Are You Experienced?
Our Dean, Frank Limehouse, preached a great sermon this Sunday on objective truth vs. subjective experience. The text was 2 Peter 1:13-21. He spoke about how little satisfaction there is in a Christian offering himself (and his changed life) up as proof of the existence of God. Christianity is based on historical facts, eyewitness accounts, and objective truth.
This line of thinking led me to another train of thought. Now, my seminary friends pretty much know that I do not waste a lot of thought on the revisionist side of the Episcopal Church. It’s just not worth spending a lot of time on because these folks have drilled a hole in the bottom of their
boat and it is sinking (slowly because of their massive endowments). I am much more interested in the doctrine of man and justification by faith as it is taught by Scripture. I will break with this pattern just this once on this little entry.
It is astounding to me that the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church can sit there and say that there is no proof for the divinity of Christ, His exclusive claims, the authority of Scripture, and the like. Then she (an oceanographer, a scientist!) can trot out and pray to the mother goddess! Don’t tell me “mother Jesus” and the “mother goddess” are not the same thing. If you think I am overreacting, go look at the communion service ECUSA put up a couple of years ago to celebrate said mother goddess. Reason has been replaced by experience on the revisionist side (there is no reason whatsoever in believing in a mother goddess or the “spirit of the deep river” as the Bishop of California likes to say). Where does this come from?
In his Dean’s Class Sunday, Frank correctly pointed out that Friedrich Schleiermacher is the father of all this nonsense. He was heavily influenced by the thinking (or feeling, rather) of the Romantic period. The people we normally associate with this school of thought are Emerson, Thoreau, and Rousseau. They basically threw out orthodox Christianity for the worship of nature (more or less). Rousseau was famous for rowing his boat out in the middle of a lake and announcing, “Nature is my god.” He was obviously struck by the beauty and majesty of nature in appearance and experience. The same goes for Emerson and Thoreau in different ways.
Now what Rousseau either did not realize or chose to gloss over was that right below him in the lake, a largemouth bass was eating a small, defenseless minnow alive. I guarantee you that little minnow was not saying, “Nature is my god” at that moment. He was too busy being digested. Now, what am I saying? Here is one more piece of information to chew on. One thing the Romantics/revisionists will not tell you is that the Marquis de Sade was also a Romantic. Wow!
The Marquis de Sade certainly didn’t make the film “Dead Poets Society” (which I liked, by the way). Why not? It is because that is the other side of nature. That is the dominant side of nature, if you will. Yes, nature is beautiful. It is also “raven with tooth and claw” (to quote Les Fairfield who was quoting someone else) and seeks to devour in order to stay alive. Yes, a sunset on the beach is beautiful. Jump in the water about three miles out and there will be an animal three times your size that would be happy to eat you.
Karl Barth realized this when he made his conversion from liberalism to orthodoxy. His liberal theology had no answer for the bloodletting that was World War I. Orthodox Christianity does. We are fallen people in a fallen world, following the devices of our own “belly” (as Martin Luther said). In order to project ourselves, we trample over each other and then find out it was all in vain. We need a new creation. We need to be a new creation. We need a savior.
This line of thinking led me to another train of thought. Now, my seminary friends pretty much know that I do not waste a lot of thought on the revisionist side of the Episcopal Church. It’s just not worth spending a lot of time on because these folks have drilled a hole in the bottom of their
boat and it is sinking (slowly because of their massive endowments). I am much more interested in the doctrine of man and justification by faith as it is taught by Scripture. I will break with this pattern just this once on this little entry.It is astounding to me that the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church can sit there and say that there is no proof for the divinity of Christ, His exclusive claims, the authority of Scripture, and the like. Then she (an oceanographer, a scientist!) can trot out and pray to the mother goddess! Don’t tell me “mother Jesus” and the “mother goddess” are not the same thing. If you think I am overreacting, go look at the communion service ECUSA put up a couple of years ago to celebrate said mother goddess. Reason has been replaced by experience on the revisionist side (there is no reason whatsoever in believing in a mother goddess or the “spirit of the deep river” as the Bishop of California likes to say). Where does this come from?
In his Dean’s Class Sunday, Frank correctly pointed out that Friedrich Schleiermacher is the father of all this nonsense. He was heavily influenced by the thinking (or feeling, rather) of the Romantic period. The people we normally associate with this school of thought are Emerson, Thoreau, and Rousseau. They basically threw out orthodox Christianity for the worship of nature (more or less). Rousseau was famous for rowing his boat out in the middle of a lake and announcing, “Nature is my god.” He was obviously struck by the beauty and majesty of nature in appearance and experience. The same goes for Emerson and Thoreau in different ways.
Now what Rousseau either did not realize or chose to gloss over was that right below him in the lake, a largemouth bass was eating a small, defenseless minnow alive. I guarantee you that little minnow was not saying, “Nature is my god” at that moment. He was too busy being digested. Now, what am I saying? Here is one more piece of information to chew on. One thing the Romantics/revisionists will not tell you is that the Marquis de Sade was also a Romantic. Wow!
The Marquis de Sade certainly didn’t make the film “Dead Poets Society” (which I liked, by the way). Why not? It is because that is the other side of nature. That is the dominant side of nature, if you will. Yes, nature is beautiful. It is also “raven with tooth and claw” (to quote Les Fairfield who was quoting someone else) and seeks to devour in order to stay alive. Yes, a sunset on the beach is beautiful. Jump in the water about three miles out and there will be an animal three times your size that would be happy to eat you.Karl Barth realized this when he made his conversion from liberalism to orthodoxy. His liberal theology had no answer for the bloodletting that was World War I. Orthodox Christianity does. We are fallen people in a fallen world, following the devices of our own “belly” (as Martin Luther said). In order to project ourselves, we trample over each other and then find out it was all in vain. We need a new creation. We need to be a new creation. We need a savior.
posted by David Browder at 8/07/2006 04:11:00 PM
6 Comments:
Peace on Earth...
Very different view of the lion and the lamb after this blog.
It is impossible to disagree with a single word you have said here, David. It is a turning away from reason applied to Scripture which is leading TEC ever further from the light of the Truth and ever further into the darkness of the human heart as it interprets its own experiences.
And, yet, what you have said here sparks a parallel observation which I have previously found myself unable to express in words. The following may sound as if it is written in arrogant assurance, but it is actually a first stumbling attempt to say something which seems to me to need saying.
Reason, the very thing which allows the Scriptures to speak to us over the gibberish broadcast by our hearts, must first fail us and we must experience this failure before we can admit that, unaided, it can bring us only “the wisdom of the wise” and the “cleverness of the clever.” It is, I think, experience and not reason which first denies salvation through works and teaches, instead, salvation through Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
First, we must have our reliance on our own reasoning stripped away to be replaced by reliance on something no human reason could ever devise, a God who brings us life even in our death, the death which is a rejection of him. “To whom shall we go?” must precede the reasoned recognition through study of Scripture that “You have the words of eternal life.” “We have believed” must come before “we have come to know” in our declaration that Jesus Christ is “the Holy One of God.”
Let us have faith in the Scriptures as containing “all things necessary” and nothing magical, and let us also have faith in the impossible, unreasonable, paradoxical failure of all our reason as we experience our inability to do what we want and to refrain from what we don’t want. Following our hearts' experience is as purposeless as following the fluttering of a leaf in the wind, but it is experience which first brings us to the true guide, the Spermatogos Logos, the very Seed of Reason.
Walter, this is utterly true and I do not disagree with a single thing you said.
I think you are describing an experience that has been informed by a) a high view of Scripture and b) the "sub contrario" theology of the cross.
When I think of "experience" as being at the top of the totem pole as it relates to Scripture, tradition, and reason, I am most pointedly thinking of the Romantics and their influence on liberal (revisionist) theology.
The experience that comes to my mind is the "spritual" person who discards Scripture as truth. This would be Jack Sprat standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, seeing real majesty, and translating that into a spiritual experience. This is the essence of Wicca, or mother goddess stuff.
My view that whole thing is that Romanticism, revisionist hooey, and all of that really amount to anesthesia for the hard edges of nihilism. If one truly does not believe in the resurrection of Christ, then, logically, all other religion is pure speculation. It is anesthesia to make one feel better.
Nietzche at least followed his line of thought with integrity, swallowed the whole loaf of the hard edges of nihilism, and went insane. Romanticism and revisionist theology wants to soften the blow, but they cannot do it. It makes no sense at all.
I totally agree with your view of experience as it relates to the Christian. I don't think I have ever seen it expressed more eloquently either.
David,
I really like the way you wrote this piece. You don't waste a word. . . it's just gospel. . . and I do believe a lot of the Episcopal church has lost its original purpose in justifying faith by feeling. The current bishop of California was my high school chaplain. You can talk about sunsets and flowers all you want. . . but in that real moment of despair. .weakness. . pain. . . that pretty waterfall just doesn't cut it. Christ is real through His suffering and IN his cruxification. I don't pray to a guy that can make life happy. I pray to a savior. . . bloody, mutilated, horrific. . .that loves me unconditionally inspite of myself. Frances
Frances, you hit the nail on the head. That is the gospel and it includes all the hard edges and rusty nails. Not only to be loved in spite of that, but to be dragged kicking and screaming to life.
Well said!
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