The Cost of Belief

It seems to me that our thoughts and beliefs have consequences, whether or not these consequences themselves are immediately obvious. The one who dwells constantly on what is good may suffer in this life, but he or she will have a type of happiness unavailable to the one who does not seek what is good with all of his heart. Marcus Aurelius notes, “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts” (Meditations tr. Gregory Hays, Modern Library, 2002, 59). Whether or not we truly live in a causal world, we certainly make decisions based on assumptions of cause and effect. If I dwell on a tempting croissant, I am much more likely to buy it than if I distract myself with other thoughts. The more I look at an appealing book on the shelf in a store, the more likely I am to purchase it. Wishing to avoid an argument with an obnoxious acquaintance, I take a detour and avoid walking down his street or frequenting the haunts in which he is likely to appear. To render this in even simpler terms: the sun shines, and we feel warm. It rains and the earth grows damp. The wind blows and the leaves start to scurry across the street. We think of loved ones, and we telephone them or cross the city to go meet them.

There are costs to our beliefs and thoughts, just as there are effects to causes, whether the consequences of our beliefs are good or bad. It is a good thing to have nice books. At one point I had several thousand of them. I have downsized my library, because my love of books made my living conditions cramped. Moreover, I found myself spending money I did not really have to cover my walls with volumes of poetry, history, art, literature and philosophy that I did not have sufficient time to read. Debt, as most people will agree, is not a good thing. A good desire and its fulfilment—the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom—came at a great cost, because I was careless.

Today, we have yet to admit the untold costs that various ideas have incurred throughout history on both social and individual levels. Our bloody wars, eroded cultures, and ruined societies are evidence of these costs. Perhaps we are too busy looking for the newest idea to stop and think whether or not our older ideas were worthwhile or not. Perhaps we are too addicted to bad ideas to consider whether or not it is time to jettison outdated thoughts and mature into new ways of thinking and being. As for new ideas, it is hard to calculate where they will lead, since we do not have the gift of seeing into the future. In this sense, we are all gamblers and debtors, racking up costs we have no way to properly measure or pay, and gambling with our lives and futures with ideas we may not have sufficiently examined.

In this light, Pascal’s Wager is not as insane as it sounds. What is striking to me about Pascal’s Wager is not the gambling aspect of it, but the fact that it is a philosophical model that considers the cost of belief. It is one of the early examples of game theory. In the New Testament, we see something similar in a parable that Jesus tells the people: “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:28-33).

Jesus, that wonderful man we applaud and ignore, puts forth an argument of stunning philosophical import. No matter what we believe, we will pay for it, and we should therefore calculate the costs before we commit ourselves to beliefs, thoughts, and opinions. In an age of science and convenient technology, we do not have time, motivation or necessity to calculate costs. We figure that they have already been calculated for us, or we believe ourselves to be above the herd of those “others” who do not think the way we do. What is especially amusing is that both the highly educated and the completely ignorant often share precisely this exact same mode of arrogant reasoning, if one can call it reasoning. It is not surprising, therefore, that we live in a world burdened and broken by debt.

Our souls are faced with the insurmountable problems of imperfection and death. No sane person believes he is perfect and can cheat death. If anything, the more disillusioned we become, the more ripe we are for enlightenment. Unless our reason has been severely compromised, with or without fault, we generally want this losing game of life to mean something to us before we die. As individuals and as societies, we have created a world of debits without credits. We are bankrupt. And still, we are busy trading our futures, selling our temporal selves, and gambling with our thoughts and actions. Only Jesus offers us a way out of the cost of living. It is true that believing in Him has its own costs—He was the first to say so and the first to pay the price. On the other hand, these costs are only temporal, while the benefits that outweigh them are eternal.

The great illusion today is that only temporal and material things matter. And not only in the marketing industry or politics, but also in Church. As long as our buildings stand, our collections are full, and we see tangible results—more people converting to our particular brand of Christianity—we are happy. What is ironic is that it is precisely this mode of thinking that seems to wreak the most damage on temporal and material things. Most bad ideas today, whether in the secular community or in the Church, derive in some fashion from the denial of eternal values in favor of temporal and material values, whereas the latter cannot be conceptualized, examined or lived out in any meaningful way without reference to the former. It is our bad ideas that have cost us so much. Through our bad beliefs, we have destroyed our environment, reduced millions to slavery or wage slavery, have murdered millions of unborn infants, we have murdered or tortured millions of men, women and children, we have sowed worldwide discord and blood-feuds through military, cultural and economic imperialism, we have prostituted and corrupted ourselves, we have traded beautiful ideas for cheap mass produced products and cookie-cutter lifestyles, and we have had the audacity to call our ideologies progress, evolution, or even freedom. Moreover, we have confused millions by teaching lies—suggesting that people are free to formulate their own morality, that life has no real meaning, that anything spiritual is obsolete, that our lifestyles are merely matters of personal choice, that freedom means being enslaved by the passions and letting them blaze away in chaotic unrestraint, that only materialistic solutions (whether liberal and socialistic or conservative and capitalistic) can have any effect on the world, and that happiness is a matter of satisfying our wants rather than our true needs on both a temporal and eternal scale.

In Immanuel Kant’s moral argument for the existence of God, one of the important premises is that we are rationally obliged to pursue the summum bonum (the greatest possible good). Because the summum bonum cannot be conceived or pursued without reference to eternity, the afterlife, and God, therefore—the argument concludes—God exists. Proving the existence of God is not my special concern here. I do believe God exists; I do believe logic points us to His existence, but I believe in the end that God is primarily approached through faith, hope and love by His grace and revelation. What interests me here is the notion of the summum bonum—the greatest good, the ultimate perfection, the good life, the true happiness. I do not think that we have the requisite imagination today to even conceive of a summum bonum. Perhaps too many decades of secular education, cultural and political disillusionment, and other problems have broken us to the point of being too scared to dream, imagine or believe in such a thing. We are down and out. Nevertheless, I believe that Boethius’ argument for God’s existence still holds true—if we see gradations of good and evil in this world—and it is ridiculous and hypocritical to say that we do not (especially when you visit the eye doctor or receive your grades back at the end of the school year)—then there is a perfect goodness, and that perfect goodness is the God who is the source of all goodness. Are we really willing to live our lives at the cost of losing the greatest good? Can we claim to be rational while dismissing our only chance at fully knowing ourselves, the meaning of our lives, and the meaning of others? Are we willing to deny this theodicy, and allow evil and pain to have the last word? Is this a cost we are willing to bear? Is it a cost we can rationally afford to bear?

It is with a Bible verse that Paul Virilio cites several times in Open Sky that I wish to close this little rant today: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

Logic, Faith, and the Mind of Christ

In the Churches of Christ, we have prided ourselves on a long history of studying the Scriptures logically. It is a wonder we have not interacted more with the Thomists. In our literature, you might frequently encounter terms like necessary inference or argument from silence used in conjunction with command and example. Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell and Walter Scott were very strong in Lockean and Baconian logic, and we have inherited their Scottish Renaissance obsession with rationalism. To this day, we have gathered numerous Scriptures to support our reasoning approach to the Bible (Isaiah 1:18, 1 Peter 3:15, Acts 17:2, 18:4, 19:8, 28:23, Hebrews 5:14, etc.).  Combining Scripture with certain modes of reasoning, we have compiled a long list of what we can do and what we cannot do, what we can believe and what we cannot believe. We have made logic into our tradition.

Reason is indeed very vital to the life of faith, since God endowed men and women with reason so that they would seek their Creator and find true happiness in Him. On the other hand, we need to seriously ask ourselves a few questions. First of all: which logic should we use?
Aristotelian? Lockean? Euclidean or Non-Euclidean?  Baconian? What about Hegelian logic, Frege, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, truth functional logic, QL, and so on? What about the logic of Zhuangzi, or the Zen attemts to break through logic? G.K. Chesterton argued for a revival of Thomism because of its use of Aristotelian logic, which he called the universal “common sense” logic that all people could relate to. Perhaps. Nevertheless, it is still shocking to me that after the post-modern experience, we are still speaking of a rational approach to the Scriptures without specifying clearly what we mean, and why mean it. It seems clear to me that we are narrowly defending one logical culture that may not necessarily reflect the wider and more complicated experience of human logic. I recall reading Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who is There and Escape from Reason when I was an adolescent. It started to bother me that for someone so committed to rational thought, one of his favourite targets was one of the greatest philosophers of the middle ages: Thomas Aquinas. Are we any different?

We have logic. Good for us! The Catholics and the Reformed Churches have logic, too. In fact, Islam had its Aristotelian logicians before the Catholic Church did, and the Muslims likely got it from the Syriac Christians (for a discussion of this, you might enjoy reading Philip Jenkins’ The Lost History of Christianity).

I do not want our community of faith to abandon reason or logic by any stretch of the imagination, but I think we need to exercise caution here and ask ourselves how the apostles reasoned and how they taught.It is true that they seem to have employed some form of necessary inference.  I do not quite see how they ever employed an argument from silence (the refusals of Jesus to answer impertinent questions do not constitute examples of arguments from silence). Unless used in a form of abductive reasoning, an argument from silence is generally considered a fallacy or an invalid form of reasoning. A concrete example is the following. I have seen both Christian Church and Church of Christ articles use this same argument in one way or another to justify or condemn the use of musical instruments in worship. For example, you could reason that since the New Testament does not mention instrumental worship, it is therefore forbidden. Or you could say, since the New Testament never mentions it being forbidden, it is therefore justified. This relates also to the debate between Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli. Luther claimed that
whatever is not forbidden is permitted. Zwingli claimed that whatever is not permitted is forbidden. Which one was right? They were both right, because both statements are tautologies. Tautologies are always true, and therefore pretty useless. The sun is the sun. The moon is the moon. Whatever is not forbidden is permitted. Whatever is not permitted is forbidden. What now? They do not mean the same thing, and yet they do.  You can develop very different theologies based on one or the other, but if both are basically right, what is wrong? You can apply these tautologies all day long, but they will not get you very far in understanding the Scripture.

Logic is important in cultivating reason, but logic seems to bring us precisely to the kind of argumentation that Paul warns against: “For
Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17); “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:12-16). In urging the “teaching that accords with godliness,” Paul enjoins us to refrain from “an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words” (1 Timothy 6:3-4).

Logic needs to be secondary in understanding the faith. It is interesting that Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli were all heavily influenced by Augustine, and yet all three diverged considerably in their theology.  Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan all studied Thomism—yet their philosophical and theological methods and ideas are also strikingly different.Even Scott and Campbell did not always see eye to eye, despite having very similar cultural backgrounds. The Restoration Movement has divided time and again over how to interpret the Scriptures, using logic and the Bible to argue such points as whether or not to use one cup, whether or not it is right to go to war, whether or not it is proper to have slaves, whether or not missionary societies are scriptural, whether or not Christ will reign for 1000 years on this earth, whether to permit remarriage following divorce, whether to allow or forbid musical instruments in worship, whether or not Sunday School is scriptural, whether or not you can have a kitchen on church premises, and so on. Only a few of these are issues are key to the Gospel message; the others are shockingly trivial before the Cross. Clearly, something is getting lost in the logic or the application of Scripture.

To return to Zwingli and Luther, we might also say that they were both wrong. Not all things that are not forbidden are necessarily permitted. Not all things that are not permitted are necessarily forbidden. What is interesting is that we will not all agree on how to fill in these two
categories. The history of the Church is proof enough of that. It takes more than simplistic premises of this nature to get any further. I suspect we need the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures for that. Again, we come to the crossroads: What reading of the Scripture? What understanding from the Holy Spirit? How can we be of “one mind” (1 Corinthians 1:10, Philippians 1:27, 2:2)? How do we do this, while we let each one “be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5)? I suspect the answer is to have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), and to seriously consider what matters pertain to salvation and the life of faith, and what matters do not, what keeps us close to Christ and what does not. When we start to take Jesus seriously as a theologian, as the theologian, who reasons to us from Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and the word of the Father, we might find that variety and unity can co-exist in Christ without departing from the written word or abandoning reasonable truth.  And, we might also receive a healthy shock.

On the Incarnation and Faith

The Christian church today is facing something of an epistemological crisis in its faith and theology. To some extent, every age has faced something similar, but this particular crisis stems from the wreckage of the Enlightenment (as Alasdair McIntyre and Etienne Gilson argue) and the rise of post-modernism. Reason and faith are not happily married, and in many cases, the divorce seems complete. The apotheosis of reason has led in some way to the global scientific technocracy that dominates discourse and practice in social, political, cultural and theological circles. Questions multiply like the heads of the Hyrda, casting suspicion on language, logic, faith, reason, science, power, identity, and ultimately–existential meaning. In philosophy, the gap between the analytical school and the continental school represents but one of the many fissures in this contemporary thought-quake. Though we find occasional challenges to the dominance of the scientific worldview among philosophers (such as Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend), the empire of science seems to reign supreme in politics and society today.

In the Church, the conflict can be best described, although inaccurately in many ways, as a rift between those who favor reason and science against those who wish to defend faith against reason and science. It can be seen in the rift between fundamentalism and historical-criticism. The rift is especially volatile in the gap between churches espousing liberal morality and those that prefer a traditional understanding of morality. This polarization is a formidable obstacle to spiritual growth, ecumenism, and the life of faith itself. As Christians, I believe we need to ask ourselves: what is the proper relation between faith and reason? Where do I start in tackling this problem?

Walter Scott, one of the early writers of the Stone-Campbell movement, argued that the only creed Christians should espouse is Christ Himself. The Quakers, another faith group that historically sought to be like the New Testament Christians, sometimes call Jesus their “Teacher and Lord”. Since Jesus is the one person and entity that Christians share, it seems reasonable to investigate the dichotomy from the point of view of the Incarnation. It is true that this would exclude those Christians who profess a more Gnostic christology that excludes the incarnation, but their own distinct concepts regarding knowledge and reason are probably beyond the realm of this problem. The theology of the Incarnation is prominent in the Gospel of John, which presents to us a Jesus who is fully human and yet fully divine, as the later creeds state.  Being human, it would seem that Jesus needed natural reason to live his life. Being divine, it seems that natural reason alone was insufficient for his remarkable walk of faith, his ministry, and ultimatly the crucifixion, resurrection and glorification.

As “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), Jesus is paradoxical. It is clear that the Father revealed things to Jesus that had never been revealed to anyone else before (John 7:16, John 8:14-18). On the other hand, Jesus frankly admitted to not knowing when the world was going to end: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matthew 24:36). Jesus calls on us to believe the impossible (Mark 11:23), and also tells us to use common sense and think rationally (Mark 7:18-19). His parables contain observations of nature (Matthew 6:26) and warnings against being too naturally minded to grasp spiritual realities (Matthew 16:3, John 3:12). He upholds the validity of the Law (Matthew 5:17-20), while arguing against legalism (Matthew 12:5, Mark 2:25-28, Mark 3:4). Jesus can be paradoxical, but he is never irrational nor rationalistic. More than anything, Jesus is a student of Scripture (Luke 2:41-52) and the greatest preacher and expositor of Scripture (Luke 4:1-32). The number of times he appeals to what is written in the Law is astounding, as well as the number of appearances he makes in the synagogues, where the Scripture is read publicly. It is the Word of God that unifies the paradox of his thought and ministry; it is the Holy Spirit that impels, counsels and directs it. In the life of Christ we see Jesus acting through faith derived from natural reason, through prayerful faith derived from revelation, through the Holy Spirit, through the Scripture, and through communion with the Father.

To summarize, for a Christian to eschew faith or reason is to step outside of the life of Christ. To ignore paradoxes or dance around them is to stumble. The bodily resurrection of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit mean that Christ Jesus is incarnated in us (Romans 7:4, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Corinthians 12:27). We are called to imitate Him (1 Corinthians 11:1). When Paul counsels against carnal thinking (Romans 8:5-9), he is speaking of that kind of thinking that denies spiritual reality, he is not attacking reasoning or thinking itself. In fact, Paul counsels the Philippians to think deeply (Philippians 4:4-9). In speaking of the greatest commandments, Jesus witnesses that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Matthew 12:29-31). Without the mind, we cannot love God completely. Without reason, our faith is deficient.

For the Christian it is never faith or reason or faith or science. It must always be faith and reason, although faith, hope and love are by far the most important virtues (1 Corinthians 13), because true reason and final knowledge will be impossible without them. It is the application of this incarnational model of faith that will be most challenging. It cannot take place without humility, courage, and some degree of freedom. Dishonest science, pseudo-science, or controversial organizations probably do more to discredit the faith then to preach the Gospel or explain the faith reasonably. On the other hand, rejecting tenets of faith based on contemporary science or historical-critical theory of the Scriptures is poor scholarship and poor faith. Reason leads us to faith and can explain faith in certain circumstances, but reason is never a replacement for faith. The early Christian philosopher and theologian Pseudo-Dionysius wrote both apophatically and cataphatically: there are things we can say about God, and there is a lot about God that we cannot say, because we are mortal. Even in the intensely philosophical writings of Thomas Aquinas, we see that reason has its limitations; for this reason, Dante put St. Bernard higher in the heavens than Thomas, because Bernard stressed revelation and faith. This approach has both satisfactory and unsatisfactory results. As the Stoics might have said–there are things we can know, and there are things we just cannot know. The Bible says it this way: “The secret things belong to the Lord our GOD, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29). There are things in the faith life of Christ that are reasonably understood; there are other things that seem totally mysterious and inexplicable. There are things in the Bible that are tangible and possess some kind of empirical evidence; there are many other things where nothing tangible or empirical will help. We need to accept that paradox, and ponder it deeply in our quest for truth. It is the paradox that Jesus embodied.

One last thing. The theology of the Incarnation shows that when God walked among us, we did not recognize Him or accept Him very readily. The truth was contrary to our expectations. Christ challenged the teaching authorities of his day. In this sense, he taught us true spiritual and intellectual freedom…as well as solitude and alienation. Being truthful comes with a cost. It also made him a rogue rabbi and something of a ronin at times (although he was never masterless, being forever in communion with the Father, and was himself Master). Jesus believed what the Father wanted Him to believe–that is truth. He did not allow himself to be enslaved by Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes, or even the disciples of John the Baptist. He did not subscribe to Greek or Roman philosophy, if he knew much about it. What He did do was preserve his reason by measuring what others said against what reason, the Word of God and the Holy Spirit taught. Today, I think Christ is teaching us to do the same. Question evolution. Question creation science. Question what Alexander Campbell or Barton Stone wrote. Question Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. Question Heisenberg, Einstein, and Alan Turing. Question the Doctors of the Church, the early Church Fathers, the saints, the heretics, the atheists. If they have something good to say that is truthful, believe it. If not, don’t. Be bold and be humble–something I despair of learning in this life. In the end, do not forget that faith requires both spirit and truth. We cannot be cheap or dishonest in our pursuit of truth, neither can truth exist without the spiritual: “God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).