Category Archives: christianity

“Top Down” and “Bottom Up” Christianity

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Catholic, christianity

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There are many reasons that people believe and trust in God, and I don’t mean to try to address all of them.  But I have come to see some general distinctions in why Christians have faith.   One general way is what I consider a top down Christian who believes for reasons along the lines of: “The bible (or the Church) is inerrant and it says this, so I believe it.”

I have no quarrel with such a view.  However I don’t think those with this view will be particularly helpful in explaining to non-believers why they might also believe.  Non-believers generally don’t start out with the premise that the bible or the Church is inerrant.

Then there are what I would call bottom up Christians.  Descartes I believe is a very good example.  It is the process he goes through to believe in God that I am referring to.  That is, he asked himself fundamental yet difficult questions about his world and his existence and how he could make sense of it.  This led him to believe in God.

Now this distinction is not a very neat one.  Because even if you are bottom up you usually come to give authority to the Church and/or the Bible.  After all are you really a Christian if you don’t give any weight to what we know of Christ and his Church?   Also the top downers usually will have some reasons to believe other than the inerrancy of the bible and/or the church.  So there definitely is overlap in everyone.

I consider myself more of a bottom up Christian.  My reasons for belief in Christ have much more to do with my desire to fundamentally pursue the ethically correct course.  It was through the consideration of what that would mean (meta-ethics) and how I can accomplish that end that supports my belief that Christianity is the way.

Now some might say – that it’s more likely that I am Catholic because I was raised Catholic.  And although I think my philosophical views support Catholicism this is just in my head.  They would say that if I didn’t have this philosophical belief to support my faith then I would just rationalize my faith some other way.  I honestly can’t answer that.   It is hard to answer such counter-factuals.

However I can say that because of my “bottom up” justification I am not so concerned with several of the issues of Christian doctrine that have no bearing on why I am Christian.  These same issues seem to deeply trouble many other Christians.   If there were to be a divide between bottom up and top down Christians, I would say it centers on inerrancy.

By “inerrancy” I think I can refer to both the inerrancy (usually called infallibility) of the Church and the inerrancy of scripture.   For Catholics the inerrancy issue centers on the church and scripture.  For Protestants it centers on scripture.  How important that is to you is a big indicator to me of whether you are a “top down” or “bottom up” Christian.

Let’s consider scripture first.  For Catholics the second Vatican Council said in the Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum)

“The Books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.”

Now for the most part bottom up Christians are fine with understanding “…for the sake of our salvation” to mean if it has nothing to do with our salvation it might contain an error.  So for example if the bible says rabbits chew the cud, or quotes Jesus saying the mustard seed is the smallest seed, this is not going to be something we feel we need to investigate and defend.   It’s hard to see how the veracity of these issues has anything to do with our salvation.

No doubt many top down Christians will be startled by my saying “might contain an error”.   I have read/heard many times arguments along these lines:

  • If the bible is wrong in one place how can we trust it in other places?

As to this argument, I can only shrug.  I suppose the bible could be wrong in other places.  But I believe that scripture teaches “firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.”  And that is really the point right?  God seems not to have much of an interest on whether I get every minute and trivial detail of history or science exactly right.  Otherwise he would have spent more time teaching history and science instead of ethics when he was here on earth.

Moreover, I read other books and learn allot from them even if they get some things wrong.  Why should I refuse to read or learn from the books of the bible if they get some things wrong?   This is the same attitude I take with the Fathers of the Church and Saints.   Reading them can enrich my life and faith even if they do get some things wrong.   Do I put more trust in the books of the bible and the teaching of the magisterium?  Sure.  But it can still be a spectrum.

The other argument that usually gets trotted out goes something like this:

  • God knows what is true and false and the bible is inspired, so why would God lie?

Here I just have a different notion of “inspired.”  Some Christians treat inspired as if there effectively was no human part to the writing.  We can imagine the authors of the various books being unable to control their hand as it writes the books of the bible.  Their intellect (or lack thereof) would play no part.   That’s not how I see “inspiration” at all.  I see inspiration more along a spectrum of the common understanding.   Such as this story was inspired by my grandfather. Etc.  OK, I think there was more to inspiration (“God breathed”) than that, when it comes to scripture but it needs to move further in that direction than some sort of uncontrolled hand.  Would God have allowed the human author to make a mistake about something irrelevant to our salvation?  I see no reason to think he would guard against it.

As a Catholic I also believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church.  Might the church make some mistakes?  Sure.  That doesn’t mean that following the Church is not the best way to living a good life and salvation.

At this point some will say I am a cafeteria Catholic when it comes to the Church and a cafeteria Christian when it comes to the bible.  They will say I just take what I like and listen when I want.  I disagree.

It is not I like a reject any particular teaching.   I have a hunch that some things the Catholic Church teaches about mortal sin are wrong.  But it is not like I have some big issue with any of the politically hot button issues.  I also don’t have a particular part of scripture that I think must be wrong although I suspect there are some errors.  But these errors are by and large in minor details.

So it’s not the case that I am only Catholic when it suits me.  I really have no problem saying I should try to live by Church teachings and never completely discount any scripture as to how I should act as merely mistaken.  Although I do interpret Old Testament scripture in light of Christ’s Teachings and admit there is certainly friction.

Just because I hold open the possibility that the Church or Scripture might get some things wrong from time to time that does not mean that I don’t hold them up as the most important authorities for how I should live.       It does mean that I will spend less time worrying about whether rabbits chew the cud, or what some convoluted Old Testament passage is supposed to mean.   Plenty of Saints have made it through life without ever a care about these issues that seem to keep so many people from embracing the faith.    Letting go of the minutia will leave more time to focus on what the Scriptures and the Church have rather clearly asked me to focus on.    Trying to strengthen my faith in Christ so I can follow him and be more loving, honest, hopeful, and charitable.

The Way

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in atheism, christianity, history

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Some might wonder why I keep talking about morality in relation to apologetics. For many Christianity is a set of beliefs. For me Christianity is a way of life. Yes our beliefs are important and even necessary in this way of life but that is not all there is to it – not by a long shot. According to the bible, the earliest followers of Christ were known as followers of “the way.” Acts 18:26; 19:9, 19:23; 22:4; 24:14, 24:22.

This description fits quite naturally with my understanding of what it means to be Christian. Accordingly when someone says they are no longer going to follow “the way” (i.e., they are not going to be Christian) it seems a natural question to then ask – well then what way will you live? Indeed when I strongly questioned whether I would remain Christian this was the question that seemed to come to the fore. How then should I live and on what basis will I choose that life?

When I looked at how I formed my moral beliefs in as dispassionate way as possible, I understood that ultimately it was my emotions that were primarily involved, not the reasoning process, or our empirical senses. Science combines reason and our empirical senses and effectively finds truth about reality. But that is not how our moral beliefs are primarily formed. In the next blog I will give further reasons and evidence for this view. For now suffice it to say that I realized that if our moral beliefs were to be reliable, in any real sense, then something beyond natural processes must have a hand in forming them.

But here I want to stress that Christianity had much more to do with being a basis for my moral beliefs, rather than any belief about science. After all, where do we get the idea that Jesus was so concerned with scientific teaching? If the Son of God was so concerned with science and came down to make sure we understood it, wouldn’t we expect to have iphones at least by the 1980s? If the Holy Spirit was inspiring people to write books with the aim of teaching science wouldn’t we expect far fewer computer crashes then we have?

Yet when I read so many blogs of people who left Christianity I see allot of talk about science. It struck me as quite bizarre. Moreover, when I bring up morality they seem to think that has no bearing on their decision. They seemed to think I was just as bizarre for raising, that issue and not talking about science. Finally in reading many of the books, comments, and blogs from those who deconverted I also see a presumption that they thought they were really “hard core Christians.” And what that meant is that they studied the bible – every bit – and they took every bit of it literally.

So for example Bart Ehrman talks about how he had studied at the Moody Bible Institute, but then started to lose his faith after agonizing over whether the mustard seed was truly the smallest seed. At first I had real difficulty understanding how anyone could think that is such a fundamental part of Christianity that they would lose their faith over it.

But I have spent time studying Christian history and these sorts of views make more sense. Let me piece together the logic as I see it. We have Martin Luther who eventually found that his views could not even be supported by prior church councils. So he retreated to the bible alone. Now from the Catholic view he actually even had to trim some of the Old Testament, but there are various arguments on both side of that debate. He *may* even have wanted to trim even some of the new testament books, or at least he de-emphasized some of them. See for example his prefaces to James, Jude, and revelation in his 1522 translation of the New Testament.

But in any case he started the belief that Scripture alone was the sole authority in matters of Christianity. This belief took hold Protestant Christians. For many Protestant Christians they insert this view into their very basic creeds and understandings what Christianity is. Rejecting this view, like the non protestant churches do, is often viewed as making them non-Christian.

The results of scripture alone should not be surprising. Even before Luther died not only was the Pope the anti-christ for disagreeing with him but even other protestants like Zwingli were accused of being guided by the devil in their faulty interpretation of scripture. See eg., http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=30081

The differing interpretations continued to happen. And over time we see the Protestant Christians who adhere to Scripture alone being divided and re-divided, how many times? With the rise of non-denominational churches it is difficult to even know. After all they hold certain beliefs but how they might differ from other “non-denominational” churches is difficult to calculate. Now one might not see this as a problem. But scripture itself seems to suggest this division is indeed a problem.

So something should be done. But what? Fast forward centuries and we get a potential solution. It seems like a sensible solution to say every part of the bible should be viewed as equally important for our salvation as any other part. After all there is no authority outside the bible that can tell us this or that part is more important or deserving of focus. But that is only part of the problem. The other problem is not so much a question of emphasis but one of interpretation. Zwingli thought the same words meant something different with respect to the Eucharist. He read them symbolically not literally.

How should that be addressed? Well the most common way to understand something is usually in a literal sense. Therefore to avoid these divisions we should read all of the bible in this sense. Hence we have the literalists who can claim a certain high ground among denominations. Everyone else is deemed to be less “hard core” Christian because they are shying away from accepting the bible. They are reading this or that passage symbolically because they lack faith and refuse to accept what the Holy Spirit is really saying in the most common sense way i.e., literal way.

Now the point is *not* to say that Catholics are right and people should reject “scripture alone” just like I do. Rather the point is to draw out the logic of this position precisely so that it can be analyzed and hopefully shown to be lacking. Does unity mean complete unity on all questions or just relevant ones? Does not the bible itself suggest that emphasis is on certain of its passages as opposed to others? My point to Christians is that you should reject the line of thinking I set out and find the holes yourself.

Have faith in your own church that meets in Christ’s name and is therefore guided by the Holy Spirit. I place faith in the Lutheran Church by sending my children to a Lutheran School. I believe very much that the Holy Spirit guides the Lutheran Church in teaching my children Christianity. I think the Lutheran church does have a tradition and an important one.

At base I want to point out this line of thinking so you can pinpoint for yourself where the reasoning breaks down. By clearly identifying the problem you will be spared the road that leads to your faith hinging on your beliefs about the relative size of seeds.

As for some atheists who might think they were “hard core” Christians because they accepted this literalist view, and therefore ultimately rejected your faith due to science, my point is different. Maybe consider it’s at least possible, you never really understood the “core” of Christianity. Perhaps, you missed the forest for the trees.