August 14th, 2008 Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »
It has long been a misconception adopted uncritically by many Christians that the Christian faith is in need of a rigorous foundation supported by empirical evidence advanced by deductive reasoning. While certainly it is a worthy endeavor to show how Christianity is compatible with the evidence of the senses and the proper application of reason, the idea of constructing an axiomatic edifice building from first principles is an example of the modernist misapplication of principles from one domain to another.
The theological patrimony of Christendom was to see Christ as the center of theology but not to then make the connections to the Church in the fashion of axiomatic reasoning. When we examine the primary elements employed in Christian theology, neither the Biblical exegesis of Christ and the Apostles nor the philosophical reasoning of classical culture viewed theology as a subject to be systematically presented in terms of their logical relations to one another based upon an axiomatic structure. Instead, their theology was largely derived from the analysis of Holy Scripture as understood within the tradition of the Church expressed in the framework of concepts adopted both from Athens and Jerusalem.
The understanding of the division of the sciences presupposed that while reason was always to be employed, the application of reason would vary according to the subject. Since mathematics was based upon abstraction of things known, it is entirely acceptable to axiomatize the abstraction process and present it in systematic form from which more complex truths may be deduced. Philosophy, on the other hand, was understood as a domain for clarifying universal truths and understanding the interrelationships between them.
Thus the division of the greater whole into its constituent parts is a methodological error in their view of philosophy as the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts. The Church Fathers saw this too in their theology as the Church is much more than the sum of its members and the Bible is much more than a collection of books. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the individual members of the Church are united in Christ through Word and Sacrament into the Body of Christ with each having its own place ordained by God. Similarly, the Holy Scriptures cannot be understood in separation from each other and the Church but their truths are revealed only in the context of the tradition, worship, and prayers of the Church. For those outside the Church, Holy Scripture is a closed book and there can be no true theology.
When we examine the great theologians of Christendom, we do not see their theological views expressed in a tree structure with axioms at the roots and theorems branching out in a manner common to Euclid’s Elements. Instead, the best visual image is that of an immensely complex web with the truths of the Christian faith connected as nodes in a grand tapestry of connections between them revealed by the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and the entire structure having Christ at its center.
The decay of this vibrant catholicity (for reasons far too complex to deal with here) and the subsequent rise of the modernist paradigm would completely revolutionize the understanding of philosophy and so with implications for theology as well. Rather than starting from a worldview intertwined in Christ and His Church, it began with a radical skepticism that necessitated the search for a firm foundation upon which to build a philosophical framework. Two starting points for constructing a foundation emerged: the Baconian structure of empirical experimentation and categorization of evidence and the Cartesian analysis of rational thought to provide a framework with quasi-mathematical certainty.
Both methodologies had much to say when applied to their natural domains of empirical science and mathematics but, while they may act as handmaids to philosophical thought, they cannot supply a foundation for exploring deeper realities. Furthermore, the presentation of such systems often buries useful insights under a completely artificial framework that prevented them from bearing fruit.
The foundations built upon both the external evidence of the senses and the internal use of reason would undergo critical scrutiny and approach solipsism from both sides. In the case of Hume, this perhaps would go solipsism one better as even the existence of the self was in doubt. The answer to these challenges would be either the desperate appeal to common sense or the Kantian rethinking of human reason that would give birth to the convoluted systems of German idealism. The final fallout in this evolution would see modern philosophy shake its death rattle in the arid linguistic manipulations of analytic philosophy and the barrenness of the soul displayed in existentialism.
Unfortunately, much of the Church followed modernist thinking by drinking from the fountain of an ever expanding doubt and accompanying the culture on its downward spiral of retreat from its once lofty ideals. Even as our knowledge of the natural world was growing, our culture was facing an overwhelming internal rot that would lead to the gradual loss of any recognizable sense of ethical moorings. This rot was itself imported into the Church from its sources in modern philosophy and henceforth applied to the Christian method with a resulting distortion that is still felt today in many once powerful churches.
How could this happen? Why would so many Christians be blind to the encroaching forces of doubt that would separate them from their Lord? If classical philosophy had enriched the understanding of the truths of Christianity then why would its modern counterpart cause such marked deterioration? The answers to these questions lie in both the foundational assumptions of modernism and in the lack of discernment of those Christians following its precepts.
The assimilation of classical knowledge into the Church was not an unfiltered process. The writings of many notable thinkers would be declared incompatible with the Christian witness and their insights rejected as a basis for Christian theology. In certain cases, however, the work of a given writer might be seen as shedding light on revelation and their concepts imported into the patristic theological framework. Such were the cases with Plato and Aristotle as each worked within an assumptive framework of eternal, unchanging, and universal truths that could be seen by the Church as pointing to God and illustrative of the natural law written in men’s hearts.
Newer philosophical systems did not allow such easy adaptations. The philosophies of Plato and Aristotle could work within Christian theology since, for the Christian, faith precedes understanding and these philosophies had faith in universal truths that Christians could identify with divine attributes. Supplemented by revelation, the recognition of this natural theology known purely by reason could move beyond the attributes to their source in God and give rise to a fully vibrant Christian worldview.
The modernist paradigm, on the other hand, takes as its starting point the sweeping away of any intuitive apprehension or inherited tradition and attempts to construct knowledge from the ground up based upon either the data of the senses or the knowledge of the self. In either case, it is a foundation based upon the reasoning of the autonomous individual Such individualist methodologies are fine when applied to the realm of the natural sciences, but are corrosive within the corporate nature of the Christian theological process.
Yet many Christian did in fact import modernist methodological strategies into their theological discourse and, just as in philosophy, the never ending cycle of doubt and critique left its mark on the faith. Again, modern theology found its answers to this by following the path of philosophy into either the post-Kantian path of critique giving rise to historical idealism or to retreat in horror to the saner voices of “common sense” philosophy and an unforgiving utilitarianism. Both paths would eventually suffer as the modernist paradigm came under fire both in the horrors of the twentieth century that called into question the myth of unending progress and the collapse of the model of the universe as a great clockwork governed by deterministic laws.
The former path was taken by those now identified with the revisionist theologies of the mainline denominations. The goal was to “save Christ” as a symbol or model to be emulated in one’s very private spiritual walk rather than as the one way to the Father who paid for the sins of the world. Both in faith and practice, more traditional approaches were given a pietistic overhaul where “communion with God” was replaced by “community” and “evangelism” by “social mission”. While very much in step with the times, it would quickly become dated with the modernism’s fall. Such churches are now viewed by most Christians with pity and scorn as rotting structures living off the legacy of dead men’s money with a leadership blinded to the Gospel they had vowed to defend.
By adopting the latter approach, Evangelical Christians were certainly more successful in retaining a connection with the Church’s true calling. However, its underlying modernism still had repercussions that have called its future prospects into question. The many crises now arising within Evangelicalism and its seeming inability to deal with them effectively are now revealing the modernist disease at its roots.
Within its more “common sense” approach, Holy Scripture was no longer viewed through the lens of the Church’s corporate tradition but as a realm of data to be mined by an autonomous exegete as if it contained the accumulated results of revelatory experiments. Indeed, analogies were put forward that corresponded the study of God’s revelation in Scripture to that of his revelation in nature with the same methodologies to be used in both. Indeed, many books on the study of Holy Scripture laud themselves as a “scientific study of the Bible” – as if that moniker alone was testimony to its seriousness. The novelties of the scientific pioneer had replaced the corporate wisdom of the Church through history as the ideal model for Christian theology.
The fallout of Evangelicalism has become so obvious even Evangelicals themselves openly wonder about their future. Insulated by a firm separation from the larger culture during liberal modernism’s heyday, the conservative modernism of the Reagan era was a two-edged sword that both elevated their movement to new heights and exposed them to their own internal weaknesses.
During their “cocoon period”, there were few challenges both from the secular culture and other Christians. Their papers, books, and magazines were published in a conservative Christian bubble where they interacted little with the outside world and no one other than themselves gave much thought to what they were saying. But when they began to take center stage both in the public square and as the most vocal element of the Church, their long unchallenged positions were attacked and sometimes skewered. The sudden exposure to alternate views along with the bewildering array of theological movements centered on the individual have left many Evangelicals weary of its rootless nature and looking elsewhere for a richer understanding of the Christian faith.
In recent years, large segments of American Christianity have now descended into what has been labeled by excited observers as “postmodernity”. I believe this is a misnomer created by those seeking to breathe life into modernity’s rotting corpse. Catholicity found ultimate truths and its source by the faith that such truths exist and their source as well. Modernity refused to take anything for granted – even that which had been known in men’s hearts from their creation - and declared boldly, “I will find God on my own terms”. When this failed, he lowered his expectations to declare “I will find ultimate truth on my own terms”. When this too was exposed as futile, he declared “There is no ultimate truth”.
It is this abyss of relativism – the dying embers of modernity – that the culture now celebrates as novel and thrilling. The Cartesian optimism of “Cogito ergo sum” has been silenced in by the despair of not knowing anything at all. For if the project of modernity represented man’s attempt to build an intellectual Tower of Babel” to the Most High, then this retreat into subjectivity known as “postmodernity” is man’s viewing of the strewn bricks of his once proud edifice and deducing from his failure that the construction of any sort of building is impossible. It is the endgame of centuries of individualist pride run amok.
There are three paths now available to Christians whose churches have succumbed to modernity. The first is to ignore the cultural shift and travel down the path to irrelevance. The second is to continue chasing after the culture and joining them in their denial of truth – and hence of its source. The third possibility is to embrace some form of catholicity that builds upon the wisdom of Christendom’s theological and liturgical patrimony and serious reflection upon how this may be reflected within the context of Evangelicalism’s distinctives.
All three of these responses are currently being implemented. The clinging to past modernism is most clearly seen both in strains of fundamentalism – both in the form often caricatured in secular culture and, in a more intellectual approach, by an arid “five-point Calvinism” that has won favor within certain Evangelical circles. Both of these groups will survive only by once again retreating into their walled cultural ghettos.
Amazingly, there is a growing movement within Evangelicalism to embrace the extreme subjectivism of the “postmodern” movement despite its antithetical stance to the very nature of the Christian message. The range of movements shows its connection to its modernity both in its lack of roots (now celebrated) and its faddishness. The initial opening for elements of “postmodern” thinking appeared in the therapeutic theology of Robert Schueler and then expanded in the consumerism of “seeker sensitive” theology.
The latter with its “marketing niche” approach for “baby boomers”, “baby busters”, “Gen X”, etc. outdid even revisionists in its exiling the sacred from places of Christian worship. With its integration of the larger culture’s narcissism, it was in step with its time just as the mainline churches were with their social activism in previous generations. And just as the social activist churches of the mainline now appear as relics from the “summer of love”, their marketing oriented brethren are under scrutiny with a younger, more militantly “postmodern” generation now creating (yet again) their own version of church.
In this “emerging church” movement, there seems to be a cafeteria approach – picking and choosing beliefs and practices – both sacred and secular - from a menu from as one might in a diner. Long on fuzzies and short on core, it undoubtedly holds much sway within a culture that is convinced that all truth is relative. Affirming the Trinity or Incarnation within this context is meaningless since one can believe something is true for himself and not in an objective manner. It is even wrong to declare them “heretical” since heresy necessitates the firm denial of a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. It might be best to say they are “atheological”.
The third approach is to again return to the riches of catholicity and approach Christianity anew from the perspective of Christians throughout the Church’s two millennia of history. The three traditions most rooted in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic past – Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism – have all waged their own battles with modernity and emerged from them in varying stages of health. But all three have vast riches in their traditions from which to draw upon even if they are currently facing trials.
Many Evangelicals are realizing this and reading the Church Fathers and later writers from both medieval times and the Reformation and are exposed to an entirely new and premodern approach to theology and exegesis. The study of patristics – once nonexistent among Evangelicals – is now a burgeoning movement. Writers such as Thomas Oden, Timothy George, and D. H. Williams are opening up a wealth of riches to those whose theological outlook rarely extended back more than a few generations.
The longterm viability of this movement is hard to gauge. Like the earlier attempts at recovering catholicity, it will undoubtedly lead to conversions to other churches and come under suspicion. But it will also enrich the theology of those remaining with a greater view of the Church in history that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
Whatever the result, the view known as “postmodernity” is only a pit stop on the road from modernity to madness. If the Church is to affect the culture rather than be affected by it, she must first recover the catholicity that is at her essence. We cannot find truth without first acknowledging He who is the source of all truth. We cannot provide a foundation for knowledge in the world but only from eternity.
The world will balk at this denying of their intellectual independence but we cannot change the world by agreeing with it. We are not called to show the world its own reflection but a reflection of its Savior.