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.

Faith: Part 1 (Originally posted June 17, 2007)

I wrote, rewrote, started over, and revised this one until I could have no more...My skeptical side would present the arguments one day only to have my spiritual side feel compelled to answer them the next. Consequently, I think I'm going to kick this one off with a short post more in keeping with my original intention - as an expression of the world's view of Faith - and follow it up later with a more in-depth assessment of what I believe to be the real issue. I think allowing some time between the two will better serve our purposes anyway as you will all have time to consider your own response to the questions surrounding the biblical virtue of Faith.

Here are some examples of the kinds of things the world says about faith:

“Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a different matter. Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn’t happen with holy books…we believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it….As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.” (The God Delusion, pg. 282-284)

“…religious faith is an especially potent silencer of rational calculation, which usually seems to trump all others. This is…partly because it discourages questioning, by its very nature. Christianity…teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue.” (The God Delusion, pg. 306)

“Irrefutability is a virtue for committed believers, but a scientific vice.” (Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.)

“More generally, what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not too hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades.” (The God Delusion, pg. 307-308)

Without picking apart these statements (and there is room for it), let me just restate what I understand to be the heart behind their criticisms:

1. The commending of faith as a virtue creates an environment for fundamentalist and extremist attitudes to develop among believers.

2. Faith, when nurtured in this way, undermines the scientific enterprise by encouraging believers to defend claims which evidence seems to contradict.

3. Faith, lacking a clear and objective definition, can be used as a trump-all sort of justification for almost any action (many of these, we can freely admit, could even be loosely supported by scripture).

My question is whether the nature of Christian faith is really as it is perceived by the secular community. Let’s consider the different definitions of faith we have heard from spiritual leaders in our own lives…how far are they from Dawkins’ and Sheldrake’s appraisals? Once we have taken time to consider those definitions we have at one point accepted, or at least tolerated in our spiritual mentors, we can then move on to consider the Bible’s definitions and see if we have missed something in our understanding of biblical faith. I think whatever we discover, it is important to realize how gray the lines must appear to the common Christian for such deviant definitions of faith to persist within the church. That realization may be an issue in and of itself, evidence which might reasonably suggest neglectful parenting on God’s part. But one thing at a time…

Hebrews 11:1-3 defines faith in this way…I am including three different translations to get every angle on what the terminology might actually infer (Justin, if you have any insight into the Greek, that’d be helpful too):

(In the NAS translation) “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

(In the NIV translation) “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

(In the KJV translation) “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

Within these verses, I think it is significant that faith is being defined in terms of evidence, substance, and assurance. These terms don’t seem congruent with the criticisms of Dawkins or Sheldrake. It might be worthwhile, then, to consider which passages of scripture might be supplying Dawkins - and those like him - with the particular picture of faith they now hold. Regardless of how close (or how far) Dawkins or Sheldrake may have come to describing the real thing, one thing is certain: the form they were criticizing has all but replaced true faith within the church.

…This moves me on to my next question: If the church has misunderstood the biblical virtue of faith so as to adopt a deviant definition of it, is God to blame? John 14:26 and 16:13 say that we are guided into all truth through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 12 tells us that it is by the Holy Spirit that we are granted the gift of discernment; and in Matthew 13:11-12, that we understand the secrets of the kingdom of heaven through tuning our spiritual ears to hear His voice. All these things seem to point to God as the source of spiritual understanding, in which case we might rightly call Him the “author and perfector of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). It seems a reasonable accusation, then, to suggest that God should be held accountable when His children err due to an imperfect understanding of His will. I remember a discussion with Justin in which we decided the Bible does not support this sort of scapegoating, but for the sake of argument, let’s consent the accusation for now. Also, if spiritual enlightenment is in fact a spiritual phenomenon, you would expect little or no correlation between sheer intellect and one’s ability to discern spiritual truths. However, there is considerable evidence that such a correlation does exist.

“A…study by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi ‘found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from.’ A study in the leading journal Nature by Larson and Witham in 1998 showed that of those American scientists considered eminent enough by their peers to have been elected to the National Academy of Science (equivalent to being a Fellow of the Royal Society in Britain) only about 7 per cent believe in a personal God. This overwhelming preponderance of atheists is almost the exact opposite of the American population at large, of whom more than 90 per cent are believers in some sort of supernatural being. …It is completely as I would expect that American scientists are less religious than the American public generally, and that the most distinguished scientists are the least religious of all. Michael Shermer, in How We Believe: The Search for God in and Age of Science, describes a large survey of randomly chosen Americans that he and his colleague, Frank Sulloway carried out. Among their many interesting results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious). Religiosity is also negatively correlated with interest in science and (strongly) with political liberalism. None of this is surprising, nor is the fact that there is a positive correlation between religiosity and parent’s religiosity.” (The God Delusion, pg. 100-102)

When you think upon those individuals whom you consider to have the best or most accurate understanding of scripture, are they not also the most intelligent individuals - at least as you personally measure intelligence? It seems, at least in my experience, that those with whom I most closely relate on spiritual matters are those who, curiously enough, think like me. So, it would seem that spiritual discernment, in many instance, is no more than recognition of your preferred thoughts expressed through others. Hence the wide array of religious flavors available to believers. Denominations are a product of personal preferences (or, at its best, personal conviction), not of sound theology. This poses a problem for me personally, as I tend to hold spiritual revelation among believers as one of the most central and necessary characteristics of true faith. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3).” But then, is our experience as Christians resonant with John 10’s description that “the sheep recognize His voice”? Do we not vary in spirituality as much we vary in personality? It must be that Christianity is either a faith embracing of a certain degree of subjectivity, or Christians just aren’t hearing God’s voice properly. I’m not sure one conclusion is any less problematic than the other. What do all of you think?