Query:

When I was an atheist, I used to do things like place a Coke can on a table and say, “God, I'm a mere mortal. I want to believe but I'm skeptical.  Just move the Coke can six inches and I'll be your faithful disciple from this moment forward.”  Why didn't God ever move the can?  There must be a reason, but I can't fathom it.  Why do you think he makes us ‘work’ for our faith?  The confirmation of faith is always indirect and explainable in other ways.

Reply:

I think part of the answer lies in the fact that the personal reality of God is different than impersonal realities like the atomic mass of hydrogen or the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle.  I can know those kinds of facts, so to speak, from the outside.  But I can only know a person, so to speak, from the inside -- something like the way I know myself.  We shouldn’t overstate the distinction, because outside knowledge has a place in personal relationships.  I came to know about my future wife while we were courting, and it was necessary to do so.  But there was a difference between knowing about her and actually knowing her.  In order to get over the gap from one level of knowledge to the other, I had to trust that what I believed about her was really true.  It wasn't like having her stand next to a yardstick or putting her on a scale.  Now you may say that since I had gone beyond evidence that can't be explained in another way, I knew less than before.  Actually, I knew more.  Knowing about her was the precondition for believing in her, but believing in her was the precondition for coming into contact with her reality in an entirely different way.

I think it is like that with all truly personal relationships.  Some impersonal knowledge is necessary in all of them, but it isn't enough.  One who seeks only impersonal knowledge can afford to say, "I know in order to believe."  But at some point, anyone who seeks personal understanding must say with St. Anselm, "I believe in order to know."  At this point, the new mode of knowledge begins.

In this life we groan in longing, because faith gives us only a foretaste of this different mode of knowledge.  But it is a powerful foretaste.  One of the apostles makes a remarkable observation about it in Hebrews 11:1.  The passage is usually mistranslated so that it seems to say faith is the confidence of the things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  But in Greek, the two key words don’t mean “confidence” and “conviction” at all.  What the apostle is actually is that in faith we glimpse the actual substance of the things hoped for, and have the proof of things not seen.  In heaven this glimpse rises to the level of vision, but it is evidential even now.

What I am suggesting is that the premise of the question is mistaken:  I think the final evidence for God is profoundly direct, and not at all explainable in other ways.

Query

After reading the Bible, it seems that God has “receded” from us -- Martin Buber’s term -- relative to his level of interaction with people in the Old Testament.  There must be a reason why He doesn’t just “come out of the closet,” appear to us in a cloud of light, speak to us, etc.  But why?

Reply:

I can see why Buber thinks that God has receded.  We don’t receive completely new revelation any more; that sort of prophet is no longer sent.   Interestingly, rather than conceding these facts with embarrassment, the Church insists on them; they’re an article of faith.  But it views them differently than Buber.  Rather than having receded, God is closer than ever, but His mode of self-disclosure to the community of faith has changed.  The Old Testament mode of revelation was never more than an incomplete and preliminary arrangement.  The disclosure was limited to verbal messages through the prophets, and not many people were prophets.  All this changed with the Incarnation, and it changed again at Pentecost -- events Buber does not reckon with, since he doesn’t believe in them.

The reason the Incarnation made such a difference was that in Christ, instead of just speaking through intermediaries, God took our form and came among us.  In an exchange recorded in the gospel of John, Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.”  I think that’s Buber’s demand too.  Jesus replied, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?  He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

The reason the event at Pentecost made such a difference is that the Holy Spirit came to take up intimate residence with Christ’s believers, to dwell with them inwardly.  The prophets had a far-off hint that this would happen in the Messianic age.  God says through the prophet Joel, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.”

This outpouring is not necessarily dramatic, with wheels and eyes and clouds of light and all that sort of thing.  Moreover it doesn’t provide any utterly new revelation about God; instead it leads His followers into deeper understanding of His self-disclosure in Christ.  But the outpouring is better than the visions of the prophets, first because it is for the whole community of faith, second because it plants the seeds of the love that it commands.  I think this is part of the point of Christ’s remark to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

“There is no humility in refraining from asking the questions; the humility consists in believing that there may be an answer.”  --  Charles Williams, "John Milton"

On Monday we considered the strange fact that the people in the pews need to be evangelized even before other people do.  On Tuesday and Wednesday we considered two kinds of obstacle:  Those which lie in the listeners, and those which lie in the proclaimers.

But the final obstacle to evangelizing Christians lies in the condition of Christendom itself.  We are divided.  Christ’s Body is torn.

But wait.  We have been discussing evangelization, not ecumenism -- the cause of the Gospel, not the cause of Christian unity.  Isn’t the end of the discussion a bad moment to change the subject?

I am not changing it.  The two causes are joined.  To suppose we can spread the word of God without unity in that word is arrogant folly.

You don’t have to take it from me.  Christ’s last plea to His Father at His Last Supper with the disciples was “that they may become perfectly one,” and the reason He gave was “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  The moral is plain.  If we are not one in proclaiming Christ, the world will not recognize Him.  If we are not one in proclaiming the Gospel, the world will find the Gospel very hard to hear.

What part of this message have we been blocking out?  What sin or resentment or cherished conceit do we clutch so tightly that we cannot open our hands to God’s grace?  In order to hear the whole Gospel, what must we let go?

Yesterday we considered the obstacles to the evangelization of Christians which lie in the listeners.  The next variety of obstacle lies in the proclaimers.

Adding to the proclamation.  When the proclaimers go beyond the Gospel and insist on the soundness of prudential and scientific judgments which they are not equipped to make, they weaken the authority of their witness.  For example, the Church does not know whether the planet is getting warmer, whether such change would be good or bad, or whether human activity is the cause; nor does she know whether minimum wage laws do more good to the poor by increasing their income of those who work, or more harm to the poor by throwing those with marginal skills out of work.  Moreover, her ministers are naïve about the pressures toward conformity which often operate in scientific communities just as strongly as in the political world.  When those who speak for the Church pretend to expertise which she does not possess, they blur the Christian message and undermine confidence in the charism she does possess.

The solution is to stop doing that.  To be a faithful minister of the word of God is not the same thing as to peddle fallible judgments about its remote implications concerning matters about which others are more knowledgeable.  Let holy lay people figure those things out.

Subtracting from the proclamation.  So often we underestimate the desire for truth and meaning.  How often have you heard the pastor tell jokes on Trinity Sunday about why he never preaches about the Trinity and isn’t about to begin? When was the last time you heard a homilist name the congregation’s favorite sins and explain exactly what is wrong with them? How many catechists fail to explain what God has done for us? How many who do teach what He has done leave out what we must do?

The solution is to stop dumbing down Christian doctrine and to teach it all.  We seem to think that the starving desire only a morsel, that the thirsty long only for a sip.  I suggest that in the long run, the very opposite is true, for the mind, like the stomach, desires a meal.  True, a mind that is starving may gladly devour even a morsel, but the morsel may come back up -- for just as some foods are palatable only in combination with other foods, so also some truths are plausible only in combination with other truths.  In order to stand firm, they must have context, as the single stone requires the arch.  We must serve the full meal, not just part of it.

Substituting a different proclamation.  There is a false Gospel for every taste and budget.  A Gospel of wealth proclaims a Jesus who will give us any greedy thing we want if only we ask for it with enough confidence; a Gospel of cool sophistication proclaims a “historical” Jesus who might be anyone but who the saints and martyrs say He is.  A social Gospel maintains that we are saved not by personal repentance but by social revolution; a Gospel of positive thinking maintains that we are saved by warm feelings and “be happy attitudes.” Eventually the sheep catch on that the voice they are hearing is not the Shepherd, and they stop listening.

It might seem that if teachers of the faith avoid the substitutes, that is enough.  It isn’t, because false teachers will go on proclaiming them, and a good many people in our own pews are suffering post false Gospel trauma.  To them we should say, “We understand that after hearing so many untruths you may be suspicious of truth claims in general, and we respect your caution.  Ask any questions you wish.  We also understand that you may feel burned and desire some healing peace.  You are welcome to be peaceful with us.  We will not crowd you.  But there is a God, who is the Truth, and He desires to be known.  Give Him a chance.”

Conclusion tomorrow.