What Binds Us Together?

A few decades ago now Schubert Ogden published a book called “Is There One True Religion or are There Many“. Carefully reasoned, like all of his books, it concluded with while there may be more than one true religion there is no way to judge others from within the standpoint of one’s own religious commitment. Each religion begins with untestable axiomatic assertions, and in different religions these assertions are different. For Ogden religions were non-overlapping domains when it came to fundamental assumptions. Their adherents could talk about many things, but none had a standpoint from which to judge the other's axioms. 

This, by the way, is the reason that Ogden refused to be called a process theologian. Because in his understanding Christian theology must arise from scripture, the source of Christian teaching. Ogden was a Christian theologian who found that process philosophy was a tool for articulating more clearly and fully the nature of the God taught in the Bible and revealed through scripture. It could not be either the source or even judge of whether a theology was Christian. 

Similarly those who are Christian theologians in the progressive and moderate tradition begin with the Bible and find that psychology and sociology, among the other sciences, give them language to more fully articulate the insights about humanity and the world that can come only through revelation. Because they begin with scripture they are doing Christian theology. 

So why is there a conflict between traditionalists and progressives if we all begin with revelation? If we all begin with scripture, then why is it that we come to different conclusions about some matters? 

Because we come to scripture with different questions, meaning we come with different assumptions about to just what is revealed in scripture. Even if traditionalists and progressives largely share the same tools for interpreting scripture, if they ask different types of questions they are going to get different types answers.

And what determines our questions? 

The observable factors, and therefore those that can be publicly discussed, relate to our culture, our social situation, and our personal experience. Culture frames the kinds of questions we think scripture should address, and our social and personal experience move us to ask those questions. If we come from different cultures, social situations, and personal experiences then we ask different questions. 

What cannot be observed, and therefore cannot be debated, is how the Holy Spirit has moved our hearts to ask certain questions, which then allows us to listen to scripture and find the answers. In the Wesleyan tradition we would say that we are blessed with prevenient grace (whose workings in our hearts we alone know) that gives us the ability to ask the right questions of God's overt and public revelation of saving grace. We can report our experience of prevenient grace, but the experience itself is hidden to all but us.

There is no public test of the veracity of our reports on the work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart. One person or group of people cannot judge another person or group of persons hearts and how God is speaking to their hearts. This is no doubt the reason that God tells us in Scripture “judge not lest you be judged.“ To assume a standpoint from which we can judge the human heart is to assume a God-like omniscience which we cannot claim. 

This means, although we do not like to say it, that there may be multiple Christianities, multiple responses to the same revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The differences between them are not based in differences in orthodox doctrine about the revelation of God in Christ, or about the nature of God as publicly revealed in scripture, but are based in the fact that having asked different questions we hear different answers. 

The traditionalists questions and the progressives questions are not mutually exclusive. But they are different. They only become are exclusive when one or the other claims a monopoly on the way in which the Holy Spirit should prompt the human heart to bring its questions to the reading of revelation. 

Differences in cultural social and personal factors can all be negotiated and accommodated because they are public. But a claimed monopoly on understanding of the movement of the Holy Spirit in human hearts cannot be negotiated, because it brings forth as a witness only the voice of the one who hears it. With no second witness, there is nothing that can be judged. 

Is there a theological way to understand a Christian community in which people have different experiences of the Holy Spirit prompting different questions they ask of scripture? I believe there is. 

The Pentecostal experience of Acts chapter 2 tells us that the Spirit enables the apostles to speak, and be heard, in many different languages. What each person heard it does not tell us, and indeed some heard only a babble and accused the apostles of being drunk. 

It belongs to Peter to articulate the meaning of the experience of those present. But it is not by interpreting into a common language what they all heard. Peter doesn’t tell them what they individually experienced. Instead he affirms that the variety of tongues spoken and understood were God’s promised sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence and the ever closing day of the Lord. 

It is then that he preaches, in the common tongue, his witness to the public events that made up the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and their meaning. His sermon might well be regarded as the heart of orthodoxy. And the public response indicates a normative (but clearly not exclusive) response to the good news. What it does not do is foreclose on, or invalidate the individual experiences of the Holy Spirit that wakened those gathered to hear. Nor does it disclose what their individual hearts brought to Peter’s sermon that led them to respond by placing faith in Christ.

This is not surprising. Jesus in his ministry encounters people in whom the Holy Spirit has prompted many different questions and the articulation of many different needs. One is prompted to ask for healing, another for freedom from demons, another forgiveness, and another for daily bread. This doesn’t mean there are many spirits, only that there are many gifts available through Christ. 

The apostle Paul also reminds us that the Holy Spirit prompts many different questions of God as well. Sometimes they are so complex that humans cannot articulate them even with the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit intercedes for us with wordless groans. What then is there to debate or discuss?

Nothing. What is left is to receive and witness to God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ. What binds the church is neither a common experience of the Holy Spirit, nor a common answer from scripture to the different questions we as Christians bring. What binds the church is a commitment to share exactly the Gospel that Peter preached at Pentecost, trusting that the Holy Spirit will draw the willing hear to hear and receive.