Thursday, November 17, 2005
Well, If You Were A Calvinist
There was an interesting post over at the A-Team blog yesterday.
There is a tendency amongst us smart folks to think that smart matters. But does it? Let me rephrase it this way, if in fact spiritual life is improved by intellectual life, what of someone that lacks intellectual capacity? Will they be denied a full and complete spiritual life? I refuse to believe that.
I am not just talking about mentally handicapped people here, I am talking about people that just maybe didn't finish high school, or the illiterate. Does this mean that all those Christians in the ages before widespread literacy missed out on a genuine spirtual experience? Again, I refuse to believe that.
It's good to be smart -- I like it. But if smart is the essense of my spirtual experience then something is wrong.
Saving faith is typically thought to consist of three necessary components: knowledge (or understanding), approval (or assent), and personal trust (i.e., some act of will). I want to suggest (and briefly argue) that the third element might not be necessary after all. In short, I have a hard time seeing how believing the right things about my own sinful state, along with some very important and specific right things about Jesus, isn?t enough.I think my headline does a pretty good job of dealing withe the primary thesis here, but there is a pull quote a bit later in the piece that I do want to address.
Finally, it?s worth considering the practical outcome of the view I?m suggesting. No doubt, an abandonment of trust and commitment to the person of Christ is dangerous; but I think we have the unique position of living among the deleterious effects of a conception of saving faith that has shifted an inordinate amount of its focus toward the idea of trust in a person, as exemplified by pithy slogans like ?no creed but Christ.? In one sense, focus on the person of Christ can be of nothing but benefit; but when trust, commitment, and matters of the heart are exalted at the expense of propositional belief, the intellectual?and by extension spiritual?life of the Church suffers. In fact, I do not think that the effect of the 20th century church?s general and anti-intellectual subordination of correct propositional belief can be overstated.This quote puts a pretty fine point on something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now. As a group we bloggers are pretty smart and we do love exercising our intellects. This is not a statement of pride, just fact, I mean look at the stuff we write.
There is a tendency amongst us smart folks to think that smart matters. But does it? Let me rephrase it this way, if in fact spiritual life is improved by intellectual life, what of someone that lacks intellectual capacity? Will they be denied a full and complete spiritual life? I refuse to believe that.
I am not just talking about mentally handicapped people here, I am talking about people that just maybe didn't finish high school, or the illiterate. Does this mean that all those Christians in the ages before widespread literacy missed out on a genuine spirtual experience? Again, I refuse to believe that.
It's good to be smart -- I like it. But if smart is the essense of my spirtual experience then something is wrong.
