Fideism: A widespread philosophy in contemporary Christianity
I was extremely interested to read an article in the October issue of Christianity magazine about Christian philosopher Dallas Willard. The article tells us that according to Gary Moon Willard’s contribution might one day be comparable to that of Martin Luther. Well, I've never heard of Gary Moon and not sure if I've even heard Willard’s name either, but this probably only goes to show how out of touch I am! Nevertheless, I was very impressed by Willard’s response when he was questioned on why he had written his book Personal Religion, Public Reality? [2010]. This is what Willard says: (The emphases are mine):
A very deep problem of contemporary society: the idea that when you speak of the truths of the Christian faith, and when you speak of the path you walk as a Christian and a disciple, you do not have knowledge to rely on. It is believed that knowledge is ‘secular’, and anything that is of God or the Holy Spirit, or of the human soul, is not in the area of knowledge, but in the area of something called ‘faith’. Over the last 100 years or so it has become commonly accepted that faith is not based on knowledge and doesn't incorporate knowledge. And so then the question is ‘So what in the world is it?’ And the answer that most people give you is that it’s an irrational leap.
That’s what the book is really all about. It’s showing first of all that this happened [this new view of faith], and that as pastors and leaders, and just as simple Christians, we’re up against this assumption, and it’s just not true. The central truths of Christianity are subjects of knowledge for anyone who could reach for them and understand that that is what they are. Such thinking changes entirely the atmosphere in which one lives and in which one deals with others. If you just take faith as it is currently understood, it dismisses reality and says that you’re just running on what’s inside of you. So the idea of personal religion becomes dominant, and the idea that religion is essentially personal and it can’t be anything public because it’s just ‘your stuff’.
Nice to have you onboard Dallas! The scourge of Christian fideism/Gnosticism is something I’m all too familiar with. I’ve been up against this problem for the whole of my Christian life and I have referenced it in my blog posts and elsewhere many, many times. However, I want to take this opportunity to make available an essay on the subject that I completed in 2000. This essay can be downloaded here.
Interestingly, the irrational leap that Willard speaks of is well exemplified in the very same issue of Christianity magazine. In an article entitled “Mind Games” we read about a pastor in the state of Pennsylvania:
There are those who say that there is no rational argument for God, and that we should be happy with that. John Wilkinson, a pastor at LCBC church in Pennsylvania….. argues that we shouldn’t expect faith to be rational, because it isn’t. When he went to Penn State University to study philosophy and religion, he was faced with and atheist ‘Goliath’ – a professor who ‘saw as his mission to suck faith out of every student’. Wilkinson was no exception, and he faced a crisis of faith. But this was not addressed by counter-argument using reason and wit. Instead, he told God that he chose to believe in him. ‘Shortly after… I felt a very calming and soothing presence’, he records. ‘Something like a warm hand on my shoulders. I heard, “there, now we can begin”. Wilkinson seems to think that we can ignore rational arguments for God, and the science behind it, and instead we should celebrate that Christianity is irrational.
Let’s face it, Wilkinson has been utterly routed by his ‘Goliath’ and that has left him with only one option; to retreat into the security of the protecting shell of his inner life and sooth himself with the ‘inner light’ of the spirit. But note the irony: It was the still small voice of reason that ultimately came to Wilkinson and spoke to him from within the soft warm womb of his bolt hole; Wilkinson's hypothesis for God was eventually supported by his (private) experience. That’s the paradox of fideism; it too is eventually forced to fall back on the canons of reason in spite of pretensions to having access to superior revelations transcending rationality. In the final analysis fideism proves to be a philosophy that attempts to justify itself through reasoned articulation and therefore one that must eventually pass the test of rationality, the test that the ideas vs. experience contention imposes on all sentience.
It’s good to see Willard giving a strong lead away from the contradictory self-referencing of fideist versions of Christianity. Willard’s book was published in 2010 and given his stature it is not a moment too soon; in fact as far as I’m concerned it is at least ten years behind the times. But better late than never!
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Links relevant to the above material:
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/split-loyalties-and-split-brains.html
http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.co.uk/2007/06/hyper-feminised-church-article-in-july.html
http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.co.uk/2007/06/hyper-feminised-church-article-in-july.html
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Addendum 23/10/12. Today's charismatic evangelical milieu is very liable to divide the Christian world up into Holy Spirit initiates and non-initiates and therefore one has to be very careful what one says in order to forestall being placed on either side of this false dichotomy. In fact, only very recently did I have to send out the email below in an attempt to promote a more nuanced position:
Dear all,
As it may have been the cause of some dismay I thought
I had better qualify my remark about expressions of Holy Spirit, a remark I
made during our discussion on the benches at the edge of XXXX's sunny
sports field. You may remember (or not as
the case may be) I said something to the effect that these expressions are
strongly influenced by personality (and I should have added “culture”)
I thought I had better qualify my remark because parts
of the contemporary Christian scene are polarized on this issue and are consequently
only able to register two Christian types; namely, those who have been
initiated into the things of the Spirit and those who haven’t. I have long
rejected the uncritical acceptance of this dichotomy.
But firstly I must say that I have always affirmed Christian
experiences such as epiphanies, spiritual gifts and the miraculous in general.
Above all I affirm that the promise and anointing respectively referred to in
Acts 2:39 and 1 John 2:20&27 are universal amongst Christians and
constitute the much needed antidote to a creeping contemporary anti-physicalism
and Gnosticism amongst Christians, just as it did in the first century.
What I do utterly reject, however, is the setting up of
spiritual elites based on a claimed spiritual initiation into some kind of mystical
“inner light” experience; in short a form of neo-gnosticism”. Gnosticism is a
common “elite” phenomenon right across the religious spectrum and beyond. In
its most general form it sets up an “inner light” vs. “reason” paradigm and my
own researches suggest that this is not a peculiarly Christian phenomenon but
is influenced by sociological, cultural and crowd factors.
My own view is that otherwise valid Christian markers
(such as epiphanies, spiritual gifts and various cultural expressions) have
been (ab)used to create a fictitious category of “elite spirituality”. In some cases this has even resulted in the calling
into question of many Christians claim to the promise and the anointing.
Tim Reeves
Some relevant blog posts:
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