Understanding and Owning Christian Theology

Week 1 (Aug 7): Right, Biblical Thinking – Why it matters

 Intro:

I grew up in a Christian home and was taught the Christian faith all my life. When I went to college I was confronted with really smart people that believed things I had never thought of and I didn’t know what to think. I thought evolution was just something to laugh at and only unthinking people believed in – I was wrong and became somewhat disoriented. I talked to people that believed that there is no God to depend on, and there is literally nothing that, given time, man could not accomplish (e.g. unaided flying). I talked to other Christians that didn’t believe the same things I did, and didn’t know how to answer them.  This may have been your own experience. In my case it was the beginning of a period of significant rebellion – not because I didn’t know things about the faith, but because I allowed my confusion to sidetrack my fundamental belief and trust.

My purpose in this class is not to provide full instruction on any of the subjects we will talk about. Rather, my goal is to provide some simple tools for knowing what it is that we teach here at RCC, and then have open discussions about the various topics so that together we can know why it matters what we believe. You are encouraged to ask questions, make assertions, and help each other both believe and understand the Christian faith.

Credo ut intelligam vs cotito ergo sum

Credo ut intelligam (alternatively spelled Credo ut intellegam) is Latin for “I believe so that I may understand” and is a maxim of Anselm of Canterbury, which is based on a saying of Augustine of Hippo (crede, ut intelligas, “believe so that you may understand”) to relate faith and reason. It is often accompanied by its corollary, intellego ut credam (“I think so that I may believe”), and by Anselm’s other famous phrase fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”).

The modern world had an auspicious beginning with the words of Rene Descartes (1596-1650): cotito ergo sum “I think, therefore I am.” With these words man’s scientific conquest of nature apart from God began. From it sprang incredible scientific progress, but also the most profound apostasy from God. For over 1000 years the church in the west had developed a Christian worldview, which in fairly short order was rejected in favor of a man-centered worldview.

The tool I want to provide today for thinking rightly is the ability to see the Christian world view in opposition to every other way of viewing the world. This tool is the use of the three great questions in philosophy: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics

Ideas Have Legs and they walk – sometimes they run away from you: Presuppositionalism 

Rousseau in 1753, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour

E.L. Hebden Taylor points out that a significant problem for Western Civilization as it turned away from God, His Word and a Christian worldview (in the 16^th & 17^th centuries) was how to balance human freedom with the needs of society as a whole.

“Rousseau attempted to solve this problem by means of his theory of the “social contract” which in order to be valid must include precisely the clause that each individual delivers himself with all his natural rights to all, collectively, and thus through becoming subject to the whole by his participation in the “general will” gets back all his natural rights in a higher juridical form…The “general will” is, by Rousseau’s definition, always right. It is the common will of the people. If man himself is the only criterion for moral and political behavior, then the benefit of the majority of men in a given community becomes irresistible. Instead of our doing good to others, it is they who do good to us by allowing us to exist.” (The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, pp. 214-215)

And so we see the seeds planted in the soil of intellectual thought that grew to become a Statist view of life, blooming into a form Totalitarian Democracy. Hebden Taylor continues by quoting Rousseau:

“As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power of all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will bears…the name of Sovereignty…The most general will is always the most just also, and the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.” (The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, pp. 216)

Hebden Taylor asserts: “With these ominous words, Rousseau, the so-called apostle of human freedom, ushered in the age of totalitarian democracy. His religion stands revealed as the deification of society…Rousseau invented modern democracy. He invented first the dogma that every man has an equal right to a say in government, and secondly, that democracy alone has the right to silence it critics or opponents.”

The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789

Thus, Rousseau also became the direct influence of those who led the French Revolution, and the Marxist revolutions to follow.

“Once the mystical idea of the general will was born, once society was credited with the common will, superior to the will of its individual members, eighteenth century rationalism became the instrument of revolutionary violence instead of benevolent despotism.” (The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, pp. 218)

E L Hebden Taylor (1925-2006)

I have recently begun The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, by E.L. Hebden Taylor He wrote:

“One of the great tragedies of the Protestant Reformation was the failure of the great Reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther to develop a doctrine of law, politics and the sate upon truly reformed and biblical lines…[because] they  were so involved in theological disputes, religious controversy and the very struggle for survival that they did not have time left in which to develop a reformed and biblical theory of politics and government.”

For this reason, Protestant Christians in the years following the Reformation relied on medieval and scholastic conceptions of society based on Natural Law, resulting in an inability to provide an explicitly biblical and Reformed view of politics, science, art, etc. Consequently, in the tidal wave of the Enlightenment forces, “protestant Christians were unable to withstand the onrush of the new secular humanist conceptions of law, politics and the state.”  Taylor quotes James Hasting Nichols History Christianity 1650-1960:

“In the seventeenth century, for the first time in a thousand years in Western history, a deliberate attempt was made on a grand scale to organize a religiously neutral civilization…independent of Christianity.”

In a New York Post online article entitled Meltdown of the climate ‘consensus’, the first line makes an assertion worth considering: “If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.”

The article is specifically about the issue of man-caused global warming, and the notion that “the best scientists” are 1) not unified on the question, and 2) fighting among each other about which side is engaged in pseudo-science and downright public deception, and 3) loosing the confidence of the worldwide audience who are witnessing the confusion.

I , for my part, don’t know what to think. How could I? What do I know about the science, one way or another? What I am inclined to is a robust mistrust of the man-caused global warming crowd and their pronouncements because of their underlying assumptions and worldviews. However, I generally wonder whether the presuppositions and worldviews of the anti- man-caused global warming crowd are any better. More often than not – it seems more like a political debate and less of a scientific one anyway.

But what about the question posed earlier? Will people stop trusting scientists altogether? And what would be the result if they did?

The materialist assumptions that modern culture has about the nature of reality promotes a general trust of science as a more reliable arbiter and establisher of truth than religious authorities (e.g. the Christian Bible). If there is nothing authoritative outside of our material world that can give us truth, who better to provide authoritative pronouncements of truth than scientists (of all kinds)? Because our culture has not given up on its materialist worldview in favor of another – I think it unlikely that people will stop trusting scientists generally.

What about us Christians? Should we trust scientists?

As far as I’m concerned, science should be viewed as an important gift from God. It is a method that is used to help us learn things about God’s work of creation. It has provided a means of developing many technologies that have been good and useful in our world (as well as some pretty useless and poorly and sinfully used ones). However, not all that science determines to be true is indeed true. Further research, testing and analysis often over turn previously announced “scientific facts.” Science is not an infallible source of knowledge and truth – Therefore, it should not be treated as one. It must be remembered that rebellious men suppress the truth of God (both in the Bible and in creation) in their unrighteousness.

Thus, Christians can and should be scientists. Christians should receive with thanksgiving the gifts that God gives to us through the works of scientists. Christians should learn about the work of scientists to better understand our world, worship God more gratefully, and provide scientists with insight about what is being learned. Christians should reject any scientific claims that contradict the Scriptures. Because scientific truth claims are often later determined to be erroneous, Christians, therefore, should exhibit patience and let time and more scientific work help us to understand the truth of the specific claims. In other words, we cannot allow ourselves to be tossed about by every whim of scientific doctrine – but constant in faith and faithfulness; and exhibit biblical wisdom in the use of the products of the scientific endeavor.

An increasing healthy mistrust of “scientists” generally in our culture would be a good thing, in my opinion. They would be forced to limit their statements of truth, be more careful in their research and conclusions, and be less willing to engage in thinking more highly of themselves than they ought. We have such a mistrust of politicians, lawyers, etc – and I believe it does us a great deal of good by causing us to hold them accountable in significant ways for their truth claims. There are certainly good and godly men in all fields of human endeavor, but the works of both the godly and the wicked need to be tested by the truth of God’s Word – our final authority for all truth.