Thinking Faith blogs

Richard Vytniorgu offers an alternative perspective on scholarly freedom:

Alicia Smith’s recent blog posts on Rilke and Scholarly work under God affirm the importance of academics’ work. But they prompt me to ask some questions. Alicia’s language is saturated by an emphasis on the ‘sovereignty’ of God. She speaks of ‘working under the supreme agency of God in the world’, that God is an ‘omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Being’ who ‘faces no restrictions’. Moreover, we as researchers seem called to ‘work under God’ and to ‘work in his laws […] the given norms of divinely created and sustained reality’. This makes me feel rather sat upon, reckoning with my contingent, ‘time-bound’ existence. Simply put, in this vision I am God’s handmaiden responding submissively, ‘Be it unto me’.

But I wonder how fruitful this view is. Firstly, I remind myself that God is a personal Trinity – that each person in the Trinity is a person in communion with the others, each with his special role. Christ – the God-man – is the person who reveals the Father to the human race and his Church is made up of those connected to the Head, who are becoming transfigured, revealing the divine to creation at the same time as revealing the human to the divine.

Creation was not finished at the first Sabbath; it is an ongoing project in which humans use their freedom either to work towards the realisation of the Kingdom of God, or to return themselves and the rest of Creation to nothingness. The Gospel is so radical because it asks that humans realise their full humanity by recovering their connection to the divine – to the one who has actually defeated death and promises a resurrection. As the Russian religious thinker Nikolai Berdyaev wrote in The Destiny of Man (1931): ‘God longs for His “other”, His friend; He wants him to answer the call to enter the fullness of the divine life and participate in God’s creative work of conquering non-being. God does not answer his own call’.

Importantly, when we turn to God and work with him in the transfiguration of the world, we are coming into contact with a personal Trinity – a God who has an inner emotional life, an inward movement towards his beloved (mankind): ‘Men are afraid to ascribe to Him inner conflict and tragedy characteristic of all life’, wrote Berdyaev, ‘but have no hesitation in ascribing to Him anger, jealousy, vengeance and other affective states which, in man, are regarded as reprehensible’. Like Berdyaev, I am puzzled by some of the attributes for which God is traditionally lauded: ‘Self-satisfaction, self-sufficiency, stony immobility, pride, the demand for continual submission are qualities which the Christian religion considers vicious and sinful, though it calmly ascribes them to God’.

The point of articulating this discrepancy is that creativity – what we engage in as academics (including scientists) – is something more radical than sliding into the grooves of pre-ordained ‘norms’ or ‘laws’. Indeed, personally I have my doubts about the very existence of such things, which seem to me to derive more from Enlightenment modernity than the Gospels.

Creativity is radically new only because it is radically personal: it develops out of a human’s transformational divine image, and is therefore a process, just as personality is also a process. All of us hope that the work we do will be considered of the gold and precious stones variety rather than hay and rubbish to be thrown on a fire. But I would argue that the only way we will create such work is by responding freely to God’s call to co-create with him (not for him), knowing that when we do so, we are bringing joy to a God who yearns to understand and love his creation as it unfolds new developments which will enter eternal life.

The Christian faith is either beset or bejewelled with paradoxes, depending on your perspective. Working under a sovereign God sounds very much like working under Caesar, and indeed, emphasis on the ‘sovereignty of God’ stems from a Roman interpretation of Christianity; it is less known among Eastern Christians. Yes, God has ‘control’ over all he made. But let’s be careful what we ‘do’ with this truth. We must remember that God’s eternal plan was always to reveal himself as the self-sacrificing one, who liberates his creation from slavery to sin and folds creatures into his sobornost (community) of transfiguring human beings. His ‘yearning’ is for this free response among us, to bring our own gifts to the great work of ongoing personal creation.

In my own work, how am I going to dignify the Triune God with a free response to his call to co-create with him as one connected to the God-man? How am I going to give joy to my yearning God?

Richard Vytniorgu is a PhD candidate in English Literature at De Montfort University with Midlands3Cities (AHRC). You can find him at www.richardvytniorgu.com.

Rudi Hayward reviews A Shot of Faith to the Head.

I have a lot of enthusiasm for this book, which contains a lot of philosophy in a popular and accessible way.  It is a response to the ‘new atheism' but not in a defensive mode; rather, Mitch Stokes takes the most common criticisms of Christianity and turns them against atheism.  The criticisms are that belief in God is irrational because lacking in evidence, that science has shown there is no God and that the existence of evil and suffering contradicts belief in a loving God.  These criticisms are dealt with in the three main sections that make up the bulk of the book – a short intermission on the rules of argument in chapters 8-10 making up the rest.

Stokes is a professional philosopher who studied under Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga, well-regarded philosophers who have spearheaded a renaissance of professing Christians in academic philosophy.  Plantinga's influence, especially, is evident throughout the book.  However this is very much a popular book with short chapters and punchy prose.

On the first objection Stokes begins by arguing that public evidence is not always necessary for us to hold a belief rationally (not only is it hard to see what evidence we have to support the belief that evidence is necessary, but there's plenty of evidence that many of our beliefs are largely held on trust).  Now, the Christian has a ready account as to why we should trust our usual belief-forming mechanisms with or without public evidence, but the atheist's reliance on an evolutionary account of our cognitive abilities leads us into deep trouble.  So what at first looked a serious criticism of Christianity turns into a major headache for the atheist.

A similar pattern emerges with the science-verses-God objection. It turns out, among other things, that Galileo was a Christian attacking Aristotle, that the 'God of the gaps' is a recent invention and quite unappealing to orthodox Christian views of God, that explanations like: "that’s just how it is" and "maybe this is just one of billions of universes" are no better than "God did it", and that the natural sciences imply naturalism is wrong.

Finally Stokes takes on the problem of evil.  He reviews and responds to both the “logical” and “probabilistic” versions before again turning the tables.  Atheists, the new ones especially, tend to say things like “We are nothing but matter,” and ”Humans are the end result of the random and unguided mechanisms of natural selection”.  Such views undermine our usual sense that such things as rape, torture, genocide, etc. are unconditionally wrong whatever people may happen to think or whatever values we may have evolved to hold.  He concludes that a naturalistic explanation for moral obligation is impossible.  So the fact that we recognize the existence of evil turns out to count against atheism.

This is a very good book, but in a few places it fell short.  Here are two of them.

1. The sensus divinitatis (an innate sense of the divine) is said to be part of humans' ordinary belief-forming mechanism except many people don’t believe in God because it has gone wrong.  On Stokes' account the problem is that sin has damaged this sense so that it partially works for some and fails altogether for others.  However Stokes also mentions that atheists could still be responding to the faint whispers of their sensus divinitatis when they posit an ultimate natural principle.  It is a real shame that he does not take this suggestion seriously here, since it is close to what Paul seems to imply in Romans 1:25.  The biblical position is not so much that the sensus divinitatis is damaged, rather that it is misdirected.  The atheist may deny the existence of God, but at some point they will end up giving divine status to something created.
2. This becomes more important when Stokes turns to mathematics as a problem for naturalists.  He speaks rather warmly of Pythagoras and his religious attachment to numbers.  Here we should recognize an example of the sensus divinitatis being misdirected!  This is a typically pagan belief in the divinity of something created rather than the Creator - so it is disconcerting when Stokes tries to accommodate this faith in maths with belief in God when he takes numbers to be part of God, even identical to God's intellect.

These concerns aside, A Shot of Faith to the Head is well worth a read.

Stokes, Mitch: A Shot of Faith to the Head: Be a confident believer in an age of cranky atheists (Thomas Nelson, 2012)

Rudi Hayward teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at a secondary school in London. 20 years ago he read Francis Schaeffer and decided to study philosophy at university. He plays football regularly and badly, and is his local church’s leading expert in reformational philosophy.

He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: "Listen! ..."

Mark 4:2

Give ear and hear my voice; Listen and hear my words.

Isaiah 28:23

For Christians pursuing academic careers, listening constitutes a spiritual task. As researchers, we are called to understand a broken and complex world. We are also expected to answer difficult questions. The two are linked: our ability to listen properly will mediate our capacity to provide meaningful insights into the world’s issues. Here, I understand listening not simply as the immediate capacity of hearing others, but also an awareness and openness to broader relevant issues (including the pressing questions in our own research field). The ability to listen properly will enable us not only to untie the complexities of our own subjects but also to discern God’s wisdom on contemporary issues. The British theologian John Stott stresses that

we are called to the difficult and even painful task of ‘double listening’. That is, we are to listen carefully (although of course with differing degrees of respect) both to the ancient Word and to the modern world, in order to relate the one to the other with a combination of fidelity and sensitivity.

(1992, p13)

I believe that “double listening” is a task for Christian scholars. We are called to be sensitive to modern issues while preserving our attention and obedience to God’s word. Here I will focus on the importance of listening to the world’s issues with love and sensitivity, and in a subsequent post I plan to address the need to listen to God’s Word.

The ability to listen to people’s voices is a biblical mandate. From the beginning of the biblical narrative, God is presented as someone who hears people’s cries for help and is deeply attentive to the world’s problems. In the context of slavery and oppression:

The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering."

(Exodus 3:7; see also Genesis 18:20-21; Psalm 34)

There are even warnings against shutting our ears to people’s cries. “He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered” (Proverbs 21:23). Listening was also a significant aspect of Jesus’ ministry. He heard the cry of the poor, women, children, the mentally ill, and the wrongdoer. In one instance, He asked a blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51), revealing a deep interest in the man’s life story, hopes and problems. He considered critically the present issues of his time and showed compassion, love and sensitivity. As he once said, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

I believe these are strong reasons for adopting a more sensitive approach to listening in our own research. This can take diverse forms: we may develop research questions that will enable the participants (or those who will benefit from our study) to voice their concerns and expectations. We may also need to be deliberate about asking whose voices we are privileging and whose we are ignoring. Like Jesus’ ministry, empathy should permeate our relationships with research participants, colleagues, and the public.

At the same time, Jesus regularly withdrew to listen to the words of his Father (see Mark 1:35; Luke 6:12-13). We are also called to be like him in both ways. My experience of doing a PhD in social psychology has taught me much about the need to listen to people’s voices on relevant societal issues. Listening to cries for justice, equal opportunities, adequate health and social care is paramount, particularly in a world of superficial interactions and noise in which many voices are systematically drowned out. For instance, in my own research, I explored older adults’ views on well-being in later life, particularly in community settings, and realised that this group has been consistently overlooked in policy campaigns and frameworks of care. Their voices are hardly heard!

Progressively, I became aware that listening to their concerns would be a spiritual task. Their views, experiences and hopes would be venues for spiritual, political, and psychological change.

Finally, John Stott (1992) highlights that

[Double listening] is the faculty of listening to two voices at the same time, the voice of God through Scripture and the voices of men and women around us. These voices will often contradict one another, but our purpose in listening to them both is to discover how they relate to each other. Double listening is indispensable to Christian discipleship and to Christian mission.

(p29)

I believe (double) listening is also indispensable to Christian scholars. In the context of academia, it may enable us to tackle relevant issues in a creative and transformative way.

Thanks to my friend Jess Hope (PhD student in History, University of Cambridge) for proofreading and for helping me to think more deeply about double listening in research.

Reference

Stott, John (1992). The contemporary Christian: an urgent plea for double listening. Leicester: Intervarsity Press.

Bruno Medeiros recently completed his PhD in psychology at the University of Cambridge. Originally from Paraíba in Brazil, he is interested in the social psychology of health and community.