By: Dr. Lothar Schwabe
I once taught a course on Interpersonal Communication to people who worked in the field of information technology. Somehow we started talking about marriage. It was startling to hear how many participants had difficulties in their marriage relationships or had even experienced divorce. more
----
October 14, 2007
Technology, Thinking, and Theology
Dr. Lothar Schwabe
TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCES HOW WE USE OUR BRAIN
I once taught a course on Interpersonal Communication to people who worked in the field of information technology. Somehow we started talking about marriage. It was startling to hear how many participants had difficulties in their marriage relationships or had even experienced divorce. Even though this was only a small sample and based on anecdotal evidence, it nonetheless made me wonder. Was there a connection between the type of work they did and their relationships to their spouses?
Does technology influence behavior? Does our interaction with the technology we use influence the way we think and subsequently behave? Can people develop a case of technitis which inhibits their capacity to relate?
It has been noted that children who spend much time at computer games and less time at play with other children are impeded in the development of their social skills.
An intensive interaction with a technology that requires exclusively left-brainish, logical, and sequential thinking patterns can lead to a predominant use of left-brainish thinking in areas of life that require a different approach.
If we work in such a technological environment that predominantly uses left-brainish thinking patterns then we can be influenced to process all of life’s experiences accordingly. All social relationships may then be subjected to analytical scrutiny. Some married couples adjust to a relationship in which everything has to be “worked out” through reasoning. Others get tired of endless arguing. A healthy relationship uses both right-brainish thinking (the heart) as well as left-brainish thinking (the head) in an interactive way.
There are cultures that have maintained an appreciation of a right-brainish relationship orientation. Our western culture has had a strong preference for left-brainish rational and linear thinking since humanism became the accepted philosophy. The impact of technologies that require a high degree of logical thinking has only amplified the problem of a neglect of relational skills.
Tragically, a society that has lost its capacity to process relationships on the right side of the brain and uses the left side of the brain for what it is not designed to be used, experiences a relational meltdown.
We must admit that the best of left-brainish thinking has not prevented our world from plunging into an environmental disaster. Reason has not prevented our society from plunging into a host of social problems.
Drug education courses in our schools have not solved that huge social problem. If reason alone is such a reliable instrument then why do we still have sexual transmitted diseases? Not every lawyer is more law abiding than other people just because of the knowledge of the law. It cannot be said that all health professionals lead a healthy lifestyle because they have the knowledge to make the right lifestyle decisions. Nor are priests and ministers prevented from committing acts that clearly go against what they know to be wrong.
It takes more than reasoning and logical arguments to produce desirable behaviors.
We have good reasons to be critical of a culture that declares values to be a personal option and that dismisses the validity of faith in God who prescribes values through the Ten Commandments.
God has given us the capacity to act in a rational way through the use of the left hemisphere of the brain. God has also given us the capacity to have faith and to love, feel, trust, and to relate to others through the use of the right hemisphere of the brain.
There is no compelling reason to declare the supremacy of the left side of the brain over the right side of the brain. Each hemisphere has its own valid functions to perform. It is only when both are fully utilized that a healthy balance through the appropriate use of both hemispheres is achieved.
REVISIONIST THEOLOGY IS APPLYING A METHODOLOGY THAT DOES NOT SUIT THE BIBLE
What happens when theological studies become infected with technitis? What happens when theologians, in the pursuit of scientific objectivity, process all theology only through left-brainish thinking? What happens when theologians forget that God gave us the use of the right side of the brain to have faith and to relate and instead predominantly use their reasoning capacity to establish the teachings of the church?
The sincerity, integrity, and intellectual honesty of theologians for whom the historical critical method is the only way to read Scriptures are not in question. There is something charming and very attractive about academics who subject themselves to the vigorous application of a scientific method.
In question is the suitability of a scientific method for the subject of the Bible. We do not use a sieve to fetch water from the ocean. What we get is gravel and sand, anything but water. The Bible is a book of faith for people of faith.
Jesus affirmed the authority of Scripture and freely quoted Scriptures. He taught Scriptures as the final authority, “Have you not read . . .”(Matthew 19:4) and, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”(Luke 16:28)
Authors of the New Testament affirm the authority of Scriptures. In 1 Corinthians 14:21 Paul quotes Isaiah 28:11. Matthew quotes Scriptures in Matthew 1:21-23, 2:14-15. Acts 4: 24-25 states that is was the Holy Spirit who inspired David to write the words of Psalm 2:1-2.
The writers of Scriptures were guided by the Holy Spirit to write Scriptures for people who understand the message with the aid of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who calls and enlightens. A scientific method is incapable of capturing the Holy Spirit. The historical critical method cannot capture revealed theology.
We must remind ourselves that the wonderful gift to be rational must be balanced by the gift to have faith and read Scriptures through the eyes of faith. Unfortunately, some of our current theologians have swallowed the historical critical method line-hook- and-sinker. There are valuable insights to be gained through the historical biblical criticism. But it is heretical to insist that divine truth is limited by what human reason can comprehend. The full understanding of the message of Scriptures cannot be assembled by reason alone.
It is illogical to speak of an all powerful God and then reduce what God can do to fit our mental capacity.
It is plainly wrong to assume that God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, cannot do miracles. Any God that can be dissected by a scientific method is too small. Virgin birth is something that any scientific approach to Scriptures must reject. Yet, for God, who designed DNA, virgin birth is a very minor task. The truly spiritual dimensions of Scriptures that are demonstrated and experienced in the lives of Christians are an unsuitable subject for the historical critical method. The products of a left-brainish scientific investigation feed the mind but not the soul. Scientific methods do well in investigating subjects of a three dimensional world only.
As Eta Linnemann observed, the historical critical method is an ideology as much as it is a method. It is an ideology based on a choice that replaces “Faith alone “with”Reason Alone”. Eta Linnemann studied New Testament under Bultmann and Fuchs in Germany, did her doctorate and her post doctorate in New Testament, taught New Testament at the University of Marburg, was admitted to the elite Society for New Testament Studies, and published Revisionist Theology until she had a conversion experience. That changed her whole outlook on the nature of Scriptures. She published “Historical Criticism of the Bible, Methodology or Ideology?" in 1990. Her brief journey of faith, Confessions of a Former Bultmannian can be accessed through Google.
In "Historical Criticism of the Bible, Methodology or Ideology?" Linnemann draws on her own experience as a professor in Germany who applied historical criticism to the Bible and taught such at the University of Marburg:
“The fundamental preposition of university theology in its entirety, as it is presently espoused in our universities, is the conviction that the final authority regarding what is true is the trained, professionally informed, regimented critical intellect. That is, Holy Scripture is subordinated to reason. Reason decides what in the Scriptures is true and real. Reason decides what is certain, probable, or improbable in the Bible and what did not, does not, and never will occur. The critical intellect decides whether God is to be viewed as someone who acts and speaks or whether “God” is actually simply human ideas and concepts about a hypothetical divine being.
Here reason makes use of the possibilities of knowing that are inherent to it. Critical intellect cannot conceive of a truly unique event; it must therefore assert as a fundamental presupposition the basic uniformity of all that happens and ever has
happened. Critical intellect acquires knowledge only through comparison and
differentiation. Where, therefore, it seeks knowledge, it must first lay out levels of
comparison. Revelation is inconceivable to critical intellect; its standard is what is
common to all human experience at all times.” Pages 107-108
UNDER THE GUISE OF SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVITY REVISIONIST THEOLOGY HAS LED CHRISTIANS AWAY FROM TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
Revisionist Theologians have to repent of their attitude that puts down Christians who dare to believe with their heart (right side of the brain) as well as with their left side of the brain, who refuse to accept a theology that is based on reason alone. There are aspects of the divinity of Jesus that are accessible to us only through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit still reveals to us what the left side of the brain cannot comprehend.
It is unfair to proclaim that there are only two theological alternatives, the theology of the Jesus Seminar theologians and the theology of Biblicists who insist on the literal interpretation of Scriptures. Luther did not fit into neither of these categories. Luther looked at Scriptures critically, hence his assessment of the book of James as the “Epistle of straw”. But he also looked at Scriptures through the eyes of faith. The Lutheran approach to Scriptures is a holistic approach using both hemispheres of the brain in an interactive way. There is something about our faith that “passes all human understanding”. A holistic approach to Scriptures prevents theologians from the extremes like the Revisionist Theology and also from a literalist interpretation of Scriptures such as the creation story.
We fall in love in the right side of the brain and then try to articulate our feelings by using the left side of the brain. Equally, we believe and relate to our Lord Jesus in the right side of the brain and then articulate that faith using the left side of the brain. In the process of that articulation, such as stated in our ecumenical creeds, we make statements that go beyond what pure reason can comprehend.
Under the cloak of scientific neutrality and objectivity Revisionist Theology subordinates faith under the lordship of reason. There is an ideological leap between the use of historic criticism as a hermeneutical tool and Revisionist Theology. A denial that Jesus died for our sins and a denial of his resurrection has made that ideological leap.
Such ideological leap has occurred in the theology of Marcus Borg. According to his autobiography Me and Jesus, “The gospel of John is highly symbolic and essentially not historical…Most (perhaps all) of the ‘exalted titles’ by which Jesus is known in the Christian tradition do not go back to Jesus himself. He did not speak of or think of himself as "the Son of God," or as "one with the Father," or as "the light of the world," or as "the way, the truth, and the life," or as "the savior of the world…It follows that Jesus’ message was not about himself or the importance of believing in him…I do not believe that Christianity is the only way to salvation, or that the Bible is the revealed will of God, or that Jesus was the unique Son of God. Rather, I now see that the Christian tradition – including its claims about Jesus – is not something to be believed, but something to be lived in.”
Revisionist theologians, too, talk about faith. But it is a faith that is radically subjected to left-brainish reason. Revisionist theologians also pray, reflect, meditate,
listen to the Spirit, and attempt to live out their faith in the world. They use the same terms as confessional Lutherans. Yet they arrive at a faith that is far removed from the faith of Martin Luther.R. Bultmann admitted that “presuppositionless exegesis” is impossible. The arrogance of Revisionist theologians is exposed in their claim that anything that offends reason and logic must be false. There is no logical reason to love someone. Nor can reason access God. Goethe’s line in Dr. Faustus “You are equal to the Spirit whom you understand (Du gleichst dem Geist den Du begreifts)” stipulates that a God who is comprehended by human reason cannot be greater than a human mind. God cannot be accessed by human reason. Any effort to prove the existence of God (Gottes Beweise) must fail. It is rational to admit that reason has its limits.
The historical critical method is a good method for historical research. But it does not fit the subject of the Bible as the exclusive tool to understanding Scriptures. It is as suitable to deal with the subject of faith as it would be to deal with the subject of love. It is an inadequate tool to exclusively understand the message of Scriptures.
There are helpful applications of the historical critical method in dealing with Scriptures. It would also be helpful if those who apply the use of the historical critical method would admit the limitations of that method rather than making it the only way to understand Scriptures. If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything gets treated like a nail.
It is the Holy Spirit who “has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified me in the true faith” (Luther).
The historical critical method crosses the line from being a method to becoming an ideology by making the assumption that anything that cannot be processed on the left side of the brain could not have happened. A sieve is not designed to fetch water. It is the wrong tool. Making the assumption that anything a sieve cannot fetch does not exist would be an ideological assumption.
Academically it is not very glamorous to tell “the old, old story”. To advance in academia one must come up with a new angle or make a new discovery, one must push the envelope. But it is a totally different thing when the basic Gospel is changed.
It is a basic change in the Gospel when
- the doctrine of substitutional atonement that Jesus died for our sins is denied.
- it is proclaimed that Jesus did not really rise from the dead and that the resurrection only happened in the minds of the believers.
- it is proclaimed that Jesus was such a good person that people actually believed that he was the Son of God and that in fact Jesus never made that claim.
Those changes attack the very core of the Christian faith.Admittedly, it does not make any scientific sense that Jesus is the incarnate God who died for our sins and rose from the dead. It did not even make sense in the days of the first Christian church. (1 Corinthians 15: 12-19)
Lutheran theology has therefore upheld that a full understanding of Scriptures can only be achieved with the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is a book of faith. It is through faith that we “understand” God as we by faith “stand under” God. Revisionist Theology based on historical critical exegesis as proclaimed by Borg, Spong, Crossan in the “Living the Questions” DVD series, ignores the validity of the faith that Lutherans have been taught and have heard preached for generations. It ignores “the peace that passes all understanding”.
It is a tragedy that some theological and ecclesiastical Lutherans have succumbed to Revisionist Theology. In doing so Lutheran roots have been abandoned. For those of us, who have been in the Lutheran ministry for a long time, it is legitimately left-brainish to ask, “If Revisionist theologians are right, did we preach a false Gospel?” But it is also legitimate to ask, “Is there the emergence of a false Gospel in our days that Scriptures warn us against?”
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itchy ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” (2. Timothy 4: 3-5)The uncomfortable truth is that either Christians have been preaching and teaching myths for well over a thousand years or that we are now in one of those periods in church history when, well intended as they are, some theologians and pastors have developed a case of itchy ears. (Or is it too left-brainish to ask such a question?)
As Lutherans we have a theology that is not limited by reason. Let us hope that some of those who have been influenced by Revisionist Theology will rediscover the joy of being Lutherans who use both hemispheres of the God-given capacity of their brain.
The challenge is to rediscover the theology of Paul and Augustine and Luther and Bonhoeffer which was not infected by technitis.
