Dialogue with an Honest Doubter. (H.A.Whittaker) A. Hello, B. How are you? Im really glad to see you. Im desperate for a bit of sensible talk with someone who can appreciate my point of view. B. Why, whats the matter, A? Been getting into trouble in your ecclesia? I know youve got one or two die-hards who can be counted on to make a mountain out of a molehill. Is that whats been happening? A. Well, by and large, yes. I wouldnt have thought it possible that brethren reared on the same Truth that Ive believed all my life, could show such uncharitable bigotry. It takes my breath away. B. But whats it all about? Stop! Ill make a guess. Youve been putting your foot in it, talking about the first few chapters of Genesis in different language from what Dr. Thomas used. Right? A. Absolutely right, B. Ive stuck my neck out, and have come precious near to having it wrung! It happened this way. At Bible Class a few weeks ago old Bro. X was to do a study of That old Serpent, the Devil, so of course—as all these old- timers do—he started at Genesis 3 and worked his way through to Hebrews 2:14 and a few more stock passages. It was all straight Dr. Thomas. The discussion was a bit flat, so to liven things up I came up with the suggestion that the serpent tempting Eve was just as symbolic as the serpent in Revelation, just a figurative representation of her own inclination to break Gods law. You should have heard the rumpus it created. Bro. X was as red as a turkey-cock. Bro. Υ wanted to know whereabouts in the works of the Truth I had read such a fantastic idea. Bro. Ζ bombarded me with questions—How did I fit this in? How did I square that with my theory? I wasnt careful enough here. In trying to stave off some of his questions, I threw out the alternative suggestion that the tempter was one of the race of Neolithic Man already existing on the earth when Adam came on the scene. That did it! There was a megaton explosion right away. Talk about The Christians to the lions! The poor old serpent was forgotten. This idea that there were men before and with Adam, blew every fuse in the building. Just imagine! a commonplace bit of anthropology like that. But it doesnt come in Genesis, and You cant square that with Romans 5, and See what comes of this modern education!—· that was the kind of barrage I had to face. And theres even talk about making me sign a solemn declaration that I have thought it over and altogether renounced these heretical notions—with the gun at my head: If you dont, well have you excommunicated in no time. Honestly, I dont know what to do. Sometimes I feel so disgusted, I could walk out cheerfully, and join the Baptists or the Methodists or somebody. B. Dear me, you have got things in a mess, havent you? Of course, Ive had a bit more experience than you have, and I know just how excited some of the old die-hards can get; they react as though with one or two interpretations on these lines you are tearing the Statement of Faith to shreds. Youll soon learn, if you havent learned already, that there are some people you can talk to, and some that its suicidal to discuss any new idea with. Now in my ecclesia I dont suppose there are more than four or five who know my ideas on some of these interpretations where we try to line up Genesis with latest scientific theory. The rest?—I just let them go on thinking Im a middle-of-the-road Christadelphian like all the rest who have never read a science text-book. A. Thats the way to ensure a quiet life, is it? But you are telling me this too late. Im in the thick of it now. But you do a lot of speaking up and down the country. If you mention any of these modern ideas in your addresses you are sure to get into hot water. B. Of course I am. So of course I dont mention them. A. But how do you manage not to? B. Its not so tricky as youd think. Choose your topics with care, and theres no difficulty. Nearly all my lectures and exhortations these days are out of the New Testament. A. But half a minute; werent you brought into that Special Effort at ______ to answer impromptu questions at a Christadelphian Forum? You might have found yourself in a spot with some of those questions. B. No, theres an easy way out when the occasional sticky question crops up. For instance, if someone asks: What is the panels attitude to the theory of evolution? Do you really believe that all the people in this world are descended from one man and one woman ? My answer begins with the stock phrase: On this question the Christadelphian position is this . . . And then I proceed to detail the traditional point of view, following the party line to the last syllable. Its simple you see. A. Simple enough for someone in your position! But whats the answer to my problem? Being the centre of a row like this is bringing me just a bit too much notoriety to be comfortable. Mind you, Ive got a fair number of sympathisers. Some of the youngsters in the ecclesia have their minds wider open to a new idea. Im getting some first-rate opportunities to show them how neatly those new interpretations fit together once you get away from a cast-iron view of Genesis. B. Cant you see that thats the ultimate answer to these difficulties we are up against. We must capture the rising generation. Get them sympathetic to our point of view, and gradually a more enlightened attitude will spread through the ecclesias. It wouldnt need many years of patient work with the younger brethren to bring about a conversion to a better informed outlook. In any case, its not reasonable to expect the ecclesias to stay mid-Victorian any longer. A. Thats all very well with an ecclesia like yours; but what am I to do when Bro. X comes breathing down my neck, asking questions about Do I believe this and that item in the Statement of Faith? Life can be a bit sticky when this sort of thing happens. B. Yes, I know. The trouble is that people like him cant see that these interpretations which they dont like, actually lend themselves to a higher and nobler view of the Inspiration of the Bible. But at least you can soothe your ecclesial watchdogs by giving them an explicit assurance that you believe fully in the inspiration of Scripture. Why dont you do that? And you can add that you accept and believe all the First Principles of the Faith. Its true that you take some of them to carry a rather different meaning from what your ecclesial patriarchs assign to them, but its no good trying to explain that. A. See, heres Bro. C. I can talk to him better than to some of the others. All the same, Im pretty sure he doesnt approve of me—but at least he doesnt blow his top about modern apostasy and science falsely so called, and all that, as some of the others do. Bro. C, how do you do? Im glad weve met. I was thinking of coming round to talk over this recent storm in the ecclesia. C. Yes, my boy, Im sorry its happened, very sorry. Some of the ecclesia are really very cut-up about it. Without realising it, you have caused a good deal more unhappiness than you realise. A. Is that really so? Well, if its true, Im sorry. I didnt want to do anything of the kind. I hope you will believe me when I say that. C. Believe you? Why, of course I do. And Im extremely glad to hear you say that. But, dear me, the damage is done now! You have the entire ecclesia in a ferment over these sensational ideas of yours about Genesis. I could wish with all my heart that you had not been so thoughtless. A. But, how was I to know that thered be such a violent reaction to one or two unorthodox suggestions. I can tell you, it shook me when such a storm blew up. C. Well, perhaps thats partly due to your lack of experience. I can remember when I was about your age startling my elders with one or two Bible interpretations theyd never heard before. You are not the first to get yourself into hot water. A. But there wasnt any talk of putting you out of fellowship then, was there? C. No, never a suggestion of it, that I can remember. A. Well, why in my case then? No sauce for the goose but plenty for the gander! C. Why, for this reason. The ideas which set my elders arguing with me were novel, and they argued with me partly because of the conservatism of old age, and partly because they doubted the soundness of my Biblical reasoning. In your case, there are not only these reasons but also a very solid conviction that your ideas about Genesis question the inspiration of Scripture, and the soundness of some of the principles of our Faith. Thats why there has been this call to arms. And you, A, were—I consider—both unwise and uncharitable to your brethren to mention these things. Unwise, because obviously you havent really thought out all the implications of these speculations (as I believe them to be). And lacking in charity because you should have known that here was something guaranteed to upset most of those who heard you. B. You mean, then, G, that As real fault is in talking openly and frankly about his ideas on Genesis, and what he should have done was to keep his mouth shut, and then it would be all right for him to go on working out a modern scientific interpretation of Genesis to his hearts content? C. No, indeed. I didnt say that, did I? And I would be very sorry if you were to assume that to be the logical consequence of what I said. This is the position. Here are ideas which many in the ecclesia are convinced are contrary to Scripture, contrary to our Statement of Faith. How can you believe in a symbolic serpent in Genesis when Paul plainly believed in a real serpent? How can you have God cursing not only the literal man and the woman but also the symbolic serpent? And how can you believe Paul in Romans 5—By one man sin came into the world, and death by sin—if death was already a normal experience in the world before Adam sinned?—and so on. I wont catalogue all the arguments weve combed over in the past few weeks. Now, thats the Scriptural Christadelphian point of view with regard to these things—and they are deemed to be fundamental. As your brethren see it, you are now trying to change some of these fundamentals. You cant do it. You ought not to try to do it. Whether right or wrong (and of course we think right), the Christadelphian position is what it is for all time—or at least until the coming of the Lord or the disintegration of the community (which God forbid!). To begin as though you are a thoroughgoing Christadelphian and to seek to change the body from within is a most immoral thing. Some would call it hypocrisy. It was in this way that the modernists took over the Church of England—by giving outward adherence to the churchs creeds and yet reading into them something radically different from what they were intended to convey. Today the Anglican church is riddled with that kind of lets pretend. You, A, would like to begin the same process with us. A. Indeed, C, you couldnt be further from the truth. I had no such idea in my mind when I first raised these points. C. Well, my boy, Im extremely glad to hear you say that. But, frankly, I dont feel so happy about several others who seem to be thinking along the same lines as yourself. A. All I wanted to do was to show that we have an obligation to face up to the problems presented by the fuller knowledge available to our generation. B. Quite so, C. The young Christadelphians, and especially the boys going through university, are up against difficulties of a sort that your generation never suspected to exist—and dont now! We are not in the middle of the last century now, you know. Weve got to settle down and rethink a whole lot of problems. Its no good pretending they dont exist. C. Right enough, B. But is this situation being tackled from the right end? My impression is that the first big assumption behind this new approach, this rethink, or whatever you call it, is that the scientists are absolutely right that all their conclusions are altogether dependable. You would think, from the kind of Ianguage that is used, that the scientist is invariably a high-souled seeker after truth and that only the Bible-believer goes in for loaded conclusions. You know, an outlook like that shows a quite pathetic ingenuousness in its attitude to human nature. Well, its all very well saying: Lets open our eyes a little wider to the existence of tricky problems, but we have an obligation to start from the assumption—which has been justified over and over again in our experience—that the Bible will stand the test. More than that, lets beware of the tacit assumption that if theres an appearance of conflict between Bible and science, the Bible must give way, even if it means bending our interpretations to the extent of making plain Bible words mean almost anything but what they say ! B. But nobody is doing that, C. Now you are indulging in caricature. C. Im sorry if you think so, B. I can assure you that there are plenty of brethren better read in the Scriptures than myself, who would say precisely what I have said. B. But wasnt A perfectly correct just now in maintaining that there is need for a higher degree of mental honesty. We need to face up to the fact that today we have problems which our fathers did not have, and we have inherited answers to other problems which today do not appear so satisfactory as they used to do. C. Thats very well said, B. But how I could wish that these high principles were applied consistently by those who talk about the need for them. B. What do you mean? Are you suggesting that theres hypocrisy in As re-exploration of some of these difficulties in Genesis? C. No, B, Im not. Im sure he has only the best of motives. But I wouldnt say that the double-speak I alluded to may not come later on. A. Whatever are you driving at, C? Thats a pretty serious thing to say. Hadnt you better explain? C. Of course its a serious thing to say. I only say it because the situation is serious. Suppose, A, this new look turns out to be, in effect, a denial of some of the basic principles Christadelphians have stood for for the past hundred years. A. But theres no chance of that. I believe our Statement of Faith completely. Theres no sign of me ever being anything but a thorough-going Christadelphian. C. Im not so sure. There are some who are already wondering how you can say that and at the same time advance some of the ideas we have heard from you. A. Oh, but thats ridiculous. C. You think so. And perhaps it is. But Im only telling you how it appears to some people. A. I suppose that explains the explosion at the Bible Class. C. I guess it does. But now, see where this might lead to. If ultimately you do reach a position where it is fairly plain that you have lost conviction regarding certain basic principles in our Faith, what are you going to do about it? You see, I happen to know of one or two brethren who are in that position already. A. Well, if the Christadelphian Faith is not as near to Truth as we have thought, it must be altered. C. Come, be practical, A. Do you think that thousands of convinced Christadelphians are going to change their principles, just because a handful of restless explorers like yourself have pulled up the roots, and found that one of them is not growing as straight as you would like it? What would you say if Β here were to come to the conclusion that the Church of England is right in its Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity? Would you agree that he could continue among us with the intention of propagating this view in the ecclesias? Or would you say to him: Since you no longer share the Faith our ecclesias stand for, hadnt you better find a spiritual home elsewhere? A. Ah, now I see what you were getting at when you talked about the danger of hypocrisy. C. Exactly. It could be with us already. I suspect that this principle of honest thinking is being applied in a rather lopsided fashion by some. Our big danger in the years ahead is that, because of this, we may be corroded from within, after having withstood attack from without for over a century. You know what Paul warned the elders of Ephesus against. B. But this is a very hard thing you are saying, C. Do you realise what it means? If a man in all sincerity finds that his researches cause him to deviate from the standard position in one thing, then out he goes—hes excommunicated ! A. I didnt say precisely that. What I was suggesting was that when he finds himself no longer a true Christadelphian he should face the fact honestly, and cease to be a Christadelphian even nominally. As I see it, to do otherwise is dishonesty. B. But you are too hard altogether, C. What you are trying to insist on can only lead to stark tragedy for some individuals. C. Do you think I havent given any thought to that, B? Of course its tragic. These problems of conviction and conscience are inseparable from tragedy. It wasnt for nothing that Jesus spoke of his message separating families. I tell you, I am profoundly sorry for any brother who finds himself tangled up in a situation of this sort. Lately, Ive thanked God time and again that I have no doubts about the soundness of the principles I have held for the last forty years. But if the day comes when I do have doubts which mature into convictions of a different kind, I shall walk out. B. Well, C, Im disappointed in you. I wouldnt have thought to see you lining yourself up with the persecuting element which has appeared in some places. I think the attitude shown to one or two of these youngsters just because they want an answer to their problems is deplorable. C. Now what have I said that you should label me a persecutor, B? You have not heard me use the word disfellowship or excommunicate or withdraw. I am all for giving a man plenty of time in which to sort out his problems, especially a young man like A here. But ultimately, when a man knows what he thinks and when he realises that he has divergent views, he should—in all honesty—have a divergent way of life. There are churches where a man may believe almost anything, may have mental reservations galore, and still continue as a member. Ours is not such a community, as you well know. B. I wonder how many have such a dour, unfeeling attitude as you. C. The big majority, I hope, or Ichabod is already written on our community. But B, this is not a hard unsympathetic approach to these difficulties which I am advocating. It is just facing facts. If your wife was a serious small-pox contact what would you think of the doctor who said to himself: This is going to upset her husband and family a lot. Ill tell them its both mild and non-infectious; theres no need for any isolation? A. My word, youve shaken me, G, you really have. In a sentence whats the answer to all this tangle we are in? C. Briefly this. First, lets beware of over-much reverence for the gods of science. If we accommodate ourselves to the scientist of today, we shall most likely be at loggerheads with the scientist of next week—and both of them are only men. Second, we must be more prepared than we have been, to acknowledge that there are problems to which we dont have an immediate answer. Theres no harm in an undogmatic suspension of judgment on such matters in the meantime. Third, and most important of all, there must be much more intensive Bible study. This will build up impregnable convictions about the utter dependability of the Word. Then our Faith is secure. Not an altogether satisfactory summary perhaps, but its the best I can offer. (re-posted from another Group)
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 04:03:34 +0000
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