Some navel gazing in the vein of Experience of a Freemason: Thoughts a Few Years In, this time about the nature of my faith and my path to Duke Divinity.
But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good. 1 Thessalonians, 5:21
From the most awesomely titled An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Being an Explanation and Vindication of the People Called Quakers by Robert Barclay1 (Proposition II, Section III), written in 1675:
For as to the first it is acknowledged, that many learned men may be, and have been, damned. And as to the second, who will deny but many illterate men may be, and are, saved? Nor dare any affirm, that none come to the knowledge of God and salvation by the inward revelation of the Spirit, without these other outward means, unless they be also so bold as to exclude Abel, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Job, and all the holy patriarchs from true knowledge and salvation.
Over two years ago now, my reality was warped by “Speaking of Faith”. They have an episode on L’Arche, a faith-based community for mentally handicapped people. That episode documented a kind of love and faith and friendship with God that indicted my own cold, intellectual relationship. If those with learning disabilities and development disabilities could love God in a way that brought joy into their lives, then what a wretch am I when I reach for God in my intellectualized way! How much is that putting the cart before the horse, since God is the light by which we see light? How much is my longing to intellectually access God really just my own inability to admit that I do not have faith—maybe not even the grace that the core members of L’Arche can show?
The Holy Spirit’s condemnation of my intellectualism lead me to some serious soul-searching. It lead me to react with horror when I bumped into those church fathers who saw salvation dependent upon any kind of intellectual understanding or right comprehension. The brief glimpse I had of L’Arche was enough empirical evidence for me to dismiss any kind of argument along those lines. The sinful soteriologies of intellectual elitism—those beliefs that knowing God in your mind is the path to salvation—are tricky, protean beasts. They disguise themselves as rational, obvious assumptions and they strike tones resonant with the mind of the intellectual and the academic. But these soteriologies are ultimately lies: lies tricking us into worshipping our own reason while we should be worshipping God.
I know the lure of those damn soteriologies well: I’m a theology junkie. I’m at Duke Divinity School because I want to know—a part of me feels like I need to know. It’s hard on my soul to be like this, but I want to know what’s actually going on out there. This drove my initial interest in mathematics: I realized early that it was one place left in our post-modern world where there are right answers and wrong answers. Unfortunately, it turns out my brain caps out somewhere around Calculus III and Topology: I just lost it. So I need to find another way to explore truth.
About the same time I lost math, I realized in talking to my physics major friends, researching Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and reflecting on abstract algebra that there’s simply no logical justification for the applicability of math to our real world. Mathematics is just a game we play with symbols: the fact that it has anything to do with our real world is a complete coincidence. (More on this idea over at Applied Epistemology, or, What Does “Real” Mean Anyway?.)
So we’re back to cogito, ergo sum as being the only thing we really know—and damned if we know what cogito or sum really mean, or why they ergo. In any case, we’ve got at least one sentence to cling to, and its truth is self-evident for obnoxiously subjective reasons. There are other obnoxiously subjective truths that I hold: like Augustine said after his Baptism in the Light (Confessions VII.x), I have heard God “in the way one hears within the heart, and all doubt left me.” The particulars of that experience—really, a drawn out series of experiences—are subject for another time, but suffice it to say that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross has me convinced.
But where does that leave me? I am still exploring and experimenting. The combination of experimentation and faith, and this newfound primacy of experience and practice have drawn me to the Society of Friends—I simply have too much integrity to commit to doctrines that I consider up for discussion, although God knows that I tried. Thankfully, Durham Monthly Meeting here in Durham, North Carolina, is a spectacularly spirited meeting.
Over the next few years, my hope is that I can eke out some knowledge, and maybe share that with people around me so they don’t have to reduplicate my struggles. I hope that at Duke Divinity (and wherever I end up for my Ph.D.), I can both learn more and become better at sharing what I have learned. Life experiences as a chaplain and as a pastor should both help me develop my sense of self and others—I’m hoping being dropped into those radically different and uncomfortable situations will shape me into a better person. So here goes nothing.
The trick in all of this is to not confuse this learning with salvation.
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