On the Language of Faith

It has been shown repeatedly, by such diverse sources as Time Magazine and Modern Reformation, that the people of this country are essentially illiterate when it comes to the Bible.  This Biblical illiteracy extends not just to the facts, historical accounts and doctrines contained in the Bible, but to the vocabulary of the faith.  Words like justification and imputation, words central to the understanding of the Gospel, pass over the heads of people as if they were a foreign language.  How did this happen?  Who is at fault?  Can this be remedied?  What is the solution?

The Institutes of Calvin, an abbreviation for the full title of that book, was written in the sixteenth century.  Today, this book is considered a book for seminary training, but not at all seminaries.  This book is considered too lofty and entrenched in dogma and doctrine to be accessible even for garden variety parish priests and pastors.  It is considered impractical and not relevant to today.  Calvin wrote this book as a primer on Christianity for the layman. It is we who have relegated its usage and status to a top shelf, out of reach tome, to be found only in the library of the more venerable seminary academician.  How did this happen?

Rather than spend prose here discussing Charles Finney, the First and Second Great Awakenings, John Wesley, Modernism and Postmodernism, let us focus on the logical connection of these people and movements.  At the time of Calvin, the printed word was still a novelty.  The Gutenberg press had been in existence for less than a century, since the mid 1450s.  The Bible had just begun to be propagated in the masses.  The story of the Gutenberg Bible and the printing press makes for a fascinating read.  But one of the results of this technological advance was a sharp increase in the Biblical literacy of the masses.  The Reformation was not possible prior to the fifteenth century because of the low levels of literacy in the masses and the lack of availability of mass produced books.  Understand that by masses in fifteenth century standards, we are still talking about aristocracy and mercantile class citizens.  Nonetheless, the impact of this event was profound.  All of the great theologians of the sixteenth century owe in part their scholarship to this technological achievement.

Because of this increase in Biblical literacy, books like The Institutes could have a more public and wide readership.  Ideas became accessible to the masses.  The theology of the church became open to scrutiny.  No longer were papal abuses able to be hidden from the rest of the church.  When Luther posted his 95 theses, as an invitation to debate within the monastery, he didn’t expect much interest.  To his surprise, when he arrived to debate, the room was packed.  This could not have happened without a population that was Biblically literate and theologically sophisticated, at least enough to have a working theological vocabulary that was represented in the vernacular of the day. 

The sum of the impacts of the next four centuries is that this theological vocabulary had been wiped out of the vernacular of our day.  Philosophy has ironically imploded on its own thoughts.  In an era where words are viewed as unnecessary and inadequate to describe emotions and feelings, even philosophy suffers.  What has really happened is that intellectual slothfulness has resulted in a loss of precision in word usage for describing anything less concrete than a piece of furniture.  As we lose the vocabulary, we lose also the ability to communicate.  The first place to realize this loss will necessarily be the masses.  The halls of academia, whose sacred task is to preserve and advance thought, have become crippled by the generational dilution of their ranks by this less sophisticated populace.

How many generations does it take to lose the language of our faith?  Many have argued that it only took two generations.  The first generation stops trusting in words.  The second generation loses touch with the ideas behind the words, and logically loses interest and leaves the church.  Where is the fault?

The movements that so regularly pass through our churches are a reaction to this loss of Biblical literacy.  We have Happenings and Promise Keepers and Acquire the Fire and who knows what other dozens of movements come…and go.  The shelf life for each of these movements seems to be about a decade.  They are grounded in spirituality and not in historical fact.  They are the result of the ever present Gnostic impulse of our culture’s Greek heritage.  But not being grounded in the historical facts, they wither and blow away in time, as people lose utility from that particular pietistic or spiritual formula.  The ideas that are behind the faith can no longer be articulated.

Jesus’ great church shrinkage seminar in John 6 makes the point that the church was never about absolute numbers.  The church is about getting the message right.  Jesus did not come to feed the masses; He came to fulfill prophesy and save His elect people.  Notice the first third of John 1.  Jesus isn’t the warm fuzzy feeling or the tear laden experience.  Jesus is the Word.  He is the Word made flesh.  The church has failed us by not teaching us the Word, not teaching us the vocabulary, not developing the doctrines that result from these Words.  If you do not know the vocabulary of the faith, the fault, initially, is not yours.  The fault is with your pastors, priests and teachers.  Admonitions to teachers in the Bible are stern, epic and everlasting.  But now that you know that your education is lacking, what are you to do?

When I realized the depth of my ignorance, I started reading.  It was a tough go.  For months, I was looking up words in dictionaries, searches and eventually books, until I could actually read the Bible and a commentary on a particular passage straight through.  I spent more time looking stuff up than I did reading.  This is a foreign language to us now.  It will require work to learn it.  When I starting writing about this stuff a year or more ago, some ideas were still a bit fuzzy.  It takes effort to learn when your teachers, in whom you have entrusted your faith, fail you in such epic proportions.  You must learn to do the legwork yourselves and you must find better teachers.

I do not presume to be anything more than what I am.  I am like the student who tutors on the side.  You get what you pay for.  I am not the better teacher that you need to find.  The purpose of this blog has been to try and bring some of you along with me on this journey to recover our faith.  We need first to understand the vocabulary and next the doctrines that make up our faith.  We need to be consistent and understand how the Bible is consistent.  If you spend 15 or more hours a week watching television, cannot you find at least 5 hours a week to learn something useful?

Our teachers have failed us.  We must learn the faith and then we must reclaim it from those who would lead us all to hell, singing loudly songs without meaning, and preaching words without doctrine.

--Ogre--