I heard a good talk last night by Ken Myers, the happy genius of the indispensable Mars Hill Audio Journal household. Our host was Dr. David Naugle, head of the philosophy department at Dallas Baptist University (N.B., for Dallas area readers, Ken's going to be speaking today at DBU at noon, on "Why There Really IS A War Between Science and Religion: C. S. Lewis's Vision of a 'Repentant Science'"; the lecture is free -- follow the link to Dr. Naugle's webpage for details). I've become a big fan of the Mars Hill interviews, and can't encourage thoughtful Christians interested in the intersection of faith and culture strongly enough to subscribe. So it was a treat to hear Ken speak in person. He talked last evening about how from the days of the founders, the American way of thinking about the role of religion in public life was not only to privatize it, but to individualize it. He explained how the inevitable result of this was to make Christian faith peripheral to the substantive questions in public life. Moreover, the principles behind this privatization of religion inevitably lead to the corruption of religion, because it becomes primarily a matter of expressing how individual men feel about God, rather than being an expression of how God feels about individual men, and what He calls us to do.
The upshot is that even among the most religiously enthusiastic Americans, the faith has become so inculturated that it has been turned inside out, and is no longer prophetic, but therapeutic. Ken talked about an interview he did in 2005 with sociologist Christian Smith, who had just written a book on the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. What he found was a consistent set of religious beliefs across denominations, and even traditions (i.e., Muslim teenagers told him the same thing). But it wasn't the beliefs of the particular traditions the kids came out of; rather, it was what Smith calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." It's principles, as Ken listed them, were startlingly familiar: God exists, but you really shouldn't get overly involved with Him unless you get into real trouble or something; the point of life is to be happy; it's important to be nice; good people go to heaven, and most everybody is good; et cetera.
What struck me when I heard Ken listing Dr. Smith's litany was how this vague message has been the basic orientation toward Christianity that I've heard in nearly every Protestant or Catholic church I've ever been a part of. This is not something that teenagers today have arrived at on their own. This is something they were taught. Ken said that in his own conversations with pastors, they are often astonished by the level of theological illiteracy among young people today, as opposed to 50 years ago. I suppose you might say that even if a religious dissenter within a tradition rejected the tradition, he at least knew what he was turning his back on. No longer. And I thought perhaps the most important thing Ken said all night was his observation that in past generations, young people were ashamed of themselves when they became aware that they didn't know something important, and they endeavoured to learn it. Today, so many are proud of their ignorance, or at least profoundly unmoved to combat it.
(It's not just teenagers; I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with adults in recent years that get aborted when the other person says, "Well, I'm entitled to my opinion" -- this, even though their opinion is based on clear factual error. It's so weird, because you'd think that if someone had reached an opinion based on an error of fact or logic, they'd want to know that. Wouldn't you? I know I would. You see, though, the philosophical basis for Truthiness: the belief that truth is essentially therapeutic -- meaning that what's true is what makes us feel good.)
Anyway. After Ken's talk, I asked him about his opening statement that Christians should not retire from the culture to their prayer towers. It seems to me from everything that followed that it is virtually impossible to maintain any sort of religious particularism amid the Moralistic Therapeutic Deistic (MTD) Kultursmog pervading our culture at every level. Wouldn't it make sense for Christians (or frankly, any religious believer interested in maintaining the integrity of his or her own religious tradition) to withdraw from the broader culture? Cloistered monks, nuns and hermits excepted, total withdrawal is neither practical nor even desirable for Christians -- nor is it Biblically defensible. But it seems to me that not to be conscious of oneself as a member of a strongly countercultural Christian community, and to constantly be reminded of one's apartness from the mainstream culture, is to be unable to resist being absorbed by the MTD Borg.
Ken, who is Evangelical, responded in part by saying that when he was younger, the conservative Christians always understood that they were apart from the mainstream. It was just a given that Jesus's people were going to be outsiders. That's not true anymore, said Ken, at least not among Evangelicals. He said that the rise of "the so-called Religious Right" served to mainstream Evangelicalism, and that now there is a big fear among Evangelicals of being thought "fundamentalist" for insisting on religious particularism or tradition. That remark brought to mind the line, can't remember from who, to the effect of, "There's no telling how much good might be done if not for the fear of being insufficiently progressive."
It was a good evening, even if my l'esprit d'escalier question went unasked: "Hey Baptists in the audience, everything Ken Myers has said tonight implicitly indicts the core Baptist doctrine of soul competency. How do you respond?"
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[continued from above] Let me digress for a moment to illustrate what ought to occur in the midst of a serious theological dispute on which hinges the spiritual growth of a fellow Christian. Suppose one of the members of a local church absolutely refused to help strangers in need when he clearly had the opportunity: he took a "God helps those who help themselves" mentality. Matthew 18 outlines how to deal with this situation. A fellow Christian should approach him in private, then with two or three friends, and then bring the matter before the church which has the authority to -- for lack of a better term -- exile him from the congregation. Let's suppose that the hard-hearted man is confronted and exiled in precisely this way; the church points to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the man responds: "Well, the next time I see a Jew in trouble on the road to Jericho, I'll be sure to help him out. Otherwise, God helps those who help themselves." (Note that the "God helps those" is not scriptural but is rather a proverb quoted by -- if not originating from -- Ben Franklin.) You see what's going on here? The man is defending his sin with an, um, unorthodox interpretation of that parable, arguing that its application is extraordinarily limited. I happen to believe that most people are many things -- selfish and proud primarily -- but not stupid. The man knows better; in his heart of hearts he knows he should help his fellow man. But we cannot compel him to change his mind and must, instead, let God sort this out with him, in this life or the next. (Note here that Christ -- who most certainly had the authority to compel more than any of us, even the pope -- didn't compel but rather asked, urged, and advised. Those like the rich man who turned away from Him were free to do so: those who betrayed Him, abandoned Him, mocked Him, and even conspired against Him were all free to do so: God Incarnate did not compel them to do the right thing.)
It is on the matter of compulsion where we get to the heart of soul competency. Let's for a moment toss sola scriptura to the wind: what would stop radical revisionists from starting their own church with their own pope? What would stop *a* revisionist from declaring himself his own pope? The only thing that could stop that is state compulsion: there being one state church and all other churches being prohibited or given second-class status by the government. I don't think soul competency leads inevitably to a privatization of faith: again, the doctrine is not considered in a vaccuum but alongside the external authority of Scripture and the belief that Christians should worship corporately. (One might as well argue that Christ's teaching and example of praying in private leads to a privatization of faith: if it did, it would only be because the person ignored His other commands to let his light shine and to preach the Gospel to all nations.) But I will grant that soul competency, taken by itself, at least presents a risk of the privatization of religion. But here's the thing: any arrangement and doctrine that excludes state compulsion has that very same risk. I believe Scripture and corporate worship mitigates against the privatization of religion pretty well, but it won't eliminate it: there will always be cranks who worship by themselves and indulge all sorts of heresies.
Will anything eliminate it? Nothing short of compulsion: I believe a genuine elimination of the privatization of religion is impossible without the simultaneous elimination of religious freedom.
I was the above "anonymous". I guess I could sum up with the following. Rod, you wrote, "The Catholic cannot maintain that the individual has the right to interpret the Bible as his conscience leads." To answer your question, you're right that, traditionally and historically, the Baptist does precisely that. If you don't mind, let's bring this from the talk of Baptists, Catholics, and the Orthodox as groups to an frank discussion about our own personal beliefs. I most certainly do affirm the individual's right to interpret Scripture as his conscience leads. I thank God it doesn't come to this, but I would defend that right with force of arms. Do you not affirm that right? If you do not -- and if indeed your faith prevents you from doing so -- I hope you understand how dispiriting it is that you cannot do so in light of your post about a life-size chocolate statue of a naked, crucified Christ. You very rightly criticize the people doing this, but you say, "I'm glad we live in a country where people are free to be blasphemous creeps and not have to face criminal action, or the threat that their gallery will be firebombed, or the likelihood that some bishop will put a fatwa on their heads and some believer will attempt to carry it out." At the same time, all I desire to do is to worship and obey the Christ they mock, to grow closer to God in intimacy and spiritual maturity, by reading His written word for myself and doing my best to understand His message. And you imply that you cannot maintain that I have the right to do that. Respectfully, I cannot see how you can defend the right to blaspheme God but not the right to interpret His word, humbly and faithfully, for myself.
Thanks for your long reply. I have only a few things to say: 1. I agree with you that there should be no compulsion in religion, and certainly not state compulsion. I believe in the civil right of all believers to their own faith, or no faith at all. My concern is not with what the state can and can't say, but with what is true. I don't want to get into a big discussion about church authority (mostly because it's 5:30 here, and I'm still at the office with stuff to do), but like you, I am concerned with how we can know as Christians what is true, and what is false. I am persuaded by Acts 15 (the Council of Jerusalem) and by the history of the church for roughly its first 1,500 years that Christ gave to the Apostles and their successors, the bishops, the right and the responsibility for setting doctrine and, when the time came, canonizing Scripture, and then interpreting it. I don't think we at all disagree that there is such a thing as objective truth in matters of faith and morals, nor do I think we disagree over the fact that it's rooted in Holy Scripture. Nor do we disagree that the state should have no role in compelling belief (if that were possible, which it isn't). What we disagree on is how Christians can reliably arrive at truth. 2. On the chocolate Jesus thing, I think you misunderstand: again, I grant you the civil right to interpret Scripture for yourself. What I don't grant is that you (or I, standing alone) can reliably arrive at the true interpretation of Scripture. That can only come through the church, and then only under the right conditions.
Thanks for the reply. I take it you and I both distinguish between civil laws and divine laws. We have a civil right to say whatever we want (within limits, like shouting fire in a theater), but we do not have a divine right to blaspheme. We have a civil right as adults to have consenting relationships with whomever we choose*, but we do not have a divine right to fornicate. (* - Actually, I would support adultery being illegal, on the basis that it constitutes a breach of contract, the contract being the state-issued marriage license.) I take it that you believe A) that even though religious freedom should be protected as a civic right, we do not have the divine right to interpret Scripture for ourselves; and B) that the advocacy of such a divine right through the Baptist doctrine of soul competency inexorably leads and has already led to religion being too personalized and privatized in America. To tackle point "B" first, I'll reiterate that Baptists affirm soul competency alongside the duty of corporate worship and the unique authority of Scripture: those two ideas serve to keep Baptists' theological beliefs within a broad mainstream. Certainly, the beliefs of self-described Christians *are* diverse, but how much is that due to a difference of Biblical beliefs and practices? Some of us believe the Bible is uniquely authoritative; others combine that authority with tradition or a hierarchy of priests, while still others ultimately (if not explicitly) champion their own whims as being free of any external authority. Some of us believe the Bible is God's written message to all peoples for all times, others believe it merely documents one culture's perspective. And some of us believe that (at least) the original manuscripts are inerrant while others deny inerrancy and determine what in the Bible is genuine by some external (often implicit and arbitrary) standard. And the fact is too few Christians actually study the Bible, so many hold beliefs that have only a passing resemblence to what's between the two covers. It is my experience that people who all approach the Bible as God's authoritative, eternal, and inerrant message -- and who do so humbly and faithfully, and who study the Bible by actually reading it -- generally come to the same conclusion. It is not that the Bible isn't perspicuous enough to be understood, it's that many who draw unorthodox conclusions do so because of the attitudes they bring to the book if they approach the book at all. I don't think that tradition and a papacy could do significantly better in preventing such sophistry in a modern information age with a large middle class.
But to tackle your point "A", while I do think the opinion of other (especially mature) Christians is helpful, it's not authoritative: I do indeed believe that we have the right to study the Bible for ourselves and draw our own conclusions. The council in Acts 15 does not imply that the decisions of later councils were ultimately binding in their authority, as the members of these later councils did not meet the essential qualification of the eleven, Matthias Judas' replacement, and Paul: being a witness of the resurrected Christ. And I believe the church discovered what was the New Testament canon, but it did not determine canon: Matthew's gospel was divinely inspired and authoritative before the church officially listed a complete canon. Though I believe the individual is still competent to reach conclusions about doctrine, let me concede that the ideal relationship between the church leader and those in the congregation is Biblically similar to the ideal of marriage: a relationship of love and submission but not symmetrically. In Matthew 19, Jesus granted the concession of divorce in rare -- obviously grave -- circumstances. It may be that, if the church leaders commit a deliberate act that the individual believes to be in gross violation of God's will, the individual has the moral right to schism rather than submit. I for one believe that the Catholic church's permanent and irrevocable canonization of some of the apocrypha (some, but not all: only those that supported their more controversial teachings) during the Counter-Reformation is a gross violation of the clear command to add nothing and detract nothing from Scripture. I have other points of contention with Roman Catholicism, but that one's sufficient to keep me from being fully reconciled with my Catholic brothers, devout and spiritually mature as many of them are.
But let us get to the heart of the matter: Jesus routinely criticized traditional interpretations ("you have heard it said... but I tell you...") and affirmed the complete authority of Jewish Scripture, to the smallest literal iota. In Matthew 15, Jesus explicitly asserted a moral conflict between God's commandments and the Pharisees' tradition. And how many times did Jesus answer a question or make an assertion with, "It is written," with the implication that a principle's being recorded in Scripture was sufficient? It seems to me that the New Testament was re-affirming the sole authority of Scripture. Creating a new authority of tradition seems to be a regression to the very problem Christ criticized. And, the entire point of Christ's coming was to bridge the gap between God and man, not just the gap of man's sin, but also our intellect, by teaching in parables that farmers could understand and even commenting to His disciples on His own parables to make its meaning clear. Not only this, but to rend the veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies, to be (as Hebrews describes so elegantly, in quoting the Old Testament) the mediator of a new covenant in which God's law would be written in our hearts and minds. "Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." - Hebrews 10:19-22, emphasis mine I do not see how a large and complex hierarchy of priests, telling us how to interpret God's word even though we can read it ourselves and imposing a new system of traditions, ultimately inserting themselves between man and God, is in any way consistent with the liberating message of the New Testament. It not only seems unnecessary, it seems positively contrary to the new covenant of Christ. Like His living Word, God's written word was given to all of us, and His Holy Spirit is available to all of us. WE are the royal priesthood promised in Isaiah 61 and described in I Peter 2, not just the men in the cathedrals and monestaries.
On that note, I might have said all I needed to on this subject. Rod, feel free to have the last word.
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