John Lennox: Science DOESN’T Explain What You Think It Does (Transcript)

In the opening remarks, I’m always open with audiences and point out that my parents were Christian. When he started, he said, “Well, there goes my main objection against all religion. People stay in the religion in which they were brought up.”

When I heard that, I thought, this is going to be very interesting, because when I got a chance to speak, I said, “Peter, I told them about my parents. Tell me about your parents. Were they atheists?” “Yes,” he said, “they were atheists.”

So I said, “You stayed in the faith in which you grew up then.” “Oh, but,” he said, “it isn’t a faith.” “Oh, Peter,” I said, “I’m very sorry. I thought you believed it.”

And cyberspace went mad at that time, that here was one of the world’s leading thinkers who didn’t realize that his atheism was a belief system. And you notice how carefully Dr. Marusca Samuel introduced this. He talked about faith in God, because all people are people of faith.

Everybody’s got a worldview that they believe. And this really exposed one of the biggest problems we have in our culture, that Christians are regarded as people of faith. That means they believe, for there’s no evidence. But atheists, they’re not people of faith, they’re rational.

And fighting against that is one of the things I’ve been doing for a long time. What have I learned from it? That’s hard to assess. I’ve learned that it’s pretty scary debating some of these people, certainly that.

And also, it has confirmed my faith enormously, because spending a lot of time unpicking these arguments as I grow older, I find them less and less intellectually impressive. But I think it’s so important that we enter this debate, or we have shows like Justin has been doing for years, to allow people to see both sides of the debate. I think that’s a very healthy thing. And it enables people to see that Christianity has actually got very powerful evidence to support it, and we need to know that evidence.

Science and Faith

SAMUEL MARUSCA: So you mentioned faith there, and you obviously have very interesting ideas on faith in God and science. And the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has this secularization theory, and he wrote extensively about this. And he said, in ancient times, people needed God to explain supernatural things. So for example, if you had a solar eclipse, people in ancient times would think that would be the wrath of God manifested.

But nowadays that science has explained that. We don’t need God anymore, so science has replaced God. We know there’s no mystery there, we know how the planets move, we can explain what happens during a solar eclipse, and we can actually predict all of the next solar eclipse for the next thousand years. So science has replaced God.

This is part of the secularization theory. And we live in a very secular society in the UK. And also there’s this God-of-the-gaps view, which says, and many atheists and thinkers will say, look, Christians are perhaps more lazy thinkers, because if they can’t explain something, they just say, well, we can’t explain it, therefore God did it. And this is the label that many atheists would put on Christian thought.

God and Scientific Explanation

JOHN LENNOX: Well, it may apply to some people, but I don’t think it applies to me, as I’ve tried to explain, but there are really two questions hidden there. There’s this notion that God and science are alternatives in terms of explanation. And for a long time I couldn’t understand why people as bright as Stephen Hawking constantly said to the public, you’ve got to choose between God and science.

And I realized for a long time that part of the reason for that was they didn’t understand the nature of scientific explanation. Now that may sound like a very arrogant claim for me to make, but actually it’s quite simple. We need to realize that the God explanation and the science explanation are different kinds of explanation. And I often give a very simple example to illustrate it, that even some professors can understand, and it’s this.

“Why is the water boiling?” Well, because the heat energy is agitating the molecules of water and it’s boiling. Well that’s a scientific explanation, but I could equally well say it’s boiling because I want a cup of tea. Now that is an agent, personal explanation.

Now think about those two explanations, they’re different, but they do not compete, they do not conflict, they complement each other. And I often say to people, the God explanation is the agent type explanation. God is the explanation of why there is a universe at all and why there are scientists there to study it. He’s not competing in that sense at all.

Ancient Gods vs. Biblical God

JOHN LENNOX: And we need both, as I find most school children can say. The second thing is that many contemporary thinkers have lost the idea of a God who’s a transcendent creator who upholds the universe. And they think of God in terms of the Greek god of thunder. They couldn’t explain thunder, as you said, so they postulated God.

It’s very important to realize that the God of the Bible is not in that category. There’s a brilliant writer in Oxford at one stage, Werner Jaeger, who was an expert on the Greek gods and the Babylonian gods, and he made this point which I think is very important. He said all the gods of the ancient philosophies and religions are, quote, “descended from the heavens and the earth.” That is, they were actually part of the original material cosmos.

The God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth, so they’re completely different categories. Now with that as background, let me come to the heart of your question, which is the God of the gaps. Now, I’m allergic to this in the sense that I do not want people to think that I believe in a God of the gaps. So how do I deal with it?

Newton and Divine Intelligence

Well, in several different ways. I’m going to go for the easiest one, and it’s this. Think of Isaac Newton and his wonderful law of gravitation, and I used to love explaining it to students, how you get an equation with eight symbols in it, and from it you can deduce the motion of the planets around the sun. It is just brilliant stuff.

Now, when Newton discovered that, did he think, “Right, I have now got an equation that allows me to deduce the motion of the planets from it. I don’t need God.” No, he didn’t. He wrote what was perhaps the most brilliant book in the history of science, the Principia Mathematica, and he dedicated it with the hope that thinking people would see in it evidence for the existence of a divine intelligence behind the universe, because his argument was this.

I found this wonderful mathematical description of what goes on in between heavy bodies and how they move. What a brilliant God who did it that way. And it’s exactly that in the way we normally think. If you know a lot about painting, you will see much more in a Rembrandt picture than I would, who am pretty ignorant about art, although I like it.

The Evidence of Mind

You can see the genius, if you’re an engineer, you’ll see much more in a Rolls Royce engine than I possibly would, because you see the evidence, and to my mind, God is not a God of the gaps. He is the most powerful explanatory power to make sense of the whole thing. I’m a mathematician. The very fact that we can do mathematics, to me, is an indicator that this is a word-based universe, to put it that way.

The very fact that in biology we’ve discovered the longest word in the human genome, 3.4 million letters in the chemical alphabet, is evidence of an intelligent mind. That’s not a mind of the gaps. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Now I’m looking around the room, but the lights are blind to me.

Oh yes, I see a word up there, “prayer.” How very suitable. There are two, four, six letters. The moment you see that, what do you deduce?

Well, you can see letters. They have meaning to you. You cannot explain that meaning in terms of the physics and chemistry of the paper and paint there. But the moment you see that, there are many mechanical processes that went in producing that sign.

But you know, because that carries meaning, it’s a word, that behind it there was a mind. Not a mind of the gaps, but a mind that’s the only sensible explanation of what you’re reading up there. It’s that kind of argument, to my mind, that I find extremely convincing.

The Meaning of Meaning

SAMUEL MARUSCA: You talked about meaning there, and semantics, and the word semantics. Richard and Ogden published this book in 1923, a hundred years ago, called “The Meaning of Meaning.” And it’s a very popular book, and they talked about how language influences thought and affects thought. And they devised the semantic triangle, which is a model of meaning.

And you have the symbol or the sign, linguistic sign, on one side. You have the actual thing in reality on the other side, which is the reference. And then you have the top thought. And it’s the relation and the causal relation and interactions of these three that give you meaning.

This book actually was very influential in philosophy and also influenced C.S. Lewis in “The Abolition of Man,” published in 1943, in which he talked about objective moral standards and also natural law. So people and scientists sometimes say, look, there’s this universe out there with millions of galaxies, with hundreds of thousands of stars, and they all dance together in a very interesting, in a beautiful rhythm because of the gravity law. But there is no meaning to that.

And also, as a human being, which is, as humans, this is a microcosm. There’s no meaning in our life either. Does meaning imply intelligent design?

The Paradox of Meaning

JOHN LENNOX: It’s interesting that people should even say a thing like that. There is no meaning in it. And they expect me to understand the meaning of that statement. It’s one of these incoherent things that people make statements and they are unconsciously accepting themselves. It’s like, may I tell a little story?

SAMUEL MARUSCA: Please do.

JOHN LENNOX: I was sitting in my Oxford college beside a man who had a book and he was putting it on the table and I could see its title was curious about semantics and so on. I said, “What’s your book about?” But he said, “This is a book that shows that there’s no such thing as authorial intention.”

I said, “Pardon?” I said, “You mean if I read your book, I will understand that an author has no intention?” He said, “Exactly.” So I said, “I’m not going to read it.”

So he said, “Why not?” Well, I said, “It must apply to your book as well.” But he’d never thought about it. He got very angry. He got up and walked out. We never saw him again.

This is one of the weaknesses of this sort of loose postmodern style talk that says there’s no such thing as truth, but they expect you to believe that statement as a truth. It goes too far. It goes right over the top. I’m very interested in the kind of way in which you pose that question because another person that influenced Lewis a lot, one of his inklings was Barfield. And Owen Barfield posed an interesting question. He said, “Why is it we live in a world where we understand how almost everything works and we know the meaning of nothing?”

Left Brain vs Right Brain

JOHN LENNOX: Iain McGilchrist is a very interesting, he’s a polymath really, he’s a neuroscientist. But roughly speaking, he’s been working on something we’re all familiar with. When we say, “Jane, you know, she’s a real left-brained nerd. Always into computers and all this kind of thing.”

Whereas James, well, he’s so right-brained with his head in arts and the clouds and so on. Left and right brain. Well, what Iain McGilchrist claims in his very interesting book, which is called “The Matter with Things,” is that there is substance to these differences between the two brain hemispheres. And roughly speaking, both brain hemispheres are involved in virtually every event in our brains and minds.

But the differences are that, indeed, there is this concentration in the left brain on rational thought, on analysis, on breaking things down, whereas the right brain concerns itself much more with putting things into context and meaning. And he says this, for the last four or five hundred years, we have neglected the right brain. So that we’re living in a world where we know how most things work, but we understand the meaning of nothing. And when our mate, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, read that, he had a lightbulb moment.

Science and Meaning

And he wrote a book because of it, a very interesting book called “The Great Partnership.” But he put it this way, and I like this formulation, it’s very helpful. He said, “Science takes things apart to see how they work. And puts them together to see what they mean.”

And it seems to me that that captures something extremely important, that we need to focus on the meaning side. Because science is powerful precisely because it limits the questions it can answer. It cannot give us meaning, and it cannot give us value. Einstein saw that years ago.

He said you could talk about the ethical foundations of science, but you cannot talk about the scientific foundations of ethics. You have to look outside. And I always cite one of Richard Dawkins’ favourite scientists, Sir Peter Medawar, who said it’s so easy to see, and this is hugely important because science is so powerful, it’s so easy to see, he wrote, that science is limited because it cannot even answer the simple questions of a child. “Where do I come from? Where am I going? And what is the meaning of life?”

And to answer those questions, we need to go to literature, and I would add, well he added philosophy, and I would add theology, and a lot of other things as well. Because the fatal flaw in much so-called academic thinking is that people have come to believe that science is co-extensive with rationality, which is nonsense.

History is a rational discipline, so is theology, so is economics, but they’re not the natural sciences. If science and rationality were co-extensive, you’d have to close half the departments in every university in the United Kingdom. So that’s how I’d begin to approach your question.

Limitations of Scientific Explanation

SAMUEL MARUSCA: So science doesn’t really explain the things that we think it explains.

JOHN LENNOX: No, that’s important. It’s very limited. Yes, but what you’re hinting at there is even deeper, because I used to think at school, because I was pretty naive then I suppose, that Newton’s law of gravity explained gravity. It doesn’t, you know.

Nobody yet knows really what gravity is. Newton’s law of gravitation gives you a mathematical capacity to calculate what happens when heavy bodies move in relation to one another so accurately that it’ll help you land a person on the moon. But Newton realized all those years ago that it doesn’t tell you what gravity is. So even within science itself, a scientific explanation is rarely, if ever, a complete explanation.

I’ve focused in the last year, on the last several years, on the nature of explanation because I feel there’s huge confusion about it.

Evolution and Creation

SAMUEL MARUSCA: But science did explain how the universe came to be. And also, this conflicts with the Genesis account and creationism. I think this is a very important issue for Christians because science seems to have explained and seems to go against creationism.

For example, some Christians say that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. So science seems to have explained that and contradict that irrefutably. And then you also have statements in Genesis that man was created in the image of God, Imago Dei. And I think this is hugely important because this is the cornerstone of our Western civilization.

Now, Harari took this a step further in his book, “Homo Deus,” and said two things. One, we can enhance human life by using data information and AI, very much based on Nietzsche’s Übermensch from the 19th century. And also, the second point he made in his book was that death is only a medical problem. And eventually, science will help us overcome that as well.

So the question is two-pronged, I guess, John. One, does evolution and the general theory of evolution go against creationism? And also, what is your take? What does the image of God mean to you?

Origins of the Universe

JOHN LENNOX: That’s actually a four-pronged question I’ve worked out listening to you. Or five, even. Let’s take the first point where you said science has explained how the universe came to be. It hasn’t.

And that was the surprise I found in reading Hawking’s more recent book. I was quite amazed to read the following key sentence in the book. It goes like this, “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” And that was the reason he gave for saying we don’t need God.

But just think of the statement. Because there is a law like gravity, that is because there is something, the universe will create itself from nothing. That’s a flat contradiction before you start.

The Meaning of Nothing

JOHN LENNOX: But do scientists mean the same thing? For me, nothing means the absence of something. Do scientists mean the same thing? No, they don’t. They have to redefine nothing as a quantum vacuum or something like this.

And then they get into incredible complexities. I’ve written a book about this, by the way, called “Seven Days that Divide the World.” But let’s just come back to the statement. Because it’s worse than that.

He says the universe will create itself. What on earth could that mean? Sorry, I didn’t mean to put the earth in, because that’s the point. The universe, if I say X creates Y, roughly speaking, you would understand me to mean if you’ve got X, you’ll get Y.

If I say X creates X, I think what that tells me is that nonsense remains nonsense even if scientists write it. And as C.S. Lewis himself pointed out. So number one point in response to you. I don’t believe science has told us how the universe came to be. It is certain theories of the etiology of the history of space-time, and as you say, a long time ago.

Age of the Earth and Creationism

So let’s come up a little bit. Second point you mentioned was age of the earth and creationism. Now I must make a confession. Because a few weeks ago I was speaking at the speech day in my own school, founded in 1608 by Archbishop Usher, who famously calculated the creation of Adam at 9 o’clock in the morning on the 6th of October, 4004 B.C. And wrote this in a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and said, “Sir, I’m sorry, I cannot give it more precisely than that.” And as I spoke in the speech day, sitting beside me was the current Archbishop.

So I turned to him and I said, “You know, you, like Archbishop Usher, are both historians. And Usher was actually a good historian. But I suspect,” I said, “Archbishop, that you differ by about seven orders of magnitude in your calculation of the age of the earth.” And then I used that to speak to the kids at school and their parents.

And I said one or two things, but not what I’m about to say to you. Now, the word creationism, creationist, used to mean a person like me who believes in a creator. Now, it has been narrowed semantically to mean a person who believes in a young earth theory. Now, let me just hit this head on and give you one or two arguments why I’m not convinced of that.

Biblical Interpretation

And I’m not convinced of it, mainly for biblical reasons. Let me explain. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s how Genesis starts.

You then get a sequence of days, the six days of creation and God rest Sabbath. The interesting thing about that text in Hebrew is that the opening statement is in one past tense in Hebrew, and it changes for the sequence of six days. Now, in order to be fair, I consulted the professor of Hebrew at Oxford and the professor at Hebrew in Cambridge. And to my amazement, they gave me the same answer.

And it’s best expressed, I suppose, by Jack Collins, who was the lead Hebrew translator of the ESV, also a trained scientist, which is interesting. And I wrote to him about this, and I quote more or less, I don’t have it exactly in my memory. He said, “This tells you that the first statement in the Bible occurs, quote, at an indefinite period before the second group.” So what does the Bible say about the age of the universe? Absolutely nothing. No matter what you believe about the days, that is the interesting thing.

Now, I could speak about the days, but it would take too long. But in order to satisfy people’s curiosity, I have a book, revised edition, “Seven Days that Divide the World.”

Evolution and Natural Selection

Let me come to your last point. The theory of evolution, well, there are many theories of evolution. And biological evolution, as usually understood by people like Richard Dawkins, is that, and I’m partly quoting here, “Natural selection, the blind automatic process that Darwin discovered, is the explanation for the existence and variation of all of life.” That’s a quotation from “The Blind Watchmaker,” one of his most famous books.

Well, the first statement is false, and he took many years to admit it. Evolution, natural selection, cannot account for the existence of life, for the most simple of reasons, that natural selection, in order to do anything at all, depends on the existence of life, to begin with. So it can’t explain it, full stop. The origin of life does not come in to the mandate of biological evolution as normally understood unless you start to talk about chemical evolution, which is completely different and has nothing to do with selective processes.

And there’s a lot that can be said about that. Secondly, neo-Darwinism, as it now is, the neo adds the mechanism, they believe, selection, but these minor changes caused by mutation. Now, number one, it’s obvious that selection and mutation do something. Just have a look around this room.

Do we all look the same? No. Why? Because there was selection. I bet some of you did some selecting. I did, when I saw the lady that became my wife, and I selected her, and marvellously she selected me. And that’s why our children look like they do, but they’re different from everybody else. Selection and mutation do something, and from a Christian perspective, we must see that that is something God has built into the world.

The Future of Biology

As Paul pointed out to the Athenian philosophers, God has made of one every race of human beings. So that’s okay, and what Darwin observed, brilliantly observed actually, were minor variations on the theme. But now comes the problem. Does this selection and mutation mechanism explain all the variation?

It has nothing to do with the origin of life, but does it really explain, does it do the work that’s claimed of it? Now I’m very interested in this, I’m not a biologist, but I have lived and soaked my mind in biology for the last many years, and I’ve got a friend in Oxford who is an absolutely brilliant fellow of the Royal Society, Professor Dennis Noble, and he is really the driving force behind what’s called the third wave in biology. And what are they saying now? They’re saying that Neo-Darwinism is not fit for purpose. It doesn’t need to be modified, it needs to be replaced. The wheels are coming off this stuff, but people don’t know it.

Which is why I’ve written just recently a major book on this, to try to introduce particularly to Christians, but not only, what is going on at the top level in science. The book is called “Cosmic Chemistry, Do God and Science Mix?”

Information and Life

JOHN LENNOX: Now don’t misunderstand these people. Many of them feel still that there’s going to be a naturalistic solution. In other words, a solution that doesn’t involve a divine input of any kind. But they’re being much more honest now, and the reason is that the levels of information that we know to have been contained in the DNA, the human genome, are now discovered as only a small part of what’s going on.

And the huge problem is that DNA and all these proteins are dependent on the existence of the cell. But the cell is dependent on them, so you get a classic chicken and egg situation to which there’s been no solution. And now scientists are thinking much more in terms of the cell, and the cell is an absolutely unbelievably bewildering complex of factories, micro-miniature. Now it’s not the fact that they contain information that’s the problem, it’s the nature of the information.

And really it goes back to this, the moment you see that, and it’s only six letters, you know there’s a mind behind it. So what I am suggesting is that within biology the evidence is mounting more and more that there are many physical mechanisms involved. Of course there are. The Earth’s a big planet.

Faith and Truth

Life is extremely sophisticated once you get it going, and clearly there are variations. But when it comes to the existence of life itself and all the major modifications, it seems to me that there is increasing evidence that you’ve got to factor in an intelligent mind in order to get a full explanation. Now I know that’s an assertion, but I’ve tried to argue the case and I’ve put it out there in the public space.

SAMUEL MARUSCA: So what you’re saying, John, is that science is not the only way to truth, which is actually scientism. But on the flip side, we have fideism. And Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, was one of the proponents of this view. And the Bible has a very interesting definition for faith in Hebrews 11 and 1, which is “an assurance about what we do not see.”

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

SAMUEL MARUSCA: And that’s very interesting, because many atheists would say all faith is blind faith. And also some Christians would say, we do not enter into the kingdom of heaven by logic. We do that by faith. So the question is, what do you make of Dawkins’ statement?

You quote Dawkins in your book “God’s Undertaker.” And Richard Dawkins says this, “It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, mad cow disease, and many others. But I think that a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus, but harder to eradicate. Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.”

Evidence-Based Faith

SAMUEL MARUSCA: Is all faith blind faith?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, no, and I haven’t forgotten what you asked me about Harari, and I’ll come back to that if I may. Dawkins and his co-belligerents have cleverly redefined faith and confused many people. What he is defining as faith is what most people call blind faith.

That is simply believing something where there’s no evidence. Now other religions must speak for themselves and philosophies, but as far as Christianity is concerned, scripture makes it abundantly clear that the faith that Jesus and the apostles talk about is evidence-based faith. Now you all know what that means. If I asked you why you trusted certain people, you’d say, well, because of this and this.

That is, you give me evidence. Why do you believe those facts because of this and that evidence? That’s the common way to react, because believing without evidence is a very risky thing to do. But let’s absolutely anchor this, because it is central.

John, in his gospel, explains why he wrote it. And he says at the end, he says, “Many other signs,” the Greek term is semion, from which we get semiotics, they’re indicators of who Jesus was, what we call his miracles. “Many other signs Jesus did in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written in order that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in his name.”

Now notice very carefully what that says. These are written that you might believe. This is a basis, a set of evidences, on which you can ground your trust. And your trust that Jesus is two things, one, Hamashiach, the Messiah, two, the Son of God, and then, on the basis of that, you can have an experience of trusting him, which will bring you to eternal life as a gift from God on repentance and faith in him.

Seeing and Believing

Now that, to my mind, is crucially important. Now you mentioned sight, and this is a very interesting thing. We have a philosopher, quite well known, called A.C. Grayling in this country, and he was invited to do, I think it was a guest editorial in New Scientist.

And he chose to point out in his article that Jesus requires blind faith. Now I got to New Scientist at that time and I thought, this is going to be very interesting. So here I read, how does he prove that Jesus requires blind faith? Well he goes to John 20 and relates the story of Thomas.

And he quotes the description where Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you have seen, you have believed. But happy or blessed are those, rather, who have not seen and have believed.” And there you are, he says, Jesus asked you to believe without evidence. My reaction to that was, can the man not read? Jesus didn’t say, blessed are those that have no evidence and believe. He said, blessed are those that haven’t seen.

I’ve never seen Jesus, and nor have you, I suspect. And why do we believe? We know evidence, we’ve got masses of evidence. It’s just we don’t have the physical evidence of seeing that Thomas had. But seeing is only one of our five senses. And there are all kinds of other evidences, both physical evidences, historical, experimental and all the rest of it.

Understanding Systems

And this is incredible, and it was even more incredible, because if he’d read the next few verses, he would have come across what I quoted to you two minutes ago. His signs are written that you might believe. It contradicts exactly how our brilliant philosopher seems to understand scripture, which shows to me something very serious. That some of our atheist friends and colleagues will not take evidence seriously, because they’ve made up their minds that if it’s Christian, it’s faith, and faith is belief it where you can’t see.

SAMUEL MARUSCA: A.C. Grayling wrote a very good book about Wittgenstein, the philosopher, but Wittgenstein said that you cannot explain a system from within the system. You need someone from outside the system in order to be able to explain it.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, Wittgenstein’s statement is extremely important, and in fact, Jonathan Sacks takes that up in his book. But I must be fair to your question, Samuel, and come back to Harari and the future, because it’s actually important.

Transhumanism and the Future

You mentioned his two agenda items that are, one, to solve the problem of physical death, and two, to enhance human abilities and capacities and essentially produce a super intelligence. This is what’s known as transhumanism, and in my own University of Oxford, they are driving this forward. There are millions of dollars being put into this area of research, by the way. This is big stuff, and artificial intelligence is very much a part of it.

Now, we could go into details, but I’m not going to, because I’ve actually written a book about it called “2084, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.” But I will comment on these two things, because they fascinate me. Because when people come to me and tell me about this wonderful agenda, we’re going to solve the problem of physical death, and we’re going to enhance human intelligence and give people some form of eternal life, possibly upload their brains onto silicon so that they won’t be dependent on biology, which perishes and dies, and all this kind of thing. I simply look at them and say, “You’re too late.”

And they say, “What do you mean, you’re too late?” Well, I said, the problem of physical death was solved 20 centuries ago, when God raised Jesus from the dead. And that proves that death isn’t the end, but it’s also solved your other desire. Because Jesus, raised from the dead, is the Son of God, and He was raised from the dead because He died.

Why did He die? He died so that there would be a basis for God to forgive us for the mess we’ve made of our own lives and those of other people. And if we trust Him as Savior and Lord, He promises that He’s going to upload us, not simply our brains or our mental capacities, but there’s going to be a physical resurrection in the last day. And I said, I’ll go for that rather than transhumanism, because I think there’s much more evidence to back it up.

So they’re too late. But they need to hear that message, because they’re not getting it. Not at all, as far as I can see.

Miracles and Natural Law

SAMUEL MARUSCA: I think the resurrection, as you say, is hugely important for Christians. And that’s a miracle. And again, David Hume said that in ancient times and in the past, people would believe the miracles because they didn’t have a good understanding. They didn’t understand natural laws, which is, I’m not sure if you agree with that. But he also said that miracles are a violation of natural law.

So what is your take on that? And also, what evidence is there for the miracles and the resurrection?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, my ancestry is Scottish. So far for me to criticize a Scotsman like David Hume, but he was wrong. And I say that not because I’m a Hume expert, but the most famous Hume expert that I ever met was Anthony Flew, a philosopher, who all his life championed atheism, like Richard Dawkins did, until he came to see that the cell and human DNA was a code. And it spoke of intelligence. And I had an interview with him not long before he died. And I asked him, I said, “What about David Hume and miracles?”

He said, “I was wrong.” And he made one of the most humble statements I’ve ever heard from an academic. He said, “My books were wrong. I’d have to rewrite them, and I’m never going to have the chance.”

But let’s come to the substance of it. That’s just a little story. Miracles, violations of the laws of nature, that’s where the confusion lies. Law has two meanings for most of us. They’re the laws of nature. What are they? They are our descriptions, often in mathematics, of what normally happens.

The apple dropped, falls towards the center of the earth, as Newton pointed out. The planets revolve around the sun in elliptical axes. But then there are those that say, you must not drive in inner London without paying a congestion charge. And if you don’t pay it, you’re going to get clobbered. That’s a different kind of law.

C.S. Lewis’s Perspective

They get totally confused. Now, Lewis, as usual, and his wonderful genius, he went right to the heart of this. In a most brilliant book, which most people don’t read because they get stuck in the third or fourth chapter, which is quite difficult, they should leave it out and go to the next chapter. But Lewis tells this illustration.

“Here I am, I stay in London overnight, and I put 50 pounds in the drawer, night one. Night two, I put another 50 in, so that’s 100 pounds. I’m leaving on day three, I get up in the morning, and I find a 10 pound note in the drawer. So what do I conclude? That the laws of arithmetic have been broken, or the laws of England?”

Well, you’re laughing, because you see, I conclude the laws of England have been broken. How do I know that? Because the laws of arithmetic have not been broken. It’s the fact that the laws of arithmetic hold that tell me that somebody’s put their hand in to what I thought was a closed system of cause and effect, but it turned out not to be. So a thief could put their hand in.

Understanding Miracles

So that has helped me enormously, because it really knocks Hume right out of the ballpark. It shows that the confusion lies in the nature of our concept of law. The laws of nature are not like the laws of England. Now here’s the slightly ironic thing. In order to recognize a miracle, and the word miracle is slightly unfortunate, because it’s Latin, miraculum, is a wonder. What we’re talking about is supernatural events that give evidence that there is a supernature.

Not everything that claims to be a miracle is one. If I say it’s a miracle that Jim passed his exam, that isn’t necessarily supernatural. It’s because he was a silly nitwit and didn’t do any work, you see. So we need to focus, and that’s why I focus on the resurrection.

This is a central claim that Jesus rose. It’s supernatural. It’s not simply that Jesus rose as if it came from inside the grave. It’s God raised him from the dead. It’s power coming in from outside. Now take a simple analogy. If I pick this up and drop it, the law of gravitation will tell me it falls towards the center of the earth. That will not stop Samuel catching it.

He can intervene and stop it. And it doesn’t break the law of gravity. It changes the configuration of the situation. So at the larger level, God created the universe with regularities in it. If he hadn’t done it that way, you wouldn’t have been able to recognize a miracle if you saw one. If we didn’t know the dead bodies normally remain dead, we wouldn’t be the least bit surprised by a resurrection.

And the interesting thing is, it answers another thing of Hume’s. Hume said, and you put it in your introduction to the question, that in those days people didn’t know the laws of nature, didn’t they? When Joseph was told by his fiancée that she was pregnant, he didn’t know where babies came from, did he? So he believed her. No, he didn’t. Because he knew exactly where they came from.

And we read that because he was a righteous man, he wanted to divorce her quietly. He didn’t want exposure to public, because he knew exactly what the law of nature was. And it took a special intervention of God speaking to that man and saying, “Joseph, this is okay, this is holy, I’m behind this.” The man born blind in John 9, it’s a wonderful story, it’s actually a humorous story.

JOHN LENNOX: They said to him, “Well, you weren’t the man that was blind, or you weren’t born blind” and all this. And he said, “Look, let’s cut all this out. Since the beginning of the world, it’s never been heard that someone born blind has received their sight. So what has happened to me is unique, it must be supernatural.”

Of course, they knew the laws of nature. And therefore, Hume was wrong on both those counts.

The Nature of Apologetics

SAMUEL MARUSCA: So, John, I want to come to the issue of the wording and the definition of apologetics, because that’s exactly what apologetics does, just what you did just now, explaining miracles and explaining the rationality of faith. But apologetics has nothing to do with being apologetic, it comes from the Greek word apologia, which means giving a defense of something.

But at the same time, the second point I want to make, John, is this. Apologetics seems to explain things, but does that limit Christianity to only the things that we can demonstrate and explain apologetically? So what is apologetics, and what are the limits of apologetics?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, as you say, apologia is defense. But it’s interesting if you do a word search to see where it’s used in the New Testament, and it’s mostly used by or about Paul. And his number one apologia defense is, I was on the Damascus Road and I met the risen Christ and he completely changed my life. That was his main apologetic, and that’s why I don’t like the word, because it sounds like an apology. We should have translated it.

All we did was take it straight out of Greek and transliterated it. I think Peter May’s explanation of it is the best, is persuasive evangelism. And the most persuasive thing about your experience, if you’re a Christian here tonight, is your experience of Christ. So it’s not just a question of reasoning, although reason is involved at every level.

Of course it is. Reason and faith are not in opposition. You need reason even to read the Bible. People get very confused about it.

Trust and Reason

JOHN LENNOX: And one of the reasons for that confusion is, they think that, they call me an apologist, I don’t like that. I try to persuade people, and I use argument. But the key to the effectiveness of that, is that when Paul stood up and reasoned in Athens and reasoned everywhere else, and the Lord did it all the time, Paul was using his abilities, but he wasn’t trusting them. And the danger for Christians, often without high education, is that they start to trust their reason.

And they use God when they get stuck. Real Christianity is to use our reason and all the abilities He’s given us, but to trust Him. That’s the key, it seems to me. And that solves a lot of difficulties.

And we must beware that the arguments are all important, but we trust God. And if we’re trusting God, we’ll know how to move and detect whether questions are genuine or not. Many are. Many people simply need the stones out of the way, so they can see clearly what the gospel is.

But in the end, God is not a proposition, He’s a person. Christ is not a set of propositions, He’s a person. So that what is being offered to us is a relationship of trust with a person. That’s a huge thing.

A relationship with the One who created the universe. And that, for me, is the biggest thing. And in this world where it’s being attacked left, right and center, we need to know not simply what we believe, but why we believe it. Because you cannot open your mouth in a multicultural, pluralistic society like what we’ve got here, without people misunderstanding, misrepresenting or simply just being curious.

And we’ve got to answer. Always, said Peter, be ready to give an answer to people, an apologia to people who demand a reason for the hope that is within you. But do it with meekness.

The New Conversation About Faith

SAMUEL MARUSCA: Justin Brierley wrote a brilliant book called “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.” And his main argument is that the new atheism wave is actually gone now and it’s failed. And there’s a lot of evidence to support that, actually. And there’s a new conversation coming on with new questions being asked that weren’t asked 20 years ago. For example, what is the meaning of life? What is my identity?

And so on. Now, at the same time, we all know that Christianity, according to the last census, is going down and is not what it used to be. So it’s declining in the Western societies, at least in Western Europe.

But how do you reconcile the two views? And do you think there’s a new wave of intellectuals, perhaps, as Justin mentioned, people like Jordan Peterson, it was great to see you on his podcast, people like Louise Perry, Tom Holland and others, who not only agree that Europe was based on Christianity and the foundation of Europe is Christian, but they also acknowledge and appreciate the social value of Christianity. How do you reconcile these two views?

Changing Perspectives on Faith

JOHN LENNOX: Well, first of all, I support your view of Justin’s book and spare his blushes, but I would encourage you to read. This man has probably one of the most comprehensive experiences of entering the arena and getting both sides together to debate these things. And it is very worthwhile reading. And if you get anything tonight, get that book. That’s number one.

Number two, I think, is that I think he’s right, that the new atheism is waning and it’s a belligerent kind of atheism that has dropped. There’s another kind of vicious atheism that is keeping people imprisoned in Xinjiang in China and all of that. We’ll not go into that tonight, but it has changed. And questions of meaning and identity are coming up to the fore in the population and young people.

The Challenge of Transhumanism

People want some kind of identity. That’s the pressure coming in one direction. Then there are transhumanists in the other direction saying, we’re going to give you an enhanced identity, but it’s going to involve bioengineering. It’s going to involve you giving up a lot of things and we need to listen to C.S. Lewis on this. I would recommend to everybody to read a book that you mentioned earlier on, “The Abolition of Man.” It’s a short book, but it’s prescient.

And Lewis saw in that book and in his science fiction novel, “That Hideous Strength,” that if a group of scientists get the capacity to modify human identity, for example, by messing around with the human genome and creating a heritable sequence where the specification of human beings will change forever, what they will produce are not human beings in the image of God, but artifacts.

And he has got this chilling statement. He says, “The final triumph will be, of man will be the abolition of man.” They won’t be humans, they’ll be beings of some kind. And I fear we’re moving rapidly towards that because in my research of artificial intelligence, there’s a disproportionate number of people driving it who are very strongly convinced of the atheist worldview.

New Voices in Faith

It’s not worldview neutral. So we need to take that on board. And it’s wonderful that we have particularly young people around who are communicating the gospel in a way that’s got straight credibility because it’s bringing young people meaning. And we need to encourage people like that and develop their ability and give them a platform.

But there are, as you say, some very interesting people around, Jordan Peterson, with whom I interacted recently and it’s on YouTube, is one of them who’s moving incrementally, but moving clearly and on his own confession towards the Christian faith. Tom Holland, with whom I’ve interacted personally, fascinating, brought up as an ancient historian and his book “Dominion” is brilliant. But what it’s devoted to is his change. He thought originally that all the good things in our society came from the Greeks and the Romans. He then discovered they came actually from the biblical worldview.

And he has got a wonderfully powerful statement about the effect of the cross. It is quite remarkable to read. And that’s another book. We’re recommending lots of books tonight. “Dominion” worth reading. And there are a number of people, it seems to be, around the world, intellectuals, public intellectuals, who seem to be moving step by step towards a full confession of the Christian faith.

And there’s then an outer group of people, and I keep meeting them, who, although they’re not that far yet, they are convinced that the materialism that dominates the academy and elsewhere is not enough. And they say to me, “John, there must be something more.” Well, that’s a great start to realize there must be something more.

SAMUEL MARUSCA: That’s a very good point because this new conversation opens the door to all things spiritual and there’s a new generation that’s seeking meaning and looking beyond this world and seeking some spiritual meaning, even though that may not be Christianity. Now, as we close, John, there are many, many young people in this audience who still have doubts and feel there might be a tension between science and faith in God. What advice would you give to young people in the audience who may feel this tension?

Advice for Young People

JOHN LENNOX: Don’t duck the questions if they come up in your mind, that’s the first thing. Because one of the reasons I’m sitting here as a believer, 80 years old, I’m a scientist, is that I’ve discovered in life there are answers. Sometimes you have to wait a bit, you have to do some work.

But that’s important that the questions that bother you start to do a bit of reading, talk to other people openly about your questions and your doubts. Because a large part of my Christian conviction has come from asking hard questions and waiting till I got answers. I don’t know whether I’m allowed to do a little bit of advertising, but I’ve been so concerned by this young people feeling this tension.

That this book, I was told this book, “God’s Undertaker,” people found too difficult to read. So, I’ve done a much shorter one, called “Can Science Explain Everything?” And some people are kind enough to say it has helped them, not only young people, but older people, to get some resolution to this tension. And I think the main resolution will come in the answer to the question that I did earlier, that the God explanation and the science explanation are different kinds of explanation.

So, read and discuss this kind of thing, because there are answers that can ease you through that tension. You see, just think of a simple historical fact. Virtually all the great pioneers of modern science, starting with Galileo, Kepler, Newton, coming up through Faraday, Clark Maxwell, they were all believers in God. And historians have noticed this.

And C.S. Lewis put it beautifully, as usual. And he summed it up this way, he said, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in the legislator.” I’m not ashamed of being a scientist and a Christian, because arguably, it was Christianity that gave me my subject.

You see, science, biology, was started on page two of the Bible. Many people don’t realize that. God made bits of the universe, but then he told the first humans, you go and name the animals. Taxonomy, naming things, is a fundamental scientific discipline.

God said, you go and do it yourself, and we’ve been doing it ever since. So, I think we’ve got a real mandate to do science, and to do it with God, not against God.

Closing Remarks

SAMUEL MARUSCA: John, there’s a lot of wisdom in your thoughts. Thank you very much for your insights on science and faith in God, on evolution and creation, on the miracles, and it’s great to have you with us. Thank you very much for your thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen, John Lennox.

Q&A Session

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Let’s kick off with a few of these very popular questions. So, you’ve spoken at length about science and faith this evening, but one of the most popular questions here is, do you think there could be other forms of life in the universe? And I suppose I would like to ask, and if there were, would it matter?

JOHN LENNOX: I was at a launch of a book by Professor Paul Davies, a physicist, and his book is called “Are We Alone?” And I was interviewed, and I was being interviewed by a certain station called Premier Christian Radio. I don’t know whether you remember.

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: I remember the interview well. It was one of the first times I’d had you on the show, and I brought you on with Paul Davies.

JOHN LENNOX: That’s right. And Paul Davies said, as a scientist, he thought that we were alone, but as a person, he hoped we weren’t alone.

And then I was asked, did I believe that there were other intelligences in the universe? And I said yes, and one very big one called God. And quite seriously, from a Christian perspective, there are other intelligences in the universe. Of course there are.

And God is the greatest one. But there are others. Because we are told that there are beings, in some sense, above us. The Bible calls them spirit beings. They’re not made of matter as we understand it. Angels and so on. So there are others. This whole universe is much more complex than we think.

And our vision, we don’t see everything. So I think there are, and it does matter infinitely, because if we were the only intelligences around, we’d be left with the question as to where we come from. But because we know about God, then we’ve got a huge answer to that question.

The Flat Earth Debate

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Thank you so much. From the sublime to the almost ridiculous in this question. There are lots of theories in our internet age floating around. And interestingly, one of the ones that has sort of had a bizarre revival is the idea that we’re living on a flat earth. And this is the most popular question, according to the likes. What do you think about the flat earth debate, John?

JOHN LENNOX: Nothing at all, really. I mean, but in all seriousness, for me it’s a sign of the fact we live in an age where almost anything can get airtight these days. And that’s true.

It was the G.K. Chesterton saying that “If people reject God, they don’t believe in nothing. They end up believing in anything.” And it just shows there’s masses of ridiculous things that people believe.

And that is the thing that staggers me, taking the question seriously. They will believe that kind of thing, for which the evidence is all contrary. And yet, when it comes to seriously set forward arguments and reasons for believing in God, they won’t even listen to them. There’s a double think.

I would go as far as to say that there’s a reason for it. There’s a very interesting statement that Paul made, that the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. That there is an enemy who sets the thought forms of the world. And Paul analyses the intellectual darkness that comes about in Romans when people reject God.

The Effects of Rejecting God

JOHN LENNOX: They end up worshipping stones and inanimate things. They ascribe creatorial power to nature because they don’t believe in God. And some of it is utterly absurd. And yet that is what happens.

And I would describe it as intellectual darkness. But there’s an enemy behind it.

Christianity’s Decline in Europe

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Thank you. This is a very popular question. Why do you think Christianity is on the decline in Europe, especially amongst young people?

JOHN LENNOX: That’s very complex, I think, historically. You’re probably better positioned to answer that than I am. There are roots in history, going back to the Enlightenment, of the evils perpetuated by some professing branches of the Christian church have died hard.

The fact that in the whole EU constitution, the word God is not mentioned at all, the fact that our major institutions are all of them virtually, as Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson and other people are pointing out, are all traceable back to Scripture, yet that’s airbrushed out of history so that we are educating young people. We’re, in that sense, brainwashing them and not telling them the facts so that they just don’t know.

And it’s not surprising. You see, let me put it very crudely. If you tell people constantly, young people, that there’s no meaning in life, they are simply animals, moderately sophisticated animals, they’ll end up believing you. And therefore, their behaviour will not be governed by any sense of morality. And it is frightening to read things like this. A class of students asked this. “Give an example of a moral dilemma.” Answer, “What is a moral dilemma?” We are in serious trouble, folks.

But I’m glad you said in Europe, because there are other parts of the world where Christianity is growing and thriving. And they are often the parts where there’s been much more persecution. And somebody pointed out to me the other day, if you take the whole of the Bible, how much of it was written at a time when there was no persecution and trouble? Very little.

And we have had an experience in Europe, at least until relatively recently, without war, for an unusual period of time. And unfortunately, into the vacuum, there has poured all this kind of stuff, post-modernism, atheism, all the rest of it. And it has had an effect in our society. But please feel free to add to that, Justin, because from your perspective…

Cultural Changes and Christianity

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: I wouldn’t disagree with anything that you’ve said there, John. I think that we are living in the wake, if you like, of many different forces that have led to the way in which religion is now seen as a private hobby. And to that extent, it’s part of the fact that our cultures are increasingly mobile, fluid. Many community institutions have broken down because of the focus on individualism in our culture. And so I think there’s a lot of things.

And alongside that goes, obviously, this materialism, this story of materialism that obviously convinces people without good foundation that there is no God and so on. I think I’m encouraged, and part of the story I tell in my new book is that actually people can only live on those thin versions of reality for so long, though, until actually people do start to come back and ask… And they are. Is this the way life is meant to be lived?

And I’m encouraged, actually, that I see a lot of young people almost… As we reach a point where there’s almost no familiarity with the Christian story, one of the good things about that is that you don’t have the assumption that you know what it is. And sometimes it’s actually easier to start telling people what it is when they don’t know anything about it, rather than those who think they know what it is, but actually have rather a false idea of it in their head. So I think we should be encouraged.

The Romanian Christian Community

I mean, let me skip to this question, since we’re talking about this. And this is obviously, you know, a lot of people here from the Romanian diaspora. And someone asked, what is your advice for the Romanian community, specifically the Christian Romanian community, for improving the belief climate in the UK? Any thoughts on that, John?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, I have had the privilege of being in Romania several times. The first time I went, I was poisoned deliberately by the secret police.

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Wow.

JOHN LENNOX: It nearly killed me.

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Gosh.

JOHN LENNOX: And I look back to that, and the Lord preserved me, because I went to visit some marvellous Christians there. But I’ve been back since, so they don’t feed you poison anymore. And they don’t have the poison.

I think I could say, but you need to ask Samuel about that. They haven’t been infected by all the poisons of atheism that we have in the West. So, I think you’ve got, and what I saw in my brief visits, you’ve got much more sense of togetherness as Christians. Well, let’s ask a Romanian.

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Yes, I think Samuel needs to speak to this. You’d probably be very well positioned to this question of how the Romanian Christian community can specifically encourage belief in the West.

The Romanian Experience

SAMUEL MARUSCA: Well, I think the Romanian diaspora community is very strong here in London and in the UK. There are many evangelical churches in London. And I think one of the reasons that Romanians believe in God and keep their faith, although they live in a very secularized society and culture, is because of communism. And communism promoted atheism as the national ideology. And Romanians have lived this for several decades and experienced what that means. And it simply doesn’t work.

So, that’s one of the reasons that Romanians and Eastern Europe in general remains a very religious society. It still is. And I think Romanians and other international diaspora communities, such as the Polish diaspora community, for example, can and may indeed revive Christianity and bring a new energy in terms of living faith in a secular culture as the UK.

Living Under Atheism

JOHN LENNOX: I think that’s absolutely true. And I spent many years, I started going to Eastern Europe in 1976 and travelled many times, particularly to Hungary, Poland and, above all, East Germany. And I came to the conclusion that many of our modern-day so-called new atheists, who are passing now, have not got a clue about what atheism does to a culture. And as Romanians, you know, and because you know, you can be a force for enormous good in our society. When people start talking about these things, you can just say, just wait a minute, let me tell you what it was like to live under the security and the secret police.

And I saw this again and again in East Germany, which was almost Stalinist and I went there many times. You’ve got a huge contribution to make and I think Samuel is absolutely right. And I would encourage you to be a source of pushback against this kind of thing.

I remember once talking in Russia, actually in Siberia, to an academician about the difference between the East and the West. And he said, in both parts of the world you’ve got materialism, you’ve got the material, we haven’t. But it’s the same philosophy. And that’s the tragedy. The stuff that you were taught under Marxism is very little distance below the surface of some of the leading intellectuals in the West today.

Stories from Behind the Iron Curtain

It’s the same materialism as a philosophy, but it’s mixed with the consumerism that you didn’t have in those days. And because you know what it’s like to be deprived of many things because of an ideology, the Christian ideology or worldview is much more precious to you because of what it’s done. And so you’ve a huge contribution to that.

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Just before we go to a question from the floor, there’s just one more that links really well in with what you’ve just been talking about, John, which is Andrea who asks, can you share with us a short story from your experience before 1990 behind the Iron Curtain that could help our faith?

Because this is a fascinating aspect of your life that perhaps not that many people know, that you moved and worked among people, you know, in Soviet Russia and so on.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes. Well, before 1990, I wasn’t in Russia. I went there first in 1989-90. But let me go years before that to East Germany. And I’ll tell you one story of a girl called Esther. And she was a very bright girl. She’d been top of her class in school.

And I happened to be there. I’m a German speaker. That’s why I could move easily in East Germany. And she came home from school weeping her heart out while we were there.

And we said, “Esther, what’s wrong?” She said, “The teacher has just told me I’ve got to leave school and go and work in a slipper factory.” Now, this girl had been top of her class in every year. But at the age of 13, she was asked to take an oath of public allegiance to the atheistic state.

And she said, “I’m a Christian. I can’t do that.” And she was crying. And we were weeping with her. But I said, “Esther, what did you say to the teacher?” I’ll never forget her answer. I said, “Uncle John, I said to the teacher, ‘Sir, one day you will stand before God. And you will answer for what you’ve done to me this day.'”

I never forgot that. It steeled me to redouble my efforts to fight this ideology for the rest of my life. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with God’s help. To fight what is driving the most extreme things on the planet.

And one of them is the persecution of the Uyghurs. But all this kind of stuff comes from not a rejection of God, but a hatred of God. And just that one thing encapsulates it.

The Problem of Evil and Suffering

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Wonderful. Let’s have a question here. Many wars are fought in the name of God. If God really cares, why is he allowing these things to happen? In the next days, even many lives are lost in natural disasters, innocent lives. Where is God when all these things happen?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, thank you. That’s the hardest question you can ask. It’s the hardest question for anyone of any world view. The problem of evil and suffering. And I would want really, to be fair to your question, to have an hour to talk about it at least. Because there are no simplistic answers to this. But I’ll try and say something briefly.

You referred very briefly and concisely to two problems. There’s a problem of moral evil. The bad things people do to one another. Wars, as we see it horribly these days.

Then there’s a problem of what’s called natural evil. Which is a bit of a misnomer. And that is catastrophes, diseases, cancers, tsunamis, earthquakes, all that kind of thing. Now, how do we face that?

And I’m going to cut to the middle of that. And tell you where I begin to see a possibility. I’ve no simplistic answer, because there isn’t one. But there are two ways of looking at it.

The person who’s suffering, sees it in a very different way from, say me, who’s watching the suffering. In other words, cancer looks very different in the eyes of a young mother who’s just been told she’s got six months to live. And in the eyes of the oncologist who’s treating her. So, there are two different sides.

And the person that’s watching tends to have a more intellectual response. They’re full of big questions. The other person is in utter pain and needs comfort and help and encouragement. Now, how do we face it?

Well, I’ll tell you how I begin to face it. The way you formulated the question is a very common one. And it’s been there for centuries. If there’s a good and all-powerful God, how is it that the world is like this?

Now, let me look at it from the theoretical perspective first. Because I’m afraid I’m a theorist above all. And if you want me to tell you about suffering, just see me in a dentist’s. Seriously, though.

JOHN LENNOX: Many people respond to this and say, therefore there’s no God. And many of my friends do. And I’ve been in Auschwitz many times. And I’ve wept every time.

It breaks my heart to see what’s going on in a country that I love, in Ukraine. Been there many times. All the cities, I know them all. So, how do we respond?

How do we respond? Well, there’s no God. Now, people that take that view think they’ve solved the problem. They’ve got rid of God. That’s true. But they’ve also got rid, by definition, of all hope. The situation for them is totally hopeless. But actually, they’ve got rid of the problem of evil.

The Moral Question

Now, this is a more serious philosophical point. So, if you don’t like philosophy, go to sleep. I’ll tell you when to wake up. The whole concept of evil.

I believe, is directly related to the existence of God. Dostoevsky, the famous Russian novelist, said once, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” In other words, he didn’t mean atheists can’t behave. He meant there’s no reason for believing in good and evil.

And Richard Dawkins says exactly that. He says, this universe is just what you’d expect it to be. If at bottom, there’s no good, no evil, no justice. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.

That’s atheism removing moral concepts. But that doesn’t work. Because Dawkins doesn’t even work for him. Because he knows he’s a moral being, and therefore he talks about the problem of evil.

Beauty and Barbed Wire

So, there are many reasons that atheism doesn’t work intellectually. But that’s not going to help a person who’s suffering. Come now to the other side, very briefly. When I was a student, we used to have long discussions. Well, if God is all powerful, and he’s all good. And we never solved the problem. Never. I’ve never heard a good answer to the solution.

Now, I’m a mathematician. And when mathematicians try for centuries to solve a problem, they usually ask themselves, are we asking the right question? So, let me reformulate the question. What are we faced with?

A mixed picture. I call it beauty and barbed wire. Beauty and bombs. We look out at a starry night, we see the Andromeda galaxy, and it’s absolutely magnificent. And then we turn on the television, and we watch what’s happening in Ukraine. Beauty and bombs. We all have to face that.

The Cross and Suffering

Now, how are we going to face that mixed picture? There’s beauty, that’s a mystery, if everything’s evil. How is it that we get like that? And now I ask myself a question that’s just as hard, and it’s this. We’ve all got to grant that it’s a mixed picture.

Is there any evidence anywhere that there’s a God that we could trust with it? That’s an equally hard question. But I believe that question brings us further. And it takes us directly to the cross.

Because the claim is, and I often say to people, please listen to what Christianity claims before you reject it. The claim is that the one on the cross is God himself, God incarnate. So what, if I may put it bluntly, is God doing on a cross? Suffering.

Well, it certainly means that he hasn’t remained distant from our human suffering, but has become part of it. And that’s the first thing, the heart of God revealed. Now, of course, if that’s where it had ended, we’d never have heard of Jesus. The next bit is where the resurrection comes into central role.

Hope in the Face of Suffering

I would have no hope, I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to answer your question, if I didn’t believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead. And that’s where the hope comes in. Atheism is a hopeless faith, literally hopeless. There’s no hope.

Now, where can we get hope? What has the atheist got to say to the young mother with cancer? Nothing. Have I got anything to say as a Christian?

I can’t promise her that she’d be cured, although I know God has the power to do it. But what I can bring to her is a message of hope, that she can have a personal relationship with Christ that will transcend death, and have something, therefore, to leave her children with.

Personal Experiences

Now, I was in Christchurch, New Zealand, the same week as the earthquake. And I spoke about this. And when I’d finished, a huge audience, one of the biggest that they’d seen in the church for many years, there was a note left for me from a lady, and it just said, “I lost my husband last week.” And she said, “What you said is the first glimmer of hope I’ve got.” Glimmer of hope.

And I believe scripture analyses this very carefully. I haven’t time to go into it in detail, sir, but in John 11, there is the story of what happens when people suffer. Lazarus died. The sisters expected Jesus to be there and cure him. He wasn’t there.

Jesus let the man die, and it nearly brought them to doubt the love of God. And when he eventually came and Lazarus was dead, the sister said, “If you’d been here, he wouldn’t have died.” And then he suddenly told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Now, that whole story, I believe, shows us how this problem on the one side can lead people to doubt the love of God, but how Christ answers it by being the resurrection and the life.

My final point is, I’ve tried to put this together briefly in a little book that’s circled the world. It’s called “Where is God in a Coronavirus World?” But that’ll have to do for that.

Comparing Religions

JUSTIN BRIERLEY: Well, thank you so much. With apologies to the many other people who have wanted to ask a question in person, because time is drawing to a close, I’m just going to finish with a final question from Slido, John. And this is, well, I’m going to give you two, actually, because I think they’re substantially the same question, both very popular. Someone asks, when Muslim people do what we do, which is believing what they’re taught by their parents and carrying on their faith, what makes them wrong and us right? And to sum up that question, someone else asks, how do you prove that Christianity is the true religion and other religions are false?

JOHN LENNOX: Thanks for that. I’m glad to hear that question because it’s important. I never try to answer that question without saying this. When we start to talk about the differences between religions, there is huge danger of looking down at other people.

Now, it is very important to go back to something that Samuel said in our interview. Every man or woman on the planet is a person of infinite worth made in the image of God. And often you’ll find that, in essence, the differences between religions are not moral differences. They are differences in what people believe about how you relate to God.

And you will find that many of our Muslim friends and Hindu friends and others have a strong moral code. Why is that? From where I sit, it’s because they’re made in the image of God. They’re moral beings.

Understanding Religious Differences

And scripture tells us clearly that pagans can sometimes put professed believers in God to shame. Abraham, in particular, the father of faith, and a pagan Egyptian pharaoh had a higher moral standard than he did. Now, it’s so important to say that because the moment you start to critique, people think you are assuming you’re better than they are, morally, or not. My atheist friends could put me to shame.

And you know Christians have been caught out in all kinds of things. So, we need to be very careful that we first recognize that the people we’re talking about are made in the image of God, and therefore, as creatures of God, have infinite value. Now, once we’ve said that, we can now come to the next question because there’s respect there.

The second point is, well, let me take the three great monotheistic religions that are over here all night. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Now, you could leave Christianity out. Judaism and Islam are not going to agree. About, well, what is central to Christianity?

Different Views of Jesus

JOHN LENNOX: I might as well bring it in again. Think of Jesus, or Isa, as Muslims call him. Yeshua, as the Jews call him. My Jewish friends believe that he died and didn’t rise. My Muslim friends believe he didn’t die. I believe he died and rose. Those three things cannot be simultaneously correct. And when I find, I talk about this in public, my Jewish and Muslim friends are nodding, they agree.

They just do not agree on what is central. Now, how are you going to decide it? Well, I know of no other way, on a matter of evidence, and then we discuss that. But there’s another approach, and that is this.

The Heart of Christianity

And this is, I think, the crux of the matter. People often say to me, “You know, you’re a scientist, and you talk about evidence for God, the universe, and all, that’s marvelous. But you’re a Christian, how do you bridge the gap between belief in God as the God of the universe, and a specifically Christian message?”

Well, I say, let’s look at it this way. The heart of Christianity is rather different from what many people expect. And if I am to explain that, I often ask people, I say, first of all, tell me what a religion is. What do you think a religion is? And I come up with a little illustration of it.

I often put it to them and say, is your view of religion like this? You’ve got a ceremony at the beginning, some sort of initiation, that puts you on a path. And I usually draw a wavy line, ups and downs. And you stay on the path, the six-fold path, or whatever it is, the way, etc.

And you’ve got various people to help you, priests, gurus, imams, all the rest of it. And then you come to a gate at the end, where I draw some scales of justice. And at the end, you’re faced with an assessment of your behavior and your deeds up to that point. And if you pass the grade, you get accepted into whatever it is, nirvana, heaven, or whatever.

The University Analogy

And most people will tell me, that is what we believe. And I say, perhaps the best way to think about it is like a university course. You have an entrance, and then you study at the university. Every university in Britain and around the world works this way.

The professors may be the best in the world, but they cannot guarantee you a degree. Why? Because the whole principle of universities is, you get a degree on the basis of your merit. And if you don’t earn it, merit it, you don’t get it.

Christianity’s Unique Perspective

JOHN LENNOX: Yes? And many people say, yes, that is religion. I’ve been told that by hundreds of people. Well, I said, you see, that isn’t Christianity.

And they say, “Oh yes, it is.” Now, here’s where the problem lies. Many people think that Christianity is like that. You pile up your good deeds, you try and please God, and you hope at the end that he won’t take his law too seriously and will let you in.

But you see, it’s not like that, folks. Christianity, the acceptance is not at the end of the journey of the judgment. It’s at the beginning of the journey of the cross. Now, this is utterly revolutionary.

In that sense, Christianity is not a religion. It isn’t. It certainly has a path and a way. But the path follows acceptance. It doesn’t come before it. Because the unique thing about Christianity is that at the very beginning, what Jesus offers me is that if I repent, that is, turn away from the mess I’ve made of life and maybe other people’s lives, sadly, and trust him as Savior and Lord who died for me, then he will give me then, right then, the acceptance. That’s hugely important.

A Personal Illustration

You see, let me give you an illustration. This is so important because I meet dozens of people that don’t understand this. Even in this country, 56 years ago now, nearly, I met a girl. She was lovely. So I decided I’d like to marry her.

So I came along and I gave her a lovely present. It was wrapped up and I said, “Sally, I’d like you to be my wife. Now, here’s the present.” So she opened it and it was a cookbook.

So, I said, “Read page 153. Apple cake. Thou shalt take so much flour. Thou shalt take so much sugar. Thou shalt take and thou shalt put in the oven and bake it and so on.” And I said, “My dear, I would like you to take this book and if you keep these rules, let’s say, let’s be reasonable, for the next 40 years, then I will accept you. Otherwise, you can go back to your mother.”

Why are you laughing, folks? That is how millions of people think about God. You would never insult a fellow human being. And I mean this very seriously. You would never insult a fellow human being by making acceptance dependent on their performance. Do you think God does that? That’s turning God into a monster. And that’s why you laughed. It’s ridiculous.

Acceptance and Love

JOHN LENNOX: Of course I didn’t do that. Now, the amazing thing is, she accepted me. It’s not amazing that I accepted her, but it’s amazing she accepted me. And what does that do? Does that mean she doesn’t care about how she lives and how she cooks? Of course not. But she’s not cooking to earn my affection. She’s cooking because she’s got it.

And here am I tonight talking to you, interviewing. Why do you think I do it? Do you think I’m doing it to earn brownie points? That God will accept me? Not at all. I’m doing it because I know my acceptance doesn’t depend on it. And that’s the difference.

Christianity’s Unique Offer

Now let me put it this way, so it’s really sharp in your minds. And it could help you to explain this to people. Christianity does not compete with any other religion. Why not? Because Jesus offers me something none of them offer me.

So, it’s a no-brainer here to accept from him something that nobody else offers me. Nobody else offers me forgiveness on such terms, and acceptance and love at the very beginning, and a relationship. And that’s the reason I’m a Christian.

Thank you.

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