Christian apologist Simon Edwards brings all his legal training to bear in defending the rationality of Christianity when it’s put on trial, writes Jason Osborne
Former lawyer and now writer and speaker at The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA), Simon Edwards is taking aim at the myth that Christianity somehow runs against reason or intelligence with his new book, The Sanity of Belief: Why faith makes sense.
The book is quite unlike others that argue in favour of faith, in that Mr Edwards brings his lawyer’s mind to the foray.
“My mum said that I would always end up becoming a lawyer because I would never take any assertion on face value,” Mr Edwards tells The Irish Catholic.
“I would always ask for it to be backed up with reason or evidence, particularly if it was an assertion that involved me changing anything about myself.”
The idea for the book came out of his own experiences of grappling with life’s big questions in his youth, and he displays a keen awareness that others frequently find themselves in the position he once occupied – confused about the nature of the world and our place in it.
“I actually wrote it for my younger, teenage self. I’m from Australia, and I grew up in an ordinary, happy, Australian non-religious family background, so we never talked about God or religion or the meaning of life or anything like that” he explains, continuing, “It’s not that those subjects were taboo, it’s just that we never talked about them.”
“But when I was a teenager, I was really into sport. I was playing cricket, tennis, rugby and athletics, but then I had a knee injury and the doctor said I had to stop all sports for a long time, months and months, for the injury to heal.
“So suddenly, I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. That meant I actually had time to think,” he laughs.
Moment
“I just clearly remember the moment, actually as a 14/15 year old, standing in the school playground at lunchtime and wondering to myself, and bear in mind, I’m on this cusp between childhood and adulthood, this middle-stage, I just remember thinking to myself, is it true that we live for 80 or 90 years, if we’re lucky, and then we die and that’s it? Game over. Whatever you’ve loved, whatever you’ve achieved, whatever you are just inevitably dissipates into nothingness. I remember thinking to myself, if that’s true, it’s sad, and it seems to render life somewhat meaningless. I remember thinking it’s a bit like a video game, where no matter how well you play this game, it’s just the same end result every time, blank screen, you lose.
“And so something in me said, ‘Not only does that feel sad and render life meaningless, it doesn’t feel true. It doesn’t feel like that’s the true story.’”
In keeping with the coincidental way in which God often operates, Mr Edwards found himself sitting through religious classes at the same time as these questions began to assail him, and he tuned in to the narrative that was on offer.
“At the same time, at the school that I went to, we were forced to sit in religious education classes. In these classes, I started learning for the first time about a different story, one that says that we’re not here by accident, we’re here on purpose, because somebody, God, wanted us to be here. And he really loves us. And this world that we’re in, it’s not the way that it should be, it’s broken…the reason for that is that we’re separated from God and his love, we’re out of relationship with him, but he sent Jesus into the world to reconnect us back to God.
“So, basically I started hearing the Gospel 101, Christianity 101, and something in my heart leapt, and it was almost this intuitive sense, a feeling that this was the true story. It really captivated my heart,” he says.
Being the critical mind that his mother pegged him as, he didn’t accept any of this immediately, but availed of all the books on theology and philosophy that his school’s library contained.
“Over time, I came to the intellectual conviction that Christianity made far and away the best sense of the world around me and also the world within me. The world around me with its overwhelming impression of order and design, but also the world within me.
“The fact that I had these longings for something more than a physical world could offer – what you’d call ‘spiritual longings’. The fact that I really believed there was such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil, that I did have a sense that there was more to this life than it being a random combination of time plus matter plus chance.”
Reading
In the course of his reading, he concluded that the big difference between Christianity and the other great traditions of the world is that the humbling nature of the Christian story is something that no human would have developed – quite unlike other religions which see man ‘earn’ or work his way up to salvation.
“One of the biggest things as I looked at the different religions and compared was that all the other religions seemed to be saying that if I thought the right thoughts and felt the right feelings and did the right religious practices, I could work my way up to nirvana, heaven, salvation, God, whatever was the goal of that religion” he explains.
“But one of them stood out in saying, actually, you’re helpless, there’s nothing you can do to get there, but God has come down to rescue you. I was very competitive as a young man, and I realised that that really smelled of not being a human-invented religion, because as humans we want to earn it. We want to compete for it. We want to win it for ourselves. But this didn’t feel like a man-made religion at all, so it had that ring of truth. So anyway, long story short, I came to the intellectual conviction that Christianity is true.”
However, Christianity is about more than intellectual conviction, and the salvific personal relationship with Christ came later by way of another coincidence.
“And then it was a few weeks later that I actually made a personal heart, volitional commitment to following Jesus. It’s funny the way it happened – I was in the school playground and this student from Malaysia had this little green booklet in his hand and I said, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ And he said, ‘Here, have it,’ and then he walked away. I thought that’s strange behaviour, and it ended up being a little book explaining the Gospel.”
Gospel
“So I read that and I took it home. It was just a basic Gospel presentation – God made everything, sin has separated us from God, God sent Jesus into the world to bridge that gap, and you have a choice…it was made very clear to me that Christianity wasn’t merely an intellectual nod to the Christian truths, but actually there was a personal commitment that I needed to make. But by that stage, it was one that I was all too ready to make, because I’d come to understand just how much Jesus loved me, and I’d also fallen in love with Jesus through that process, so for me it was a no-brainer. I really wanted to give my life to him and I did that.”
It was his own journey that inspired Mr Edwards to write his new book, convinced as he was that others need help finding their way out of “a cultural moment where the metanarrative is that faith in God is irrational, irrelevant, and possibly even immoral”.
“It’s really difficult for people who are trying to work out what life is all about to take Christian faith seriously as a viable option. So, I’ve written a book to help them see that you don’t have to leave your brain at the door to be a Christian, and that trusting in Jesus is the most sensible, rational, and wonderful thing that you could possibly do with your life. And that when you look at the world through the lens of Christianity, it makes sense of our rationality, it makes sense of science, but it also makes sense of the non-physical realities of human experience, which are meaning, value, goodness, truth, love and hope in the midst of suffering,” he says.
His legal background and the critical skills it honed in him are perfectly suited to the task of rigorously conveying the ‘Good News’ to an often-sceptical population.
“I’ve found many helpful parallels with legal thinking about reason and evidence and thinking about reason and evidence for Christian faith. Because often those who study philosophy get caught up in questions about whether they even exist, or whether the people in the class around them really exist, but reasoning and rationality in the legal world is very much a real world rationality,” he laughs.
“And so, you know, sometimes people ask me, ‘Oh, you’re a Christian and a lawyer by background, lawyers are interested in proof, can you prove Christianity?’ I say to them, it depends what you mean by proof. I can prove to you that two plus two equals four, but that sort of proof doesn’t exist in the real world. Proof from a legal perspective simply means the establishment of a fact by the use of evidence. And the way that lawyers reason, it’s really a process where you look at all the alternative explanations for the evidence presented to the court, and you ask which of the alternative explanations best fits the evidence.
“That’s very similar to my journey to the Christian faith. I looked at all the alternative explanations for this incredible world that we live in. Because the reality is there’s something rather than nothing – the universe. There didn’t have to be, and it turns out this universe has an overwhelming impression of order and design, and it’s filled with beings like us who have conscious awareness and enjoy love and music and mathematics.”
Rationality
“Basically, when it comes to the rationality of Christianity, it’s not just Christian faith that’s on trial, it’s every worldview that attempts to explain this marvellous world that we find without us and within us. And so that includes atheism, it includes Christian faith, it includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. For me, as I looked at all the alternative worldviews and did very much what a lawyer or a judge does in a court of law, looked for which has the strongest explanatory power of the evidence, the evidence being everything around us and within us. For me, it was like Christianity was the key, the only key, that fitted this complex lock that we call the universe, and in doing so, unlocked the meaning behind everything.”
His experience is reminiscent of one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th Century, a man he cites as an influence on his own thought; C.S. Lewis. Lewis argued that he believed in Christianity in the same way that he believed in the sun’s rising – not only because he sees it, but because by it, he sees everything else. Mr Edwards wholeheartedly agrees, his faith making perfect sense of the world around and within him.
The prevailing atheism in many circles today is sorely lacking in Mr Edwards’ opinion, because it involves denying so many aspects of human experience.
“Atheism for example, it does not explain the complexity of human experience. Atheistic naturalism, to be more specific, the idea that there is no supernatural dimension to reality. That everything boils down to mindless unguided laws operating on mindless atoms. Atheism’s method of explanation is what I call ‘nothing-buttery’.
“It’s actually a famous legal term as well, nothing-buttery. It reduces meaning, value, goodness, truth to ‘nothing but’ unguided laws and mindless atoms. Nothing but chemistry and biochemistry and biology. A human being is nothing but meat and bones and chemicals. And that does not fit with our lived experience…what I discovered is that Christian faith allows us to embrace the totality of our lived experience and accords with our deepest intuitions, whereas atheistic naturalism runs against our deepest intuitions.”
The sense that there must be more to life than mere matter is one that is espoused by many of the people Mr Edwards now interacts with through his apologetic work, no matter where they’re coming from.
“I remember speaking to a group of investment bankers and consultants in Canary Wharf for a week about the big questions of life, you know, why are we here, how should we live, why should we worry about integrity in the workplace, how should we think about money – all of these sort of questions.
“But one of the common refrains that came from the people is this deep sense that, even though all these people were outwardly very successful, had very good jobs, well-paying, etc., almost all of them had this deep and abiding sense that there must be something more to life than what they were experiencing. Something more than the material trappings of wealth and success can possibly bring.”
What they’re looking for, he feels, is meaning. We can experience short-term happiness without meaning, he says, but we cannot sustain it.
Meaning
“In order for meaning to be true, the following things need to be true. That who we are matters, which is a question of value. That what we do matters, which is a question of goodness and morality. That what we experience is real, which is a question of truth. That our relationships are meaningful, which is a question of love. And that we can have hope for the future, even in the midst of suffering, sickness and death.
“From where I sit as a Christian, it’s true that who we are matters, what we do matters, and what we experience is real, and our relationships are meaningful and full of love and that can have hope for the future. So, Christian faith makes sense of meaning because it makes sense of value and goodness and truth and love and hope.”
His work is bearing fruit, his experience being that most people simply need to hear the Good News. Despite living in a lingering Christian culture, many have never heard the Gospel message conveyed as it should be.
“As I share these things with people, the difference it makes is that I’ve seen lots of people over the course of the last few years not only seriously considering Christian faith for the first time, but actually becoming Christians. And for me, that’s been just marvellous. For them, it’s like fresh good news, because they’ve never heard it before.”