It's one thing to break free of philosophy or tradition, or the extant influences of the Magisterial Protestant Reformation, but for Americans in particular there's often a barrier or problem the hinders a return to the New Testament and it's one that Restorationist groups like the Witnesses, Churches of Christ, and others need to understand.
In desiring to break free from the strictures of Catholic and
Protestant Scholasticism and indeed the larger influences of philosophy, the
founders of these movements did not seem to grasp that they too were under the
influence of strong philosophical currents – the Scottish Common Sense Realism
that dominated the nineteenth century Anglo-American world and in particular
the culture and thinking of the early United States.
Few understand this and others are quick to dismiss the
concerns. What's wrong with common sense? Can't we just read our Bibles and
understand the message in plain terms?
There's nothing wrong with common sense and it's right to
believe in the perspicuity of Scripture – that's its message is clear and
communicated in terms that are readily understood. It's simple enough that
regular plain folk can understand it – and while this is certainly true, such statements
must be qualified. Common sense has its limitations. It's good for engineering,
construction, and mechanics, and it has a degree of functionality in day to day
life but it is wholly inadequate to deal with deeper questions, let alone
things of a spiritual nature which in fact utterly defy common sense and turn
it on its head.
Yes, philosophy can lose its way and when you no longer can
tell whether the hand you hold in front of your face is real – then you've lost
your head. And yet it's not that simple. We assume many things and yet never
think very deeply about them – their meaning and their relation to other
things, how we differentiate, and the value we place on them. When these
questions are pressed, cracks begin to appear even when it comes to the
assumptions we rely on in every day common sense interactions.
Common Sense Realism which has deeply affected Restorationist
groups, Fundamentalists, and even many of the conservatives in the larger
denominations, came about in response to the scepticism that developed in the
aftermath of The Enlightenment and indeed it is not unrelated to the
epistemology (theory of knowledge) and thought-categories of modern scientism
and its materialist worldview. We could even say it's a philosophical answer to
rival philosophical challenges. It may seem to be an expression of simple and
universal human experience and basic reasoning but there's actually a lot more
to it than that.
In actuality, this epistemology cannot account for many
things – the question of consciousness being one of its primary sources of
grief – along with many other abstract and nebulous questions that surround
existence and the nature of the universe. Christian adherents of Common Sense Realism
have no real problem with this or even accounting for laws of thought or things
like physics – even as these laws in themselves cannot be 'seen' and observed
as a materialist would require. Common Sense has always been resistant to the
world of ideas (Philosophical Idealism) and yet as the scientific materialist
will point out to the Christian, you are necessarily relying on inferences and deductions
based on things unseen. In other words even Christians who advocate Common
Sense Realism are relying on ideas, and a type of coherentism (a system held
together in the logic of the mind) in order for their view of the world to
function. And once we get into the realm of ideas – we're into subjective
questions and the waters are quickly muddied. The word 'common' (as in
assumptions that are commonly held) quickly goes out the window.
Further, common sense can never account for the supernatural
or for miracles as these things actually defy common sense and reveal a
dimension of reality completely beyond our daily experience and normal means of
judging and evaluating things. Is it so hard then to imagine that such things
might be revealed to us and yet we cannot hope to understand them by means of
our normal faculties? We can apprehend them but not comprehend them. There is a
significant difference. We can know something about them and even speak of them
but they will always escape our ability to fully understand them or explain
them in the same way we can explain the physics of household plumbing or the
chemical processes involved in making paint.
And while we can have a type of knowledge about the spiritual
realm we can never hope to 'know' it in the same way God or other supernatural
entities can. Undoubtedly we will know more in the age to come but at this
point given our context, we have a choice, we can either submit to what has
been revealed, what the Scriptures say – or we can insist that what is revealed
conforms to our notions of logic, and our experiences of what makes something
coherent. Further we need to understand that how we evaluate these things is
closely rooted in (and to) our assumed understandings of space and time, and
yet is it right to impose these categories of thought and judgment on a realm
that does not conform to what we call space and time – not the temporal realm
we know, but the eternal?
The truth is common sense is also limited by culture and
cultural context and even within a common culture there is still a wide
divergence in terms of intuition, how things are related, and moral questions.
Common sense is in fact (according to the Scriptures) fallen
sense, it is foolishness, and in the end it's the world's wisdom and knowledge,
the very type of philosophical paradigm the Church succumbed to in the fourth
century, except in this case it was a child of the eighteenth century
Enlightenment. Nineteenth century Common Sense Realism (ironically much akin to
Roman Catholicism on certain levels) had a very low view of the noetic effects
of the Fall – the notion that our minds are also fallen, and our thinking is
askew. This is so central to Paul's opening salvo in 1 Corinthians. We need
revelation and that is found in Christ and in His Word which also implies and
includes the Scriptures – particularly the New Testament, the writings of the
apostles.
This understanding allows us to submit to the Scriptures and
to leave our concepts (in some cases) undeveloped and unresolved as we cannot
hope to work them out. And in fact doing so will lead to error as we will
necessarily tend to prioritize one aspect of truth at the expense of another.
But this is contradiction, non-sense, or even mysticism some
will protest.
Even philosophers have demonstrated that an attempt to
understand the eternal (or metaphysical) by means of temporal tools (as it
were) will lead to such contradictions (real or otherwise). Is it in fact non-sense – literally incoherent, empty,
and meaningless talk? By what standard are you judging that?
Is it mystery? Undoubtedly, and yet one need not embrace or
fall into mysticism. It's right and
proper that we experience a sense of awe, wonder, reverence, and humility, as
we interact with the divine. And indeed the Scriptures are filled with many examples
of this. It's not simply that God knows more than we do (as in terms of
quantity) but the very nature of His knowledge is different (its quality).
This does not mean that we have to abandon perspicuity – the
notion that the Scriptures are clear enough to be understood. The Scriptures
are both simple and profound as any Bible student should be able to tell you.
They are simple enough to reveal God and the gospel, and yet deep enough that a
lifetime of study will never exhaust their riches. And yet the deeper we go (so
to speak), the more profound it becomes and the more our reason and confidence
in our own faculties should be humbled.
Indeed this is at the heart of what saving faith is – a
living trust that produces obedience, repentance, and leads to self-denial.
This is also where the Holy Spirit comes into play, teaching us, and moving us
toward this end, sealing us in union with Christ, His person and work. This is
the message of the gospel, not the cheap grace of Evangelicalism – but it's not
the gospel of the Watchtower either. And this dependence on the Holy Spirit and
the exercise of faith are critical to understanding doctrine. It too is part of
this trust and faith, something missing in the methodology of Common Sense
Realism and also within much of the 'theological' approach that dominates
Church history.
Common sense and perspicuity should not be used to cancel out
Biblical teachings or reduce them to something less than what they are.
Likewise there is a real danger in turning to philosophy in an attempt to flesh
out the teachings of Scripture in the quest to formulate a grand unified
theology.
So once again it needs to be understood that nineteenth
century Common Sense Realism dominates Restorationist thought and that includes
The Watchtower. It was the intellectual context of its birth and yet in seeking
to combat philosophical scepticism it embraced another set of philosophical
assumptions that in the end are also detrimental to understanding the
Scriptures as God has revealed them. The Scriptures are read as a math or
science text and subjected to human limitations and categories of thought.
Such an approach cannot accommodate the Biblical teaching.
Dominated by a strong rationalist tendency, it is inevitable that Scriptural
doctrines will be subject to reductionist, truncated notions and categories – and
ultimately misrepresented. This is at the heart the problem of the Jehovah's
Witnesses and the issues surrounding the Incarnation and the larger question of
the Trinity – a problem that ends up corrupting the very gospel itself.
A shift in understanding and the embrace of a more pervasive
Biblicism will allow for not only an embrace of the Trinity but a more hearty
critique of Constantinian Christianity and the many erroneous developments
within Church History – not to mention a more fruitful interaction with the
state of today's Church and the problems at the heart of this decadent and
depraved culture.
This shift in epistemology (one's theory of knowledge) and
hermeneutics (the methods for interpreting the Bible) can be made without the
embrace of philosophical theology, mysticism, or the embrace of easy believism
and the cheap grace gospel of Evangelicalism.
Theologians may torture the text and build their paper
castles in the air. Evangelicals may water down the gospel and present it in
terms of worldly wisdom and self-affirmation – and as such fall prey to
consumerism and a doctrine of worship that is tantamount to little more than
therapy, entertainment, and politics, – but there is another way that escapes
the traps of nineteenth century rationalistic philosophy and allows for the
full orb of Biblical doctrine to function.
There is much to commend about the Witnesses but there are
deep and fatal flaws at the heart of the movement including the gospel and its
doctrine of God. From its notions of authority to the way its subjects the
Scriptures to certain cultural and philosophical sensibilities, to a gospel (that
having downplayed the person and work of Christ) is absent grace – the movement
is (for all the accolades it is due) found wanting. And under stress, the cracks
are showing as in the end the Witnesses are not properly rooted or founded in
the Scriptures. My heart goes out to you. I enjoy the company of Witnesses and
it is my hope that as your movement experiences turmoil, God will use this to
bring some of you out of the Watchtower and into more Biblical forms of
Christianity – to be a shining light in these days of apostasy.