Annotating Ross Douthat’s Conversation with Tyler Cowen

A Reformed evangelical perspective

Ross Douthat has now achieved three separate appearances on Conversations with Tyler, the public intellectual equivalent of an American sports ‘three-peat’.

I’ve added my commentary on selected parts of the conversation below.

Heavenly rewards

COWEN: In your theology, does converting me win you points? It’s not really a Catholic view, is it?

DOUTHAT: No. No, it’s not. Probably no toaster oven, but you don’t want to—

COWEN: It’s not going to lose you points.

DOUTHAT: It’s not going to lose me points. Let’s put it that way, yes. Maybe indulgence-style, it might compensate for some failings in other areas. There’re probably people who have been alienated from the truth about existence because they disliked something I said or did. Every day is a new chance to make up for those failings.

There is some variation in the evangelical stance on whether there are different rewards in heaven. All agree that salvation – entry into heaven – is not on the basis of merit in any way, but by grace alone (God gives it out of his free unmerited favour). Dwelling with God in love and harmony will be perfect.

Jonathan Edwards, New England preacher, argued in favour of different rewards, which he resolved by analogy:

Every vessel that is cast into this ocean of happiness is full, though there are some vessels far larger than others, and there shall be no such thing as envy in heaven, but perfect love shall reign throughout the whole society.

The parable of the minas (talents) in Luke 19 could be cited as supportive here.

Others are less convinced, however, or even outright opposed to this idea. I’m not sure which of these I think is correct – at a minimum I don’t think Christians should be motivated by the idea of a greater reward due to obedience, as we’re all recipients of grace.

The exclusivity of Christianity

COWEN: I just think we should look at all of Sri Lanka and figure, “Hey, these people ended up where they did because of how they grew up.” That’s fine. It’s maybe good for social cohesion, but then move on to just thinking about it more abstractly. Why is that wrong?

DOUTHAT: Well, right. This is where I’ve been saying to some of my religious friends that this is my most liberal book in a certain way, in that I go a certain distance with that argument. I do think that the diversity of religious traditions strongly suggests that some form of connection to God is available in a lot of different places. This is the official teaching of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. It’s not some radical, controversial opinion, but it is on the liberal side of potential theological interpretations.

Absent any other indication of what kind of religion you should be, what sort of religious perspective you should have, a default to the one that works in your culture is, I think, by no means, crazy.

The Bible does teach that everyone can have some knowledge of God from observing the world around them (general revelation), but that this isn’t the same as a knowledge which saves (“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” Romans 1:21).

I’m not familiar with the Catholic Church’s stance on this question. ChatGPT and Deepseek directed me to Nostra Aetate (1965):

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.(4)

The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.

As well as Lumen Gentium (1964):

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.

Evangelicals hold to a much more exclusive doctrine than this seems to imply. Even if you just look at John 14:6, quoted above, in its entirety: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Taking Catholicism on its own terms, the self-proclaimed one true church seems to be going out of its way to say non-Catholics can be saved without joining it.

General ‘religion’ v.s. Christianity

COWEN: Well, everyone is influenced by the views of their parents on all kinds of things. The soap I use actually is still the same soap my grandmother used when I was a kid. That’s probably related, right? It’s arguably irrational. No doubt, it’s true. But saying that happens everywhere — I don’t see how it gets you to religious faith. I just think at best, it gets you to some kind of probabilistic deism.

DOUTHAT: Well, I guess the argument in the book is that you can get beyond probabilistic deism into what I would characterize as maybe probabilistic supernaturalism. I don’t know exactly the right term. I use the term religion, as you said at the outset, as obviously a contested term. People argue about what constitutes a religion, but I think you can get somewhat probabilistically to the view that not just that deism is true but that there is a fundamental order to the cosmos in which human beings have an important or significant role to play.

There are divine or supernatural impingements on our reality that seem significant in various ways. You probably have a soul that is related to your body but distinct in some way. There’s probably life after death. I would say — and people can read the book and agree or disagree — but I think that there’s a preponderance of evidence in favor of most of those claims.

Now, I agree that even going that far, quite a bit past deism, doesn’t get you to a particular religious decision. There, I have some explanations at the end of the book about why I’m a Christian and why I think the choice to believe in, let’s just say, the significance of Jesus’s life and death and resurrection seems like a rational sequel to those initially rational ideas.

But I think there’s absolutely a reason why religious believers talk in terms of relationship. On the one hand, you’re seeking not just a theory of God but a relationship with him, or them if you prefer, but also in terms of divine grace. The relationship runs both ways. To some degree, it has to be up to the higher order of existence what your relationship to that order might be. But what I’m trying to suggest is, I think there’s a broader and thicker foundation for seeking that relationship than many intelligent people right now seem to think.

Not having read Douthat’s book yet (out on Tuesday), I hadn’t really thought through the consequences of trying to argue for religion in general – he only makes the specific case for Christianity at the end.

That’s a tough gig! He’s left having to justify, on some level, a lot of different religious experiences and perspectives. Far easier, I think, to focus on the case for Christianity, which I think is both unique and the most plausible of all religions.

I cannot be truly comfortable encouraging people to become religious in general. A criticism is often levelled at that Christianity are atheists about every religion but their own. Like Douthat, I do think there are other spiritual forces in the world, but I’m much less convinced about how many of those are God specifically.

UFOs

COWEN: Because even I would say this: UAPs have increased my probability that there’s a God because there are not many explanations for them. There’s China. There’s Russia. There’s craft of our own. There’s alien drone probes. There’s what you could call broadly supernatural. So, there’re five explanations.

DOUTHAT: Yes.

COWEN: That’s one of the five? So, it’s upped my p.

I commend Tyler on his willingness to update his priors. I don’t know what’s behind UAPs, but I think that whatever they are should lead us to update our views more generally:

• If they’re the US government, then it is more willing to blatantly lie to itself and the public than I would have guessed

• If they’re China/Russia, we are all a lot less secure than we thought

• If they’re alien drone probes… need I say more?

• If they’re supernatural, then God is indeed much more likely to exist

I hope we get to find out soon!

Cross-cultural hallucinations

DOUTHAT: But you can also see patterns in those things like near-death experiences. The range — there is cross-cultural variation in near-death experiences. If you have a near-death experience as a Tibetan Buddhist, you are more likely to see the Buddha. If you have a near-death experience as a Catholic, you’re more likely to maybe see an archangel or a Catholic saint or something. But at the same time, there are some pretty clear commonalities to suggest that people in Tibet and people in Indiana are having the same kind of experience when they die and are resuscitated and report the lights, the tunnel, all the strange things associated with those experiences.

Somewhere around here, there was a bit of a missed opportunity to discuss the phenomenon of Muslims reporting dreams of Jesus before their conversion to Christianity. I don’t know how exactly to evaluate the truth of those… but it doesn’t seem that supernatural/religious experiences have to be of your own culture.

The Pope

COWEN: Does the ex cathedra doctrine make sense to you concerning the pope?

DOUTHAT: I would say I have more questions about the nature and limits of papal authority today than I did 10 or 15 years ago, before the age of Pope Francis. I think it makes sense that, if there is a God, and if the second person of the Trinity came to Earth to suffer and die for your sins and mine, and if there was a church established that was supposed to carry that revelation forward throughout history, that institution would be protected in some way from the most serious forms of error.

No surprises that this evangelical agrees with the thrust of the question! If Pope Francis says things that conflict with the Catholic Church’s view, I think that strengthens the case for Protestantism. (Some Catholics seem to argue that he hasn’t spoken ex cathedra which may help resolve this.)

Unlike Catholicism, Protestantism doesn’t believe that there’s a single eternally correct church, so it’s able to reform itself in response to error, while the Catholic church is effectively unable to do so.

My questions for Ross Douthat

• Why do so few intellectuals convert to Protestantism?

• Aren’t 2000s-style apologetics debates simply passé now, given people's focus on narratives and personal experience?

• What does it say about our times that you published the book with an evangelical Protestant publishing house?

• Does evangelicalism's general aversion to aesthetics limit its appeal?

• Over two years into the AI revolution, the impact on Christianity appears limited. Agree or disagree?

• Do you see hope for Catholicism in the Dimes Square / bohemian Catholic scene?

• Why do evangelicals supply so much of the GOP base yet so few of its elites?

If you’re reading, I would love to discuss them with you and post our conversation here!