The wrong answers

Phillip Johnson's “The Right Questions” is a difficult book to review, since I consider virtually all of Johnson's answers (and some of the questions) all wrong. But yes, the book is interesting. Johnson is the founder of the Intelligent Design movement in the United States. He is more outspoken about the movement's goals than its other representatives. “The Right Questions” clearly shows that Johnson is a Christian fundamentalist of the “presuppositionalist” variety with a very conservative social agenda. Abortion, feminism, transgenderism, gay rights, sex outside of marriage, and perhaps even divorce all have to go in the re-Christianized United States envisioned by Johnson. At one point, he even mocks liberals who become less liberal when a “Negro couple” moves in next door! Strom Thurmond, much?

To Johnson, the root cause of America's social ills is Darwin's theory of evolution. By teaching that we are really products of a blind, materialist process, the theory of evolution necessarily leads to moral relativism and nihilism. The goal of the ID movement is to banish “naturalism” from science, making it possible for scientists to embrace divine creation, and thereby make theology and revelation repositories of true knowledge. Indeed, Johnson believes that there already is a “scientific” case against evolution. His own alternative is a form of old earth creationism. In a surprisingly forthright foreword, Nancy Pearcey writes about how the ID movement has united all Christian opponents of evolution (including young earth creationists), and how it will split the evolutionist camp by luring those critical of unconditional naturalism over to the ID side (i.e. people like yours truly). Well, Nancy, thanks for tipping me off in advance! I'll try to resist the temptation.

Johnson, at least ostensibly, bases his conservative agenda on the Bible, but the whole thing feels more like an attempt to turn the clock back to the 1950's or even earlier. If this period in U.S. history was really “Biblical” is perhaps another matter, since the Bible can be interpreted in different ways on some of the crucial points under contention. For instance, the Bible mentions both voluntary and involuntary Christian “eunuchs”, making Johnson's wholesale rejection of transgenderism problematic. Moses had a Nubian wife, so presumably at least one “Negro” moved in next door. And what about the female apostle Junia?

A more serious problem for a conservative Christian is surely the old earth creationist perspective itself, since Johnson simultaneously wants the creation story of Genesis to be literally true, both because of his opposition to gay and transgender rights, and because of the connection between Adam and “the second Adam” (Christ). But how can Genesis be true, if the Earth is billions of years old? Note also that humanity, according to modern science, is more than 6000 years old. “Adam” would have lived about 150,000 years ago!

The most personal chapter in Johnson's book deal with his stroke and how it helped him grow in the Christian faith. Here, Johnson also explains why he believes Christianity to be the true faith. The argument is a form of presuppositionalism, whereby Johnson affirms the Johannine prologue as the starting point for all meaningful reasoning: “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”. I find this extremely unhelpful. Rather than arguing the case, Johnson's approach would (logically) simply brush aside all objections to the Christian creeds, both those based on modern Bible criticism and those based on alternative religious traditions (neither Jews nor Christian “heretics” accept the standard Christian creeds). Johnson's response is an existential one, affirming that trust and faith in Jesus Christ – a personal god incarnated as man – is stronger and more secure than trust in any “man made gods”, not to mention dead particles of matter. He bases this on his own trust in Christ during his potentially debilitating stroke.

But this argument is surely a weak one: as Johnson acknowledges in the concluding chapter, Muslims also have a strong faith in a personal god (albeit a phony one), a faith which confounds the secular liberals at every step, and hence presumably gives Muslim lives existential meaning. Besides, some people have a strong faith in a non-personal god, or some kind of combination of impersonal god and personal angelic beings – witness Eben Alexander's best-seller “Proof of Heaven”.

That being said, “The Right Questions” is nevertheless an indispensable read for those interested in the actual political and theological ideas of Phillip E Johnson and (presumably) a large portion of the ID movement, and I therefore give it three stars. Of course, it could also be read “on its own”, as an introduction to a particular form of conservative or fundamentalist Christianity.