Perspectives on Reason and Faith

The Long Show – Let’s start with a prayer.

HOTM

Show 60L Athens or Jerusalem? Neither. We are approaching the time where we are going to change our approach to matters in ministry. Before we do I want to step into something I’ve mentioned before but do not speak too much about all things considered.

The Inquisition: A Challenge to Creedal Trinitarianism

A number of years ago here in this very building we had something we called the Inquisition in response to my publicly renouncing Creedal Trinitarianism. In that setting we have a large crowd gathered and a local Calvinist pastor stood and made a challenge – he told me that I needed to study up on my Greek. I assumed he meant not only the ancient language but also the culture and the Greek way of seeing the world. He didn’t clarify.

I understand the need to study the Apostolic Record from the Greek language because it does add insight to the English translations, but if this pastor was suggesting that I should study up on Greek worldview and mindset as a means to become more reasonable, more of an aesthetic, more astute in human reason, he was wasting his time and in my estimation, a fool. On the other hand, there is a huge body of believers who turn from Athens (as it were) and look only to “Jerusalem.”

These are typically our biblical literalists who, due to the presence of their own zeal and the influence of like-minded teachers, take the Bible and assign it (and all that it says to others) as if it was written to us today! I mean they actually believe, God bless them, that every English word of the Bible (especially the King James) was written to them now and has direct literal application – to everything. Their perspective is Jerusalem – the Law, the written Word. And just as I understand the benefit of reading the Apostolic Record in the Greek to aid in comprehension of the Word, I also understand the “Jerusalem-devotion” that comes with wanting to assign the Bible’s principles to our lives, that to side with Jerusalem strictly speaking is to side with an “ethic” long since fulfilled and frankly replaced by God Himself when He writes His laws on our hearts and minds.

Soren Kierkegaard's Viewpoint

Soren Kierkegaard, a super influential Christian philosopher in my life (and others) also had an issue with the Athens/Jerusalem extremes. Unfortunately, I don’t agree with his end solution (entirely) but we can learn an awful lot from his deep personal study of the impasse between the two mindsets when it comes to creating a metaphysically reasonable approach to the faith today. The insights of Soren Kierkegaard go a long way to help us comprehend the issues that exist between Athenian reason and Jerusalem Ethics.

See, Kierkegaard’s philosophy was in direct reaction to what is known as the Hegelian synthesis – something I used to glom onto and see as the best worldview approach. We had a history of philosophers claiming to have authored the best explanation for life and living and Hegel comes along and produces this final solution (pun intended) to it all. He said instead of there being one right philosophy there was an ongoing process, a dialectic, that was at work in the world where one idea would be presented as truth (called a Thesis) and then another would come along and challenge that idea (Antithesis) and those two ideas would go to war with each other which would result in what he called a synthesis.

Hegel said the new synthesis would then become a new Thesis, and the whole process would start all over again. A working example of this would be a person presents a thesis, like: Blue eyed babies are most beautiful. Another would contradict this statement with an antithesis: Blonde haired babies are most beautiful. These two would argue and might agree on a synthesis: Blue eyed blonde haired babies are the most beautiful babies in the world. And this would become a working norm or the New Thesis which would produce an antithesis statement like Brown eyed babies are more beautiful than blue.

Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic

This Hegelian dialectic was for some the final say on philosophy – and well, Kierkegaard comes along and frankly hated it. It was too demanding and rigid; too systematic and defined. It was too smug, too certain, too concrete and certain in its ability to put an end to all other philosophical systems. In the end, it was too Greek, too Promethian, according to Michael Surgrue, Princeton PhD, and in his words, “not enough Jerusalem.” Meaning, too much reason (represented by Athens) and…

Kierkegaard on Faith and Reason

Not enough faith (represented by Jerusalem.)

To Kierkegaard, Hegel’s reconciliation of the two was too pat, too dogmatically staid and most importantly was not consistent with Kierkegaard’s own experience with reason and religion. See, Kierkegaard saw it as a problem when we mixed promethean, Greek, humanistic, rationality and the strictly understood elements of biblical faith. So he sought to reformulate a problem that has been around since Augustine or before, and that is the connecting faith and reason. In his eyes, this was not good. And so he attempted to sort of strip the reasoned, logical Greek elements away from the Christian walk and left behind a model image in the likeness of Job – a sort of, “God is right I will follow,” mentality.

Athens and Jerusalem

See, many philosophers came along and approached faith as an admixture of Athens and Jerusalem, which is pictured in Hegel’s dialectic. There is a thesis, there is an antithesis, and warring against each other there will be a synthesis. Kierkegaard said, “no way, Jose. All people must make a choice between one or the other.” Do we look to nature as our ontological source of truth or do we look to the immaterial, the metaphysical or what people call God? Choose between naturalistic ontologies or metaphysical ontologies, says Kierkegaard, but do not mix them together! You either walk by Athens or Jerusalem. Between religious faith and rational certainty.

A problem arises when we enter into defending one or the other views through presuppositional standing. Meaning, if you believe, well ahead of your argument, that natural ontology is superior to metaphysical ontology, you will arrive at the place you sought from the beginning. And if you suppose that the Bible is inerrant then you will arrive and justify a faith-based ontology. And so people make a choice between Jerusalem and Athens, between the sacred and the profane, between reason and faith, between a human conception of life and living or a God conception of life and living. The problem is while most will make a choice, they really can’t explain WHY they make that choice without resorting to their presuppositional arguments they held in place before deciding!

Cartesian Examination

I want to suggest that we can slip into a Cartesian state of mind (though it requires a tremendous amount of personal effort and integrity) and deconstruct most of our presuppositional views as a means to examine the value and merits of either side – humanistic reason or Godly faith. And that is something I have attempted to do in the quiet hours of decades of personal contemplation. Of course, my attempts are not wholly successful and I am probably very unaware of the biases that influence me in the conclusions I have embraced, but before we are through I will articulate why I choose an amalgam of faith and reason as the better choice than either faith or reason.

So well before my paltry attempts the genius Kierkegaard pursued the same. To simplify his conclusions he believed that we could assess human desires in two ways – those who are oriented toward what he called the aesthetic life (and this included those who lived for physical pleasures – sex drugs rock and roll and/OR intellectual pleasures – meaning, he did not leave out the intellectual hedonists. This is important because he recognized that people could be totally bereft of faith and sold out to ascetic pleasures through intellectualism and never abuse sex, drugs or rock and roll.

Aesthetic Life vs. Ethical Life

In other words, Kierkegaard points out that it is entirely possible to be an aesthetic pleasure lover and not have a scandalous sex life. You might get your aesthetic fill via art, intellectualism, music, theater while never drinking a drop or having an affair. Mental or physical – your orientation is pleasure. Kierkegaard wisely observed that this is the natural direction or state of humankind. Pleasure in some form or another. This tendency, Kierkegaard submits, while natural, is reasonable for humans to pursue (something scripture makes clear). We are born into it.

Kierkegaard believes that all people must therefore choose between this natural desire toward pleasure and what he calls the Ethical life, the human alternative to the Natural, Reasonable, Aesthetic, Pleasure-seeking life. He describes the Ethical life as someone who pursues moral righteousness independent of pleasure. This, he describes, as those who follow God’s divine law – regardless if they know it's his law or not. This Ethical man or woman follows these laws for their own sake, not because they are the best mode of operating, not because he or she…

Kierkegaard's Ethical and Aesthetic Divide

Kierkegaard aligns himself more with Kant as he struggles to navigate all the disparate elements lingering about from both the Athenian and the principles out of Jerusalem in the choices people make in life. However, where Kant unites the Aesthetic and the Ethical, Kierkegaard divides them completely and promotes a life of pure faith, pure Jerusalem, void of all presuppositional thought suggesting that to mix the two is a fail, that reason is a distraction in faith and it must stand alone.

For Kierkegaard there is a hierarchy in human existence and there are better and worse choices and the fundamental choice that ALL human beings must make is between the aesthetic and the ethical life. So now the question becomes, what standard can we use to decide which is the best thing to do? And here is where Kierkegaard greatly contributes to the 20th Century philosophy called Existentialism which Kierkegaard, as a devoted Christian, is considered the forerunner to or founder of.

Either/Or – A Criterionless Choice

He says that individual human beings must make a choice and he lays this out in a two-volume book called, Either/Or. The either is the aesthetic life and the Or is the Ethical life. Kierkegaard says we are faced with a choice and it must be EITHER OR – you cannot choose both! If you do, you remain aesthetically driven! No, says Kierkegaard, you must choose EITHER the pleasure of Athenian reason in the ascetic life OR the pursuit of God in the Ethical. You are EITHER an aesthetic person OR you are an Ethical person – no in between says Kierkegaard. That would be a compromise.

This places all people in a really sobering position. What makes Kierkegaard the father of existentialism is that he says that the choice is without criteria – there is no thing, nothing, no standard by which anyone can reasonably act. This is a horrifying reality as he demands that all of us must make a decision without any basis (presupposition) for making it. Criterionless Choice. No real standard to support you. This is a grim reality. AND we all must make a choice too – like it or not. We must decide. And he cuts us all off at the knees of relying on some sort of rationality forcing those who want God to make what he calls, a leap of faith because there is zero rational procedure available to aid us in our decision.

The Agonizing Reality of Choice

Yes, we will all balk at this and claim otherwise, but Kierkegaard adamantly rejects pushback and says . . . no. He says, I have agonizingly realized that if someone really examines their decisions to a life of aesthetics or a life of ethics, and they are able to strip away all presuppositional arguments for making their choice, they are looking at a blank silence backing their decision. In other words, to Kierkegaard, what is most agonizing about the choice we all must make is we have, in the end, zero grounds for making it. And in this space, we have the groundwork laid for existentialist ideals like dread, angst, anxiety, nausea, irony, absurdity, disorientation, and meaninglessness. All a result of our having to make the most important decision in our lives but having no governing star, no real tangible guide.

This could be seen as a rather horrible universe. And again, there is zero compromise. No mixing the two. It’s Either/OR. And in this we can now see how and why he hated Hegelian synthesis. What is agonizing is we choose and we all have to choose. See, if you say, I will not choose, you have chosen! Chosen what? How were you born? You started out as an aesthetic natural woman or man, screaming for pleasure, a dry diaper, more food, our way – to not choose leaves us with our obvious choice.

Kierkegaard was tortured. Utterly. And he did not believe that most people had even the slightest grip on what it meant to be an aesthetic man. So in the either volume of Either/Or, he endeavors to describe our natural condition. To him, it is one distraction after another and he posits that the reason the Aesthetic man pursues distractions in life is BOREDOM – another brick in the foundation of Existentialism. This caused him to write, Boredom is the root of all evil. And if we think about it I think he was onto something.

Kierkegaard and the Aesthetic Choice

Superior to the notion that money is evil’s root. And he talks about boredom in such morose terms that in the end his observances almost appear as unkind mockery. Culture – everything, is the result of boredom. The world consists of nothing and so we fill it up with things like culture of every kind, sport, art, studies, travel, eating, drinking being merry. These are the results of aesthetics and in the end they amount to nothing. Your life in choosing the aesthetic choice is deathSeparation from God—now overcome. Physical death remains, but it no longer separates us from life with God. – which is imposed upon you and if you really understood the end result of this Either you would, instead of passively living to escape boredom, you would actively kill yourself in the face of the fact that all you do and all that you are about and all you have chosen to pursue and do are hollow empty acts as a means to escape . . . boredom.

In terms of morbid perversity Kierkegaard is right up there with Nietzsche. He saw himself as a clown bearing serious news to the world and yet all people could do in response was to see him as providing them humor. He was warning in Either of the hollow choice of Athens, and reason, and pleasure seeking, but nobody took him seriously. But they would regret that choice.

Faith and Reason

His advice was for people to choose the OR and become a human in blind pursuit of the moral soul, following God by unadulterated faith. It is here where I personally depart from Kierkegaard. Not in terms of leaping to faith – we all have to make that choice because in reality we cannot prove our reasons. But I have a hard time accepting the utter separation he makes between faith and reason. I suggest that God, having made us in His image, and wanting us, as Jesus said, to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” that this is not possible through a mindless unreasonable leap. Instead, while the ultimate leap is based in faith, the faith is based in reason, as Isaiah wrote God as having said:

Isaiah 1:18

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

No, Soren, while you have given us enough meat to gnaw upon for centuries, you have ignored the fact that God gave us teeth and jaws and in order to swallow, He has made it so all of us participate in the process. Stepping from such esoteric rhetoric, let me wrap this up with some ideas I find far more biblical than pure Jerusalem or Athens. That is to say we all are certainly born of the Athenian pleasure seeking flesh. And at this stage in our lives we do face a dogmatic either/or.

But stepping a little further down the road, I would suggest that once we take the Kierkegaardian leap of faith in the waiting hands of God, His Sons and Daughters shift from the Either/Or view to a Both/And dynamic, where God calls to us on the two lane highway of relationship, and longs for us to choose Him with our logic, and with our minds, as we reason together – He writes the Laws in us, and we walk freely and accordingly.