Fundamentalism: Whence? Where? Whither? Part 3
Fundamentalism Common Sense
By definition, Fundamentalism does not concern itself with the whole counsel of God. As the name implies, it concerns itself with fundamentals, i.e., with those matters that are essential to the bare existence of Christianity. Fundamentalists may, and many Fundamentalists actually do, go beyond this limited concern. When they do so, however, they are no longer acting merely as Fundamentalists, but as Fundamentalists who also happen to be something else.
On one hand, as an actual, historical movement, Fundamentalism has often tended to settle for an abbreviated form of Christianity. Though clear exceptions exist, it has often sacrificed doctrinal breadth and detail. On the other hand, Fundamentalism has also tended to add elements that are not necessary to any form of biblical Christianity. Over the next few essays, I wish to explore three of these additions: Common Sense Realism, populism, and sentimentalism.
Common Sense Realism was a reaction to and development of Enlightenment philosophy. It was articulated by Thomas Reid of Aberdeen (later Glasgow) and sold to the philosophical world by Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh. A relatively late development, Common Sense Realism represented an attempt to circumvent several philosophical impasses. Continental rationalism had never been able to move convincingly beyond solipsism. British empiricism had led to the subjective idealism of Berkeley and the skepticism of Hume.
Reid hoped to get past these problems by grounding knowledge in a core of self-evident common sense. Where earlier thinkers had distinguished appearance from reality, Reid posited that people perceive reality directly. Normally, perceptions can be relied upon as accurate and trustworthy. For Common Sense Realism, reality is transparently available to the perceiving subject.
How did Reid justify this appeal to common sense? In a way, he refused to. He argued that the truths of common sense cannot be established by deductive proofs. Common sense is properly Reid’s foundation, his axiom beyond which no appeal is possible. It cannot be proven, nor does it need to be. Opinions that reject common sense always end up in absurdity.
For Common Sense Realists, common sense is the final court of appeal in all matters of intellect. No special training or philosophical ability is required. Matters of common sense lie within the purview of common understanding. Every person is a competent judge.
Many Christians embraced Common Sense Realism, particularly in America. It became a powerful force in American theology before the Civil War. It was still influential in the proto-Fundamentalist milieu of the 1870s through the 1910s. Proto-Fundamentalism is the social and ecclesiastical environment out of which the Fundamentalist movement emerged around 1920. Not surprisingly, Fundamentalists inherited and were profoundly affected by Common Sense categories. The Fundamentalists who were most affected tended to be those who were convinced that they had no philosophy at all.
Scottish Common Sense Realism proved to be a mixed blessing for Christians. On the positive side, it provided evangelicals with a handy defense against the skeptics of the early Nineteenth Century. Indeed, by embracing Common Sense Realism, evangelicals found themselves in the forefront of a leading intellectual fashion. They were able to speak from a position of respectability.
Their moment of prestige was short-lived, however. During the second half of the century the philosophical winds shifted. Because they had invested heavily in Common Sense Realism, evangelicals now appeared outmoded and irrelevant. Furthermore, since Christians had committed themselves so heavily to Common Sense, they ended up defending it as if it were the Faith itself.
Theologically and ecclesiastically, Common Sense lent itself to theories that emphasized human autonomy and ability. It provided no mechanism for assessing the noetic effects of sin. It also tended to produce contempt for disciplines (including theological disciplines) that relied upon specialized knowledge and a high degree of training. Combined with Baconian method, it led to a vision of theology in which the Bible is essentially a warehouse of disordered but transparent theological facts, which the theologian’s task is to organize. In short, the Bible became a jigsaw puzzle, a game at which everyone was equally qualified to play.
Common Sense Realism is now more than two centuries old. So thoroughly did Christians accept its categories, however, that it remains influential among many evangelicals and most Fundamentalists. The conflict between Fundamentalists and Modernists was not merely a conflict over theology, but also was a conflict over philosophy. Theological Modernists had moved away from Common Sense into a philosophy that was more influenced by Romanticism and Kantian Idealism. Fundamentalists found themselves defending not merely orthodox doctrines but also Common Sense ways of thinking.
Therein lies one of the great ironies of the Fundamentalist movement. Common Sense is simply a slightly older form of Modernism. It is an Enlightenment philosophy that accepts all of the modern assumptions about detached, objective observers, clear and distinct foundations for knowledge, and neutral common ground as a starting point for discourse. Like nearly all evangelicals of the early Twentieth Century, most Fundamentalists were Modernists. If they objected to the Modernism of William Rainey Harper and Shailer Mathews, it was only because they wished to assert an alternative Modernism in its place.
Fundamentalism is a great idea. In the actual development of the Fundamentalist movement, however, the idea of Fundamentalism was confounded with other ideas. One of those ideas was Scottish Common Sense Realism. To the extent that Fundamentalists were (and are) committed to defending the categories of Common Sense, they were (and are) adding something to the Faith. They are confusing their Christianity with a very recent philosophy.
The practical consequences of Common Sense Realism were serious. One of the worst was that Common Sense provided an intellectual accelerant for a version of populism that was already becoming widespread. In the next essay, I wish to explore how Fundamentalism has added not only Common Sense Realism but also populism to its vision of the Christian faith.
Holy Father, Cheer Our Way
Richard Hayes Robinson (1842-1892)
Holy Father, cheer our way
with thy love’s perpetual ray;
grant us every closing day
light at evening time.
Holy Savior, calm our fears
when earth’s brightness disappears;
grant us in our later years
light at evening time.
Holy Spirit, be thou nigh
when in mortal pains we lie;
grant us, as we come to die,
light at evening time.
Holy, blessèd Trinity,
darkness is not dark to thee;
those thou keepest always see
light at evening time.
This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.
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[Caleb S] I’m sorry; maybe I’ll get some heat over this. I don’t know… . But, it has been on my mind, and I’ll just throw it out there for scrutiny. In theology, once again, I often hear, “Well, that is just the plain rendering of the words.” I can almost hear, “It is just common sense to take it that way.” PERHAPS, the common sense realism is a partial support for the appeal to “normative” readings of the text. Well, what makes it normative? What exactly is informing the norm? Where did the standard of “norm” come from? Personally, I prefer “grammatical historical” as it is must more clear, but then we have different versions of “grammatical historical exegesis” too.I think you hit paydirt here, Caleb. I think this in part is what Bauder is getting at. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it illustrates where common sense (any variety of it), can go wrong.
My final thought has to do with (and I apologize for poking holes in a sacred cow, but here goes) how Fundamentalists (of the cultural variety) “tend” to not be able to discern between fundamentals and secondary issues. Granted, secondary issues are exceedingly important, since they are in the Bible, but you are not going to hell if you believe in replacement theology, nor are you going to hell if you don’t see a rapture in the Bible. It is just common sense to see that that music is wrong. Etc. There, I wrote it. What do people think?
Striving for the unity of the faith, for the glory of God ~ Eph. 4:3, 13; Rom. 15:5-7 I blog at Fundamentally Reformed. Follow me on Twitter.
[Red Phillips] Aaron, I have been ranting away here for a while now, especially on some of the political threads, about how often conservative Christians embrace modernity and the Enlightenment. I’m not criticizing modernity from a post-modern standpoint, but hoping instead that Christianity will re-embrace pre-modernity. I really don’t see all this griping about modernity you apparently see. I would be happy if I did, as long as it wasn’t from post-moderns….It is not so much that you can’t say anything is right as you can’t say anything is wrong.Interesting you should mention that. I was reflecting on all this the other day when a thought peeked out of the fog: “Bet you anything, one of Kevin’s answers to ‘what would have been better than SCSR’ would be to point to something older than SCSR, not something newer.” We’ll see, but if he addresses that point at all, I’d expect him to point to something pre-modern.
I’ve got myself so curious about it at this point that I just might have to drive over to Central and knock on his door and ask him. :) It would be worth it, because the truth is, we’ve all got a philosphy and mine is pretty eclectic and probably self-contradictory on several points (as eclectic tends to be). And there’s no question that “Enlightenment categories” are in the mix. I’d be happy to find something better if there is something truly better. I just don’t know yet what would be. So I’d love to hear a good case for anything else really (anything other than what I’ll call “common sense revised by Scritpure” for lack of a better term.)
Somebody remarked about abuse of “common sense” in arguing for this view or that view. This is true. The ordinary guy’s working definition of common sense tends to be “the way people are thinking when they agree with me.” But that doesn’t mean there is no underlying reality, a starting point that is real. Kevin himself has argued in the past that the fact that the Sriptures are written communication means that they must be approached rationally (though not just rationally), because reading itself is rational work. Then he went on to argue that necessary inferences from Scripture are as authoritative as the Word itself (which I took exception to). It’s hard to see what basis for “rational communication” there could be if a core of common sense does not exist in nearly every man. Is that Enlightenment talk? I’m not sure I care if it is.
By the way, when common sense is lacking or abused, I think this happens where capacity clashes with character. That is, it’s not usually that the capacity to see the the truth that is not there, but we are not willing to use the ability we have. Of course, when it comes to spiritual truth, the problem runs much deeper but is still a problem of “character” (i.e., “dead in trespasses in sins,” or, if alive, still “being renewed day by day” and not yet entirely new).
(Edit: of course, I’m still not claiming that common sense is all sufficient… there’s a limited range there no matter how well it’s used. Just to be clear)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Charlie] but realistically, not everyone needs to know the difference between condign merit and congruent merit in medievalism. .I am so relieved. :)
The common conception, if people even know about Nicaea, Chalcedon, and Arianism, is that the great monolith of Christianity was pestered by some erudite Greek philosophers who used cleverly composed arguments to undermine the deity of Christ, and that these heretics were battered aside at Nicea. The truth is nearly opposite. In reality, Arianism was dominant just about the entire period between Nicaea and Chalcedon. Also, the Arian theological agenda was driven by a “common sense” populism that eschewed complications and extra-scriptural terminology. They held quite a sway over the populace of the Empire and employed simple arguements, such as, “Jesus spoke to the Father. Now, if Jesus was begotten, then he can’t be eternal, right? That’s just nonsensical.” The other side came back with the theory of eternal generation, which is quite abstruse. The Arians said, “Jesus himself said he didn’t know things. Now, how could he be the eternal, omnipotent God and not know things?” The other side retorted (at Chalcedon) with the hypostatic union, a very complicated and delicate construction relying heavily on Greek metaphysical terms (ousia, physis) that would be further refined by ecumenical councils for the next 200 years (Third Council of Constantinople, 680). The Arians argued, “It doesn’t make sense to say that three are one. Either they are three or they are one.” In response, the other side invented the term homoousian and used comparisons such as the sun and the light that comes from the sun to explain the Father and the Son. We still haven’t been able to find an analogy for the Trinity that actually “works.” In the end, the homoousian party won not because of popular support, but because of the untiring work of a few extraordinarily persistent, heavily philosophical theologians (Athanasius, Cappadocian Fathers, etc.), along with a good touch of belated imperial power.
My point should be clear: the doctrines which we hold to be most dear to Christianity - the Trinity and the hypostatic union - are themselves heavily philosophical and far removed from common sense or, dare I say, “plain Bible reading.” Yet we cling to them desperately, as we should. Our hermeneutic and approach to theology, then, ought to be in line with the type of approach necessary to conceive and propound the Trinity and hypostatic union.
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
I also, earlier, had drafted a response that I didn’t post because it was too complicated and I would have had to work longer on it than I can justify.
The gist of it was that no philosophy is adequate if it undermines a practice or tradition that is constitutive of one’s identity, as a person, tradition, institution, etc. In the case of the Church, the fact is you’re going to need some “big guns” in terms of theoretical sophistication and breadth even to come close to providing a framework within which the enormously complex Trinitarian debates took place, and that kind of sophistcation, besides being found in church’s with very strong traditions of thought, like Roman Catholicism and some forms of Protestantism, is pretty much impossible given a philosophy like Common Sense. Much of the tripe that goes around in Christianity about doctrine, theology, the place of philosophy is only possible because no one seriously studies the Patristics. Spend a few months of your life reading the history of the early church and theology, and then spend a few weeks reading someone like Gregory of Nyssa, and you’ll never have the same ideas about philosophy, theology, etc. again. Those guys were the real deal.
While I have great admiration for the Scots, my view of the history of philosophy is that, in general, people in the 18C, especially empiricists, mucked a lot of things up, and Americans, never ones to be caught with the most sophisticated trends in Europe, ended up being influenced more by Scottish/British forms of Enlightenment (e.g. Adam Smith, empiricism, etc.) thought than those found in Germany, preeminently Kant.
The result is that classical liberalism is neo-Kantian while much of American religion, including elements of “modernism’ and conservative religion, is influenced by Hutchinson and a host of other Scottish/ British moral and economic philosophies, practically all of which were pretty naive about a lot of things: the process of acquiring knowledge, the structure of science, the nature of morality, etc . (Incidentally, really thorough studies of American liberalism can be found in Gary Dorrien’s multivolume history of American Liberal Theology.
1. I would agree with Aaron that there seems to me to be less SCSR than “common sense” in a more organic way. There is often a sense in which we “pool our ignorance” with others in day-to-day situations. You may be correct to say that we need to have some different people to pool our ignorance with, and that could certainly be the case. No doubt we bring our own baggage to our conclusions. But it doesn’t seem (common sense) to me to be the same as SCSR.
2. There is truly a sense that in Christ are “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3)”. Yet, how does that fit into a philosophy? Did believers in the early church who were deciding what should be in the canon of Scripture or how to react to error work off of their philosophies first? Or did they start with their relationship with God and His word and seek the direction of the Spirit?
3. I would absolutely agree that “it seems to me” is not a very good reason for things (even though I said it myself above). We’re a lot more sloppy and thoughtless as human beings than we give ourselves “credit” for. Going back to the doctor illustration, if your wife is having menopausal mood changes or problems that are hard for the doctor to classify, would you follow his advice to go on anti-depressants? No, he’s just taking the easy way out. Not to mention he’s probably getting a kickback from the drug manufacturer. Human logic isn’t anywhere near as pristine as we would like. We all battle inconsistencies. It doesn’t have to be that we are partaking of a certain philosophy.
Charles writes: The Arians said, “Jesus himself said he didn’t know things. Now, how could he be the eternal, omnipotent God and not know things?” On Monday night, here at the church building during our cub scout activity, a winsome LDS friend stated to me in different words this very topic.
Charles and Joseph, a while back, Blake Ostler mailed me a copy of his book, Of God and Gods (Salt Lake City, 2008). He is aggressive in his appeals to your common sense.
1. “It is not uncommon to find traditional Christians who assert that Mormons must be excluded from the true Christian faith because of an erroneous idea of the Trinity. However, irony abounds in such assertions. Rare indeed is the person in traditional camps who can elucidate the notion of the Trinity without falling into one of the many so-called heresies that lurk in the graveyard of Trinitarian theories. In fact, I have never seen a carefully spelled-out statement of the doctrine of the Trinity that did not commit the heresy of modalism or of tritheism unless it simply propounded an unintelligible position or reveled in mystery.”
2. “The logical problem of the Trinity takes the following form: (1) The one true God is exactly one divine individual, Yahweh. (2) The Father is God. (3) The Son is God. (4) The Son is not identical to the Father.”
3. “The creeds are clearly intended to be believed by adherents, but it is impossible to believe an assertion when one cannot grasp what the assertion asserts. For example, if a church required its adherents to believe that “all bliks are krogs,” we can believe it only if we know what krogs are, and how they relate to one another; but we don’t know such things, so it literally cannot be believed. If the creeds entail that adherents believe both that there is one God and also more than one God in the same sense, then they simply deny what they affirm, i.e., that there both is and is not more than one God.”
4. “If the property of being the sole and unique member of a species is an essential property of being “true God,” then Nicea fails to distinguish between the Father and the Son because it logically entails that they are but one thing, one entity. So construed, the creed entails modalism.”
5. “… according to John of Damascus, ousia refers to a general species identity and hypostasis refers to an individual person. Such an interpretation readily lends itself to the view that there are three men, Peter, James and John, who share the common ousia of the human species and are three individual hypostasis or personal substances. Yet is the unity of the three persons in the Trinity really like the shared species identity of three merely mortal persons? Such an interpretation sanctions a form of polytheism because it allows for merely various instances of species to count as but one God.”
6. ” … the Latins used substantia to refer to the common essence and personae to refer to the three instances of this one substance. This translation readily led to the view that there is only one divine individual who is manifest in three different ways or modes. This interpretation was natural because the Greek equivalent of the Latin persona was [Greek word] (prosopon) which referred to a mask or role undertaken by an actor. Further, in Latin substantia could refer to a single person in the sense that a person is a single rational substance. Such a translation thus already presupposed modalism and, in fact, led to the dominance of modalistic views in the Latin West. Augustine is the primary proponent of psychological analogies. The modalistic approach was compounded by Augustine’s adoption of the neo-Platonic doctrine of divine simplicity. For example, Augustine suggested that the three persons are like the relation of a person’s intellect, heart, and will. All are different faculties of volition but constitute one personality.”
7. “Those who penned the Nicene Creed failed to recognize that the issue is not solely whether the Son came into existence at some “first time” but whether, for each time that the Son exists, his existence is merely contingent and not necessary.”
8. “Latin Trinitarianism, as it was elucidated by Augustine, makes the following claims: (A) The Father is identical to God. (B) The Son is identical to God. (C) The Father is not identical to the Son… . Thus, we must ask what it could possibly mean to say that “the Father is the same God as the Son but the Son is not the same person as the Father”? It seems simply incoherent to assert that “Buddy is the same mammal as Spike, but Buddy and Spike are not the same dog,” or that “Superman is the same ‘individual’ as Clark Kent, but they are not the same ‘person’.”
9. “How could the Father, but not the Son, then know the date of Christ’s second coming if all self-consciousness is located solely in the Trinity as a whole? … It is fairly clear why no Latin theory of the Trinity can be acceptable. The Latin theory is based on the view that there is just one being, one personal individual who is God. Yet the divine persons are distinct individuals who have different personal properties. The Father knows the date of the second coming, but the Son does not. The Son has the property of having been incarnated on this earth as a mortal, but the Father does not. The Son has the property of being Mary’s offspring, but the Father does not. The Son has the property of having voluntarily subordinated his will to the Father’s will, but the Father does not. The Father has the property of being the “only true God,” but the Son does not… . The Latin theory of the Trinity is neither logically coherent nor can it be maintained consistently with the types of things said in the New Testament.”
Of course, listening to all these logical appeals makes me more highly interested in the Eastern branch of theology on the Trinity and pouring over the words of Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory Nazenzius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil.
But Blake Ostler challenges with a heavy critique, them and modern theologians like Bauckham, Richard Swinburne and his Social Trinitarianism, William Craig and J.P. Moreland’s Trinity monotheism, and Stephen Davis’ perichoretic Trinitarianism, etc.
Blake quotes Robert Scott Clark, “How God can be truly one and also three distinct, co-eternal, subsistences or persons is a mystery; and yet a mystery we are bound to say that he is. To confess these truths is to commit oneself to a great and glorious mystery—that is, something which is necessarily true but which transcends our ability to explain it fully. In any case, then, we must repudiate the root of the Arian heresy: rationalism, the notion that one should believe only that which one can comprehend entirely.”
But then Blake repudiates, “Yet Clark seems to me to be creating a diversion from the real problem. We can all acknowledge that there are aspects of God’s nature that we cannot grasp. We cannot grasp omniscience or the vastness of his creation or even the extent of his power. However, the problem is not what we don’t grasp, but what we do. According to the Athanasian creed, God is three distinct Persons each of whom is almighty, but it claims that there is but one almighty and not three. We can grasp that this is a contradiction. If similar reasoning were widely adopted it would sanction all kinds of nonsensical claims, such as that: “Mercury and Venus are the only planets between the Earth and the Sun, and yet there are really not two planets between the Sun and Earth, but sixteen. However, we shouldn’t expect such a claim to be coherent or make sense because we cannot grasp what it is to be a planet, or the vastness of the planetary system. It is a great and grand mystery how there can be both two planets and also sixteen.” While it is true that we don’t grasp all there is to know about these two planets or the sheer vastness of the planetary system, we know quite enough to know that there aren’t sixteen planets between the Earth and the Sun and anyone who claims otherwise simply doesn’t know how to count… . The greatest problem with the “mystery” solution is that it impairs the salvific import of knowing God. For example, if I assert that “I love God,” I must have someone to whom I refer. Truly loving God is not loving something or other or just loving in general; rather, it is loving this particular divine person. If “God” is such a mystery, then how can I love it? Assertions such as “God is loving” or “God saves” must be vacuous because we cannot grasp in any sense what we are asserting. If we adopt this view, then we lose all sense of what we mean when we assert that God is worthy of our worship. If God is such a mystery then we worship a we-know-not-what. This position leaves Christians in the same boat as the pagan philosophers to whom Paul preached on Mars Hill.”
Muslim apologists seem similar to LDS folk, in that they both attack the Trinity as incoherent. If you haven’t read it yet, I would highly recommend your (eventually) purchase a copy of Lewis Ayres’ “Nicea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology” (Oxford, UP: 2004).
Also, if you haven’t studied Aquinas on the Trinity, I would recommend it. Fergus Kerr has a good discussion of the Trinity in “After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism.” Also, a great philosopher/theologian on these fundamental issues, like the identity of God in monotheism, is David Burrell, whose work is simply brilliant. (he has a couple lectures at Boston College’s Front Row website)
Personally, I don’t think philosophical theology, of the sort you mention, is unequivocally helpful, as analytic philosophers tend to ignore precisely the complex historical/theological questions that make the doctrines of Christianity what they are.
I think the LDS guy has a good point: If you take a robust, othodox understanding and emphasis of the Trinity to be central to Christianity, many churches of impeccable paper orthodoxy are deeply unChristian. I know you don’t need convincing of the importance of the church fathers; Blessings on your ministry.
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
I believe we’re confusing “common sense” with the sinner’s aversion to truth. We all know that common sense—even if we could hypothetically imagine it in the mind of a non-sinner—has its limitations. It can only be a beginning. But given that only sinners think anyway, we should expect common sense or any other approach to lead frequently down the wrong path. It’s not “walking” that is the problem, but where the walker wants to go.
Edit: in the case of the Arian controversy and other attacks on the Trinity, common sense is not to blame but rather a selective appeal to common sense. It’s true that the doctrine of the Trinity—and other doctrines—offend the common sense of sinners. But this is a failure to use good sense against bad sense. What I mean is that if you read the Bible in a common sense way, you understand that the Scriptures are God-breathed and for our instruction. You also understand that God’s ways are higher than our ways, and understand that His words are “spirit” and “life” etc. In short, common sense + humility leads the reader to accept what he is not able to fully explain. Common sense + pride leads the reader to insist that everything fit into his tidy little logical boxes. Again, common sense is not the problem, but human execution of it.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
“Now I’m just going to remind you that when we begin to break it down this way, the persons can’t really be thought of as distinct things. In fact, Thomas Aquinas, in my opinion and I don’t know how many people have taken the time (I did) to read the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles in Latin. (Laughter) I’m telling it was very well worth it. I have huge respect for this man and his mind because I think that he got it right. And in it getting right, I think he exposed the greatest problems that exist in Christian theology.
The persons of the Trinity are reduced to mere relational substances on his view, or relational subsistences, that is, the persons aren’t things, they’re not separate, they’re not distinct—they’re mere relations. And if you ask, ‘Well doesn’t a relation require something and something else that are in relation together?’ I would say yes, but let’s take away the something and the something else and see what’s in between and that’s what Thomas Aquinas was talking about—those are the persons.
Because you can’t have distinctness in God and that’s why he came to that conclusion. By the way so did Augustine toward the end of his life came to the same conclusion that we can’t really have anything distinct.”
Joseph, thanks for the recommendations. And Aaron, thanks for letting me step in for a minute to insert my own little spin on “common sense”.
It seems to me that ‘fundamentalists’ may have been more clued in to philosophy 150+ years ago, but succeeding generations became so insular that the philosophy of the first generation became set in stone. Now it seems that some are swinging to the other extreme with the difference being that the early fundamentalists actually studied philosophy, and many of today’s reactive fundamentalists are rejecting the old and adopting a variety of new things without study.
[Greg Linscott]Not a good analogy for what you’ve said.Thinking people do not change their minds about anything because an expert told them they should. Period.Not sure that’s true. I know several thinking people who make major decisions because their medical doctor (“expert”) told them they should. Period.
A good doctor will teach his patient about their condition and why the treatment is recommended, or necessary. Especially if they start with a definate opinion about the diagnosis or best treatment.
If a patient started with an opinion about what is wrong, and especially if that opinion is common, I would not expect him to accept my diagnosis without any explanation.
What is interesting about this analogy is that the older generation will often refuse the teaching. Instead, they only want to be told what’s wrong. And they don’t want treatment options. Younger people do want explanations and they want treatment options.
So it would seem to this very philosophy-ignorant writer that populism in health care is very recent.
The Trinity is a doctrine that is easier asserted than explained. Recently I had to fill out an application to send my son to a “covenantal” Christian school, meaning at least one parents has to be an orthodox believer. One question asked me what my position is on the Trinity. My answer was essentially that I affirm the historic orthodox formulation as explained in the creeds one of which I then quoted.
This in a way illustrates what I think Dr. Bauder may be getting at. I simply affirmed a Revealed and settled issue. I didn’t attempt to reason it out or rationalize it. This is in a simplistic way the pre-modern way. It is the Enlightenment, with its excessive faith in man’s reason that has led us astray. This is what I meant when I said I suspect Dr. Bauder would prefer something more Revelationistic and less rationalistic.
That said, of the Enlightenment philosophies SCSR seems one of the least offenders.
But I had to ask Blake - Of the villagers you were talking to, how many of them were seriously reading and meditating and weaving together detailed phrases of the Godhood from Genesis to Isaiah to John’s Gospel, etc.? I told him that the compounded complexity is not to be sourced in or charged to the theologians - it is the biblical revelation of God. The paradoxes of God in scripture alone are the challenge. Specific revelation is stunning (and by far more intricate and aggressive for thinking minds) in comparion to the ANE paganism of Abraham’s day, the Greek philosophies of the apostle John’s day, and the tantalizing but same ol’ heterodox teachings and commonplace groupthink (when the whole “Christian” community is against you) pressuring us today.
Since this particular discourse with Blake, I have asked myself, Is the Trinity just common sense as Christian country folk in Idaho open their Bibles? What about John’s Gospel? The opening prologue, etc.? Often in my first glances and comparing verses with verses in a new, fresh book study, I sit scratching my head. But God is merciful to me as the Spirit illuminates my thinking in making Trinitarian truths deliciously black and white. Yet a vital aspect to my growing in grace and understanding is the Spirit using the gifted Body of Christ. Of course, nowadays in America, one has to be very selective.
We need astute, precise, carefully studied, Spirit-filled theological proclaimers of the nature of God and the Gospel. I am praying for whole teams of those who complement each other in the fields of theological expertise ministering in our churches as we engage in spiritual battle for the Christian foundations in this country. And may the guardians and gate-keepers of the truth energize and rally the courageous lay-men and lay-women in the trenches, providing humble helping hands in discerning sound common sense in the midst of all the smoke.
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