The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics

        In 1988, a book by Alasdair MacIntyre was published under the title, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  Without attempting to summarize the argument of its 400 pages, suffice it to say that MacIntyre demonstrates admirably that Justice (and, by extension, morality) is a word or concept that means different things to different cultures and times.  He traces, as a paradigm case, the change from what people meant by "justice" and "rationality" (two ideas MacIntyre claims are always deeply intertwined) from presocratic Greek thought, through Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, through the Middle Ages to Hume and his heirs.  The change, even within Western history, striking.

         Some would argue that this means that there is no such thing as "absolute" justice, morality, rationality and the rest.  The argument being, if so many different cultures disagree on what these terms mean, how can we possibly say that one of them is right and the rest of them are wrong?  This is amplified when we consider that we have a tendency to assume that the rationality, etc. that we are immersed (or grew up) in is "right."  In such a case, how can a claim to be committed to an "absolute" truth of any kind be anything other than a new form of imperialism, where we go into new cultures and, under the guise of spreading "rationality" or "truth," in fact end up spreading nothing more than our own forms of thought and life?

        I am not entirely convinced that arguments like MacIntyre's (and also, in their own way, of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others within the philosophy and history of science) lead us to conclude that there is and can be no such thing as absolute truth.  Rather, it means that, if there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is not just a characteristic of Christian faith but also is true of philosophical systems like Plato's (as well, incidentally, of Eastern philosophies which do not so much emphasize what is, but what is not which, ultimately, presuppose their own metaphysical convictions), we do not have access to it in any way that somehow manages to bypass a particular language and conceptual framework.

        There has been a longstanding strategy in modern Christian apologetics which gets an awful lot of mileage out of the idea (which, in my opinion, is suspect if not entirely false) that, because all human beings are created in the image of God, we all share a kind of common moral awareness.  By building on that, along with other related claims to commonality, apologists often try to reason that the "whence" of that moral awareness is God, and therefore, since everyone already believes in moral standards, everyone already believes in God.  It should be noted that, while many contemporary apologists for Christian faith would identify as being theologically (if not politically) conservative, this idea has far more in common with the theology of Schleiermacher, the father of Liberal theology, than the example of Paul the apostle and the other Biblical authors.  It should also be noted that, even if this line of reasoning were valid, it would not be a victory for Christian faith but for classical theism.  Any train of thought that simply does not take the actual life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ is not a distinctly "Christian" argument.

        What is interesting is that, in addition to the fact that this line of argument is not good theology, nor is it good apologetics, it is also fundamentally flawed from a philosophical and sociological point of view.  The irony of this is that anyone who is involved in missionary work can see the flaws.  It does not matter into what culture you enter, there are interesting differences as to what is "just" or "moral" that belie any real confidence in the standard apologetic argument from morality.  The best one could say is that, because every culture has moral standards (though they are often very different from one another), the source of the existence of standards in general (not the standards themselves) is God.  If this line of reasoning is sound, it is no more helpful than the other.  There have been several missionaries in the last twenty years or so who have shared how their experiences in other cultures have called into question their conviction that their own culture was the standard by which to judge the values of others, but this has challenged them to reflect all the more deeply about the nature of justice, morality and truth, rather than abandon them.

        All of this is to say that this line of reasoning (that truth and faith are bound up with moral standards) has become so deeply engrained into our culture that both the theological (and political) left and right believe it.  In fact, it has become something of a basic axiom which people have turned into a means to critique Christian faith from a new angle.  The argument goes something like this.  You are correct that I have a deep moral sense.  It is part of my very identity and I believe it, even when other things seem uncertain.  When I take this moral sense and I read parts of the Bible (or, as often as not, when I hear others tell me what is in the Bible), I find things there that violate my sense of right and wrong and so, therefore, I stand in judgment over what I find there.

        It is significant that, in many ways, this is nothing more than a contemporary, non-Christian (not to say atheistic) appropriation of the apologetical argument from morality.  While Christian apologists attempted to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is true," these new non-Christian apologists are attempting to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is ridiculous, as well as the Bible in which we read about it."  It is deeply ironic that this way or arguing has demonstrated that the apologists have actually won, even if their victory doesn't look like they wanted.  They have finally convinced the American people of their major premise, that our moral sense ought to be judge of everything else.  The only problem is that people took that major premise and concluded, not that they were immoral, but that the gospel is immoral.  If we combine this with a decreased sense of the majesty of the Christian tradition (which may or may not be too bad a thing), we find that people are unwilling to give the gospel the benefit of the doubt and, when their first encounter is bad, simply dismiss the rest.

        The problem with this is that, in the attempt to reveal Christians as naïve and non-Christians as enlightened, the secular world has joined large portions of the church in their naïveté by becoming every bit as imperialistic and paternalistic as the views they condemn.  We don't say that sex-slavery is wrong because it violates our own, culturally conditioned notion of how we ought to treat other people; it is wrong because it violates universal human rights.  In many ways, this is a more arrogant position than a Christian position that says that, because sex-slavery is clearly against what God would will, as revealed in Christ, it is against God and therefore is wrong, which at least recognizes that we need to be informed by God what really is right and wrong and that we cannot trust our feelings to always be right on the topic of morality, because it presupposes that there is something about humanity that should make it clear what is right and wrong and that people who do otherwise are not just in communities that have not yet been shaped by the gospel but are fundamentally evil and must be restrained from maintaining their tradition.

        If we cannot understand that other people have different points of view from ourselves and that we will need to translate and, at a more basic level, learn to listen, we will never rise above name-calling.  Baptizing our own point of view and using it as the standard by which to judge others does not become magically noble when separated from Christian faith.  Secular culture is every bit as biased and full of agenda as religious culture.  What we must do is learn how to work together and acknowledge the fact that, if indeed there is such a thing as absolute truth (which, as a Christian, I believe in wholeheartedly) it very well may stand in every bit as much judgment over me as it does over you.

Biblical Inerrancy

Biblical Inerrancy

A topic that comes up in conversation for me with some frequency is that of Biblical inerrancy. It is something that sneaks itself into various conversations on a wide range of issues and seems to be surrounded by all kinds of assumptions that I feel are simply not true. To that end, I have decided to write out my thoughts on the topic of Biblical inerrancy.

Before I begin, I feel that a disclaimer is in order. It must be said at the very beginning that I do not identify myself as one who subscribes to Biblical inerrancy (precisely for the reasons outlined below), but I would like to encourage, as much as I can, for anyone who reads this to do so knowing that this is in no way intended to be an anti-Bible essay. I believe the Bible to be remarkably important, it is truly the sole source and norm for our faith and practice and that it is an irreplaceable witness to what God has done that is vitally important for us to take very seriously and to submit ourselves to the radical critiques that it makes on our lives. Reading the Bible has had an absolutely transforming effect on my life. I continue to read and study the Bible and I continue to use it as the basis of my preaching as a pastor. It should also be noted at the beginning that, though I do not subscribe to Biblical inerrancy, neither do I identify myself as a theological Liberal. To me the Liberal tradition is just as deeply problematic. In fact, a large portion of my critique, though at a tacit level, is that Biblical inerrancy has Liberal roots, inasmuch as it is, in its modern form, just another way of dealing with the challenge of Liberalism and so bears its stamp.

A distinction must be made here between Biblical inerrancy and Biblical infallibility. From one point of view, the words inerrant and infallible are synonyms; from another, infallible is actually a stronger term because while inerrancy implies that there are no errors, infallible implies that there can be no errors. However, in spite of how the words might be used elsewhere in discourse, within the context of this issue, they have become technical terms. Specifically, inerrancy is a stronger term than infallibility. Biblical infallibility states that, in matters of faith and life that is, what we believe and how we live, the Bible is absolutely trustworthy and must be taken seriously. Biblical inerrancy asserts that every part of the Bible (down to the very words) is true in every sense of the word. The reason for this is because, if it were not true in any sense of the word, the whole authority of the Bible would collapse.

It should be noted that the mainstream of inerrancy, when pushed (or even just when clarifying their position), will qualify their position by saying that the Biblical texts are inerrant "in the autographs," which means the texts were inerrant when they were originally written. Now, why would someone feel it necessary to make that clarification? Why not just say the Bible is inerrant, especially since that is how it plays itself out in day-to-day Christian life? The reason is because even those who hold to inerrancy are not convinced that the copies we have today are really inerrant. The impulse for affirming that the autographs were inerrant is understandable because such a view needs to affirm that the text, at least as given by God, is perfect in every sense of the word, but it is my contention that such a qualification actually destroys the whole inerrancist position.

The point is made that the Bible must be affirmed to be true in every sense of the word because if any part is not true in any sense of the word, the authority of the Bible falls to the ground. The reason why this is the case is because, once you have made the argument that one part of the Bible may not be true, we are left with the question, "Why do we say that about this part and not about some other part?" Before long, a questioning of one part of the Bible becomes a questioning of the entire Bible. If we judge the text to be errant based on some extra-biblical criterion, why can't we apply that to the whole of the Bible? And yet, the admission that the Biblical texts are only inerrant in the original autographs brings the problem back in for this simple fact. We do not have access to the original autographs. It is true that the Bible is just as reliable, both from a literary and a historical point of view, as any other ancient text, but what we have is not identical to the original autographs. However, though we have a high degree of certainty that our copies are not the originals, we cannot be certain precisely which parts were in deviation from those autographs. After all, if we could, we could simply restore our copies to the original. However, if our copies are not identical with the autographs, and we can not point to precisely where those discrepancies are to be found, what can stop us from saying that any particular point is in deviation from the originals? Yes, there is an absolutely reliable source of doctrine, but if we have no access to it, we are back to square one.

Another interesting weakness to the inerrancist position is put forward by Donald G. Bloesch, a leading evangelical theologian who passed away just recently. In his Essentials of Evangelical Theology, he says this. "The rise of pseudo-Christian cults that champion biblical inerrancy has been a source of embarrassment to those who contend that this doctrine is the foundation stone and practical guarantee of orthodoxy." He names groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons in the endnote as concrete examples of this tendency. Clearly, Bloesch notes, inerrancy as such does not guarantee orthodoxy. It should be noted that, though the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons also have other authoritative texts outside the Old and New Testaments (or rely on a particular version of them), other groups such as Unitarian (Oneness) Pentecostals fall into the same boat.

There is one more methodological objection to Biblical inerrancy before I go into a concrete analysis of the shortcomings of the position and how I deal with the problems posed by the Biblical text. It is my greatest concern that, in point of fact, Biblical inerrancy ends up being an idolatrous position. My biggest concern is a theological one, not that it takes the Bible very seriously, allowing it supremacy over our culture and our own opinions, but because it also gives it supremacy over Christ himself and transforms him into nothing more than just one more of the doctrines that the Bible teaches and one we should affirm on the basis of that Biblical authority, rather than emphasizing that the Bible is the written witness to the living Word of God that actually encounters us.

An example is appropriate here. A local physician and leader in a nearby local church wrote an essay in defense of Biblical inerrancy which was made part of his church's official resources for its members. It is a fairly long treatment of the issue, but in my judgment only the first few paragraphs actually dealt with the issue of inerrancy and about the alleged difficulties that arise, merely from denying it. The overwhelming majority of the work was concerned with demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible, especially as compared to other ancient writings. In this, I agree in every regard. There is a reason why, when archaeologists have wanted to locate an ancient city in the Ancient Near East, they go to the Bible first to try to find out where it may be located. There have been doubts about the existence of groups of people spoken of in the Bible that have been consistently cast aside by subsequent research. If we ignore the problem of induction (which plagues all science, not just historical science), there is much to compel us to conclude that any other parts of the Bible that are open to doubt will be vindicated eventually.

What is interesting is that, though this is a fairly common way to articulate and defend Biblical inerrancy, it actually undermines it and proves my point. The question is whether the position of Biblical inerrancy relies on justification from historical and archaeological science to stand. If it does not, it makes one wonder why so much effort is taken to demonstrate the Bible's historicity. If the Bible's authority is supreme, even over historical and archaeological science, why use the results of such science used as reasons one should believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? If the legitimacy of inerrancy does indeed depend on the findings of historical and archaeological science, it undermines the position altogether. After all, it implies that the Bible is, in point of fact, not of ultimate authority but rather that historical and archaeological science has the final word. It is my contention that, in this particular treatment of the issue, the amount of time and energy spent on defending the historical reliability of the Bible shows that inerrancy cannot stand on its own but must be bolstered by an outside authority.

I would like to move now to a concrete examination of how Biblical inerrancy plays itself out, but before I do so, I must make one more observation. The real problem that we are trying to overcome with a doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the problem of interpretation as opposed to looking at what the text actually says. Once we cross the gap from looking at what the words on the page say to what we say they must mean (that is, placing a particular interpretation on the words that cannot be reduced to the words themselves), we have given up inerrancy. Allow me to demonstrate.

1 Kings 7:23 is a relatively unexciting text. It lies merely in the account of the building of Solomon's Temple, specifically within the context of Hiram the bronzeworker making various items for it. It reads this way (NASB), "Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference." The problem that arises here, that many have noticed, is that the text says that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of this circular object is 3:1, which is not true (that is to say, it is not true in the absolutely most strict sense of "true" which is what we are talking about when we are dealing with Biblical inerrancy), as the ratio is π:1. This is a more striking issue than even the evolution controversy, since we are not concerned here with a question of evidence, but the simple fact that such a ratio is not 3:1.

Now, many people have come up with explanations for this, most commonly by running to 2 Chronicles 4:2 where the same details are given and by pointing out that 2 Chronicles 4:5 names the thickness of the sea as a hand's breadth. The argument goes that, if we take into account the thickness of the brim and compare the inner diameter with the outer circumference, we get a result that is remarkably close to the value for Pi (though again, not exact, though we will not press this point). My concern is that this, first of all, does not deal with the text as it appears in 1 Kings but interprets it in light of another text altogether. At the very least, this technique demonstrates that all parts of the Bible are not evenly weighted, that 2 Chronicles 4:2, 5 is a more important text than 1 Kings 7:23 and the latter should be interpreted in light of the former and not the other way around. I think that this raises the question "Who decides which texts are more accurate and how can we determine which texts are clear and which are unclear?" but that is not the direction I plan to go with this.

The fact of the matter is that, in both texts, the diameter and circumference are mentioned in the same breath, without even so much as a hint that we are not dealing with two different circles. It certainly appears, based only on the text, that regardless of whether we are talking about the inner or the outer circumference, we are dealing with the same circle. To argue that we can use the diameter of one circle and the circumference of another requires that we make an argument that goes above and beyond the words on the page and stems from a preconceived notion of precisely how we must get the words on the page to work out. That is, the text does not stand on its own, but must be interpreted to bring it into line with mathematical observations, so it must be carefully interpreted to make it work out.

So, we are left with a few options if we hope to keep this text while still holding to the innerancist position. The first is to say that, whatever mathematicians have found, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of circles in general is actually 3:1. This falls to the ground unless we wish to subscribe to a wholesale rejection of mathematics, which would be, in my judgment, a foolish thing to do. A more moderate position is to say that, whatever might be the case with other circles, this circle has a ratio of 3:1. This, however, does not solve the problem, because now we have an example where the events and items spoken of in the Bible have no real connection to anything else in our world, which undermines its authority to speak to us.

A third option (which encompasses the standard solution just mentioned above) is to say something along these lines. "Look, if we look at the history of mathematics, we find that human beings have always known that the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle is a little more than 3:1, but they only began to get any kind of conceptual clarity around the issue until about 400AD. The text in question is describing events that took place around 1000BC, 1400 years earlier. Maybe, just maybe, God wasn't concerned with getting such minute issues exactly right, as they have no bearing on any aspect of life, and maybe when the text says 'circle' it means 'something pretty darn close to a circle.' In that case, what good would it have been for God to say 'Make it 10 cubits across and 31.4159265359... cubits around?' None at all. It would only have bewildered the people. What really mattered? Getting the thing built. What harm is there in saying that God simply said, 'Make it ten across and thirty around; it's close enough for jazz?'" This is a position that I wholeheartedly embrace, but there is a serious problem for Biblical inerrancy that only becomes clear when we play out its implications.

The fact of the matter is that I know of no Christian, inerrancist or otherwise, who would say that any aspect of Christian faith stands or falls depending on our interpretation of 1 Kings 7:23. But if we take this third option, we have made a tremendous step. We have said that the text as a text cannot stand on its own; we must interpret it based on what we know to be the case independently of the text itself (whether simply because of mathematical considerations or by saying it must be interpreted in light of another text and is inadequate on its own). We have made a significant leap away from the text as such into the world of interpretation. We have said, "The text might say that the ratio is three to one, but what the text means is that it is close enough or that there is some other explanation." Let us now move on and see what can become of this position.

What would happen if we were to turn to Genesis 1? What if we were to say, "The text might say that creation took place in six days (defined as the sun coming up and going down, implying a day of 24 hours), but what the text means is that creation took place in an orderly way that follows this general pattern but that the word 'day' must be interpreted as 'period of time.'" Not every Christian would object to this, but there are many that would. And yet, at the end of the day, the crucial distinction between what we did with 1 Kings 7:23 and what we have done here are not fundamentally different. We have taken a text and said that it cannot stand on its own but must be interpreted in light of something we know elsewhere. Nothing but a sheer force of will can make someone say, "We can take that step with 1 Kings 7:23 but we cannot take it with Genesis 1."

To take it a step further, let us look at the accounts of Christ's Resurrection from the dead. What if we were to say (as many have done), "The text might say that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead in glory, but what the text means is that, on Easter morning, the disciples had such a profound encounter with the spirit of Christ (not without parallel in the history of Hinduism) that it was as if he had been raised from the dead." This is where many (if not all) Christians, myself included, should stand up and say, "That is going too far." If there is one thing that is necessary to keep the New Testament documents from falling into unintelligibility, it is the physical, literal resurrection from the dead. The resurrection is not just another doctrine to believe, it forms the epistemological cornerstone of all our faith. If Christ was not really raised from the dead, as Paul says "We are of all people most to be pitied."

And yet, if we have made the leap into interpretation based on external insights back in 1 Kings 7:23 (or anywhere else, I might add), on what grounds can we stand and say that a purely metaphorical interpretation of the resurrection is unacceptable? I think that, ultimately, this gets at the heart of the whole impetus of the Biblical inerrancist position. Nobody thinks that the gospel stands or falls with the diameter of the sea in Solomon's Temple, but it certainly does with the resurrection of Christ. How can we be flexible (or even self-consciously non-literal) with the former and not with the latter? It is precisely because it is hard to find a way to do this within the interpretational worldview fostered by Western culture that we find ourselves pushed into an affirmation of inerrancy. We desperately want to defend the resurrection and the incarnation and the only way we can see to do this is to affirm inerrancy.

I think that the whole view of Biblical inerrancy is an inverting of how things ought to be and a simple observation from our most basic Christian experience should help to make it clear. Very few, if any, of us, became Christians because we had a high doctrine of the Bible first and then were convinced of the gospel because it was in the Bible. Most of us encountered the living Lord first and only after that were driven to the text. We do not believe in Jesus because the Bible teaches about him (as if the Bible was the supreme authority and Jesus was merely one of the many doctrines taught in it), but rather we read the Bible because we have been confronted by God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit and the Bible is the only place to turn for reliable information about Christ.

So, as I said at the beginning of this essay, I do not subscribe to Biblical inerrancy. For what it is worth, most inerrancists whom I have taken through this whole line of thought have said that they don't take as rigid a position as I portray. My response is that, in point of fact, whatever term they may use, they are not inerrancists in the classical sense, but are likely infalliblists, which is based on weaker claims (weaker in the sense that they do not claim as much, not that they are weak arguments). One might ask me, "If you reject Biblical inerrancy, do you affirm that the Bible is inspired?" My answer is that yes, I do indeed believe the Bible is inspired. My understanding, however, is that biblical inspiration is much more complex and dynamic that most people think.

As is clear by my argument so far, I do not think that the Bible is primarily inspired in its writing, that is, I do not think that God is the only author of the Bible in the sense that the words are merely a transcript of God's words to the human who actually put pen to paper. Some strands of inerrancy argue that the Bible is even a transcript of the very thoughts of God (a view that is not the mainstream and has disastrous consequences for our doctrine of God). I used to think that this view was a fairly recent one, that it only arose in protest of theological Liberalism. I have been convinced since then by Karl Barth that this has been present in at least a few thinkers throughout the whole history of the church (Barth's argument and historical survey is long, but culminates in his Church Dogmatics I.2, pg. 529-30).

I commented at the beginning that, though I am not an inerrancist, I am also not even close to what many would call a theological Liberal. I believe in a literal incarnation, virgin birth, resurrection, and miracles. In light of this, it should come as no surprise that I do not believe that the Bible is primarily inspired in its reading. That is, though I believe that God actually does speak anew to us as we read the Bible, I do not think that we can reduce all the inspiration of the Bible to the activity of the Spirit as we read the text. After all, if it were nothing more than the Spirit moving and the text is not involved, why should we expect God to speak through the Bible and not other works of literature (such as Huckleberry Finn, as a professor of mine suggested)? I think that, though we cannot reduce the inspiration of the Bible to the text on the page, it must involve it or else we will end up with a view that is even less satisfying than inerrancy.

My understanding of inspiration flows more or less directly from my doctrine of Christ. It is my contention that Christ is, in the final analysis, the real foundation of the Christian faith, that it is not on the inerrancy of the Bible but on the living Person of Christ with which the gospel stands or falls. This manifests itself in dialogue with some Christians as a need to place Sola Christus above Sola Scriptura or even Sola Fidei. It manifests itself in dialogue with others by modifying the statement, "God will never reveal anything to you through his Spirit that is contrary to what is written in the Bible," with "God will never reveal anything to you through his Spirit that is contrary to what he has revealed of himself through Christ." It is given tremendously clear expression in the words of T. F. Torrance. "Now if we think of Jesus Christ in this way as the Truth in his own Person, our statements about him, biblical or theological statements, cannot be true in the same sense as Jesus Christ is true, for they do not have their truth in themselves but in their reference to him away from themselves, and they are true insofar as that reference is truthful and appropriate" (Reality and Evangelical Theology, 124).

My understanding of the role of the Bible is also deeply connected to the Christian doctrine of the ascension of Christ. In Christ, God himself came among us in a particular place and at a particular time. During that time, he taught, he lived and he formed a community of redeemed sinners to take the good news out to the whole world. And then, after he was raised from the dead and met with his disciples for forty days, he ascended to heaven. There is not only a particular location in space-time where God came to meet with us, there is also a particular location in space-time where God departed from being physically present. By doing so, God has marked off the years of Christ's earthly life and ministry to be the covenanted place where he can be met; he has subordinated all theological activity, all pretended claims to inspiration to those concrete years and that concrete revelation of himself in our midst.

It is because of this, because of these Christological considerations, that we cannot do away with the radically important place of the Bible in our Christian lives. To try to avoid the Bible as the source and norm of our Christian knowledge is to try to avoid the centrality of Christ and to look elsewhere to find God, that is, to search for God where God cannot be found. Not only this (as one might claim that the argument so far only sanctions the use of the gospels), but the fact that God did not become incarnate in a cultural vacuum but did so in Israel as a Jew, "born of a woman, born under the law," we must take the Old Testament seriously for without it, we cannot rightly understand the revelation of God in Christ. Additionally, because Christ did not simply come and go, but specifically commissioned the apostles to go and proclaim, their post-resurrection activities and pastoral correspondence is of incredible importance and cannot be jettisoned without tremendous disaster (not to mention the arrogance of assuming that we can understand Christ from our foreign culture and language better than those who lived with him for years). Unless one can find another collection of texts that so comprehensively bears witness, not just to Christ, but to the whole historical context, both before and the generation after Christ, we are not free to dispose of Biblical revelation.

I do not expect that everyone will agree with these arguments, and some may even become angry with me as I have come from a decidedly Evangelical background and am self-consciously departing from orthodoxy as defined by that community. I only stress once again that my doing so is not rooted in any way, shape or form in a rejection of the Bible, but in absolutely radical devotion to Christ as the Lord and center, not only of my life, but of all.

Some Thoughts about the Nature of Illustration in Sermons etc.

Some thoughts about the nature of illustration in sermons etc.

I have just begun my fifth year as a pastor.  I must admit that my approach to preaching has changed over the years.  Those who attend the United Methodist Church in Hudson might be able to point out one or two things that have changed since I have been there, such as cultivating a somewhat milder tone, but there are others as well.  For example, before having to preach week after week, I thought of myself as an outline preacher.  I always thought it was neat when someone could just stand up with a few scribbles on a piece of paper and then deliver a passionate and engaging message.

The transition from outline to manuscript, in hindsight, was inevitable.  When I preached several times at my home church in Marshalltown as an intern, I only ever used outlines, but they steadily got to be far more detailed and each point turned into a paragraph.  Once I had to write a manuscript for my sermon that I had to give at licensing school.  One of the things I appreciated was the ability to think out in more precise terms what I wanted to say.  As I put it into practice, I found that the Holy Spirit worked just as much when I prepared throughout the week as it did when I preached from an outline.  In fact, I found that, by thinking out exactly what I wanted to say and seeing how it sounded out loud, I was able to use more precise language, reducing confusion and other good things. I found that I was more able to preach with boldness and conviction when I wrote out a manuscript than I ever was when I preached from an outline.

Though manuscript preaching is quite common in the mainline (or, at least, within some parts of the mainline), it was quite uncommon in the circles I found myself in before becoming a pastor.  In spite of the fact that I found a manuscript extremely helpful, there was still a nagging feeling that I had, at least in this way, abandoned my tradition.  I had to wrestle with this for quite a while.

All of this is to set the stage for some thoughts on illustrations in sermons, because this is also an area where I find myself at sharp distinction from, not only my tradition before becoming a pastor, but even among my seminary peers and throughout the mainline.  I have personally never been in favor of filling my sermons with illustrations.  The initial, gut-level reason why I have tended to avoid them is because I am simply not that creative of a person.  I have always had a hard time figuring out good illustrations, so I more or less let them go.  From time to time, someone (usually from outside of the church I serve) would talk about how helpful they have been in their lives, and I would begin to wrestle with the issue over again.

I found myself having conversations with people who love good illustrations in sermons and been able to discern my issues at a deeper level.  I began to realize that, when people would speak of really powerful illustrations they have heard used, they would not be able to recall the point from the Gospel that was the real purpose.  One person in particular related to me a youth leader he knew who frequently brought small items that were related to the message that they could take home to remind them of it.  There was one particular item that he kept in his room and had a lot of meaning for him.  But when I asked him, “What was the point of the message that went along with that item?”  The response was, “I don’t remember.”

Even in my own experience, I have found that this is the case.  Relatively recently, I used an illustration that I thought was better than most.  Not only did I make the point at the very beginning that the illustration was very limited, I also made sure to frequently point away from the illustration to the reality I was hoping to communicate.  The talk was very well received.  The young people who heard it loved it and really resonated with the illustration.  However, it became clear that their grasp on the illustration was far stronger than their grasp on the actual point made by the Gospel.  The talk was relatable, but I began to think that it could be argued that, since in practice, the illustration overshadowed the Gospel in the hearers, it was not truly a Gospel message, not truly the Christian faith proclaimed and received.

It is only recently that I found, in the course of my reading, a truly clear and deeply theological argument along these lines.  Let us say that we have an aspect of revelation, “Thing A.”  Because the ways and thoughts of God are not like the ways of human beings  (Isaiah 55:8-9), we should not be surprised that it is not easy for us to understand.  After all, it stands against the ways of the world and it stands against us inasmuch as we are sinners who are not fully conformed to the image of Christ.  In order to understand the revelation of Thing A, we introduce an illustration, “Thing B.”  The moment we try to illustrate Thing A with Thing B, our attention becomes divided between the two, if it is not wholly captivated by Thing B.

The problem is that, while Thing A is revelation, Thing B is not.  At its best, the illustration would intend to make a leap from Thing B (the illustration, created out of our own imagination) to Thing A (revelation, given by God).  But how is this possible?  How can we make a jump directly from something that is not revelation to something that is?  How can we say that the two Things are similar in any meaningful way for the church if one is revelation and one is invented by human beings?  It might be argued, “But Thing B is so much easier to understand than Thing A, so we should start there.”  I do not deny that Thing B is easier to understand.  How could it be otherwise?  Thing B stands far closer to us than Thing A because Thing A stands against us as the Word of God while Thing B was invented by the creativity of human beings.

When we illustrate the Gospel with images that we have thought up ourselves, what have we done?  If people walk away from the sermon or other message remembering the Gospel and the revelation from God and not the illustration, then the illustration was unnecessary.  If they walk away remembering the illustration and not the revelation, they have walked away with something, but it is something of fundamentally human creation and not the word of God.  There is a word for substituting something of human creation for the revelation of God.  Idolatry.

When I first heard illustration bluntly called idolatry, I thought to myself, “Well, I probably wouldn’t go THAT far.”  However, the more I think of it, the more I think that it is true.  What can we make of the desire to illustrate the Gospel to make it easier to understand by making it something of our own creation?  What are we to do if illustration is as important as we make it by our constant use of it?  What are we to say to those who think that illustration is so important for sermons and other Christian proclamation that it is not just helpful but necessary?

I cannot finally stand in judgment of others on this as it probably would not take someone long to find all kinds of other problems in my sermons that I post for all to see, especially if they were looking for them.  However, I have become more convinced than ever before that illustration is not where I should be putting my energy.  I refuse to feel that my preaching is inferior because it is devoid of illustration.  I hope that people would walk away from my sermons remembering nothing that was said than remembering something of my own clever invention that replaces the Gospel in their minds.

Probability and Meaning

Probability and Meaning

One of the things that well-meaning apologists for the Christian Faith do from time to time, is argue that the odds against the universe having the laws that it has, especially in the combination of these laws, is astronomically unlikely. This is a fact that everyone who is aware of the issues will grant. However, the conclusion that is often drawn from this is that such an incredible statistic should drive us to conclude that the Christian doctrine of creation (and who knows but all other traditional doctrines of Christian faith) is true.

The chief problem with this, as atheists are quick to point out, is that the argument trades on a conviction that "Incredibly Unlikely" => (that's "implies") "Designed by an Intelligent Source (or at least profoundly significant in some way)." In spite of the best efforts of such apologists, such an implication is simply not valid. Not valid, that is, as stated. There is an additional dimension that is taken for granted by the apologists that needs to be made explicit and, until it is, it will not hold any water at all.

Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian Physician/Chemist/Philosopher of Science, wrote his monumental work, "Personal Knowledge" based on the Gifford Lectures of 1951-52 on a wide range of topics, ultimately arguing that the goal of absolute objectivity (or, perhaps more accurately, "objectivism") that some claim for science is unattainable and should never have been viewed as the goal in the first place. It should be noted that Polanyi did not set out to undermine science in any way, but rather to help put it back on its proper foundations, where it functions quite authoritatively. In fact, he was trying to provide a more accurate account of how science actually works (which, as a scientist, he found was not the same as the way many scientists believed it to work) and promote more complete honesty among scientists. It should also be noted, for the sake of total disclosure, that Polanyi was himself a Christian, though his Christian faith does not enter into his writings on science and his views on evolution would not be agreeable to many particularly conservative Christians.

In the third chapter, on Order (and following a chapter on Probability), Polanyi suggests three scenarios. The first is that, at a particular village, when one enters by rail, there is a statement on the railway embankment in pebbles that reads "Welcome to Wales by British Railways." It is clear that those stones were placed by an intelligent human being who designed their location with some care. If someone were to challenge this view, how might we defend it? We would take the number of all the different ways that those pebbles could be arranged to make the phrase, and divide it by the total number of ways the pebbles could be arranged on the embankment (an incomprehensibly higher number) and say something along the lines of, "See? It is so improbable that it would have happened by accident; it must have been planned."

The problem arises if we imagine that, long after the person responsible for the phrase dies, the pebbles may find themselves scattered around the embankment in a haphazard manner. But what if someone were to argue that the evidence was just as strong that they are in this position by intelligent design than it was earlier. If we do the math, we find that the odds of the pebbles falling to this exact location is just as astronomical as before. Using a purely statistical approach, the evidence is identical on both sides.

Another example is that we would find it coincidental, interesting and incredibly unlikely (in the sense of "surprising") that someone was the 500,000 visitor to an exhibition, whereas we would not if they were the 573,522nd visitor, even though, if we do the math, the odds against being the latter are higher than against being the former.

The third example is to take twenty flips of a (fair) coin. Let us say they are all heads. What are the odds of this happening? Two to the twentieth power, or 1,048,576 to one. Sounds significant. But if we think about it, it turns out that every unique sequence of twenty throws of a coin are equally improbable. We now have over a million results that are, statistically, equally unlikely. Why single out one of them (or two if we also consider twenty tails in a row to be significant) to be particularly striking?

The point that Polanyi is getting at is that probability is not the only factor at work in this kind of reasoning. The striking thing about the first example is not that it is unlikely that the pebbles would be arranged at random, but that they were arranged at random and it resulted in an English phrase that made complete sense in that particular location where it wouldn't in nearly any other part of the world. The distinguishing factor is meaning. It isn't that we could pile a bunch of rocks in any particular way and have it happen to be unlikely how it turns out, but it is that it is incredibly unlikely that such a pile would be the carrier of a message (in whatever form this message may take) that has meaning for a specific group of people. The issue is whether the unlikely event is of no particular meaning, that is, it could easily have been different with no substantial impact ("noise") or whether it makes a considerable impact (a "tune").

This raises the key question. How can we tell whether what seems to us at first glance as random is a tune or whether it is just noise? That is to say, how can we know if there is a message, whatever that message may be, embedded in the details or whether it is nothing more than random facts with no significance? This is a real question (though the example is somewhat trivial) for those who cannot see the hidden images contained in Magic Eye puzzles. Everyone around them proclaims that there is an image to be seen; they can independently verify what it is and can even trace it out with their fingers, but, so long as the individual in question cannot see it, the dilemma remains: Is there really an image that I cannot see, or is everyone around conspiring against me?

Another example might be that of Stonehenge. Such a huge monument has attracted attention for years. If we were to forget everything we knew about the function of Stonehenge, we would have to ask the question, "Were these stones placed here for a reason, or is it merely random?" We might be inclined to the former conclusion because it might seem impossibly improbable to explain how the rocks ended up where they were merely by chance, but, since chance is not convincing evidence in and of itself, as we have noted above, it is not sufficient to tilt the argument decisively in one direction or another. It is only when we begin to say, "These rocks are here as a calendar," when we notice how it charts the solstices, that we are fully convinced, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the rocks are meaningful.

The problem still remains. How can we judge whether the object of our study is truly random, that is, purely coincidental or meaningful in a way we cannot yet understand? How do we know that what seems to be nothing more than white noise does not contain a message we have simply not yet learned the language to understand? The fact of the matter is that there simply is no surefire way to judge ahead of time which is the case. What is more, there is no way to ever prove that there is no message, even after countless trials. One can only prove, or make a strong case for, a message bring present; never that one is absent. After all, a message may emerge one day after years of fruitless research. Projects to understand a given reality may even be abandoned and yet be pregnant with a meaning that we have not yet been able to grasp.

This does not mean, of course, that we should operate with the assumption that every seemingly meaningless thing has a hidden, deep meaning. We simply cannot function if we look at every arrangement of rocks or grass as holding a deep truth about the universe. Sometimes things that appear meaningless are precisely that. Among scientists, there is only so much grant money available, there are only so many pages in a given journal, there are only so many lab technicians, which means some selection must take place. Not every lead can be followed; not every pattern can be analyzed in every possible way. Decisions must be made and they must be made knowing full well that by doing so, important discoveries that have hitherto been just beyond reach, might be missed.

So, to return to the question raised by apologists in our modern world, is the universe an accident or is it created? The decisive point in the argument is not on the improbability of the universe being precisely what it is and not otherwise, but on whether the universe being what it is is full of meaning that would be destroyed if it were not what it is. This often takes place around the issue of the so-called "anthropic principle." I do not mean to suggest that this observation will solve this or other problems easily, but that it must be taken into account and realized that the battlefield upon which much debate has raged is a false one and should be abandoned by both parties, so that we might start again and have more authentic, more fruitful, more honest discussions. The question is (we might say always) one of meaning. Not just "What is it?" but "What does it mean?"

Let God Be True...

11/20/11 Let God Be True... Grace UMC

The concept of truth has played a dominant role in the history of Western thought and culture. In their various ways, in spite of all their differences, the whole history of theology, philosophy and natural science, have been engaged in the search for truth and to understand how that truth impacts us as human beings. In the classical period and after the Enlightenment, truth was held to be the most beautiful of things. Truth and beauty were so connected, it was as if everything that is true is beautiful and everything that is beautiful is true.

But not everyone has thought that truth was beautiful. With the rise of postmodern skepticism and relativism, truth has taken on a different, almost sinister turn. There have been many thinkers who have concluded that the shocking truth is that there is no truth, at least no truth that can be agreed upon by everyone, which means no truth in the sense that we usually talk about truth. In this case, truth is far from beautiful, but can be ugly and even frightening. This kind of truth is something before which we tremble because we have deep desires that there are absolute things like love, goodness, value, meaning, and things like that. What are we to do if there aren't? It is a stark idea that many people have resisted, even if they have been convinced by it, if by nothing else than by a sheer act of the will.

When Jesus was standing before Pilate, he was asked, "So you are a king?" Jesus responded, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." Pilate's retort to this is famous. He asks the question that has been on so many lips since that time and is more common now than perhaps at any other time in history. "What is truth?" Pilate merely did what so many skeptics have done. He attempted to dismiss Jesus' claims to the truth on the grounds that he could not find anything that he felt he could call truth.

Since I have begun my appointment here a few months ago, I have found myself asking a classical question about the nature of truth that goes back to Socrates. In his dialogue with Euthyphro, a man known as a prophet of the pagan Greek gods, Socrates asks this question. "Are things loved by the gods because they are holy, or are the things holy because they are loved by the gods?" Now, it must be said at first that this question has a lot of buckshot in it, because Socrates is, in his own way, attempting to make Euthyphro look foolish. After all, you do not need to read Greek mythology for long before you realize that there isn't hardly anything that the gods all agree on. If we define goodness in terms of what the gods think is good, we can never get started, because they can never agree on what is good and what is not.

This particular jab does not apply if we direct the question to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, we do not affirm a plurality of gods who disagree, quarrel, and even wage war on one another, but only one God, who is absolutely united, even in his triunity. And yet, the question still needs to be asked. Are things good because God loves them or does God love them because they are good? To many people, this sounds like a silly question to ask when they first hear it. After all, what difference does it really make? What should we care which way we look at things, if they both say basically the same thing.

Of course, the real question is, "Where does truth come from?" Is truth something that is defined by and has its source in God, specifically the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or is truth something that is even more basic, even more fundamental than God himself? To look at it from a slightly different point of view, is good what it is because, first and foremost, God is who he is and not otherwise? That things are objectively good or evil based on what relation they bear to God? In that case, we find we must listen hard to God in order to really know what good and evil are. Or, perhaps, are good and evil what they are independently of God, and we follow God because he is so good and being good?

Often, when I ask this question of people, the moment they realize that there is actually a difference between these two ways of thinking, they say, "God loves things because they are good." I think that the reason we do this is because we are so deeply aware of the realities of good and evil, we can see good and evil in our lives everyday in undeniable ways, because we want everyone to live according to our understanding of good and evil, regardless of whether they agree with our religious convictions. And yet, the Bible consistently portrays God as the source of everything, of everything that we can see and everything that we cannot see. And that means that God is also the source of the distinction between good and evil. Things that are consistent with God, that are in their proper relationship to him are good; those that are not, that defy God, that take authority that belongs to God, are evil. This distinction holds regardless of what we as individuals or as a community think about it.

Paul has something to say on this topic. In his letter to the Romans we find a careful and heartfelt exploration of the relationship of the old covenant to the new, of the nation of Israel to the church as a whole. There is a constant going back and forth between the Jewish situation and the Gentile situation. Paul explores and compares how the Jewish people have reacted toward Christ with how the Gentiles have. In the chapter before our text for this morning, Paul, a Jew, critiques the Jewish people and their failure to respond to God in obedience. He argues that the Jews, no less than the Gentiles, fall under God's judgment. Indeed, they are even more guilty, for they had been set apart by God, they had been given a law to live by, they were truly meant to be God's people, and yet they misunderstood when their God came among them.

After pointing all of this out, Paul asks his readers, "Then what advantage has the Jew?" Biblical scholar C. H. Dodd responds here by saying that, according to Paul's line of thought, the answer should be "Nothing at all!" If all of the laws and rituals don't necessarily make the people better, what good is it? But that is not Paul's response. What advantage does the Jew have? "Much in every way!" Why is this? Because the Israelites were entrusted with the oracles of God, the revelation of God from the very beginning. The Israelites had played a vital part of God's interaction with humanity and this cannot be forgotten. After all, later in his letter, Paul will say that Gentile Christians, like you and me, are like branches from wild olive trees that have been grafted onto the roots of Israel, and not the other way around. Whatever may have taken place, we are not free to discard the history of Israel, for in Christ, it has become our history, too.

Paul puts forward the counterargument that someone might make. "What if some were unfaithful?" What if the Jewish people, in spite of all the blessings they had received, in spite of the care and mercy that God had shown them, didn't react in faith, but rather in unfaithfulness? What if the people showed by their actions that they did not value God? Paul's response to this is, "What about it? What difference should that make?" After all, just because a whole nation of people, generally speaking, did not behave faithfully to God, why should that mean that God should be unfaithful? "Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!"

This bold declaration by Paul is incredibly comforting, especially because it reminds us that we are simply not capable of undoing the love that God has for us. We might live inconsistently with it, we might not receive the benefits that we are meant to get from it, but we can never actually undo it, we cannot actually make God change his mind about the compassion and mercy he has decided to show us. Not even the murder of the Son of God could stop God from loving us and working out his redemption for us and in us. "Let God be true though every man be false" is encouraging because it reminds us that, even if we have dedicated ourselves to falsehood, it does not change the fact that God is still true and that the truth of God stands in spite of our falsehood.

There is a bit of potential discomfort that comes with the declaration that, even if every human being was a liar, God would still be true. Because, you see, it means that, if I am false, if I, in spite of myself, am a liar, it means that God stands against me as far as my falsehood is concerned. It means that, if I am to be put in the right with God, I must simultaneously be put into the wrong as far as myself is concerned. That is, I cannot be made right with God without being deeply changed. The same God who reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ is called, in the Old Testament, a consuming fire, a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces. When we are confronted with the truth of God, all our falsehood is exposed for what it is and, if we are honest, we don't really like that. We would rather avoid it.

Christians in every generation have wondered why it is that some people simply will not turn to God. We sometimes wonder if people are just not convinced that God really is good. I think that the opposite is sometimes the case. I think that sometimes, people do not avoid God because they do not know how good he is but precisely because they know exactly how good he is. It is precisely because, when they meet with God all their evil is exposed by God's goodness and all their falsehood is exposed by God's truth that they want to stay away. It is as Isaiah says. "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away." When we compare ourselves to the absolute truth and goodness of God, we shrink away; not because we have found out something about God that we do not like, but that we have found out something about ourselves that we cannot bear.

And yet, it is not as though this discomfort is the final word. God did not come among us to make us uncomfortable, though that certainly happens when we are challenged by his very being. God came among us to stare our evil and falsehood in the face and to overcome it. To endure it in all its depths and even to provoke it to new heights by offering himself to be betrayed and murdered by us, and to use that very manifestation of our human evil and falsehood as the moment where God's goodness and truth are most concretely manifest in our world of space and time. Jesus said once to his disciples, "I am the truth." He did not say, "My words are the truth," or "The scriptures are the truth," but "I am the truth." And how did humanity react to this truth in their midst? By nailing him to a tree and leaving him to die. And yet, in spite of the radical faithlessness that humanity showed toward the faithfulness of God, God did not turn away, but remained faithful, remained true, remained absolutely fixed on his goal to take us and make us his own.

"Let God be true, though every man be false" is a statement of the absolute reliability of God's promises to us. When all the world comes crashing down around us. when it seems that all our hopes and dreams for certainty, for joy, for meaning, collapse, God still stands. When we look around and see that all our heroes are crumbling into dust, when all those we thought we could trust turn out to be deceivers, when we realize that not everyone we thought was looking out for our best interest was actually doing so, when we realize that we ourselves were not always looking out for our best interests; when we realize that our falsehood goes down to the core of who we are, God remains true.
Being put into the right with God carries with it, simultaneously, the realization that we are in the wrong. The word of justification, the word of salvation, the word of redemption means that we, in and of ourselves, are unredeemed, that we are in need of redemption; that we are not who we ought to be.

The good news is that God is true, regardless of whether we are. That God is good even when we are not. That the Good News of Jesus Christ stands, regardless of whether anyone listens. God will not let us out of the implications of what he has done that easily. God is true, even if you are a liar; God is true even if I am a liar. God is true and has invaded this world of falsehood; and that is good news. Let us pray.

AMEN