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To Know in Part Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis June 20, 2010, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Acts 26:1-29
With Pomp and Circumstance accompanying the still fresh memory of a daughter graduating from grade school or a son from middle school, of seniors turning their tassels as they head toward higher education while older siblings repeat the same ritual on some college playing field far away, I want to consider, this morning, the importance of liberal learning to the life of faith, the centrality of skepticism to the gift of the Spirit that is human understanding, and the role of faith in our coming to know the truth that sets us free. “One wants to see clearly,” begins Jack Forstman, Professor of the History of Christian Thought at my alma mater, Vanderbilt Divinity School in an article about the faith that seeks understanding. “That is, one wants to understand. Not everything, but things that count--the life one lives with others, the others one loves, the affairs and events that affect this life.” But he goes on, “Wanting to see clearly is a condition of seeing and not seeing at the same time. Seeing clearly means seeing that one does not see as well as seeing. That is the most a human being can achieve. So,” Forstman concludes in the first place, “the impulse to see clearly is an impulse to see more clearly, to improve one’s sight.” But how? In our first place this morning, there is the acquisition of what we call “know how.” We want to know how an electrical circuit works, an economic theory plays out, a physics problem can be fit into a formula and solved or how an oil spill might best be cleaned up. We want to see our way more clearly to the solution that will fix the problem or to the answer that will dispel the mystery. It seems the acquisition of “know how” is the primary way we cope when the economy tanks or national security is an overriding issue, when the family falls apart or a free-floating anxiety casts a pall over the future. “Know how” promises mastery over a finite subset of the universe. Therefore, in times such as these, forget liberal learning! Acquire a skill, choose a trade in which “know how” will not only lead you to see more clearly, but also will land you a secure job, a lucrative position, a more certain future. Yet consider this same desire to see more clearly as it concerns the things which pertain to God. Consider faith as “know how” leading to theological and ethical certainty. Consider Saul, the Pharisee who saw clearly before he was struck blind by God’s grace. Even though Saul’s teacher, Gamaliel, was a winsome scribe in the School of Hillel (the more liberal wing of the Pharisees known for its contextual interpretation of the Torah), Saul appropriated his education in a “know how” sort of way that equipped him to see through the lens of certainty. In his defense before King Agrippa, Paul testifies that he “belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee.” His interpretation of the law was exacting, his faith zealous and his response to those who fell outside of the truth he knew murderous. When the desire to see more clearly is played out theologically and becomes established in the institution of religion—its practices and dogma and people—then one’s “know how” manifests itself in a sort of zealous confidence about the truth. As Forstman puts this, “…if a person is certain of seeing it so and seeing it truly, then he sees clearly without question—which is to say he does not see clearly at all because he does not recognize that he does not see clearly.” Therefore, in the second place, the recognition that we see and do not see invites us to understand the things that count—our life with others, the others one loves, the affairs and events that affect this life—not as problems to be solved but as mysteries that meet us on the boundaries of our human existence. Such “knowing in part” often characterizes the critical thinking of liberal learning and the skepticism of a true believer. To wit: fifty eight years ago, the executives of Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania began to worry about the education of the company’s rising managers. “‘A well-trained man knows how to answer questions, they reasoned; an educated man knows what questions are worth asking.’…In 1952, continues Wes Davis in his op-ed of last Wednesday, the president “took the problem to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a trustee. Together with representatives of the university, Bell set up a program called the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives.” The Institute was a ten-month immersion in the liberal arts. The reading list was broad and deep; the course work included visits to “museums and art galleries, orchestral concerts [and] day trips meant to foster thoughtful attention to the history and architecture of the city that surrounded the Penn campus, as well as that of New York and Washington.” Guest lecturers included the poet W. H. Auden, Lewis Mumford, the architectural historian, and composer Virgil Thomson. But the “capstone of the program” involved eight three-hour seminars on James Joyce’s Ulysses. With minds and hearts that had been broadened, deepened and readied to think critically, they “rose to the challenge, surprising themselves with the emotional and intellectual resources they brought to bear on Joyce’s novel.” At the conclusion of the Institute, the managers reported that “they were reading more widely than they had before—if they had read at all--and that they were more curious about the world around them. At a time when the country was divided by McCarthyism,” Davis observes, “they tended to see more than one side in any given argument.” That is to say, liberal learning had led men whose understanding was characterized by their “know how” to see more clearly that they both saw and did not see, understood in part and yet inhabited a mystery no amount of learning could dispel. Where might this turn in understanding be taken by those whose “know how” and certainty has to do with the things which pertain to God? In part, you could say that the cerebral Reformation happened because John Calvin was schooled in the liberal arts by Erasmus and so brought critical thinking to bear on the study of Scripture. There he encountered the God whose terrible and tender sovereignty sent him into the world asking after God’s purpose. But that is only part of the story. The visceral Reformation happened because Luther’s desire to see clearly led him to search the Scriptures for the gospel and the God whose mercy he had forgotten (or had never known, thanks to the church) in the blindness of his heart. There he encountered One God who was both known and utterly incomprehensible: the God whose mercy was revealed in Jesus Christ but whose mystery and power remained hidden in “human tragedy and luck,…wealth and poverty, lordship and servitude….” Luther leads Forstman to speak of another kind of critical thinking: to speak of skepticism. “Skepticism,” he says, “serves the Christian faith by keeping it honest and true to itself.” He refers not to the present day skeptic who has nothing to do with faith, but rather to the skepticism of a Martin Luther, whose 95 Theses in the beginning questioned the church’s claims to absolute truth, and whose written words two days before his death sought to hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience:
Likewise no one understands Cicero’s letters who has not engaged significantly in politics for twenty years. Let no one think that he has sufficiently understood the Scriptures who has not looked after a church with the prophets for a hundred years (Who can stand!). Wherefore the miracle of John the Baptist, Christ and the Apostles is immense. You cannot fathom this divine Aeneid, but stooping forward worship the footprints. We are beggars. That’s for sure. |