Can genuine faith lead one beyond orthodoxy?

Many Christians are pretty comfortable with the idea of progressive revelation - the notion that more ancient people groups might have engaged with a less perfect revelation of God's true nature than we do today. This move, among other things, serves to free up some room for modern Christians to reject certain ancient practices, perhaps even doctrines, which strike them as outmoded, archaic, or even flat wrong.

Scripture seems to provide some justification for this notion, i.e. in books like Romans and Hebrews which outline the rejection of the law in favor of a new covenant of grace. This could be taken as an instance of progressive revelation.

E.g., “Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:7-18)

An explanation of such paradigm shifts within God's larger program is provided by the dispensationalists. These are going to say that, as much as the methodology may change, there is an unbroken harmony between them all, and each are in their own way compatible with some more fundamental principle which is essential to God's nature.

A common example is the variant expressions of love. A parent may at times express his love for his children by showing affection, at other times through discipline; at times through intimacy, at other times through imposed distance. All expressions, however, are consistent with the more fundamental principle which motivates them - that is, love.

And the idea is that a well-developed acquaintance with the principle reveals that which is essential to God's nature, and necessarily underlies his every action. We hence become empowered to reject as fixed or essential any particular expression, or 'dispensation', of God's love. This kind of understanding presumably frees one from various forms of legalism, and allows one to take a stand against things which have a foundation in tradition or standard orthodoxy.

E.g., "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven...

"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt. 5:17-20, 27-28)

The revolutionary character of Christ's teaching seemingly finds sanction in an understanding such as that described above - when one understands the principles from which orthodoxy derives, one may dispense with the orthodoxy in favor of the principle.

"Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law." (Gal. 3:24-25)

But how far does such liberty extend? Christians have deemed heretical those views which presume to affirm revelations of God's nature and plan for mankind which extend beyond that of Christ. Joseph Smith, for instance, of the Mormon sect made such claims, and orthodox Christians categorically reject them. They do this on several bases, one of which is the following passage of scripture:

"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." (Rev. 22:18-19)

Although this passage only speaks of adding to the content of 'the prophecy of this book', i.e., the book of Revelation as recorded by John, it is commonly applied to that further end as well as a sort of logical implication. Other passages of scripture seem to corroborate this interpretation, such as those in which Jesus warns his followers to be wary of false prophets who will come announcing his return, etc. Fair enough.

But here is the question. How deep can the rabbit hole go within the confines of orthodox Christian doctrine? How much can a Christian's understanding of God's nature transcend or diverge from orthodox Christianity before it becomes heresy? C.S. Lewis in one book uses the term 'Tao' to refer to the broadest, most fundamental basis of all truth, out of which systematized Christianity derives. But he speaks also of a freedom to improvise improvements/ adaptations to the system as one becomes more deeply familiarized with the Tao itself, the source of truth.

Liberalist movements within Christianity largely tell the story of man's attempt to stretch and adapt orthodox Christianity to accommodate certain difficulties which the original forms seem to neglect or misrepresent. Many feel like they absolutely must make allowance for such 'improvements' to preserve the viability of the system in the face of science and a million other factors. Between the options of adapting or abandoning, they concede to adapt.

So, some alter their belief structure to accommodate problematic features of their experience. Others, I believe, follow other influences to similarly foreign places. Internal conviction, even that believed to be of divine origin, might motivate these changes. The development of denominations within the church, the launching of humanitarian or religious movements, etc. can probably be traced back to a nagging impulse which the possessor interpreted as a divine calling or command. They are all alike improvising on the general theme.

Can genuine faith, then, lead one beyond orthodoxy into apparent heresy? What are the safeguards for the 'pilgrims', those that brave the journey beyond the tradition into potentially deeper revelations of God's nature and intentions for mankind? Kierkegaard writes on this theme in his book, Fear and Trembling. Here he considers the story of Abraham, the 'father of faith'. Kierkegaard takes his situation to be paradigmatic of the life of faith - a journey into the unknown, a journey in which one relates directly to God, circumventing even those ethical prescriptions which are typically thought to facilitate the life of faith. He asks, 'is there a teleological suspension of the ethical' such as would justify Abraham in following God's calling even to the alter where he would sacrifice his beloved son? Why divorce one from the ethical norm in order to initiate the life of faith? This question consumes Kierkegaard, and for good reason, I think.

There's so much more to this dilemma that I can't develop right now, but I think the question has been adequately contextualized to fuel initial discussion. Where might faith lead us within the legitimate boundaries of Christianity? How far beyond or outside of orthodoxy, and with what stipulations? When has one definitively transgressed his/her doctrinal commitments? What is the essence of heresy such that one might recognize how to avoid it while remaining faithful to God's call on their lives - even, if necessary, beyond or outside of traditional orthodoxy?

Faith: Part 3 (Originally posted Aug. 27, 2007)

Let me preface my response by telling you that C.S. Lewis has already discussed this issue at length in the first chapter of The Abolition of Man. By the end of my post, I hope to have provided what I have just asked AS for in my last post - that is, the “shape” of supernatural discernment. But so that we are first all agreed in my general premise, let me describe the “real world” correlative as referenced in Plato’s Republic (pgs. 122-125):

“It would seem…that the direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life. Does not like always attract like?…Until some one rare and grand result is reached which may be called good, [or] may be the reverse of good?…[so then,] shall we condescend to legislate on any of [the] particulars? I think…that there is no need to impose laws about them on good men; what regulations are necessary they will find out soon enough for themselves…”

“…[but] without divine help…they will go on forever making and mending the laws and their lives in the hope of attaining perfection…[such men] are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra…” (pg. 122-124)

(If it is not clear what Plato is describing, think of these individuals as the ethical equivalent of a hypochondriac. The person is always troubling himself with trivial matters, when it is his general character which he should attend to. They “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel (Matt. 23:24).”)

“…the true legislator will not trouble himself with this class of enactments whether concerning laws or the constitution [of a State]…many of them will naturally flow our of our previous regulations.”

In the book, Socrates returns later to describe what is to be the emphasis of sound instruction with this illustration:

“You know…that dyers, when they want to dye wool for making the true sea-purple, begin by selecting their white color first; this they prepare and dress with much care and pains, in order that the white ground may take the purple hue in full perfection. The dyeing then proceeds; and whatever is dyed in this manner becomes a fast color, and no washing either with lyes or without them can take away the bloom. But, when the ground has not been duly prepared, you will have noticed how poor is the look either of purple or any other color. Then now…you will understand what our object was in [educating our citizens]; we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the color of…every opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure - mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye; or by sorrow, fear, or desire, the mightiest of all other solvents.” (pg. 128-129)

As C.S. Lewis comments:

“In The Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her (see Republic, pg. 95-96).’” (The Abolition of Man, pg. 16-17)

Up to this point, we have considered only Plato’s philosophy of education, and it seems to me a good one. Now, is there any reason preventing us from applying the same principles to God’s approach with man? I think, rather, that the Bible supports this principle, as evidenced in the verse below.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Rom. 12:2)

The concept is that the heart is like an instrument requiring fine tuning if it is to resonate in harmony with God’s heart. Or perhaps it is better thought of us an antennae which must be regularly tweaked in order to tune in to God’s frequency. Or it could even be thought of as the helm of a ship. This is my personal favorite because it treats the heart as a fixed mechanism with an explicit purpose: to direct the ship. (Furthermore, it isn’t as accommodating of those cutesy clichés as my previous illustrations, and the fewer cutesy phrases I have to use, like “quiet time” for instance, the better.)

People - particularly academia - often ridicule someone who “follows their heart” or “trusts their gut” (by the way, the Israelites also placed the heart’s activities in the bowels and the kidneys, so the terms are interchangeable). Thomas Jefferson says it best:

“'Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity (The God Delusion, pg. 34).’”

Jim Watson, founder of the Human Genome Project, commented: “I’m a bit embarrassed [laughs] because, you know, I can’t believe anyone accepts truth by revelation (The God Delusion, pg. 99).”

And, here comes the slippery slope, we all probably agree that reliance upon feelings is unwise (reminiscent of the Fact-Faith-Feeling train from certain Christian tracts). But telling someone not to follow their heart is, relative to Biblical principles, the equivalent of telling someone not to navigate their ship at the helm. To further illustrate this point, consider Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees:

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matt. 12:34)

“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

What I like about the concept of living from the heart - well, one thing anyway - is that our hearts are capable of inspiring actions that we would not have otherwise made intellectually. It allows such experiences as falling in love, bearing someone else’s burdens, or even laying down our lives for someone else. I like that we describe this kind of inspiration in terms of being “swept up” into something “bigger than ourselves.” It seems to reestablish our position in relation to God - we recognize in we do are not doing the work, but participating in the divine nature. It distinguishes us from other creatures, even from ourselves when we are acting as mere creatures, and makes us feel truly human. “…for in the image of God has God made man.” (Gen. 9:6)

But back to the attitude of academia toward what Jefferson would call “unintelligible propositions”, that is, those that are based on some subjective intuition of the heart, let me clarify what is really being debated. What most critics mean when they call a proposition unintelligible is that it can’t be assessed empirically. And to further clarify, let me provide a definition. Empiricism is defined as the way we assemble what we know of ourselves and our world from the "association of ideas" that come to us from our five senses. Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. But is that all there is? Are the “five senses” really the only contributing constituents to what we acknowledge in our minds as sound reason? Philosophy would not exist if it were. But when we’re studying the natural world, that one side of what many acknowledge is a two-sided coin, all voices besides those coming from our five senses are silenced. And this is what we call being empirical.

And you know what, this is a perfect standard for the field of science. Science is only concerned with the natural, therefore it only makes sense to exclude non-empirical data. The problem comes in when someone becomes so habitually dependent on the natural, that he/she forgets its limitations. It is nothing but a case of nearsightedness. Narrow-mindedness. Bias. None of the terms are meant to offend, only to remind anyone who has forgotten that such a state of mind is quite common. We all do it. But every once in a while, we need to expose ourselves to the many correctives this world has made available. We are acted upon by reality in the same way our government is acted upon by the system of checks and balances. As C.S. Lewis has said, “All reality is iconoclastic (A Grief Observed, pg. 66).” There are experiential counter-weights everywhere, if only we are open to them.

In the illustration below, we see the potential consequence of a life lived shut off from the reality and its iconoclastic nature. As you read it, keep in mind that we are sometimes kept from the reality by forces outside ourselves (as is the boy in the story); but at other times, we are our own imprisoner (as we have just discussed).

“Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance, she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities, and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that the outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute of two they are at a cross-purpose. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps, ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?’ And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition - the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the colored three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes with at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.” (The Weight of Glory: "Transposition". pg. 109-110)

Needless to say, we have all had personal experiences with individuals who affirm - and under no compulsion - certain feelings or experiences which Christianity presents as evidence of our origins but which science (or more strictly, the monist perspective) disregards. One of the most wide-reaching examples of this kind of experience which I have found is that which Lewis describes as Joy. This experience, when understood as Lewis intended, is to me one of the strongest arguments on the side of Christianity and deserving of a separate discussion all its own. For now, suffice it to say that even atheists are sometimes caught off guard with experiences that draw them outside themselves.

Before closing, I would like to discuss the thing which takes the conversation full circle…I have already suggested that faith is a reliance upon those things which God has made known to us intuitively, in our hearts. But this is a double-edged sword, because as intangibility protects intuition from being ruled out by science, so it also prevents us from making empirical judgments about its conclusions. It, perhaps unfortunately, introduces a measure of subjectivity into the discussion, allowing not the accountability to peer review as does science, but personal accountability to one reviewer: God. As the Bible affirms, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?…The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment (1 Cor. 2:11).” But if you think about it, is this not a much more appropriate type of accountability for intuitive knowledge, since morality (or better, right standing with God) is at its heart? Morality really goes no further than the heart (as in, there is no prior source). Actions in themselves are morally benign; it is sin in the heart that brings death to the soul. “…but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death (James 1:14-15).”

For all these reasons, I am inclined to agree with A.W. Tozer’s assessment (I think this is Tozer?) that “God’s voice must speak from within to bring enlightenment. It must be the Spirit of God speaking soundlessly within. That is what brings in man and makes him accountable to God.” (Peter Lord, Hearing God, pg. 20) And if all this is true, true of Christianity at least, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to return to my position as devil’s advocate for a while…the consequence of establishing a system of such immense expectation - that of God entering into intelligible dialogue with man - creates the potential for deep emotional / spiritual wounds to develop. It is as if God signs on to what is very largely, in our experience anyway, a human enterprise, where the rules of engagement are well-agreed upon. How does the God who reveals Himself to Job as an unpredictable, uncontrollable whirlwind (Job 38:1) condescend to such a position? How does He then borrow such emotionally-infused qualifiers as friend, brother, father, and lover to describe His relationship with us? God was not wary, not the least bit cautious, in building up the incredible expectation that exists around Him today. And I find this is a frustrating, an exasperating, promise of scripture that demands our deeper exploration.

(Suggested reading on this subject includes John Eldredge’s Journey of Desire; Peter Kreeft’s Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing; C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man (Chapter 1: Men Without Chests); Peter Lord’s Hearing God, and of course all of the context implied by quotes included in this response.)