Tag Archives: academic method

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

5 Replies

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)

5 Replies

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 With His Old Theology Professor (Part Two)

1 Reply

Introduction

For the full context of this post please read the first conversation posted December 05, 2023. In that meeting, the old professor addressed the question of why seminary training tends to weaken if not destroy the faith and piety that young people bring to the endeavor. In sum, the professor explains, seminaries participate in the ethos of modern academia, which sees as its main task critical examination of all inherited beliefs. Whether intended or not, this relentless questioning replaces the student’s initial certainty of faith with doubt. Many students enter seminary with the naïve belief that the indubitability of the faith is an essential sign of its truth. Hence some students take refutation of the faith’s status as absolute knowledge as disproof of its truth. Or, at least as a reason to refrain from embracing the faith wholeheartedly.

Setting: As our young seminarian approaches the old professor’s office, he notices that his office door is open. Their eyes meet.

Professor: Good to see you again! Come in.

Seminarian: Thank you, professor.

Professor: How have you been? Tell me what you are thinking.

Seminarian: In our last conversation you gave me much to consider. Some of which, I had never before thought about.

Professor: What was that?

Seminarian: That I may have unknowingly identified the believability of a belief with its indubitability; that if I can doubt it, I should not trust it. And in doing so, I may have mistaken the academic method of universal doubt and endless criticism for a livable philosophy. If you don’t mind, I’d like to pursue this issue today.

Professor: I was going to make the same suggestion. Examining this mistaken inference may go a long way to dealing with your concerns about the Bible and the credibility of the orthodox Christian faith.

Seminarian: I look forward to it.

Professor: Let’s begin by thinking about the terms you just used, “believability” and “indubitability.” In my experience, contemporary use of these concepts and their near relatives creates much confusion. I see three areas where we need strive for more clarity. (1) Note first that the words “believability” and “indubitability” diverts our attention away from the person who believes or doubts and focuses on the proposition in question. They speak as if believability and indubitability are properties inherent in the claims being made. I do not accept this attribution. Whereas a proposition’s truth or falsity is not dependent on the person believing or doubting, a proposition’s believability or indubitability is. For a claim may seem believable to one person but doubtful to another. Hence debates about the believability or indubitability of a proposition are a waste of time. It will be helpful here to recall that these terms are derived from the verbs “to believe” and “to doubt.” To believe and to doubt are acts of individual subjects. And one person may believe while another person doubts a claim. A proposition may indeed possess the property of truth or falsehood, but it cannot possess the property of believability or indubitability or doubtfulness, or any other like property. The assertion that a claim is believable means no more than this: “I assent to this claim and can see no reason why others would not do the same.” Likewise, the assertion that a claim is doubtful means no more than this: “I dissent from this claim and can see no reason why others would not do the same.”

Seminarian: This is helpful. It keeps our focus on the place where decisions between belief and disbelief must be made, that is, on the individual’s weighing of the evidence for and against the truth of a claim.

Professor: True. And I will return to examine the acts of belief and doubt in greater detail. But first, there is another area of confusion I want to address. (2) Faith and doubt (the acts of believing and doubting) are often seen as mutually exclusive. More precisely, they are seen as different kinds of actions; that is to say, faith acts and doubt refrains from acting. Faith assents and embraces a claim while doubt refrains from assenting and embracing. Belief moves, but doubt remains steadfast. According to this way of thinking, doubt is conservative and cautious but belief ventures into uncertain waters and risks error. Doubt rests secure until it is moved by evidence it judges compelling. The doubter claims the higher intellectual and moral ground and looks down his nose at the naïve believer.

Seminarian: As I look back on my first year in seminary, I now understand why I was so confused. Up to that point in my life I had thought of the act of faith as responsible and virtuous. Only people lacking true virtue embraced skepticism and doubt. They were clearly looking for a way to escape from the restrictions of morality and religious practice. But when I entered the academic world, these values were reversed. Doubt, skepticism, criticism and avoidance of commitment were viewed as responsible and virtuous. Belief and commitment were signs of fear, gullibility, and carelessness. I suppose I was gradually socialized into academia.

Professor: But it’s all based on a deception. For doubt is not the absence of belief. Doubters can refuse to be moved to belief by arguments for a particular claim only because they hold to other beliefs that exclude that claim. One may justify rejecting Paul’s testimony to the resurrection of Jesus based on their belief that miracles are impossible. A person who rejects the New Testament’s sexual ethics can do so only because they rely on other moral sources they trust more. Doubters can be just as gullible, fearful, and careless as believers! Everyone is simultaneously both a doubter and a believer. Hence debating the relative moral and intellectual superiority of doubt over belief or of belief over doubt is another complete waste of time.

Seminarian: I had never thought of that before! But it’s obviously true. Disbelief in one proposition is possible only because of belief in another opposing proposition. Academia’s critical method won’t work unless the criteria by which beliefs are measured are assumed true, at least provisionally. Criticism without criteria is an absurd idea.

Professor: Well said! Let’s move now to the third clarification. (3) As I said above, “to doubt” and “to believe” are acts of individual subjects situated in a particular time and place. The act of doubting or believing expresses a subjective state, a judgment, a decision, and a mood. (a) To say “I doubt” expresses the present mental state of the speaker. It communicates something like: “I do not find the evidence for your claim compelling.” It says nothing about the properties of the proposition in question or the evidence supporting it. (b) But clearly the subjective state of the doubter results from a judgment, which concludes something like, “The evidence for this claim is not sufficient to justify rational assent.” (c) Because neither expressing doubt nor affirming belief assert infallibility, treating either one as a basis for action involves a decision, a decision to move forward apart from complete clarity and certainty. (d) Many judgments and decisions are accompanied by certain moods: joy, triumph, glee, pride, etc. And these moods often indicate the operations of motives other than desire for truth and commitment to sober rationality.

Seminarian: I did not realize that believing and doubting were so complex. But I should have known this. Human beings are not calculating machines. Their judgments and decisions are conditioned by their multidimensional natures, widely different experiences, and diverse characters.

Professor: Let’s bring this line of reasoning to its point: “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.

Seminarian: You may be correct. When I returned home after my first year, I’m ashamed to admit that I felt a bit smug when relating to the “unenlightened masses.”

Professor: I hope I’ve given you something to think about until our next meeting.

Seminarian: You have indeed! But I have many more questions.

Professor: We will take them up one by one. See you soon.

Seminarian: Goodbye.