Year: 2004

Epistemic Theology Part 5
(Parts 1, 2, 3, & 4)

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

“Now that is just the problem with you Christians. All this logical talk, and then what does it really come down to? Circular reasoning! The Bible can’t prove itself! All your talking is just a bunch of…”

Oh pardon me, miseur. You misunderstand. The word of God in that passage is not the bible. The word there is Rhema, the living and present, verbal word of God. We have faith because God himself attests to the thing that we believe. I think you will find that this is perfectly acceptable. “Since He had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself” (Heb 6:13b).

Ok. Let me get this straight. God is the witness who testifies to the authority of the Bible. How does he do this?

Not exactly. But close.

In Luke 24:13, after Jesus had risen from the , some of his disciples were walking on a road to a city called Emmaus. This guy shows up and asks them what’s up, and they tell him all their doubts and concerns about whether Jesus was really resurrected. The guy expresses amazement that they just don’t get it, “and beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was in all the scriptures” about Jesus.

The disciples get to where they’re going, and invite this guy in to dinner. At the table, he decides to do the honors, and when he breaks the bread, they suddenly realize that he’s Jesus. Then Jesus goes “poof!” and he’s gone.

Now check what they said: “Didn’t our heart burn within us while talked with us on the road, and while he opened the Scriptures to us?”

This is exactly how He confirms His word. When we open up that book, when he breaks the bread, His words burn in our hearts, and by that burning we know that it is his word. This is the same process you go through when you are converted to Christ. Someone proclaims the word to you, the Gospel (Literally, “God’s spell,” but that’s another teaching), and God’s Holy Spirit is present to ratify the word. He testifies, like a witness in the stand, that it is true. It says it in 1 John 5, “It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth… if we accept the testimony of men, God’s testimony is greater.”

Do you realize what this means? Just as God has made a commitment to individually ratify the truth of the Gospel, so that each man is individually saved by faith, so also he has made a covenant with His word, that He would confirm that it is his word to every individual who hears it. Simply put, there is no authority in heaven or on earth that can authorize God’s word to you as an individual but God Himself. The church can’t prove to you the word of God; archaeologists can’t prove to you the word of God. Saints and scholars, none of them can prove to you the word of God. But open the book, and read, and His words will burn in you like fire in your heart, and you will know that it is the very word of God.

Understand, this is no new doctrine. Calvin said pretty much the same thing 500 years ago. Back then, the fallacy was that the Church verified the scriptures, just as today the fallacy is that archaeology verifies the scriptures. The irony is that the reason we have a church is that it’s authorized by God’s word. But whether it’s authoritarian government or human knowledge, the mistake is the same: the idea that human agency can replace a revelation from God. It takes a lot of faith to believe that God will reveal the same basic set of understandings to every one who reads his word. But generally, he does.

Nevertheless, the idea that God proves his word this way is very radical. It’s intimidating to a lot of people, because it throws the power structure right out the window. Any attempt to verify that the bible is true because so-and-so says (and so-and-so is a noble gentleman) ultimately falls flat on its face—because only God can be a foundation sure enough to provide the kind of authority that the bible has in our lives. The reliability of men quickly fails, and ultimately knowledge and understanding (i.e. science) will cease—there’s only so much power an authority figure can have over a person’s life, and all science can do is prove a very very accurate history book. But the word of the Lord remains forever. “…Since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself.”

A little Application

The chapel services at my undergrad school always went in a certain order. I think it was the standard Presbyterian liturgy. I don’t really know. I had never had a liturgy before. Honestly, I had barely ever had an order of worship. But one of the things we did every service was to have a scripture reading from the Old and New Testaments. Our chaplain would stand behind the podium and carefully turn to the verse and read it with these strong round tones, always careful pause just exactly right to maximize the echo effect. Having finished her reading, she would carefully close the bible, and slowly look up, and then she would say, “God always blesses the reading… and the hearing… of His word.”

I never realized before how true that was. Quite literally, he stands behind his scripture and confirms the reality of it, the power of it, to each and every person who reads or hears His word. And the amazing thing is that, as radical as this idea is, you can bank on it. For instance Billy Graham, God bless him, doesn’t bother explaining anything in his evangelistic sermons. Heck, he doesn’t even bother giving chapter and verse. He doesn’t need to. He just lists whatever the standard worldly position is and rebuts it with a single phrase: “But the bible says…” And people who hear him speak get saved in the thousands. Why? Because God absolutely honors His word.

People don’t need to quickly thumb through to find the text and say, “Well lordy be, it does say that!” and then make a decision that will change their lives. They hear the word, God honors it, and their lives are changed.

“One of the major premises throughout the entire Bible is that leadership is to be held to a higher standard.”

This is one of the meanest, most unchristian statements I think I have ever heard. It’s also totally untrue. Let me see if I can take a pinch hit at explaining why.

I had this comment directed at me in a discussion on Tim Bednar’s e-church blog. A new pastor somewhere made the decision to can the church web site and start from scratch. It was a bad decision, and people called him on it. Ok. So he was publicly thrashed. Rare was that voice to suggest that this was something else than evil pastor syndrome. Actually, I may have been that rare voice. Within a week or so the pastor saw the error of his ways and brought back the old design. (I’m not aware of the status of the old webmaster.)

For some, however, capitulation was insufficient. Perhaps public penance would have been preferable. But it was in this context that the above statement was made.

“Leadership is to be held to a higher standard.”

And my question is: By whom?
Certainly not by God. All have fallen short of the Glory of God. No one is righteous. Everyone is going to hell, apart from the blood of Jesus. Why? Because the standard is so high. Infinite perfection is unattainable by anybody. How can the standard be any higher for my pastor than it is for me?

But perhaps our eternal reward is not the place where leadership is being held to a higher standard.

If it had been some random wayfarer who struck the rock instead of speaking to it, would they have been allowed to enter into Canaan? From the other examples in the Penteteuch, I’d say anybody else would have been struck dead on the spot. If somebody other than the king had slapped his arrows on the ground only three times, would Israel have beaten their enemies perhaps five or six times in battle before they were defeated? I see no reason to believe so. Perhaps Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for lying because they were in leadership.

There is, of course, the example of David, who was confronted with the specter of 70,000 dead because of a silly little census. If somebody else had taken a census surely there wouldn’t have been so many dead.

Yes. Well, there is that.

Honestly, I have no clue what was the big deal with the census. But apparently it was bad. The same with that whole David and Bathsheba thing that caused the whole country so much turmoil in later years. Heaping consequences for huge numbers of people. But is this an indication of a higher standard? I don’t think so. If a census is wrong, a census is wrong, no matter who conducts it. Having an affair and arranging to have the girl’s husband murdered to cover the evidence is wrong: it doesn’t matter if it’s you, me, or the czarina of Spain. There’s no higher standard at stake here.

There is, however, a greater level of ramification. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. The president of Enron screws up his books, and thousands of people lose their jobs. I screw up my books and I get overdraft charges from my bank. Perhaps this is what was meant by being “held to a higher standard.”

The problem is, these kinds of statements aren’t used to warn church leaders to be careful, so they can avoid harming their sheep. They’re used like spiritual BB guns to make potshots at any passing offense. They are used, in effect, to subtract grace in the very areas where we should be adding it. That to me is the meanest, most unchristian thing a person could do.

Obviously, where there is sin, call it sin. But, people, look for every opportunity to forgive. If nothing else, remember the parable of the Unmerciful Servant.

Epistemic Theology Part 4
(Parts 1, 2, & 3)

In X-Men United, the new X-Men movie out last year, there’s a scene where Storm, our lovely weather-controller, needs to get on the other side of a locked door. She turns to her friend Kurt Wagner, also known as Nightcrawler, who happens to be a teleporter. Nightcrawler happens to be Catholic. Very Catholic. In fact, he spends a great deal of the movie talking about his faith, presumably his faith in Jesus Christ. Nightcrawler has also repeatedly said that he can’t just teleport anywhere. He has to be able to see where he’s going, or he could miss, pop back into the world in the middle of something solid, and die. So when Storm asks him to teleport her to the other side of the door, he tells her he can’t—because he can’t see where he’s going, he could kill them both.

Storm puts a hand on his shoulder and looks deep into his eyes. “I have faith that you can do it,” she says. That changes everything. Nightcrawler nods his head, pulls her close, closes his eyes, and pop! They’re on the other side of the door. Storm rushes in and stops the bad guy and everything is better.

I always felt sorry for poor Kurt Wagner in that scene. I know it was important for them to get to the other side of that door—and it obviously worked—but it just wasn’t fair. I know it would have ruined the movie to suddenly take a break in the action for a deep religious discussion, but Kurt really needed to ask her, “You have faith in what?!”

What was she really saying here? Was she saying “I have faith in God, that he has been directing us since the beginning of this movie, and if he brought us to this place where we need your ability to do this, then he will give you the ability to teleport us to the right place.”? It would be nice, but I really doubt it. What she was probably saying was more like “I have faith in you—you can do it!!” That would have been a nice thing to say, but it really would have had no basis, since he had been undermining that kind of faith since they met him. But I can tell you what the audience was thinking: “Hey, if you can’t jump to the other side of that door, you’re all dead anyway… ooh, faith! that’s nice.” Me? I had faith in the scriptwriter’s love of money, that they wouldn’t make the movie bomb by having a major character die by teleporting into the middle of a steel door.

It really is important to know what the object of your faith is. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen,” literally. If you’re in the jury of a murder trial and a key witness tells you, “he did it,” then the only evidence you have is your faith in that witness. If your witness is a liar, then your faith is unfounded.

So. Who is the witness attesting to the scriptures? Fortunately, the bible tells us, in Romans 10:17, who our witness is: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Epistemic Theology Part 3
(Parts 1 and 2)

Took me long enough to get here, didn’t it?

Lee Strobel, in his book, A Case for Faith, Tells a story of how Billy Graham came to decide that the Bible is the Word of God. I have no idea where he got it, so I’m quoting him, in probable breach of copyright:

The year was 1949. Thirty-year-old Billy Graham was unaware that he was on the brink of being catapulted into worldwide fame and influence. Ironically, as he readied himself for his breakthrough crusade in Los Angeles, he found himself grappling with uncertainty — not over the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus, but over the fundamental issue of whether he could totally trust what his Bible was telling him.

In his autobiography, Graham said he felt as if he were being stretched on a rack. ….

“If I was not exactly doubtful,” Graham would recall, “I was certainly disturbed.” He knew that if he could not trust the Bible, he could not go on. The Los Angeles crusade — the event that would open the door to Graham’s worldwide ministry — was hanging in the balance.

Graham searched the Scriptures for answers, he prayed, he pondered. Finally, in a heavy-hearted walk in the moonlit San Bernardino Mountains, everything came to a climax. Gripping a Bible, Graham dropped to his knees and confessed he couldn’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions that Templeton and others were raising.

“I was trying to be on the level with God, but something remained unspoken,” he wrote. “At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say it. ‘Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word — by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.’”

It was a powerful experience, I’m sure, but how does it help me? How do you get this faith? If it comes from within yourself, if you just up and decide to believe one day, then your faith is futile. Not because faith is powerless. A firm conviction can lead people to do amazing things. But unless faith has an objective correlation with the truth, then you haven’t determined the truth. You’ve only determined what you’ve decided to believe. So where does faith come from?

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about this word, partly because we only use it in a religious context these days, so the word automatically takes on these religious overtones. People usually interpret the word to mean “belief,” or better, “really really strong belief.”

But the word “faith” comes from the Latin “fides,” which means something along the lines of “trust” or “adherence,” not just belief. It’s also the root word for “fidelity,” which I think we understand better, thanks to hi-fi electronic equipment (that would be your stereo). The dictionary definition of fidelity is, “Exact correspondence with fact or with a given quality, condition, or event—accuracy,” or, in regard to machines, “the degree to which an electronic system accurately reproduces the sound or image of its input signal.”

What I’m trying to get across is that the word faith carries with it the concept of alignment. To have faith in something is to align yourself with that thing. This is an important concept because it means that you can’t have blind faith. I don’t mean you shouldn’t have blind faith. I mean it’s impossible. It’s as much of an intellectual absurdity as deaf radio.

Consider your stereo. Before the advent of digital media, fidelity was the number one indicator of an instrument’s quality. Everything was recorded in analog format, which is to say, an exact representation of the sound. If you take a cone and attach it to a needle and run that needle along a blank wax record, and then speak into the cone, the needle will vibrate in tune with your voice and the vibration will cut an exact representation of that sound into the record. You could then run that needle back over the record at the same rate, and it would vibrate back at you, making the exact same sound—almost. Fidelity would be the measure of how faithfully the instruments reproduce the original—your voice. With digital media, the record is reduced to a series of numbers, which can then be reproduced exactly, so fidelity is much less an issue.

For your stereo to have blind fidelity, it would have to reproduce a sound with out a record of the original. I think it could be a new wave: Bli-fi: Sound Without Substance!

Faith must always have an object. If I may wax metaphorical, it is the needle of your soul. The record is what your faith is in. You can’t just have faith in the bible, because it requires faith to believe the bible in the first place. There has to be something more foundational, more fundamental than the bible for you to rest your needle on. And the more closely your needle is aligned with this other thing, the more clearly it resonates within you.

So the question for Billy Graham, for you, for me, for my stereo—for everybody—is “faith in what?”