Faith, Certainty and Idolatry (part 2)

Throughout my childhood and college education I was taught that if you can’t explain it you don’t know it. In other words, knowledge consists in the ability to describe propositionally a thing, idea, experience, or whatever. If you can’t do this you don’t know what you are talking about. This is the Enlightenment view that knowledge and it is flat wrong. Wittgenstein’s statement about the inability of language to communicate the smell of a cup of coffee powerfully illustrates that language is at best an imperfect vehicle for communication. Language cannot adequately communicate an experience. Likewise Michael Polanyi challenged the rationalism of the scientific community proposing that beneath that which we can explain there is tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is implicit knowledge but difficult if not impossible to pass on or explain to another person by means or propositions, although much tacit knowledge can be passed on through apprenticeship where the apprentice learns by observing the master’s methods as opposed to just listening to his explanations. This sounds to me like Jesus method of discipleship.

The term “ ‘tacit knowledge’ was first introduced into philosophy by Polanyi in 1958 in his magnum opus, Personal Knowledge. He famously summarizes the idea in his later work brief work, The Tacit Dimension, with the assertion that “we know more than we can tell.” According to him, not only is there knowledge that cannot be adequately articulated by verbal means, but also all knowledge is rooted in tacit knowledge in the strong sense of that term.”¹ Examples of tacit knowledge would include riding a bike, swimming, driving a car. This is a knowledge that we must “indwell.” That is this knowledge becomes a part of us and enables us to perform activities, but we cannot perform the activities while thinking about how to do them. Such tasks must become “second nature” in order to perform them. But tacit knowledge involves more than how we do things. It consists of beliefs, ideals, values, schemata and mental models which are deeply ingrained in us and which we often take for granted. While difficult to articulate, this dimension of tacit knowledge shapes the way we perceive the world.

I find Polanyi’s use of the term “indwell” striking. This is of course the term we use for the work of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised would lead the disciples (and by extension all his later followers) into all truth. Indeed, we affirm theologically the doctrine of the “inner witness of the Holy Spirit” or the “testimony of the Holy Spirit.” Despite what the theological rationalism of our tradition has asserted, this witness does not just involve the cognitive-rational assurance to the truth of propositions of scripture. This is a knowledge that is supra-rational, immediate and intuitive.

The “witness of the Spirit” is explicitly taught by Paul in Romans 8:14-16, “Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave to fear again, but you received a spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba Father.’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God’s children.” The Apostle John likewise states, “We know that we live in him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit.” (1 Jn. 4:13 NIV)

Calvin insisted upon the “witness of the Spirit” as a vital aspect in the assurance of salvation. This emphasis has been forsaken by a large swath of conservative Protestantism. This “witness” involves a personal communion with God. In the nineteenth century, Isaac Dorner, reflecting Calvin, argued that spiritual truth made a demand on the soul if certainty were to be attained. Thus, certainty and assurance of spiritual truth were qualitatively different in nature than certainty of all other knowledge. Faith became the principium cognescendi. This faith was a product of the personal experience of the presence of God and the medium of His presence. “ … Faith has a knowledge of being known by God, and of its existence because of God, and in such a way that it knows God as the one self-verifying and self-subsisting fact…”² Thus, faith offers a divinely assured certainty since it involves a genuine reciprocal divine communion attested in the human soul. This is not mysticism in the classic sense of the term. Rather God, as a person reaches out to directly touch the soul of the individual and give certain knowledge of Himself.

Over a century and one half ago the American Presbyterian theologian Henry Boynton Smith, when studying the then emerging critical theories of the Bible in Germany, felt his faith buffeted as the Scriptures as he understood them were attacked. He ultimately came down to the simple truth that became his anchor, “I know Jesus.” Whatever, barbs and attacks were hurled against his understanding of Christianity, the one thing that could not be assailed was that he knew Jesus, not as a doctrine but as a person. Smith found that he could not match his adversaries’ rational argumentation which at least called into question his faith in the truth of Scripture and Jesus to whom it bears ongoing witness. His faith, his confidence, his faith, his certainty arose out of his internal, his tacit experience of Jesus as his savior.

In contrast to Smith, I have had several friends with whom I went to seminary and were convinced evangelicals very conservative evangelicals when they left seminary, who then went abroad have and earned their Ph.D. degree, who have comeback doubting the uniqueness of Jesus and the truth of the faith. They were well prepared intellectually to undertake their studies at some of the world’s most prestigious universities, but they had cut off their heads from their hearts, and when questions arose for which they had no answers they did not have the capacity to hear the testimony of the Spirit.

I believe that the witness of the Spirit falls within the realm of tacit knowledge. This brings me to what I consider to be a couple of significant examples of the reality of tacit knowledge. The first is Peter Enns. Enns is an evangelical who went to Harvard and earned a Ph.D. in Old Testament studies. Several years ago Enns was fired from his post at Westminster Seminary for his views on the nature of the nature of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. In short, the powers that be saw his views as incompatible with the school’s strong stand on inerrancy. As I viewed the controversy from a distance I was saddened and believed that the school was wrong to fire Enns (one of my good friends who studied under Enns found him to be devout and scholarly and a very positive influence on his own spiritual and intellectual growth). In the process of losing his job Enns was run through the ringer. He still has some deep wounds surrounding the whole experience. And it sometimes shows in his writings. That being said he is also bright, witty, insightful, funny and willing to look at issues that those caught up in the idolatry of certainty won’t touch because those issues would threaten their faith. This was brought home to me in spades in a recent review of Enns new book, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It. In a review of this book, Andrew Wilson, while seeing much to like in the book gives substantial negative critique (some of which I do think is valid). But the point he ends with is telling: “there is a good deal of interesting, humorous, and thought-provoking material in this book. Ultimately, though, he pushes so hard against the idea that the Bible tells you everything that he leaves you wondering if the Bible actually tells you anything.” This I see as a dualist mindset reflecting a mentality among many. A mindset that believes the adage “false in one, false in all.” In other words, if I can’t trust the Bible to be what my theological construct says it is, how can I trust it anything it says. (Shades of the Enlightenment view of truth!) There is beneath this kind of defensive posture a fear of epistemological nihilism. This seems to me to be a concrete example of the idolatry of certainty. Enns can like Henry Boynton Smith read the text outside the box of the rigid evangelicalism in which he was raised and maintain his faith because he has encountered Jesus in and through the text, and is assured that whatever critical conclusions he has come to God still witnesses to him tacitly through the text.

I will end with one more example. Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Frank was the producer of the How Should We Then Live video series in the late 70’s and is also a New York Times bestselling author. Frank has also had his own convoluted spiritual journey. In his 20s he was the quintessential “Angry Young Man.” In fact one of his early books was A Time for Anger. Schaeffer ultimately he left the fundamentalism and evangelicalism he had been raised in and converted to Orthodoxy in the late 80’s. But his journey did not stop there. While in Guam last month I read his latest book, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace. Frank is someone with huge “father issues,” While Francis was an household name to millions of evangelicals and fundamentalists from the late 60’s through the time of his death in the mid 80’s. He was autocratic, domineering and utterly rigid as a father. This scarred Frank and was the source of much of the anger in him. Now in his at the age of 62 he is an atheist who believes in God. He has rejected the culture and rigid fundamentalist worldview and in dualist fashion has swung to the opposite extreme. On an intellectual level he rejects Christianity and God. He calls himself an atheist. However on an internal emotional (and tacit) level he prays and sees the miracles of life and relationships as a gift of the God he has rejected intellectually. He even regularly attends Orthodox services and regularly repeats the “Jesus Prayer.” (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.) He recognizes the contradiction but doesn’t try to reconcile the two opposites, nor can he reject either pole. This seems to me to be another example of tacit knowledge and the work of the Holy Spirit at work. His heart tells him that there is more to life than materialism—there is a God. While his intellect rejects the concept.

As Pascal said so poignantly “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

In raising generations of those who are schooled in Enlightenment rationalism and its “certainty” we have unwittingly created idolaters who worship propositions, truths, and systems instead to relating to the Person of God in Jesus Christ.

I believe that as a  tradition we need to collectively and individually repent in the literal sense of the word. We must change our minds i.e. change our way of thinking (the literal meaning of the term metanoia). We must reject the dualistic rationalism of the Enlightenment which demands rational certainty before commitment and return to the holistic thinking that characterized Hebraic thought, and look for our security not in propositions and theological constructs but in Jesus Christ himself.

1. Wikipedia s.v. “tacit knowledge” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge (accessed September 29, 2014). [↩]
2. Isaac August Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1897) 2:175. [↩]