Barth: Anthropocentric?

A few weeks back, a Barth post of mine led to a good discussion in the comments.  This post is a sort of answer to that using Gustaf Wingren (20th C. Lutheran theologian) and Cornelius Van Til (20th C. Reformed theologian) to speak about one weakness found in Barth’s theology.  Basically, both Wingren and Van Til noted a glaring irony: Barth’s loud voice speaking of God was quite anthropocentric after all.

Wingren, for example, accused Barth of substituting revelation in place of justification and forgiveness.  Wingren said Barth overemphasized human knowledge instead of redemption from the guilt and corruption of sin.  Barth, Wingren noted, had a sort of Schleiermachian bent.  “It is strange that we must make this statement, but it is necessary: In Barth’s theology man is obviously the center.  The question about man’s knowledge is the axis around which the whole subject matter moves.”  (Sources: Wingren’s Theology in Conflict: Nygren, Barth, Bultmann p. 28-29; this is also mentioned in William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching, p.80 & 279.  Willimon, who loves Barth, even admitted this was “true,” since for Barth, “sin is mostly a form of unknowing” [ibid, 80].)

Van Til, independent of Wingren’s conclusion, wrote similarly.  Barth’s “theology is still nothing but an anthropology.”  Elsewhere he says that Barth’s ontology coalesces with this epistemology.  According to Barth, Van Til wrote, “all human beings who exist, that is, really exist in the Christ, and all human beings who have knowledge of anything at all have this knowledge because they are one with the process that is Christ and that is God.” (See Van Til’s New Modernism p. 375.)

After reading Barth for a few years now, I do believe these are legitimate concerns, but I’m still reading.  He has “tossed around” my furniture, but I’ve not yet crossed the 1,000 page mark so I best not comment too much.  When I cross the 1,000 page mark, perhaps I’ll have something to say (although one never knows with Barth!).

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The god Within

Many of you may have heard it, but reading through Chesterton’s Orthodoxy today I ran across his great stuff on the terrors of “inner” religion or spirituality.  He first recounts something he read in a Christian journal:  “…Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma…turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the inner light.”  He comments:

“Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within.  …That Jones shall worship the god within turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.  Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within.  Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to be hold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain.  The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.”

Wonder what Chesterton would say to Deepak?

Above quotes taken from G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 81.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Anselm: Faith and Reason

   Over the years, I’ve enjoyed Bengt Hagglund’s History of Theology.  Here’s a section from chapter 17, specifically on Anselm. 

“Anselm, like Augustine before him, represented that position with respect to faith and reason which was customarily characterized by the expression, ‘I believe in order that I may understand’ (credo ut intelligam).  Basing their opinion on the words found in Is. 7:9 (Vulgate), ‘If you do not believe, you will not understand,’  those who follow this line emphasize that faith is the presupposition of a rational insight into revealed truth.  As Augustine put it, understanding is the reward of faith.”

“Anselm developed this position in more detail, among other places, in his Proslogion.  It is clearly expressed, for example, in the following passage: ‘I do not attempt, Lord, to penetrate Thy depth, for by no means do I compare my intellect with it; but I desire to understand, to a degree, Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves.  For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand’ (Ch. 1).”

“The credo ut intelligam concept presupposes that theology and philosophy can be harmonized.  That which forms the content of faith, and which man comprehends by faith, can also be understood by reason – at least to some extent.  Faith and the principles of reason are not antithetical.  It is the task of theology to present the content of faith in such a way that it can be understood and comprehended. …[Faith] has the primacy, for man does not come to faith through reason; but on the contrary understanding comes by faith.  The role of reason is simply to make clear, a posteriori, that the truths of faith are necessary even as seen from the point of view of logic and reason.  For it is only after one has grasped revealed truth in faith that he is able, through rational discussion and meditation, to perceive that that which he believes is also agreeable to reason.”

Good stuff.  In a day where values and feelings rule over truth and logic, it is good for Christians to remember that our faith is not irrational.  Many great theologians followed this Augustininan/Anselmian perspective.  For just one example, Herman Bavinck wrote Our Reasonable Faith, a masterpiece of theology.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

He Is There and He Is Not Silent

 The only thing I’ve read of Francis Schaeffer is He is There and He is not Silent (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1972).  It has been a few years since I’ve read the whole thing, so I’ll have to re-read it again soon.  In sermon prep this week, I did re-read part of the book.  One quote stuck out (from pages 33-34):

“Evangelicals often make a mistake today.  Without knowing it, they slip over into a weak position.  They often thank God in their prayers for the revelation we have of God in Christ.  This is good as far as it goes, and it is wonderful that we do have a factual revelation of God in Christ.  But I hear very little thanks from the lips of evangelicals today for the propositional revelation in verbalized form which we have in the Scriptures.  He must indeed not only be there, but he must have spoken.  And he must have spoken in a way which is more than simply a quarry for emotional, upper-story experiences.”

“We need propositional facts.  We need to know who he is, and what his character is, because his character is the law of the universe.  He has told us what his character is, and this becomes our moral law, our moral standard.  It is not arbitrary, for it is fixed in God himself, in what has always been.  It is the very opposite of what is relativistic.  It is either this or morals are not morals, but simply sociological averages or arbitrary standards imposed by society or the state.  It is one or the other.”

I especially appreciate the next paragraph:

“It is important to remember that it is not improper for men to ask these questions concerning metaphysics and morals, and Christians should point out that there is no answer to these questions except that God is there and he is not silent.  Students and other young people should not be told to keep quiet when they ask these questions.  They are right to ask them, but we should make it plain to them that these are the only answers.  It is this or nothing.”

shane lems

sunnyside wa

On Inerrancy (Once More)

Over the past few years both of us (Shane and Andrew) have benefited from G.K. Beale’s work on numerous Biblical-theological matters (i.e. his commentary on Revelation, his work on the temple, and so forth).  Recently, however, we’ve had to pause because evangelicalism has divided itself along what it believes to be a perfectly straight “line in the sand” when it comes to the matters of inspiration and inerrancy.

While “conservatives” have raced toward Beale’s side of the line in droves simply to not be branded a “liberal” or a “post-modern,” we’re surprised that so few have expressed any doubts as to whether his book The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism (hereafter Erosion) is really the answer that will best serve those with a high view of scripture as they face difficult issues raised by critical studies.  Indeed both of us were quite dissatisfied as we worked through this volume, noting that the issue is not simply newer approaches to biblical studies, but a fundamental epistemological precommitment foreign to our Reformation principles.

What is key in our critique is that what Erosion assumes as an epistemological and hermeneutical starting point is at odds with the historical Reformed approach rooted in analogy and the creator/creature distinction. Note this quote from Erosion:

…It is true that we can perceive God’s in-breaking revelatory presence and communication as that which enables us to see through our aberrant presuppositional lenses and to apprehend God’s unerring truth from his perspective or lens. (pp. 258-59)

Beale also explains that God’s word forms/reforms in people “his lenses on reality,” so that “we see reality more truly from the divine perspective.”  “We should want…God’s subjective though true perspective on truth…”  On page 260 (in appendix 1), Beale says this is his view of epistemology which relates to how the NT interprets and understands the OT.

Note the “lens” language Beale uses to describe Christian knowledge.  He says clearly that we can and should know things from God’s perspective or point of view.  This runs roughshod over our Reformation epistemology, which holds that we cannot know things from God’s perspective or lens.  To be sure, Beale sees himself as standing in line with Cornelius Van Til by starting with scripture and then judging all things by scripture (pg. 78, n. 45).  He also asserts his shared commitment to presuppositionalism with Van Til (pg. 79; though we’ll note his hesitations below).  There was, however, more to Van Til than the primacy of scripture and presuppositionalism, i.e. the Reformed view of epistemology in general or more broadly (how we know what we know).

We find this Reformation thought in Van Til’s book, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, wherein he makes a very important contribution to the doctrine of scripture, primarily in noting how the creator/creature distinction comes to bear on the issue.  He helps to show that scripture is indeed “self-attesting” and therefore: “The doctrine of Scripture as self-attesting presupposes that whatsoever comes to pass in history materializes by virtue of the plan and counsel of the living God” (pg. 28).  While humans can never know the world or even the word of God exhaustively, it is God himself that knows these things exhaustively.  Because we have knowledge that is analogous to God’s, we can know things adequately even though our knowledge does not intersect with his.

Van Til continues:

The system of truth set forth in Scripture cannot be fully understood by the creature.  The point here is not merely that creatures who are sinners are unwilling to believe the truth.  The point is further that man as finite cannot understand God his Maker in an exhaustive manner.  As he cannot understand God exhaustively, so he cannot understand anything related to God in an exhaustive way, for to understand it we would have to penetrate its relation to God and to penetrate that relation we would have to understand God exhaustively. (pg. 36)

In sum, Van Til makes clear that man simply cannot “share God’s lens” when it comes to knowledge of anything in creation.  This plays itself out in important ways in the way that Van Til responds to historical-critical proposals; the same sorts of proposals Beale responds to in Erosion.  Thus Van Til notes that there are “discrepancies” in the Bible (quotes in original) resulting from the difference between the original text and the versions/translations of that text.  Indeed these discrepancies “are of no great moment for the ‘system of doctrine’ contained in the Bible” (pg. 35).  Indeed he argues that the Christian interpreter must “freely admit that orthodox scholarship has not solved all of the difficulties deriving from the phenomena of Scripture.  It is not even likely that these difficulties will ever be fully resolved” (pg. 35).

Van Til concludes: “It must be said, therefore, that there is a sense in which the orthodox believer holds to his doctrine of scripture ‘in spite of appearances’” (pg. 35).  While Van Til does not seem to have had a “believing critical” approach to biblical studies on his radar, his insistence of the analogical relationship between man’s knowledge and God’s gives him much more epistemological and hermeneutical humility than we tend to find in Erosion.  That Erosion(along with the rest of evangelicalism) shies away from Van Til’s approach to presuppositionalism rooted in analogy (Erosionpg. 79, n. 50) fits the univocal-esque tenor of the rest of the book as well as some of Beale’s other writings.

Van Til did not articulate this approach de novo. The earlier Reformers also spoke of the difference between God’s knowledge and human knowledge. Amandus Polanus explained it like this: God’s knowledge “is a formal wisdom, absolute or perfect, infinite, utterly simultaneous, incommunicable, and such that only its image or reflection can be communicated to rational creatures” (PRRD, I.233).  Bavinck was the same: “Our knowledge of God is the imprint of the divine knowledge God has of himself but always on a creaturely level and in a creaturely way.  The knowledge of God present in his creatures is only a weak likeness, a finite, limited sketch of the absolute self-consciousness of God accommodated to the capacities of the human or creaturely consciousness” (Dogmatics I.213).

[For more information on this Reformed epistemology, see Francis Turretin, Institutes, I.i.9, Wilhelmus a Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable ServiceI.5, Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, I.c, and Mike Horton's Covenant and Eschatology, 183, 251; or simply look up the "standard speak" of the Reformed (archetype/ectype, accommodation, univocal/analogical, ministerial use of reason, pilgrim theology, Creator/Creature distinction, etc.) in Muller's Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms and other places.  Or, to go even deeper, review the debate between Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til.]

At the end of the day it seems to us that the problem is not that Peter Enns (Beale’s chief foil) has encouraged evangelicals to ask a different set of questions of the biblical text, but rather that evangelical fundamentalism dies hard.  After all, evangelical fundamentalism is much easier.  The black-and-white certainty it offers doesn’t require Christians to bow to mystery and live with the cognitive dissonance that results when humans with limited knowledge wrestle with divinely inspired scriptures – scriptures that are, at the same time, difficult to harmonize with a modern[istic] approach to history.

_____________
Shane and Andrew

Personal Knowledge: Polanyi

I now know why Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1962) is highly cited and appropriated by quite a few modern theologians and philosophers: because it is an outstanding work.  In some ways, it is parallel to Barth’s bombshell, only in the realm of epistemology.  This “bomb” from Polanyi is that he rejects “the ideal of scientific detachment” (p. vii).  He sets out to establish “an alternative ideal of knowledge,” an ideal which most scientists (in the mid 20th century and before) would reject: “In every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known” (p. viii).

The book has four parts: 1) The Art of Knowing, 2) The Tacit Component, 3) The Justification of Personal Knowledge, and 4) Knowing and Being.  I’m still making my way through this, but so far it is clear, cogent, and very stimulating.  Some parts are difficult, because Polanyi uses illustrations from his realm (chemistry) to make points.  For example, when he talks about how order and probability in natural things involves personal choices and some subjectivity, he uses the law of chemical proportions and crystallography to illustrate his point.  His points are pretty easy to understand, so even if I have no idea what hc/2e2 = integer 137; 137~307 means, I still understood what he was getting at.

In chapter four, Polanyi talks about tradition (among other things).  To learn a trade – from a doctor setting a cast to an engineer setting his laser to cut sheet metal – you take many things for granted because of the tradition you work within.  Some knowledge of things can only be passed on “by example from master to apprentice” (p. 53).  The wheel is not reinvented each time a doctor is trained; she is trained and operates on hundreds and hundreds of physicians’ traditions that are sometimes very old.

“To learn by example is to submit to authority.  You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness.  By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself…. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition” (Ibid.).

The point is that purely objective knowledge of a topic is impossible.  Half (if not more!) the assumptions and presuppositions by which any scientist works are not original to him.  He has to accept them – sometimes unknowingly – and work by them, and they become tacit, much like a hammer becomes almost “one with” the hand when a carpenter pounds a nail into the 2×4.  He personally embodies and accepts the tradition, though he cannot objectively account for it or claim it as originating with himself.  You cannot really master a tradition objectively, because you are “in” it, personally.

Of course there is more to this argument, and there are many more helpful points that Polanyi makes. Again, this book is not overly difficult – it should be on your shelf if you enjoy apologetics and/or epistemology.  It is rather long (c. 400 pages), but it is structured well and can be read in sections.  I’m guessing it could be used as a college textbook.  This book makes an excellent supplement to much of Lesslie Newbigin’s work, along with Cornelius Van Til, Herman Bavinck, Esther Meek, Tim Keller, C. S. Lewis, and so forth.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Contextual Character of Knowledge

This book (or small library of books!), Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996) has been a huge help to me in the past four years (as I mentioned here a few years back).  This week, in my studies, I’ve been re-reading book 5 of this tome, Science and Hermeneutics by Vern Poythress (I also just set down his excellent The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses).  Here in chapter nine of Poythress’ contribution, he talks about the lessons we can learn from the fact that all our knowledge is contextual (i.e. theory and presupposition laden).  One specific lesson I appreciated was humility in Christian knowledge, or in my terms, epistemological humility.

“We must remember that, though the Bible is infallible, our own understanding of the Bible is not.  Hence some practice of critical self-doubt, in light of the Bible’s search-light, is in order.  As long as this doubting criticizes ourselves, rather than doubting God or doubting the Bible as God’s Word, we are acting in conformity with Christian standards” (p. 504).

This really has to do with Christian humility: now we see in a mirror dimly and know in part (1 Cor 13.12).  It has to do with pilgrim knowledge: we’re travelers on the way, learning as we go.  The gospel truth is not something we own, possess, or master, but an awesome announcement we trust in and try to live according to (and it keeps changing us!).  We’re pilgrims in via – the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

A Newbigin Summer

Around six months ago, I read my first dose of Lesslie Newbigin simply because I heard him quoted from time to time.  I read him because I like to get to know important church figures and their thought (at least to some extent).  The Gospel in a Pluralist Society was the first book by Newbigin I dug into, and I’ve been “hooked” ever since.  If you want to read some of Newbigin but don’t know where to start, you may want to check out Lesslie Newbigin Missionary Theologian: A Reader edited by Paul Weston (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).  In this book, Weston basically took all the writings of Newbigin and put them in a historical and topical order, giving the reader a great summary of Newbigin’s thought.

The book has two basic sections: 1) The Theological Foundations For Missions and 2) Missionary Theology in Practice.  Here’s a chunk of the opening chapter (following a short biography of Newbigin) on The Knowledge of God.

“It is the mark of religion, among the activities of the human spirit, to claim to be the bearer of revelation; to claim, that is to say, that the message which it delivers and the facts with which it deals are not the fruit of unaided human processes of observation and inference, but have their root in transactions in which man plays the part of the recipient and not of originator.  In Christianity this is central.”

“There have been divergences, sometimes wide, but the main current of Christian thought has echoed the words of Christ: ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding and didst reveal them unto babes.’  It has been the glory of Christianity to find its saints among those whom the world counts babes, and to exclude from the sphere where it is most intolerable the snobbery which makes blessedness dependent upon abilities which must always be the possession of a few” (p. 18).

In other words, Christianity is not a mathematical endeavor in which the “knowledgeable” have some sort of superiority (like science).  Christianity is receiving something from Someone else and personally trusting that testimony which He has chosen to reveal to us.

It is a Newbigin summer over here in South Central Washington State.  I’m going to read Foolishness to the Greeks next.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Faith, Doubt, & Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Newbigin)

This is an amazing and truly outstanding book.  Lesslie Newbigin’s Proper Confidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) is honestly one of the best brief and to the point books I’ve read on Christian epistemology (i.e. knowing things – specifically how faith and knowledge relate).  I would love to do a series of blog posts on this book, but I don’t have the time right now.  Instead, I’ll blurb a bit now, and come back to it later.

In this book, Newbigin talks about modernism & fundamentalism along with postmodernism & liberalism.  He wonderfully describes them, critiques them, points out the strengths of each, but then says neither will ultimately do for a Christian pilgrim “on the way.”  In fact, says Newbigin, our knowledge is “partial here in via, but promised in its fullness at the end” (p. 7).  We cannot assume a sort of enlightenment or even fundamentalistic view of knowledge, that we know so much based on scientific, reasonable propositions.  Nor can we assume a sort of liberal or postmodern view that nothing can be known with any certainty.  Instead,

“If the place where we look for ultimate truth is in a story and if (as is the case) we are still in the middle of the story, then it follows that we walk by faith and not by sight.  If ultimate truth is sought in an idea, a formula, or a set of timeless laws or principles, then we do not have to recognize the possibility that something totally unexpected may happen.  Insofar as our knowledge is accurate, we shall be able to predict the future.  Future and past events are governed by the same laws, the same principles, and the same realities.  But if we find ultimate truth in a story that has not yet been finished, we do not have that kind of certainty.  The certainty we have rests on the faithfulness of the one whose story it is.  We walk by faith” (p. 14)

Again, I’ll come back to this book some other time.  If you want a lesson in epistemology, especially how to think and act when it comes to liberalism and fundamentalism or postmodernism and modernism, reason and faith, and so forth, you really have to get this book.

A few more reading tips: First, Newbigin appropriates Polayni well in this book.  Second, this adds a new “robustness” to Van Til’s presuppositional arguments.  Finally, I assure you that if you read this book of Newbigin along with Herman Bavinck’s Certainty of Faith, you will not only be edified, your faith will also be strengthened, and you’ll have a great set of lenses with which to read and view the Christian faith in light of science, doubt, and skepticism.   Both books are around 100 pages and probably easy enough for anyone who knows the basic outlines of the history of philosophy.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Bible and Foundationalism

Foundationalism is a philosophical term for describing how the modern Western world theorizes/ed.  Basically, it means that we form a body of theories from which all bias, falsities, and prejudice has been eliminated, and this forms the foundation of certitude from which we can think.  In Wolterstorff’s terms, “the foundationalist sees the house of genuine science as firmly based on a foundation of certitudes which can be known non-inferentially.”  That is, the foundation upon which we build our knowledge is a foundation that is solid because it is built on certainty.  A scientist believes x theory because x theory is justified by his foundational propositions.  Of course there are different sorts of foundationalistm – soft, hard, etc. – but this has been the dominate way of theorizing in the Western world.

Wolterstorff and others have questioned the legitimacy of foundationalism.  He uses the example of a desk that is brown.  It is not brown to everyone – say the colorblind or those under the influence.  Also, what if the desk comes under a different sort of light that makes it blue?   “Perception does not yield a rock-firm base for our theories.”    Wolterstorff goes on to say that better than certainty for foundational truths is probability.  We can believe that this desk is brown without knowing all the laws that would make the desk seem to be blue.  We can have true knowledge without a body of indubitable foundations, but Wolterstorff says theorizing will have to be nonfoundationalist theorizing.

Can the Bible Save foundationalism?  Wolterstorff says no.  “The Bible…does not provide us with a foundation for theorizing.  Reading and interpreting the Bible is not a procedure for arriving at propositions knowable non-inferentially and indubitably to be true.”  One example he gives: “neither Bohr’s theory of the atom nor its denial can be derived from the Scriptures.”  It may sound pretty radical, but Wolterstorff is simply saying, “Our reading and interpreting of Scripture does not provide us with a body of indubitably known propositions by reference to which we can govern all our acceptance and nonacceptance of theories.”  I think this is a good path to trod in light of postmodernity.  There is a Christian way besides foundationalism that is not equal to postmodernity.

If this kind of thing interests you, I highly recommend Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, which Myron Penner edited.  It is a collection of essays that presents six views on modernity, postmodernity, foundationalism, and non-foundationalism.  I appreciate Vanhoozer’s chapters in it, along with his Drama of Doctrine and Is There a Meaning in This Text? which also interact with foundationalism in a way similar to Wolterstorff.  You may also like the work Vanhoozer edited, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology.

Above quotes taken from Wolterstorff’s Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1976).

shane lems

sunnyside wa