THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS Prof.

John Lennox
Published in THE WASHINGTON POST 12/24/2011 (On Faith Guest Blog) Connect with Professor John Lennox: Website: www.theocca.org, www.johnlennox.org Twitter: @theocca Twitter: @ProfJohnLennox

In Britain, where society is increasingly secular, Richard Dawkins new book The Magic of Reality has been high in the bestseller lists for weeks. But while Dawkins insists there is a divide between the life of the mind and the life of the soul ( you can t be an intellectual and a religious believer ) now in the UK, a number of Christian intellectuals are starting to take on the New Atheists. Prominent among them is John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. Here is Professor Lennox s Christmas take on Dawkins latest book.

Christmas is real magic not the magic of wizards, wands and wishes, not the stagemagic of illusion, but the poetic magic that derives from supernatural reality. What could be more awe-inspiring and worthy of celebration than that unique turning point in history when supernature invaded nature, the Creator entered his creation, the Word became flesh, God became man? What story could be more suitable to tell to every generation of children? Magic because it s true. But now a mighty wizard has arisen who wishes by his own magic (what he calls The Magic of Reality) to rob the world of Christmas. Standing on Mount Improbable, he waves his wand at the sun, at earth and living things. He summons lofty words to describe all these in wondrous detail so that all are caught in his spell and sense not the sleight of hand when he then tells them that this is all there is no transcendence, no supernature, no Creator, no God. The spell is strong, for nature is wonderful indeed and many of the wizard s words are true. And yet the mighty wand of science that he waves did not create the sun, the earth and living things. That wand of science was forged long before the wizard s day by those who believed that the universe was worthy of attention because God had created it. The wizard tells us of the greatness of Newton, but not about the God of Newton. He dares not disclose that his chosen weapon is borrowed from his enemy. But more. Whence come these wondrous words of reason with which the wizard describes the magic of reality? From his brain. And that, so he would tell us, is but the end product of a mindless, unguided climbing of Mount Improbable. Yet, passing logic, this wizard imagines that by some deep and mysterious alchemy this brain thus formed produces meaning. A fairy story this, an invention of his mind whose very activity is evidence of that transcendence he abhors. For do not his reason and

his science point beyond nature to that divine Word that is the foundation for all rationality? But this he cannot see for he fails to understand what explanation is: he says that "to claim a supernatural explanation of something is not to explain it at all and even worse to rule out any possibility of its ever being explained." What strange confusion is this as if God and science were alternative explanations? God no more competes with science as an explanation of the universe than Henry Ford competes with the science of engineering and the laws of physics as an explanation of the motor car. Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Clerk Maxwell were not hindered but rather motivated in their science by believing that God created and upheld the universe. They simply did not confuse explanation in terms of agency on the one hand with mechanism and law on the other and so were happy to think God s thoughts after him. But not this wizard. Miracles violate the laws of nature and so they cannot occur his wand forbids it. This, too, is false. For these laws, what are they? Our descriptions of what normally happens. Indeed, from the theistic perspective, the laws of nature predict what is bound to happen if God does not intervene; though, of course, it is no act of theft, if the Creator intervenes in his own creation. To argue that the laws of nature make it impossible for us to believe in the existence of God, and the possibility of his intervention in the universe, is plainly fallacious. It would be like claiming that an understanding of the laws of internal combustion makes it impossible to believe that the designer of a car could or would intervene and remove the cylinder head. Of course he could intervene. Moreover, this intervention would not destroy those laws. The very same laws that explained why the engine worked with the cylinder head on, would now explain why it does not work with the head removed. It is, therefore, inaccurate and misleading to say with Hume that miracles violate the laws of nature. C. S. Lewis writes: If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born . In this vein we could agree that it is a law of nature that virgins do not become pregnant by some natural mechanism. But Christians do not claim that Mary became pregnant by natural means but by supernatural power, so that her son was fully God and fully man. By themselves, the laws of nature cannot rule out that possibility. When a miracle takes place, it is the laws of nature that alert us to the fact that it is a miracle. It is important to grasp that Christians do not deny the laws of nature, as Hume implies they do. It is an essential part of the Christian position to believe in the laws of nature as descriptions of those regularities and cause-effect relationships built into the universe by its Creator and according to which it

normally operates. If we did not know them, we should never recognise a miracle if we saw one. Attempts to fill the minds of children with wonder at the glories of creation are to be applauded but not if they unscientifically set out to rob the children of the Creator of it all: the Wonderful Counsellor, the Almighty God, the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. Sad to leave children at this Advent time in a bleak, illusory world in which it is always winter and never Christmas. Some magic that! But then, that kind of magic always was a delusion. John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, and author of Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists Are Missing the Target (Lion, 2011)

Prof. John Lennox is an experienced exponent of the intellectual defence of Christianity. He has debated a number of the world s leading atheists over the past five years, including Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer and Christopher Hitchens. The Wall Street Journal described his God Delusion debate with biologist Richard Dawkins as a revelation . He is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, a Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford, and an Adjunct Professor of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (the OCCA). In addition, he teaches for the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Executive Education Centre, Said Business School, Oxford University. He studied at Cambridge, from which he holds the degrees of MA, MMath and PhD, and was subsequently Reader in Pure Mathematics at the University of Wales, where he was awarded a DSc degree. He also holds an MA in Bioethics. John has lectured extensively in North America and Eastern and Western Europe on mathematics, the philosophy of science and the intellectual defence of Christianity. John has written a number of books on the interface between science, philosophy and theology including Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target; God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it anyway? (responding to Hawking's The Grand Design). His 2009 book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God was described in The Spectator as an excoriating demolition of Dawkins overreach from biology into religion. Areas of interest: the interface between science, philosophy and theology, the socalled new atheists and their unscientific methodology, science and ethics, philosophy of science. Articles: John was profiled in the The Times (November 2010) and has written for The Daily Mail.

Media appearances: various appearances on UK television (BBC, Channel 4) as well as national television in North America, and Australian (ABC).

CONNECT with the OCCA Prof. John Lennox lectures at six week, one year, and two years Master s programme at the Oxford Centre For Christian Apologetics, the OCCA, which is a part of Wycliffe Hall, a permanent private college at Oxford University Website: www.theocca.org

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Oxford-Centre-for-Christian-Apologetics-OCCARZIM-Wycliffe-Hall/182944905053367 On Twitter: @theocca @ProfJohnLennox The original article appeared here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/the-magic-ofchristmas/2011/12/24/gIQAHIJlFP_blog.html