Tag Archives: Theology

How Experts Stole the Bible

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This is the fifth in our series of essays examining how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of otherwise intelligent people. In this essay we will continue our discussion of biblical authority in hope of discovering how some Christian people could come to think that the church should affirm the whole range of LGBTQ+ identities and behaviors even though the plain sense of the biblical text and the unanimous tradition of the church forbid it.

Faith and Authority

In the previous essay I argued that the most basic reason that the earliest church received the Bible as the authority for its faith and life is that it contains the teaching and deeds of Jesus and the witness and teaching of his chosen apostles. Jesus and his apostles were authorities in the sense that you either believe them and follow them or not. This decision marked the distinction between becoming a Christian and a church member or remaining a nonbeliever and outsider. Late in the first century or early in the second, in the absence of the voices of living apostles, the written and unwritten words of Jesus and the apostles, treasured and passed on by the church, called for the same decision.

Note well that the decision to believe the Gospel was (and is) simultaneously the decision to accept the authority of Jesus and his apostles for all things pertaining to the new faith and life. Moreover, the authority of Jesus’s words and deeds and that of the teaching of the apostles was extended to those writings that the church believed preserved and passed on that teaching, the New Testament canon. That is to say, the church not only accepted the words of Jesus and the apostles as authoritative but it accepted the New Testament as the authority for the location of that inspired teaching.

As I pointed out in the previous essay, by the early part of the second century, the church had for some time been quoting the Four Gospels, Acts, and the thirteen letters of Paul as authoritative for defining Christian faith and morals. By the middle of the fourth century, all 27 books of our New Testament were recognized as canonical, that is, as authoritative. The New Testament canon of the fourth century has remained unchanged since that time—for Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches. Though Orthodox theologians tend to quote the ecumenical creeds and the Fathers as authoritative interpreters of Scripture, they recognize Scripture as the foundational authority. Roman Catholic theologians tend to argue from tradition and the authoritative teaching of the church, but they also acknowledge Scripture as the most basic norm. Protestant theologians claim to base all their doctrine and theological arguments on Scripture alone. Scripture, then, is the common language and authority for all three. It is the basis for ecumenical discussion. To refuse the authority of Scripture is to exclude oneself from the historic church in all its forms.

The Scientific Revolution Again

As I argued in Parts 2 and 3 of this series, in developing their empirical/mechanical philosophy Galileo, Descartes, and Locke destroyed the classical and common-sense belief that creation reveals itself truly—even if only partially—in the way it appears to us. They drove a wedge between the human mind and the “external” world. For Locke, human identity, the self, is not determined by one’s place in the order of creation or even by dwelling in a particular body but only by consciousness. The identity of the self is its continuity of consciousness or its consciousness of continuity. One cannot achieve scientific or reliable knowledge of nature or the self by faith, uncritical acceptance of tradition or submission to authority. One must apply the methods of science to examine all truth claims and judge for oneself. Only then can one claim to be a reasonable person.* What, then, of the authority of Scripture?

The Rise of Modern Biblical Criticism

If you’ve read the previous essays in this series, it won’t surprise you when I assert that modern biblical criticism owes its genesis to efforts to apply the methods and standards of modern science to the Bible. From the second to the seventeenth century, the Bible had been quoted, preached and studied by the church as an unimpeachable authority. In its creeds, confessions of faith and theological disputes, the church quoted the Bible as the final word on the subject under discussion. Faith, tradition and received authority had been for eighteen centuries the grounds of the authenticity, truth and certainty of the Bible.

But by the dawn of the 18th century, the philosophies of Galileo, Descartes, and Locke had made faith, tradition, and authority seem unreliable sources of knowledge. The new science demanded that all traditional truth claims be critically examined by rational/scientific methods. To refuse to examine one’s traditional beliefs critically was to risk being labeled superstitious, gullible, irrational, or in other ways backward. From what I have read, this cultural shift in what it means to be a rational person lies at the beginning of modern biblical criticism.

Of course, the Bible is not a physical object that can be studied by empirical science and expressed in mathematical language; it is a historical text. And some biblical scholars began to develop a science of biblical studies in analogy to the new science of nature.** Among the first principles of such a new historical science of the Bible as it developed in the 18th and 19th centuries are (1) read the Bible just as one reads any other book, (2) biblical studies must rid itself of all dogmatic presuppositions, such as those about divine inspiration or the authority of the creeds, (3) interpret the biblical texts within their ancient cultural, religious, and literary horizon, (4) fact or truth claims within the biblical texts must not be taken at face value but must be examined and accepted only to the extent that they are supported by historical evidence.

At first reading, these critical principles may seem to lead only to radical skepticism and unbelief. In fact, however, these four principles were used in the 18th and 19th centuries to reach conservative as well as radical conclusions and the whole range of opinion between. Conservative scholars, who trusted the church to have preserved and passed on the original and true faith, used historical critical principles in their efforts to justify the traditional faith on rational grounds. Theodor Zahn (1838-1933), for example, argued that the Four Gospels and the letters of Paul were considered canonical before the end of the 1st century. In our own day, N.T. Wright (b. 1948) carries on the project of using historical critical principles to support a conservative reading of the gospels and Paul. Other scholars of a more skeptical bent argued that much that had been accepted on faith and authority in the past could not be supported by sound historical examination. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) argued that much of the New Testament teaching about Jesus is not history at all but myth. Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) concluded that hardly any of the letters attributed to Paul were actually written by him and that much of the New Testament was written in the 2nd century. According to Baur, the development of the earliest church was driven by division between the extreme Jewish party led by Peter and the Hellenistic party led by Paul. The resolution came only in the 2nd century with the creation of the catholic church.

The story of the rise and triumph of modern historical criticism is much too long and complicated for me to tell in these essays. But I believe the essential feature of all its forms is this: since the triumph of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment based on it, a person who wishes to be known by peers as an intellectually responsible thinker must not appear to accept any truth claim on mere faith, tradition, or authority. One must, instead, place all truth claims on the witness stand for cross examination. Only those that withstand scrutiny may be accepted with intellectual integrity. As a corollary to this principle, because the number of things we can know with absolute certainty are few, the quality of beliefs may be ranked on a scale that ranges from certain knowledge through various levels of probability to the clearly false. Intellectual integrity demands that one proportion belief to the level of probability. It does not take much imagination to guess that many biblical critics severely reduced the extent of our knowledge of Jesus and the early church compared to that assumed by tradition.

Demystifying Modern Historical Criticism

The social location of the leading historical critics plays an important part in our assessment of their project. To engage at the highest level of modern historical criticism a student must gain an elite education in one of the great universities in the Western world under the supervision of a recognized scholar in the field. One must spend 10 years or more mastering ancient languages and cultures and undergoing thorough socialization into the history of the discipline. The only social location where such rigor can be sustained is the university. The modern university—especially from 1800 to 1960***—is a community of intellectuals bound together by shared academic values: respect in the community depends on adhering to the critical principle mentioned above, that is, the scholar’s conclusions must be supported by reason and evidence alone, not by faith, tradition, or authority. People who do not live within (or near) this elite subculture do not feel the same pressure to conform to this rigorous rationalism as do those whose identity and livelihood depends on its good graces. Indeed, they may find it snobbish, abstract, irrelevant, arrogant, speculative, and irreverent.

Though the number of elite biblical critics is small and they live within the cloistered walls of the university and speak an obscure language hardly anyone outside can understand, their influence extends beyond this narrow circle. (1) Many college students take religion or Bible courses during their college careers at secular or church-related universities. Not many of these courses are taught by top historical critics, but they are taught by the second and third tier students of those elite scholars. Or, students read textbooks that present the skeptical conclusions of biblical criticism as if they were established facts. Perhaps more importantly, students absorb the enlightenment skepticism toward faith, tradition, and authority. (2) University educated people, especially those who attended graduate schools, tend to adopt an elitist identity, which views people of traditional religious faith as unenlightened and backward. They couldn’t defend their elitist views or explain why faith, tradition, and authority are not good grounds for belief. They simply adopt the snobbish attitudes of their teachers. (3) Even professors of Bible, theology and ethics who teach in Christian universities and colleges for the most part received their graduate training under the influence of modern critical scholars. Some of them uncritically adopt the critical methods and conclusions of their teachers and pass them on to their students. (4) The clergy of most denominations are taught some form of historical criticism in their seminary educations and socialized to some degree into the skeptical and elitist academic attitude.

Notes

*Locke himself applied these methods to Christianity in his book The Reasonableness of Christianity.

**Many books have contributed to my understanding of this subject. One of the most important is Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems, trans. S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972).

***Beginning in the 1960s the postmodern model of the university began to compete with the modern/enlightenment model. The postmodern university abandons rationality to embrace leftist ideology and activism.

Next Time: How progressive exegetes and theologians use the principles of modern biblical criticism to ignore the plain meaning of the biblical texts and find their own thoughts behind, underneath, and beside the words of the biblical texts.

Galileo, What Hast Thou Wrought?

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Today we continue our study of how the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 19), came to be taken seriously by millions of intelligent people. The previous essay explained why no one before 1500 could have comprehended the modern dichotomy between the external appearances of such things as the male and female bodies and their internal reality. At the conclusion of that essay, I promised that in the next part “we will see how the architects of the scientific revolution—Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, et al.—destroyed confidence in the reality of forms and souls and replaced them with atoms, space, and machines. The appearances no longer reveal the reality of things. Creation is emptied of spiritual reality, meaning, purpose, moral law, and beauty, all of which are transferred to the inner subjective world of the human mind.” We begin that saga with Galileo Galilei.

Galileo Versus Aristotle

Students of nature before Galileo assumed that the way things appear to us reveals something about their inner reality and that the inner reality of things manifests itself truly in their external appearances. The meaning, purpose, beauty, moral law, and value we experience in our minds also exists in nature. The goal of Aristotelian science was understanding how all these qualities are embedded in the natures of the things themselves. However, by the time Galileo (1564-1642) came to maturity in the early seventeenth century, such thinkers as Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) were already complaining that the doctrine of forms contributed nothing to our empirical understanding of things. Mysterious forms, whether they are real or not, cannot be clearly thought and have no value for making predictions, discovering laws, and creating technology. And for reasons I do not understand, achieving these goals had become the driving force of the emerging scientific revolution.

Galileo and the Mathematization of Nature

Galileo believed that applying mathematics to nature was the only way to achieve his practical goals. Numbers and mathematical operations are clear and simple, and when we see the value of a mathematical expression or equation, we become certain of its truth. To understand nature, argued Galileo, we should set aside questions about its mysterious inner nature, the ways it appears to us, and the way it makes us feel; these are irrelevant to achieving the goals of the new science. We will then be free to work out the mathematical laws of nature’s movements and transformations. At last, we can understand nature as clearly as we understand mathematics!

Unforeseen and Unintended Consequences

To modern ears, Galileo’s philosophy of science and his revisions to the scientific method sound familiar and innocent. Whatever Galileo’s intentions, however, his innovations produced a profound moral and religious revolution. For by limiting science to knowledge that can be expressed in mathematics, Galileo, Descartes, et al, broke decisively (1) with the traditional belief that things reveal their inner reality in their outward appearances, and (2) with the corresponding belief that the inner worlds of things in nature are intelligible and mindlike in a way similar to the inner world of the human mind.

The Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Qualities

Perhaps Galileo and other pioneers of the scientific revolution could have narrowed science to what can be understood in mathematical terms without postulating an alternative to Aristotle’s intelligible forms as the cause of the way things appear to us. But they did not exercise such restraint. Instead, they replaced Aristotle’s inner forms and souls with imperceptible material atoms or corpuscles, which possess only mathematically measurable properties: shape, movement, mass, velocity, etc. In ways Galileo and Descartes cannot explain, these material particles cause us to experience the world in a human way. By distinguishing primary qualities (material, mechanical, and mathematical) from secondary qualities (psychological, organic, and qualitative), they drove a wedge between the way human beings experience the world and the world as it is apart from human perception. The only bridge between the two is mathematics. Listen to Galileo, Descartes, and Locke drive this point home:

“To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements. I think that if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds. The latter, I believe, are nothing more than names when separated from living beings, just as tickling and titillation are nothing but names in the absence of such things as noses and armpits” (The Assayer, 1623).

“The properties in external objects to which we apply terms light, color, smell, taste, sound, heat and cold—as well as other tactile qualities…are so far as we can see, simply various dispositions in the shapes, sizes, positions, and movements of their parts which make them able to set up various kinds of motions in our nerves which are required to produce all the various sensations in the soul” (Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, 1644; Quoted in Cottingham, A Descartes Dictionary, p. 149).

“These I call original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, as colors, sounds, tastes, etc. These I call secondary qualities”(John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1698, II. 8)

Oh Galileo! What Hast Thou Wrought?

Galileo convinced the world that the variety and obscurity of the natural order could be reduced to the clarity and certainty of simple mathematical equations. Modern advances in understanding the mathematical laws of nature and the explosion of technological innovation rely on this supposition. But at what cost?  God’s glorious creation has fallen silent, emptied of spiritual reality, meaning, depth, mystery, purpose, moral law, and beauty, all of which have been transferred to the inner subjective world of the human mind. But how can we continue believing in the reality of meaning, depth, mystery, purpose, moral law, and beauty, if we think of them as existing only in the human psyche? They seem to be hanging in midair with no confirmation in common experience or foundation in an enduring reality.

Aristotle and all the ancients believed in the likeness and harmony between the human world and the natural world. This belief seemed reasonable, obvious even, because humans are part of the natural world. Galileo, Descartes and others split them apart, dividing the qualities we experience into the objective (real) and subjective (psychological) spheres. Human beings became islands of mind in a sea of mindless matter. It was inevitable that this division would become intolerable…that the human mind and soul would be reunited to nature by reducing them to something simpler. Sooner or later some thinker would do to the human soul what Galileo had done to the solar system.

And that “someone” was John Locke.

Teaching the Faith in a Christian University, Part Two: The Religion Professor’s Responsibility

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I ended my previous essay by quoting a statement that I place in all my course syllabi and teased my next essay by saying, “Next Time I will unpack my syllabus statement in hopes of answering the question about the place of evangelism, catechesis and theology in the Christian college.”

Preliminaries

The much-discussed tensions within the concept of “a Christian university” find expression also within in the idea of teaching the faith within an academic institution. An institution that presents itself to students, donors, and the public as a “Christian university” incurs an obligation both to be authentically Christian and to uphold sound academic standards. I won’t undertake here the challenge of blending these two principles together harmoniously in one institution. I work toward this end in my forthcoming book The Christian University & The Academy.

A professor teaching the faith in a Christian university must do justice to at least three major concerns:

  • Courses should present authentic Christianity
  • Courses should be pedagogically appropriate to students
  • Courses should be academically sound

The meaning of each of these concerns is contested and always has been. Contested or not, however, a Christian university must define the limits of what it considers true Christianity, good teaching, and sound academia. Individual professors don’t get to define these values as they wish.

Courses Should Present Authentic Christianity

At whatever level and by whatever method, professors should endeavor to present true Christianity to their students. The measure of “true” Christianity is its conformity to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles as recorded in the canonical New Testament. I will accept no substitute for this criterion. There have always been disputed questions and obscure matters on which learned and sincere Christians have disagreed. But it is very clear both in the New Testament and in the course of church history that some matters of faith, doctrine, and morality are nonnegotiable. To step outside these boundaries is to move away from orthodoxy into heresy.

In secular private and public universities, leftist politics has all but replaced liberal values and traditional subject matter. This is especially true in the humanities and social sciences but increasingly so even in the natural sciences. Christian university professors—most of whom received their graduate education in secular universities—are not immune from the temptation to use their classrooms to advocate for the social or political causes dear to them. In my experience, the ones most likely to politicize their classrooms are on the political and theological left.

After the elections of 2016 and 2024 in which evangelical Christians overwhelmingly supported Donald J. Trump for President of the United States, it is not uncommon for Christian university professors to dismiss the faith of evangelicals in very harsh terms. In the politicized Christian university classroom, students often hear barely-argued assertions that Christianity is incompatible with capitalism and most compatible with socialism, that Christians should champion radical responses to climate change, that God is always on the side of the oppressed, and other claims based on a liberationist approach to theology. (For my thoughts on Liberation Theology, see my essay of February 19, 2025: “Is Liberation Theology Christian?”)

I do not deny that Christianity has implications for the way we live in the world and that we need to reflect on these implications. But such reflection presupposes a thorough grasp of Christianity and a commitment to live according to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles. Unhappily, most contemporary students and many faculty do not possess either one. So, “Christianity” becomes an empty cypher invoked to enhance the authority of the speaker. In my view, it is unethical as well as unacademic to ask students to accept a supposed social or political implication of Christianity before they gain a thorough knowledge of Christianity itself.

The first priority, then, is to make sure that Christian university students encounter the full range of Christian teaching as presented in the Bible and the ecumenical tradition of the church.

Courses Should be Pedagogically Appropriate to Students

The student bodies of the colleges I attended as an undergraduate were pretty homogeneous. Most of us were raised in Christian homes, attended church all our lives, and had a basic knowledge of the Bible. Most students lived within 250 miles of the college. There were very few international students, and I don’t recall a single Roman Catholic, adherent of a non-Christian religion, or atheist among my classmates.

This description fits very few Christian universities today. In my general studies classes I have evangelical students, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists. I have students from six continents. How do you teach the true Christian faith to such a diverse class of students? Do you design your course for the least, average, or most knowledgeable? Do you teach in a way that presupposes Christian faith or belief in God or at least openness to faith? Do you stay objective and descriptive or do you advocate for belief?

Precise answers to these questions must be decided by the teachers, given the makeup of their classes. However, I think there are some goals we must strive to achieve whatever the composition of the student body. We should want every student to learn the story told in the Bible and embodied in the historical life of the church. Even if we teach in the descriptive and objective style characteristic of academia, the Christian sources themselves present Christianity as the truth about God’s identity and purposes. So, even if professors refrain from using the rhetoric of evangelism, the claims of the Christian message will exert their persuasive power. And a Christian university professor should be happy about that.

Consider what the student with no prior knowledge of Christianity can learn: the basics of what Christianity asserts about God, creation and providence; about human nature, sin, death, and salvation; about Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the church; about what constitutes well lived human life, and about the hope for eternal life. And the student with prior knowledge of Christianity can benefit from an orderly, sympathetic, and coherent presentation of the Christian narrative and doctrine. Catechesis, then, if conducted in an academic mode, is not out of place in a Christian university classroom. In contrast, theology explores in depth the interconnections among the topics of faith. It teaches students how to justify the church’s teachings from Scripture, tradition, and reason and engage in debates with dissenting views. Theology is best reserved for advanced students who are believers and wish to learn how to teach the basics of the faith to others.

Courses Should be Academically Sound

Teaching the faith in an evangelistic or catechetical way differs from teaching the faith in an academic style. But that difference is not what you might suspect. We expect the academic style to proceed rationally, to respect the freedom of the student, to delve deeply into the subject matter, and explore the subject’s connections to other subject areas. But evangelism should also appeal to listeners’ reason, respect their freedom, and address their concerns honestly. Catechesis, too, respects these values. What then makes a presentation of the faith academic?

Academic teaching accepts the obligation to avoid relying on presupposed authority. It feels an obligation to state clearly its presuppositions and axioms, present evidence for its assertions, get informed about the views of others, and argue logically for its conclusions. Though evangelism makes arguments, it is primarily proclamation and confession. Catechesis does not ask students to bow blindly to the church’s authority. It respects their rationality and freedom. Nevertheless, it focuses on explaining the details of what the church believes to those who already have faith and wish to learn more. Christian evangelistic, catechetical, and academic teaching communicate the same faith, but they do so in different ways tailored to different audiences and for different purposes.

To teach the faith academically is not at all synonymous with taking a skeptical, cynical, or ironic stance. It’s not identical with being progressive, liberal, or rationalistic. Except in extreme cases—concluding to a flat earth, holocaust denial, or soundness of phrenology—it is not the conclusions you reach but the methods you use that make for academic soundness.

Teaching the Faith in a Christian College

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In the previous essay, I posed the following question, which I left unanswered: “What about teaching the faith in the Christian college? Is it catechesis or theology or evangelism or something else?” I will address this question today.

What is a Christian College?

My Experience

I do not remember a time when I did not know that I would attend a Christian college. The Christian college was presented to me as a safe alternative to state colleges. Faculty at state colleges were known for ridiculing the faith of Christian students, and state-college students, away from home for the first time and unsupervised, often plunged into drunkenness and fornication and reaped the consequences. In contrast, faculty at Christian colleges were all faithful Christians and encouraged students to pursue lives of faith. Most students were raised in Christian homes and chose to attend a Christian college because of its devotion to Christianity. There they could study the Bible at a deeper level with knowledgeable Bible teachers and live in a community dominated largely by Christian ethics and worship.

I attended two Christian colleges and found them to be much as they were described to me. All the faculty were indeed Christians, and a religious mood permeated both campuses. No matter what their majors, students were required to take a Bible course every semester. We attended dorm devotionals every evening and chapel services every day. You could hear the continual buzz of theological conversations in dorm rooms, hallways, and classrooms. These two Christian colleges gathered hundreds of Christian students and faculty in one place for one purpose, and it was good for me. Indeed, it was so good for me that I set my sights on teaching in a Christian college. And for the past 36 years I have taught in a Christian university.

A Little History

During my time as a student in these two Christian colleges I knew nothing about the history of the Christian college in America and very little about the history of the institutions I attended. I knew only their founding dates and founders and the names of a few of their most illustrious presidents. Later, I learned that from the colonial period until the late 19th century nearly all colleges and universities in America understood themselves to be in some sense Christian. However, from the late 19th century to about 1920, many of the older church-related colleges moved from an overtly Christian stance first to non-sectarian and then to a secular identity. At the same time, conservative Christians—sometimes called fundamentalists—established small liberal arts and Bible colleges as orthodox alternatives to liberal and secular colleges.* My alma maters, too, were founded in the early 20th century in response to the loss of the older Christian colleges to modernism. And they retained that countercultural mentality through my time there and beyond.

Diversity Within Limits

According to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, there are hundreds of Christian colleges in the United States and Canada and around the world. And they are quite diverse. Some are closely associated with a particular denomination and some center their identity in a confession of faith. Some require all faculty to be confessing Christians and some do not. Some require students to adhere to a Christian confession of faith and a code of conduct and some do not. Given this diversity, I cannot hope to present a one-size-fits all answer to the issue posed in the title of this essay: “Teaching the Faith in a Christian College.” Should it approach students as subjects for evangelism or catechesis or theological instruction? Below is a statement I place in all my syllabi and read to my classes on the first day of the semester. Although you can easily find out where I teach, I will not use my university’s real name. Let’s call it Misty Mountain Christian University or MMCU.

My Syllabus Statement to Students

“Misty Mountain Christian University is a Christian university.”

At minimum, this assertion means that (1) most professors and staff profess and practice the Christian faith; (2) students are required to take courses that introduce them to the original, normative religious texts of Christianity—the Bible—and show how this faith has influenced the world; (3) students are allowed and encouraged to be involved in voluntary Christian activities of worship and service; (4) the University takes an affirmative stance toward Christian belief and practice. If you are a Christian, studying at MMCU gives you an opportunity to deepen your faith in an affirming climate. If you are not a Christian, studying at MMCU will give you an opportunity to understand what Christianity actually teaches and why it affirms these things as good and true.

In terms of your course of study, MMCU does not require you to be a Christian to study here. Nor does it make the quality of your grades depend on affirming Christian belief. Grades will be determined by your level of mastery of the course material and not your beliefs.

Professor Highfield is a Christian believer, thinker, and writer. This course takes an affirmative stance toward belief in God in general and Christian faith in God in particular. Nonetheless, I will respect every person even if you do not agree with my viewpoint and Christian beliefs. I ask you to treat your classmates with the same respect. The quality of your grade does not depend on agreeing with me.

This statement contains the essential features of my view of the purpose of teaching religion courses in the Christian university.

*For more of this fascinating story, see William Ringenberg, The Christian College: A History of Protestant Higher Education in America (Baker, 1984, rev. ed. 2006).

Next Time I will unpack my syllabus statement in hopes of answering the question about the place of evangelism, catechesis and theology in the Christian college.

Understanding the Church’s Teaching Ministry

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It may be, as John Calvin thought, that human beings are born with a sense of divinity, so that their experience of the magnitude, mystery and grandeur of the universe invariably evokes the thought of God. But it is certain that children are not born with explicit knowledge of religion any more than they are born with knowledge of agriculture, animal husbandry, or physics. Their sense of divinity will be given concrete form by the society into which they are born. In many cultures, especially those dominated by only one form of religion, children gain religious knowledge by participating in the common activities of the culture: listening to its founding stories and myths and participating in its rituals, ceremonies, and holidays. The Old Testament records how the nation of ancient Israel was established. Israel taught every new generation the stories of the patriarchs, Passover, Exodus, wilderness wanderings, the giving of the Law, and the conquest of the land. They celebrated feasts and holidays associated with these great events. They participated in sacrifices, ritual washings, and purity practices.

The Teaching Ministry

The church engages in at least four types of ministry: sacramental or worship, pastoral, teaching, and works of mercy. Each is important and teaches the faith directly or indirectly, but I want to focus on the teaching ministry. Like ancient Israel, the church must teach its faith to converts and every new generation. The story of Jesus from birth to resurrection is the center of that message. But that story is set within the history of Israel told in the Old Testament and it continues in the work of the apostles and the churches they founded. The goal of that teaching ministry is that believers may continue to possess the original, true faith and enjoy the fulness of life in Christ and the Spirit to the glory of God the Father.

The church teaches in many ways and at many levels. Christian parents teach their children when they pray over meals, read Bible stories, point out the works of the Creator, take them to church services, and answer their questions about God. The church provides such programs of instruction for children as Sunday school and catechism classes. Regular church services usually incorporate Scripture readings, homilies or sermons, and hymns into the program.

Catechesis

Catechesis merits further comment. The English word catechesis derives from the Greek verb katecheo found in Acts 21:21; Galatians 6:6, and 1Corinthians 14:19. It means to instruct. As it is now used, catechesis refers to the process of teaching the full range of doctrinal and moral teachings to believers at a secondary level. It is usually conducted in special classes devoted to this purpose. Surveying all these teachings in detail in sermons, homilies, or the eucharistic liturgy would not be possible or appropriate. These teachings include such topics as God, the Trinity, creation, providence, the incarnation, the atonement and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit, sin, the church, the sacraments, justification, sanctification, the Ten Commandments, marriage, the biblical virtues and vices, and much more.

Theology

Catechesis supplies knowledge of the faith appropriate and useful for every believer. However, the church needs some believers who are taught at an advanced level. For it needs people qualified to teach the basics of the faith and answer difficult questions asked by students. At this level, select students explore in depth the interconnections among the topics of faith, learn how to justify the church’s teachings from Scripture, tradition, and reason, and engage in debates with dissenting views. At this level, we first engage in the study and practice of theology. Theology methodically employs reason (logos) to see connections among the truths of the faith, explore the presuppositions, and unfold the implications of these truths. Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) famously defined theology as “faith seeking understanding.” At the level of catechesis, the believer trusts that the church possesses the true faith and the correct interpretation of Scripture. The study of theology helps the advanced student understand why the church is correct in what it teaches.

For most of its history, the church has valued a theologically educated clergy—priests, presbyters, and bishops—and provided means toward that end. Theological training has taken place in a variety of settings. In the early centuries, individuals studied theology in catechetical schools, monastic schools, or private study. In the Middle Ages, bishops established cathedral schools, some of which developed into universities. After the Reformation, the Jesuit Order established the first seminary (1563), which is a school devoted exclusively to training clergy. In the American colonies, people destined for the ministry would attend college for an advanced classical education but for their theological education would apprentice themselves for three years with an experienced clergyman. The first Protestant seminary in America was Andover Theological Seminary (1807). (For the full story, see Justo Gonzalez, The History of Theological Education, Abington Press, 2015).

Why the Church Needs Theologians

There must, however, be an even more advanced level of theological education. Some individuals must qualify themselves to teach teachers, ministers, and priests for service in the church. Let’s call them theologians. In the early centuries, many of them were highly educated in secular learning before they embarked on a program of reading and writing theology. Among these are Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and many more. Some were bishops, some—like Origen—were monks, and some—like Justin Martyr a converted philosopher—were private teachers. In every generation some theologians stand out as teachers of theologians or doctors of the church. Since the Middle Ages, most theologians have been located in universities or seminaries.

The Christian College

What about teaching the faith in the Christian college? Is it catechesis or theology or evangelism or something else?

To be continued…

Orthodoxy or Progressivism: The Choice all Christian People Must Now Make

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The Change

The decisive choice facing Christian people today is not picking a church based on worship styles or children’s programs. Nor are the most pressing decisions occasioned by the traditional differences among Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Churches. For sure, each of these great traditions still places before us distinct doctrinal positions. But in the past, one could assume that with all their differences each preserved the essential Christian gospel and a faithful vision of the life of discipleship, what C.S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity.” But lately that confidence has been shattered. Now every believer in whatever tradition must decide between orthodox voices and progressive ones within their tradition.

The Choice

The orthodox voices call us to listen to all of Scripture, deal honestly with the apostolic teaching, and pay attention to the faithful of all times. They urge us to follow the narrow way of obedience and sacrifice. Orthodoxy warns us not to listen to the voice of the world, which often resonates with our lower natures. In contrast, progressive Christianity values liberal social change more than personal repentance. Whatever deference it gives to Christian language, progressivism is not animated by the spirit of obedience. It views miracles as parables and Christian teaching as wisdom for a less enlightened age. Biblical morality is useful only insofar as it contributes to personal happiness. The true authority for progressivism is subjective feeling validated by the spirit of the times. Its religion like all idols has been crafted by human hands.

My Growing and Shrinking Family

I am a life-long member of a fellowship of believers that reaches back into the early 19th century. I treasure it and remain committed to its central aims…that is, of being simple New Testament Christians without too many “addons.” For most of my life I’ve respected believers from other traditions, but I never felt the desire to join one of their denominations. And I still do not.

But within the past few years I’ve realized that I have more in common with orthodox Roman Catholic, Global Methodist, Orthodox Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Baptist, Bible Church Evangelical, Pentecostal, or almost any other group of orthodox believers than with the progressives in my own tradition. I share with the progressive wing a common history, traditions, institutions, heroes and villains, but sadly, we are no longer led by the same spirit. Our diverging paths grow further apart with every step.

Evangelicals: The Group Progressives Love to Hate

Progressives love to hate evangelicalism. The reasons for this antipathy are clear. Progressives lean to the political left; American evangelicals lean right. Progressives adopt a permissive view of sex, gender, and marriage.  Evangelicals hold to traditional sexual morality and marriage. Progressives are doctrinally liberal while evangelicals are orthodox. Most progressives are former evangelicals embarrassed by their roots and eager to demonstrate their enlightened credentials.

Pan-Orthodoxy

Evangelicals are orthodox but not all orthodox Christians feel at home in American evangelicalism. It’s too emotional, entrepreneurial, doctrinally shallow, political, culturally narrow, etc. I suggest that orthodox believers need not feel locked into a choice between American evangelicalism and progressive Christianity. Orthodox Christianity was not born with the American evangelical movement. It can be traced back to the New Testament through all the great traditions, despite their cultural differences and distinct doctrinal emphases. It’s in that line of true faith, that spirit of obedience, where I feel most at home. I am brother to all my orthodox brothers and sisters wherever they worship the Lord Jesus. I stand with you. We can work out or bear patiently our differences as long as we share that loyalty. Let’s find each other and stand together “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3).

Christian Colleges Are Academically Sound and Socially Necessary

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Today I want to flesh out an idea I introduced in the previous essay: “Can Christian Scholars (and Colleges) be Academic?” Secular critics of the idea of the Christian college charge that such colleges cannot live up to the ideal of a university. As I observed in that essay, according to the reigning model of academia,

to be a real college or university, that is, to live up to the ideal of academia, the institution must not presuppose the truth of any belief. No theory, hypothesis, belief, description, method, etc., can be given privileged status. Professors must be left completely free to go wherever their minds and hearts take them and share these thoughts with students and the public.

Christian colleges and universities violate this principle by presupposing the truth of Christian faith. Hence, they are not true colleges and universities.

An Abstract and Unworkable Ideal

University Not a Street Corner

Notice first that the ideal of the university as articulated in the above principle is abstract. It has never been realized in any real university; nor can it be. Every real university embodies a host of value judgments, social goals, methodological principles, and truth claims. And it excludes many theories and truth claims from examination because it considers them false, immoral, irrational, or irrelevant. It seems to me that the “ideal” of a free-for-all discussion fits better in the general space of society governed by the First Amendment right of freedom of speech than in the university where speech is governed by rules far more restrictive than freedom of speech. You don’t have to possess a PhD to express your opinion on the street corner. But possessing a PhD is the minimum qualification to teach in a university classroom; and by the time students complete their PhDs they’ve already been socialized into the elite world of mainstream academia.

A Fallacious Argument

Second, academic critics of Christian colleges and universities make a fallacious argument. They apply an abstract ideal to Christian colleges but not to the secular university. Secular universities will not allow the geocentric theory of the universe or the idea that the earth is flat to be taught because they “know” they are false. They will not allow racist or homophobic or sexist ideas to be expressed by professors because they “know” they are immoral. The list of proscribed theories and dogmatic certainties is long. I am convinced that the real reason secular critics reject the idea of a Christian college is that they believe that Christianity is false or immoral. Or, is it that they are afraid it might be true?

No University is Universal

Third, no university is universal. No particular university can house research professors from every discipline and study every problem. Nor can any one university create programs and employ teachers in every possible subject. Many significant problems will suffer neglect and resources will be wasted pursuing ephemeral winds of change. Universities possess limited resources and draw on a finite pool of prospective students. They compete with each other for resources, professors, and students. They vie with each other to construct the most appealing “brand.”

No Professor is An Island

Fourth, the idealized principle quoted above makes it seem as if professors work in complete isolation, boldly experimenting with ideas, daring to think for themselves, having no settled opinions, and beginning every morning with a clean slate and a clear mind. This image completely misrepresents how academia really works. Professors work in disciplinary departments—chemistry, sociology, psychology, biology, history, and philosophy. And though there are always inner departmental controversies and rivalries, departments have a tendency to hire like-minded professors. It is sometimes called ideological inbreeding.

Professors also belong to national and international associations devoted to their discipline: The American Chemical Society, The Modern Language Association, The American Historical Association, and hundreds more. These societies develop professional standards and give professors a sense of identity beyond their local universities. Perhaps even more significant, every subject area is further divided into rival theories held by communities of adherents that are often called “schools of thought.” No one is just a philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, language scholar, theologian, biblical scholar, or political scientist. These subjects divide into rival theories bent on refuting each other. Some of these rival communities have existed for decades or centuries and some for over 2,400 years.

An isolated researcher, a member of no community, without adherence to a school of thought can make no progress. Progress in any field of study is marked by extending the explanatory scope of a paradigm or theory held by the community of scholars to which one belongs. People like Galileo or Newton or Einstein come along once in a century. In the meantime, thousands of scientists work out the implications and applications of their theories to new areas of experience. Mathematics, physics, and Chemistry best exemplify the possibility of progress. But every discipline taught in the university imitates these sciences insofar as it can.

Every modern university conducts its business according to this method or pretends to do so. For only in this way can a university claim to advance knowledge, provide a sound education, and therefore justify its existence.

The Christian Philosophy

Secular universities as institutions adhere to rules, principles, values, and certain truths that distinguish them from a gathering on a street corner, and research professors and teachers conduct their work within departments, disciplinary societies, and among rival schools of thought. There is no such thing as an uncommitted, neutral academic institution or enterprise. Academia is about testing, extending, and applying theories and paradigms that researchers believe are reliable guides to discovery and progress. Therefore, I believe I am fully justified in rejecting the secular criticisms of the idea and practice of the Christian college based on the abstract principle quoted above.

How may the existence of a Christian college or university be justified in view of the actual practice of research and teaching in American colleges and universities as I described it above? What if we think of Christianity as a “school of thought” in analogy to such philosophical schools of thought as Platonism, Stoicism, Idealism, or Empiricism? These philosophical paradigms can be, and in fact are, taught in state and private secular universities. Many philosophers who teach courses in Plato or Stoic literature argue for the truth of these philosophies in part or as a whole. Why couldn’t Christianity be taught in secular universities alongside these philosophies, some of which are very theological? As long as professors argue in rational ways and deal fairly with objections rather than merely asserting Christianity dogmatically, I can see no rational or legal objection to the practice.

Sadly, state universities appeal to the United States Supreme Court’s decisions about the First Amendment’s prohibition of government-established religion to forbid professors from arguing for the truth of Christianity. But more than that, there is a huge bias against Christianity in both state and private secular universities. Hence Christians need to establish their own colleges and universities to explore the implications and applications of their Christian faith.

The exclusion of Christian theology from academia is an important academic rationale for the existence of Christian colleges and universities.* Because of the bias against and legal restrictions on teaching Christianity as possibly true, beautiful and good in secular universities, theology has been exiled from the curriculum. In my view, this exclusion is a dereliction of duty based on animus—a betrayal of the true academic ideal. Christian colleges and universities are doing for American society what secular colleges and universities culpably neglect to do. Christian colleges and universities serve the Tens of millions of American Christians and other believers in God by seriously exploring the implications of their faith for all aspects of life and in providing an education for their children that takes their faith seriously as a truth claim. And these institutions keep alive for society as a whole a very influential and profound viewpoint on the perennial questions about the human condition.

*There are many other rationales for establishing Christian universities and colleges. I am focusing on one academic reason that secular academics should acknowledge even if they are not sympathetic.

Can Christian Scholars (And Colleges) be Academic?

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For the past year I’ve been reading about higher education in America, about 10 books in all. I wrote blog reviews of 5 of them. Most of these books focus on secular private and state-controlled colleges and universities. Whenever they mention “denominational,” or “sectarian” schools, the clear implication—if not the explicit declaration—is that these colleges are not truly academic. Indeed, they cannot be academic, because they exempt certain religious dogmas from critical scrutiny and prohibit professors from teaching or writing anything that contradicts them. To be a real college or university, that is, to live up to the ideal of academia, the institution must not presuppose the truth of any belief. No theory, hypothesis, belief, description, method, etc., can be given privileged status. Professors must be left completely free to follow where their minds and hearts take them and share these thoughts with students and the public…and be given career-long security and a salary to do so.

Academic Hypocrisy

I think you can see already that this ideal of academia is unworkable. It is skepticism of the most cynical kind that envisions academia as a game to be played for its own sake. If students, parents, and the government came to believe this, would they pay professors and administrators to play this game? In fact, however, the secular description of academia is a cynical ploy designed for one purpose: to make it seem irrational for a college to presuppose Christian faith, traditional morals and common sense as guiding principles. Secular colleges and universities have no intention of living up to this ideal.

The whole point of anything we might call an academy is to rise above the undisciplined and emotion-driven conversations of the street. The academy claims to be a social good because it uses time-tested and critically proven methods of assessing facts, perceiving logical coherence and causal connections, and weighing probabilities to approximate truth. And in order to carry out this process, scholars work within traditions, schools of thought and communities to work out the implications of the dominant theories. Apart from accepting well-supported theories at least provisionally, scientific progress is impossible.* The same holds true in all areas of academic research—from fine arts to history to economics. It is precisely the methodical, rational exploration of (provisionally) accepted theories that makes academia academic!

Christian Academia

Christian scholars, colleges and universities conform to this model of academia as well as secular colleges and universities do. If you think of basic Christian doctrine in analogy to a well-supported theory, Christian scholars seek to work out the full implications of this theory in religion, theology, ethics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. Christian colleges and universities gather Christian scholars from all disciplines to work together on this grand project and to share the results of their study with students and the public.

Objections and Replies

1. But you may object that Christian colleges presuppose only one grand theory, whereas secular colleges gather scholars that presuppose many theories, which are allowed to clash. In response we might point out that secular colleges exclude many theories from consideration. Just try exploring the implications of belief in divinely revealed moral law or the resurrection of Christ at a secular university. Or try teaching a class arguing for rejection of the theory of human-caused climate change or that there are only two genders. Larry Summers was forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard just for suggesting that the disparity between the numbers of men and women in the STEM subject areas should be researched to see if it might be biologically based. Secular colleges’ and universities’ claims of neutrality and all-inclusivity are clearly disingenuous.

2. Some would object that Christian faith is not a “well-supported” theory but a set of beliefs based on faith. But this objection misses an important truth about Christianity. Christianity claims to be true. Belief in God can be supported by many lines of argument that many people find compelling. The distinctive beliefs of Christianity are based on events that it claims really happened. Christian scholars assert that Jesus Christ really lived, taught, died on a Roman cross, and three days later rose from the dead. The tomb was empty and Jesus was seen alive by many people, including Saul of Tarsus. One may argue that these beliefs are false, but note well, you have to argue that they are false! And if something is worthy of arguing about, that makes it worthy of academic study! If Christians believe that basic Christian doctrine is true, that of itself makes engaging in scholarship to explore the implications of this truth and creating an institution to facilitate that exploration an immanently reasonable (academic!) thing to do.

*This is a major conclusion of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Revolutions come along generations apart. In between, scholars work within traditions or paradigms. Kuhn calls the activity within these interim periods “normal science.”

Is Liberation Theology Christian?

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I am taking a break from my essays on higher education to ask, “Is Liberation Theology Christian?” A few years ago, I would have answered this question, “It depends.” Perhaps that was because I knew it only from books. But now my first impulse is to say “No!” because I find myself surrounded by “liberation” theologians, and I know firsthand where they are coming from. It does not matter what they focused on in graduate school—biblical studies, church history, systematic theology or practical theology—everything is about liberating the oppressed. They’ve multiplied like rabbits. It seems that within the past 10 years, every theology graduate program in America decided that the only subject worth studying is oppression and liberation. Everybody is a social ethicist and a political activist. And you advance your academic career by discovering new classes of oppressed people and ever more subtle ways oppressors oppress their victims.

Before I go further into my complaint, I should probably define liberation theology. Liberation theology is a general term for any system of theological thought that privileges “liberation” as the lens through which it views all the topics usually studied in Christian theology. It evaluates every theological utterance by its tendency to oppress or liberate some group of people. There are no neutral theological statements! Everything is political, and everyone has an agenda. The purpose of liberation theology is to critique theologies that justify oppression and construct theologies that justify the efforts of designated oppressed groups to liberate themselves. It is not to listen to the word of God, repeat it to the church, and obey it.

What kind of oppression does liberation theology have in mind? Not sin, death, and the Devil! These three are the classic oppressors of humankind from which traditional Christianity sought liberation through the gracious saving action of the Father, Son, and Spirit. In liberation theology, the oppressors are human beings and the social structures they create. Liberation theologians work to expose and critique the capitalism, patriarchy, white racism, homophobia, colonialism, transphobia, etc., that they see permeating American society. Liberation theology focuses on political liberation. And it draws on the socio-political analysis of Karl Marx and his contemporary followers often called neo-Marxists. They divide the world into the oppressor classes and the oppressed classes. It’s a very simple analysis of a very complicated world. And from this simple analysis liberation theologians derive a simple theology that divides people into good and bad, guilty and innocent based on group identity. The oppressors can make no defense and the oppressed can give no offense.

What gives these liberation theologies the appearance of being Christian? The simple answer to this question is that they argue that the God of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ always took the side of the oppressed. Liberation theologians select such prooftexts as the Exodus story, some of Jesus’s statements, some of his interactions with the poor and rich, and a few other isolated statements in the Old and New Testaments. They sprinkle these quotes within an already complete system of social and political thought derived from Karl Marx and lead the reader to leap to the conclusion that the whole system springs from the essence of Christianity. But Christianity is completely superfluous to the doctrine. It is added to tickle Christian ears and, frankly, to deceive them.

Why do I say that liberation theology is not Christian? (1) Read any liberation theology you please—feminist, Black, womanist, gay, queer, and Latin American—and you will always find that the subjective experience of these groups is considered a divine revelation as authoritative, if not more so, than Scripture. No reading of Scripture, no matter how obvious to the ordinary reader, will be allow to subvert the “truth” of the subjective experience of oppression. But in any theology worthy of the designation “Christian,” Scripture must be acknowledged as the norm of all theological doctrine and ethics, and to reject this norm is to cease to be Christian. To continue posing as Christian is to lie and deceive. (2) Liberation theology selects one theme within Scripture—liberation—and subordinates everything else to it. Liberation theology does not therefore present the fulness of the gospel or the apostolic teaching; and this distortion through omission is a textbook definition of heresy.

How to Read Jordan Peterson, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine

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A Reading Guide

I just finished reading Jordan Peterson’s most recent book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine. In this 505-page, quirky, provocative book Peterson wrestles with certain biblical characters and stories, among which are the creation story, the fall, Cain and Abel, Abraham, Moses, and Jonah. As my essay title indicates, I will not be doing a full review. My aim, rather, is to give you my perspective on what the book is and is not, what it does and does not do; that is to say, I want to help you get the most out of reading it.

What the Book is Not

Not Christian Theology

Don’t read this book as if it were an exercise in Christian theology. Peterson is not a theologian. You will completely miss its important message if you measure his interpretations by the standards of Christian theology, orthodox, progressive, or liberal. Mistakenly reading it in this way will lead you to think at one moment that he is orthodox, the next heretical, and the next completely off the wall. Peterson does not read the Bible as the canonical scripture of the Christian church and does not adopt the methods and language of Christian theology. Don’t critique the book for not doing well what it makes no pretense of doing at all.

Not philosophy

We Who Wrestle is not a book of philosophy. Peterson is not a philosopher and does not attempt to deduce a system of metaphysics from self-evident axioms. Nor does he use logical analysis to clarify traditional philosophical problems and arguments. It’s not philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, or philosophical anthropology. The book is much too mystical, hermeneutical, eclectic, and as I said above, quirky for that. Indeed, at points it reads like a stream of consciousness riff on a theme. So, don’t look for an internally consistent philosophy. You will be disappointed.

Not Christian Apologetics

Peterson is not a Christian apologist, though he could be mistaken for one. Peterson often asserts the “truth” of the religious and moral message of the Bible. He speaks of “inspired” prophets who open themselves to “revelations” of the “divine” and “reality.” And he consistently uses the words “God” “spirit” and “Logos” to refer to the highest Reality toward which we should aim. We should not, however, assume that he uses these words in exactly the same sense as they are used in the worship and theology of the Christian church. He does not. And he always qualifies assertions of “truth” and “reality” with question marks or other markers of tentativeness. In the end, Peterson poses the question of the “reality” of the divine as a decision between directing one’s aspirations toward the good, true, and beautiful or surrendering to the downward pull of evil, falsehood and the ugly. God is defined as the adequate ground of all we hold to be worthy of highest human aspiration. Listen to these words from his conclusion:

All these great, profound and unalterably memorable stories are characterizations of God…God is presented as the unity that exists at the foundation or stands at the pinnacle. In the absence of that unity, there is either nothing that brings together and harmonizes, in which case there is a deterioration into anarchy and chaos, or there are the various replacements that immediately swoop in, in their foul way, to usurp and dominate: the spirit of power that characterizes the Luciferian realm and produces the scarlet beast of the degenerate state. Does that make the divine real? This is a matter of definition, in the final analysis—and therefore of faith. It is real insofar as its pursuit makes pain bearable, keeps anxiety at bay, and inspires the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. It is real insofar as it establishes the benevolent and intelligible cosmic order…It is real as the force that opposes pride and calls those who sacrifice improperly to their knees. It is real as the further reaches of the human imagination, striving fully upward (pp. 502-504).

Not Historical and Literary Study

Peterson does not interpret the Bible in the traditional ecclesiastical or the modern historical and literary way. Don’t expect to learn much about the historical context of the events recounted in the texts or the setting and process of their literary composition. He does not concern himself with whether or not the events recounted in Genesis, the rest of the Pentateuch or Jonah really happened. Interestingly, Peterson’s method of interpretation has more in common with patristic and medieval than modern interpretation. The church fathers and medieval interpreters read the scriptures on four levels: literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical or spiritual. The word “anagogical” means “leading upward.” In other words, to interpret biblical texts in an anagogical way means to seek in the text a mystical or spiritual truth about God and the soul. Peterson does something similar. He seeks evidence in biblical texts of human “perceptions of the divine.” The medieval interpreters were guided by their conviction that God spoke in the texts and if we purify ourselves and listen carefully, we can hear his voice speaking deep truths and mysteries. Similarly, Peterson assumes that these texts, as evidenced by their power to shape definitively and inescapably the culture we live in—that is, what we consider to be good, true, and beautiful—have proved themselves reservoirs of deep truth about the divine and the human. This truth, these perceptions, is what Peterson seeks to articulate.

Not Psychology, Sociology, or Politics

Peterson is a psychologist and draws on his knowledge and experience as a therapist. But this book is not a book of psychology. Despite his many studied observations, opinions and off-handed comments about society and the political order, do not read the book as primarily about society or the state.

What the Book is

A Study of “Perceptions of the Divine”

As the subtitle indicates, Peterson listens to the biblical stories for “perceptions of the Divine.” Think about each word in this expression. First, these “perceptions” are human perceptions. The place where the divine is perceived is in the human psyche; hence the book is a study of the human soul as the locus of divine revelation, not a theology that attempts to speak about God in himself. Second, to perceive is not the same as to think or to theorize. Perception is, if not precognitive, at least preconceptual. In perception, we meet a reality that causes changes in us that we feel but cannot yet name. Peterson is careful to warn us that our “perceptions” of the divine can never be exhaustively translated into clear thought. God is always beyond our comprehension. Third, Peterson speaks in his subtitle of the “divine.” The “divine” is a general term that covers many different “characterizations” of the divine. Whereas “perceptions of the divine” are universal in human experience, the divine is named and characterized only in specific religious traditions. This book is about the universal human openness to and experience of the infinite, the upward call toward perfect unity and perfection, which as Peterson reminds us many times, is “by definition” the divine (e.g., p. 234).

A Phenomenology of “Homo Religiosus”

Peterson does not preface his book with a discussion of his methodology. He talks a bit about meaning and paradigmatic and archetypical stories. And when I hear such discussions I think of the psychology of C.G. Jung, the scholar of archaic religion Mircea Eliade, and phenomenologist of religious experience Rudolph Otto. Having read the book, I would characterize Peterson’s method as a phenomenology of “homo religiosus” (Eliade) or the religious human being. Phenomenology is the study of how things come to appear in human consciousness. Peterson listens to biblical texts, which were produced by prophets and deeply religious individuals, for their perceptions of the divine. That is to say, how and in what ways did the divine—the highest and the best—come to appear in their consciousness? And what kind of transformations happen to people who perceive the divine and made the sacrifices required to respond appropriately?

According to Peterson, these biblical texts voice something universally human. The book’s title is We Who Wrestle With God; not “They” or ‘Those” but “We.” Peterson challenges his readers to understand themselves as part of the “We.” Human beings by virtue of their humanity have no choice but to wrestle with God. The divine is always near, pressing in on us, calling us upward. Our destiny as individuals and as a society will be determined by whether we obey the upward call or in sloth or malice sink downward into chaos and destruction.

Next Time: In Part Two I will propose some ways the book can be useful to the individual Christian, the church, and society.