How to get at the truth
I have set out here, very briefly, what seem to me to be some of the key intellectual and practical commitments that need to be made if we are to achieve a more realistic Christian faith. The intellectual commitments are essentially matters of faith. They are an acknowledgement of the fact that Christianity has to do with a serious and real engagement with the God described in the biblical traditions and that this ‘Truth’ is not rational; it can be incorporated into Christian discourse only as a largely unargued presupposition. The practical commitments relate to the way in which the church handles the Truth that has been entrusted to it, how we ensure the ‘truthfulness’ of Christian discourse.
Each of these commitments needs in principle to be elaborated and defended, not merely abstractly but in the context of one or other of the various implicit dialogues in which we are involved. To assert, for example, that God exists brings into view a debate that is largely foreign to the biblical writings or, for that matter, to modern evangelical discourse. In relation to secular thought, however, such an assumption becomes extremely difficult, and in other contexts the claim that this God is almighty or personal introduces a different set of disagreements which are virtually impossible to resolve on any sort of rational or philosophical basis. Here, however, I only wish to outline some of the basic ideas or assumptions that underlie this work and which may not always be properly explained or justified.
1. The existence of an almighty God who interacts meaningfully and purposefully with his creation. It is appropriate to speak of a personal relationship, one of dependence and worship, with such a God.
2. A special ‘relationship’ between this God and the descendants of Abraham over a period of approximately 1400 years, out of which emerged the particular and (eschatologically) decisive option of Jesus as messiah and saviour. In accepting this, however, one must also accept that because of its historical particularism and religious favouritism this relationship is thoroughly problematic. This arrogation of a universal God, which is both religiously and philosophically offensive, cannot simply be ignored by the church: it must be part of Christian self-understanding.
3. The broad reliability of the biblical texts as a record and exposition of Israel?s experience of God. These texts I take to be generally amenable to informed scholarly interpretation, and indeed to intelligent lay interpretation given an adequate ‘historical-critical’ framework.
4. The belief that mankind, individually and corporately, is in need of ‘salvation’. This ‘salvation’ consists in the restoration of Israel as a unique people in which God dwells by his Spirit, and rather more importantly from our perspective, in the extension of membership of this people to the whole world on the basis of faith in Israel’s messiah. Salvation is through an apprehension of the grace of God and should not be allowed to degenerate into any form of ideological conditioning. What we are saved from is a fundamental (ontological) alienation from God, which manifests itself secondarily as human sinfulness.
5. The option of Jesus Christ, which has become since the resurrection in principle a universal option and which carries with it a real and final accountability. I take it to be inherently reasonable to assert, as a matter of faith, that the story about Israel’s messiah has an absolute applicability, and that in some real way all people will find that they must answer to God for their loyalties and behaviour.
1. A commitment to the Truth must be accompanied by a no less vigorous commitment to truthfulness in all respects. The evangelical church has become so sure of its grasp of ultimate Truth that in many respects it has stopped thinking. Such complacency must, in the end, undermine and bring into disrepute the Truth that the church seeks to uphold.
The concern for truthfulness covers all areas of thought and expression, but a special emphasis should be placed on how Scripture is used. On the one hand, dogmatic statements must be recognized as provisional - secondary to and contingent upon the much more complex and difficult content of Scripture. On the other, we should not allow faith to elevate Scripture above truth: faith can never make the assertions of Scripture either more or less true. Only on the basis of this sort of intellectual commitment can the larger, more controversial and offensive claims be made about the rightness of the biblical view of God and the uniqueness of Christ. The pursuit of intellectual integrity, moreover, should not be restricted to the evangelical intelligentsia; indeeed, the more pressing need at the moment is for the naked gospel of Jesus Christ to find expression in the churches. It is ordinary Christian discourse that cries out for integrity and credibility.
2. Traditional evangelicalism defines itself largely by means of its beliefs. A more appropriate self-understanding would construct itself around a lively sense of the historical and experiential reality (the practical commitment of baptism, the experience of the Spirit, the worship of God, the speaking of truth, the exercise of forgiveness, the search for unity) to which both Scripture and doctrine, in their different ways, point. The evangelical mind is too much in the grip of a stifling ideological, even mythological, commitment and needs to recover instead a sense of the reality of things.
3. A crucial requirement for reading the Bible well is that we consistently ask first what was being said to the original hearer or reader, and only once this has been established to ask in a rather critical and historically sensitive manner what is being said to us. The Bible is not a two-dimensional text from which an all-purpose, universal truth can be read by anyone at any time: it has historical depth, it is thoroughly contextualised, and this complicates things. The Christian mind must incorporate this third dimension, must reach back imaginatively to hear Jesus speak to Israel or Paul address ancient Christian communities. Dogmatism is a poor substitute for this work of the Spirit-filled, Christ-centred, imagination.
4. There must be a fundamental commitment to be able to proclaim?to learn how to proclaim?the kingdom of God with a sense of conviction and integrity. This cannot be taken for granted. Too many Christians are unable to speak about their faith because they struggle to find a way of speaking that does not sound puerile or implausible or fraudulent. The work of evangelism and apologetics has frequently been hamstrung by its reliance on irrationality and dogmatism - the hope that people will somehow come to believe despite the fact that what is said does not sound very believable. By embracing open standards of truth (and accepting the intellectual risks involved) we put ourselves in the position of being able to mount a more plausible defence of a Christ-centred worldview and a more compelling critique of secularism.
5. The church needs to develop a rhetoric that speaks both to insiders and to outsiders. The failure of the church to communicate to those on the outside is a further symptom of the loss of intellectual integrity and of the corruption of truth within evangelical thinking. Much can be done to mend the situation simply by learning to speak the truth about Christ to those who have not been innoculated with the presuppositions of evangelicalism.
6. If changes, perhaps quite deep changes, need to be made to the way in which we think and speak about our faith, this should not be to the detriment of a passionate and effective life in the Spirit. This life, this vitality, in its various manifestations, has been one of the best fruits of the modern evangelical movement. Perhaps more to the point, Christian discourse should always be prophetic, in the proper sense of the word. It arises as much from an engagement with God as from the interpretation of a text, and although modern prophecy is often either over-politicised or simply banal, I would argue that it remains a necessary part of Christian discourse. The church must find ways to speak directly from God - but this too must be done with integrity.
7. By restricting the ideological and cultural definition of evangelicalism we allow for the continuing possibility of a constructive and purposeful ecumenism. ?Evangelical? should always be a cross-denominational category, not a sectarian label; and an evangelical commitment should be open to finding Christlikeness not only across the spectrum of Christian traditions but also across the other cultural and social partitions that divide up the church.
Tim Parker
I first heard the Christian message over 20 years ago; at least that was when I was taken in by it. Little did I know it at the time, but my initial inclination was to ask legitimate questions as to the coherence and integrity, the intelligibility and reliability of this person called Christ – my first tentative steps at doing theology. Nothing could be more central to theology proper than the posing of questions as to the nature (ontology) and veracity (epistemology) of the claims of Jesus to be a figure so important and unique that he is worthy of worship. After subsequent study along these lines, I cannot help noticing the habit of our local politicians here in Ireland to use the phrase ‘The reality is…’ (!). If this, the Incarnation, presents problems for Jews and Muslims ‘to get their heads around’, then why not also for Christians? In the setting of a college Christian Union I was taken aside by one whose Bible was well penned and shown respectfully just how Jesus’ relation to God is one of equality and not inferiority. Those few minutes were the beginning and end of my theological induction – even the non-biblical term, Trinity, was mentioned (!).
Little did I know at the time, nor subsequently at college, of the acres of print of early church debates concerning the understanding of Jesus which reached the clarity of credal statements (for example, the Nicene Creed) by the time of the 4th century. Yet there is today the analogous problem of the ‘alien’ message of God coming into a culture which is not, as then, God-moulded to receive such a strange message – today, especially, given the anti-intellectualism. It is the very newness and uniqueness of the message that requires the hearer to sweep away obstacles to belief and understanding. Special revelation, especially if one is going to base one’s life on it, demands not just assent to a few disconnected propositions but assured personal belief. Much of the point of religious reading is not just to sharpen our minds (reason) but to have a confidence in saying and doing that we would not otherwise have. Libraries become places of retreat where the shortness of time for intelligent conversation gives way to a different channel of communication! Only while thinking and writing the last article here did I really begin to appreciate how the message of God’s love is bound up with reason, that reason is an aspect of love. Wherever we look, our thoughts are bound up with relationships – natural, human and divine – so any notion of rationality is particularly important to the way it may help us to know God, or hinder our understanding. That brings one to the recent debates about the use of reason and the view of postmodernism. Essentially I see the problem of postmodernism and the Christian message as one of the distrust in reason and a misunderstanding as to the place of culture under Christ – again, the latter amounting to a misuse of reason.
Reason and western cultureGoodness knows what are the acceptable criteria for rationality – not that I could begin to describe the conditions for thought in pre-enlightenment, enlightenment and post-enlightenment periods. Since the word postmodernism, so far as I understand, is an umbrella term, embracing all cultural spheres, and hence many different levels of meaning, the word does not fit neatly any one definition. It is more of a reactionary term, perhaps, one would say, with a distaste for the present/status quo and being reactionary – ie. without necessarily knowing how we got to the present state of affairs of dissatisfaction. So the problems to be addressed are all ones to do with (alien) Western Culture, its values, our way of life. Do we have a situation where modern culture influences the way we view God, with deleterious results, rather the case whereby God dictates cultural expression and organisation? Much resides on thinking out the doctrine of God. That is the real problem for postmodernism. To acquiesce in this is to accept pluralism, relativism, and more besides – even anti-realism in philosophy. It is to place the religious within a private sphere of truth. We find postmodernism in reaction to modernism, but what comes next in reaction to postmodernism? Are we not embracing the symptoms of a wider problem when using the word postmodernism instead of looking for the cause?
Dualism and cultureWe can rephrase the problem as one primarily of dualism, cosmological, and epistemological – ie. precursors to the formation of culture. To tackle the inroads of dualism is to make way for the unifying and reconciling message of the gospel, set against a fragmentary schizoid secular, and even religious, culture. A reinvigorating of all of life, social, cultural, economic. (Here Christianity becomes a perpetual haunting of the lifestyles adopted unwittingly in our western culture). I think of the devastating attack on the American educational establishment by Allan Bloom in ‘The Closing of the American Mind’; Melanie Philips’ provocative critique of the British educational scene in ‘All must have prizes’; Jonathan Sacks Reith lecture on ‘the Re-moralisation of discourse’; Sack’s debate about the public sphere in his ‘Future of Politics’ (compare his concern for the distortions of liberalism with modern-day illiberalism and the BBC TV program called ‘the Century of the Self’ in which the policy-making of political parties is determined by the psychological form of focus group); the cosmological and epistemological background to the problem of disunity and fragmentation of knowledge in the writings of Thomas Torrrance; not to mention the missionary writings of Leslie Newbigin.
The relevance of theology – going beyond the biblical textAs I asked elsewhere, how do we cope with the level of analysis and constant questioning Christ poses of us? Essentially, then, He is in the truth and we are in untruth! In the world of numbers it is rather like getting all people to appreciate, as non-engineers, the specific designs of bridges! It is not easy for the eye alone to appreciate the shape of say, a suspension bridge except on aesthetic grounds. But knowing God also involves the language of reason, the rationality of word and number. Many of the attempts at reflection on our place in culture then could open ourselves to the fear factor, for we are in unchartered waters. If the Bible is relevant for all times and places, then the real relevance of the biblical text is where the text leads off into the handling of theological difficulties of the present. This is surely where the biblically derived idea of repentance comes in – the overcoming of personal weakness (sinfulness) and disinterest in the truth, his Light overcoming the darkness of fear and misunderstanding. Just as mathematics is a wonderful language for the initiated, so too is theology. If theology is done in a repentant fashion and really open to the truth then it is an enabling subject helping us to see where we have put up arbitrary walls of division. For, after all, the message is one of wholeness, healing and reconciliation Yet even here I am reliably informed by (the writings of) Archbishop Rowan Williams that theology is really no use for helping us with problems! But this is surely not the case with a theology done with sufficient conceptual clarity as to lay bare before us difficult problems.
Repentant rethinking on cultural relationsFor if Jesus represents before us the perfect vicarious human response to God, our High Priest, then the question of Who he is and the question of ethical demands are intrinsically related. The confusions of our culture, ones of relationship, personal, social and economic, have transcendent causes residing in the very life and being of God – for he has gone through with the sharing of his very life with us. It is the eclipsing of God in Christ by our selves, a negation of his ultimate self-offering, which introduces into our thinking, the distortions of human will and subjectivity. In trying hard to work out, and do what is right in and for our culture, we act in self-justificatory ways.
I put to the test the idea that theological ways, as opposed to biblical chapter and verse treatment, has still much further to penetrate in the church. A group of local Presbyterian clergy were at a conference. In the bookshop during an interval I asked a young clergyman whether he ever gave sermons about politics. His immediate response was that the Bible had nothing to say on the matter. This really says it all! For the whole civic realm, which we know God must care about deeply, becomes closed to Christian scrutiny and critique. On this view, all he could offer from the pulpit for our socio-political problems was a stymied version of God’s love. No wonder, in this case, that we try to avail of whatever help is at hand, from whatever sources.
Points of conclusionAs a result of the paucity of my experience or otherwise, I find that:
1. The active meditation on reason (God) in books can make one impatient with the ritualistic elements in Christian worship. Given the broad range and number of books available on every conceivable topic, like the feeding of any appetite, one’s boredom threshold can be considerably lowered! An eminent biblical scholar, C.E.B. Cranfield posed the question, why are we to take the Eucharist? His answer was simply that God commanded it. Unless one had been brought up in the tradition of animal sacrifice, the crudeness of the handling of the Eucharist symbols is nearly beyond belief, for me anyway.
2. By the notion of Lex orandi lex credendi, ie. the close affinity between what we believe (statement) and worship, I find a simple credal statement as effective for the centering my thoughts on God as the introduction of a church setting.
3. The musical expression in worship is not necessarily anymore meaningful than the listening to a sermon or biblical reading.
4. Because book reading is a largely solitary activity it is easy to acquire a bit of obstinate individuality – probably one is still perceived to be slightly odd to like theology as a subject – so as pietist legalism (self-righteousness) fades into the background there is more of the ill-disciplined, ‘I shall do as I like’ feeling! This was a feeling that came rushing to the surface a while ago when I did a trial signing of a Christian dating agency. Despite the general level of education the degree of interest in theological engagement seemed terribly low. All seemed to have read the same best-sellers! I wished to ‘knock’ such apparent complacency and cliché as was written in the boxes used as selling points for the individual concerned.
5. Somehow if a lack of theological expertise is shown, one thinks that Christianity is irrelevant to life because it takes a compartmentalised view as opposed to a holistic view of life. For example, although there is nothing about GM crops in the Bible, God as the maker of all things and the one who keeps all things in existence surely has something to say on the matter.
6. In a crude sense Christianity is Christ, or at least the profession thereof. I am astonished that outside of the Church as a building it is rare to even hear the name of Christ mentioned by churchgoers. Does this reflect what I have been saying about the loss of confidence about who he is and what he has really done for us? To use the Biblical text is to follow the reference of the text to him who is its real subject, namely Christ. Christ is the essential Schoolmaster – I like being made to think theologically as others are capable of showing me, to be tutored.