The atheists would agree!
An article appeared in the
October edition of Christianity
magazine entitled “Let’s be reasonable”. It’s about the presentation of Christian
apologetics and debate. Let me just explain here that my own motives for
studying and thinking are not primarily apologetic but rather motivated by a
desire to unravel selected mysteries. This has a tendency to intensify my focus on very
particular issues and away from the broad “jack-of-all-trades” focus required
by an apologist because he or she is servicing an audience. However, there is a lot
of very good stuff that comes from Christian apologists. In this particular
connection what piqued my interest were these quotes from the article:
David Robertson, pastor of St
Peter’s Free church, Dundee says: “People say no one is ever converted through
arguing. That is rubbish. Of course people are only converted through the Holy
Spirit, but he uses different means”
Alister McGrath, theologian, says: “As an apologist, I occasionally meet some
people who are aggressively anti-Christian. What made them like this was
somebody taking a very anti-intellectual viewpoint; that faith is all about
not using your head, refusing to think
and just trusting. People who say this kind of thing do create a lot of damage”
I agree completely: The Holy
Spirit is as much immanent in reasoning as he is anything else. Fideism is one
of the byproducts of a Christian dualism that sharply separates out the supernatural from natural. Fideists are complete failures in what they may think of as the profane field of apologetics and so make their escape into the esoteric "supernatural" knowledge of those who
claim to have the inexpressible inner light of the gnostic. Well, fair enough,
perhaps they do have esoteric inner light; who knows how the Holy Spirit works
in the inner man. However, the ultra-fideists believe they have a superior epistemic based on their arcane intuitions and they are intolerant of those who might claim that reason is a facet of revelation. Here’s an example of fideism that I picked up from
a TV program which showcased a Christian “teacher”. As always with fideism it is
ultimately self-contradictory: Unless the fideist shuts up completely (I wish
they would) one can observe the amusing spectacle of the fideist justifying
fideism with reason!
Fideist Number 1: If you always process salvation through your mind you will never
enter the fuller things in your walk. You must move from a place of cognitive
reasoning ability to a place where faith and belief flows through your spirit
and not your head … God is beyond your logic.
Now, below is another farcical example
of a fideist using reasoning to justify his fideism. This example is a particularly unpleasant and nasty specimen betraying a self-centered spiritual egotism: The
quote has been taken from the post of an anonymous contributor to the comments
section of the Christian web site Network
Norwich and Norfolk: I have highlighted (in bold) some parts of this text, in
particular those parts showing the use of the extreme anti-superlatives to which this
kind of person is readily attracted. I have also highlighted those parts which evidence a resort to his "inner light"; that is, his intuitions and feelings which of course he identifies with Christ's authority. As a consequence notice that he has little respect for
Bible study because to him intuitive inner light trumps reason; that’s
just another way of raising his opinions and feelings to the level of divine authority!
Fideist Number 2: Debate, debate, debate, even
if you win sometimes you lose! What is the church? I want to tell you that in
the heavy load that we carry called "the local church" it is very
difficult for us to really slow down long enough to not just study the bible but to eat and drink that which it really
speaks of which is the very person of Jesus Christ Himself. To intimately
fellowship with Him even romantically as His bride even to eating His flesh and
drinking His blood. I mean really doing this not just drinking a cup of grape
juice and a piece of cracker and acting all introspective and holy in some
ritualistic form. Brethren we have been ignorant
of the devices of Satan. We have not known that religion and spiritual thinking in the minds of men is
SATANS THROWN! (sic) I have had some conversations with members of the
Jehovah’s witness cult and I was
instructed at the time by the Holy Spirit not to debate with them from
their intellect. The Spirit showed...that
is EXACTLY what they want. They want to debate with you the scriptures. The
moment you want to disprove their interpretation of the scripture with the
scripture...they got you RIGHT WHERE THEY WANT YOU! Even if you outdo them with
your wisdom... you lose. Because
they will never know anything of what you are talking about because they are
forming their argument even to "twisting"
your words and guess who wins. Satan.
You have just participated in and played his game. You want to tell the
truth to someone and really help them to know the truth. Direct them to the teacher inside their spirit. Christ in them. Now
if you don’t believe Christ is in them...well your gonna have to keep picking
up that sword of the word and fighting it out but hear the echoes of our
Saviour in the pressure of His passion....(He
who lives by the sword SHALL DIE by the sword) The Carnal mind is DEATH the mind of the Spirit (within even deeper
than intellect) is LIFE and PEACE. The letter KILLS but the Spirit gives life.
Christ the teacher is in all men. Don’t
debate with men direct them to
Christ within. John said that which denys (sic) Christ in the flesh is the Spirit of Anti-Christ. That simply
means "instead of Christ." Watch out if you get pleasure in
debate...and pleasure in your doctrine...your church...your way of
believing...watch out what spirit you really are in. Of whose domain really has
dominion in that realm? Jesus told Peter Get
behind me SATAN you do not know the things of God but THE THINGS OF MEN. Christ IN YOU is the hope of glory and Christ in
others also!
I hardly need say that I don’t
see eye to eye with the Jehovah’s Witnesses but it is very unfair to accuse them of being Satanic; in fact their methods, customs and epistemic philosophy are very similar to other fundamentalist Christians.
Like other fundamentalists the fideist I have quoted sees the world very much in the black and whites of depraved baddies versus spiritual
goodies like himself. Unable to see the world in shades of grey he goes
straight for the maximum fire power of the spiritual nuclear option, accusing, with loud shouts, those of
whom he is unable to successfully reason of heinous sin and being instruments
of Satan. Christians who do engage in reason are written off as falling for
Satan’s wiles. In the fractious world of Christian sectarianism abusive accusations
like this are as bad as it gets. This conceited spiritual bigot, of course,
believes that he is above reason and instead
receives direct instruction from God and the
Christ within Viz “I was instructed by the
Holy Spirit”. "The Spirit showed [me]". Moreover, notice that he is very ready to rubbish other Christian's experience of communion over his own.
And yet in spite of the pretensions to a having a deep mystical union with Christ it is ironic that this conceited bigot is engaged in a spiritual ego trip that is manifestly all too humanly motivated. McGrath is
completely right “People who say this
kind of thing do create a lot of damage”. The only people that a testimony of
the above sort attracts are fellow egotists who are tempted by thoughts of
being part of a spiritual elite from where they can scream down hell
and damnation on all who disagree with them.
Some relevant links:
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/dallas-willard-catches-up-on-gnosticism.html
