For previous posts in this series:
Anselm’s Faith seeking understanding seems at first glance an unpromising approach for an evangelical committed to Scripture as the source of revelation. Through this series, I’ve argued that it is actually very helpful as part of evangelical theological exploration.
a) The goal (that which is to be understood) is set by long established and agreed truths of the faith. For Anselm that was the creeds. For evangelicals that might be confessions and statements of faith. But it is intrinsically shooting for orthodoxy.
b) The goal is not narrow or peripheral, but the great and central truths of the faith, richly expressed.
c) Seeking to understand or restate these truths helps avoid the danger of parroting words which have lost their meaning. The process of faith seeking understanding gives fresh insights into truths long accepted.
d) Starting on the common ground of beliefs shared by the Christian and the unbeliever in the culture, and proceeding by reasoning accepted by both means a real communication is possible, and so this is a particularly useful form of evangelism.
e) This shared starting point and reasoning also means that we address the secret doubts of Christians in the culture we are living in.
Having described faith seeking understanding, it may be you can see how Christians of the last 100 years have been using this method. Someone suggested Dan Strange’s subversive fulfilment as an example. The example that came to my mind was CS Lewis’ mere Christianity, which starts with moral outrage as the shared common ground and seeks to go from there to a fairly full Christian faith in steps that an atheist would accept.
One challenge for applying this method today is that our culture is fractured and pluralised, and you might need different starting points and methods for different subcultures.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that there are several potential starting points in our culture. One is the widespread feeling that “the world is not as it should be”, “the world is messed up”. Another is the sense of confusion that I feel like I ought to be significant, I’m made for greatness, and yet feel flawed and small.
What do you think are examples that a Christian and a non-Christian can accept as a basic truth? And what Christian truth can you reach by steps of reasoning a non-Christian would accept.
Jots and Scribbles 