Messiness and main things

It can be very easy to fall out with people, something all human beings seem to have a talent for. Sometimes religious people in general, and Christians in particular (particularly those at the Protestant/Evangelical end of the spectrum) get singled out for being key exemplars of this propensity. Given that, it is worth pointing out that the Monty Python joke about “splitters” has much more to do with politics than religion, suggesting that this really is a human, not specifically Christian, frailty.

Unity is of course important. In philosophy it has been a matter of debate from Plato and Aristotle forward. In politics, it is valued because of the perception that people don’t vote for divided and disunited political parties (a rule most recently restated by Nadhim Zahawi, Boris’ final chancellor). More importantly for me, it is enjoined by the Psalmist  (Ps 133:1 – “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity”) and prayed for by Jesus (John 17:21 – “..that they may all be one..”). But unity is one of those odd things that while important, is not really of value in an of itself. Just as faith can only ever be as strong as its object, so unity is only of value where there is something (or someone) to unite around. This brings us back to splitting.

One of the accusations constantly thrown at the Reformers in the sixteenth century was essentially that they were “splitters”. They were introducing division into the church that had no business being there. The point was often made that it would not end well; once a splitter, always a splitter (partly the Python’s point). It was predicted that once the split had occurred from Rome there would be other splits, until the whole reforming project ran into the sand. Where previously there had been glorious unity under Rome, there would be all these fissiparous protestants, both defacing the beauty of the church, and generally causing lots of trouble. And it did rather look like this for a while. Except for a couple of things.

The unity of Rome was both around the wrong object and was in part illusory. The human institution of the church, with its accretion of prelates and both extrabiblical and unbiblical ritual, with its devotion to international politics and political rather than spiritual leadership, had moved so far from the church as instituted at Pentecost as to be unrecognizable. It had become a barrier to the saving truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not its doorway. Even so, even Luther recognized a high threshold for secession, and his original intent was reform rather than schism. That door, if ever open, was swiftly closed against him. In any case, Luther faced a situation in which no-one was entirely sure what the truth really was that everyone was supposed to unite around. He was active during a period of theological pluralism, when even for key ideas (including some that would become hotly contested like justification) the right line was often ill-defined. The production of Erasmus’ new translation of Scripture, a great improvement on the Vulgate, had the effect of showing up that in certain areas what had become accepted truth was far from it. The institution, when challenged, reacted with hostility. A split became both inevitable and unbridgeable where truth was defined by God in His Word, as opposed to a human institution.

And while it still looks to some that chaos was the result, chaos that is still with us, this is surprisingly deceptive. That central role of Scripture as defining truth has another important aspect to it. Some things are both true and necessary – get them wrong and the consequences can be eternally disastrous. Deny them, and the outcome is likely to be as unpleasant. It is clear that Jesus is not just a great teacher or prophet, but God and man. As hard as this is to get our heads around, undermine, redefine or deny the truth of who Jesus is, relegate the truth of His life, death and resurrection to opinion, and the Gospel is emptied of its transforming relevance and power. This hypothesis has, as it happens, been tested in contemporary Europe (including the UK) and North America, and the results may be clearly observed. However, it is less clear whether it is necessary for Christians to meet at 10.30am every Sunday morning, sit in wooden pews and sing songs written prior to the nineteenth century only accompanied by a pipe organ. In the New Testament there is teaching about some of things we should do as Christians, and in some cases the way in which we should do them. But there is surprisingly little practical detail, leaving ample scope for a legitimate spectrum of practice. This has not prevented some Christians from falling out over details that Scripture simply does not supply.

John Newton, former trafficker in human slaves, writer of “Amazing Grace” and latterly Church of England vicar and rector wrote “If a man is born again, hates sin, and depends upon the Saviour for life and grace, I care not whether he is an Arminian or a Calvinist.” I think Newton puts it rather well. Essentially he was saying that we should keep the main things the main things, and not fall out over the other stuff. And this was the genius of the eighteen century revival and awakening. Even though there were fallings out, and the big one was the Calvinist/Arminian division between John Wesley and George Whitefield (the one referred to by Newton, and one that still exists today), there was an underlying unity in the Gospel. Even the division between Wesley and Whitefield should not be overstated; they found a way to work if not together then at least with a degree of harmony. Wesley famously preached Whitefield’s memorial sermon in 1770.

Of course there will always be a legitimate debate about what the main things actually are, and where the border really is between main and secondary issues. I think Newton summarises them well. There are primary issues, those necessary for salvation, and then there are secondary issues. We can debate these, and perhaps we should, but we should not be falling out about them. Because some have fallen out about them in the past, we find a range of different groups, and it can all look a bit messy. And yet I have always found so much in common with fellow believers in, and followers of Jesus, that there has always been a degree of unity for all to enjoy. This unity, based on God’s Word, is the sort of thing experienced at places like Keswick.

Keep the main things the main things and it turns out things are not as messy as they first appear.

Life in the pandemic XXVII Explaining stuff is hard…..

You might think that there are oh so many things that need explaining. We still don’t really know where the virus came from. There are lots of folk who think they can explain this, or at least want us to think they can. It’s all down to the malevolence of the Chinese Communist Party we are told. Even if the CCP did not release the virus deliberately, they were up to no good in a lab in Wuhan, got sloppy, and it escaped. The rest is history. Now this might be the correct explanation for what transpired. But it is fair to say that outside of the CCP no-one really knows, and of course it would naïve to expect the CCP to be particularly forthcoming. For their part they’ve been keen to push a counter-explanation suggesting that it is all a CIA plot to tarnish China. Closer to home with over 50% of the UK fully vaccinated (ie over 30M people have now had two doses of vaccine), there are still those who pop up on the news saying they will not be vaccinated because no one has explained to their satisfaction how the vaccines work, and how they can be sure that they are safe. And notwithstanding the success of the vaccination campaign in the UK, no one has yet explained to Dominic Cummings satisfaction how Matt Hancock managed to keep his job for so long. So many people, in search of so many explanations, for so many different things. Someone is going to be disappointed. And all of this is before you get to explaining really tricky stuff like why are we here? Why is there a “here” in the first place? Did God really do it or was there nothing to “do”? I’ve been giving some thought to explanations.

The first odd thing about them is that they are not always required. In fact, in contrast to where I began, they are only really required on the odd occasion. There are lots of things that all of us don’t need, and don’t expect, explanations for. Despite the heroic mathematical efforts of Newton and his successors, I don’t really need someone to explain gravity to me. The basics I get. If I step off of a tall building, nothing good will come of it. It’s not so much that I would be happy with absolutely any explanation for why I would plummet to the ground (what philosophers call “folk” explanations), it’s more that I don’t feel in need of any explanation at all. In fact, I’m so not interested in gravity, it’s only when it is somehow thwarted that my interest is peaked and I’m likely to go in search of an explanation. This is particularly the case when on the basis of that explanation I might consider taking some risk or other. So while I’m not particularly interested in gravity, I am interested in what keeps aeroplanes in the sky.

However, it is worth pointing out that even in this case my interest only goes so far. I suppose if I was really that bothered I would have done a degree in aeronautical engineering (I actually did a degree in Physiology and then a PhD in Neurobiology). So as I’ve pointed out before, what I actually do is put my trust (or to use another word my faith) in the people who did do their degrees in aeronautical engineering, and have designed safe aeroplanes. Of course I do this in the full knowledge that because designing and building aeroplanes is a human activity it will be flawed, along with other activities like fuelling, operating and maintaining aircraft. But in the absence of evidence that aeroplanes fall out of the sky every day (which they don’t), I’m prepared to fly and so defy gravity, if only in a well explained and therefore well understood way (at least in principle if not actually in personal fact).

It seems that I am prepared to accept as a good explanation one that provides either me, or people I trust, with some suitable level of understanding. And the level of understanding required is likely to vary depending on the extent to which I might be risking something if the explanation turns out to be wrong. Any explanation that is likely to satisfy me is likely to satisfy you provided that we are prepared to run the same risks, have the same priorities and are prepared to trust the same people. But this is where the trouble starts. The levels of risk we are prepared to take may be different for perfectly understandable reasons. The levels of trust we are prepared to place in different individuals, groups, bodies or authorities is also likely to vary. So while I might be prepared to accept a given explanation, you might not. And in all of this, I haven’t yet mentioned what we would both likely think is the most important criterion that should be applied to any explanation – the extent to which it actually is the true explanation for whatever it is we want to explain. That of course is assuming that true explanations are ever possible at all.

Given this it should come as no surprise that intelligent people disagree even about when something needs and explanation. In a famous BBC radio debate in 1948 on the existence of God between Frederick Copleston and Bertrand Russell, they couldn’t agree on whether an explanation was required for the existence of the universe. Copleston thought that the existence of the universe, that there is something rather than nothing, just cried out for an explanation. But Russell replied "The Universe is just there, and that's all there is". All other things being equal, there probably is no objective way to choose between these alternatives. But in this case all other things are not exactly equal. For most of human history, and in most of the world today, most human beings appear to have felt and appear to feel that there needs to be an explanation for the existence of something rather than nothing, and that the explanation is to be found in outside the material and the natural. Now even although this observation is data of a sort, it doesn’t mean that this feeling is an accurate guide as to how things really are. It all may be an illusion, perhaps a psychological by-product of our so-called “big brains”.

However, there is a Biblical explanation for this intuition that there is something more going on than the stuff we can see, hear, touch, smell and feel.  According to Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has put eternity into man’s heart” – it’s designed in, by a God who is there. Add to that inner intuition the external self-revelation of God through the created order of things (the “sort” of universe we find ourselves in), the specific revelation of God in the Bible, and the (admittedly fallible) experience of many thousand if not millions of believers over centuries. This points me to not just the existence of an explanation for who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re headed, but to what that explanation is. It seems to me that while explaining even hard stuff is hard, it is not impossible.