The Pearl (Matthew 13)

I know the wayes of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the presse, and make it runne;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of it self, like a good huswife, spunne
In laws and policie; what the starres conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forc’d by fire;
Both th’ old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and historie:
All these stand open, or I have the keyes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the wayes of Honour, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesie and wit:
In vies of favours whether partie gains,
When glorie swells the heart, and moldeth it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love-knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe’re it goes:
How many drammes of spirit there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the wayes of Pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot bloud and brains;
What mirth and musick mean; what love and wit
Have done these twentie hundred yeares, and more:
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuffe is flesh, not brasse; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Then he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.

I know all these, and have them in my hand:
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I flie to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have thy love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through these labyrinths, not my groveling wit,
But thy silk twist let down from heav’n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climbe to thee.

Many thanks to my friend Peter Smith for bringing this moving, insightful poem to my attention!

Image via Wikipedia

Over the last couple of days, Joseph Kelly and John Hobbins had a brief blogversation about what ḥesed means in the Hebrew Bible. These two guys are waaaaaaaay out of my league on this sort of discussion, and to my knowledge do not fall prey to the above mentioned shortcomings of biblical scholars, but reading Joseph’s last post prompted these thoughts.

Just as an outside observer, it appears that what we have here may be a result of treating semantics on a synchronic basis rather than reconstructing possible diachronic effects — not to mention the possible effect of synchronic language variation. That is, I think it’s clear that ḥesed means something very much like ‘loyalty’ in certain passages as Joseph suggests, ‘justice’ in others, and very much like ‘random acts of kindness’ in others (e.g. Ruth). As a linguist looking at this broad usage, I think we’re seeing the concept being used differently in different communities, probably living at different periods in history.

I admit that I’m no expert in OT chronology, and I have by no means done a study on every instance of this word. But I’ll offer one highly conjectural sketch of what the evolution of the word could have looked like:

It appears as though the word originally meant something akin to ‘obligated fairness’ and gradually evolved into more of a bland sense of ‘favor’. Psalms presents an early meaning, namely ‘justice, fairness’; at a later period (Exodus, 2 Samuel, etc.), Israel’s conviction of God’s favor for their community may have helped broaden and even dilute the concept to mean ‘loyalty, faithfulness’, perhaps further weakened toward ‘favor, goodness’ (essentially, “YHWH does right by us”); Ruth, typically dated in the Hellenistic period, might be a snapshot of the word at a late period in which the meaning of ‘goodness, favor’ has remained, the semantics of obligation possibly having dropped out over time (although I would also question ruling out a personal sense of obligation in Ruth’s faithfulness to Naomi).

I have focused here on possible diachronic reasons for this word’s varied usage rather than possible variation effects from different, synchronically coexisting theological or geographical communities. And as I said, this is nothing more than an armchair analysis. But this sort of variation in meaning between texts is absolutely the kind of thing that we must expect in our linguistic excavations in the Bible, and it’s also the kind of thing that biblical scholars don’t pay enough attention to. They often end up inflating words with all kinds of semantic baggage in ways akin to the Amplified Bible.

Lord knows I’m not accusing either the linguistically astute John Hobbins or Joseph Kelly of this, but I did think this particular discussion might benefit from those considerations in ways I hadn’t seen offered so far.

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The topic of discussion was “Has Neuroscience Killed God?” Featured was a discussion between Cambridge neuroscientist Rev. Dr. Aladair Coles and psychological therapist Martyn Frame, a Christian and an atheist respectively. The discussion covered the ground you might expect, e.g. whether determining the neurological phenomena associated with religious experiences fully explained those experiences and was therefore sufficient to discount them. Overall I think this was a much better discussion than last week’s disappointing conversation between David Papineau and Keith Ward over materialism/dualism, in which I sided with the materialist over Ward (whom I really respect).

Anatomy of a religious experience (via Wikipedia)

Frame early on concedes that religious experience as emanating from divine interaction is not strictly speaking disproved by neurological evidence, but keeps insisting that (reductive) naturalism is somehow more in line with the scientific evidence. Yet when pressed to explain how this was the case, he kept wanting to offer philosophical/theological challenges. Specifically, he wondered why the Christian God wouldn’t wire people to believe in specifically Him (i.e. the Christian God) rather than to allow people to either believe in another deity or disbelieve altogether. Unsurprisingly, Coles countered that 1) this is not after all a neurological question and 2) a God who wired everyone to believe in Him would be despotic and unlike the Christian God. Coles was very careful not to dismiss Frame’s concern as a real problem, but pointed out quite rightly that it was a philosophical and not a scientific challenge. As this show’s topic was specifically on the scientific evidence, I think Coles was right in respectfully and not dismissively steering things back.

Among the more interesting scientific discussions was the evidence cited by Coles that the parts of the brain that appear to be involved in the perception of religious experience are not at all unique to humans. There is no detectable “God module” that humans utilize for their prayer lives and religious experiences; people interact with their deities in the same way they interact with other humans. For Coles, it might be easier to dismiss God if there were such a lump of cells tacked on by evolution which makes humans think they are having their mystical experiences, but having the brain act in a normal, human way when interacting with either other humans or a spiritual being is “deeply Christian” in that it coincides with the Christian belief in God as a person with whom we interact rather than just some mystical force. I found that interesting; take it or leave it.

One of Frame’s lines of evidence was pointing out that people with a dominating right hemisphere were likelier to be religious than otherwise. The right hemisphere is the creative side of the brain and notoriously can find patterns even where there are none; the popular implication is that, essentially, right-brained people are the likeliest to believe in things that don’t exist, and that this explains religious people. Coles countered that there are plenty of left-brained people who are religious in different ways: he said that although right-brained individuals seem to have more mystical experiences, left-brained individuals are likelier to view God in doctrinal or theological terms. Moreover, Coles cited studies that show people with no religious inclinations who have the left side of their brain damaged will often find a sense for spirituality as a result of their dependence on the right hemisphere. From this he suggested that we all have the physical mechanisms for religious experience built in to us, but such inclinations are sometimes “bullied” out by a dominating left hemisphere. Such people are not de facto atheists or materialists, but may find mystical, religious experiences harder to access.

A couple additional thoughts from me.

• The case was predictably made by Frame that being able to artificially stimulate mystical experiences using electrodes applied to the applicable regions of the brain invalidates any immaterial source for those experiences in other people. The implication is that if we can fool the brain into thinking there is a God through very mundane physical processes, this goes to show that it’s all delusion caused by our brains’ reactions to electro-chemical accidents. This is a very old, very tired bit of reductionism. If neuroscientists were able to manipulate a subject’s perception so that he thought his mother was in the room, this would not at all invalidate the existence of the subject’s mother, or even exclude the possibility that his mother was in the room. Similarly, neuroscientists are able to artificially approximate all kinds of reactions to stimuli that, while actually existing, are not actually present at the time. To my mind, this is a line of evidence that painfully begs the question. All that has been shown is that certain kinds of experiences that are experienced by our brain’s chemistry are in fact reproducible by chemistry.

• The topic of this show dealt specifically with religious experiences; I have indeed had religious, even mystical experiences, but I am not particularly right-brained. My left hemisphere really tries to get me to dismiss my experiences, and although I do think it important to suspend my belief in them when evaluating these questions, I find that my left hemisphere is more than adequate to explain my religious beliefs anyway. The fact is, I don’t believe primarily because of religious experiences as perceived by my right brain: equally so, perhaps even more commonly these days, I believe because the world makes better intellectual sense to me with a God behind it. Importantly, in practice I discount every mystical personal experience, mine included, and proceed with my belief in the Christian God based on a reasoned choice. All this to say, for me, not much hangs on the outcome of this discussion in either direction.

Please note that I’m not saying there aren’t real challenges for theism or Christianity from neuroscience. I honestly don’t know enough to say whether there are or aren’t. But I do know that Dr. Coles presented a better case than Mr. Frame.

Anyway, for a cordial, civil exchange of interesting ideas, I certainly recommend checking this episode out.

In a recent post called “Christianity as humanism,” David Withun reproduces part of a summary of Irenaeus‘ thought as described by Paul Tillich. Here’s a bit of it:

“Here we have a profound doctrine of what I call a transcendent humanism, a humanism which says that Christ is the fulfillment of essential man, of the Adamic nature. Such a fulfillment became necessary because a break occurred in the development of man; Adam fell away from what he was to be come. The childish innocence of Adam has been lost; but the second Adam can become what he was to become, fully human. And we can become fully human through participation in this full humanity which has appeared in Christ.”

So in a mystical sense, Christianity has the potential to be humanistic. I do not at all disagree. But I am afraid that even many who champion this understanding of Christian humanism fail to distribute their emphasis in all the necessary places. More on that in a minute.

Erasmus the scholastic humanist

One of the ideals that modern Christians have lost out on after eschewing humanism as dirty, atheistic idolatry (humans are crap — didn’t you get Augustine’s memo?) is the importance of education and the development of the mind. Great institutions of higher learning were begun by those who believed that Christians couldn’t be the best humans they could be without an emphasis upon the life of the mind, whereas the early twentieth century saw the tide of Protestants intent on pitting the life of the mind against the life of the Spirit swelling, warning of the dangers of “overeducation”.

Education is a vital aspect of humanism, obviously. Learning the right stuff is important, no doubt. So is keeping our bodies healthy, producing art, etc. But how about our moral and ethical behavior? Isn’t being as good a human as I can be actually dependent on how I live? Certainly, as good humanists will tell you, because humanism is about a holistic approach to betterment; it’s about a dedication to excel for all the things human can excel in. This means that humanism, at least Christian humanism, is not an end in itself. You don’t become the best human you can be just so you can be proud of yourself. It’s because you recognize humanity as something valuable — and not just your own humanity.

Looking back, I see that the appreciation for humanism that awoke in me during college probably influenced my conviction about the importance of social concern as a necessary feature of Christianity. It might be returned that I’m confusing humanism with humanitarianism, but I would disagree: the latter is a significant element of the former. Integral to valuing humanity and human potential is being interested not only in what it means to be human, but being interested in actual humans. This is especially true of Christian humanism, or Tillich’s “transcendent humanism”, because NT theology teaches us that kenosis is an essential feature of God’s character (John Piper’s warped views notwithstanding). From a Christian perspective, the desire to become the best human you can be necessarily entails becoming more God-centered; becoming as divine as you can be (theosis) necessarily entails becoming more human-centered. “And the second is like it,” said our teacher.

Tragically, because of the lie that works = human effort and a myopic misunderstanding of Christian social concern as “the social gospel”, most conservative American Evangelicals really stink at this stuff. I give these guys are hard time for that. But unfortunately, it’s not just them: there are other faith traditions that despite being keenly aware of the need for orthopraxis as a complement of orthodoxy nonetheless seem to think that worship, whether in ritual/liturgical practices or in emotive song services, satisfies the bulk of the requirement. I asked one believer from the Orthodox tradition what the Christian life was all about, and the response consisted of things like mystic communion with God and following the ritual/liturgical guidelines prescribed by the Church. The Orthodox may affirm “transcendent humanism” all day long, but an attempt to partake of the divine nature and commune with God apart from cultivating the desire to emulate God’s love by substantive efforts to mitigate the suffering of fellow humans is not at all sufficient to be called humanism.

Developing one’s mind and body and contributing to human achievement are valid components of humanism; likewise, praying and communing with the Spirit of God are wonderful. But until we learn to obey God by developing His heart within us, our worship and rituals are nothing at all but clanging cymbals. Your praxis is not truly orthē and your sanctification/theosis is a farce without humanitarianism. In the Gospels, the manifestation of the Kingdom of God frequently took the form of Jesus demonstrating compassion — not just feeling it or passing the buck to God by praying that He intervene. We can’t then “become fully human through participation in this full humanity which has appeared in Christ” without an ever-present sense of compassion that erupts in action. “Oh, those poor suffering people” is a contemptibly selfish sentiment when it’s not followed through on, much like feeling sorry for or simply praying for a woman as you see her being raped in front of you.

Let me put it bluntly, brothers and sisters: you simply cannot live an authentic Christian life without being consumed by the passion that motivated God in Jesus: love and care for humanity. And not just their eternal destinies (which is mostly out of your jurisdiction anyway), but every part about them. We prove our dedication to God by taking care of their material circumstances and let God worry about whether they dedicate themselves to Him.

The brute fact is that people are dying of starvation and preventable disease, and we’re sitting over here in our comfort expecting to commune with God while we take care of our marginal concerns. This should not be so.

Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

Philippians 2.4-7

What makes us think that the “full humanity” which Christ brings with him could look like anything other than full, self-emptying submission to God through service of others?

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Dear Mr. Beversluis,

Yes. On my view one must apply something of the same sort of explanation to, say, the atrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua. I see the grave danger we run by doing so; but the dangers of believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him ‘good’ and worshiping Him, is still greater danger. The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.

To this some will reply ‘ah, but we are fallen and don’t recognize good when we see it.’ But God Himself does not say that we are as fallen as all that. He constantly, in Scripture, appeals to our conscience: ‘Why do ye not of yourselves judge what is right?’ — ‘What fault hath my people found in me?’ And so on. Socrates’ answer to Euthyphro is used in Christian form by Hooker. Things are not good because God commands them; God commands certain things because he sees them to be good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant to the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockham’s, Paley’s) leads to an absurdity. If ‘good’ means ‘what God wills’ then to say ‘God is good’ can mean only ‘God wills what he wills.’ Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan.

But of course having said all this, we must apply it with fear and trembling. Some things which seem to us bad may be good. But we must not consult our consciences by trying to feel a thing good when it seems to us totally evil. We can only pray that if there is an invisible goodness hidden in such things, God, in His own good time will enable us to see it. If we need to. For perhaps sometimes God’s answer might be ‘What is that to thee?’ The passage may not be ‘addressed to our (your or my) condition’ at all.

I think we are v. much in agreement, aren’t we?

Yours sincerely, C. S. Lewis

Big thanks to Alex Smith at the Evangelical Universalist message board for this gem (and David Baldwin for tipping me off).

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