5 Reason, Revelation, and Experience
The movement of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the movement which brought our contemporary Western culture to its distinctive self-consciousness, was in an important respect a movement of rejection of tradition and its authority. Immanuel Kant summed up the central theme of the Enlightenment in the famous phrase "Dare to Know." It was a summons to have the courage to think for oneself, to test everything in the light of reason and conscience, to dare to question even the most hallowed traditions. That robust determination remains operative as perhaps the central thrust of our culture, of what is happening now in every part of the world under the name of "modernization." Any attempt to affirm and defend the Christian faith within our modern scientific worldview has necessarily to answer the questions the Enlightenment put to tradition and the authority of tradition.
The first thing to be said is that a movement of this kind is irreversible. One cannot go back. It is one thing to say "The Church has always taught" or "The Bible teaches," if one is part of a culture which accepts these as authoritative. But it is quite a different thing to say these things in a culture which does not. If, in a modern society today, I say "The Bible teaches," I will at once have to answer the question: "But why should I believe the Bible?" In this culture an appeal to the Bible is simply an expression of my personal choice of this particular authority among the many which I might choose from. This is the point Peter Berger makes in the title of his book The Heretical Imperative. In a preEnlightenment society there are only a few heretics in the original sense of the word, that is to say, only a few people who make their own decisions about what to believe. For the vast majority faith is not a matter of personal decision: it is simply the acceptance of what everybody accepts because it is obviously the case. There is no alternative and no personal choice. By contrast, Berger rightly says, in a post-Enlightenment society we are all required to be heretics, we are all required to make a personal choice. Everyone, as the saying goes, has to have a faith of his or her own. If, then, I appeal to the authority of the Bible or the Church, that is simply my personal choice. It does not settle any argument.
Of course one could point out, in response to Peter Berger, that his heretical imperative is not universal. There are elements in our culture where tradition is operative. No one, in our culture, suggests that each of us should have a physics of his own or a biology of her own. We know, of course, that there are arguments among physicists and biologists, just as there have always been arguments among biblical scholars and church theologians. But where there is a consensus among physicists, as there is across the vast range of matter which is included, for example, in a school textbook of physics, we accept that as authoritative. In this field, the statement "All physicists are agreed that ... " is normally enough to settle an argument. There is no significant proportion of our society which simply dismisses the findings of the physicists as merely private, subjective preferences. In the case of statements about Christian belief, however, the situation is obviously different. A very large section of society simply dismisses the statements of theologians as expressions of personal opinion-opinion which they are entitled to hold but which does not rank as public truth, as factual knowledge in the sense that the statements of physicists do. If Christians then appeal to the authority of Scripture or of the Church, they know that others will regard this appeal as simply the expression of a personal choice. How, in this situation, can Christians affirm their statements as public, factual, objective truth?
My own first teacher in theology was John Oman, and there was no issue about which Oman felt so passionately as the issue of individual freedom and responsibility in pursuing and grasping the truth. His book Vision and Authority, with its subtitle "The Throne of St Peter," was a passionate assertion of the right and duty of individual search for truth over against the claims of ecclesiastical authority. He takes Jesus' command that we are to become as little children to he his authorization of a spirit of endless and relentless curiosity which refuses to be fobbed off with authoritarian answers. And in an unforgettable chapter entitled "The Authority of the Optic Nerve" he contemplates the fragility of the instrument through which we perceive the world, so small and so liable to failure, and asks the question: "Why is the channel of sight a nerve and not a sinew, a thread and not a cable? Why, if the Creator would grant a vehicle of knowledge of the outer world, is it so weak and delicate?" (Vision and Authority, p. 44). It would seem, in other words, that the Creator had intended fallibility to be part of our human nature, and that the appeal to an authority beyond our own fallible vision is an offense against our Creator. And so, in a chapter entitled "The Essential Attitude," Oman writes: "All man's faculties afford their own demonstration and require no external guidance, nay, err if they are subjected to any such interference" (Vision and Authority, p. 40).
There is surely a vital element of truth in this, and there are situations in which it is this element which needs to be emphasized. But it is a one-sided emphasis. A teacher of mathematics who has tried to teach her pupils the elements of geometry will not be content until the pupil can see for himself or herself that it is true that the three angles of every triangle add up to 180 degrees. The teacher will not be content if the child simply accepts it on her authority and-when questioned by someone who does not understand-can only say, "My teacher says so." And yet the child will certainly not reach the point of understanding without first accepting the authority of the teacher. We do not expect each fresh generation of schoolchildren to discover the whole of Euclid by the unaided exercise of native curiosity.
It is instructive to compare at this point the differing approaches to learning which are currently used in science and in religion. There is a great deal of contemporary literature about the teaching of religion which emphasizes almost exclusively the freedom and autonomy of the child, and which strongly condemns any attempt to impose on the mind of the child any particular view of religious truth. One may take as an authoritative example the report entitled "Understanding Christian Nurture," produced by the British Council of Churches in 1981 under the chairmanship of Bishop John Gibb. The report affirms as the purpose of Christian nurture the development in children of "critical openness" or "autonomy." Tillich's concept of theonomy as something distinct both from heteronomy and from autonomy is rejected, since either God must give me reasons for submitting to him or else theonomy is simply heteronomy. In the words of the report: "Either divine authority is presented to us with reasons, in which case we must discern them in criti cal openness in order to obey God, or, on the other hand, God is a dictator" (p. 19). Children are to be taught to use their critical faculties in respect of any claim to truth, and to be open to new truths which might call in question their previous ideas of truth. The Christian must learn to "act as if it were possibly the case that his beliefs were false" (p. 26). The problem, of course, is that one can only entertain rational doubt about a proposition on the basis of some belief which, at that moment, one does not doubt. To doubt all one's beliefs at the same time is impossible. The report recognizes this in a later section where it is said that "a certain element of dogmatism is necessary to balance the critical principle since without this the criticism itself would seldom be sufficiently sustained and penetrating" (p. 26). The problem here is that it is not possible to be both dogmatic and doubtful about the same beliefs at the same time. One can only be doubtful about some beliefs if one is at the same time firm in holding others. In spite of this concession to dogma, the report overwhelmingly emphasizes the critical principle as the one which is to be fostered in the nurture of children. The approach corresponds to the succinct statement made by the legal representative of the school board in a recent case in the U.S. courts, a case in which Christian parents were objecting to the things their children were learning in the state schools. "The schools seek to teach students to be autonomous individuals who can make their own judgments about moral questions. The schools believe that students should be able to evaluate and make judgments on their own, based on their experience and beliefs, not on those of their teachers."
The contrast between this approach and the approach to the teaching of science in schools is obvious. The science teacher has a clear and firm view of what is the case about-for example-the laws governing the expansion of gases, and he expects that as a result of the teaching the pupils will also believe the same thing. This "believing" must mean, of course, that the pupil has really understood it, believes it to be true because he or she sees that it is true; it will not be enough that the pupil learns to repeat what the teacher says; the pupil must also understand it as true. And that means that the pupil will have to be encouraged to ask critical questions. There is no other way by which the new truth can really be grasped. But the teacher will certainly not be satisfied if, at the end, the pupil has an open mind on the truth or otherwise of what is taught, nor will the teacher at any stage give the pupils the impression that the truth or otherwise of Boyle's Law is a matter of private opinion.
This "understanding" is more than a matter of logical argument. It is much more a kind of intuition. Most of us can, perhaps, remember early struggles with school mathematics. There is a time, sometimes a long time, when one simply cannot see what the point of it is. The teacher's words are clear and simple, but one cannot see the point. And then, suddenly, the penny drops. One sees that there is something true and beautiful and satisfying. Afterward it is impossible to see how we could not see it before. The logical steps the teacher took in explaining it are now quite clear, and we wonder why they were not clear before. It is a little like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle. You can be told all about the way balance is kept by turning the front wheel this way or that, but you still fall off. But then, suddenly, you know how to do it, and after that you soon reach the point where the actions needed to keep your balance are no longer a matter of deliberate decision. You have so internalized them that you no longer attend to them but think only about where you are going. While you are still learning and falling off, you have to accept in faith the belief that people can ride a twowheeled machine without falling off. You have to submit yourself to the tradition of bicycle-riding until the point comes when you have internalized the tradition and it has become part of your own self. The same is true in respect of our learning in mathematics and science. As Michael Polanyi has said, "The authority of science is essentially traditional" (Knowing and Being, p. 66).
The statement of Polanyi stands in sharp contrast to the way science is popularly understood. One could quote as typical of the popular understanding of science some words of Bertrand Russell: "The triumphs of science are due to the substitution of observation and inference for authority. Every attempt to revive authority in intellectual matters is a retrograde step.... One of the great benefits that science confers upon those who understand its spirit is that it enables them to live without the delusive support of subjective authority" (B. Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1952; quoted by Polanyi, Knowing and Being, p. 94). How is one to explain these contradictory views of the place of authority in science? The answer is partly by reference to history. At the critical time when the new science was developing it was necessary to reject elements in the traditional teaching of the Church. It was necessary to set the actual visibility of the moons of Jupiter through the telescope against the traditional teaching that there could not be such moons. In this sense observable facts had to be set against the authority of a tradition. And such oppositions are obviously neces sary at many points in the development of human thought. But it is an elementary mistake to assume, therefore, that the authority of tradition has no necessary part to play in the quest for truth. The actual practice of science shows that Polanyi is right. Polanyi has followed the advice of Einstein, who said that if you want to understand science you should not listen to what scientists say but watch what they do. In other words, we will get a better understanding of science if we look behind the finished product to the workshop, the laboratory where the creative work on the frontiers of science is done.
I began by looking at the experience we have all had in our first attempts to learn mathematics or physics. We have to rely on the authority of the teachers, but the purpose for which this authority is exercised is that we should come to see for ourselves that what is being taught is true. Clearly also the teacher herself has had to rely and continues to rely on the authority of the scientific tradition as embodied in the standard textbooks. But behind these textbooks lies a whole range of material-articles in learned journals, lectures and seminars in which the frontiers are being pushed back and new ideas are being explored. It is through this work that the tradition is being continually developed and reshaped-sometimes by gradual adjustments, sometimes by dramatic changes which Thomas Kuhn calls "paradigm shifts." But how do these changes, these new discoveries, take place? I have already touched on this in the previous chapter. There are no logical rules by which one can learn how to make new discoveries. There are certainly no logical steps by which one could argue from the premises of Newton's physics to the formulations of the special and general theories of relativity. It has much more to do with intuition and imagination-the intuition that there is a problem waiting to be tackled, a configuration of things waiting to be discerned, an orderliness not yet manifest but hidden and waiting to be discovered. And it is a matter of personal judgment between alternative possibilities for experiment and research, personal judgment also in distinguishing between a meaningful pattern and a set of random events.
None of this can be embodied in formal rules which could be applied without taking the risks involved in personal judgment. That is why the scientific tradition can only be passed on through personal contact between teachers and learners. This is true even at elementary levels. A child cannot grasp even elementary mathematics simply by reading a textbook; the help of a teacher is essential. A medical student is not qualified to become a doctor simply by reading all the textbooks on physiology, anatomy, and the like. When she has completed this she has to go through a long period of clinical training in which she learns through hour-by-hour contact with an expert as he does his work. She may have learned all she can from a textbook on diseases of the lungs, but she will still need this clinical practice with an experienced doctor before she can learn to interpret the lights and shades of an X-ray picture. She has to acquire this skill through a long period of practice, and there is no way of acquiring it except by submitting herself to the authority of a practitioner who is already acknowledged as possessing this skill, and certified by the scientific community as a competent teacher.
The same holds true from this elementary level right through to the highest levels of original research. Only after a long period in which the student has submitted herself to the authority of the tradition is she qualified to work alongside a scientist who is doing original research on problems which are not only unsolved, but perhaps not even recognized except by this scientist. It will only be by watching this scientist at work, seeing how he tackles difficulties, chooses lines of inquiry, evaluates ambiguous evidence, and projects fresh and original ideas that the student will learn the skill of research. There are no impersonal and mechanically applicable rules by which such original research can be guided. There are no objective criteria by which the work of the scientist can be judged: he, along with his peers, is the one who sets the standards and determines the criteria, and-in doing so-accepts the risks of failure as well as the possibility of success. The question of success or failure may not be settled for a long time. Einstein's theories were, after much debate, accepted on the basis of their intrinsic beauty and completeness, but it was only long afterward that there was any experimental verification of their truth. In fact, a great many attempts were made to test their truth by repetitions of the Morley Michelson tests, and they did not give the results required by Einstein's theory. Polanyi records that in a broadcast discussion with Bertrand Russell they both agreed that Einstein's theory was never likely to have any practical consequences. Only a few days later the first atomic bomb was exploded, and since that fateful date we have learned of many more practical consequences that have flowed from his theory. Yet the theory was held as true by scientists even in the absence of proof or of practical utility. This is an example of an important feature of scientific discovery. The theory was held to be true because of its intrinsic beauty, rationality, and comprehensiveness. These qualities were taken to indicate that it corresponded with reality, and that therefore it would open the way for new discoveries. The holding of the theory for truth is an act of faith in the rationality of the cosmos. The justification-if one may put it so-is by faith; only afterward, as a spin-off, does one find that it is also justified because it works. The analogy with Christian faith hardly needs to be pointed out.
A major paradigm shift, such as that from the Newtonian physics to that of Einstein, does not take place easily. Perhaps it will come mainly through the conversion of younger scientists to the new view. A similar long debate took place before the Copernican paradigm replaced the Ptolemaic. For such paradigms form the world within which scientists work for generations. They form the lenses through which things are perceived. They are not easily or lightly abandoned. I spoke in the last chapter about Polanyi's use of the example of a probe. In the act of using the probe we do not attend to the probe but to the lumps and cavities which are being explored by the tip of the probe. The probe becomes an extension of my hand. I indwell it, just as I indwell all the bodily functions-eyes, ears, fingers, and so on-through which I explore the world. I do not attend to them, but through them I attend to the world I am seeking to understand. My relation to them is a-critical. I may have to be told by a doctor that my eyes need attending to, and in that sense I have to take a critical attitude to them. But while I am using them to examine things-for example, to read a book-I do not and cannot take a critical attitude. I indwell them a-critically. Clearly the scientific tradition as a whole, and the many concepts, classifications of data, and theoretical models which are the working tools of science form as a whole a tradition within which scientists have to dwell in order to do their work. Without such an enduring tradition, science would collapse. At any moment in history several parts of the tradition may be under critical review and alternatives may be proposed; but this critical review would be impossible without the a-critical acceptance of the tradition as a whole. The progress of science depends, therefore, on the authority of this tradition.
The authority of this tradition is maintained by the community of scientists as a whole. This community is held together by the free acceptance by its members of the authority of the tradition. Attempts to organize science from a single center, such as those made at certain times in Russia, have failed and are bound to fail. The authority of the tradition is maintained by the free assent of its members. But it is, nonetheless, a powerful authority. It is exercised in practice by those who determine which articles will be accepted for publication in scientific journals and which rejected, and by those who determine appointments to teaching and research posts in universities and other institutions. There is no appeal within the scientific community against this authority, and any appeal outside falls on deaf ears. Polanyi in various writings has given a number of examples of theories put forward with a considerable body of evidence to support them but which have been rejected without examination or discussion by the scientific community. Among the many examples given I quote just one. In 1947 Lord Rayleigh, a distinguished member of the Royal Society, published an account of an experiment which demonstrated that a hydrogen atom impinging on a metal wire releases energies ranging up to a hundred electron volts. If this were true, it would have enormous implications for physics. But the article was ignored. No one attempted to repeat the experiment or to discuss it. It was simply implausible within the existing frame of understanding. And, says Polanyi, scientists were right to ignore it. If every experiment which purported to show novel results was followed up by detailed examination and debate, science would evaporate into futility. Great numbers of articles offered to scientific journals are rejected without discussion simply because they fall outside the accepted tradition. Without this careful protection of the tradition, science could not develop. Yet if the tradition did not make room for radical innovation, science would stagnate. The point to be made seems to be twofold: first, innovation can only be responsibly accepted from those who are already masters of the tradition, skilled practitioners of whom it could be said both that the tradition dwells fully in them and that they dwell fully in the tradition; and second, that one alleged new fact, or even a number of new facts, does not suffice to discredit an established paradigm. That can only happen when a new and more compelling paradigm is offered, a vision of reality which commends itself by its beauty, rationality, and comprehensiveness.
The acceptance of such a vision is a personal act, an act of personal judgment to which one commits oneself in the knowledge that others may disagree and that one may be proved wrong. It involves personal commitment. But it is not therefore merely subjective. The scientist who commits himself to the new vision does so-as Polanyi puts it-with universal intent. He believes it to be objectively true, and he therefore causes it to be widely published, invites discussion, and seeks to persuade his fellow scientists that it is a true account of reality. As I have already said, he may have to wait many years before there is convincing experimental verification of his vision. It is his personal belief to which he commits himself and on which he risks his scientific reputation. But at no stage is it merely a subjective opinion. It is held "with universal intent" as being a true account of reality which all people ought to accept and which will prove itself true both by experimental verification and also by opening the way to fresh discovery. It is offered not as private opinion but as public truth.
On what does the authority of this tradition rest? Obviously on nothing outside itself. Like all visions of ultimate truth, science is necessarily involved in a circular argument. It has to assume from the beginning the truth of that which it seeks to prove. It begins from the conviction that the universe is accessible to rational understanding, it refuses to accept as final evidence that which seems to contradict this faith, and it seeks with a passion which is one of the glories of human history to prove that the faith is true. It can only pursue this task within a tradition which is authoritative. The maintenance of the tradition depends on the mutual trust which scientists have in one another, in the integrity with which each does her work, for no one scientist can have direct knowledge of more than a tiny fraction of the whole. But the authority of the tradition is not something apart from the vision of truth which the tradition embodies. It would be a violation of the tradition if authority were to be substituted for the personal grasping of the truth. The scientist, from the pupil just beginning to study physics, to the pioneer on the frontiers of research, accepts the authority of the tradition not to replace personal grasp of the truth but as the necessary precondition for gaining this grasp. He accepts the authority of the tradition in order to reach the point where he can say, "I see for myself." In Augustine's phrase, his program is Credo ut iritelligam-" I believe in order to understand." And if the scientist is a pioneer who has reached the point where he has to challenge the tradition and to propose a drastic innovation, it is not in order to undermine the authority of the tradition, but to strengthen it by making it more truly congruent with the truth. Insofar as his innovation proves acceptable to the scientific community, it will itself become part of the authoritative tradition.
Before I move on to consider the bearing of this discussion on the question of the authority of the Christian tradition, one further remark may be in order. I have emphasized the character of scientific knowledge as-in Polanyi's phrase-"personal knowledge." It is knowledge to which the scientist commits herself personally and on which she stakes her professional reputation. She accepts the risk that she might be wrong. If this is so, must we not say that it is part of the deep sick ness of our culture that, ever since Descartes, we have been seduced by the idea of a kind of knowledge which could not be doubted, in which we would be absolutely secure from personal risk? And has not this seduction taken two forms which, even if they disclaim all relationship with each other, are really twin brothers? One is a biblical fundamentalism which supposes that adherence to the text of the Bible frees me from the risk of error and therefore gives me a security which does not depend on my own discernment of the truth. The other is a kind of scientism which supposes that science is simply a transcript of reality, of the "facts" which simply have to be accepted and call for no personal decision on my part, a kind of knowledge which is "objective" and free from all the bias of subjectivity. With that question I move to look briefly at the role of an authoritative tradition in Christian believing. Here I suggest only a few broad generalizations which will have to be developed in the later chapters.
When we are received into the Christian community, whether by baptism as infants or by conversion as adults, we enter into a tradition which claims authority. It is embodied in the Holy Scriptures and in the continuous history of the interpretation of these Scriptures as they have been translated into 1,500 languages and lived out under myriad different circumstances in different ages and places. This tradition, like the scientific tradition, embodies and carries forward certain ways of looking at things, certain models for interpreting experience. Unlike the scientific tradition, at least in its present form, this tradition is not confined to a limited set of questions about the rational structure of the cosmos. Specifically, unlike science, it concerns questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of things and of human life-questions which modern science eliminates as a matter of methodology. The models, concepts, and paradigms through which the Christian tradition seeks to understand the world embrace these larger questions. They have the same presupposition about the rationality of the cosmos as the natural sciences do, but it is a more comprehensive rationality based on the faith that the author and sustainer of the cosmos has personally revealed his purpose.
Like the scientist, the Christian believer has to learn to indwell the tradition. Its models and concepts are things which he does not simply examine from the perspective of another set of models, but have to become the models through which he understands the world. He has to internalize them and to dwell in them. And, as in the case of the pupil learning physics or mathematics, this has to be in the beginning an ex ercise of faith. He has to trust the tradition and trust the teacher as an authorized interpreter of it. In an established Christian community the first teachers will be parents, followed perhaps by teachers in school and church. In the beginning the child has simply to accept what is told on the authority of parent or teacher. There is no alternative to this. But if the parents and teachers are wise, they know that their work is not truly done until the child has reached the point where he or she can say, "Now I see for myself. Now I know the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior." And this "knowing" is of course not a matter only of the mind, but also of the heart and will. It is a personal and practical discipleship within the tradition.
But being personal does not mean that it is subjective. The faith is held with universal intent. It is held not as "my personal opinion," but as the truth which is true for all. It must therefore be publicly affirmed, and opened to public interrogation and debate. Specifically, as the command of Jesus tells us, it is to be made known to all the nations, to all human communites of whatever race or creed or culture. It is public truth. We commend it to all people in the hope that, by the witness of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of others, it will come to be seen by them for themselves as the truth.
The integrity and fruitfulness of this continuing learning and communicating will require (as in the case of science) the recognition and honoring of the authority of a tradition. There will be proposals which are simply so implausible within the tradition that they do not deserve serious attention. But, on the other hand, those who have learned to indwell the tradition and to become skilled interpreters of it will also be called from time to time to propose modifications in the tradition, modifications which must be submitted to the judgment of the Christian community as a whole, and which may be the subject of debate and dispute for many years. The purpose, however, should always be that the community as a whole should advance toward a more complete understanding of and living by the truth.
Thus far, I have suggested, there is a close parallel between the ways in which the authority of tradition works within the scientific community and within the Christian community. The parallel, however, is by no means complete. In the case of the scientific community, the tradition is one of human learning, writing, and speaking. In the case of the Christian community the tradition is that of witness to the action of God in history, action which reveals and effects the purpose of the Creator. These actions are themselves the reality which faith seeks to understand. Thus the Christian understanding of the world is not only a matter of "dwelling in" a tradition of understanding; it is a matter of dwelling in a story of God's activity, activity which is still continuing. The knowledge which Christian faith seeks is knowledge of God who has acted and is acting. The special structure of this kind of knowing will be the subject of later chapters.