| Firewalls and faith
Theological explorations in the nineteenth century were often based on a “firewall” principle—a defence barrier that could preserve the integrity of Christian faith in the face of new scientific discoveries and claims that seemingly contradicted and threatened the very plausibility of Christian faith in the modern world. In its simplest expression, a firewall thesis locates faith and science in completely different fields of human knowledge and experience. A firewall is established between faith and science in terms of vocabulary, concepts, methods and purpose. “Progressive” nineteenth century theology often pitched faith merely in terms of ethical values, of which selected aspects of Christian gospel gave supreme expression. Science, by contrast, enables us to understand our physical existence but cannot give us such values. Divvying up reality was the basis of firewall theses. v The primary theoretical expression of the firewall principle was Immanuel Kant’s distinction between phenomena as the focus of scientific information and the noumenal or unknowable, which includes God. Conscience is also an experience of the noumenal. Phenomena cannot be used to prove or to disprove the reality of God. Concerning arguments from design in nature, the existence of God was as readily dismissed as believed. Conscience is real in human experience and rightly not derived from natural phenomena. Conscience contests values derived from natural equilibrium sustained by violence as much as by nurture; it can also contest pragmatism that is arbitrarily forged from selected human phenomena. This too, gave impetus to firewall theses. By identifying two realms of human experience, phenomena—subject to methods of observation, and the noumenal—the realm of faith, Kant created a firewall to protect faith from the claims of science within the realm of phenomena. Theological firewall theses generally lacked a perspective of the body in the midst of life whereby what is experienced and perceived in the heart has also been moderated or buffeted by hard edges of reality that cannot be conjured away by conjecture. Faith apart from phenomena could be fashioned toward an ideal of what humans should be or by aesthetic romantic visions of what humans could be. These theological productions were as vulnerable to intellectual flightiness as a fabulist conjuring unicorns for fables. Hard edges of creation are a permanent testimony to the wonder of life as a tangible gift and the fearfulness of creaturely existence amid elements that can overwhelm our sense of self-standing and security in an instant. Hard edges of creation invoke humility within our experience of life as creatures before our creator. Construction of firewalls between scientific claims and social ideals of human harmony occurred within a contradiction. With the benefits of scientific discovery, conjectures about human ideals could occur within the material ease and security of parlours where hard edges of reality were seldom experienced. A firewall thesis was a convenient perspective within elite, artificial isolation from the tangible world—a case of having your tea-cake and eating it too. Whether by endorsing science as knowledge of phenomena or religion as knowledge of humanity, firewall theses did not account for ideological deployment of selected scientific theories to make social assertions, such as inevitable progress from theories of evolution or racial superiority as a manifestation of the same principle. Isolated from hard edges of human hubris and partisan connivance, theological firewall theses proved to be naïve. v Following Kant, the primary intention of nineteenth century firewall theses was “to make room for faith” in a world where new scientific claims threatened to overwhelm faith. Yet certain assumptions were made in firewall theses that eventually ran counter to faith, destroying faith instead. Firewall theses were developed to protect faith, yet they invited agnosticism as a virus within Christian faith. In the cause of faith, Kant drew a line between phenomena and the noumenal. With God and conscience belonging to the latter, belief in God must occur “as if” God is a reality, otherwise it is not faith. If faith could believe something “as if” it is true in the absence of any requisite evidence, the thought that faith is the focus of faith seemed a plausible idea. A serious game of “as if” was inducted as faith became the focus of faith, eclipsing any focus on realities affirmed in the great relay of Christian testimony. Agnosticism was solicited within this game as wholly compatible with such expression of progressive modern faith. For the agnostic to engage in “as if” hypotheses was supposedly the same as Christian faith without the requisite evidence for such faith. Yet the effects or fruits are different. Another form of agnosticism emerging from a firewall thesis was precipitated by Schleiermacher who, in a genuine desire to promote the vitality of Christian faith, separated theological claims from experience, the latter being the basis for theology. While this strategy sought to dispel rote belief in doctrinal propositions in order to express genuine Christian experience, it effectively repeated the focus on believing in believing. Theology is really about the effects of faith not the focus of faith. In resistance to a (Kantian) division of reality that is given expression through various firewall theses, another proposal was generated in which everything expresses the reality of God, even without people’s awareness of this. The growth of knowledge toward a final fullness of understanding invariably runs through thesis and counter thesis generating further theses and so on—Hegel’s dialectic. Crucial to the dialectic is a dynamic interaction between seemingly opposite perspectives, methods and perceptions of reality that moves humanity toward its final self-understanding—all will be seen to be one and every variation ingested toward one reality. This is a vision of monism in which everything is seamlessly one. There is no need for any firewall in monism, for monism eventually digests or assimilates all differences, including any notion of human sin. Even hostility to Christ is necessary as darkness at midday that precedes resurrection as a human ideal. The dialectic had the effect of generating a pan-Christian claim on everything that was progressive, inculcating an uncritical optimism in which suffering, contradiction and even violence are part of the necessary process toward a complete tapestry. It also generated agnosticism as everything will pan-out, whatever is believed along the way. Critical agnosticism or even hostile atheism is therefore in true service of this dialectical machine that rolls on, digesting everything, to reveal in time that all is one. v Instead of firewalling faith from phenomena in a game of “as if” or its opposite, creating a seamless continuum of everything, including human compromise, the focus of Christian faith and integral human response are centred in a person. Contrary to firewall theses and monism, the gospel proclaims grace and truth in Jesus Christ as the definitive expression of human life without fragile fear for the veracity of Christian faith and testimony amid all the diverse, conflicted and ultimately compromised human possibilities generated within creation, which is a gift that will always exceed human purview and assimilation.
Relevant historical texts: Kant Critique of Pure Reason; Critique of Practical Reason; Critique of Judgment; Hegel Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion; Phenomenology of Spirit; Schleiermacher The Christian Faith. |
