Category: Theology – Religion (page 1 of 5)

Will Fear Make You Wise

March 22, 2024 / / Comments Off on Will Fear Make You Wise

Will Fear Make You Wise?
Larry Hart, Curtal Friar

What Are You Doing Here
The Baltimore Catechism asks the question, “Why did God make you?” with the expected answer being: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” If you believe in God maker of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1), and if you believe God is love (1 John 4:16) then you also believe, even if you do not always feel it or grasp its weight as a logical necessity, that you were created by love, in love, and for love, and that when you die you will awake in the light of love (Romans 8:14-18, 37-39). You were made for love, not fear, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

I find myself cringing whenever I hear a preacher or Bible teacher extolling the virtue of fear––the ugly emotional agitation that comes from the belief that something, or someone, is dangerous, and likely to hurt us, make things difficult for us, or cause us pain. That may not be exactly what preachers and teachers have in mind, but that’s what fear is and what fear does according to modern English dictionaries. Fear, in this sense saps our energy and robs life of gratitude and joy. So, I invariably wonder if the proponents of this English dictionary definition of fear are aware of how many people sitting there in the pew politely listening to their exegesis of fear are struggling, given the statistical probabilties, with alcoholism (theirs’s or a family member’s), the trauma of childhood sexual, psychological, or physical abuse, rape, domestic violence, clinical depression, an anxiety disorder, or serious illness. Admonishments to fear God in this sense, are unlikely to induce health, hope, or healing in anyone who has come looking for the peace of God in a church service. As William Barry, S.J. notes, every psychotherapist is aware of the many people taught to fear God in childhood who grow up thinking of God as always snooping around after their sins, trying to catch them in the slightest wrong or error so as to punish them, people who are in dread of God, and grow up “hating vice more than loving virtue.” The opposite, of course, should be true. Barry quotes the psychoanalysts Henry Guntrip:

The enjoyment of God should be the end of all spiritual technique (practice); and it is in that enjoyment of God that we feel saved not only in the Evangelical sense, but safe: we are conscious of belonging to God, and hence are never alone; and, to the degree we have these two hostile feelings disappear. . . . In that relationship Nature seems friendly and homely; even its vast spaces instead of eliciting a sense of terror speak of the infinite love; and the nearer beauty becomes the garment with which the Almighty clothes himself.

But how about those passages of Scripture that urge fear and obedience? “Fear God and keep his commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12:13 NIV). “Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come” (Revelation 14:7 NIV). “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28 NIV). “The fear of the LORD (Yahweh) is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 14:27). “The fear of the LORD leads to life” (Proverbs 19:23). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10 NIV). ” And he said to the human race, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding’” (Job 28:28). The story of Job is a helpful place to start the search for an answer.

The Meaning of Fear in the Wisdom of Job
The Book of Job is a masterful piece of literature, a poetic drama which provides a simple case study of what it means to fear God. It begins by identifying Job by name, geographically, and spiritually. I quote Job 1:1 here from Edward L. Greenstein’s Job a New Translation:

A man there was in the Land of Uts––Job was his name; and that man was whole (in heart) and straight (of path), and fearing of Elohim and turning from evil.

That Job live in the Land of Utz or Uz means he lived literally in the “land of the wise”––a place known for its learning and wisdom. In Lamentations 4:21 Uts, or Uz, is associated with Edom, and in Jeremiah and Obadiah 1:8, Edom is recognized as a center of wisdom. Job lived in a place and among a people noted for their wisdom, but Job is himself a person noted for his wisdom––people come to him to settle their disputes, and to ask for advice. He is an elder, a sage, a satrap who sits with leaders, “judges,” and the learned at the city gate for that very purpose. Everyone knows him and respects him for his fair and just judgements. When Job speaks everyone listens (Job 29:7-29). He not only asserts like Israel’s other sages that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Job 28:28) but is himself someone whose wisdom comes from fearing God (Job 1:2).

The word for “fearing” in this first verse of Job, “yirah,” originally meant, as already noted, to shake, quake, or tremble. But many experiences may leave one trembling––a threatening danger, an acute crisis, clinical anxiety, dread, relief, ecstasy, awe. intense delight or pleasure, or an experience of the numinous––the mysterium tremendum. “Yirah“, as well as the other words for fear in Hebrew must, therefore, be understood in light of the context in which they occur, and because theology is essentially the study of God and the relationship of God and humanity, fear must be understood theologically––as an inexplicable awareness or consciousness of God.

Besides being an attitude, a feeling, or an emotion, fear in the Old Testament is the observance of moral and ethical standards, as well as religious rituals and ceremonies. So, when Abraham and Sarah move to Gerar Abraham tells Sarah, who is evidently a beautiful and desirable woman, to say she is his sister rather than his wife. It may be, Abraham reasons, that there is “no fear of God there,” and they might decide to kill him and take Sarah (Genesis 20:11-13). By “no fear of God” Abraham clearly means there may be no conventual morality in Gerar such as is common to civilized human beings.

Derek Kidner says that theologically, in regard to our relationship with God, “‘The fear of the Lord’ is that filial reverence which the Old Testament expounds from first to last.” Fear, in this sense is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7, 9:10; Psalm 1 11:10; Job 28:28). It is this “filial reverence” that William Barry seems to have in mind when he writes of what he calls the Abba / Amma experience––an experience of being held by an awesome power with which one is completely safe––like being held in the arms of a loving mother or father.

There can be little doubt for anyone who has read Job, that Job experiences the full range of what Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a religious or spiritual experience of God as The Holy, the numinous, the ineffable mystery in the presence of which one both trembles and is fascinated, before which one may feel both frightened and strangely drawn or attracted, before which one may simultaneously feel both like fleeing from and drawn to. There can be a frightening sense of overwhelming power, yet also of being completely safe in the hands of that power. Job is fearing of God it that he lives a life of moral and ethical integrity, reverences God by following the precepts of the Torah, and knows the mystery of God’s presence––the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

Word Colors
There are not many Biblical Hebrew and Greek words for fear, but they each have numerous colors, synonyms, or definitions. The primary Greek words for fear are phobos and phobeo, which can be translated as “fear,” “dread,” “terror,” “panic,” “timidity,” and “alarm,” but also as “wonderful,” “stupendous,” “reverence,” “respect,” and “awe.” Phobos” is the word used in the Septuagint (the 3rd century Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew) for passages like Psalm 111:10, “The fear of the Lord.” The Greek term “theosebeia” (Theos, God,” and “sebomai,” to worship) which is used in 1 Timothy 2:10 is translated variously as: “women professing godliness,” “women who have reverence for God,” and “women who worship God.” It sometimes was used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew “yirat.” But it is Philippians 2:12 and Paul’s use of phobos there that is more relevant to our investigation of fear as reverence and awe.

Fear and Trembling
I have no idea how many sermons I heard preached from Philippians 2:12 as I was growing up, or how many times I heard it quoted in sermons taken from other texts. Since I always heard it read from the King James Version that is how I will quote it here. It reads: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Now, I want to be clear. I do not mean to suggest that the intention in the preaching of this text in the church in which I grew up was to frighten me or anyone else. I think the self-educated preachers I heard, were good people, for whom daily life was often difficult, and who saw life, death, and eternity as serious matters requiring serious attention––otherwise you are likely to make a mess of life and end up in hell––which I still think is true only in a little different way than what they thought.

However, Paul’s urging of Christians to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling” is more about the joy of seeking to know and follow the will of God than it is of being terrified of judgment. We know this because Paul uses “fear and trembling in 2 Corinthians 7:15 to mean just that. And in Ephesians 6:5 Paul says: “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” Although it is possible to argue fear and trembling in Ephesians means something like “shaking with dread and terror,” that really wouldn’t make sense given the context. It is obviously more about serving with respect. The word “phobos” (“fear”), as already noted and as seen with the Hebrew “Yirah,” has a wide range of meanings––terror, dread, reverence, respect, awe, and like “yirah” is a neutral word so that whether it is meant in a positive or negative sense can only be determined by the context in which it is used.

“Fear and trembling ” is what is known as a hendiadys––an idiom (a phrase in a language which means something different from its literal meaning but understood because of common and popular use. A hendiadys is an idiom in which a verb is intensified by being linked by “and” to a synonym. An example in English would be “I’m sick and tired.” What is being intensified in Paul’s use of the phrase in Philippians is reverence for God, the worship of God. Philippians 2 is a very positive passage and interpreting “fear and trembling” as living in fear of hell simply does not fit as well as understanding fear as reverent awe.

Someone may wonder if this doesn’t contradict Matthew 10:28 where Jesus says: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” It should be sufficient to say that in this passage, in Matthew 10, Jesus is not talking specifically about the fear of God, but how his follower should face persecution. In effect, Jesus says there, “Don’t worry about what people might do to you for speaking the truth, for sharing my message, if you want to worry about something worry about your relationship with God.” Eugene Peterson therefore translates this verse as: “Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands” (Matthew 10:28 MSG). It reminds me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writing of how spiritual growth and transformation was possible in the brutal Gulag camps, which were meant to strip away all vestiges of human identity, only by letting go of the idea that one had to survive at all costs. That is the spirituality of courage and beauty Paul describes and encourages in Philippians 2.

The Fear of God in Hebrew Poetry
The simple fact is that from the beginning to the end of Holy Scripture, to fear God is to reverence God. Above I quoted from the first half of Psalm 33:8 NIV, “Let all the earth fear the LORD,” but I withheld the second line in verse eight which is, “Let all the people of the world revere him.” The beauty of Biblical poetry is not found in rhyming schemes, as in English, but in parallelisms where the words of two or more lines of a text are directly related in some way. The Beatitudes of Jesus in Matthew 5 are cast in this Hebrew form of poetry. There are actually several types of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, found mainly in the Psalms and Proverbs. For example, there is synonymous parallelism where the second line or part repeats what has already been expressed in the first line while varying the words, and there is antithetical parallelism in which a statement is followed by its opposite. Notice below how in Psalm 133 each verse is extended by the next, and how the first line of each verse is extended by the second line of the verse. I find it intriguing that structured in this way simple Hebrew poetry, song, chant, or whatever you want to call it, loses none of its beauty regardless of the language it is translated into. Here, then, are the first nine verses of Psalm 33 where this parallelism tells something important about what it means to “fear God.”

Psalm 33 (New International Version)

1 Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the Lord with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
4 For the word of the Lord is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.
5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
he puts the deep into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.


What is central to this Psalm is not that God demands in a loud scary voice to be praised. But that God is praiseworthy. The psalmist finds the beauty and wonder of God stunning. “6 By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” God’s precepts are astonishing, “his love is unfailing,” and will not let of us no matter what hell we have got ourselves into. Everything about God fills the heart with an amazement and joy that wells up from deep within heart and soul and bursts out in guitars, banjos, keyboards, and drums, and happy song. So, verses 8: 

 

Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the people of the world revere him.


It is impossible to miss. To fear the Lord is “to revere” Him. Or, as the New American Standard Bible translates: “To fear the Lord is to “stand in awe” of Him.”


Let all the earth fear the Lord;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.

It is not just that fear and reverence are made synonymous by the poetic parallelism of the psalmist, although that should be quite enough to show us fear is reverence, but that both “fear” and “revere” or “awe” in Psalm 33 come from the same Hebrew root––”yirah.” Language scholars who understand not only the vocabulary and syntax of a language (how a language is structured), but also know linguistics, the science of language and how a language relates to the behavior of the people who speak it, are able to open vistas for us as we read Psalm 33:8 that would not otherwise be available to us. Thet help us to understand that “the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom,” is not like a student being afraid she might not pass an exam, or a small boy that he might get beat up by a mean bully at school, or Jean Paul Sartre’s character in the Wall who, left to think through the long night of his impending death before the firing squad in the morning, wets himself. It is not the fear of a tyrannical God whose expectations cannot be met, but, again, it is the experience of becoming lost in immense wonder, astonishment, and awe. I do not know when or where you have had such experiences. For me they have occurred in a Giant Redwood Forest, standing on a high ridge overlooking the surreal Badlands of South Dakota, walking on the beach, in a simple chapel, in worship, and in my own daily private prayers and meditations. One of the best film portrayals of the experience is in the Tom Hank’s film Joe and the Volcano when Joe, lost on a makeshift raft on the sea, battered by blistering sun and waves, so weak from hunger and thirst he can hardly lift himself, sees the full moon rising, looking so huge and low that it could be easily touched by barely raising a hand. Joe, who has not known to this moment what it means to feel gratitude or to really be alive, staggers to his feet, reaches his hand up to the moon and says, though he is half dead, “Thank you God, thank you for my life.” Those who have had such an experience will know, unless the experience was lost on them, what the Scriptures mean when they say: “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10 NIV).

Fear: The Beginning of Wisdom
Whenever I hear someone expounding on the fear of God, on fear as alarm, panic, dread, agitation, or terror as the path of wisdom and of “salvation,” perhaps quoting from Job: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28), or Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” or maybe “The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the snares of death” (Proverbs 14:27) maybe along with, “The fear of the LORD leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction; he will not be visited with evil” (Proverbs 19:23), there is a question that rises spontaneously and as naturally as breathing within me: “If perfect love casts out fear,” as it says in the First Epistle of John, then how is “The fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom.” If fear leads to spiritual enlightenment and progress, why does Isaiah say, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you'” (Isaiah 41:10 NIV). And why is that in the parable of the talents the servant who winds up in “outer darkness” is the one who is afraid and acts cowardly rather than boldly and confidently? The answer is so obvious I will not repeat it. If you find the question’s resolution elusive just sit with it quietly for a while.

Fundamentalism of Both Kinds in Light of the Via Media

July 13, 2023 / / Comments Off on Fundamentalism of Both Kinds in Light of the Via Media

Larry Hart

Abstract

This essay, which originally appeared in 2005 in The Living Church, asserts that there is a fundamentalism of both the religious right and the left, and that the Anglican (Episcopalian) principle of the via media offers the possibility of avoiding the pitfalls of both, while guiding us into a theology that is both progressive and orthodox. The version which appeared in The Living Church was, to my disappointment, edited by the editorial staff who weren’t fully convinced a liberal theologian or bible scholar could be a fundamentalist. I, therefore, found it rather gratifying when Marcus Borg embraced that idea as more than a possibility. At any rate, this is the unedited version originally submitted for publication.

Key Words

fundamentalism 1), via media 2), profession 3), confession (confessio) 4), ideological 5), factuality 6), Scripture 7), conservative 8), liberal 9), progressive 10), existential-expressive 11), explanatory-objective 12)

Moments of Clarity

The deeper significance of the Anglican principle of the via media, the middle way, has, I confess, until recently been somewhat lost on me. I saw it as a refined expression for “compromise.” And, while I knew the ability to make appropriate compromises was a sign of health, I also knew being a real person means possessing an awareness of the distinction between the soft-self where concessions and compromises can be made with ease while maintaining integrity, and the solid-self where values, convictions, and commitments may not be negotiable away or abandoned without a loss of something essential to an individual’s personhood. But while reflecting on two disappointing worship experiences I had a particularly lucid moment in which I saw that the via media is not compromise, but rather the ability to consider unfamiliar and novel ideas, and to synthesize the truth of those ideas.

This moment of clarity was actually preceded by two similar experiences, the first occurring some years before the second while attending a worship service with my mother and sister. My mother had just been widowed for the third time, and my sister was struggling with depression. The church where we worshipped that Sunday morning was more than a little conservative, and the sermon, typical of my mother’s denomination, focused on how everyone could and should understand the Bible in precisely the same way, how all Christians should be of “one mind.” Later my mother quipped, “Yes! And we know whose mind it would be too.” She was simply recognizing, having heard many such sermons, that what the preacher was really saying was that anyone who disagreed with his particular understanding of the littlest details of the Bible, or with the particular views of the partisan group to which he belonged, was destined for the flames of hell. What I thought that morning was, “There is nothing here. There is nothing here for the sick at heart, for the desperate struggler, or for anyone who sits beside a pool of tears. Nor is there anything for anyone seized by the incalculable goodness of life who wishes to celebrate on this day.” Conservative fundamentalism is about the inconsequential and therefore simply cannot address the depth of our existence.

My second experience was, as I say, more recent. While in pastoral transition my wife and I had begun attending a parish because of its convenient location for us. Most Sundays the sermon attempted to debunk whatever lectionary readings were appointed for the day. The pastor was concerned, he said, with “making people feel welcome who don’t and can’t believe all this Christian stuff.” As I understood from my conversations with him, he was himself a Christian because he enjoyed the beauty of the Episcopal liturgy and thought Christianity generally a good way to live one’s life. One Sunday as I sat listening to the sermon, still mourning my oldest sister’s recent death, it came to me that I felt the same way I had felt years before sitting with my mother and sister in that rigidly conservative church with its simplistic understanding of life and Scripture. “There is nothing here,” I thought, “nothing for the grieving, nothing for the joyful, nothing for those seeking ultimate meaning and fulfillment.” When it came to the Lord’s Prayer we might as well have recited Hemmingway’s version: “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy nada. . . ” Liberal fundamentalism is also about the inconsequential and therefore unable to speak to the depths of human experience.

A Fundamentalism of Both Kinds

A few days later I realized how much these two experiences were alike, and that there is a fundamentalism of both the religious right and the religious left, and they each share a number of similarities. For example, fundamentalism of both types is predominantly what Douglas John Hall calls professional rather than confessional in nature. Profession is the public acknowledgement of what we think. Conservative fundamentalism replaces a living faith in Christ with rigid dogma and precise intellectual propositions about Jesus that one must profess or be dammed for all time. But liberal fundamentalism is no less adamant in its claim to be the arbiter of ultimate truth. Only someone from the “enlightened” far left can see the real truth of things. Where the conservative relies on dubious and unthinking personal interpretations of Scripture in constructing a worldview, the liberal spins metaphysics out of his or her own imagination. For the latter, assumptions are correct not because of any reasonable epistemology, or commitment to Scripture, but because that is how he or she personally thinks and feels; or would like for things to be. Conversely, confessional faith bears witness to what one has experienced and known of Christ.

Profession or Confession

The Latin confessio was originally used to designate the burial place of a confessor or martyr; that is, one who had borne witness to the truth he or she had encountered even if doing so meant torture and death. As used here we profess what we think, but confess the reality we have encountered, discovered, and, in the Jungian sense, “know” as well as believe. It seems to me that confession, honestly expressing the reality I have discovered in Christ without denigrating any other faith traditions and having a willingness to listen and learn from them, is the via media between an exclusivism so dense that not even what is good can penetrate it, and an inclusivism so porous it lacks integrity. I have an appreciation for something the editors of The Christian Century, a more theologically liberal magazine, once wrote:

 Tolerance of others is a virtue, but it is a complex one. . . . Embracing the virtue of tolerance should not lead us to think religions are all the same or that all religious beliefs are compatible. Tolerance should not preclude Christians from humbly and joyfully witnessing to the truth about God revealed to them in Jesus Christ. Christians are called to proclaim this distinct truth, while affirming the kind of religious tolerance that arises from their own belief – the kind voiced by the Apostle Peter when he said, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation [ethnos/ethnei] anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34b-35).

Honestly confessing what I have discovered on my pilgrimage, saying who I am, where I stand, and where I am going while respecting the right of every other human being to do the same is the path leading safely between adversarial professions. It is also, coincidentally, according to psychotherapists the mark of a healthy minded, self-differentiated, person.

Fear On the Right & Anxiety On the Left

A second shared characteristic of all fundamentalism is that it is fear based. Edwin Friedman, the highly respected rabbi, therapist, and pioneer in family systems theory, believed all debunking, a frequent characteristic of far-left scholars and theologians, arises out of the individual’s own internal anxiety. Those biblical scholars and theologians embracing the ideology of the far-left can be somewhat obsessive in their search for evidence that will, in their estimation, disprove the “factuality” of some part of the biblical narrative––as if the Bible, like a bank statement, must be true down to the smallest decimal point or the whole thing is false. In reality there are very few instances in life where we apply such logic. But the religious right is also afraid and obsessed with factuality. It believes that the absolute fact of every detail in the Bile must be vigorously defended––that the possibility of any error or mistake, no matter how slight or insignificant, will lead to the complete collapse of the Christian faith like a house of cards or a line of dominos. Consequently, the suggestion of any discrepancy or anomaly in the biblical text is seen as a threat to the overall trustworthiness and “factuality” of Scripture and is angrily resisted. Fundamentalism, then, is essentially a reaction to events arising out of one’s own inner emotional baggage rather than a wholesome and grateful response to the beauty, goodness and truth that has been graciously revealed to humanity. Fundamentalism is, then, not about specific beliefs, but the manner in which those beliefs are held. The via media of the open mind and heart can work as an antidote to both types of fundamentalism

The Shared Problem

The problem, then, with both sorts of fundamentalism is deeper than any particular set of beliefs. The problem is that both engage in ideological thinking; and are, therefore, subject to elements of pride and self-interest. To paraphrase John Carnell, “There is always a demagogue on hand to decide who is virtuous and who is not.” When their particular beliefs are examined John Spong and Franklin Graham seem very different, but when one looks at the way in which each holds his beliefs, they appear very similar. Years ago, Rokeach discovered in his psychological research that “closed-minded” and “open-minded people” differ precisely in this regard; that is, a closed-minded person may change his or her mind, for instance change political parties, but they will hold their new beliefs with the same dogmatism, negativity, and even hostility with which they held their old beliefs. However, the “open-minded” person holds his or her beliefs with humility, with a genuine appreciation of other ways of believing, and with the understanding that while one must make committed choices in life it is always possible that one is, to one degree or another, mistaken.

Ambiguity, Unpredictability, and the Need to Control

Fundamentalism is intensely concerned with control. Usually this arises out of a fear that if not carefully managed one’s world might careen into chaos. Consequently, God must be managed, the Spirit restrained, and Christ the Lion tamed and domesticated. The right does this by reducing Christianity to a legalistic system and formulas that God is obligated to follow. In this way the fearful ambiguities of life and its unpredictability are safely managed or removed all together. The theological left, horrified by what a deep unqualified yes to God and the Christ whom God sent might mean, find relief in denial. I recall a parish forum in which the leaders could not bring themselves to acknowledge God as Creator or Jesus Christ as Lord.

The Same But Different

I have been writing about the fundamentalism of the right and left as two ideologies in Christendom; yet it is at this point that I am forced to agree with Douglas Hall:

Those who say that Jesus is not in some special sense significant for their belief have already stepped outside the Christian faith, for Christianity is what it is through the affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth, who has been called the ‘Christ’ is actually the Christ, namely he who brings the new state of things––not a statement of Christian conservatism but of one to whom many turn for their basis of interfaith dialogue.

The right approaches the interpretation of Scripture from a rigidly literal perspective that deifies Scripture itself as totally inerrant; the left, is rigidly figurative in its understanding and sees Scripture as a misguided, mistaken, and erroneous set of documents whose only truth is in an emblematic meaning. Both views are obsessed with “factuality,” both are held with the same attitudes indicative of closed-mindedness, and both are equally one-dimensional. They are, as the saying goes, reverse sides of one coin.

There is a great illustration of what I mean in Craig Evans’ book Fabricating Jesus. Evans explores the shift of the scholar Bart Ehrman from conservative to liberal fundamentalism. Ehrman became a believer as a teenager in a conservative setting. He enrolled in the fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and then from there went to Wheaton College and Graduate School, eventually earning a Ph.D. at Princeton. Ehrman held rather rigid ideas about inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture. Eventually everything unraveled for Ehrman as a result of reading Jesus’s comment in Mark 2:25-26 stating that David, when he was in need and hungry, entered the house of God when Abiathar was High Priest. However, I Samuel 21:1-10, actually says Ahimelech was the High Priest who assisted David, and that when Saul, who was pursuing David, heard about this he murdered Ahimelec. His son, Abithar, escaped and later succeeded his father as High Priest. Because Ahimelec and not his son was actually High Priest when David and his band of warriors ate the consecrated bread, we technically have a mistake––a mistake either on the part of Jesus, or Mark, or someone who passed the story along. Ehrman says that once he admitted that mistake the floodgates opened. “For if there could be one little picayune mistake in Mark 2, maybe there could be mistakes in other places as well.” This is not the day Ehrman outgrew fundamentalism, it is the day he capitulated to it, and was consumed by it. Evans comments: “The historical reliability of the Gospels does not hinge on proof that no mistakes of any kind can be detected in them. Ehrman’s struggle with faith grows out of mistaken expectations of the nature and function of Scripture.” My point is that whether as a conservative youth or a liberal adult there is a sameness to Ehrman’s thinking and approach to Scripture that has an intense concern with a highly literal factuality as at least one of its chief characteristics.

The Existential-Expressive and The Objective-Explanatory

The work of John Knox, the twentieth century theologian, indicates at least one way the via media might free us from both types of fundamentalism. Knox believed Scripture must be understood in terms of its great myths, as well as its objective reality. In a true biblical myth, he said, there are both “existential-expressive” and “objective-explanatory” elements. Although the two cannot be separated, the “existential-expressive” is the use of imaginative language to express the deepest reality of life as we feel and live it. Resorting to highly poetic language is the best we can do in trying to express the reality of certain events and experiences. The “objective-explanatory” is “the actual objective act of God” which accounts for where the expressive narrative came from. A story, then, may contain certain imaginative elements but, nevertheless, be rooted in an objective reality that can only be described “metaphorically.” The opening chapters of Genesis are clearly in the language of poetry or myth; yet Christians believe Genesis expresses the very real fact that God is the creative source of our existence and every blessing of beauty we experience. As Knox insightfully pointed out, “there is a difference between a story that imaginatively expresses the inner meaning of a known fact, and a story that invents the fact itself.” Knox is suggestive of how the via media might be useful in synthesizing the metaphorical and objective reality of biblical events and stories––integrating spiritual practice and rigorous scholarship.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the via media offers the possibility of avoiding the pitfalls of the fundamentalism of both right and left, and in moving toward a progressive orthodoxy of intellectual honesty and spiritual depth characteristic of those times when “the mind descends into the heart.”

 

Open and Closed Mindedness: An Essay on Ideological Thinking

July 4, 2023 / / Comments Off on Open and Closed Mindedness: An Essay on Ideological Thinking


Larry Hart, Curtal Friar
http://awakeningheart.spiritual-christian.com

Abstract
In our highly polarized postmodern American society, there are a good many accusations made that particular individuals and groups are being merely “ideological.” But what does it mean for an individual or group to be ideological in thinking? What does it really mean to be either open or closed minded within a family, an organization, or a nation? This paper deals with those questions a bit more from the psychological perspective than the theological perspective from which I normally write, although for me the two are inseparable.

Key Words
closed minded, open minded, ideology, critical thinking, insight

Closed and Open Mindedness
It is now over forty years ago that I was introduced to Milton Rokeach’s research into open and closed mindedness (The Nature of Belief and Personality Systems, 1960), but what I read then has remained with me across all the years. Rokeach stated as one of his findings, that the difference between open and closed minded people is not that the closed minded are unable to change their minds, but that even when their beliefs do change it does not alter the attitude with which their beliefs are held. An angry anti-abortionist, for example, may change his or her mind about abortion, but more often than not will merely become an angry pro-abortionist. A negative and hostile alcoholic out of synchronization with life, reality, and others may see the first principles of AA’s Twelve Steps as applicable only to the problem of drinking and without relevance to the totality of his or her life; and, therefore, while able to continue abstinent as a practicing member of AA, remains at odds with life and never knows a day’s peace in his or her sobriety. Notice, that the basic question here is not the essential truthfulness or validity of an ide or value, but the way in which any idea or value is held, viewed, and used.

Ideology
Actually,” open minded” and “closed minded” are not terms one hears much anymore. They appear to have been replaced by the less vivid and more abstract term “ideological.” The word “ideology” was coined by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy around 1796. He used it at that time to mean the “study of the science of ideas.” He joined two Greek words, idea (the form or idea of something) and logie (study, science, or knowledge), to create the French word “idéologie” meaning, again. “the science of ideas.” However, since the time of Karl Marx “ideological” has more popularly referred to the beliefs, values, and thinking characteristic of a particular culture, group, or individual––especially those beliefs, values, and ideas which are political, religious, philosophical, or social in nature. Today the term is generally used negatively to mean a prescriped doctrine that is unsupported by rational argument.

A Hypothesis
Based on my experience as a pastoral psychotherapist, and as I look back across the years to the individuals for whom I have provided counseling and spiritual direction, I have formulated a hypothesis that I think worth considering and which invites further investigation. I am positing that ideological thinking, or closed mindedness, if one prefers, may be understood not only as the set of beliefs, ideas, and values, held by a particular group, culture, or individual, but, as Rokeach maintained in his research on open and closed mindedness, also includes the manner in which those ideas, beliefs, and values are held. Specifically, I am suggesting ideological thinking is characterized by the thirteen following elements. In reading them keep in mind that ideological thinking is neither conservative nor liberal. It is not the specific beliefs, ideas, or values that are ideological, but the way in which they are held. As I have written elsewhere one may be a religious or theological “fundamentalist” whether liberal or conservative. Anyone who believes only adversaries, opponents, or enemies are ideological, is most likely an ideological thinker him or herself.

Criteria for Ideological Thinking
1) Fixation on one or a few ideas, issues, or principles, while minimizing or excluding other significant, and perhaps larger, questions and concerns.
2) A dogged focus on content rather than process questions––ignoring questions of intimacy and relationship, and fixing rigidly on the mechanics of how things are done rather than why they are being done to begin with.
3) Little appreciation is shown for nuances, relevant circumstances, or context.
4) A tendency to engage in dichotomous (all or none) thinking rather than along a continuum, which then results in an inability to properly evaluate situations, ideas, feelings, problems, and solutions.
5) Idiosyncratic thinking confuses personal tastes, subjective likes, dislikes, needs, and individual and parochial concerns with ultimate and universal values.
6) There is an adversarial attitude toward others––a drive to dominate others so that rather than engaging in co-operative problem solving, or attempting to arrive at a consensus, there is an emphasis on winning at all costs. Here there is no sense of the AA saying: “Live and let live.”
7) An inability to grasp or appreciate the legitimacy, truth, or strength of counter propositions and arguments.
8) There is a compartmentalization of values and principles so that their application is limited to some specific area of life and reality rather than recognizing their wider application or utility.
9) The person engaging in ideological thinking is generally unable to grasp the possibility that their point of view might be the minority position; or, does not necessarily represent the perspective of all reasonable people of moral and intellectual integrity.
10) Thought processes are characterized by non-critical thinking in general leading to incomplete or false conclusions, and unrealistic solutions to serious and complex problems.
11) A reflexive aversion to finding pleasure or enjoyment in good things said, done, or produced by one’s perceived opponents or enemies.
12) Little or no appreciation for consensus so that there is a confusion of justice with majority rule, and/or favorable legal rulings with justice so that “winning” (getting one’s way) is mistaken for and touted as being right.
13) It is not enough for the ideological thinker that others do things the way he or she wants, others must also actually think and believe as the ideological person thinks and believes.

Conclusion
I do not much think, of course, that this little essay is likely to result in any appreciable improvement in the thinking of very many people. As Edwin Friedman, the pioneer in family systems therapy and organizational leadership noted, “It is impossible to change unmotivated people through insight.” Nevertheless, real solutions to problems and substantial positive changes, when they do occur, nearly always represent changes that seem akin to a kind of conversion experience in attitudes and perceptions.

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