I’ve been thinking of ways of knowing and how “christian reasoning” works on a practical level.   Here are a couple rough categories that I am working on:

Revelation: knowledge from outside, divine knowledge

Revelation is a knowing that interrupts our knowing, it needs neither logical explanation or “good sense:”  Take 300 men and go fight against Midian”  Revelation is self-authenticating, the revealer guarantees the efficacy of the revelation: Thus saith the Lord

Wisdom: Knowledge from below, earthly knowledge

Wisdom is knowing from below, it is human knowing - logic, experience, these are the pools from which wisdom pull.  Wisdom requires authentication, requires reference to some system that certifies the wisdom; reasoning has to be sound, experience is probabilistic knowing and has to be vindicated by new reality.

Christians appeal to both of these categories in the context of decision making.  We say:

“It seems that X is right” (Wisdom)

“We know that X is right” (Wisdom)

“The Lord told me X” (Revelation)

“Scripture says that we should do X” (Wisdom)

“I’ve prayed about X and feel led” (Revelation)

One distinction between these ways of knowing, at least as it concerns “Christians reasoning,” is that wisdom is public knowing, revelation is (mostly) private knowing. Another distinction:  Revelation is a higher order of knowing than wisdom for Christians: If God tells us to water the garden, it does not matter whether it is raining.  I really don’t want to exclude either forms of knowing from “christian reasoning.”

I am wondering how revelation functions when Christians discuss together about a decision that needs to be made: in public decision making. Perhaps an illustration is in order: A church committee is tasked with deciding whether the church should buy a new building, since they have outgrown the current building. During one of the committee meetings John says, “our budget cannot sustain this move.”  Steve says, “I think that, based on Matthew 28:19, God would want us to move to a bigger space.” Stacy says, “I was praying about this move and I am certain that God is telling us to move to the building on 4th street.”

John and Stacy make different kinds of claims, and their claims have different effects on the committee’s ability to make a decision:  If I were to disagree with John’s claim, I have only to demonstrate how the budget can sustain a move:  we appeal to a document available to the whole committee.  Steve’s claim works much in the same way; if I disagree I can explain how his interpretation of Scripture is inadequate.  How could I disagree with Stacy’s claim? It seems that I can only agree or disagree that Stacy has, in fact, heard from God.  And, how can any other committee member know? When one person makes an appeal to revelation in the process of making a decision, that person seems to exclude their conversation partners from the reasoning process, we can only trust the veracity of the report of revelation (and its content). How can the conversation continue?  

Here’s my question:  Is it (and when is it) appropriate for christians to appeal to revelation in the course of group decision making?

I’m just finishing chapter 1 of the Barth’s Dogmatics, and the discussion has looped back to a topic that Barth brought up in the first section of the Introduction:  Is Dogmatics a Science?  Barth’s argument seems to be that dogmatic theology is indeed a science:

“When the Church puts to itself the question of truth in its threefold form in a way which is objective and not arbitrary, its self examination acquires the character of a scientific undertaking which has its own place alongside other human undertakings of the same or a similar kind.” (CD I/1 5)

At this point it seems that dogmatics qualifies as a science because of it’s objective, non-arbitrary nature.  Objectivity seems to be meager qualification, at least to me.  Barth recognizes that there are good reasons for not insisting that Dogmatics is a science, but says that we should nonetheless “quietly insist” that Dogmatics is a science for three reasons

1. Theology recognizes solidarity with other human concerns for truth
2. By insisting that Dogmatics is a science, Dogmatics reminds the other sciences that their own conclusions are quasi-religious
3. By refusing to cede the concept of science to the “heathens” by separating itself from them and taking a new name.

Barth comes back to the subject several hundred pages later:

“For [the Church] realises for one thing that in its question about dogma, i.e., about the agreement of church proclamation with the Word of God, it has to tread a defined path of knowledge, a path defined by this particular problem. And then it realises, too, that it has  to submit to itself, i.e., everyone who has a share in it, an account regarding this path of knowledge.  In this twofold inner obligation to itself consists the concrete significance of its claim to be a science, which it cannot prove externally before the forum of a general concept of science.” (CD I/1 275)

So, at this point I am confused as to why Barth wants Theology to be a science:

The reasons for quietly insisting that Theology is a science quoted above all imply that theology is a science in relation to other sciences.  That is, Science is a category in which theology should fit along with other disciplines. Barth concedes, much like Radical Orthodoxy figures, that all other sciences should be subordinated under theology (CD I/1 7).  Even though categorizing Theology as a science is puts it in a peer-relation with other sciences, Theology does not share with those other sciences a common pool of data or facts, rather Barth insists that Theology is about “the agreement of church proclamation with the Word of God.” The Word of God, Barth also insists, is not a fact in the world like other facts.  In what way, then, is theology a science?  

“These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.” - so remarked Terry Eagleton in his famous review of “The God Delusion.”  He’s right, of course, when we’re looking at Theology’s relationship to the Sciences:  That theology’s standing amongst the Sciences was slipping is perhaps what concerns Barth here at the beginning of his Dogmatics.  

I’m not sure that this should concern us, however:  If theology is, as Barth suggests, concerned with the relationship between church proclamation and the Word of God, then it is also an intramural affair - a discipline whose material arises within the church and whose audience is also the church.  If this is the case, then it seems odd to insist that Theology is science in peer-relationship with, say, physics.  So, Barth, why should theology be considered a science? 

In my reading of Barth, I have skimmed or skipped many of the lengthy footnotes, which is sometimes a mistake, because his footnotes are sometimes the most interesting portion of his text. Far from being an academic in an ivory tower, Barth always has an eye on church practice, especially preaching, and he buries his cultural observations about the church in the footnotes. Like this one about American churches:

The American sermon is seldom Biblical and expository. Its reference o the Scripture is in the majority of cases casual or superficial. It deals generally with “religious” topics …. But perhaps even in America there is at least a dim recollection that the preaching of the Church might stand in some sort of special connexion with the bible. And even there it will surely happen some day that “religious” topics will become so stupid and stale that the dim recollection might become once again a clear recollection. (CD I/1 254)

Perhaps our preaching has gotten better in the 70 odd years since this was written, perhaps preaching, on the whole, is more exegetical. Certainly America’s evangelical seminaries have worked hard to emphasize the importance of exegetical preaching. But, perusing the bestseller’s list at CBD suggests that this exegetical urge hasn’t leavened the whole lump. Here are some titles:  

“So Long, Insecurity: You’ve Been a Bad Friend to Us” ”What on Earth Am I Here For?” “Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear”

Each of these books are written by authors you would recognize as mainstays of the Christian book industry. Just from these titles it looks like Spirituality is pretty much the same as self-help, except with a little God thrown in. About my well being, about my feelings of security or my boundaries, about making my leadership skills or my business run like Jesus the CEO of the universe would run it - or is he the co-CEO? So much of our spirituality is about me and about what happens inside of me. The core of the spiritual life happens to be located about the same place as the seat of my desires. This point is hammered home by another title, or set of titles, on CBD’s bestseller list: “The Me I Want to Be,” available with four different color covers, to suit anyone’s taste.

This is a theme of Barth’s: that the church engage scripture, but not so that we can get something from it, not in such a way that our reading of the word becomes mostly about us. But most of the time, it seems, we are looking to get something from Scripture:  We want to make our marriages better, have a closer relationship with God, feel at peace, Be better at Praying, or worse, looking for the biblical way to lose weight. We bring these needs to the Bible expecting answers and solutions.  In his essay, “The Word of God and the Word of Man” he writes of the strange new world of the Bible:

The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God but what he says to us; not the right relation in which we must place ourselves to him, but the covenant which he has made with all who are Abraham’s spiritual children and which he has sealed once and for all in Jesus Christ.  It is this which is written in the Bible.  The word of God is within the Bible.

That is, we approach the Bible expecting to be confronted by the word of God, a word that is not controllable and that may want to address other things than our questions. We approach the Bible as a supplicant, waiting and expecting to hear God address us. 

It’s a strange New Year’s resolution: to blog more.  Come to think of it, even New Year’s resolutions are strange.  Perhaps that’s grist for some future blogging.  Why “to blog more?”  Because writing is a discipline, and a worthwhile one.  Writing well is kin to thinking well.  Writing encourages thinking all the way through the matter.  Writing is an appropriate response to one’s reading.  Why “to blog more” and not just “to write more?”  Blogging is public, or potentially public.  By offing up my writing to you, I am offering and asking for conversation.  Conversation is also a worthwhile discipline, of course. So I am starting afresh: to blog more.

Over the next year (or more) I will have a couple of reading projects that I will be reflecting on.  First, I will be reading through the Bible.  There are always new discoveries in this strange world we call the Bible.  Second, I am working my way through Karl Barth’s “Church Dogmatics.”  I won’t finish it this year, to be sure, but I am on the 10 page a day plan (or so, I’m slightly behind at the moment!), and am just a few hundred pages in. Third, I want to interact with the reading I do outside of the above titles, whether books or web-articles and other blogs.  Finally, you can expect some miscellaneous posts: pictures, recipes, etc.

There is an old and well worn illustration about the stagnant pond that never receives new water:  the moral of the illustration is that if we never receive anything new our intellectual life will become stagnant.  It’s a very touching tale, and probably true; but its doesn’t describe the world most of us live in.  We have a plethora of inputs: movies, news, the internets, church services.  Our intellectual lives are characterized by input, but are often lacking output:  we consume and consume but rarely create or respond carefully to what we consume.  This is my resolution: to respond, in writing.  to blog more.  Thanks for reading.