In The Nick of Time

Roger Olson and I disagree about plenty of issues, but according to a recent blog post, we apparently find concord in one important topic. We are both convinced that Christians should not sing hymns that express significant error.

To be sure, Roger and I dispute both what constitutes error and how significant the error is. He is Arminian while I am Calvinistic. He is very broadly evangelical while I am pretty narrowly fundamentalistic. He believes that the gospel does not have to include hell (though he does not deny its existence), while I believe that the good news (gospel) is only as good as the bad news (laðra spella) is bad, and that the gospel is hardly news at all without a doctrine of eternal perdition behind it. These differences are more than negligible, and they definitely mean that Roger will sing some songs that I cannot, and vice versa.

Where we agree is in taking hymnody seriously. What we sing is a confession of what we believe. For us to sing what we do not believe would be to bear false witness.

Roger says that he cannot sing “Be Still My Soul” because it expresses God’s sovereignty, even over evil. On the other hand, one of my former colleagues could not sing the last stanza of “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness” because he is convinced of limited atonement. Personally, I relish both of these hymns, but Christian charity forbids me from pressuring a brother to affirm what he does not believe. For him to do so would be a sin, and for me to coerce him would also be a sin. I take no offense with what he cannot sing, though I may well disagree with his choice.

Thus far, I believe that Roger and I are committed to the same general practice. In my own conscience, however, I go one step further. We have not discussed this matter, but I would be surprised to discover that Roger would take this step with me.

This week’s mail brought one of the first copies of Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, edited by Andy Naselli and Collin Hansen. The book is a contribution to Zondervan’s Counterpoints series. It has been in the making for just under four years.

Andy Naselli was the one who came up with the idea for this “four views” book, suggesting the topic to series editor Stan Gundry during the meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2007. Naselli already had his Ph.D. in theology from Bob Jones University and was working on another in New Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He was also working as D. A. Carson’s researcher.

Though his educational background is with Bob Jones University, I’m not sure whether Andy would want to be identified as a Fundamentalist today. Even if not, however, he is definitely not an opponent of Fundamentalism. From the beginning, one of his main concerns was to have a credible presentation of the Fundamentalist position included in the volume. Several names were discussed: Mark Minnick, John Hartog III, Dave Doran, Mike Barrett, and both of the Houghton brothers (Myron and George). It was thought that all of these writers would defend approximately the same vision and values in their presentation of the Fundamentalist perspective. At one point, the editors even considered the possibility of featuring more than one Fundamentalist author.

When all was said and done, I was chosen to write the chapter (though any of the others would certainly have done as well). In accepting the opportunity, I was especially motivated by the prospect of subjecting a defense of Fundamentalism to the criticisms of representatives of other positions. On my view, Fundamentalism is suffering from a kind of ennui today, partly because we have been content to talk only to ourselves. My opinion is that the idea of Fundamentalism has merit and we ought to be eager to share it with the rest of the world.

Among people who discuss such things, truth is understood to be a function of propositions. While the terms truth and reality are sometimes used interchangeably in popular conversations, they are distinguished in technical discussion. As a function of propositions, truth is (roughly speaking) about reality, but it is not reality itself.

Since Christians affirm the existence of a real, created world external to themselves, they typically incline toward some version of the correspondence theory of truth. Stated simply, the correspondence theory affirms that a proposition is true if and only if what it asserts corresponds to reality. Suppose someone proposes that the sun is shining outside. That proposition is true if and only if the sun actually is shining outside. If the sun is not shining outside, the proposition is false.

The nature of propositions is to make connections. This is the difference between naming and telling: telling always involves some form of predication. Propositions assert the existence of links between facts (ideas and objects), activities, and concepts. Consequently, propositions are always interpretive, which means that they are always more than merely factual.

The connective nature of propositions is important because of the interconnectedness of the universe. Simply to point and say “cow” is not particularly useful unless the notion of a cow can be connected to other aspects of reality. By making connections between “cow” and the rest of reality, propositions not only factually assert “cow,” but they construe what a cow means.

Truth, therefore, is more than a matter of asserting existence (though even an assertion of existence is already an interpretation). It is a matter of rightly construing the various aspects of the universe so that their relationship becomes evident. It is a matter of putting facts and connections in the right contexts. These contexts include not only material reality, but also moral and personal reality.

In their attempt to know and understand the universe, humans must pay attention to a bewildering variety of considerations. First, they must notice objects and events. Then they must grasp the connections between the objects and events. Furthermore, they must perceive how objects and events are connected, not merely to material reality, but also to moral reality. Finally, they must take account of the presence and character of personal reality.

The genius of modernism—especially in its more empirical permutations—was the insistence that reality could be known by assembling facts. It was supposed that an observer could accumulate fact after fact, eventually noticing patterns that allowed informed guesses as to the connections between facts. Given enough time, enough observers, and enough good guesses, moderns thought that they could unlock the secrets of the universe.

G. K. Chesterton spoke for the opposition. In his short story, “The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown,” pre-modernity and modernity are typified by two brothers, Basil and Rupert Grant. Rupert fancies himself a detective and, at one point in the story, is convinced that his facts have yielded the truth. Basil, however, is convinced of the opposite. The exchange between them follows.

The universe is finite. The events and objects that it encompasses are not limitless in number. Nevertheless, the sum of facts in the universe is so immense as to be incalculable. It is so vast that no finite mind could ever comprehend the whole. Indeed, a human mind is not capable of registering all of the events and objects presented to it at any moment.

The universe is a universe because each fact is related to each other fact in a seamless order. This order includes all of the facts in their connection to all other facts. Because of these connections, each fact points to other facts with varying degrees of directness. To affirm that the universe is ordered is also to affirm that it is significant and that each fact has its own proper meaning.

In addition to the material order of facts, the universe also encompasses a moral order. Within the order of the universe, moral realities such as courage and justice find a place. Virtue is possible, and so is vice—and neither of them is a mere illusion.

Even if we had to deal only with material realities and their connections, our finite human minds would be overwhelmed by the complexity of the universe. The existence of moral reality poses additional difficulties. If we wish to grasp the order of the universe, we shall discover that our task is exponentially complicated by having to account for moral nature.

Indeed, the material order of the universe is penetrated by and connected to the moral order. Material nature is infused with moral nature. To know a thing, one must know its use. Otherwise, we do not know whether we should do the things that we can do.

Because of these complexities, knowledge of the universe requires more than an acquaintance with facts. A mind that could comprehend all facts (all events and objects), and that could grasp all of their material connections, but that was incapable of perceiving moral realities, could not truly know the universe, for the most important features of reality would remain outside of its purview. Right knowledge belongs, not merely to the best fact-gatherers, but to those who are most capable of perceiving the moral dimension of the things that they see. Facts without values are—without value.

There is, of course, a whole world that exists in time and space independently of our minds and perceptions. Things that have extension through space we call objects. Alterations in those objects we call events. These objects and events together are what we typically call facts. The world of facts has real existence whether we perceive it or not, and in that sense it can rightly be called objective.

In principle every event and object is accessible, either immediately to our senses or else through the extension of our senses through instrumentation and other media. We can observe distant galaxies through telescopes, minuscule amoebae through microscopes, speeding electrons in cloud chambers, and so forth. The sheer number of facts that we could observe in any instant is so incalculable that, for our purposes, it might as well be infinite.

Most of these facts, however, escape our notice entirely. Even now you are sensing facts of which you are unaware. Perhaps you have failed to notice the sound of the air moving through the ductwork around you. Perhaps you have overlooked the texture of the ceiling or the intricacies of the pattern in the carpet. Almost certainly you are unaware of the weight of your clothing upon your body. The moment I mention such things, you notice them instantly, but until I did they were completely outside your consciousness. At any given time, we are taking account only of the tiniest proportion of the facts that are available to us, even when those facts are actually stimulating our senses.

The facts that we do sense often turn out to be different than their appearances. You are now reading what you perceive to be words on a computer screen, and you perceive the individual letters of which those words are composed. If you were to examine the characters more closely, however, you would discover individual pixels being lit with different colors. At a sufficient degree of magnification the letters would disappear and you would perceive only the pixels.

When you watch a movie, you perceive the appearance of objects in motion. No motion is actually occurring, however. You are really observing a succession of still photographs being presented in rapid sequence. Because each image registers slightly longer on your retina than it actually appears on the screen, your brain is able to meld this succession of stationary objects into an illusion of motion.

People are often surprised—sometimes to the point of disbelief—when they are told that the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity was not a significant concern prior to the Enlightenment. Yet it is so. Granted that generalizations pose risks, from the ancient world until the beginning of modernity the majority of people assumed that they somehow participated in what we would now call the construction of reality. They assumed that the world as they perceived it was an appearance, and that the appearance represented some conjunction of reality and the perceiver.

Consider a rainbow. A rainbow can be seen. It can be described. If one knows the distances of objects on the horizon, it can even be measured. Its colors can be distinguished and their intensity gauged. Yet, as anyone who has tried to find the end of a rainbow knows, it is not “out there.” It exists in a world of appearance, but not in some world detached from and purely external to the perceiver.

Premoderns thought that all appearances were like the rainbow. The entire perceived world, whether seen or heard or touched or tasted or smelled, was always and everywhere shaped by the perceiving mind. Consequently, the distinction between the perceiver and the thing perceived was not absolute.

By this, they did not suppose that no world existed externally to and independently of their awareness. They were quite sure that it did. What they lacked, however, was a direct means of encountering that external reality. The enterprise of philosophy arose (at least in part) because of the desire to find ways of working past perceptions to a knowledge of things as they really were.

That approach to reality (it is called a “metaphysical dream”) began to disintegrate in the late Middle Ages, and it was finally rejected with the beginning of modernity in the Enlightenment. No one was more influential in its rejection than René Descartes. He thought himself capable of positing a distinction between the perceiver and the perceived, or, more correctly, between that which thinks and that which is thought about. The former (the perceiver or that which thinks) is the subject. The latter (that which is perceived or thought about) is the object. For a thing to be objective, it must exist independently of conscious awareness or perception.

Many conservative Christians are still fascinated with objectivity. For example, they insist upon the objectivity of truth and, consequently, upon the objectivity of meaning. The objectivity of truth implies the objectivity of meaning because truth is normally understood to be a property of propositions. To the degree that the meaning of propositions is subjective, the truth-value of what they express also becomes subjective.

Subjectivity is too dreadful for some to face. They fear that a significant element of subjectivity would render both human communication and divine revelation completely relative. To put it rather woodenly, they assume that if meaning is subjective, then anything can mean anything. Verity becomes an illusion.

In spite of such seemingly dire consequences, we might well ask whether this insistence upon the objectivity of meaning is true to our own experience of communication. Is it really the case that (as one radio commentator is fond of saying) words mean things? Is this the end of the matter?

This question can be answered in many wrong ways. For example, some postmoderns argued that words cannot mean things. They note that when we look for meanings, we do not usually look for the things that the words are supposed to mean. Instead, we look in dictionaries or lexica. Such reference tools do not define terms by their relationship to objective realities, but by their relationship to other terms. A word is defined by other words, which are defined by still other words. Eventually, dictionaries begin to reintroduce into their definitions the very words that they have already defined. If one chases definitions far enough, one eventually ends up back where one started.

Structuralists suggest that language is a web of meaning. It is ultimately self-referential. Deconstructionists believe that this web takes the form of ideology, which is used by power structures to manipulate people and legitimate their own interests. Consequently, deconstructionists seek liberation by untangling the whole web.

You’d think that it would be easier to change jobs within an institution than to change institutions. I thought it was going to be. And it probably is—but that’s not how it feels right now. Things are more complicated than I had envisioned.

I’ve moved across country several times. Back in 1979, Debbie and I loaded all our worldly goods into a twelve-foot U-Haul trailer, hitched it behind our 1976 Chevy Nova (with a 250 straight six), and headed from Iowa to Colorado. We left at noon with temperatures in the upper 90s. Pulling that kind of a load, it was a challenge to keep the little Nova from overheating. Fortunately, the weather turned while we slept overnight in Omaha, and we drove through a cold rain all the way into Denver. While we unloaded the trailer, we actually watched snowflakes falling (in June!).

Six years later we found ourselves and our toddler headed in the other direction. This time I drove a Ryder truck filled with furniture. I towed one car behind the truck while Debbie’s brother drove the other. When we reached Newton, Iowa, we found an entire crew from Immanuel Baptist Church ready to help us unload. I’ll never forget the feeling when one of the deacons greeted me with “Welcome to Newton, Pastor.” God allowed me to minister to that congregation for the next six years.

The next move came at the end of 1990. Feeling the need to continue my education, we left for Dallas. During the intervening years, however, we had added another child and accumulated enough stuff to fill a four-bedroom house. We sold or gave away whatever we thought we didn’t need (need being a relative term, of course), but we still had enough to fill the largest van that U-Haul would rent us. Again we towed one car while Debbie drove the other. We managed to stay in touch using CB radios.

When we arrived in Dallas, there was no one to meet us. Without help, I had to unload everything myself—even the piano. It’s amazing what you can do if you rent a good dolly.

When we answer theological questions, we often find ourselves confronted with a variety of evidence. Some of the evidence will point in one direction while some of the evidence may seem to point in one or more other directions. Because the evidence is of different sorts, it carries different weights.

Weighing the evidence to discover an answer is one of the more difficult challenges in theological method. It is more of an art than a science. It usually involves an element of judgment. When the evidence appears to point in more than one direction, we must allow some of the evidence to explain the rest. In other words, part of the evidence will explain not only our answer, but also the remainder of the evidence.

Previously, I have suggested three methodological principles that should guide us in making these judgments. First, didactic (teaching) passages must explain historical references. Second, clear passages (texts that have only one likely interpretation) must explain obscure passages (texts that have more than one plausible interpretation, but in which no single interpretation is significantly more likely than another). Third, deliberate passages (texts that aim to address the theologian’s question) must explain incidental passages (texts that touch on the question only tangentially).

These principles need to be illustrated in practice. Therefore, in the present essay I wish to bring them to bear upon a theological question. In doing so, I shall deliberately avoid the issues that have more obvious answers (e.g., the fundamental doctrines). Of course, by selecting a question with a less clear answer I shall open myself to disagreement. That kind of interaction, however, is useful and necessary. Theologians learn through conversation, which is one reason that the best theology is done in community.