personal faith and universal truth

so, i just thought i'd share some thoughts which i've been mulling over lately.  i don't take credit for them since primarily they are just some highlights out of a book that i've been reading by lesslie newbigin called the gospel in a pluralist society.  if this post sparks your interest, i'd suggest reading the book.

the topic is that of faith and truth (as the truly insightful have already gathered from the title :), and the relationship between them.  newbigin traces the roots of modern day nihilistic thinking to the 17th century philosopher descartes (pronounced day-cart).  you might not recognize the name, but chances are you have heard his most well known saying: cognito ergo sum (in latin), translated, "i think, therefore i am".  descartes was searching for a basis for truth that could in no wise be doubted.  he finally came down to the fact that if he is thinking, that proves he exists and therefore this is the uncontestable basis for all further knowledge. 

newbigin points out that this conclusion was one of the greatest mistakes of modern history.  what it effectively did was shift the basis of truth from divine revelation to man himself.  all of a sudden man was the ultimate authority for truth and critical doubt was exalted over faith.  what this does, what this ultimately leads to, is a world where no one can know anything.  the only belief that remains is that life is without truth outside of self, and therefore without real meaning.  in other words, nihilism.

what newbigin insightfully points out is that no one can doubt anything except on the basis of a firm belief in some other theory.  every time someone criticizes the christian faith (or any other belief system), it can only be on the basis of another, contrasting belief which is held a-critically.  he points out that in fact the humanistic atheist is just as dogmatic (and actually more so) as the christian he criticizes for claiming to have absolute truth.

very often the example of 5 blind men and an elephant is used by the atheist/agnostic to try to prove that no one faith is right.  the story (if you haven't heard it), is that a king brought an elephant to 5 blind men and told them to describe the elephant.  well, each one touches a different part of the animal, an ear, the trunk, the tail, a leg, the side and each gives a different description of the elephant as like a fan, a snake, a rope, a tree, and a wall, respectively.  the point is then made that they were all right in part, but no one had the whole truth.  newbigin points out 2 problems with this story.  1) there is a king who can see and is able to see all, including the true nature of the elephant.  when an agnostic says "the blind men are like all the different religions", we must say "well, that must make you the king!  how is it that you know ultimate reality well enough to determine that all the world's faiths are not correct?"  2) the real objection that the agnostic has is that someone claims to have absolute knowledge of the reality of the universe, absolute truth.

here newbigin discusses what the agnostic (or pluralist) means by this phrase "absolute truth" - in a word, it is the position of the king.  it is what descartes went searching for: something which could never be doubted.  newbigin makes the challenge that in this sense, we as christians do not have "absolute truth".  that is, we have not seen God.  and we cannot say that it is something which is impossible to doubt.  in fact our belief in Jesus as God and the Lord of human history is just that: belief.  it is faith.  of course the Bible is very clear about faith being the way that we enter relationship with God.  but newbigin challenges that modern christianity and apologetics have made a huge mistake in accepting the "reigning plausibility structure" of the modern west.  that is, that we often try to defend christianity in a way that never calls into question the modern dichotomy of facts (usually scientific) as public truth and values as mere personal beliefs.  he argues that without faith it is impossible to know anything.  even the scientist has great faith in all the training he received, the books he read, and perhaps most of all in the concept that the universe is rational and therefore possible to study.  but there is no physical evidence for that understanding; it is a belief.

in contrast to descartes' "cognito ergo sum", newbigin quotes the early church father st. augustine's "credo et intelligum", or in english "i belive in order to know" as the right understanding.  that is, that faith is the basis of all real knowledge.  the question obviously arises, "if our trust in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior cannot be proven as "absolute truth" in the sense of something that cannot be doubted and if we do not have objective truth in the sense of the king in the parable of the elephant, what keeps someone, or us ourselves, from drowing in subjectivity and the attack that faith is simply personal preference?"

newbigin answers this by saying that our faith in Christ, though requiring a personal commitment (that it costs me something personally to believe) and therfore has a subjective element, is not merely "my opinion" because it is faith held with "universal intent".  that is, all knowledge requires this type of faith commitment (though some like descartes would like to dream of a type of truth that didn't require personal commitment to that truth to know it), but the christian truth to which we commit is one that claims to be true for all men at all times.  the truth that we have is not "objective" in the sense that it is exhaustive or without personal risk, but it is universal in its claim and scope and therefor not mere opinion.  the only thing availible without faith is nihilism (which, btw, is where many are headed and is reflected in much of the post-modern art and philosophy). 

well, i'll stop my book report now.   i myself have only read half of the book so far, but already it is, i think, fascinating and a great help in understanding how to find the right approach in witnessing to the agnostic/pluralist.  i highly recommend it for that reason, though i'll make the disclaimer that there are some things that he states, i.e., his understanding of in what sense the Bible is "the Word of God", apparent amillenialism, that i disagree with.  but that shouldn't stop one from gleaning from it what is insightful and edifying.  well, if anyone has read this book, or simply after chewing over the brief summary i've given here, i'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

happily behind the times...

i've recently listened to and read a number of works on the emergent church and the infiltration of postmodernity into the church.  statistics that churches calling themselves emergent are the fastest growing "movement" in christianity today speak volumes about the current state of the philosophical fabric of "the west". 

the trend towards postmodernity in america and europe (aka, "the west") is evident in just about everything.  i thought the other day about all the recent films i have seen that are as blatantly post-modern as a hammer to the forehead. the sheer amount of them is staggering. (must be part of that whole life-imitates-art-imitates-life thing.) 

perhaps you're asking yourself, "what exactly qualifies a movie as post-modern?"  well, the way i see it, the first conspicuous sign of a post-modern (pm from here) flick is that you get an overwhelming sense of the movie having no real plot.  there's no flow of events, just chaotic happenings.  there's no real climax to the film; people kind of do whatever they're doing for an hour and a half or two and then it stops.  next, everyone in the movie looks like they're on prozac for most of the duration of the film (or like they ought to be).  there is an overwhelming sense in the characters of purposelessness and loneliness.  and as the characters have no purpose, hence the absence of actual plot.  (the best, or worst rather, recent example i can think of is "friends with money".  if you were unfortunate enough to see it, you know what i mean.  if you didn't see it, i DON'T recommend it.)  the overwhelming message is "life doesn't have any meaning (and so neither does our movie)".  the literary critic fredric jameson says of pm art (film and other mediums) that it is "the transformation of misery into beauty" and that it contains a "deathly quality… in a way that would seem to have nothing to do with death ... on the level of content."  good description.  even in a pm film that has nothing to do with dying, the viewer is still left with the feeling of emptiness or death.

the whole pm system of thought (which i am not about to attempt a summary of in a blog entry) has slithered its way into the christian community as well.  hence, the birth of the "emergent" movement.  now, i'm not saying that EVERYTHING put forward under the "emergent" label should be tossed out.  the emphasis on cultural relevancy (or "contextualization"), personal relationships and actual experience of God (juxtaposed with mere ritual) are truly positive things (none of which, however require adoption of pm thought, merely acceptance of Biblical teaching).  the sad part is that the emergent movement in typical pm fashion, cuts the boat loose from the anchor of the soul, Christ.  the emergent movement promotes deconstructionism, redefinition, removal of what in the philosophical world is called a "meta-narrative" (what we'd simply call one objective truth for everyone), and a bag full of other problems.  (for a pretty good summary of the emergent movement, listen to this teaching by mark driscoll (formerly a leading member in the emergent community): click here.)

in contrast, ukraine is currently very much in the "modernism" mindset (which has its own problems, of course... materialism being one of the greatest ones.)  we've not caught up to the west in that area, thankfully.  ukraine is an odd mix of old and new.  in many ways this country is much like america in the 40's.  people are much more interactive within society (think like open markets, public transport, and neighbors borrowing things from each other like matches or sugar).  most everyone is convinced that there is an objective truth (though they certainly don't all agree what that is).  they are struggling to find an acceptable order in areas of politics, family, work, etc., rather than the trend to reject order.  there is, in general, an accepted understanding of moral absolutes, and even the existence of God.  at the same time, just about everyone and their mom has a cell phone, mp3 player (younger generation) and a dvd player at home.  the younger generation (30 and under) are starting to catch on to many of the techno-trends of the west as well as the philosophical propaganda of the west.  the moral/spiritual climate will likely change very quickly as the younger generation grows and the older generation dies off.  well, all that to say, it makes me really glad that we here in ukraine are way "behind the times".

on a completely separate note, me and lena, and the navarros and two married couples from our church were able to go up to kiev for a married couples' retreat in feb.  it was a great, refreshing time.  pray for God's strengthening of all the marriages in our church (i'm counseling with one couple currently and Jesus is definitely doing great things).  here's a pic from that retreat. 

from left to right: igor and anya dikiy, lena and tom navarro,
grisha and valya yaromenko, ben and lena morrison