theology

There are some things in what he says that I really like.  There are some things that cause a certain unsettling feeling.  What do you think?

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I have recently come to hear William Chillingworth’s famous statement, “The Bible alone is the religion of Protestants.” Can Protestants agree with this statement? It is difficult to answer this question at face value, for what is needed is a definition of terms before one can conclude in agreement or disagreement.

First, what does the “Bible alone” mean? For the Bible is never alone, in that an interpretation must always be made. With regard to the general Protestant era (Luther up to the present), we have a variety of ways to interpret the Bible. Do we interpret as Luther did with differentiating between the literal and historical and the spiritual and prophetic? Or do we side with Zwingli and attempt to find a natural sense of Scripture? Or should we use modern rational approach, historical approach, sociological approach, or literary approach? Whichever way one goes, there is always an interpretation of the Bible to go along with the words of the Bible. While unlikely, if the by the “Bible alone,” interpretation of the Bible is to be included, we must then look at the next term: “religion.”

So what of this term? Is by religion meant the works of man to merit the righteousness of God? Or is it meant the structure of the Christian faith that the Protestants have built? Or is it simply the faith of Christ followers? If by “religion” is meant the faith of Christ followers, then to answer our question we still have one more term to examine: “Protestant.”

It is historically plain to see that there is no one “Protestant” faith or religion. If the mainstream Reformation wing is meant, then one can find tradition (as in the traditional method of interpretation), reason (as in the basic human faculty of thinking), and experience (as in theology interpreting our inner experience) all impact the faith of Christ followers. Only in the radical wing of the Protestant reformation do you find a total rejection of tradition.

It seems then the only way Protestants can agree with this statement is to define the Bible alone to include its interpretation, religion to simply mean the faith of Christ followers, and Protestant to mean those denominations derived from the radical wing of the Reformation. Otherwise the Bible alone is not the religion of the Protestants.

The question of gaining knowledge about God is an ancient one. Is there a god? Can we know about him/her/it? How can we know about him/her/it? What is he/she/it like? All these and more are questions which people have sought to answer for years. One small wave of discussion in the ocean of conversation concerning this topic is the idea that shared experience of all humankind leads us to a knowledge of God. Is there a shared experience among all humans that gives us common ground upon which to stand? Is there something that we all have in common that links humanity and forms a foundation upon which we can build our knowledge of God?

Augustine seemed to argue that indeed there was such a common ground. This common ground is our shared experience of frustration with the world. Things ought not to be as they are. We cannot put our finger directly on it, but we know there is something missing. This is summed up with his famous quote, (speaking to God) “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Karl Barth, similarly ,points to conscience as that shared experience among all men which brings us to knowledge of the righteousness of God. He argues in the opening of his work The Word of God and The Word of Man that such knowledge cannot come through our reasoning alone, nor can it come by communication from one man to another, but instead it is found seated in the depths of man’s conscience. All men have the experience of conscience, thus it appears (at face value at least) that this experience is common among men and able to give us knowledge of God.

Yet Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of such an idea of shared experience challenges well this notion. Is this idea of conscience, or frustration and longing for fulfillment simply human awareness of itself and nothing more? Has anyone really spoken about God, or was it simply a projection of our own thoughts and fears?

So does shared experience lead to any common ground upon which we can find knowledge of God? Is this the right starting point for knowledge of God, the wrong starting point, do we need a starting point or can we obtain a starting point? What do you think?