Arrogant doubt | Carl Trueman

If it is not self-referentially incoherent to make the claim, then one thing in the West today is certain; that doubt is regarded nearly everywhere as a virtue, a sign of modesty, sensitivity and intelligence.

To be certain about almost anything else is a sign of arrogance, of bull-headed ignorance and bigotry. Such is simply not the stuff of a secularised pluralism.

Here is an evangelical example of refusal to express certainty on a pretty straightforward issue. Time magazine recently listed the most important evangelicals in America; among those highlighted was an individual who is, apparently, a significant figure in something called ‘the emerging church’. This is a group which has made the astounding discoveries — wait for it, you may want to sit down before reading this — that, generally speaking, people, especially younger people, do not like going to church, do not like authority structures, and do not wish to commit to any kind of traditional doctrinal position, ecclesiastical structure or established form of worship and piety. Well I never! People don’t want to go to church?! And young people object to authority?! Well, we do live in a day when evangelical prophets are made by pointing out things that are as plain as a pikestaff to most of us.

Post-pikestaff

Now this post-pikestaff evangelicalism of groups such as the emerging church movement may well possess all the features of preening self-regard and portentous pretension to be expected from the various ‘post-whatever’ movements of the last 15 years; but in the context of the brief Time interview, this was not what concerned me. It was that, when asked his view of homosexuality, this person responded that it was a hard question to answer because he could not do so without hurting somebody on one side of the debate or the other. We need to remember that this was a press interview, and this sound bite may not reflect his views in all their nuance (though I did not notice any published clarification in later issues); but he did seem to be saying that expressing certainty on this issue would break the higher moral code of not ‘hurting anyone’. Clear teaching of Scripture notwithstanding, this leader wanted to avoid offending. He is a leader who leads by giving no clear leadership. Doubt is in, being nice and kind; certainty is out, being harsh and unloving. Behold the creed of the modern West.

Registering dissent

Sadly, doubt is not the monopoly of the trendy pundits of the post-pikestaff evangelicalism. I come across it all the time, even within allegedly traditional evangelical quarters. Indeed, I am continually confronted with those who seem to think it is a sign of intellectual arrogance or emotional immaturity to have definite opinions on any theological issue, however basic, however obviously taught in Scripture, however firmly held by Christians for centuries. For these characters, to be in doubt is to have come of age, to be mature, to be modest, to realise that all questions are irreducibly complicated, and must be kept permanently open to debate.

That is why I wish to register my dissent at this point. I believe that doubt is a sign of unspeakable arrogance, and, in those who should know better, is a sign of intellectual and moral maturity and abdication. Why do I say so? Simply this: Scripture teaches, repeatedly and emphatically, that God has revealed himself to us clearly and straightforwardly, in general revelation, in creation and providence; and in special revelation in Christ and in Scripture, the latter of which now operates as a lens for understanding the whole of reality. Now, a dozen hermeneutical whizz-kids are, no doubt, reaching for the phone to complain at such a simpleton. Has this numpty never heard of Gadamer, of Derrida, of Foucault?

God revealed

Well, yes, I have, and unlike many who drop their names in conversation, I’ve even read quite a lot of their stuff as well. But my point still stands: God has revealed himself clearly, claims of non-Christian philosophers and literary theorists notwithstanding, and he has promised his Holy Spirit to believers, particularly when gathered as a church, to assist them in understanding that revelation through the pages of Scripture.

This is, of course, a highly controversial statement; but let me say that there is something extremely anti-evangelical, nay, anti-Protestant (in the best, non-sectarian sense of the word) about the whole current obsession with hermeneutics. Evangelicalism, after all, has historical roots in the Reformation of the 16th century, and the Reformers were convinced that, as long as the Scriptures were accurately translated into the vernacular, their basic message was clear for all to see. They did not believe that every verse was as transparent as every other verse; they were aware that there were hard passages and easy passages, but they had the supreme confidence that, given decent translations of Scripture and lives of regular, prayerful, churchly obedience, every Tom, Dick and Harriet could understand the basic message of the gospel contained therein.

In the Reformation, of course, it was the Roman Catholic Church that took Scripture from the people, claiming its meaning was obscure, and that it was therefore necessary for an elite priesthood to extract its meaning and mediate it to the people. The Reformers stood against this, arguing for the essential perspicuity, or clarity, of Scripture’s teaching. Today, the priesthood has been replaced by a fragmented scholarly guild, with only a tenuous connection to the church, and every generation of scholars creates its new Gnostic knowledge which one must possess to unlock the arcane meaning of the Bible. In the 19th century it was Higher Criticism that was created. Now it is a thorough acquaintance with continental philosophy or the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Basically simple

Anti-evangelical? Anti-Protestant? Friends, this culture of hermeneutical doubt and uncertainty is nothing less than anti-Christian. Don’t get me wrong: we need scholars, we need translators, we need theologians. There is a difference between needing something in order to ensure the overall smooth-running of a particular thing, and being so dependent on it that one cannot meaningfully operate without it. My car runs pretty well 90, well, perhaps 80% of the time. When it breaks down, I need an expert to fix it for me. I do not, however, need my mechanic to start it for me in the morning, nor do I have to call him for advice every time I approach a traffic light. In other words, I am quite capable of routinely operating the car myself. I simply need the mechanic to give the car a service every six months to make sure everything is satisfactory, and, at times of crisis, to repair whatever is wrong. Compare this to the church. Now, the Bible is, basically, a simple book, teaching a relatively straightforward story of creation, fall, redemption and consummation. There are complex details, and there are points in history where the church has broken down, where the gospel has been obscured. That’s why we train our ministers and leaders to be competent in biblical languages and theology — so that they can offer wise and gentle leadership for the routine smooth running of the church, and we have a few experts here and there to offer advice as and when problems and crises occur. However, what we are witnessing today is nothing less than a hermeneutical and technical overload, which has almost entirely appropriated the Bible for a Gnostic guild of scholars and academics. At the base this Gnosticism is predicated on the belief that the Bible is not essentially simple but highly complicated on every issue on every page. We therefore need to hand it over to the experts who can tell us what it means, or, more frequently, tell us that it can mean nothing definite in particular. After all, for all of the opaque verbiage of the hermeneutical hoo-hah of the last 20 years, there is little evidence of any widespread improvement in preaching or of a greater general confidence in the raw power of God’s Word.

A moral motive?

What drives this? Dare I say, the problem is not an intellectual one. It is, at base. a moral one. To abdicate certainty about God and his revelation in the face of this hermeneutical overload, to concede that all of Scripture is incomprehensible to any but the experts, is to doubt that God has communicated to us in a clear and decisive way. It happened in the Garden of Eden when the very first expert in hermeneutics asked the lethal question: ‘Did God really say...?’ and doubt was immediately sown in the minds of Adam and Eve. Their doubt, of course, was not a piece of appropriate interpretative modesty relative to God’s Word. It was part and parcel of a moral rejection of God’s authority, a bare-faced act of rebellion.

Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, doubt is not the result of the hermeneutical overload after all. Perhaps the hermeneutical overload is itself the result of doubt, narcissism, and of a moral crisis with regard to submission to God’s Word. We need to face up to it. We all want to get out from under the authority of God as expressed in his Word. What better way of doing this is there than doubt? What better way of doubting than to produce an elaborate theology which makes such doubt not simply coherent, but which also clothes it with the virtue of modesty, reasonableness and cosmopolitan savvy?

Friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ is far different to the gospel of doubt. Don’t buy into this chaos.

This slightly shortened article is reprinted with permission from Themelios, Vol. 31, issue 1, October 2005.