Faith: Part 2 (Originally posted Sept. 13, 2007)

Ok, so now that we’ve gotten to the point of proposing a “mechanism” for receiving and discerning spiritual truth, we can move on to testing our hypothesis. Just to recap AS’s definition, let me cite some of his statements along with the supporting scripture references:

“Why do differences in doctrine exist? Sin. Laziness- an unwillingness to do the hard work of interpreting the Scripture rightly, which may include things like learning the original languages and reading books by gifted teachers, etc. etc. Spiritual immaturity or perhaps better stated as a lack of spiritual maturity in certain areas - we may just plain be unable to handle certain truths at particular points in our lives. Bad English translations of the Bible. Who knows what else?”
-AS

“My point in reviewing all those texts you provided that speak of spiritual enlightenment coming via the Holy Spirit was to emphasize I don’t think that the Holy Spirit is necessarily the means by which every spiritual truth is understood.” -AS

“But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Heb. 5:14)

“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” (2 Tim. 2:7)

“I think there is a fine line between understanding spiritual truths as intellectual constructs and understanding them as spiritual insights.” -AS

This is one distinction which I have to recognize. The intellect certainly plays a role in discerning truth, spiritual or otherwise, and intellectual laziness can certainly be blamed for poor theology. Jameson already did a good job providing the scripture to support this point (Heb. 5:14, 2 Tim. 2:7 and 15).

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:12-13)

“Again, I think this is a disciple-limited promise that the Holy Spirit will guide the apostles ‘into all the truth’ in the early church age so that they may speak the very words of God and communicate the ‘whole counsel of God’ to believers as was achieved via the New Testament.”
-AS

Someone could probably ascribe a name to this position, whether it be one of the proposed “dispensations” or something else. Whatever the case, I don’t know that I subscribe to the idea that God revealed spiritual truth to his apostles any differently than He does to us today. Even if I could accept that they received a heightened capacity for discerning spiritual truths, I cannot accept that we operate by any different principle. And it’s the principle that I think we are most concerned with. The simple fact that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth in John 14:17 (see also John 4:23-24) reveals that spiritual discernment is one of the roles of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. (And anyway, what part of the scripture you cited do you not believe to apply to the modern-day believer?). I think our contention, if there is any, concerns the location of that subtle line distinguishing that truth which is discernible through the work of the intellect versus that only discernible by supernatural revelation. I think in many cases the latter is no more than a unique condition of preparedness to receive the lesson…Spiritual revelation in my experience has always come to me as a sort of chain reaction connecting hundreds of previously understood lessons which effectively produces a glimpse of the larger picture of who God is and what He’s all about. I call that “revelation” because it’s a moment where the intellectual components work together in a uniquely orchestrated fashion that allows me to “see” God. Perhaps the only supernatural part of the whole thing is that God is responsible for directing the course of my intellectual growth that allows that moment of “enlightenment” to unfold (see Ps. 119:130). In this case, maybe the question is more about the extent to which we can expect to hear from God via means other than our intellect. Can you think of any instances in which spiritual discernment is more strongly differentiated from discernment via intellectual constructs. How are such revelations validated? Against what measure or standard are we to test these revelations?

“What I do know though is that we have the Bible. Why? Why didn’t God just give us a systematic theology book that we could just turn to a page and get the answer to whatever question we had under the appropriate heading? I can’t be sure, because I’m not God, but I could guess that one of the reasons is because he wants us to work.” -AS

This is a worthwhile question to consider. Why is the majority of the Bible (particularly the Old Testament) written in story form rather than as a book of systematic theology? Why also, within these stories, would God choose to be less than clear on the intrinsic lesson - assuming there is one (not very didactic of Him, huh Jameson)? As Justin has previously pointed out, the Bible tends to be more descriptive than prescriptive. It tells the story as it happened and very seldom takes the extra step to supplement the events that are occurring with any moral qualification. So, why Story? Let me provide the only possible explanation I have come across as presented in John Eldredge’s book, Epic.

Story is the language of the heart. Or, in other words, the heart receives and frames its beliefs within the construct of story. As Eldredge suggests, “Life doesn’t come to us as a math problem. It comes to us the way that a story does, scene by scene (Epic, pg. 2).” He goes on to suggest that story is also how we figure things out (as evidenced by our fixation with the news, novels, and movies and our tendency to look to them for illumination into our own lives).

This principle has applications to our spiritual life as well. For instance, God uses this tendency to redeem all those dead, stagnant periods of time (chronos in Greek) by providing also divinely orchestrated moments (kairos in Greek) which infuse them with meaning. But if we understood life and internalized our experiences with our bare bones intellect, we wouldn’t find it necessary to draw a distinction between chronos and kairos at all. But the fact of the matter is that we do perceive such a distinction, and this is why human beings love stories. All the elements of a great story - setting, plot, conflict, character, point of view, theme - work because there exists a corresponding quality in our nature. If we can accept this principle, then we’ve understood the premise of Eldredge’s worldview. He goes on to say,

“Every story, great and small, shares the same essential structure because every great story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being - what pioneer psychologist Carl Jung tried to explain as archetype, or what his more recent popularizer Joseph Campbell called myth.” -Epic, pg. 12-13

“Every story we tell is our attempt to put into words and images what God has written there, on our hearts.” -Epic, pg. 73

While I might be missing some inherent flaw in his theology, I think Eldredge’s explanation serves at least one crucial purpose and that is to provide a framework within which we can understand our communion with God. If God has made our hearts to learn and grow through the medium of Story, then it might follow that He meant for our communion with Him to be an experience more centered around the heart than the mind. We can all agree that our intellects are more adept to learning through concise, systematic presentations of facts and principles. Stories, on the other hand, tend to teach us things which our intellect often has difficulty putting to words. The lessons take a “back road” to accomplish its intended purpose. Blaise Pascal writes in Pensées, “The heart has its reason which reason knows nothing of.” We’re all familiar with the idea of a girl’s emotions preceding her intellectual comprehension of those emotion’s source. They cry before they even know intellectually what’s wrong. Stories do that…after watching the movie Braveheart, you might feel inspired to take up arms with William Wallace without ever grasping the politics or necessity of his cause. It moves our hearts, and so we act.

As implied in this framework, Story is the language of the heart; and incidentally, Story is also the dominant form of divine expression available to believers. It must follow that God intended a communion of the heart to be the center of our relationship with Him. Story is an especially powerful tool to teach, grow, and challenge believers in their faith walk with the unique characteristic of transcending the intellectual limitations of its hearers (positive actions can be inspired without the antecedent of intellectual comprehension). This quality of Story relieves the tension that exists between intellectual capacity and one’s ability to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

I believe God intended for our heart, rather than our intellect, to be the center of our faith walk. I think this point is communicated in Prov. 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”; and Prov. 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” We cannot ignore the emphasis the Bible seems to place on the heart’s activity and the debilitating limitations He has placed on our intellect. In Ecclesiastes 11:5, Solomon writes, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” In 3:10 he writes, “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” David reflects on God’s intimate knowledge of him and responds, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain (Ps. 139:6).” And Proverbs 25:2 suggests that God conceals things in mystery for the sake of His glory (it’s interesting to consider the “God of the gaps” discussion in this light).

The intellect is indispensable in discerning spiritual truth, but I believe that God intended our heart to be the primary instrument for communion with Him. Granted, the concept of the heart is kind of ambiguous and can hardly be separated from the mental process, but I think we are all aware of the distinction between the type of meditation our hearts engage in as compared with that of the intellect. The intellect, stripped to bare bones, would produce a naturalist or a monist. The metaphysical heart is the bridge between our bare bones intellect and that abstraction which we call the supernatural (see The Abolition of Man, pg. 25). An acknowledgment of both is essential to the Christian worldview, yet they have different means of receiving truth.

So, anyway, let me bring this back to the essential question. How does God’s choice of story form to express Himself (according to Eldredge’s worldview) relate to the discussion of discerning spiritual truth? For one, It appeals to a heart-centered form of communion whereas our discussion up to this point has more supported discernment via the intellect. I feel pretty certain that, if we are to take the Biblical perspective, we are going to have to accept some degree of supernatural discernment which is not so dependent on intellectual capacity. Likewise, I think there are fundamental qualities of the Christian faith that are lost to an intellect-driven faith walk. On the other hand, I think the alternative forces us back into that uneasy territory of subjectivity, which is very difficult to defend. In one last quote, AS, you said:

“But if the primary means through which God speaks is the Bible, and I think it is, it might would be an apt illustration to say that that voice is in a language that needs to be interpreted. Interpretation, of course, involving the intellect.” -AS

What would you propose is the “shape” of spiritual discernment (that not arrived at via intellectual constructs). What does it look like? How is it practiced? What is it and what is it not? Is there communion with God beyond that which is freely accessible through intellectual exploration of His word? Can we truly expect the type of intimacy which many Christians are claiming is available to us or is nearness to God nothing more than harmony with the theology of the Bible? WHY DOES IT SEEM THAT CHRISTIANS ARE CONTINUALLY MISSING IT!?…“Like sheep without a shepherd…” That is the question.

Validity of the Bible: Responses (Originally posted June 2007)

Allow me to preface with an apology for any rehashing that may be done in my attempted response as I would like to take this opportunity to organize my thoughts on assorted topics that have at least some relevance to the topic at hand. I feel I have very limited credentials to speak on much of what has been raised and for that reason I will give more treatment to some of the issues than others.

First, as to the origins of the canon. I’m sure it goes without being said that, as far as we know, none of the New Testament writers wrote with the intention of having their works canonized. So how’d it happen? I appreciate your five possible logical explanations for why the NT canon came together and I realize what I am about to say furthers the plight of the skeptic, but is it possible that the gathering of the canon came about by way of supernatural guidance? It would be nice to assume that closer to the event of Jesus’ incarnation there would be a deeper spirituality among God’s people. We are talking about people who supposed lived within just a few generations of the most revolutionary figure in all of history. These people’s great grandparents had seen Jesus. You get the idea. So perhaps their faith was so strong and God’s plan was so out of the ordinary that he used unparalleled guidance by the Holy Spirit to direct those responsible for assembling the canon very specifically as to what to include and what not and so on and so forth.

Moving on to the dating of the Biblical texts. I think the dating of the book of Acts is imperative in the dating of the gospels, which I would say is the most important dates we need to get right. We know that Acts was the second part of a letter written by Luke to “His Excellency” Theophilus. Accepting the assumption that Luke is a reliable historian (which I might add is the normal supposition made when examining the writing of all other historical figures [innocent until proven guilty]) one must wonder why Luke does not include two things in the book of Acts: 1. The Destruction of the Temple- AD 70 2. The death of the Apostle Paul (one of the book’s central figures)- AD 62. If you are willing to follow out the logic, you’d see that the reasonable explanation would be that the book of Acts would have been written before either of these two crucial dates. Going backwards, that would mean that the Gospel of Luke came before AD 62 and since Luke contains parts of Mark, as does Matthew, (Mark being the earliest Gospel) we have the Gospel of Mark being written very near Jesus’ death. Even if you don’t buy into that argument, consider this: Scholars, even liberals, put Mark in the 70s, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John in the 90s (generally). So, that is a window anywhere from about 40-70 years of Jesus’ death. That is two generations at best. Compare that with the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great (I owe such a comparison to Lee Strobel). His two earliest biographies were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after his death in 323 BC. Historians consider these to be generally trustworthy. In the case of Jesus, we are talking about twice as many biographies in less than a fourth of the time.

Finally, in regards to the Bible being “self-authoritative”. We know that the NT’s authority is rooted in the apostles who are the foundation of the household of God (Eph. 2:20). This makes sense since Jesus promised in John 16:13-14, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” So, ultimately, the NT’s authority is rooted in Jesus and we can work backwards from there to hear what Jesus said about the OT like Matt. 5:18 where Jesus claims, “truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” And I am sure you are familiar with tons of other NT verses like that that affirm the OT’s canonicity. I realize that it gets a little hairy to tell a skeptic, “the Bible is the Word of God because it says it is the Word of God and since it’s the Word of God I believe it.” But think of it this way. Imagine in a court of law the prosecutor is making his case for why he thinks the defendant is guilty and the defense attorney rises to object. The judge asks on what grounds does he object and he responds, “On the grounds that the prosecutor who is making this case actually believes the case he is making is true.” That is, analogously, what the authors of the Bible are so often accused of. I think this is especially prevalent when skeptics look at the gospel writers. They claim, “oh, these people had an agenda, therefore the fabricated nonsense they recorded is just that, nonsense.” But to borrow an analogy from Strobel:

Some people, usually for anti-Semitic purposes, deny or downplay the horrors of the Holocaust. But it has been the Jewish scholars who’ve created museums, written books, preserves artifacts, and documented eyewitness testimony concerning the Holocaust.
Now they have a very ideological purpose – namely, to ensure that such an atrocity never occurs again – but they have also been the most faithful and objective in their reporting of historical truth.

So it is with the gospel-writers. I recognize much of my focus has been on the gospels specifically rather than our broader intended scope of the entire Bible, but I really feel like Jesus has to be the starting point in apologetics. Seriously, if we measure time (or used to before they came up with the politically correct BCE/CE crap) according to the time of the man’s death he probably should be where we start when it comes to defending/working out our faith’s issues.

The Validity of the Bible: Part 1 (Originally posted June 2007)

This issue seems, from every angle, to be one of unique ambiguity. For the purposes of this forum, I will focus my questions to the following issues regarding the validity of the Bible: One, the origins of the canon; two, the methods of dating biblical texts by both conservative and liberal theologians; and three, the specific relevancies of the argument (as it effects the authority, reliability, and application of the text for the Christian; and how the perspective of the secularist might be undermined if their assumptions were properly challenged). This is a question which I’m sure others will be better suited to answer, but I’ll do my best to introduce the topic.

As for the origins of the canon (those books included in our modern Bibles and considered to be “inspired” by God), it seems an issue up for debate. It is clear that, even from several thousand year B.C., Jewish believers operated by observance of particular texts considered to be inspired by God. For instance, Daniel 9:2 reads: “…in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.” Also, it is known that certain biblical texts were commonly read aloud at the feasts of Israel. These include Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. If I remember my conversation with you correctly, the entire Old Testament was compiled and canonized - although perhaps not formally - by approximately 300 B.C. The New Testament books were canonized at a later date, the time and circumstances of which I can’t seem to nail down (granted, I’ve only asked around rather than researched the issue personally). If someone could supplement this issue, I would appreciate it.

So, where did the concept of canonization come from? I’m only guessing, but I suppose that part of the explanation involves our innate expectation that God would reveal Himself in a written account, as He has historically and as inferred through the person of Jesus Christ (as supported by the theology of His disciples - see, for example, John 1:1-18). The logic goes something like this:

1. God’s original revelation of Himself came via the Law, originally divinely transcribed on stone tablets and later expanded into written law.
2. God spoke through the prophets, who left written accounts of their prophecies.
3. The Messiah was both foretold in scripture and later validated by it (Luke 24:27, John 13:18, John 19:28, etc.)
4. God described Himself through these prior methods in terms of “word made flesh” (Ps. 119, etc.); this concept was also incorporated into New Testament theology (Heb. 1:1-3, Heb. 4:12, John 1:1-18; Col. 3:16; 2 Tim. 3:16, Rom. 9:17, Gal. 3:8, 2 Peter 1:20)
5. The retrospective evidence of having the word of God prove true in the lives of believers (Rom. 12:2-3, Rom. 2:15, 2 Cor. 3:18, James 1:22-25).

This last point is an example of how the Bible could be considered self-authoritative. If anyone would like to expound on this concept - specifically, how the Bible itself can be a legitimate testimony of its own validity - I would appreciate it. Points 1-4 are hardly worth considering if the Bible’s self-authoritative claims cannot be reasonably validated.

Anyway, it seems that Christians are very comfortable with the interpretation, application, and the concept of scriptural authority (particularly in regards to directing their lives and providing promises of eternal security), but seem alarmingly less clear on how the Bible came to be and from where its authority is drawn. Like my previous points have suggested, the strongest argument I’ve found so far as to the Bible’s validity is one which could very easily be considered a circular argument. As damning as the terminology sounds, I think there’s room to bolster that argument (that the Bible is self-authoritative) with clear logic and sound reason. Indeed, science espouses its fair share of self-authoritative theories as well. Quantum mechanics, for example, relies on a sort of retrospective proof which science seems to regard as quite convincing. As Dawkins writes, “Quantum mechanics, that rarefied pinnacle of twentieth-century scientific achievement, makes brilliantly successful predictions about the real world. Richard Feynman compared its precision to predicting the distance as great as the width of North American to an accuracy on one human hair’s breadth. This predictive success seems to mean that quantum theory has got to be true in some sense…yet the assumptions that quantum theory needs to make, in order to deliver those predictions, are so mysterious that even the great Feynman himself was moved to remark…: ‘If you think you understand quantum theory…you don’t understand quantum theory.’” (The God Delusion, pg. 364-365) Having said that, could the Bible’s authority be of a similar kind as that of quantum mechanics, gaining credence from the fruit it produces rather than upon the claims/assumptions it makes? What are your thoughts on this, since you introduced me to the term “self-authoritative” in the first place?

The meeting has reconvened...

Welcome to the Meeting of the Minute Minds, the annex to a prior series of discussions occurring between 2006-2008 that went by the same name. As the annex to this prior series, this forum will feature many of the same questions and themes as the original, as well as some of the specific content which those first discussions precipitated. Most of our discussions, then, will center around issues of faith, with primary attention being given to the question of whether the tenets of faith can be conciliated with principles of reason. Discussions of the past have featured such themes as the reliability of scripture, variant interpretations of the doctrine of faith, and the possible mechanics of conversing with God.

As the reader will no doubt recognize in the course of time, none of our contributors (at least presently) are experts on the topics we are discussing. However, the vast majority of us are highly sympathetic to the plight of the critically-minded to have their questions addressed in a manner that is intellectually satisfying. Therefore, though we might often in the course of our discussion fall well below the level of meticulousness that these subjects rightly warrant, we are nonetheless committed to the ideal of scholasticism, and will do our best to produce content that has at least appreciable intellectual merit. It is my hope that whatever ineptitudes we bring to the discussion do not serve to deter potential contributors from joining in, but rather encourage them to offer their own perhaps less-than-sophisticated thoughts and opinions on what is, admittedly, very complex and difficult subject matter.

Finally, in the process of browsing through the archives of past entries (particularly that content that is original to the first series), the reader will notice that prior discussions were largely motivated by a positive desire to defend the tenets of faith before the potential critiques of reason. This motivation, however, was largely a function of convictions which I no longer hold to the same degree. As such, though I might continue at times to proffer arguments in defense of faith, it is expressly not my intention to act as its guardian, and would be happy if future discussions featured a slightly more balanced representation of views. In short, the purposes of this present forum are NOT reflected in the bulk of its archived content (that is, occurring between the years 2007-2008), in which a distinctly pro-Christian bias pervades. I hope the tone of these prior discussions, which was merely an indication of the different goals I then held, does not too greatly burden our present discussions by obscuring the fact that it is driven by its own unique set of goals and motivations.