good imply? Or as Boethius put it 1,400 years ago, “If God exists whence evil; but whence good if God does not exist?” All the famous atheists from Darwin to Dawkins note that nature is in a state of unmitigated war with itself. Where then does the impulse, let alone the fact, of good come from?

A wise man warned, “The writing of many books is endless.” Especially theology books.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the book as a whole & the author's Theodicy disappointing. It does seem that he assumes not only an earth that is billions of years old (though I believe in a young earth I do not think one who holds to an old earth denies the truth of Scripture-some do of course) but that evolution is true, that God did use evolution to bring about much of creation. That, I believe is problematic. How he tries to bring this belief into agreement with Scripture on one hand is brilliant & creative. However, it is, I believe, thoroughly wrong.
I don't really think it's worth reading, however it's your dime & your time.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE “INTELLIGENT DESIGN” THEORIST CREATES A NEW THEODICY

William Albert Dembski (born 1960) is a key figure in the "Intelligent Design" movement, who is a former professor at the Southern Evangelical Seminary and a former senior fellow of the Discovery Institute.

He wrote in the “Acknowledgements” section of this 2009 book, “[This book] began as a paper posted on my website… That paper touched a nerve, and many people offered useful insights as I was conceiving and revising it and then writing this book.” He adds in the Introduction, “the challenge of this book is to formulate a theodicy that is at once faithful to Christian orthodoxy (thereby underscoring the existence, power, and goodness of God) and credible to our mental environment (thereby challenging the neo-atheists at their own game)… The theodicy formulated in this book attempts to combine credibility in the current mental environment with faithfulness to Christian orthodoxy.” Pg. 4-5)

He continues, “if there is any originality here, it is in my analysis of claim 3 [‘All evil in the world ultimately traces back to human sin’]… claim 3 is not attributing to humanity an absolute origin of evil. Rather it is asserting that human sin is the immediate or proximate cause of evil in the world… the fall of humanity presupposes the fall of angelic beings. And the fall of angelic beings may presuppose some still deeper features of reality that bring about evil… the effects of the Fall can be retroactive as well as proactive… The question I therefore want to pose---and help answer---in this book is how we, as Christians, are to help bring about the ultimate triumph of Christ.” (Pg. 9-11)

He suggests, “Creaturehood implies constraints to which the Creator is not subject. This may seem unfair… The question then naturally arises, Has God the Creator denied to the creature some freedom that might benefit it? Adam and Eve thought the answer to this question was yes (God, it seemed, had denied them the freedom to know good and evil). As soon as the creature answers yes to this question, its will turns against God. Once that happens, the will becomes evil… In short, the problem of evil starts when creatures think God is evil for ‘cramping their style.’ The impulse of our modern secular culture to cast off restraint whenever possible finds its root here.” (Pg. 27-28)

He explains, “I don’t assign primary responsibility for natural evil to the person of Satan. Rather, I take the entirely traditional view that natural evil traces to the personal evil of the first humans… At first blush the traditional view appears to contradict widely accepted claims from astrophysics and geology concerning the age of the earth and universe. Indeed, how could natural evil trace to the Fall of humanity if natural evil predates humans? But, as will become evident in later chapters, the soundness of viewing natural evil as a consequence of the Fall is, in fact, independent of scientific creationism.” (Pg. 39)

He acknowledges, “Young-earth creationists deserve credit for highlighting the difficulty of reconciling an old earth with the Fall. In particular, they see the theological necessity of linking natural evil to human sin… Sure, one can try to make an exegetical argument that passages like Rom 5:12 speak strictly about human death. But young-earth creationists have the stronger case here, both exegetically and theologically, in interpreting such passages as speaking about death and corruption generally and not just about human death…” (Pg. 48)

He observes, “since the 1990s Russell Humphrey’s use of Einsteinian relativity to resolve the problem of distant starlight has been the young-earth cosmology to beat… To reconcile how distant stars that appear be billions of years old can be compatible with a young earth, Humphreys therefore set up a relativistic model in which the rate at which time passes changes dramatically in different parts of the universe. Thus, what looks like 6,000 years on earth may correspond to billions of years elsewhere in the universe. But there is a problem with this proposal… Humphreys, despite having over a decade to shore up his cosmology, has been unable to get his numbers to come out right… Even though I’m not an expert in relativity theory, as a mathematician who has read both sides of this discussion, I would say that Humphrey’s model is, at least for now, dead in the water… But even if the numbers on Humphrey’s model could be made to come out right, we would still be a long way from confirming that this model accurately reflects the true state and history of the universe.” (Pg. 70)

He argues, “Within young-earth creationism, all divine compensatory action to redress humanity’s sin occurs forward in time from the Fall. But why should God be limited in that way?... To assume that God must respond to the Fall only with actions that take effect afterward is thus doubly mistaken. First, it commits an unwarranted anthropomorphism by treating God as time-bound in the same way that we are. Second, it fails to recognize that though we ourselves are time-bound creatures, we often respond to events before they occur. God… can therefore respond to events before, during, and after their occurrence. In particular he can respond to the Fall by changing not only the history that comes after it but also the history that comes before it.” (Pg. 111-112)

He observes, “As humanity’s progenitors, Adam and Eve are usually taken to be a single male-female pair. This clearly is how the Bible portrays them and how creationists of all stripes have historically understood them. The theodicy developed in this book is certainly compatible with a literal Adam and Eve. But it does not require a literal Adam and Eve. What is does require is that a group of hominids … had their loyalty to God fairly tested… moreover, on taking the test, they all failed.” (Pg. 146)

Later, he adds, “the reading of Genesis 1-3 that I’m proposing here requires that whatever makes humans distinctly human… must happen at the precise point when they enter the Garden. For is the world outside the Garden of Eden exhibits the effects of the Fall (which, chronologically, has yet to happen), then as fully God-conscious humans, they would be experiencing the punishing effects of the Fall while they were still, literally, innocent. And this eventuality is precisely what the theodicy developed here attempts to forestall.” (Pg. 154-155)

He continues, “For the theodicy I am proposing to be compatible with evolution, God must not merely introduce existing human-like beings from outside the Garden. In addition, when they enter the Garden, God must transform their consciousness so that they become rational moral agents made in God’s image… For it the first humans bore the full image and likeness of God outside the Garden prior to the Fall, they would have been exposed to the natural evils present there---evils for which they were NOT YET responsible.” (Pg. 159)

He points out, “a face-value chronological reading of [Gen 4-11] requires, among other things, acceptance of the following highly dubious claims… *that Noah’s flood occurred about 1600 years after the creation of Adam and thus roughly 2400 BC… *that an ark much smaller than many cruise ships housed all animals… for a year without access to outside food… quite likely without access to outside drinking water… *that eight people… populated not just the earth but whole civilizations within 400 years of the Flood… *that a mere 200 years before Abraham was born the Tower of Babel incident occurred, before which all humans spoke exactly one language. How, then, to interpret Genesis 4-11? That a topic for another book.” (Pg. 170)

This book will be of great interest to those seriously studying Apologetics (particularly the Problem of Evil).

[Ben Zajdel]

The End of Christianity is William Dembski's attempt to reconcile a good God with the evil that is so inherent in our world. In theological terms, this is called a theodicy. The title refers not to Christianity's demise, but rather to Christianity's ultimate triumph through Jesus.

What Dembski does is remarkable. A mathematician and philosopher who has studied at the University of Chicago, Princeton, and MIT, Dembski introduces a blueprint that is satisfying to the scientific and theological mind.

The premise of The End of Christianity is that there must be a way to reconcile the scientific evidence that suggests the earth is billions of years old and the effects of the Fall as described in the Bible. This obviously involves numerous sciences and philosophical ideas, making Dembski's work a complicated one. There were several chapters that required more than one reading. But the theory the author presents is fascinating.

Dembski proposes that the effects of man's sin in the Garden of Eden, known as the Fall of Man, were retroactive through the natural history of the universe. In other words, the sin of Adam and Eve is responsible for the death of animal and plant life that occurred millions of years before their existence. The idea is radical in one sense, but Christians believe something similar. It is a widely held Christian belief that the death of Jesus provided retroactive salvation for those who lived before his death.

Dembski provides thorough explanation for his theory, and the book, while technically complex, is a great read. I highly recommend it for anyone who is struggling with the concept of science and faith.

[Yari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theodicy needs to be understood especially now with the rise of atheism. The author has deep insight - without a doubt. I have pages and pages of notes gleaned from his words. One of my favorites - "With God, evil never has the final word. The Tree of Life, which Adam and Eve could no longer reach because they were expelled from the Garden, appeared again 2,000 years ago as a cross on a hill called Golgotha." God is good.
The only negative about the book is that there were portions that were unnecessarily complex and for that - I took off one star.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting theory about how God put sin into the created order in anticipation of the fall. This provides satisfying answers as to why it seems as if humans need to eat meat and animals seem to be designed to eat one another. It also raises more questions. I think Dembski does a good job dealing with all the relevant passages, including the ones in Romans that talk about sin coming into the world through Adam.

Got me thinking, big time!

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many books about theodicy but this one is truly unique.

[Lee Harmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to get into this book, but once I did, I was hooked. Dembski is a proponent of Intelligent Design, and has written before on that topic. His conundrum is that he also is a believer in the biblical story of Genesis—the story of the Fall is particularly troublesome—and wishes to accommodate scripture into an old earth theology. But unless one refuses to recognize the evil in nature itself, evil came before the Fall, right? Evil (defined primarily as the cause of suffering) seems designed into the world. What do we make of human suffering, and how did evil enter the world? How are we to interpret the Original Sin?

In the book, Dembski methodically debunks one young-age creationism theory after another, and he’s right: It’s time that evolution be accepted as a given. Evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne defines biological evolution as follows:

There is only one going theory of evolution, and it is this: organisms evolved gradually over time and split into different species, and the main engine of evolutionary change was natural selection. Sure, some details of these processes are unsettled, but there is no argument among biologists about the main claims.

Dembski reasons that anyone without a stake in the age of the earth is unlikely to find young earth arguments persuasive. But at the same time, he holds fast to scriptural stories in Genesis, seemingly prepared to jump through hoops to preserve his belief, and that contradiction left my head spinning. I hardly find the Genesis creation stories plausible unless—as Dembski puts it—I “have a stake” in the Bible’s historicity.

So how does Dembski make sense of the creation? We have in our Bibles two distinct creation stories; Genesis 1:1-2:3 forms one, and Genesis 2:4-3:24 forms the other. Proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis (see my book review at http://www.dubiousdisciple.com/2011/0... ) explain that the two myths were written by two different authors, and collected side by side in the Bible. Dembski proposes a different solution, suggesting that the second story can be seen as a sort of second creation; the planting of a Garden of Eden billions of years after the first creation was begun. The formation of humans occurred within that Garden, by imparting a soul; the breath of life. Whatever makes humans distinctly human (thereby separating them from the rest of the animals and infilling them with God’s image) happened at the precise moment when they enter the Garden. There, in a segregated tropical paradise, where natural evil is not evident, mankind’s love for God could be fairly tested. And mankind still fell, as God anticipated.

If we accept that God was able to anticipate the Fall, we can accept that God built a world to accommodate that Fall. Even though the first humans dwelt in perfect, evil-less surroundings, they still sinned, and were banished to the world prepared for them over billions of years. Thus Dembski preserves the traditional view that natural evil is a consequence of the Fall, even though God—who creates outside the boundaries of time—prepared retroactively for mankind’s sin.

[Gary Fields · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was certainly one of the most thought provoking books I've read in a while. The aim of this book is to offer another solution to the problem of having a good God in an evil world (theodicy). The unique twist here from other theodicies is that author William Dembski writes from the perspective of the earth being extremely old. In the past young earth creationists have solved this issue in a neat cut and dry fashion by saying that natural evil did not enter the world until human sin took place in the garden of Eden. The old earth creationist, of course, has to deal with the problem of natural evil already being present on earth for millions of years.

Dembski's proposed solution is to say that the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin are able to have retroactive consequences, and not only consequences that affect the future. The way he does this is by drawing a parallel to C.S. Lewis's mention of praying for things that have already happened in the past. His response to people questioning why he does this is that it is entirely possible for an omniscient God to create the universe in such a way that an event at time A plays out a certain way because an individual would later pray for it at time B.

Of course this leads to the question of whether or not God is responsible for directly creating natural evil. To this point I would say I am not entirely sold on Dembski's answer to this problem. It would appear that Dembski is suggesting that he gets around this problem by having the creation of natural evil be a form of punishment on the future sins of humanity.

Other than this, I would highly recommend the book as a must read when dealing with the problem of evil. Dembski adds much to this area of discussion, and yet, his book touches on so many other subjects that the book really becomes a must have. To give an example, before dealing with the retro active effects of the fall, Dembski devotes a deal of space on the pros and cons of both young and old creation. Though he concludes and sides with the old earth side of the debate, I felt as though Dembski was extremely fair in dealing with the young earth views (even going so far as to call it the most hermeneutically cohesive viewpoint). If anyone were to ask me for suggestions of books on the debate of how to interpret Genesis 1-3, this book will now be one I always mention.

As I said before, I don't believe any book I've read in the last few years has challenged and provoked as much thought as this one. I definitely enjoyed reading it.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start off by saying, I am still quite new to the Young Earth, Old Earth debate between Christians. I haven’t done much studying on the topic. (I’ll get around to it eventually). The goal of this book seems to be to reconcile natural evil in this world with the concept of a good God while defending the Old Earth position. Dembski’s book was straight forward and was intriguing enough that I had no issues finishing it. I did have a bit of trouble with his chapter, “Moving the Particles.” I have a general knowledge of physics but he goes into quantum mechanics which I know very little about. This chapter is essentially dedicated to explaining all the ways God could interact with the natural world. I was still able to follow his logic easily enough but an underlying knowledge would definitely be helpful to grasp a deeper understanding of this chapter.

Obviously, Dembski spends a good deal of time defending his Old Earth position and explaining natural evil before the fall. However, I’m not entirely convinced of his interpretation of Genesis. Regardless, this isn’t the entirety of his book. He brings other topics in. The part on the suffering of Christ and the significance of God using a divine spoken word to create the universe were exceptionally insightful. He also addresses questions like, why was Christ death on the cross necessary at all? And God is in the forgiving business so why doesn’t he just have at it? He provides good answers to these questions that many seem to grapple with.

He does a good job dealing with why God permits natural evil in the world without placing limitations on God from the Christian theological standpoint. He criticizes those that try to explain natural evil by placing limitations on God as if He simply isn’t capable of stopping it. I think Dembski handles this issue quite well since it isn’t an easy issue to deal with.

Overall, Dembski leaves us with a lot to chew on. He convincingly defended his Old Earth position as being biblical, explaining natural evil as a result of the fall retroactively. I definitely would recommend this book to a Christian who seeks a deeper understanding on these topics even if they don’t necessarily agree with Dembski‘s theology. Always good to have an understanding of various perspectives that are well grounded.

[Frank Peters · Rating 2 out of 5]

The purpose of the book was to provide a philosophical/theological explanation for how the fall of Adam and Eve fits with the natural world and the problem of evil. This, he tells me is a theodicy. The bible says that sin and death come from the fall, so this creates a potential problem, given the scientific evidence from the natural world. Dembski therefore starts the book by criticising other explanations, including the ones that are common from: young earth creationists, old earth creationists, and those who believe in theistic evolution. The book had too many diversions that seemed to be disconnected with the book, but eventually the author got around to explaining his view. Ultimately it is that all of physics and spiritual suffering and death was a result of the fall, however this was accomplished retrospectively due to God’s prescience. He suggests that the garden was a special oasis without death used until the fall took place, while outside the garden the results of the fall had already taken place from the beginning. This thesis was well reasoned and argued. This does not mean I am convinced, but he certainly has my respect. On the other hand the book was much longer than required for this purpose, and really could have been a long essay. I was relieved to finish the book, as the last chapter was especially unrelated to the main thesis, and therefore seemed completely out of place.

[Jeff Voeltner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! The last two or three chapters of this book are absolute gold! I really enjoyed the first half of this book and while the middle section was a bit over my head and slightly too technical... I was brought full-circle with the last few chapters, which I absolutely loved. More Christians today - in the age of being spoon-fed so much and not being encouraged to become engaged in really thinking through some of these issues on our own... ought to read this. I contend that this book will help you wrestle with important issues in a time in which it is so ever-important to rationally think through and balance what the scientific community is saying, with the truth of God's Word. Ultimately, there IS agreement and I contend that the two "communities" are not mutually exclusive, when all known evidence is considered. I believe you will be encouraged to put your thinking cap on while sorting through and reconciling the evidence for things such as 'natural' evil and an ancient universe/old Earth perspective, with faith in the God who created it.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judge this book by its cover. The clever design on the front did not belie the content underneath.

Enlarged my view of God, life, science, Genesis, freedom. Engaging on so many fronts.

This may be the most respectable and interesting handling of the problem of evil I've read.

(and i must admit I've stayed amused at the fact I'm reading an advanced copy of the book before it's released). Release coming Nov. 1

[Skipr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An innovative attempt to reconcile God as creator, mainstream scientific views of the age of the earth and the presence of death among living things from the beginning, and a biblical view of Adam and the impact of his sin on the cosmos. Pretty dense stuff, but worth the effort - the most persuasive attempt to reconcile these ideas I've ever heard or read.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely interesting book that challenges the reader on many levels. Whether or not it convinces on every level, it certainly inspires in the sense that it induces wonder toward God and His creation. Put another way, the books leaves one scratching the head, but nonetheless grateful for what is going on inside it.

[Brad Kittle · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like theology, you should enjoy this book. This is not a science book, and, in my opinion, is full of speculation, however reasoned. I enjoyed the book and was surprised to find the author was a better writer than I anticipated, and even waxed lyrical at times.

[Jonathan]

Anxiously awaiting a copy of this book

[David Haines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come on my blog.

[Marty Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty academic in its approach, still some interesting insights and theories relating to the problem of evil.