From Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God: “A God of Judgment Simply Can’t Exist. . .
Robert Bellah’s influential work Habits of the Heart speaks of the “expressive individualism” that dominates American culture. In his book Bellah notes that 80% of Americans agree with the statement “an individual should arrive at his or her own beliefs independent of any church or synagogue.”2 He concludes that the most fundamental belief in American culture is that moral truth is relative to individual consciousness. Our culture, therefore, has no problem with a God of love who supports us no matter how we live. It does, however, object strongly to the idea of a God who punishes people for their sincerely held beliefs, even if they are mistaken. The objection, however, has a cultural history to it.
In C.S. Lewis’s classic The Abolition of Man, he outlines what he considers to be a major difference between the ancient and the modern views of reality. Lewis attacks our smug belief that ancient people believed in magic and later modern science came along and supplanted it. As an expert in the medieval age and how it gave way to modernity, Lewis knew that there had been very little magic in the Middle Ages, that the high noon of magic was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the very time that modern science was developing. The same cause, he contended, gave rise to them both. The serious magical endeavor and the serious scientific endeavor are twins: one was sickly and died, the other was strong and throve. But they are twins. They were born of the same impulse. Lewis describes that impulse—a new approach to moral and spiritual reality.
There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious. . . .4
In ancient times it was understood that there was a transcendent moral order outside the self, built into the fabric of the universe. If you violated the metaphysical order there were consequences just as severe as if you violated physical reality by placing your hand in a fire. The path of wisdom was to learn to live in conformity with this unyielding reality. That wisdom rested largely in developing qualities of character, such as humility, compassion, courage, discretion, and loyalty.
Modernity reversed this. Ultimate reality was seen not so much as a supernatural order but as a natural world, and that was malleable. Instead of trying to shape our desires to fit reality, we now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desires. The ancients looked at an impatient person and prescribed spiritual character change. Modernity talks instead about stress management techniques.~ Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 2008, 2018) 72-73 (continued)
