Summary:
As a college Bible professor, I am constantly confronted by
fundamentalist students who are convinced that only the Bible—the inerrant,
revealed Word of God—can be relied upon to offer us truth about the operation
of the cosmos. Any source of knowledge that contradicts that truth is only a
test of our faith. But the exact opposite is true. God’s creation itself is the
only inerrant, revealed Word of God, and our divinely endowed mind is a gift of
the divine bestowed on us as a source of communion—a vehicle that unites us
with the divine by allowing us to encounter the divine through the ongoing
revelation of God’s creation.
Being a college Bible professor offers a unique andexciting
challenge. No other college subject—except perhaps biology or paleontology—brings
a teacher into such direct confrontation with fundamentalist religious
doctrine. Virtually every semester there is at least one student who simply
refuses to “think outside the box,” to learn something new, to consider another
perspective. Often I encounter students who are simply incapable of doing so.
They are brainwashed.
Perhaps the most remarkable, disturbing and disappointing
comment I hear is the one that confronts the challenge offered to
fundamentalists by the findings of science. Whether the challenge comes from
the natural sciences (creation vs. evolution), history/archeology (Did King
David actually control a vast empire?), literary criticism (Is the Pentateuch a
single composition or a composite work?) or otherwise, the challenge is most
often alleviated by understanding it as “a test of faith.”
Essentially this involves a theology that portrays a deity
who plants false evidence to test whether or not we will accept the belief that
God is a best-selling author. This portrait of God begins with a doctrine that
the Bible is the inerrant, revealed word of God, and anything that exists in
the world to dispute this doctrine has been planted there to test our faith. Every
truth offered by the rational mind that contradicts the doctrine of the
inerrant, revealed Word of God is “a test of faith.”
I’m not even going to begin to dispute this utterly demented
theology that turns the creator and sustainer of the cosmos into a kind of
Promethean trickster. What I’d rather do in this piece is to turn this view of
revelation on its head.
The primary and ultimate divine revelation—the alpha and the
omega, the first and the last—is the creator’s creation. The world as such, the
cosmos as it is, is the inerrant Word of God.
Not only that, but my soul, my consciousness, my mind, my
intellect is a piece of the divine within me. It is a free gift of God’s grace,
a vehicle for union between me and the divine implanted in me to allow me to
discover the presence of God through the intersection of my rational, divinely
inspired mind and God’s inerrant revelation in the form of the created cosmos.
That is the primary source of revelation. Other forms of
revelation come to bear. Great seers, scientists, thinkers, prophets, bards and
sages, whose ability to perceive the order, structure, meaning and significance
of the cosmos far exceeds my own, continually provide me with new insights and
perspectives. The great scriptures of the world—the Bible, Quran, Upanishads and
Bhagavad Gita—written at a time of great spiritual and intellectual fervor, are
profound sources of insight and knowledge.
Ultimately, however, God’s creation is the only inerrant
source of revelation. The attempt to convince me otherwise—that God’s revelation
through the world as such is false and that only this book contains God’s Word—is
a true test of my faith. It is a faith that I can use my divinely implanted
mind to discover the truth of God’s presence as it is revealed in the world as
such and the cosmos as it is.
Ma gadlu ma’asekha
adonai
Me’od ‘ameku
mahshevotekha
‘Ish ba’ar lo yeda’
Ukhesil lo yavin et
zeh
How tremendous are your deeds, O God
Your thoughts are deeply profound
The fool cannot know
The dullard cannot understand this.
(Psalm 92)
Richard, I love your take on the "true test of faith"!! And, I have two questions for you:
ReplyDelete1. Is it more likely to be a fundamentalist Christian who voices this idea of a test of faith, of God as a Trickster (I'm reminded of the Norse God Loki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki)? Do fundamentalist jews or muslims voice the same idea?
2. did you hear the debate on IQ2 titled "Science Refutes God"? you can find it here, but even if you don't listen to it, scroll down the page to the comments, where someone posting as john32 says "A very big deception of the devil is to get you to debate God, Christianity and other religions."
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/728-science-refutes-god
and, thank you for the excerpt from Psalm 92 - I really need to study the Psalms, they're amazingly insightful (although it seems like you have to sift through a lot of not-so-insightful stuff to find the gold nuggets)
Thanks, again, morethanfoursides, for your comment. I did not specify any particular religious tradition that holds this line. There are certainly fundamentalist Jews and Muslims, though I must say that I've never heard the "test of faith" terminology used by Jews. Jews seem to be more into, "you lose your share in the world to come if you don't believe" type of response, but I figure I'll be in good company. I'll be sure to check out Intelligence Squared.
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