Category Archives: Doubt and Faith

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

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.

Young Seminarian Visits With Old Theology Professor (Part Three: The Bible)

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Introduction

The last meeting (posted on December 19, 2023) ended with the professor’s summary of the conversation:

 “To doubt” and “to believe” are acts of situated individual subjects involving judgments, decisions, and moods. Every doubter is also a believer and every believer is also a doubter. The doubter possesses no inherent intellectual or moral superiority to the believer. I think this truth sheds light on your seminary struggles. You may have been beguiled by academia’s spurious claim that doubt is intellectually superior to belief and seduced by the offer of membership in a social class marked by its presumption to higher wisdom.

Setting: The young seminarian drops by the professor’s office without an appointment, hoping that the professor is in and available for a visit.

Seminarian: Hello professor. I remember that you have open office hours at this time on Wednesdays, and I was hoping to visit with you, if you have the time.

Professor: Good timing. A student just cancelled her appointment. Come in. Have a seat.

Seminarian: Thanks. I wanted to continue our conversation. Last time, you mentioned that we’d discuss the Bible next; that is, the contrast between the way the church treats the Bible and the way the modern academy treats it.

Professor: Oh yes, so I did. Since we last talked, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways, overt and covert, modern academia subverts faith. As we saw in our last conversation, modern academia canonizes doubt and criticism as methods of weeding out superstitions and other unscientific beliefs. It rejects tradition, orthodoxy, and commitment as ways of knowing and living. This institutional stance in itself, apart from any particular criticism, places faith under a cloud of suspicion. Of course, we know that modern academia is deceptive and hypocritical. As we learned last time, the doubter is also a believer and critics of one belief must remain uncritical of opposing beliefs. The modern university cherishes its own traditions, orthodoxies, and commitments, but it calls them by other names: professionalism, science, scholarship, equity, diversity, critical thinking, research, inclusion, tenure, academic freedom, free speech, progress, fairness, and academic integrity. So, as we begin our reconstruction of faith, I suggest we refuse to be intimidated by modern academia’s claims to moral and intellectual superiority over faith and tradition.

Seminarian: The Bible?

Professor: Okay. We are nearly ready for the Bible. But I want to know that you see academia for what it truly is. Its two traditional activities are teaching and research. On the one hand, it is tasked with educating the coming generation. It introduces young people to the current state of discussion among scholars of the arts and sciences and it helps them develop the skills they need to become expert practitioners and researchers in their chosen fields of study. On the other hand, academia is a way of generating and testing beliefs, hypotheses, and theories by means of criticism and doubt. It protests that its purpose is not to pass on political, moral, and religious tradition of any kind. But we know that American universities are much quicker to criticize traditional morality, conservative politics, and the Christian religion than they are progressive morality, leftist politics, and exotic religion.

Seminarian: I get it. I should adopt a critical attitude toward the critical attitude practiced in modern academia.

Professor: Yes! As a way into the subject of the Bible, recall as best you can the view of the Bible and the Christian faith you brought with you to seminary.

Seminarian: I don’t recall that I was taught a “doctrine” of Scripture as a child. In my home and in church, the Bible was quoted, preached, and taught as the true moral, religious, and metaphysical worldview. It was our unquestioned framework for meaning, identity, and purpose. In its teachings about creation, fall, atonement and the world’s end, the meaning of history and the destiny of humanity were laid out before our eyes. Our greatest enemies are sin, death, and the devil, and these foes can be dealt with only through the power of Jesus Christ and the Spirit. The Old and New Testaments’ stories and heroic characters provided examples of courage and obedience. The law, the prophets and the Writings provided moral rules and wise principles by which to live. Jesus’s teaching, example, and above all, his sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead were at the center of our worship and moral lives. Religious and moral disputes were settled by determining what the Scriptures teach. Whatever the Bible says is the truth of God.

Professor: At what point in your development were you taught an explicit “doctrine” of Scripture, and what was it?

Seminarian: I can’t remember a particular occasion, but in my teenage years I became aware that there were outsiders who did not believe. This seemed very strange to me. How could anyone not believe? It stands written in the Bible and has been held true for thousands of years. The voice of the prophets, Jesus and Paul ring out as authentic and powerful witnesses to the truth they experienced. Who would have the temerity to label them liars or fools? Around the same time, I began to notice that the church leaders taught a “doctrine” of Scripture, albeit a rudimentary one.

Professor: I am very interested in exactly what you remember about the doctrine of Scripture you learned at this stage in your life. Understanding this process is important because we need to discover what made you vulnerable to the critiques you faced later on. So, try to remember the view of Scripture you internalized in your late teen years.

Seminarian: I will try. But I am not sure I can remember exactly how I understood things at that stage. I may have to use categories I learned later to express what I remember.

Professor: Okay. Do the best you can.

Seminarian: As I said above, as a child I accepted the biblical portrayal as the true world. The voices within the Bible seemed as real to me as those of my parents and the preacher. I believed not because I compared and contrasted it with other ways of understanding but simply because I was taught it. That is to say, I believed the Bible because I trusted my parents and the church. At some point I began to notice church leaders speaking not simply about the contents of the Bible but about the Bible itself. We learned about the distinctions between the Old and New Testaments and the various types of literature within each division. We memorized the names of all 66 books within the Bible. We even sang songs about the B.I.B.L.E. I could not have put it into words at that point in my life, but I could not help but notice that the scriptures were use as the exclusive source and authority for teaching within the church. The Bible was the authority by which theological disputes were settled. Church teachers and preachers often referred to the Bible as “the inspired Word of God.” I took this to mean that the voice of Scripture was the voice of God. I don’t think I heard the word “inerrancy” until I entered college, but even before then I would have rejected instinctively the proposal that the Bible contained mistakes, lies, and myths. Accepting such a proposal would shatter my biblical worldview and thrust me into an uncertain, chaotic world without guidance.

Professor: I presume that in college or seminary you encountered a more sophisticated doctrine of Scripture?

Seminarian: Yes. I learned what many people pejoratively label a “fundamentalist” doctrine of Scripture. That is that the Bible as a whole and in every part, from Genesis to Revelation, down to every word, is “inspired” or “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). I took this to mean that God chose every word the human authors wrote and miraculously protected them from error. The words of Scripture are simultaneously the words of the human author and the Word of God. In terms of its use, this conviction reinforced the authority of the Bible for use in teaching and theological disputation. To quote the Bible was to quote God.

Professor: And you accepted this doctrine of Scripture?

Seminarian: Yes. But what I did not see at the time was that I accepted a doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture on the same basis that as a child I had accepted the reliability of the contents of Scripture; that is, that the church whom I trusted believed it and assured me that it is so. I did not ask at the time, “Can the doctrine of the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible be independently verified?” In my childhood, I could not have asked this question, because I accepted the word of those I trusted. To ask for their assurance to be independently verified would be to abandon the very basis on which I trusted Scripture. But by the time I entered seminary, I came to think that the absolute truth of the Bible could be (and needs to be) verified by reason. How this transition occurred I don’t know, but I think it had something to do with my conservative teachers’ efforts to demonstrate by rational arguments the complete truth of the Bible. In other words, my path to doubt was cleared by the friends of faith.

Professor: Humm. This seems like a good place to end for today. Let’s return next time to this ironic turn of events wherein efforts to make faith secure by rational argument ended up making it doubtful.

Seminarian: I look forward to disentangling the matter.

Professor: Goodbye.

Seminarian: Goodbye.

Young Seminarian Visits Old Theology Professor

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Introduction

Previously, we listened as a confused young seminarian visited with a progressive bishop. Our troubled seminarian explained to the bishop that he had lost faith in the conservative Christianity of his childhood and inquired whether he might have a future in a progressive church. After three sessions, the young seminarian left just as confused as he had been beforehand, if not more. (To pick up on the story, see the posts of October 7 & 17 and November 4.) After his disappointing series of meetings with the progressive bishop, the young seminarian decides to meet with a professor of theology about whom he has heard some intriguing things. This old professor has a reputation for being orthodox in doctrine and morals but not combative or judgmental. Having taught theology for over 40 years and written many books, the old professor is well acquainted with the history of Christian theology from the first to the twenty-first century and with contemporary issues in theology. Above all, he is known for his honesty and moderation.

Setting: After having previously set up an appointment by phone, our confused young seminarian knocks on the old professor’s office door.

Professor: Come in.

Seminarian: Thank you, professor.

(The old professor closes the book he has been reading and moves from behind his desk.)

Professor: Have a seat. Would you like water or perhaps a coffee?

Seminarian: No, thank you.

Professor: What’s on your mind?

Seminarian: Where to start? I hope you will not be offended if I am brutally honest. I’ve lost faith in the conservative Christian faith I was taught in church. Driven by the obligation to be honest with God and myself, I examined doctrine after doctrine of my inherited faith and found them doubtful. I thought I should not continue to hold to a teaching about which I felt uncertain. I visited recently with a progressive bishop in hope that he could help me sort out what I believe and how I could continue in some form of Christianity. You can imagine, then, how shocked I was when I discovered that the progressive bishop admitted that he lies to his church every Sunday. He uses such traditional Christian language as incarnation, miracles, resurrection, salvation, Holy Spirit, atonement, etc., and allows his people to think that he means what the church has always meant by these terms. In fact, however, he believes none of it and justifies his dissimulation by saying he believes these things interpreted metaphorically. I found it all so disheartening. Can you help me?

Professor: I will try. But you need to be patient. To get a handle on the problem we need to move logically from the foundations to the issues with traditional Christianity that most trouble you. Our first goal is to find the most fundamental point at which your thinking departs from the logic of orthodoxy. You need to ask yourself, “Was that departure warranted?”

Seminarian: Okay. I don’t know for sure where that point is, but when I spoke with the progressive bishop, I said something like, “Well, I suppose it all started with the Bible. Before I entered seminary, I believed that everything the Bible says is true because it is the inspired word of God….”

Professor: We will get to the Bible, but first allow me to share some general observations about the transition from childhood faith to mature faith. As children of Christian parents grow up in the home and in the church, they accept what they receive from these sources as unquestionably true. And this is a good thing. Children need simplicity, certainty, and a clear identity; they do not have the maturity to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty. At some point, however, they must learn to deal with challenges to inherited faith and embrace it as their own. Ironically, those children of the church who decide to attend seminary to prepare for ministry face greater challenges to their faith than those who take another path. In seminary they are introduced to the academic study of the Bible and theology. Nothing is taken for granted. Every fact, doctrine, and practice that is taught in church as “what we believe” or “what the scriptures teach” is placed in doubt. In academia, every doctrinal claim must be backed up with persuasive evidence before its validity and truth can be admitted. And even in faith-affirming schools under the guidance of conservative teachers, students must read the works of atheist, deist, liberal, and progressive authors. Many beginning students find this experience shocking, disorienting, and horrifying. What they experienced in their lives up to that point as matters of prayer, reverence, worship and comfort they now hear dissected, debated, and doubted. Even blasphemed! Many students find that seminary study dilutes, cools, and sometimes shatters the faith they received from their parents and churches.

Seminarian: That’s my story exactly! I entered seminary with a sense of God’s presence and confidence in the truth of the Bible. By the time I left, God seemed distant and the Bible no longer seemed sacred. Why does seminary study have this effect on some students?

Professor: I have a theory about that. Would you like to hear it?

Seminarian: I’d love to hear it! Because it does not seem plausible to think that everything my parents and church taught me was wrong and that I needed to attend a seminary to discover this.

Professor: I do not believe that what your parents and church taught you was wrong. But I think you may have formed the impression that what you learned in church was not only right but self-evident, certain, and so obviously right that no right-thinking, good person could object. Now I am sure that neither your parents nor your church made such a bold claim, but perhaps you took this expectation with you to seminary.

Seminarian: I certainly did not expect to have my faith so thoroughly deconstructed!

Professor: Now for my theory. Academia does not understand the way faith works in real life. Modern academia is a laboratory, designed originally to examine critically every inherited belief and practice, looking for superstitions, fancies, and opinions masquerading as knowledge. It had rather reject a dozen true beliefs than risk being taken in by single false one. It prefers never-ending criticism to the slightest commitment. For above all, it does not wish to be fooled. It would prefer to be teleported naked to a White House gala dinner than to be exposed as naïve and gullible to its peers. The academic study of the Bible and theology follows the same pattern. It feels obligated to challenge traditional Christian beliefs from every angle: historical, logical, and metaphysical. Never has a belief system been so criticized by so many for so long with so little results. Rarely does this history yield a credible claim to have falsified an essential Christian teaching.

Seminarian: Then why do so many seminarians get confused by it?

Professor: Because they enter seminary thinking wrongly that their inherited faith is so obviously true and certain that no serious objections can be made against it! Implicit in this naïve faith is the notion that the unimpeachability and certainty (for me) of the Christian faith is part of the faith itself. That is to say, they accept the absurd idea that the faith can be falsified merely by showing that it could be false. As the student encounters a barrage of historical, logical and metaphysical objections to Christian faith, they lose their naïve confidence in the impregnability of the fortress of faith. Then comes their greatest mistake: they conclude that, because they are fallible and a cherished Christian belief could be false, they ought not remain unreservedly committed to the faith they were handed by the church. They unwittingly accept the enlightenment view that it is better to reject a dozen true beliefs than risk being taken in by single false one. What young seminarians overlook as they enter the world of academia is the nature of faith. The preaching of the gospel of Christ does not call us to gnosis, absolute knowledge and complete certainty, but to faith. If Christian beliefs were as self-evident as 2 + 2 = 4, it would not be called faith. The terms “self-evident faith” or “proven faith” are contradictions.

Seminarian: Wow! I’ve never encountered this perspective before. My head is spinning. I’d like to think about it for a few days before we continue.

Professor: Of course. You think about it and we’ll set a time to meet again.

Seminarian: Thank you. I will check in soon.

Professor: Goodbye.

Seminarian: Goodbye.