The Faith of a Seeker: Integrating Science and Scholarship with Christian Experience

By Robert H. Morris

In The Faith of a Seeker, the author draws upon his lifelong search for truth and understanding, trying to face squarely the difficult issues of faith and science and those raised by biblical criticism. After an introductory essay on seeking and the seeker, he turns to recent ideas and findings in cosmology and how they relate to biblical faith. He then devotes three full chapters to biological evolution and to the relation of humans to apes, taking the best books available on both sides of the issue and setting their arguments side by side. After finding what he feels is sufficient evidence for the biblical God, he then makes his own arguments for the being and nature of God, followed by a lengthy chapter on Jesus and a short one on the Holy Spirit, then a study of the Bible itself. The final chapters are: “The Supernatural”; “Our Human Condition”; “A Seeker’s Life of Faith”; “Concluding Remarks.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781595557582

Robert H. Morris

Robert Hunt Morris, II, a lifelong spiritual seeker, encountered Jesus at age nine. He left orthodox Christianity in his 20s, but never lost his love of Jesus. He was an active Quaker for 15 years, explored Eastern religions, and enjoys woodworking, writing, and editing. He married Jeanne Elizabeth Sokol, to whom three children were born. They lived from New York City to Oklahoma, and finally Tennessee in 1996. Today he is active in an evangelical United Methodist church

Book preview

THE FAITH OF A SEEKER

THE FAITH OF A SEEKER

Integrating Science and Scholarship

with Christian Experience

Robert H. Morris

© 2018 Robert H. Morris

The Faith of a Seeker

Integrating Science and Scholarship with Christian Experience

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Elm Hill, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Elm Hill and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Elm Hill titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail].

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Cover art by Roger Glenn. Image of stars by Dan Doolan, used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941264

ISBN 978-1-595557667 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-595557711 (Hardbound)

ISBN 978-1-595557582 (eBook)

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

In memory of Carl David,

Man Beloved,

my son and a fellow seeker

whom I miss.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

1 The Seeker and the Search

The Challenge

The Impulse to Seek

The Object of the Search

How to Seek

Resources for the Search

2 Chaos to Cosmos

Awakening to the Universe

The Beginning

Something from Nothing?

A Fine-Tuned Universe

Chance and Randomness

Potential, Tendency, and Purpose

From the Beginning ...

3 Evolution: The Current Debate

Definitions

Evolution: Merely a Theory, or Is It a Fact?

Natural Selection: Quality Control, or New Forms?

What Does the Fossil Record Tell Us?

The Cambrian Explosion

The Effect of Geographical Isolation

Homology, Convergence, and Analogy

Hippos and Whales

Punctuated Equilibrium

Reptiles to Mammals

Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity

Radioactive and Molecular Clocks

The Great Tree of Life: Real, or an Illusion?

The Origin of Life

Apes, Man, and In-Between

The Uniqueness of Humans

Summary of the Arguments

My Conclusions

4 Evolution: The Evidence for Purpose

Denton’s Teleological Perspective

Design in the Laws of Nature

Michael Denton’s View of Evolution

Denton’s Long Chain of Evidence

Evolution: Reasonable Conclusions

5 Evolution: The Vision of Teilhard de Chardin

Consciousness and Interiority

De Chardin’s View of Evolution

The Future of Evolution

De Chardin’s Challenge to Science

De Chardin’s Faith

Evaluation of de Chardin

6 God

The Idea of God

Evolution and God

God as Creator

Looking for God

God as Ruler

God as Revealer

God as Covenant-Maker

The Godhead

God as Judge

God and the Problem of Evil

God as Lover

The Reality of God

7 Jesus: Messiah and Lord

Historicity of the Gospels

Historicity of the Resurrection

The Man, Yeshua of Nazareth

Who Was (and Who Is) Yeshua?

Living Words

Alive and Coming Again

The Incarnation

Christ and Evolution

8 The Holy Spirit

The Spirit in My Personal Experience

The Spirit as I Have Observed Him in Others

9 The Bible

The Scriptures of Major Religions

What Is the Bible?

Biblical Inspiration

Biblical Criticism

Why I’m Not a Biblical Fundamentalist

The Integrity of the Bible

Genesis and Evolution

The Bible and Homosexuality

The Bible and Gender Equality

The Bible: Conclusions

10 The Supernatural

Psychic Experiences

Near-Death Experiences

An Inner Voice

Answered Prayer

An Experience of Joy

Testimony of a Holocaust Survivor

Dreams

Angels

Satan, and Other Demons

Heaven and Hell

Eternal Life

11 Our Human Condition

Humans as under God

Humans as Brothers and Sisters

Self-Awareness

Humans and Nature

Humans and Choices

Life as a Struggle

Living in Hope

12 A Seeker’s Life of Faith

My Basic Beliefs

My Life of Faith

13 Concluding Remarks

If You’re Struggling

If you’re struggling with your body ...

If you’re struggling with your mind ...

If you’re struggling with finances ...

If you’re struggling with social or political conditions ...

If you’re intellectually confused ...

Encouraging Divine Words

WORKS CITED

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is grateful to a group of some fifteen persons who’ve read one or more chapters, or even the entire text, in draft. Several of these, for their own good reasons, prefer to remain anonymous. The names listed here are by permission:

• Dr. Larry Lacy, professor emeritus of philosophy, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee

• Jon Barnacastle, recent college graduate

• Bill Winston, respiratory therapist with special interest in interfaith dialogue

• Rev. Bill McClarin, associate pastor in my church (now deceased)

• Dr. Don Thrasher, senior pastor in my church

• Rev. Terry Presson, former associate pastor in my church

• Kelly Morris, my daughter-in-law, homemaker and business woman

• Roger Glenn, designer of the SeekerFaith website and musician

• Bill Batchelder, psychiatric social worker and amateur historian

More than anything, their interest and personal support have given me the courage to press on to complete this work. In particular, the helpful criticisms and suggestions of Dr. Lacy, Dr. Thrasher, Bill Batchelder, and Kelly Morris have saved me from some pitfalls and helped me to think more clearly. The final text, however, is totally my responsibility.

My acknowledging them does NOT imply that these persons endorse my views, either specifically or in general; rather, they are supporting me as a friend who is seeking to articulate a fresh understanding of key issues. For this I’m grateful.

I’m even more deeply grateful to my wife of almost fifty years, Jeanne Sokol Morris; to our son, Dr. Joseph Morris; and to our daughter, Virginia Morris Hughes. For decades I uprooted them, dragging them from state to state and depriving them of comforts and financial security as I followed my leadings, seeking truth, God, and wholeness. I wish our son Carl were here to thank, too; I realized too late how our moves disrupted his relationships and contributed to his struggle with mental illness.

FOREWORD

This is written for the earnest seeker after spiritual truth. I’m convinced that only the honest, earnest search is effective. Many today don’t believe that there’s any spiritual truth to be found. I don’t expect that what I have to say will be persuasive to them.

What I do know is that, as a lifelong seeker for truth, I’ve found answers to many of my questions. But with the answers have come new questions, sometimes troubling ones, and seeking the answers to these has led to further truth. This is an effort to articulate the results of my search over some 60 years since I first read Socrates’ Apology and books on world religions.

The pages ahead will pose key questions that have troubled me and that have guided my search through life. I hope my approach will be helpful and suggestive, but I don’t expect it to be definitive for the reader. This book is one seeker’s attempt to both think and feel his way through the issues for his own benefit and for the benefit of others. I claim no special powers of reasoning or logic, and while I’ve had spiritual experiences, I claim no unique enlightenment. What I do have is reasonable intelligence and a lifetime’s search for truth, a good general education, advanced studies in the literature and beliefs of Christians and Jews, an exposure to a variety of philosophies and religious traditions and the experience of being an atheist for about four years (not believing in God or in life after death), an interest in scientific principles and in the ongoing discoveries and theories of science, the experience of personal despair (to the point of one serious, aborted attempt and another intense struggle with suicide), and the joy of tasting the overwhelming love of God and the reality of the supernatural.

This book is written with respect for the seeker. I don’t expect everyone to experience what I’ve experienced, to follow and agree with my thinking at every step, or to come to the same conclusions. We seekers must seek, each in his or her own way. What I offer is a scattering of uncovered facts, my own thinking, my serious study of the Bible and of biblical languages, my experience in a variety of religious settings, and my personal testimony of finding.

Please note: I don’t see myself as a scholar, although I have a master’s degree and three years of studies preparing for the PhD (which I never completed). A scholar masters a field of knowledge, critiques what others have done, and adds his own insights. I have a great respect for good scholarship, but my own style is eclectic; I’ve read selectively, here and there, as propelled by inner and outer forces—things that I’ve stumbled upon or that others have suggested to me. I learned the principles of theology and church history in a Christian seminary and the main features of Jewish history and thought in a seminary of Conservative Judaism. Likewise, I’ve always been interested in the principles of science, and especially those of cosmology and anthropology. My contacts with world religions, mostly through their writings, will be seen as we go along. And beneath all this, the reader will see me as another human being struggling with life, seeking to understand it and to make the best of it.

INTRODUCTION

Iwrite for other seekers like myself and like my son, Carl David Sokol Morris, who died August 17, 2006. He was brilliant but schizophrenic, an artist and a seeker who took his own life at age 26. He missed much, and he is missed.

I’m writing primarily for those who are skeptical, indifferent, or confused about religion. However, I also have in mind Christians who are curious or who have unanswered questions of their own, and I hope this book will challenge them to study and reflect. I live in the Bible Belt of the United States, dominated by Christian fundamentalists, most of whom deny evolution altogether. It seems that others around me who like me love both science and God make little effort to resolve the tension; they keep the two areas of truth compartmentalized. This book is my best effort to face the difficulties squarely and to think them through.

Since childhood, I’ve lived in two worlds of thought, one being religion (mainly evangelical Christianity), and the other being humanistic and scientific thought. As a college freshman, biological evolution made sense to my mind, while many years later, charismatic (Spirit-filled) Christianity satisfied my heart. In large part, this book is an attempt to integrate these two worlds. There’s a parallel between my experience and that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose ideas I’ll discuss in Chapter 5. In an essay, How I Believe, he wrote:

The originality of my belief lies in its being rooted in two domains of life which are commonly regarded as being antagonistic. By upbringing and intellectual training, I belong to the ‘children of heaven’; but by temperament and by my professional studies, I am a ‘child of the earth’ ... I have allowed two apparently conflicting influences full freedom to react upon one another deep within me. And now ... I have the feeling that a synthesis has been effected naturally between the two currents that claim my allegiance. The one has not destroyed, but has reinforced the other. Today I believe probably more profoundly than ever in God, and certainly more than ever in the world.¹

In one sense I’m the opposite of de Chardin: I’ve had a liberal, humanistic, and scientific education, but by temperament I’m essentially religious.

While in the pages ahead I’ll freely share my own conclusions on each topic, I believe strongly that each person has the right and responsibility to find her way. I hope that this approach will be helpful and provocative for the reader.

I’ve often turned to Wikipedia as the most convenient source for general information but have employed Encyclopaedia Britannica (online) when I needed to check facts more carefully. These sources have helped me confirm and clarify things I vaguely remembered or partially understood, such as the meaning of scientific terms, the dates of historical events, and facts about people. I’ve also read or reread a number of books, especially about cosmology and biological evolution. While not writing fully to academic standards, I’m exercising care with facts and sources. The errors that remain I hope will be minor. Any mistakes of fact will be honest ones; I would welcome their correction for possible future editions.

One thing I can say here: To me, the search for God and the search for self are closely intertwined. They aren’t the same thing, of course; still, to truly know ultimate reality, which I call God, is to know much about ourselves, and we can’t find our true selves without finding God.

As I release this book, I can only guess who may read it or what its effect on others may be. I write because I’m impelled to do so. At this point in my life, I can think of nothing better to do, and I hope my efforts will be useful to others. I’m casting it on the winds (that is, on the ether-waves of the internet) and hope for some feedback.

I expect that many of my Christian friends, reading this, will think, Why do you need to speculate? Why consider what science says at all? Why not just take the Bible for what it says? But the Bible says many things, and it doesn’t explain everything. Just for starters, it often describes God as having bodily form, and this before his incarnation. Also: Where is God? Where is heaven? Why doesn’t God prevent evil? I’ve wondered about these things since I was a child. Please put this book aside now if speculation and reasoning about such things offends you.

I wrote the first draft of this book when I was 62, and now, 14 years later, I’m finalizing it. This is the attempt to pull together my accumulated thoughts of some 69 years, if I include my first dizzying sensation of never-ending eternity while sitting in a church pew.

I have no hidden agenda. Here in advance is my main line of reasoning:

• that the scientific theories of cosmological and biological evolution are basically sound and are supported by overwhelming evidence;

• that random events and natural selection can’t account for all the facts, either for the creation of the universe or for the emergence of man;

• that there’s a great deal of evidence for pre-designed evolutionary processes, making a strong argument for purpose;

• that biological evolution itself can be seen as aiming at a spiritual unfolding;

• that evolution and the critical study of the Bible cause us to rethink its message but don’t destroy it;

• that the evidence from spiritual experience, unavailable to science, attests to the reality of God—the God of the Bible and of Christianity in particular;

• that we can have a close relationship with God through Jesus the Messiah; and

• that we have evidence at hand for a supernatural realm.

I want to acknowledge here my heavy dependence on two writers. The first, C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis, 1898–1963, was a professor of literature at Oxford University, a novelist and lay theologian. His Mere Christianity helped me, when I was a floundering college senior, to recognize what’s essential in the Christian faith. I’ve also used his Miracles: A Preliminary Study ² at some critical points. The second, Michael Denton, in Nature’s Destiny, has led me to believe that the entire sweep of evolution is pre-designed. Chapter 4 is a summary and evaluation of his book.

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t claim to prove God, the Christian faith, or my own peculiar ideas in a rigorous way. However I believe there are some original lines of thought in this book that hopefully will be useful to others.

I wasn’t able to write this book until I’d found things worth sharing. Today I’m still wrestling with issues and trying to connect the dots, but on a different level. That said, I put this in the hands of you who will pick it up, and I commit it to God.

CHAPTER 1

THE SEEKER AND THE SEARCH

The Challenge

In the twenty-first century, it’s easiest for those who’ve seriously studied science, and who at the same time lack real religious experience, to believe there’s no God and no spiritual certainty. And even for us who’ve had some sense of God in our youth, encountering the larger world and scientific theories can make us doubt everything we previously believed.

Why is this so? For primitive people, for those living in a homogenous religious environment, and for little children, it’s easy to accept God or gods as the explanation of phenomena: God made you; God made the sunshine; God’s going to make you well. For these, God is the unquestioned source of all good and the power behind all of creation.

But to us of the new millennium, science seems to promise (if not now, soon) an explanation for everything: You’re the product of a long evolutionary process. The sun is a medium-sized star. The doctor is going to operate on you so you can get well. Religion is considered not as a matter of truth but as a cultural and social phenomenon, and personal faith is often viewed as a weakness or even as a delusion.

Many of us today have no felt need of God. Why do we need God when we’re healthy, have full bellies, enjoy comfortable dwellings, steady incomes, and endless entertainment, and are fortunate to live in societies basically at peace? All of our material needs are met, so why should we even consider God?

Some of us are actually relieved no longer to answer to a higher power or being, and some even see the very idea of God as a pernicious superstition from a pre-scientific era—pernicious because it represents, they believe, an attempt to escape from their fate as animals and from responsibility to shape their own and their planet’s destiny.

Even those who feel twinges of awe in cathedrals, whether those made by man or those made by nature, or who otherwise have moments of transcendence, may dismiss these feelings as childish reactions to the grand and the unusual.

Where’s the place for God when our deepest needs and yearnings are considered to be merely psychological and social, and when the spiritual impulse is dismissed as a false attempt to find meaning in the face of certain extinction or as a way to cope with guilt? Belief in life after death, says the naturalist,³ must be a mechanism to avoid facing our mortality.

The evil in the world makes it hard to believe that there’s a loving God in control. Newspapers and streaming videos are filled with murders, tortures, abuses, and every kind of suffering and violence. Religious leaders seem to be as bad as the rest, and are perhaps the worst because—here I’m thinking of certain televangelists and mega-church pastors—they preach righteousness while being crudely self-serving and while exploiting their flocks. It’s easy to conclude that if there is a God, God must be evil or impotent, or at least very cold to the suffering of both individuals and masses.

Ideologies and religions in our pluralistic society compete and clash for attention. Their claims pretty much cancel each other out; what one believes, the other denies. Opinions are relative, and (so the thinking goes) no one has a special claim on the truth. Christians seem no more moral than Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. Why should we commit ourselves to any ideology or to any exclusive claim to truth?

Along with this, 200-plus years of critical⁴ studies have exploded the fundamentalist view that the Bible contains no error scientifically and historically. Most conservative Christian scholars accept this and most seminaries teach it, though pastors rarely will tell this to their congregations. One of the original tenets of Fundamentalism, that the Bible is inerrant⁵ in its original manuscripts, betrays the truth that none of the original manuscripts have survived and that our existing texts are imperfect.

In sum, there are formidable obstacles today to a search for God and for ultimate truth. Our whole age seems to deny the ultimate, and in particular the claims of Christianity, which in spite of the phenomenal growth of Islam and of atheism in recent decades, is still the religion with the most adherents worldwide, the dominant faith of Westerners, and today growing rapidly in the Far East and in third-world countries.

One challenge to seekers, then, is whether they can step outside the prevailing general skepticism of our day and, without plunging headlong into a purely emotional experience, into some exotic cult, or into a superficially-appealing philosophy, open themselves to fresh insight and experience.

The Impulse to Seek

In the face of all the obstacles facing the spiritual seeker of the twenty-first century, why would one, and why should one, search for Truth, for God?

First, we seek, not because we casually decide to do so, thinking it will be pleasant or interesting, but because we’re driven to it—it has become an imperative for us.

How has this happened? Our spirits are hungry; we’ve lost our equilibrium. A basic inner need is unmet; we’re unfulfilled in some way, perhaps a way we can’t define. Our hearts, our spirits cry out for more. If already religious, we’ve become disillusioned or have reached a point where the doctrines and rituals no longer satisfy. Even if we have a strong faith in God, the old learned formulas don’t square with what we know of the world. On the other hand, if we’re not religious, something either within or outside of us has shaken our complacency, generating a longing we were unaware of up to this point. We need answers to our deepest questions about reality. We need to know that life has a meaning and purpose that transcends our inevitable death. I need to know whether I have intrinsic value and whether life is worthwhile even when it’s painful, difficult, and seemingly unrewarding. Is there any real hope for life?

The seeker, by definition, has at least a faint hope of finding some truth or guidance or comfort; otherwise he or she would have no will to seek. Hope says, "If I search, I may find! There just may be something out there, after all—something worth seeking for." Even when we seek out of desperation, we hold on to the possibility, however slight it may seem, that we’ll find. The seeker wants to find—to find a transcendent reality, but at the same time she does not want to be deceived.

Animals seek instinctively. The trout will seek the bed where it was spawned. Hummingbirds and some butterflies will fly thousands of miles to places they’ve never been. It’s the human instinct to seek for spiritual fulfillment. Even ancient art on rocks (in the Australian Outback, for example) is sometimes abstract, representing not nature but inner realities. Ten thousand years ago, humans treated their dead with dignity and prepared their bodies for an afterlife. Moral codes are very ancient; the Mosaic code, over 3000 years old, is by no means the oldest. People throughout history have sought (and they did so even in prehistoric times), not only to order society and to secure necessities, but also to find inner peace and transcendent meaning.

The human species is endowed with mental and physical capacities securing its position at the top of the animal kingdom, making it the dominant species on earth.