Tag Archives: Bible

“Dignitas Infinita” (Infinite Dignity) A Recommendation, Part Two

3 Replies

Today I will continue my reflections on the just released declaration of the Roman Catholic Church’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on “Dignitas Infinita” (Human Dignity). In part one I commented on the Introduction and point # 1. I will take up points #2 and #3 below.

Presentation

Introduction

1. A Growing Awareness of the Centrality of Human Dignity

2. The Church Proclaims, Promotes, and Guarantees Human Dignity

3. Dignity, the Foundation of Human Rights and Duties

4. Some Grave Violations of Human Dignity

Conclusion

The Church Proclaims, Promotes, and Guarantees Human Dignity

The unimpeachable ground of infinite human dignity is the incomprehensible love of God. That love is expressed first in creating humanity in God’s image, body and soul, male and female. In the second place, created human dignity is confirmed by the incarnation of the Son of God. The third guarantee of infinite dignity is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which reveals that eternal life in union with God is humanity’s ultimate destiny. Human dignity rests securely in humankind’s ontological nature and remains as a permanent moral imperative to treat each and every human being with respect and love. Moreover, that same indelible dignity constitutes a moral imperative for each person to live out their dignity in their own free activity. Though we cannot erase our God-created dignity, we can contradict, wound, and soil it.

Dignity, the Foundation of Human Rights and Duties

The revelation of infinite and universal human dignity articulated in the biblical doctrines of creation, incarnation, and the resurrection to eternal life has had a profound influence on the world. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) witnesses to this influence. The Declaration notwithstanding, some people limit human dignity by specifying it as “personal dignity” and restricting the category of “person” to “one who is capable of reasoning.” Hence “persons” are a subcategory of human beings. Clearly, this restriction designates some human beings as non-persons (e.g. preborn human beings) and offends against the infinite and ontologically basic nature of human dignity. A second misunderstanding of human dignity transfers the unlimited nature of dignity (originally objective and intrinsic to human being) to the subjective sphere, endowing the capricious human subject with a panoply of new rights. In the name of dignity, individuals claim arbitrary sovereignty over themselves, body and soul. The concept of dignity, originally grounded in the love of God manifested in creation, incarnation and the promise of eternal life, becomes the justification for the quasi deification of the individual subject wherein the inner self grounds and measures its own identity, freedom, and behavior. Where such a subjective view of dignity becomes dominant, social life becomes possible only through arbitrary agreement among individual wills. Social life becomes an incoherent mixture of individual capriciousness and political coercion. Pope Benedict XVI sums up this situation perfectly:

A will which believes itself radically incapable of seeking truth and goodness has no objective reasons or motives for acting save those imposed by its fleeting and contingent interests; it does not have an ‘identity’ to safeguard and build up through truly free and conscious decisions. As a result, it cannot demand respect from other ‘wills,’ which are themselves detached from their own deepest being and thus capable of imposing other ‘reasons’ or, for that matter, no ‘reason’ at all. The illusion that moral relativism provides the key for peaceful coexistence is actually the origin of divisions and the denial of the dignity of human beings [Message for the Celebration of the 44th World Day of Peace (1 January 2011)].

To be continued…

Cafeteria Catholics and Cafeteria Protestants: Different Denomination, Same Hypocrisy

4 Replies

In the March 31 episode of CBS’s Face the Nation, Roman Catholic Cardinal Gregory Walton of Washington DC spoke of President Joe Biden as a “cafeteria Catholic.” The Cardinal explained to the audience that cafeteria Catholics pick and choose which church teachings to believe and practice based on expediency and preference. Walton hastened to add that Mr. Biden is “sincere,” which to my mind strains credulity. For I can’t square flagrant disobedience and direct contradiction of the Church’s clear teaching with sincerity. What stands out in the cafeteria Catholic mentality is the lack of a spirit of obedience. They want the advantages of being known as good Catholics without actually having to live like one. And so, they add the sin of hypocrisy to the sin of disobedience. A “sincere” cafeteria Catholic is an oxymoron, like a square circle or married bachelor.

Cafeteria Protestants join their Catholic counterparts in the same spirit of selectivity and hypocrisy. Cafeteria Protestants treat the Bible the way cafeteria Catholics treat the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For them, Jesus’s teaching can be summed up in two commandments: (1) don’t judge the choices of others, and (2) do what makes you happy. They quietly pass over Jesus’s teaching forbidding divorce, lust, and greed. They soften Jesus’s warnings about the narrow and the broad ways. They practice injustice, abortion, fornication, and adultery. The only cross they bear is the one the wear around their necks. Of the spirit of obedience, they know nothing. Sincerity means purity of heart. You can’t be a sincere hypocrite!

In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, the test of sincerity is your willingness to suffer for the faith. Faithfulness unto death is the mark of a true disciple of Jesus. Willingness to confess Christ as Lord before hostile audiences is the proof of faith. The words of Peter expose and condemn in the clearest terms the hypocrisy of “cafeteria” faith in both its Catholic and Protestant forms:

Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God (1 Peter 1:13-21).

“Alert and fully sober,” “obedient children,” “holy,” “reverent fear”? These are not terms that come to mind when I think of cafeteria Christians. Like all hypocrites, cafeteria Catholics and cafeteria Protestants possess no real consciousness of God, that is, of the “Father who judges each person’s work impartially.” They seek only “to be seen by others” as virtuous. Jesus says of them, “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:5-6).

Coming Soon–The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living?

3 Replies

My new book, The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living? will be published and available within a week from today!

Here is what my good friend Rubel Shelly said about it:

Ron Highfield has made a significant contribution to the present-day discussion of LGBTQ+ claims by a tight focus on the work of Karen Keen. Highfield’s The Choice is a careful and erudite analysis of Keen’s work that uncovers a species of argument being offered from many quarters. First, he lays bare Keen’s postmodern substitution of feeling and rhetoric for Scripture and sound reasoning. “From the postmodern perspective,” he notes, “autobiography is argument.” In such a case, Scripture can be displaced by personal desire. Second, he skillfully explains the implications of such an approach to an orthodox view of the Bible. If only those historic demands of Scripture that pass muster with one’s self-defined notions of kindness, justice, love, secular psychology, and minimal human suffering (i.e., inconvenience, restraint of desire) are obligatory to Christians, we are back to the ancient times in Israel when every individual is a law to her/himself. Contrary to Keen’s claim to show how evangelicals can defend an “affirming” case for same-sex marriage, Dr. Highfield demonstrates that her case abandons an orthodox view of God-breathed Scripture in order to read into the Bible what our postmodern culture otherwise could only wish it had said.

Rubel Shelly

professor, writer, minister, and author of Male and Female God Made Them: A Biblical Review of LGBTQ+ Claims (Joplin, MO: College Press, 2023).

If you are a church leader, teacher, or an individual believer who is seeking help with answering the question voiced in my subtitle, Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living? I wrote this book for you. Soon, if not already, every denomination, every local church, including the congregation where you attend, will be faced with The Choice, the choice I address in this book. Are you ready?

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.

What About the Bible? An Autobiographical Reflection

2 Replies

What about the Bible? Is the Bible true? Is it historically accurate? Is it a revelation from God? We often hear such questions in popular forums and in the media. And in almost every case we would be mistaken to take such questions seriously. As I have argued in previous posts, the Bible’s authority does not become an issue for us until we accept the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We do not accept the truth of the resurrection because the Bible says so. Instead, we become interested in what the Bible says about other matters when we come to faith in Jesus Christ. Today I want to look at the question of the Bible autobiographically.

Let’s look at how the question of the Bible arises for a person born into a Christian family and surrounded by a Christian culture. I shall speak from my own experience. My experience of the Bible was always that of an insider. It was our book. Though I don’t remember the word being used, it was the unquestioned authority for church life, morals, and for knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. I loved to hear stories of the Old Testament heroes of faith and the New Testament stories about Jesus, Paul, and Peter. The Bible provided texts for the preacher’s sermons. My parents owned several copies of the Bible, which were displayed on the coffee table and night stands. At an early age I received my own copy of a King James Bible with my name inscribed inside. I came to understand that reading the Bible was a religious duty, a discipline that should be maintained for a lifetime. Memorizing important texts and in depth study was also encouraged. Religious education was identical with Bible education. And the most admired preachers were those reputed to have the most extensive knowledge of the Bible. William Chillingworth’s (1602-1644) famous declaration that “The Bible alone is the religion of Protestants” certainly describes the religion of the church and family of my youth.

At some point, in my late teens I think, I discovered that there were outsiders whose view of the Bible differed dramatically from ours. I say “ours” because I had accepted the church’s understanding of the Bible without question. That is what my parents taught me, it was the belief of all the good people at church and the ministers, and it was reinforced by the consensus of Southern (American) culture. Ironically, my first encounters with external critics and doubters of the Bible were facilitated by teachers and books that wished to defend the church’s view of the Bible. They wanted to reinforce my faith that the Bible is indeed worthy of the respect given it by the church. My teachers realized that an inherited and naïve faith in the Bible had to become a reasonable faith or it would not be able to withstand the scrutiny it was sure to receive from critics. I think their intuition in this matter was correct: an inherited faith must transition to chosen faith.

But I believe they were mistaken to attempt to demonstrate apart from faith that the Bible deserved the respect that the church had traditionally given it. It is impossible to prove that the Bible deserves to be treated as the sole authority for knowledge of God, morality, and religion by arguing from its visible characteristics to its divine origin, historical reliability, and moral superiority. The Bible is a huge book, or actually, a huge collection of 66 books. It spans fifteen centuries and crosses many very different cultures. It recounts thousands of events for which we have no other sources and no independent way to confirm. It contains many writings for which we know neither the authors nor even the century in which they were written. No matter how many of the Bible’s marvelous characteristics we uncover we can never get close to proving that the Bible deserves the respect given it by the church. And the unhappy by-product of this effort to prove the Bible is creating doubt in the hearts of the very people these arguments are designed to help. We are courting disaster if we convince young people that they must transition from an inherited and naïve faith to a chosen and reasonable one but lead them to believe that in order to be reasonable their acceptance of the Bible’s religious authority must be based on rational arguments for the Bible’s perfection. Such a strategy distracts from the real decision of faith and may exile them to years of wandering in the desert of doubt and indecision. I know this from experience.

Hence in my view, apologists for the Christian faith should resist answering directly the questions with which I began this essay: Is the Bible true? Is it historically accurate? Is it a revelation from God? Why? Because no definitive answers can be given. Any answer will raise as many questions as it answers, and it will provoke endless counter arguments and follow-up questions. The only path forward is the one I charted in earlier posts. We must decide—apart from any view of the authority of the Bible—whether or not to accept the apostolic testimony to Jesus resurrection. Yours, mine, and the whole church’s respect for the Bible’s authority rightly flows from this decision and from nowhere else. But as I hope to show in future posts, the church’s respect for the Bible has not been misplaced; it really does flow from this decision. And neither was my trust in my parents and the church of my childhood misplaced.

“This I Know, For the Bible Tells Me So”

3 Replies

We have come to the point in our discussion of the resurrection of Jesus where we can see clearly what is involved in a reasonable and responsible decision to believe and adopt the Christian faith and life. If we’ve studied the first disciples’ recorded memories of Jesus’ life, teachings, and death, if we’ve listened to the testimonies of Paul, Peter, James the Lord’s brother, and many others to the resurrection, if we’ve been favorably impressed with the way of life of the early disciples, if we know and admire some contemporary believers, and if we are attracted to the Christian hope, I believe our decision to enter the Christian way can be reasonably and responsibly made. This transition is not best described an inference from premises to conclusion or an inference to the best explanation or a decision about the level of probability that a narrated event really happened. It is certainly not a blind leap of faith or a careless fall into wishful thinking. It is best described as the deepening of a personal relationship from respectful listening to trust and love for those who are in a position to know what we do not.

As a personal relationship of trust and love, faith makes a decisive commitment. It does not deny the possibility that it could be wrong, that it could be deceived. But it will not accept an obligation to withhold commitment while it anxiously seeks more evidence to confirm its trust. Nor does faith proportion its commitment to the weight of probability on each side. Genuine trust and love pushes aside the whispering voice of doubt that says, “But what if you are wrong?” Faith asserts in response, “I understand that I cannot know absolutely that I am right, but I believe that I am right. And I have decided and am determined to live as if I am right, even if I am wrong!” I shall have more to say about daily living in faith in future essays in this series. We are focusing here on the initial decision to believe.

Beyond the Fourth Decision Point

We have made the decisive move beyond the fourth decision point, that is, the division between mere theism and Christian faith in God. Now what? What are the implications of this decision? The first result of this move is a dramatic change in our relationship to the apostles and other early disciples. As seekers and enquirers, we treated the apostles’ writings as we would other historical documents. We gave them no advantage, no special deference, no authority above other texts. But once we come to believe that the apostles experienced Jesus’ conquest of death in his resurrection, everything changes. Now we are eager to know everything they can teach us about Jesus Christ and how we too can become his disciples. Because of their special relationship to Jesus, we accept them as our teachers, exclusively authoritative for what it means to believe, love and, hope as Christians. As a matter of historical placement, no other teachers, no other texts can guide us. But this way of understanding the authority of the Bible may seem new to many, so I want to deal briefly with that concern.

The Bible Tells Me So?

The children’s song says, “Jesus loves me! this I know, For the Bible tells me so.” A wonderful thought! Comforting to adults as well as children! But this line in the song does raise a question. Do Christians hold all their Christian beliefs simply because the Bible tells them so? Should nonbelievers be urged to believe in Jesus simply because the Bible tells them so? But why should a nonbeliever feel obligated to believe what the Bible says simply because it says so? Should believers attempt first to convince nonbelievers of the Bible’s divine authority and then argue from the Bible’s authority to the truth of everything the Bible teaches? In my view, it would be a serious mistake to place a decision about the authority of the Bible before a decision about Jesus and the apostolic testimony to his resurrection. Such a stance presumes either a culture in which the Bible is already held in high esteem or it obligates us to argue from historical and rational evidence to the Bible’s divine authority. Neither option is very promising. We no longer live in culture where we can assume that people will accept a claim just because the Bible says so. And most contemporary people view as implausible and unpersuasive arguments to the divine authority of the Bible from its historical reliability or internal coherence or its sublime teaching. Such arguments raise more questions than they answer.

As I argued above, I believe the proper basis for an individual’s recognition and acceptance of the authority of the Bible is the act of faith in the apostolic testimony to Jesus’ resurrection. Acceptance of the Bible’s authority is implicit in this act. In future posts I will continue to develop the implications of this thesis, attempting to place particular Christian teachings in their proper order in relation to the central Christian claim, that is, that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

When Religion Goes Wrong: God and the Modern Self (Part 3)

Leave a reply

In Part 2, we examined the anti-religious attitude of defiance. When we think of God primarily as power, especially unjust power, we feel a rising urge to defy. This urge is amplified in the mind of the modern self by its self-understanding as autonomous. If I am defined as a real person by my free will to do as I please, an all-powerful God looms a threat to my identity and dignity. But not every modern person is a Prometheus, willing to endure torture and destruction just to witness to the Power’s injustice. Even if we think of God largely as an undefeatable authority, most of us take another approach. I shall call that attitude subservience to distinguish it from submission, which is an act of faith and love. The subservient resist the urge to defy and give precedence to their desire to survive. Better a dog alive “to lick the foot of power” than a lion dead but defiant to the end.

Subservience is a religious attitude that views God as the inescapable law of reward and punishment, the ultimate source of blessings and curses. Ancient pagans worshipped the gods to secure their favor and ward off their wrath. Divine favor brings bountiful crops and fertile animals. Divine wrath brings floods and earthquakes. Subservient religion is religious worldliness, a science of the divine capriciousness. For people who think this way, God is part of their personal economy, a means to the end of wellbeing here and now. They may seem very religious, but it’s the world they love, not God.

Doubtless there have been a few pagan critics of subservient religion, but its earliest, severest and most radical critics are found in the Bible. The prophets of Israel, Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, warned their people against viewing temple worship and sacrifice as replacements for justice and mercy. They championed relating to God with inner devotion and ethical behavior. By criticizing idolatry they insisted on God’s transcendence over nature and his immunity from religious manipulation.

Jesus takes up the perspective of the prophets and radicalizes it even more, if that is possible. External acts of religion are empty and even offensive if not accompanied by a pure heart, that is, with wholehearted and undivided devotion. Hypocrisy is a mismatch between two parts of life, public and private or internal and external. One wishes to appear pious and morally upright for the worldly advantages such appearances give while retaining the “advantages” of a worldly life practiced in secret. Jesus condemns hypocrisy in the strongest terms, reminding us that God knows the secrets of the heart and sees what goes on in the dark.

Paul follows his Lord in demanding that we give our whole heart to God, become new creatures, be transformed in our minds and live by faith. Above all, he urges us to love. Heroic acts of self-sacrifice, stirring worship performances and great acts of generosity count for nothing—indeed they are displays of pride and hypocrisy—if not motivated and accompanied by love (1 Cor 13). Not to be out done by Paul, John helps us enter into God’s heart by reminding us that “we love because he first loved us.” If we see how much God loves us, we will love him back. And in loving him back and loving our brothers and sisters, we will experience his love from inside. In the Spirit, God’s love and our love become one heart and one spirit.

In his beautiful essay On Loving God, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) follows Jesus and his disciples Paul and John. Bernard outlines four stages of love beginning with pure self-love. Once life’s hard knocks teaches us that we need God and others we move to stage two, loving God for what he can do for us, that is, subservience. We enter stage three when we learn how beautiful God really is and how much he loves us, that is, we begin love God for his own sake. Ultimately, we must learn to love ourselves only in our love for God. Listen to Bernard as he struggles to find words to explain why we should love God:

“Could any title be greater than this, that He gave Himself for us unworthy wretches? And being God, what better gift could He offer than Himself? Hence, if one seeks for God’s claim upon our love here is the chiefest: Because He first loved us (I John 4.19). Ought He not to be loved in return, when we think who loved, whom He loved, and how much He loved?… In the first creation He gave me myself; but in His new creation He gave me Himself, and by that gift restored to me the self that I had lost. Created first and then restored, I owe Him myself twice over in return for myself. But what have I to offer Him for the gift of Himself? Could I multiply myself a thousand-fold and then give Him all, what would that be in comparison with God?”

Subservience is religion gone wrong. It views God from the outside, as a law or a power to which we relate in external acts because we must. It resists the Holy Spirit who wants to join our hearts to God’s heart, so that we live in his life and love with his love. In subservience…

“We…pledge to give God whatever God asks, but earnestly pray that God does not ask for too much. We want what God wants for us only when we want it anyway; we submit our wills to God in areas where we would prefer something else only because we must…[subservience] manifests itself in our lack of passion for God, in our inability to love God with our whole heart. We do not consciously think of God as a threat, but neither do we see God as our soul’s passion, the one thing for whom giving everything up is worth doing. We do not rise to the level of loving God for God’s sake (God, Freedom & Human Dignity, p. 63).

Note: This post can be used as a companion to Chapter 3 of my book God, Freedom & Human Dignity (“Subservience: The Religion of Idols, Hypocrites, and Hirelings”).

Questions for Discussion

1. Describe the subservient attitude in its distinctions and likenesses to defiance.

2. What are some modern forms of subservient religion? Explore some ways it can appear so deceptively like true religion.

3. What is the central feature of idolatry and how does it embody subservience?

4. What is hypocrisy and how is purity of heart its opposite? Give examples.

5. How do the Old Testament prophets and Jesus and his disciples understand pure and true religion; and how does this view of religion fit with their view of God and God’s actions?

6. Explain how Bernard of Clairvaux’s four stages of love progress from one to the other.

Next week we will examine the attitude of indifference.

Questions and Answers on Fear and Freedom, God and Providence, Faith and Scholarship: A Written Interview

Leave a reply

For this week’s entry I’ve reprinted a written interview just posted on Pepperdine University’s “Research News” page. You can see the original interview by following the link pasted below:

http://www.pepperdine.edu/research/news/2013/ron_highfield.htm

In your book, you address big themes and fears that have haunted the human psyche for quite some time.  What inspired or motivated you to write this book?  Has it been something you have been thinking about or planning for a long time?

Ron Highfield: This book [God, Freedom & Human Dignity: Embracing God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered Culture (IVP, 2013)] finds its origin in my two teaching/research interests, (1) the intersection between Christianity and secular culture, and (2) theological reflection on issues facing the church today. As I wrote my previous book, Great is the Lord (Eerdmans, 2008; 467 pages), which falls into category (2), I kept thinking about the problem of the relationship between God and human freedom and dignity. This issue has been discussed by theologians and philosophers for 2,500 years. I began to see that this problem makes itself felt in popular culture as unspoken fear that the existence and activity of God may pose a threat to our freedom and dignity. I wrote this book to show the ways in which this fear shapes how secular culture views God and to show how the Christian view of God overcomes these fears. I argue that instead of being a threat to human freedom and dignity God is their securest foundation and the greatest hope of their glorious fulfillment.

How does this book differ from your past scholarship?

RH: In many ways God, Freedom & Human Dignity continues my theological research program of the last fifteen years. It addresses a significant theological problem at a high level in dialogue with the best theologians and philosophers, ancient and modern. It differs in at least three ways: (1) I address the problem of the way secular culture (rather than the church) thinks of God and humanity, (2) the target audience is those influenced by this secular vision and the theological students and practicing ministers who minister to them, and (3) these limitations influence the smaller size of the book (227 pages) and the less ponderous and less argumentative style of the book.

Modernity and its psychological influences are central to your argument about the internal struggle humans face in confronting and accepting God today. The crux of this struggle lies in the human need for (and even exaltation of) autonomy when it is juxtaposed with or seemingly undermined by a belief in God.  Could you discuss your concept of a “me-centered culture” and how you see people grappling with religion in a different way now than in past decades?

RH: By designating our culture is “me-centered” I don’t mean that it is especially selfishness or narcissistic; rather, I mean that it teaches us that we should look exclusively within the human self for our dignity, for guidance in our pursuit of happiness and for how to treat others. It views self-expression and authenticity as sacred rights. The “me-centered” culture instinctively recoils at the idea that we need guidance in these areas from external authority. It views calls for adherence to moral law and obedience to God as threats to autonomy, dignity and freedom. It reacts to restrictions on our search for happiness as the worst sort of hatred and cruelty. Clearly, presenting the Christian message to our contemporaries confronts us with challenges not faced by Christian thinkers even fifty years ago. In part, I wrote this book to explore ways of communicating the meaning of Christianity in this new context.

What kind of research are you currently working on?

RH: I am currently working on a book on the Christian doctrines of creation and providence. This book will continue the trajectory began in Great is the Lord. Having treated the Christian doctrine of God, I am now thinking about what it means to call God “the Creator” of the world and “Lord and Governor” of history. In dealing with the idea of creation I want to take the focus off the “science and the Bible” debate and replace it with thorough reflection on what I call the “God-creature” relation: what does it mean to say that God gives being and form to the world? What does it mean to say that creatures depend on God for their existence, form and life? These profound questions have not received the attention in recent theology and popular religion that they deserve. In this book I want to show the intimate connection between the ideas of creation and providence. The concept that ties the two together is the “God-creature” relation. Providence is a kind of continuing creation that aims at bringing the world to its appointed end. In one sense the divine act of creation includes all time and not merely a timeless beginning of time. In the course of this book I will deal with the relationship between divine providence and human freedom and with the problem of evil.

What is the proper end of an academic vocation? Or how do you understand your research?

RH: Contemporary higher education (“the academy”) seems to be very confused about why it exists and what end it should pursue. The standard rhetoric (usually directed at threats from outside the academy) argues that the academy should pursue “knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” This ideal sees the scholar as an objective and disinterested servant of truth who should receive complete academic freedom in the sacred name of truth. On the other hand, as a matter of practice, scholars adopt many other ends: political agendas, battles for cultural dominance, career advancement, reputation, money and other private goals. In my opinion the “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” view is at best a methodological guide to keep us honest and fair in our research. Understood in this sense I honor it. But scholars are human beings and all human beings serve ends beyond mere exercises in method. “Knowledge is power,” said Francis Bacon truly. And good people should direct power toward good ends. No human activity deserves to be exempt from ethical scrutiny. Hence scholars are obligated to direct their research toward good ends. Every scholar, whatever his or her religious stance, should direct scholarship toward the good of humanity. As a Christian scholar I have a particular understanding of human good, and all my theological research is directed toward that good: that human beings should come to love God and their neighbors. For me, keeping this end in mind unifies my role as a teacher of the young with my role as a researcher in search of truth. End of interview.

How would it affect the way we approach theology and church life if, instead of thinking exclusively about pressing issues and short-term goals, we extended our horizon a hundred years to 2113? Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Are we pursuing practical goals and working on theological issues now in ways that will contribute to the preservation of faith for our great, great grand children? Or will the trajectories we are following in the present make it less likely that 2113 will greet future generations with the word of faith? Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth in 2113?

Until next week…