TRUTH AND AUTHORITY

(A developing series of chapters in my new book: where would you take it from here…???)

Jim was doing a course at college called The History of Ideas. The lecturer talked about the notion, common in Western Europe until the fifteenth century, that women have one more rib than men do. Back then everybody knew that. It was there in the medical texts. Theologians and ‘people in the pew’ all agreed.

Where did the idea come from? Simple: in the Genesis story Eve was made by God from a rib taken from Adam, so all males had to be short one rib. And whenever the Bible and science were in conflict, the Bible always won.

But a rebellious anatomist named Andreas Vesalius after studying living and dead bodies, wrote a book saying the idea was ridiculous: ‘The ribs are twelve in number on each side in man and woman.’

‘And, Rowland,’ Jim said, ‘Vesalius was accused of “twisting the Scriptures”, was called a revisionist and heretic, and narrowly escaped with his life. It was many years before the holy fathers changed official church policy on the subject.’

‘So my question is: How do I know what’s right? Do I start with scientists – who constantly change their minds anyway? Or tradition – what our ancestors believed? Or ‘common sense’ – what “everyone knows”? Or what my parents and family-friends taught me growing up? Or the Bible? Or the Church? Or my own experience? Or what?’

Good – very good – questions, Jim.

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Let’s start here: Where do ideas come from? Why do you believe what you believe?

Just over 100 years ago Auguste Rodin made a bronze statue – ‘The Thinker’: a naked man sits on a rock with his chin in his hands, deep in thought… But look carefully: the Thinker’s muscles in his arms, legs and toes are knotted and cramped.

Thinking, mental activity, is hard work…

He’s cooking up ideas. But what ingredients is he using? Ultra-simply: stuff put into his mind/brain by dad and mum and others who shaped the culture he was brought up in. (Google neuroscience, neuroplasticity etc.).

Example: for 200 years half a million Europeans crossed land and sea in a dangerous voyage to ‘take back’ the holy places from Muslims… Kids went too, or learned about it, and what do you get? The Children’s Crusade…

Repeat: our brains, our thoughts, the ideas that guide our lives, are shaped by the culture created by those who’ve gone before us… [More on culture, neuroscience etc. -  jmm.org.au/articles/33324 ].

So… let’s look at some of these ideas. Like: Is there a God? If so, so what? How then should I live? How much am I worth?

I’ve learned that my parents – and their parents – were wrong about some things. So what do I do to build on the good ideas I’ve grown up with, but also straighten out the crooked thinking mixed up in there as well…?

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One attempt to integrate various sources of knowledge about theology – God, humans and their worth, the Scriptures, eternal life etc. –  has been called The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, credited to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Briefly: Scripture is our primary source (Wesley described himself as ‘a man of one book’), but to understand the Bible we need the help of others (tradition). And if the Bible is ‘true’ the stories of how people back then ‘experienced’ God will connect with our experiences today. But, then (problems, problems…) experience needs to be validated by reason. Wesley – and most other thoughtful people – warned against divorcing faith from reason. [Wikipedia: Wesleyan Quadrilateral]. John Wesley believed that to renounce reason is to renounce religion: religion and reason go hand in hand.

So there we have it: scripture, tradition, experience, reason.

But Christian thinkers have different hierarchies of authority… Before we examine the pros and cons of each of them, let us note that there are 41,000 Christian ‘denominations’ in the world, according to the research group Pew Forum [Appendix B: Methodology for Estimating Christian Movements, “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population”, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, December 19, 2011. “The figures on Christian movements in this report were commissioned by the Pew Forum from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) atGordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. CSGC researchers generated their estimates based in large part on figures provided by Christian denominations and organizations around the world. CSGC has obtained denominational membership information from about 41,000 organizations worldwide.” Wikipedia: List of Christian Denominations]. Each of these groups/denominations has a slightly different view of ‘authority’ – and of course there are people within each grouping who hold either a conservative or progressive/radical view.

Let’s look at some almost random examples…

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One of Jim’s questions: can I trust my own experience? 

The closest book ‘in print’ (actually it’s an e-book) to this one that I can find is called Big Beliefs in Small Bites: The Pilgrim’s Projects by Reg Nicholson. Reg has an interesting section on experience: 

‘Seeing isn’t believing… Believing is trusting when you can’t see. As the Bible says, seeing can be the opposite of believing, the assurance of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is experiencing God and then having a belief to which you hang on, even when you cannot provide proof.’ (p. 5)…

He goes on to talk about best-selling author Dr. Wayne Dyer’s ‘Mango Experience’:

‘When speaking to a large audience he invites someone who has never tasted a mango to volunteer for a little experiment. Then he asks people who have tasted a mango to tell the volunteer exactly how a mango tastes.

‘As each person attempts to convey the flavor of a mango they realise how fruitless their attempts are. The conclusion is that it is impossible to convey this information in words. Wayne Dyer says the mango tasting exercise is analogous to our ability to have faith where there is doubt. 

‘Just as we cannot know the taste of a mango unless we have had the experience of eating a mango, we cannot know faith without having had an experience of God’. [There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, p. 197].

Wayne W. Dyer  says in that book when he asks an audience to point to themselves, 99% will point directly to their hearts, not their heads.

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And what about the Bible? Bishop Jack Spong (‘Christianity Caught in a Timewarp’,  The Voice, September 1998) disagrees with Wesley about the preeminence of the Bible-as authority: 

‘Appealing to a literalized reading of the this ancient biblical text  to solve complex issues [is dangerous]. This attitude towards the Bible condemned Galileo, Darwin and Freud. Time demonstrated in each case that this view of the Bible did not prevail. The Bible has also been used to justify slavery, segregation and apartheid… This sacred book has been used to oppress women, reject left-handed people, bless the church’s refusal to bury a victim of suicide and oppose birth control. Christians are today embarrassed to recall this history.

‘If this expression of evangelical Christianity is to define the Anglican Communion of the future, I do not want to be part of it. I regard this expression of the religious right as an irrational, hysterical stage in the death throes of Christianity. If we cannot reassert the Anglican genius that reason must be an equal factor with scripture and tradition in shaping the Christian message in every generation, then Christianity as we know it is doomed.’

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What about those with a different (perhaps pro-Wesleyan) view of the authority of the Bible? Two of the most prominent ‘Evangelical’ voices in the English-speaking world in the last half-century have been evangelist Billy Graham (US) and Rev. John Stott (England). Here are their views: 

Billy Graham: Jesus Himself used the Scriptures as the authoritative Word of God (Matthew 4:4-10) and declared that their authority could not be broken (John 10:35).

We also know that the Bible is God’s Word because of the transformation we have seen it make in the lives of those who read, believe, and live by its teaching.

It is God’s own Word, His saving truth which He has spoken to mankind. It is inspired from beginning to end, and it is the only infallible guide of faith and practice—read 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and 2 Peter 1:19-21. [http://billygraham.org/answer/can-we-still-believe-in-the-authority-of-the-bible-for-our-modern-world/ ]

John Stott expresses similar views, but spot an interesting ‘add-on’:

For evangelical people, our authority is the God who has spoken supremely in Jesus Christ. The really distinctive emphasis is on Christ. We believe in the authority of the Bible because Christ has endorsed its authority. He stands between the two testaments. As we look back to the Old Testament, he has endorsed it. As we look forward to the New Testament, we accept it because of the apostolic witness to Christ. [But] I want to shift conviction from a book, if you like, to a person. As Jesus himself said, the Scriptures bear witness to me. Their main function is to witness to Christ. [http://www.albertmohler.com/2006/10/13/john-stott-on-christ-and-the-bible/ ]

That bit about giving preeminence to either a book or a person is important. Most thoughtful Evangelical theologians suggest that when we think ‘Word of God’ we should connect that idea with Jesus Christ, rather than a book. Fundamentalists almost always think ‘book’ first. We’ll come back to that idea later… 

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Another Christian approach to all this is to ‘bow before the Mystery, to ‘pierce the cloud of unknowing’, to assert (almost) nothing in addition to ‘God is…’ or ‘God is love’. 

‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ John 12:24.

You may think God’s best saints rarely if ever suffer confusion or bewilderment or disillusion. Not so. They sometimes feel keenly a sense of failure; they often have to negotiate obstacles in the dark; ‘My God my God why have you forsaken me?’ is their cry too.

But they realize that those experiences of desolation may be God’s breaking down the idols and removing false securities, like belief-systems. As Gerald Hughes writes, in The God of Surprises, ‘This may seem like disintegration, but it is the disintegration of the ear of wheat: if it does not die to bring new life, it shrivels away on its own… God is in all things, so that there is no particle in creation and no experience of yours in which he is not with you.’

The Western World’s most famous 20th century Christian contemplative offered this famous prayer: 

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Take Lord and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my will, all that I have and possess. Everything I have is yours, for you have given it all to me; to you I return it. Take me, Lord, and do what you like with me, only give me your grace and your love, for that is enough for me. (St Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises).