The New American Evangelicalism Version reads…

“For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by fear from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by fear’.”  -Romans 1:17

Faith has been replaced by fear. It’s everywhere. Why don’t we admit it and sing, “Fear is the victory that overcomes the world”?

WE BELIEVE THEREFORE WE KNOW

Reading “Part One” (23-110) of The Aims of Jesus by Ben F. Meyer is a baptism into an overview of the history of Jesus studies and methodologies of doing history.   In chapter five “History and Faith,” Meyer offers this question, How is the integrity of faith secured in the face of history? In answer to this question, Meyer writes, What can be ascertained historically often falls far short of what is affirmed by faith. Does faith, then, affirm without warrants? And is it put in jeopardy to the advance of historical knowledge? The answer to these questions must be yes, unless faith itself guarantees the past particulars it intends.

The operative presupposition of this last possibility is that faith-affirmations are warranted but not by the intrinsic evidence of their objects. The warrant of faith is the fidelity of God. In this view God, not historical data, provides the ground and secures the truth of faith. It is a view elaborated from within the faith-perspective itself where truth is not a distant goal but a starting point and the rest is only explanation. … Still, the theology of faith will not dissolve in the slightest the scandal of unprovability (105-106).

I think that Meyer is advocating the view that “we believe in order to know.” This delivers us from the pervasive skepticism in so much of Jesus historical studies. While not ruling out the discipline and function of apologetics, our faith is not inherently dependent on apologetics. We possess data in terms of the New Testament Scriptures and we can enter the challenge of  historical inquiry without fear the faith will be undermined or undone. If we enter the complexities of historical Jesus studies with a sense of fear of what we will find, we have tipped our hand to an Enlightenment-driven, “scientific” methodology; a methodology that has fallen with a great crash to “the myth of objectivity” in the postmodern critique. There are no “empty heads” pursuing historical investigation. Doing history has “metacritical moments” where the historian becomes “listener and learner,” not just controller of the data (79-80). These metacritical moments transcend the science of historical criticism, but inexorably determine the outcomes of  what is defined as “history.”

SO WHAT?

Do we check our brains at the door of the church and blindly declare, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”? Do we bite our fingernails that something in science (and almost all of life thanks to modern rationalism is subject to the god of science)  is going to yank the rug from under our beliefs? Do we have to become adversarial to all alleged disciplines that call into question, for example, the poetic truth of Genesis 1? Do we have to become either head-in-the-sand ostriches or belligerent culture-warriors to keep the sanity of faith?

In light of the Book of Acts, why is so much of current evangelicalism’s relationship to its surrounding culture driven by undeniable fear? In speech we say, “We live by faith,” but in practice we demonstrate “We live by fear.” Is it that we never imagined that we would be so marginalized as the vast moral majority of our world? Do we believe we have no gospel for marginalization? Is it possible to be triumphant from the margins? Are there huge pockets of evangelicalism that cannot operate except out of the fantasy of triumphalism? Has the Enlightenment epistemology trained us to use Saul’s armor to fight Goliath? If so, no wonder we live in self-constructed ghettos and simply want to hide and endure until Jesus raptures us.

“The warrant of faith is the fidelity of God.” –Ben F. Meyer

Popularity: 2% [?]