Reconciling Ayn Rand with the Gospel

The motion picture Atlas Shrugged - Part 1 was released in theaters last week, and coupled with the positively prophetic mapping of the plot of Atlas Shrugged to current events, Ayn Rand and her Objectivist Philosophy are front-burner topics. I know that many Christians read Rand and want to stand up and cheer, but at the same time are racked with guilt because of her atheism and decidedly anti-church professions. Can Rand be reconciled to the Gospel? Can Christians read and learn from Rand's writings? I say yes, and emphatically so.

The first thing we must do is approach this question from an adult perspective. It is patent absurdity to argue that atheists and other non-Christians have nothing to offer society or the Christian milieu itself. To argue that the work of atheists be dismissed is to argue for the dismissal of a large percentage of the advances and breakthroughs in mathematics, physics, and biomedical science that have been achieved over the last several centuries. Furthermore, any Christian worth his salt should be able to defend his beliefs, and should welcome honest challenge and questioning -- not run from it. Steel sharpens steel. Raw squid left out in the sun for six hours sharpens nothing.

One of the hallmarks of Rand's Objectivist philosophy is the supremacy of an individual's capacity for logic and reason. Those two words, logic and reason, appear over and over again in all of Rand's writings. Here is a quote from Rand herself, emphasis mine:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

The Christian reconciliation of all of this lies in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse one: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

In John's creation narrative, he immediately identifies and establishes Jesus Christ as divine, co-eternal with God the Father, begotten, not made. Today, we simply say that Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. But what we must focus on in terms of this discussion is the word that John uses to name and identify Jesus: John calls Him "the Word." In the original Greek, the word John uses is "Logos." The word "logos" in Greek is the same word used for the concepts of logic and reason. This Greek root is indeed the etymological source for the modern English word "logic." What John did in the very first sentence of his Gospel is to specifically identify Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, as Logic and Reason Itself. Logic and reason are intrinsic, constitutive qualities of God. They are His essence. They are who He is. This is why Christ identified Himself as "The Truth." Logic and reason are the process and mechanism by which statements are determined to be either true or false. A true statement is simply a statement that is aligned with God. 1+1=2. True. Why is this true? Because it is in alignment with the existential reality that is God Himself. Or, for you math buffs, consider Euler's Identity, which I and many, many others consider to be the very thumbprint of God:

Here are the five great constants of mathematics: e, the base of natural logarithms; i, the imaginary number which is the square root of negative 1; pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter; the number one -- the multiplicative identity; and the number zero, the additive identity. Now look at how simply and beautifully these numbers combine to form a true statement. That, dear readers, is God winking at us. Rand was right -- reason is our only absolute, because Reason is God Himself. If one re-reads Rand making this simple, conceptual substitution, it will literally knock you to the floor.

There is one more postulation I would like to make, and this one is going to make heads explode on both sides. It is my considered opinion that Rand probably influenced Pope John Paul II's masterwork on human sexuality, "Theology of the Body." When I first read Atlas Shrugged, one of the most powerful and astounding passages to my mind was Francisco d'Anconia's monologue on sexuality in Part 2, Section 4, "The Sanction of the Victim." I had just finished reading "Theology of the Body" and was dumbstruck by the similarities between the two works. Both works center around sexuality as a total, complete gift of self. Further, both works emphasize how the individual must first hold himself in esteem before he can possibly give himself to another unreservedly as a gift. Additionally, both works explain how the lack of esteem of self, and even self-loathing, pervert the sexual act and drive people back inwards upon themselves, eventually leading to highly destructive sexual behaviors.

Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957. At that time, Karol Wojtyla, who would later become Pope John Paul II, was wrapping up his second doctorate in philosophy. Wojtyla, as a Pole, was intensely interested and personally invested in fighting Marxist Communism. He had personally experienced the horrors of both National Socialism under the Third Reich during World War II, and then Communism under the Soviets in Poland. The notion that Wojtyla, a post-doctorate level philosopher himself, did not read Rand, who provided a scathing critique of the very system Wojtyla knew it was his vocation to fight, is laughable. I contend that Francisco's monologue may have planted, or at the very least fertilized, Wojtyla's nascent philosophy on sexuality, which later became "Theology of the Body."

And somewhere this morning, a grad student in theology has just been handed the topic of his doctoral thesis.

“If Anyone Will Not Work, Let Him Not Eat.”

The Christian religion is a religion of self-reliance combined with *voluntary* Charity given by believers to those who are incapable of work.

For those for whom this simple statement isn’t enough, Jesus himself retold it in the form of a parable.

Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins, who took their lamps, and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. Those who were foolish, when they took their lamps, took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, “Behold! The bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet him!” Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, “What if there isn’t enough for us and you? You go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” While they went away to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins also came, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Most certainly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

The Christian is industrious, prepared, and self-reliant.

Rand’s philosophy is not incompatible with true Christianity. It is incompatible with the false gospel of the Sojouners.

RE: Did she proclaim herself an atheist or was she branded an atheist like Thomas Paine?

From Wikipedia (EXCERPTS):

“She later recalled that while in high school she determined that she was an atheist and that she valued reason above any other human attribute.”

“In metaphysics, Rand embraced philosophical realism and atheism, and opposed anything she regarded as mysticism or supernaturalism, including all forms of religion.[83] In epistemology, she considered all knowledge to be based on sense perception, the validity of which she considered axiomatic,[84] and reason, which she described as “the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses”

“Chris Matthew Sciabarra has called into question the motives of some of Rand’s critics because of what he calls the unusual hostility of their criticisms.[176] Sciabarra writes, “The left was infuriated by her anti-communist, pro-capitalist politics, whereas the right was disgusted with her atheism and civil libertarianism.”

Rand was right -- reason is our only absolute, because Reason is God Himself.

I've only read your article here and haven't seen this movie, but I would argue that Rand is not necessarily correct in this statement. As Aquinas, Coke, Blackstone, and others discussed, there are various types of reason and not all are tied to godly reason. Reason is a subset of God. You could say reason is a subset of truth. You could also say reason is a subset of faith. Reason is not absolute, but God Himself, of course, is.

Oswald Chambers has said (sans my additions in italics), Reason without faith is rationalism (what we have a great deal of today) and faith without reason is fanaticism. God's life is not without reason, of course, but His life reaches beyond the comprehension of our reason where only faith can go. We ultimately walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7) and are to trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not to our own understanding (Prov 3:5). So reason is our servant, not our master, and certainly not "absolute" because our reason is fallible and can be exercised apart from God Himself. We are to be ultimately ruled by God Himself, not by our reason.

The best parts of Rand’s Objectivism are thinly disguised elements of theistic Natural Law, painted over with a thin patina of atheism to make them palatable to a broader audience. Objectivism recognizes a great truth, also accepted by theistic Natural Law, that economic process works best in terms of matching needs to resources when it is conceived of as the interaction of self-interested peers. However, it arrives at this right conclusion for the wrong reason. Reality is objective and reason may be used to discover much about it. But reality is also bigger than anything we can see with either our eyes or our minds. Limiting our definition of morality, as Rand recommends, to asking the single question, “What’s in it for me,” falls well short of the better solution provided in theistic Natural Law as the Founders used it.

Why? Because without rights being a grant from the Creator, there is no logical stopping point whereby we may prevent ourselves from descending into the Nietzschean nightmare struggle for individual dominance, the surrender of all reason and morality to an eternal battle among selfish selves, irresolvable for lack of an Arbiter. This, BTW, is why Marxism and Objectivism end up at the same destination. Marxism, as a system of ideals, is nothing but a facade to get buy-in from useful idiots; the real game is what it has always been, what Rand and Nietzsche say it is, that some pigs end up being more equal than others, just because they can be. In the end, there is no separating Rand from Nietzsche, and therefore there is, apart from principles borrowed illegitimately from theistic Natural Law, no reconciling Rand with Christian theism.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.