I give myself away, I’m sure, as a mathematician by training. That’s my undergraduate degree, and the emphasis was on theoretical mathematics — the best kind. And so I know that logic and reason necessarily trace back to certain starting assumptions — axioms — that cannot themselves be proven or even tested except for consistency.
The mistake mathematicians and philosophers make is to start with the unstated axiom that Reason governs all, when in fact Relationship governs all. Start there and everything changes. When the beginning of understanding is “God so loved the world” rather than “I think; therefore, I am,” we have to bring an entirely different toolbox to the job.
Rather than working purely from observation and logic, we begin with love for God. Just as it says in Deuteronomy.
(Deu 6:4-5 ESV) 4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Historically, in the Churches of Christ, we’ve taught this as a “command” because, well, it is a command. But what we missed is that it’s much, much more than a command. It’s the beginning of philosophy and theology and religion and understanding and Christianity and life itself.
God is announcing himself as a personal being who wishes to live in relationship with his creatures. And because relationship with God is the beginning, God is inviting us, not into a realm of new knowledge, but into a story in which he is the protagonist and in which we participate along with him.
Thus, story becomes an essential element of understanding — of knowing. After all, if you love me, and so wish to know me truly, then you’ll have to learn my story. Otherwise, I’m just a hunk of flesh and blood to you. I’m not really a person in your eyes until you love me well enough to know something of my story.
And so it’s the same with God and Jesus and with each other. We must love to know because personal beings can only be truly known by knowing their stories.
And so this is the power of story. The revealed story of God is far more powerful, far more affecting, than the Enlightenment story, and here’s why. The Enlightenment proceeds on the assumption that the universe may be known by observing. “I think; therefore, I am.” I observe myself. I perceive; therefore, there is something out there to perceive.
It’s all very Greek, very philosophical, and very distant. And there’s not much of a story because story requires characters and conflict — and dispassionate observation insulates the observer from the story. It takes him out of the story — and so, to him, there is no story in which to live.
On the other hand, the Bible tells a story about the reader. The reader reads and is read by the Bible. The story includes the reader and cannot proceed without the reader. Hence, the story becomes and is real.
The universe was not made to be dispassionately observed by the distant philosopher. It was made to be loved by its Creator and by the creatures placed there by the Creator. And therefore it can only be truly known by those who love.
God is a person, not a life principle, not a moral code, and not a lawbook. And just as is true of any person, he is best known — indeed, only truly known — by those who love him.
And because humans are made in God’s image — they also can only be known by those who love.
To love is to know. And this fact establishes an epistemology — a philosophy of knowing — radically different from the Enlightenment philosophers, who thought objective knowledge possible, and from Modernist and Postmodernist philosophers, who doubt all forms of knowing. After all, they argue, the Enlightenment experiment ultimately failed. True knowledge could not be had rationally and so true knowledge could not be had at all. As though there could be no other way.
But there is. Knowledge comes from God who reveals himself to humanity.
(1Co 8:2-3 ESV) 2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
The beginning of all knowledge is not knowledge of God but love of God. Love places us into relationship in a world made by a being created for relationship. Surrender the relationship to become a disinterested, dispassionate observer and you step outside the structure of the world. It’s a world made for relationship and so can only be understood from within that relationship.
As a result, Christianity becomes much more than a religion. “Religion” in the modern vocabulary is an element of culture — which is a characteristic of some group of people. Christianity as religion is studied by Enlightenment philosophers as something manmade, something smaller than Reason, to be subjected to the wisdom of Reason. Religion is sliced in a microtome, placed on a slide, and viewed through a microscope.
But, in fact, Reason is a constituent of Christianity, that is, knowledge of God through Christ. Reason only works when built on solid, true axioms. And the fundamental common assumptions about reality that truly define the great questions of philosophy are found in Christianity. It’s axiomatic.
Reason is ultimately about the mind of God. Reason cannot be proven by Reason. It’s true because God wills it. Reason therefore is a subset of theology.
This does not mean that we don’t reason about the Bible. Obviously, we do because the Bible is given to us in language, and language has to be translated and interpreted using reason — but reason as applied to the nature of God and Scripture. Reason starting with biblical axioms.
Now, crazily enough, if we grasp the centrality of story to knowing, then it affects how we deal with everyone. Rather than Christianity being essentially propositional (“You must believe these statements!”), it becomes relational (“Love the Lord your God”; “Love your neighbor.”) The relational elements are commands to be obeyed. But not merely. They define who we are as a people. They become our identity.
When I confess, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God,” I speak not only a propositional truth but enter into the Messiah’s story. I become a part of the Messiah community and take on the Messiah’s mission. I join him on the cross.
(Gal 2:19 NET) 20 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
“The life I now live” is not just about a better morality. It’s about having a new story to tell as well as a new story in which I live. I live in the story of Jesus.
“Crucified with Christ” is not just “got baptized.” It’s entering into the story of the cross as a follower of Jesus. I live a life of service, sacrifice, and submission and even suffering because I follow a servant-hearted, sacrificed, submitted, suffering Savior who teaches me how to live as he lived.
Hence, “sound” teaching is not correctly reciting the Nicene Creed or the Five Steps of Salvation or the Five Acts of Worship or even the Sinner’s Prayer. It’s becoming united with Jesus on his cross. It’s becoming like the Rabbi — living in his sandals. And dying with him on his cross.
(Rom 12:1-2 ESV) I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
