Monthly Archives: January 2024

Conclusion: The Certainty of Faith (Seminarian Visits Theology Professor #6)

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Introduction

In their last conversation, the professor and the seminarian concluded that modern academia’s 250-year effort to rationalize faith has failed miserably. Academia’s obsessive desire to avoid believing anything false led it to apply standards appropriate only to mathematics and (perhaps) logic to the Bible. Of course, no theological scholar attempted to translate the Bible into mathematical terms. But the historical and literary methods critical biblical scholars developed aimed to approximate the ideal of mathematical certainty as closely as possible. And they do not limit their efforts to understanding the message of the texts as written. Ordinarily, when we read a supposedly historical text, we imagine the real events as having unfolded as they do in the written texts. Critical scholars begin, instead, with the suspicion—real or methodological—that the texts are not what they seem. The modern scholar’s goal is to escape the spell cast by the text, outsmart the author, and use the text as a source for discovering what really happened.

The Bible is the only source we have for almost every line of the history it contains. We don’t have independent access to the real events, so scholars develop methods—using literary features, psychological plausibility, metaphysical theories, and other criteria—they think capable of distinguishing those events within the texts that really happened from later literary embellishments. Each of these methods and the results their application produces simply generates another set of debates in an endless cycle. But from the point of view of faith, the two most troubling problems are these: the set of historical and theological beliefs considered the closest approximation to mathematical certainty are so few and so trivial that they are of no use to the church. Not only so, even these most probable beliefs are highly debatable. The end results of critical academic study of the Bible turns out to be but a pale shadow of the bright light of faith that the church, drawing on the whole canon of Scripture, has proclaimed, taught and lived for two millennia.

Setting: The professor and the seminarian thought it fitting that the sixth conversation should take place in the local Antiochian Orthodox church. Surrounded by stained glass renderings of Bible history, vaulted ceilings, and illuminated icons, what better setting could one find for discussing the reliability of the church’s faith in Scripture and the believer’s trust in both!

Seminarian: Sitting in this place one has a feeling of participation in something ancient and transcendent.

Professor: And holy!

Seminarian: Something you cannot experience in academic lecture halls!

Professor: Divine and heavenly; not earthly and merely human. A silent presence rather than empty chatter.

Seminarian: Sitting here, now, after all our conversations, I feel changed; all doubt has left me. It’s as if I had been locked in a dark cellar, my captors telling me that my memories of sun and sky, wind and rain, green grass and singing birds were mere wishes based on pretty stories; but now I see the sun and feel his warmth, I hear the birds, the breeze caresses my cheeks. I smell the flowers, I taste the fruits of the earth—and my heart sings. How is this possible? The Reality and Truth that hostile critics tried to suppress and friendly critics attempted to prove—both producing only doubt and confusion—now fills my soul so that I could sooner doubt that I exist in this world in this body than doubt that I am loved by God, saved by Christ, and illuminated by the Spirit. Is this what the church means by the “certainty of faith”?

Professor: Yes. I believe the experience you describe could be what the church designates as “the certainty of faith.” Our parents and the church assured us that the Scriptures embody and preserve the original witness of the companions of Jesus. By the “church” I don’t mean simply the church you experienced as a child. I mean the worldwide church. Pick any century you wish, the 17th, 12th, 2nd or the 1st.  Pick any continent, any country. You will find that every sermon, creed, confession, catechism, prayer, and sacramental rite derives its legitimacy from the teaching preserved in Scripture. And this is true despite heretical movements, ambitious patriarchs and worldly bishops. Scripture always exerts a corrective force that exposes heresy and ungodly bishops. No movement that abandons or twists the scriptures can long endure.

Seminarian: But there are those who deny or doubt that the church is correct in its confidence in Scripture.

Professor: Yes. You can always find someone who doubts the church but gullibly believes the most outlandish conspiracy theory. Consider the source.

Seminarian: But even if we believe the ecumenical church of all time and space that the scriptures embody and preserve the original witness of the companions of Jesus, we can still ask or be asked, “Is their testimony true?”

Professor: Yes. That is a genuine question, and it should not be dismissed too readily as cynical. On one level, asking whether or not the apostolic testimony to Jesus Christ is true has in view two alternative possibilities. It would be false if they were innocently mistaken or they cynically conspired to create and perpetuate a fraud. In responding to these possibilities, I believe we should be careful not to slide back into the endless academic debates about historical probabilities. Usually, when people, even strangers, tells us about an event they witnessed, we believe them unless we have a good reason not to do so. If we happen to know that they could not have been present at the event as they claim or if they have a reputation for telling tall tales, we greet their story with a raised eyebrow . And if the event to which they bear witness were highly unusual but not impossible, we might maintain a bit of skepticism unless their story was corroborated by several other reliable people. Whether or not to believe a stranger cannot be decided with mathematical precision. Such decisions are much too complicated and mysterious to articulate explicitly. In a similar way, evaluating the apostolic testimony and making a decision to believe them or not cannot be made in a scientific way. You have to listen to them, get to know them, and, as they say, go with your gut.

Seminarian: But even if you come to believe that the apostolic witnesses are telling the truth in the New Testament writings, you may still harbor doubts, because you don’t know what you don’t know. It doesn’t seem that we have yet achieved the certainty of faith.

Professor: It’s true. Simply believing the apostolic message—as important as that is—is not yet the fullness and certainty of faith. Why? Because you have not yet experienced for yourself the Reality of what they experienced; it was not meant for them alone, you know! For sure, we depend on the apostolic word recorded in the New Testament for knowledge of Jesus Christ. We can never outgrow it. But with the help of that word, we are led to the living Father, the reigning Christ, and the ever-present Spirit of God. In worship, in prayer, in liturgical reading, in loving service, in suffering, and in meditating on the cross, we open ourselves to the Father, Son, and Spirit who come to live in us and in whom we live. We experience an all-embracing love and a peace that passes understanding. And this is the certainty of faith.

Seminarian: Beautiful! Finally, what about the Bible? We began these conversations with the question of whether or not my parents and the church taught us rightly when it urged us to accept the whole of the canonical Scriptures as the word of God and the authority for believing and living as a Christian. Were they right?

Professor: Absolutely! They were right! Your parents and your church said only what the church has said from the beginning. The church pointed us to the original apostolic witness so that we could hear and believe and experience its truth for ourselves. It urged us to listen to the Scriptures as the word of God. Once we come to believe for ourselves and experience the Reality they experienced, that is, the Father, Son, and Spirit, we return to the church to thank her for her guidance, for preserving and rightly interpreting the Scriptures. Having tasted the truth of that to which prophets and apostles witnessed, we long by means of their writings to sit at their feet as they tell us more about the God whose word they heard and whose power they witnessed. Those chosen ones who walked with our Lord in the flesh, who saw the empty tomb, and to whom the risen Christ appeared are to be listened to, obeyed, and honored until the end of the world. We who believe want to take our place in the congregation of the people of God. We seek not to live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. So, yes your parents were right when they urged you to listen with the ecumenical church of all times and places to every writing, every paragraph, every sentence, and every word of the Bible, and to receive it as from the mouth of God.

Seminarian: These conversations have been life-giving. Thank you so much! I feel a joy and confidence I have not felt for years! But my renewed joy and confidence are grounded not only on my trust in my parents and my childhood church but on my newfound trust in the ecumenical church of all times and places, in the persuasive power of the original apostolic witness, and finally, in the confirmation of the living presence of the Father, Son, and Spirit who pours out his divine love and peace into my soul. Thank you!

Professor: May God bless you always with his living presence and through you bless the lives of many yet to be born.

Seminarian: I hope you don’t mind if now and then I drop by for a visit.

Professor: Of course. You are welcome to stop by. Goodbye.

Seminarian: Goodbye

Academia’s Double Standard, Or Orthodoxy for Me but Not for Thee (Seminarian Visits Theology Professor #5)

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Introduction

Today we listen in on the fifth conversation between a recent seminary graduate and one of his former professors. The previous conversation centered on clarifying the critical standard academia uses to test knowledge claims. Taking mathematics and logic as the ideal sciences, academia measures all other endeavors to secure knowledge by the ideal of clear, exhaustive, and absolute knowledge. In sciences other than mathematics, however, this ideal is unattainable and can be only approximated to one degree or another. Not only so, the level of success in approximating the ideal is always a matter of dispute. Because it is unattainable in fields other than pure mathematics, it is open to abuse and selective application. Our professor argues that the dominant academic approach to the Bible and Christian faith displays just this sort of abuse and endless debate.

Setting: The seminarian and the professor agree that friendly conversation is better when you are sharing food and drink or taking a walk together. Warm and sunny, today is a perfect day for a leisurely walk.

Seminarian: Thank you for suggesting that we walk as we talk today.

Professor: Like sharing a meal, walking together is an act of friendship conducive to honest conversation. Where did we leave our last conversation?

Seminarian: As I recall, we were going to examine the ways the academic method creates doubt about the Bible as a reliable source of knowledge of God.

Professor: Yes. I remember. Tell me, then, in the most succinct way you can how academia attempted to diminish your confidence in the Bible as a repository of divine revelation.

Seminarian: I can summarize it in four words. On hundreds of occasions, in scores of different ways, and to every belief I brought with me to seminary, academia repeated the same challenge: “How do you know?” How do you know the Bible is true? How do you know that every book, every sentence, and every word is inspired or God-breathed? How do you know the biblical writings are authentic, that is, written by authors to whom they are ascribed, composed at the times and in places they claim, and preserved uncorrupted? How do you know that the events they recount really happened? How do you know that the authors’ theological interpretations of the events they write about are true? How do you know that the Scribes and Rabbis that selected the Old Testament canon and the churches and bishops and councils that selected the New Testament canon did not make mistakes in the writings they included or excluded?

Professor: Asking “how do you know?” seems more like a rhetorical ploy than an academic argument. You don’t have to know anything about a subject or offer any alternative explanations for the data, to ask this question. Did they make any positive arguments? Do they attempt to demonstrate the Bible’s unreliability or provide an alternative history or theology?

Seminarian: Yes. They did. And they can succeed in creating plausible doubt at some points. In my experience, however, the “how-do-you-know” question is the only way to mount an effective challenge to faith in the Bible’s reliability as the authority for Christian teaching, because most of the Bible’s message is untestable by universally acknowledged criteria. The Bible is the only source of information we have for almost all the history it contains. You have to take it or leave it. True, there are some areas where the Bible’s statements may be tested. The simplest way to test the Bible’s reliability is to examine it for internal coherence or compatibility with external sources. If the Bible seems to assert two contradictory ideas or incompatible facts, this would be a mark against its reliability for those ideas and facts. If the Bible asserts ideas and facts that contradict or are incompatible with ideas and facts sourced from outside the Bible, one must assess which source to trust and to what degree. To take one obvious example, the first eleven chapters of Genesis, taken as history or science in the modern sense, seems to be incompatible with some aspects of modern cosmology, archeology, biology, and the modern understanding of the course of ancient history. And there are many other places where the Bible speaks of historical events, natural phenomena, and moral principles to which some people claim to have independent access.

Professor: Indeed, examples could be multiplied. Hardly a biblical stoned has been left unturned. Biblical scholars have been studying the Bible in this academic way for at least 250 years. Some hoped that academic study would confirm the truth of faith and others seemed to take delight in debunking it. Some were cautious and reserved and others prone to speculation and flights of fancy. They examined it from every angle imaginable and set it within every ideological schema that has been developed: Hegelian, Marxist, postmodern, feminist, and gay. I have read widely in this literature for 50 years, and as I asserted a few conversations back, for all their efforts not much of substance has changed. If you want to know what the ancient Jews believed about God, creation, and other faith topics you still have to read the text of the Old Testament printed in your Bible, which is for all practical purposes the same as that read by Jesus and Paul. If you want to know about the life and teachings of Jesus, you have to read the New Testament Gospels. If you want to know what Jesus’s original disciples and the earliest church believed about Jesus, you have to read Acts, Paul, John, and the rest of the New Testament documents. Don’t get me wrong, biblical scholars have been very helpful in providing insights into the biblical writings. But when scholars use the biblical texts plus their vivid imaginations to reconstruct a picture of Jesus or the early church that is radically different from that given in the New Testament texts, what are we to do? Trust modern scholars and their methods? Which scholars? What methods? Surely, it makes more sense to trust the original sources even if there is no independent way, acceptable to academia, to prove them true. No matter how many scholars you read, you will still have to make a choice to believe the biblical teaching or not.

Seminarian: If I am hearing you correctly you are saying that all attempts to go beyond faith in grasping the truth of the Bible—whether to confirm or deny it—are futile and unreasonable. Am I right?

Professor: Yes. The Bible’s truth value cannot be assessed with mathematical methods. It makes historical and theological claims, and the methods by which historical and theological claims can be assessed cannot produce “clear, exhaustive, and absolute” knowledge. Academics who nevertheless attempt to transform biblical faith into scientific knowledge will inevitably reduce that faith to a few meaningless historical facts and a short list of culturally acceptable moralisms. Their edited Bible turns out to be even less plausible than the uninterpreted text. Ironically, their failed efforts to rationalize faith actually renders a service to faith. For if the Christian faith could be refuted (or proved) by academic means, it seems that 250 years of scholarly work would be enough to accomplish this task. From an academic point of view, however, it is still inconclusive. And it always will be, for that is the nature of academia.

Seminarian: And that brings us back to the “How do you know?” argument!

Professor: Exactly! Because orthodox/biblical faith cannot be defeated by positive academic arguments, unbelieving academics often resort to the “How do you know?” argument! Because it contains an element of truth, it often ensnares unwary students. It is true that we do not know the truth of the orthodox/biblical faith in the same way and to the degree of certainty that we know that 2 + 2 = 4. So what? Skeptical academics argue or imply that we ought not to trust beliefs grounded in faith. This act, they say, is a failure of rational responsibility and a loss of courage. We ought rather to hold such beliefs in suspense until we can know their truth status one way or another, which implies that we should never embrace Christian faith wholeheartedly and apply it to every aspect of our lives. For we cannot know its truth clearly, exhaustively, and absolutely.

Seminarian: If academics applied this standard to every belief they cherish, they would never embrace wholeheartedly and live by any belief or principle…except perhaps mathematical or logical ones. And you won’t have much of a life if you determine to act guided only by those abstractions!

Professor: But as we all know, the dominant culture of academia does not apply this rigorous standard to every belief and value! Can you imagine the furor that would be created on most college campuses if a guest speaker or a professor were to turn the tables and apply these standards to modern academia’s sacred cows in the following ways? “How do you know that the world is divided into wicked oppressors and righteous oppressed people? Can you prove that all black and brown people are victims of systemic racism? Can you give demonstrable evidence that racism is immoral? How can you prove that socialism is morally superior to capitalism? How do you know that diversity is a moral and social good? How do you know that seeking equity (or even equality!) is morally superior to rewarding merit? How do you know that inclusion is right and exclusion is wrong? How do you know that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights? Indeed, how do you know there are such things as human rights? So, you don’t know? You can’t answer? Well then, you should to hold such beliefs in suspense until you can know their truth status one way or another. If you don’t know them clearly, exhaustively, and absolutely you should not risk living by them or imposing them on others!”

Seminarian: I suspect that such a person would be silenced and perhaps attacked by a mob, fired from their jobs, and even arrested by law enforcement.

Professor: Higher education, too, has its dogma, its orthodoxy. To question it is to blaspheme, and you don’t argue with blasphemy. You silence it and persecute the perpetrator.

Professor: I see that we have been walking for about an hour and its nearly lunch time. Next time, let’s address directly why holding tenaciously to the faith proclaimed in the Bible and attested and passed on to us by the church is a very reasonable thing to do.

Seminarian: I look forward to it!

Professor: See you next time.

Is Faith an Inferior Way of Knowing? Seminarian Visits Theology Professor #4

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Introduction

This post is part four of a multipart conversation between a recent seminary graduate and one of his former professors. In part three, the seminarian outlined the view of the Bible and the Christian faith he learned in church. Today, he will attempt to recreate the steps by which he came to doubt the Bible and the traditional faith.

Setting: Since their last conversation, the seminarian and the professor discovered that they both frequent a little coffee roaster near the seminary. They plan to meet at 10:00am Wednesday.

Seminarian: Hi professor. Have you been here long?

Professor: Just got here.

(After receiving their coffee drinks, they resume their previous discussion.)

Professor: Now, where were we? Oh yes. I think we were about to examine the ways in which the academic approach to the Bible tends to weaken our commitment to biblical authority and render our faith doubtful. To get the conversation started, tell me the story of your first encounter with the modern academic method.

Seminarian: In our introductory class, we were asked to step outside our faith and look at the Bible and tradition as an outsider might. I was bewildered by this suggestion. Having always, along with the church, treated the Bible as Holy Scripture and its teaching as our precious faith, this request seemed to recommend sacrilege and betrayal. But my teachers assured me that this move was purely methodological. We did not have to become outsiders in fact. Taking a neutral stance to faith merely enabled us to ask questions that insiders don’t think to ask because they don’t need to, questions about history, literature, and ways of knowing. In this way, they explained, the academic approach enables us to understand the Bible and the traditional faith in a more comprehensive way. Besides, they continued, if the church’s view of the Bible is sound and the traditional faith is true, they will survive critical examination undamaged.

Professor: Did this justification for applying the academic method to the Bible seem reasonable to you at the time?

Seminarian: Yes and no. Something about it bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. On the one hand, it made sense that if what my parents and the church taught me was true, I had nothing to fear from submitting it to examination. On the other hand, it wasn’t clear to me how the Bible and the faith I receive could be tested in a way that could produce objective results. As historical, experiential and theological, the claims of the Bible are not testable in the way that proposed solutions to math or physics or logical problems are. Even more troubling, I did not see how one could maintain a neutral stance when dealing with such profound and personal issues. The meaning of the whole world, the nature and destiny of every human being, and the way we ought to live…all hopes, fears, and dreams turn on a series of questions to which the Bible proposes definite answers: Is there a God? What is God? Who is God? What does God want from us?

Professor: Let’s pause a bit before we move on to the next phase of your academic development and try to clarify your ambivalence at your first encounter with modern academia. If I have learned anything in my long career in higher education, it is that many gratuitous assumptions lie hidden in every method of study. Calling on you to lay aside your trust in the church and its tradition to examine your faith critically assumes uncritically that the academic method is superior to faith at producing knowledge. This assumption begs scrutiny. Galileo, Bacon, Descartes and other architects of modern science urged students of nature to treat it as a mathematically structured, material machine. To see the workings of the machine as they exist apart from our subjective involvement, the scientist must maintain a disengaged attitude and look for aspects that can be understood mathematically. Scientists must ignore every aspect of their experience of nature that cannot be thought mathematically. That is to say, our experiences of color, odor, touch, smell, taste, and feelings of fear, pleasure, anger, shame, and so on, do not conform to the scientific ideal of clear thought. To understand these experiences, they must be analyzed and reduced to physical or chemical exchanges, which can be understood only mathematically.

Seminarian: So, even the archetypical natural sciences of physics and chemistry make gratuitous assumptions?

Professor: Let me put it this way: these mathematical sciences seek to understand nature in so far as its activity can be stated in mathematical equations. The meaning of numbers and mathematical operators is perfectly clear. Numbers hide nothing about themselves. They possess no mysterious inner world. They are discrete, abstract, and depend on nothing outside of them. We feel confident that everyone who understands them sees them through and through and alike. We also feel confident that as long as we follow the rules, we can solve any solvable mathematical problem with the same clarity of understanding as we have of the numbers and operators it contains. The mathematical sciences set the bar for what counts as knowledge not only in the study of nature but in all modern endeavors to understand. To know means to understand a thing clearly, exhaustively, and absolutely.

Seminarian: Is this why every non-mathematical, academic discipline seems envious of mathematics?

Professor: Yes. From a methodological point of view, the history of biology could be written as the quest to reduce biological categories to chemical and physical ones, that is, to mathematical equations. And insofar as biology cannot state its conclusions in mathematical terms it seems incomplete and obscure. The same quest and obscurity characterize all other “sciences.” Perhaps you have noticed how the social sciences love statistics. Counting things gives them an excuse to call themselves “sciences” and label their value-laden stories “scientific knowledge.” Depending on the theory being applied, psychological explanations resemble mythology, common sense, or hermeneutics more than they resemble mathematics. However, many psychologists pursue chemical explanations for psychic phenomena. Even logic envies mathematics, as its use of symbols and operators bereft of existential content and its calculus-like operations demonstrate.

Seminarian: I may be getting ahead of myself here, but what does reviewing the history of the scientific method have to do with clarifying the difference between the way of faith and the way of academia?

Professor: Even in the academic study of the Bible the mathematical ideal exerts influence. No one as far as I know attempts to reduce the Bible to mathematical equations. But the ideal of knowledge as understanding a thing clearly, exhaustively, and absolutely lies behind the demand that bothered you so much in your early academic career, that is, that you must step outside of your faith to understand the Bible correctly. The ideal academic student of the Bible disengages from preconceived notions, feelings, commitments, personal relationships, and moral and esthetic values to discover those things about the Bible that can be understood clearly, exhaustively, and absolutely. Of course, no human being can disengage to this extent; nor can the ideal of clear, exhaustive, and absolute knowledge be attained. Still, this unattainable ideal powers academia’s incessant criticism of every knowledge claim it chooses to examine.

Seminarian: I remember feeling a sense of despair. The more I studied the less I knew.

Professor: If academia were consistent and honest with its ideal, it would have to preach universal skepticism. Or, it would at least admit to knowing only abstractions such as those we find in mathematics and logic. Let me tell you a secret not many people know: the “knowledge” gained by physics and chemistry is clear, exhaustive, and absolute only when it is abstracted from real existing nature and stated in mathematical terms. Physicists, chemists and biologists cannot comprehend nature as it exists in itself any more than the untrained person can. Their empirical/mathematical method cannot reveal a thing in its unity and wholeness. Get clear on this: the ideal of knowledge that animates academia mandates that we set aside as unknowable everything about a thing that cannot be translated into a number and be put into an equation. I will let you in on a second secret: Modern American academia is neither consistent nor honest with its supposed ideal. It is driven by leftist political ideology, institutional self-interest, and antipathy for anything traditional, conservative, and orthodox Christian.

Seminarian: It has become clear of late that you are correct. But I still hear the rhetoric of objective science and religious neutrality.

Professor: Of course. But if you pay close attention, you will notice how selectively the ideal of clear, exhaustive, and absolute knowledge is applied. If you come to academia as a political or economic conservative or a moral traditionalist or Bible-believing Christian, your beliefs will be subjected to the strictest application of the criterion of knowledge. They will be inevitably declared biased, if not simply false and evil. Why? It is not because the American university subjects every knowledge claim to examination by this same criterion. It is, rather, because these beliefs run afoul of the ideology and orthodoxy that define modern academia. In contrast, the claims of diversity, equity, and inclusion philosophy (DEI), Critical Race Theory, Critical Pedagogy, and many other Marxist-inspired ideologies are praised as morally self-evident perspectives. The dominant culture of American higher education dismisses any criticism of these ideologies as inspired by racism, white privilege, heteronormativity, and other supposed evil motives.

Seminarian: I think I see where you are headed. When modern academia asks us to leave our faith at the university gates, it demands that we live by a set of rules it does not apply to itself. And if, in a fit of careless consistency, it did apply this criterion of knowledge to itself, it would have to admit that the search for knowledge of the world is futile. We cannot know the world as it exists but only as empty abstractions. But then academia would no longer have a convincing rationale to reject faith as a way of knowing while accepting science as productive of knowledge. Paraphrasing Hegel’s assessment of Schelling’s philosophy in the Introduction to his Philosophy of Mind,  “in the dark all cats are black.”

Professor: You’ve got it. Next time we meet let’s explore exactly and in detail how academia applies (hypocritically and selectively) its rhetorical ideal of knowledge to the church’s view of the Bible to produce doubt and reduce the number of religious beliefs one can hold in a rational way.

Seminarian: Thank you for giving of your time.

Professor: You are welcome. Goodbye.

Seminarian: Goodbye.