Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 7 - HOW TO READ)

This series explores the nature of Scripture (specifically those aspects which many of us find uncomfortable) and what our approach to Scripture should be as a consequence. This exploration is needed because our intrinsic human biases cause us to assume that God's nature / aims / priorities / etc all line up with our modernistic worldview, which focuses on detailed accurate synergistic information. However such an approach to Scripture clashes with many of its properties. Our response tends to be to curate Scripture, or to minimize our engagement with the aspects we find difficult to explain. Instead, we should engage with all of Scripture as God designed it, and challenge our perspective on it when needed. What does it look like when we value the uncomfortable aspects of Scripture?

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read (this post)

So far I've spent a long time justifying my belief that God is more interested in the meta-cognitive goals of person-hood, expression, and relationship. Now I want to start exploring the practical aspects of reading Scripture. 

Scripture's purpose, specifically, is to be a collection of some of the individual progressive revelations of God's person-hood throughout history, which taken together He has deemed to be the most universally useful expression toward encouraging relationship with Him. It does this in an incredibly dynamic way. If we focus on cognitive information and a harmonious synthesis of theology, we can miss a lot of what the Bible has to offer toward relationship with God, and at its worst it can lead us to minimize aspects of Scripture to the point that they are almost useless to us. How should we approach Scripture keeping relationship in mind, and balancing the usefulness and limitations of cognition toward this ultimate aim? I have some general principles to share, but this is something I'd like to grow in more, so please share your own thoughts!

How to Read Scripture:

1) Immerse yourself in the passage, allowing every aspect of yourself to be impacted by the experience. We don't expect each expression of a person to be perfect and balanced - and likewise with each revelation - but they are unique and beautiful and insightful. By reading Scripture and inviting the Holy Spirit to speak through it, you are touching an aspect God, a deliberately designed expression of Himself! Never let this slip by you. 

2) Utilize flawed cognition to your relational advantage. Despite its limitations - which I have emphasized in my defense of God's relational aims - cognition is central to our approach to Scripture for obvious reasons. Firstly, Scripture is written in a language, meaning cognition has to be engaged to even start experiencing it with your other non-cognitive faculties. Secondly, 'Immersing yourself in the passage' is something that's not under much of our direct control, since all our faculties are overwhelmingly influenced by external circumstances, our subconscious, and each other. However, cognition is unique in that it is also (at least partly) consciously controlled, which gives us an avenue to steer and focus our other faculties of experience. If we are discussing how we should control our approach to Scripture, this control has to occur through our cognition. 

3) Attempt to cognitively understand what God intended for people to experience from his designed expression in Scripture. How Scripture's designed relational purpose is realized - or whether it is realized at all - varies between individuals. Our cognition needs to understand the intended experience if it is to steer our experience in the right direction. 

4) Deliberately consider multiple different experiences of God from the passage in mind. I think this is one of the most productive ways to attempt to properly experience God's expression through Scripture. These different perspectives help us break out of our worldview and so avoid subconscious worldview hijacking of our cognition, so we can consider God's intentions for the passage more clearly. But more profoundly, they help us stick to the first principle of relational experience (rather than cognitive accuracy). If we understand another person's relational experience, it allows us to experience an echo of God ourselves. In addition to the hypothetical 'universal intended experience' we're trying to understand from a passage, it's as if we were experiencing a personalized expression of God by proxy (albeit one with greater potential for error in our understanding, and with less universal benefit than Scripture itself). 

5) Start with some 'high yield' perspectives. Perhaps most useful is that of the original intended audience or of the author, since these are clearly going to be integral to God's intended experience of his expression in that passage of Scripture[1]. Also helpful to consider are the experiences of early and/or orthodox church consensus[2]. A final group of helpful perspectives are those of individual saints who you discern to be relating well to God in a holistic sense - these may be dead or living saints, famous or privately known[3]. 

6) Allow your cognition to function naturally and form a harmonized view of God as a person. Try to see God through each of the expressions you experience which you deem to be intended by God, or genuine healthy relationships. Remember you are trying to understand a person in the light of all their complex expressions. Don't make a God up who wraps perfectly around all these 'experiences' (this can never take into full consideration the dynamics of person-hood). Instead try to understand the God who expresses Himself in these ways. 

7) Don't let our modernistic worldview hijack your cognition and make an idol of it. This is an imperfect process and does not define 'relationship', though it is useful and natural.  Do not be distracted away from the aim of relationship with God.  Remember that the hypothetical 'universal intended experience' is actually going to be a spectrum of experience, just like any public expression in earthly relationships. Do not become obsessed with the difficulties of forming a harmonized view of God. Focus on God's intentions for Scripture (rather than picking 'the best' interpretation), and focus on God as a person (where Scripture springs from Him, rather than the reverse). Where cognitive perplexity exists, relate to God through this (some perplexity is a normal part of any relationship).

Its more (or less) intuitive

This approach is fairly intuitive and natural - read the passage for what it is, and consider the spectrum of legitimate ways to experience God through it (even if they contain different mixes of cognitive gaps). Despite its simplicity and intuitiveness, this approach IS difficult - because our worldview isn't happy with cognitive gaps, and because this approach requires us to put aside our preferred priorities and seek God as HE wishes to be found.[4][5]

Summary:

Reading Scripture should utilize cognition to focus the rest of our faculties and allow our whole being to experience God as He intends. At the same time we need to be vigilant not to focus excessively on our cognition, or elevate its importance above other aspects of relationship. One way to do this is to deliberately consider the spectrum of legitimate experiences of others through Scripture - including the original audiences and authors, church consensus, and individual saints. We should let our cognition form a harmonized view of God, a God who would express Himself through all these experiences. But there will always be perplexities of person-hood and relationship that our cognition cannot 'solve', and we need to be careful not to assume that this means something is 'wrong', and not to let this distract us from relationship.

• Are there any other reading / interpretation techniques that you feel are important to enhance a proper relationship with God?
• Do you agree that considering a variety of perspectives is important?
• Do you agree that considering the whole experience - not just the cognitive aspects - is important?
• When deciding which experiences are useful to consider in your interpretation of Scripture, how much attention do you pay to the cognitive aspects of that experience?
• How do you feel about accepting inevitable perplexities when it comes to forming a harmonize cognitive view of God?

Coming soon...

• Next I'll deal with some further issues people have with this approach to Scripture, specifically how it can seem to threaten traditional theological processes and the concept of 'inerrancy'.
• After that we'll explore some specific examples of progressive revelation and how a relational approach to Scripture leads ancient and modern saints to Him, but through different cognitive paths. 

Footnotes:

[1 - When attempting to understand the experience of the original audiences and authors, it can be helpful to remember how progressive revelation functions to serve relationship with Christ. Each passage was written to enhance as much as possible the revelation of Christ to the intended audience, taking into account their interpretive bias, and the historical processes God intends to drive as part of his expression to mankind. Thus this consideration can be helped a lot by an understanding of the times and cultures and language etc (which can seem daunting), but a lot of this can be gleaned from the Scripture itself. Important things to remember is that these audiences did not have subsequent revelation to balance their cognitive experience of God, that they had different priorities and worldview to us, and that they had genres of language that we aren't too familiar with in our modernistic society .]

[2 - Church 'concensus' is clearly not unanimous, and has also frequently been plagued by political and selfish motivations. However, the greater unity there is among those who seem driven by a desire to relate to the God of Scripture, the more authority this consensus has as a legitimate intented experience of God.  After all, the church - functioning this way - is the means by which we trust God to have chosen and preserved Scripture in the first place. This kind of concensus can allowing many doctrines labeled as heretical by the modern American/Western church, and can also be troubled by the influence of the current worldview (e.g. Greek thinking paved the way for modernism and tended to idolise cognition).]

[3 - The more you know a person yourself and are persuaded of there relationship with God, the less 'orthodox' their cognitive views need to be in order to be useful. Conversely, some 'orthodox' saints may have an experience of God that is less than convincing, and so may not be worth considering.]

[4 - Our modernistic mind will search for reasons to avoid worldview reform - e.g. by disregarding it as 'post-modernism'. This view is post-modern in the sense that it recognises the problems with modernism, but it is NOT postmodern in the sense of denying the reality or importance of cognition, absolutes, truth, consistency, etc. This approach relies upon the essential foundation of absolute reality and consistency in the person of God - but our experience of God should not derive all its meaning from how well we grasps all the cognitive details of God's absolute reality and consistency. The incarnation reveals how God is more than willing to 'empty himself', forgoing some aspects of His reality in order to better express others (e.g. His willingness and ability to relate to us).]

[5 - Even if we agree with this approach to Scripture, it doesn't make the difficulties go away! Our preference for cognitive information is deeply ingrained in our culture, and makes us constantly think about how this approach deals with cognition. What a shame to miss the beauty of the big picture, because we are thinking too much about how the picture is bigger than the sum of its parts and can't be contained in a cognitive description of it! What a shame to miss Jesus because we're thinking about how a person can't be described well with words alone! It can be good to understand how cognition and relationship interact - but Satan can use anything to distract us from actually relating to Jesus.]

Expressing Doubt Builds Faith

Introduction

Many of us have felt guilty for feeling doubt regarding our faith, whether it be our whole faith or parts of it. I hesitated about using the word doubt in this article because of its potentially negative connotations. However, I choose to use it because it captures the emotion behind what many of us feel when we question or enquire about areas of our faith that we don't understand. Interestingly, Fuller Seminary completed a study on what is most helpful for young people to retain their faith and build maturity, and found that wrestling with doubts was a key. Experiencing doubt can be emotionally draining and a fearful experience, and this needs to be recognised and addressed. When looking at the Bible, it seems to portray God as being merciful (in some cases praising) towards those who express questions or doubts. Faith doesn't seem to be an unquestionable act of trust in God, but more a choice to trust God, whilst acknowledging and wrestling with our doubts.  

 Retrieved from http://www.redletterchristians.org/wp-content/uploads/Faith-in-times-of-uncertainty.jpg

Opening questions to consider:

Is it right or wrong to question our beliefs?

Is it unhelpful or helpful to question our beliefs?

What does God expect us to do?

What does evidence suggest we do?

Two Mindedness is not Necessarily Helpful

I admit that the Bible does emphasise that it is not helpful to be two-minded in our beliefs according to James 1. After looking at many scriptures relating to uncertainty and faith, what James appears to be referring to here is a person who is permanently indecisive and without conviction in life. Most people would say that a person having no conviction about social injustice or various issues would be a person who is unhelpful and impractical to reality. Edmund Burke said "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

Scripture and Doubt

There are many situations in the Bible where people experience a type of doubt and it is not always seen with disdain. What God appears to respect in His Word is the sincere seeking of truth that people partake in. As the Bible says "seek and you will find".  The prophets would repeatedly appeal to what God has done in the past as evidence of God's power and glory, rather than just claiming that God is God. This suggests that God does not expect blind faith, but faith based on evidence. Paul also took time to argue the gospel reasonably and based on evidence. If faith is based on evidence, then it is based on conviction of that evidence and not a fake conviction of nothing. God is more concerned about the sincerity of heart than about shallow publicly espoused allegiance to Him, as Jesus so often accused the Pharisees of doing. 

Mark 9 shares a story where Jesus answered a doubting man's prayer. Jesus said that he needed to believe in order to receive His assistance. The man replied that he believed, but also asked Jesus to help him with his unbelief! What the man requested seems to be an oxymoron, but Jesus had mercy on him and granted his request. It seems that an admission of faith while experiencing doubt can even have prayers answered! God doesn't seem to need our unwavering faith to bring about His purposes. This story suggests that Jesus is more interested in a sincere pursuit of Him, even if that pursuit involves admission of doubt.

Paul says at the end of Roman 14 that we need to be congruent (consistent) or true to ourselves. He says that if we go against our conscience, it is more or less akin to sin. In the context of doubt, this could mean that acknowledging the doubt and wrestling with it, rather than going on pretending it isn't there, is the more helpful way of living.

Matthew states that even Jesus expressed a form of "doubt" when He cried "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?". I am not saying that Jesus necessarily intellectually doubted His Father's existence, but that He existentially doubted (experiencing emotional or intellectual doubt) God's faithfulness to Him while He was on the cross. We all go through periods in our lives where we experience doubt about God's existence, goodness, or our understanding of "correct" doctrine - whether it be emotional or intellectual. Christ seemed to be free to express his anguish without worrying about the judgement of religious lofty eyes.

Jude 22 also chimes in on how to deal with doubt. He emphasises the mercy that we need to show to those who doubt. Rather than thinking less of those who experience doubt, he appears to imply being slow to judge and quick to hear. 

Expressing Doubt Builds Faith 

I have been reading a book recently by Nancy Pearcy called "Saving Leonardo: A call to resist the secular assault on mind, morals, & meaning".  In it she brings to our attention a fascinating study by Fuller Seminary that investigated High School graduate's tendency to lose their faith after school. In the study they found a key factor that influenced whether youth kept their faith or not. They found that the most effective factor was not prayer or Bible studies, but the safe exploration of questions before leaving home. The college students said that the more they felt they could safely express their doubts meant that they developed higher levels of faith and spiritual maturity. Pearcy believes that the best way for teens to be prepared to give an answer for their faith (1 Peter 3:15) is by personally wrestling with questions. Jesus interestingly said that we are to be child in like some way. Pearcy and Francis Schaeffer said that being childlike is not about believing the first thing we have been told, but about a tendency to ask questions! Pearcy concludes that we need to have the attitude of Paul "Test Everything; Hold fast what is good". 

As counselling theory has well established, safely and honestly exploring our realities (without fear of judgement) helps us to have a greater awareness and understanding which equips us to live more fruitful and sincere lives.   

Doubt and Fear

The alternative extreme to double mindedness is when people engage in a blind following of one belief without questioning it or hearing and entertaining another's viewpoint. I wrote a post recently on the subject of Group Think, its' dangerous tendencies, and how to combat it. I do believe in the usefulness of constructive talk around what we generally see as evidence for the faith (and there is a lot), but if this talk is not balanced it can produce fear amongst people when they doubt something that is taken for granted. Why do we fear? It could be because it has been ingrained into us to believe blindly or else be condemned, instead of engaging honestly with our doubt. I have felt at times that the attitude within church culture can be that to doubt is a sin or a weakness. However, there is a more helpful and God honouring way to view doubt.If I love truth, and God is truth, then I love God. The search for truth comes first, if it doesn't, then we just believe whatever we first come in contact with, or whatever suits our fancy. That would not be honouring God to believe something for the sake of it. On a similar note, if I expect someone else to question their world view in the humble pursuit of truth, then I must also too. God wants us to love Him with our heart, strength and mind. I am not saying that we blow about in the wind 24/7, but how C.S. Lewis put it: "Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods". People believe things for many reasons, and it would often take a huge amount of evidence before their belief would change anyway. I believe the honest pursuit of truth is the attitude that God would find most helpful to work with, rather than a dogmatic adherence to creeds with the suppression of doubt.    

Conclusion

Scripture suggests that it is not evil to experience doubt, but part of the process of finding out who we are and why we believe what we believe. Instead, we can be true to ourselves. The Fuller Seminary study shows that being real, and safely exploring our doubts leads to a stronger faith. It suggests it is more dangerous to not safely question your faith. However, it is not helpful to always be wavering and double minded, but instead having a humble conviction about what we do have evidence for. Experiencing doubt is not something people can always avoid due to the enquiring minds God has given us, but it can be extremely frightening and painful. One way to help relinquish this fear is by sincerely searching for truth while having an attitude of trust towards God, that if He is truth, He will guide our sincere searching in the most helpful direction. We cannot ever understand everything. Being true to ourselves is the best we can do, and what I believe God wants us to exhibit. I am not suggesting giving up on faith, but suggesting the necessity to express doubt as a part of our faith.

P.S.

Joshua Griffiths is currently doing a series talking about how relationship and the existence of knowledge gaps is essential for a full understanding and experience of faith - Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 3 - RELATIONSHIPS)

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 6 - COPING WITH EVIL II)

This series explores the nature of Scripture (specifically those aspects which many of us find uncomfortable) and what our approach to Scripture should be as a consequence. This exploration is needed because our intrinsic human biases cause us to assume that God's nature / aims / priorities all line up with our modernistic worldview, which focuses on detailed accurate synergistic information. However such an approach to Scripture clashes with many of its properties. Our response tends to be to curate Scripture, or to minimise our engagement with the aspects we find difficult to explain. Instead we should engage with all of Scripture as God designed it, and challenge our perspective on it when needed. What does it look like when we value the uncomfortable aspects of Scripture?

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II (this post)
7. How to Read

We've discussed how Scripture suggest that God is more interested in the non-cognitive goals of personhood, expression, and relationship, and deliberately utilises a thoroughly human Bible along with cognitive 'gaps' (biases or 'errors', according to our modernistic perspective) to achieve these aims. 

Many cognitive / experiential 'gaps' can be considered normal or conducive toward relationship. One challenge to this view is that not all 'gaps' easily line up with this supposed aim of God's - some gaps can legitimately be called 'evil' even from a relational perspective. We've been discussing how our relationship copes with these gaps in the form of faith, which again is not primarily cognitive. One strategy faith uses is to wrestle with God's purposes for these gaps, and to provide potential answers which sustain our relationship through these 'evil' gaps. These answers also demonstrate that 'evil' gaps do not ultimately conflict with God's relational aims. 

This discussion has led us to analyse 'progressive revelation' (with its obvious cognitive 'deficiencies') as a specific form of 'evil', recognizing that it still specifically serves God's relational aims, and discussing how faith grapples with Scripture.

We've already covered how the these 'gaps' are required for the expression of faith, which is the most vivid display of the authenticity and health of any relationship. To round off my defence of God's relational aims, we'll explore a couple of other potential 'answers for evil' that faith can grapple with.

Full Expression

First, In a broad sense Evil allows a more complete expression of God's character. God is not merely good, He is ANTI-evil - meaning ultimate evil (real persisting gaps in the expression of God) cannot exist. This very impossibility - God's anti-evil nature - itself needs expressing, and what better way than to give evil the opportunity to assert its own existence, only to be gloriously and satisfyingly overcome by Gods goodness?{1} Sometimes this is obvious and temporally relevant (i.e. God meets our needs when we pray to Him), but other times it is more subtle and eternally focused (i.e. by some of the other purposes for evil, discussed below). 

Progressive revelation likewise allows the more full expression of God's character. The ANTI aspects of God's nature need revealing - including the faults  of the previously biased views, which requires their existence to start with. Harmonious summary statements about God are not enough - certain aspects require a full and mature dealing, which may require a partially biased expression for a time. If these biases also produce evil gaps, it is so that they can be overcome by integration into the whole goodness of God, and so that we can enjoy the full spectrum of views and perspectives on our unified God. And the unity of God's people - under a common spirit-wrought love for Christ, in varying states of cognitive awareness - is meant to demonstrate the impossibility of evil ultimately winning, even if it is given opportunity (through the existence of cognitive bias and disagreement). 

Specific Effects

Second, evil performs its own specific purposes more directly. Some events - which are required in Gods expressive narrative - require evil in order to occur, or require evil to setup the context for another expression of God's character. Examples of these kinds of evil include huge parts of Israel's story (which gives so much meaning to the rest of God's revelation in Scripture), and the murder of God's son (which was ordained before the world was even created). Another big class of specific purposes for evil, is the individual development of our characters as free agents. Some character developments REQUIRE the existence of evil.{2} Gods relational nature wants a large number of different characters in heaven, which require various patterns of mixed experience, including (temporary) evil which is ultimately overcome by God's goodness.

Progressive revelation has direct effects as well, in terms of intended messages, directing historical events, and molding specific characters. Each revelation had an intended message and intended effect, which might change with the historical context. The bias, the truth content, and the omissions all have a necessary role in accurately conveying the message and creating the intended effects. 

Summary

Even 'evil' experiential gaps in God's expression are readily assimilated by God's relational aims. Relationships persist in the form of faith, a valuable self-evident manifestation of the health of any relationship. Faith can sustain itself by grappling with some of God's purposes for evil (such as allowing alternative expressions of God's goodness), and how it fits with his relational aims. Faith can also grapple with God's purposes for the 'evils' of progressive revelation, which (like all 'evil' gaps) allow the goodness of God to take on alternative expressive forms, enhancing relationship rather than posing a challenge to God's relational aims.

• Does it feel wrong to attribute deliberate good original purposes to 'evil'? 
• Do you agree that the it is better if you are given a chance to express your relationship in faith? Does this 'purpose' for evil give you any comfort?
• Are there other purposes for evil you can think of?
• Do you think that having good 'purposes' for evil, is enough to justify its existence? Or the existence of 'gaps' within progressive revelation?

Please comment below! I need feedback to tailor my views and stay faithful to Scripture...

Coming Soon...

• Next I'll attempt to summarise how to approach Scripture, with everything we've already discussed in mind.
• After that we'll explore some specific examples of progressive revelation and how a proper approach to Scripture leads ancient and modern saints to Him, but through different cognitive paths. 
• We'll also reverse course a little, discussing some cognitive 'gaps' that WE impose on Scripture (making progressive revelation seem more full of gaps than it really is, or than ancient readers saw it).

Footnotes:

1 - Some will object that God's goodness can't require even a temporary experience of evil for it to be expressed, as this would make Him dependant on something other than Himself for full expression of His goodness. This view has several problems, one of which is that it defines evil as something that does not originate with God. The Bible's definition of evil, however, includes things that originate from God. Also, this view simplifies the concept of God's expression down to a single mode (where everyone is aiming for an identical relationship, which includes only an abstract understanding of any evil and God's victory over it). I agree that God does not require every person to experience every form of evil and His victory over it, but people will experience varying degrees of isolated goodness vs. its victory over evil in a wide spectrum. This is a beautiful thing in the end, when we consider the natural and desirable variety of relationships God desires.

2 - God can't simply create specific characters from thin air, just like he can't perform other logical contradictions. Strength, experience, maturity, and other aspects in our souls exist precisely BECAUSE of how they are formed. They can't exist in isolation of their development - that doesn't make sense, and to try and fake them would result in poor substitutes, and we would easily and quickly discover that they lack any basis.

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 5 - COPING WITH EVIL I)

So far we've discussed that God uses cognitive biases (which many of us, with out modernistic worldview, would label 'errors') in his progressive revelation as he works toward his ultimate aim of relationship with us. Relationships include inevitable and healthy ‘gaps’ and ‘excesses’  of experience (and cognition). But some of the gaps God allows go beyond this to create 'evil effects' of limiting our experience of God BEYOND these normal and healthy experiences of relationship. In this post I want to talk about how our relationship copes with such messiness. And we'll start to think about why God allows gaps and cognitive 'errors' that he knows will have negative effects.

Love becomes Faith

In the face of these gaps of experience, our relationship takes a form known as faith. We go on seeking and living out the relationship, even while we are temporarily deprived of the experience of the relationship{1,2}. Faith has all the usual characteristics of a relationship. And as a relationship it needs a basis, which include all forms of experience (e.g. Scripture communication, the Holy Spirit's inner witness, The human character of Jesus, our experience of God through other people and events, reason and science, etc). It is not necessarily about any particular accurate cognitive view of the person we're relating to, but it nevertheless engages our whole being (including the process of cognition), and all experiences of the person (including cognitive understanding) will strengthen the relationship. Faith then uses the grounds it has, to bridge the relational gaps we are faced with, persisting when the relational experience is impaired. Faith thus simultaneously co-exists with both the grounds of the relationship AND the ongoing doubt and uncertainty. 

There are multiple ways to describe how faith uses its existing relational strength to bridge gaps. It can remember God's universal goodness expression which must pervade even the 'evil' we are facing (treating 'evil' as ultimately a matter of temporal perspective). It can grapple more intimately with what God's good purposes for these gaps might be. Specific answers can even be an experience of God which subsequently strengthens the relationship and faith. Faith can also remember that God’s ultimate solution to evil is an actual change in reality, not just in our minds - and so faith can work concretely to oppose evil, attempting to be the means by which God expresses Himself in these gaps. Faith doesn’t necessarily consciously engage in all these methods – it is a relationship, and so it will express itself in unique strengths and weaknesses. We can tend to react to some legitimate expressions of faith (within us or within others) as if they are actually opposed to faith, and squelch them in favour of our preferred expressions of faith. ‘Submitting to God’s will in suffering’, ‘questioning God’, and ‘fighting suffering’ may sometimes spring from a lack of faith (in which case they need redeeming by a right relationship with God), but often they can simply the unbalanced form a healthy faith naturally takes in the face of evil. We need to encourage our faith to express itself in all these ways in order for the relationship to flourish maximally in the face of evil{3,4}.

'Questioning' and working concretely against the 'gaps' created by the complexities of Scripture can likewise be an expression of faith, just like how faith deals with evil. And we can squelch faith (in ourselves or others) by squelching particular modes of its expression. It is common practice to focus on techniques and strategies that distance us from the reality and weight of the uncomfortable aspects of Scripture, making it easier for us to dismiss them without engaging in other full flourishing-faith dealings (e.g. emphasising the harmony of Scripture, and engaging in rhetoric which belittles claims to the complexity of Scripture). These uncomfortable aspects of scripture are real and weighty and deserve a proper dealing{5}. 

God's purposes for Evil

So if faith grapples intimately with the specific good purposes God has for allowing 'evil gaps', what kinds of answers can it come up with? The first purpose to think about, is that evil allows relationships to take the form of faith. This is important because Faith (when understood as above) is the most undeniable demonstration of a relationship possible. Faith demonstrates the authenticity and health of a love relationship because the relationship it is based on persists even if the desired experiences are not there. Our responses to gaps reveal where our heart really lies - the degree of distress at gaps reveals the value of what is now lacking, and the degree of relational resilience DESPITE these gaps reveals the strength of relationship{6}. 

Progressive revelation allows for the demonstration of faith by leaving us with cognitive questions and challenges, with grey zones and apparent conflicts. How we navigate these based on our relationship to the person of Jesus, and not based on a commitment to a set of rigid interpretations of particular aspects of revelation, reveals our faith.

I’ve run out of room for this post, so the other two purposes for evil will have to wait for next post (allowing the full varied expression of God, and directly causing specific historical or character development effects). These are also important for faith to consider as it wrestles with God's purposes for evil and progressive revelation.

Summary

Faith is the form a relationship with God takes when there are experiential gaps in that relationship ('evil'), including the difficult aspects of progressive revelation. A healthy faith will deal with these things in multiple ways - one of which is to wrestle with God's purposes for evil and provide potential answers. One answer is that evil provides opportunity for relationships to take the form of faith, which is important to God.

What do you think of this relational definition of faith? Does it fit with Scripture?

How do you think faith ought to respond to evil and difficult aspects of Scripture / revelation? What do you think of the concept of 'questioning God' in a positive way, as opposed to the Devil's way?

Do you agree with that one purpose for evil is to allow the expression of faith? 

How do you think our faith is meant to interact with God's secret will when it comes to actively opposing 'evil'?

Coming Soon...

• Next post I'll discuss the other two major purposes for evil and progressive revelation. 
• After that I've got a couple of other interesting properties of progressive revelation to talk about, including our modernistic OVER-estimation of the bias that exists in progressive revelation. 
• Then I can finally summarise how I think God actually wants us to approach Scripture, how to practically use it faithfully in our relationship with God while still valuing those aspects we've been discussing that can seem uncomfortable and confusing! And then we can explore some practical implications.

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I (this post)
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read

Footnotes:

1 - This definition of faith fits well with Scripture. It explains why faith is the 'substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' - it IS the manifestation of a relationship that has real substance, but is nevertheless 'hoped for' and 'not seen'. It explains why God must first call people with experience before faith can arise. It explains why many of the qualities of faith in God (including exclusive rewards like grave and salvation) are also ascribed to individual components of this relationship (like love, humility, wisdom, obedience). It explains why sin (NOT living in a love relationship with God) is naturally opposed to faith, and why faith results in sanctification. It explains why faith is a constant integral part of our relationship with God here on earth, but disappears in heaven (by way of graduation to a form without ‘evil’ experiential gaps). It explains why faithful saints can still powerfully express strong doubts and wrestle with God.

2 - This description of faith still encompasses the more specific 'faith' we can have in particular promises or blessings. Technically according to Scripture we should not 'have faith for’ any particular blessing, but we can have faith in God’s goodness and faithfulness to His promises. This alters our hope / assurance / expectation / confidence regarding specific blessings - they can exist on a spectrum from possible to very likely to absolutely certain, depending on the context and God’s revelation on the matter.

3 - Faith which works to concretely oppose evil may seem at odds with a faith which submits to God's purposes in evil. But this is not necessarily true. Firstly, faith must express itself because it is relational - even if it cognitively understands that God has purposes for evil, our desire for the ultimate solution God promises (a changed reality in the new heaven and earth) MUST express itself in working toward this. Building on this, one of God’s purposes for evil IS to allow faith to express itself in this way - so God's purpose for evil may well include its defeat by the very faith it encourages. God may make it clear to us if He has other ongoing purposes for evil that require its ongoing existence – but many times, God wants both the demonstration of our faith AND the ongoing existence of that evil, in which case He keeps simultaneously encouraging our faith and thwarting faith’s efforts to defeat the evil.

4 - Also worth noting is that these abstract / concrete reactions of faith toward gaps, are also reactions our relationship can have on behalf of others. Our relationship with God is not self-centred, but God-centred - and as such, we seek ongoing experiences for ourselves AND for others. When others relationships are taking the form of faith and wrestling with gaps, we will bear their burdens and help them wrestle in abstract and concrete ways with these gaps.

5 - Some worry that wrestling with and questioning God's revelation is a lack of faith because this is what the devil tried to get Adam and Eve to do – but their ‘bad’ questioning was aimed at pushing the boundaries of God's revelation as far as possible in order to satisfy their own curiosity and independence and desires. Faith’s aim is to pursue a relationship with God. Some also worry about concretely working to oppose the 'evil' of the uncomfortable complexities of progressive revelation - as if this implies a deficiency in God's expression Himself. Faith views it instead as a designed opportunity to exercise itself - obviously valuing God's chosen expression, but seeking a more desirable relational state without as many 'gaps'. It utilises 'secular' disciplines (such as science, archeology, linguistics, history, logic and philosophy) to do so. All our efforts - as with our efforts to oppose generic 'evil' - are sincere but flawed. We rely on God to either work alongside us with His power, or to clarify our limits (as He has done by banning tampering with his revelation), or to simultaneously encourage and thwart our ongoing efforts.

6 - Obviously this is highly contextual - sometimes faith might be only mildly distressed at financial strife, because what ultimately matters is the relationship with God, which is persisting despite this 'gap', and is probably being experienced in a myriad of other ways. This same faith might be more distressed by more direct reflections of the relationship (e.g. besetting sin, a difficult ethical problem, or a lack of access to Scripture or fellowship). Or the financial hardship may become so pressing that our human minds simply cannot focus to appreciate the other more direct expressions of God, so that the immediate problem BECOMES the most direct relational expression of God that is possible in the circumstances - in this case, although the relationship continues to persist in the form of faith, there will obviously be a greater degree of distress.

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 4 - MORALITY & EVIL)

So far we've discussed the impact of our (extra-Biblical) worldview on our approach to Scripture. We've used progressive revelation as a practice engagement with the tricky complexities of honest Scriptural interpretation, and being willing to challenge our worldview. We've explored the nature of relationships, and discovered the cognition and communication fall short of defining 'relationship' because of their very nature, and not just because we humans can only handle them imperfectly. In addition, it seems as if God - technically capable of using 'perfect' communication and cognition - seems to have deliberately utilised bias in these things in His pursuit of what really matters to Him - a relationship of love.

Morality

A discussion of morality flows naturally from our discussion of communication, because it functions very similarly. Morality refers to the pattern of our behaviour. Like communication, it is inherently cognitive - we consciously decide what to do, and so it is a window into another person's cognition, but also suffers similar interpretation inaccuracies as communication. And just like communication and cognition, morality finds its true purpose in relationship. It is meant to be person-based, not abstract. We are meant to want to be like Christ and to please Christ, based on our flawed cognitive understanding of Him through our relationship. 

Because cognition cannot reach a static full encapsulation of a person, our morality will never be able to fully encapsulate them either. For this reason, some argue that we are meant to disengage our morality from cognition, and just follow the rules God has set down without question or interpretation, because this is the only reliable way to reflect God. I don't think this is the case, because the only way morality can reflect anything, is through people's interpretation of it - and they interpret it by trying to see through to the person that produces it. We reflect God by being a person that people see God in, and by behaving in a way that springs forth from this person. This cannot occur if our morality is disengaged from our cognition - it actually makes the reflection of God's character less accessible, not more accessible. Besides, the very nature of relationships and people means that things like morality and cognition could never capture a person, even if we disregard the link between morality and cognition. Relationships are meant to be dynamic processes that engage with the other person, and so a static cognition and a static morality cannot fully capture this. 

In other words, you cannot legislate the kind of morality God is after through fixed laws. They could never be nuanced enough, and there is always the possibility of life situations bringing together multiple conflicting values and unique considerations for the relationship which could NEVER be exhaustively described. No doubt God has a preferred way to behave in each situation, but we can only know this if we know God through relationship. So instead of prescribed living, there has always been a need for prioritisation, flexibility, and pragmatism BASED upon the right living relationship with God. I'm not advocating a liberal lifestyle - the relationship I'm advocating includes a desire to submit to God, and also a recognition of the complexity of applying God's values to real life situations. 

But God still legislated morality - if this was not for 'prescribed personal morality', then what was it for? We can argue for some specific purposes behind the OT law e.g. Societal coherence, which was difficult to maintain in a largely 'religious' society where God was never-the-less rarely relationally known, and where cognitive understanding of God was incomplete. But a big reason - the one that applies to ongoing legislation even in the NT - ties back to the purpose of communication. God wants us to see a prioritised understanding of His cognition THROUGH the commandments, and then base our morality on the relationship, which will include submission to our cognitive understanding of Him. Our morality will often look 'prescribed', but the different emphasis allows for deviations that please God when situations arise that aren't covered by the legislation with enough contextual relational nuance. 

Because morality is cognitive, it will change with progressive revelation and an evolving cognitive understanding of God. It needs to be emphasised that God does not want us to take the burden upon ourselves to guess / determine the 'next phase' of morality and progressive revelation. Its also worth mentioning here that morality (and to a lesser extent, communication) DOES have non-cognitive influences, which could potentially reflect non-cognitive aspects of the relationship. These are, however, much less precisely expressed and are readily overwhelmed by cognitive influences.

You can see that morality behaves much like communication and cognition - dim but important reflections of the underlying important spiritual love relationship. The intrinsic biases of morality must also be deliberately designed by God as they are natural consequences of deliberately designed cognitive biases. And just like we don't need to properly cognitively understand the God we love, we also don't need to legalistically and un-critically 'submit' to any particular legislation from God in order for the love to be real - but we DO need to engage in the process of submission. 

Evil 'Gaps' in the Relationship

I've talked a lot about what a relationship intuitively means to us, and about how our modernistic mindset can cause us to wrongly perceive many 'normal healthy' aspects as imperfections. But we all know that there ARE real cognitive deviations and gaps in our relationship with God, things that should not be considered healthy. And often it can sure seem as if its the 'healthy aspects' of normal relationships that become the culprits. Using our example of progressive revelation, it is often the intrinsic bias in communication and cognition that leads to problems in our relationship with God - and yet we've discussed them as natural and healthy, and something God has deliberately designed. What is it that makes some 'imperfections' normal and healthy, and others problematic? What is God's purpose behind allowing 'gaps' in the experience of Him through relationship, when He knows they will often cause problems? If modernism is wrong and many gaps are actually healthy and good, can we find another way to talk about the reality of bad gaps, ones that are real deviations from God's ideal relationship?

I think we can :) Lets start with some definitions - these are entirely my own definitions, which I think are supported by Scripture, but they're open to debate in the comment section! 'Good' and 'Evil' are terms which describe the quality of the experience of God through relationship. God is intrinsically 'good', and everything else is 'good' to the degree that it brings about the experience of God. 'Evil' is any lack of 'good' i.e. any gaps in the experience of God's goodness. This makes sense from a more Jewish perspective as well, where 'good' and 'evil' refer to something close to 'function' and 'dysfunction'. If God's fundamental aim is for us to experience Him in a relationship of love, anything which fulfils this function (i.e. our experience of God's character through His expression) is 'good', while anything that does NOT fulfil this function is 'evil'. Evil is intimately linked to sin, because sin harms our experience of God through relationship. Because these things are tied to relationship, you can see that 'good' does NOT refer to an attainable 'full' end outcome, but rather to an ideal uninhibited experience of a process (the ongoing relationship). Even from an eternal perspective, the 'good' all things work toward is an ideal ongoing relationship with God. Likewise 'evil' refers to the inability to have this ideal uninhibited experience of the process of relationship.

Note that both of these terms are dependent on your perspective. From an eternal perspective, we know that ALL things work together for 'good' i.e. are functioning (ultimately) to enhance our experience of God through relationship, even if it is 'evil' from a temporal perspective. And this makes sense, since ultimately all things are in some way an expression of God and Christ, even if you think He is merely 'permitting' their existence. God says that He Himself performs 'evil', where the experience of God in relationship is clouded or confused in a temporal sense - and yet he also says that all His actions are 'good' in an eternal sense. Also, both of these definitions are dependent on our interpreted experience of God from various perspectives, NOT on how well God is actually expressing Himself (I'm sure He is never actually limited in the expression of Himself, even temporally). This is why some 'normal' aspects to relationships, like incomplete cognitive understandings and varied and incomplete expressions of God, can be perceived as 'evil' when occurring in specific contexts. Its not these healthy normal aspects that are the culprit per-se, but the entire context has led to an impaired experience of God, which means the whole situation can rightly be called 'evil'. I believe 'evil' will not exist in heaven, but this is not because I think relationships will fundamentally change - I still think God will express Himself in varied and incomplete ways, and that our cognitive understanding of God will be incomplete and growing. Evil ceases to exist in heaven, because God will express Himself in ways that He KNOWS we will experience clearly (in a temporal sense). In this life, 'evil' exists because God chooses to express Himself in ways that He KNOWS we will NOT interpret clearly, even though they ultimately work toward enhanced experience of relationship.

Scriptural 'gaps'

Its obvious at this point that Progressive Revelation ties into our discussion of 'evil'. From many perspectives it enhances our relational experience of God, and is clearly 'good'. But from some perspectives progressive revelation can also be called 'evil'. You've probably felt this already yourself, when considering the implication that God has deliberately introduced bias into our cognitive understanding AND into our morality . As I've discussed earlier, much cognitive bias is a normal part of healthy relationships, but in some contexts it can also function as an 'inhibition' of our experience of God through relationship, especially when we can sense the spirit-wrought ache in our hearts for a more accurate cognitive understanding. It is thus sometimes a temporal 'evil' designed by God as part of the 'good' of progressive revelation. The 'good' of progressive revelation becomes more obvious as the revelation accumulates to produce a more accurate picture, and as we learn things from God that would not make as much relational sense if not for the previous 'unbalanced' cognition, and as we realise the limited role cognition and communication can play in relationship anyway. We should experience these unbalanced views of God as part of the ongoing expression of our relational God - simultaneously acknowledging the 'evil' this can encourage / allow from our temporal perspective AND the 'good' from other perspectives.

Summary

Reality is not as idealistic as I've been suggesting in the series so far. 'Evil' refers to NON-healthy gaps in our experience of God through relationship. But its not a simple division between gaps which are 'evil', and gaps which are normal and 'good' (i.e. the nature of relationships and cognition and morality). These descriptions depend on your perspective, and since there are usually multiple appropriate perspectives, there is usually a mix of recognising 'good' and 'evil' in these gaps. And some apparently 'evil' aspects may in other contexts be considered normal and 'good' aspects to healthy relationships, and continue to exist in some form in heaven. Importantly, all forms of 'evil' are ultimately 'good' and serve to enhance our ultimate experience of God, because permitting their existence is still itself an expression of God, and He is ultimately good (which is why He works all things work together for good). Progressive revelation demonstrates this nicely, as this variously biased revelation - with all its 'problems' - is still 'God-breathed' and good and trustworthy as part of the expression of His character. 

Do you agree that morality should be relationship-based, and thus more flexible / pragmatic than mere legislation? 

Do you agree with my relational-experiential definition of 'evil' and 'good'? 

What do you think of the assertion that 'evil' is ultimately good (from an eternal perspective), and an expression of God? 

Would life or Scriptural interpretation be easier / better if things could be definitively  divided into 'good' and 'evil' categories, instead of being both from different perspectives?

Coming Soon...

• Next I'll explore how relationships deal with the 'evil' gaps we've just discussed - through 'faith'. This will open up some more possibilities to discuss, regarding what God is doing by deliberately creating / allowing these gaps (especially those we find in Scripture).  
• After that, I will have (almost) finished my defence of the bias God has created within Scripture :) And I can work toward positively addressing how God wants us to approach His Scriptures, given its divine inspiration, purpose, and 'gaps' / biases. 
• Then we'll  explore this in more detail over some of the phases of progressive revelation. 
• And then onto the practical implications of a  proper vs improper approach to Scripture.

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil (this post)
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 3 - RELATIONSHIPS)

Last post I used the example of progressive revelation as a sort of 'practice' engagement with the issues of faithful Scriptural interpretation, and being willing to reconsider our world-views. Progressive revelation suggests that God's purpose for Scripture may not be focused on perfect unbiased clear communication of cognitive knowledge. In fact, it demonstrates that God deliberately creates bias. This doesn't sit well with the modernistic components of our worldview, and so we tend to minimise this aspect of Scripture, and thus divert from a completely faithful approach to Scripture.

Next I want to start working through to the purpose of Scripture. But before we get to that, we need to explore what God's fundamental aim is in ALL His dealings with us. Often Christians use the same words to describe this topic, but haven't fully considered what these things really mean.

I'll always reiterate that my aim is not to challenge things for the sake of it. I just want us to be willing to challenge our worldview IF being truly faithful to Scripture and God requires it.

Background

First, some broad assumptions. I don't feel these need to be justified in this post, but feel free to use the comment section to disagree or help unpack these things more :) I think it is evident from Scripture and experience that God's fundamental aim in all things, is to express His character in as full and diverse a way as possible, so that other beings can immerse themselves in this expression and 'know' Him. Christ IS God, and contains the fullness of God as a person - something that all other expressions of God cannot come close to doing! In essence, then, all other expressions of God are actually expressions of Christ, and God's aim is that we experience and know Christ through them. This is true regardless of how clearly Christ has been cognitively identified as a distinct person - even in the Old Testament era, God's aim was for people to experience Him (which means experiencing Christ). 

Framed from our perspective, humanity's purpose has always been to experience Christ in a positive and reciprocal way - otherwise known as a relationship of love. This love involves an inclination of our heart toward enjoying this relational engagement with God's character (Christ), wrought by the Holy Spirit. God and Christ are unchanging, therefore the inclination of all God's people's hearts have been directed (by the holy spirit) toward the same person - despite the fact that the conscious experience / revelation of Christ's character varies enormously in its cognitive clarity. This is why Christ accused the Pharisees of not accepting Him - although they appeared to have the right relationship outwardly, they did not have the mark of the Spirit in their hearts - they did not love Christ unconsciously before He was revealed, and so they did not recognise or love Him when he was revealed. God wants us to have this relationship of love even when our conscious cognitive understanding of the details of this relationship are not clear. As it becomes clearer, we will rejoice because the relationship of love already exists in a less 'realised' form. 

But how exactly does a 'relationship of love' behave? What do we really mean when we talk about relationships? There are several interesting observations about relationships (as God's fundamental aim) that run against our 'modernistic' leaning to prioritise detailed cognitive information. Essentially, it makes no sense to conceive of a relationship in terms of a definable 'fullness' that we can attain to. To start with, relationships are ongoing - no amount of expression is enough for a person to have fully expressed themselves or been experienced by another. Also, the expressions and experiences of relationships are creative and dynamic - it is good for individual snapshots of a relationship to express varied aspects of the person rather than everything at once. Even focusing on the concept of 'fullness' in a relationship can be detrimental and insulting - we enjoy the interaction of friends or spouses in the moment, because it expresses who they are. Analysing the clarity of our perception of them through this experience misses the point entirely.  Finally, two people could potentially have the 'same' relationship with another person (i.e. two of my close friends, two of my brothers brothers, two of my elders, two children, two soccer opponents), and yet because each of THEM is different,  each relationship will look different. Even if I can't distinguish between the two relationships in terms of 'health' or 'fullness' or 'inferiority/superiority', the relationships will still be different (including the cognitive conscious interpretations). This isn't because each is imperfect - even in the theoretical (impossible) case where each person fully and accurately cognitively grasping me, the emphases and flow of awareness of each person's cognitive understanding of me will still be different. This isn't because each is incomplete, but because a static definable 'fullness' doesn't make sense, and so identical 'fullness' is impossible. It's just an integral positive aspect of what 'relationship' means. 

Cognition

Am I really saying that cognition is not very important to relationship, which is God's fundamental aim? Well, yes and no. To start with, there is dissonance between specific cognitive information and proper relationships, as discussed above. Cognition is merely one way to experience someone - just like no particular 'experience' or 'set of experiences' can define a relationship, so neither can a particular cognitive understanding. Even for God, complete intimate and perfectly accurate cognitive knowledge about someone (which I believe He has) does not mean He 'knows' a particular person in the sense that matters (He talks about 'never knowing' people who He casts out), and doesn't seem to be a big part of what He means when He does 'know' us this way. But on top of its problems integrating into relationships, cognition on its own can't even live up to what we expect of it, at least not for humans in this life. It is inherently inaccurate and extremely fallible due to both the inabilities of our mind AND due to deliberate strategies our minds employ! Our minds can only conceive of things that it has developed to be ABLE to conceive of - experience, background, developmental framework, personality and creativity types, what is suggested to us in the moment, all limit our abilities to actually think of or interpret certain things. Not only that, but our minds deliberately employ strategies that make life more efficient but extremely biased - e.g. confirmation bias. Our world-views, desires, existing understandings, etc ALL automatically / subconsciously heavily taint our interpretation of cognitive data - which is what they are designed to do, and which is what makes them useful in everyday life. 

God certainly has the ability to overcome and manipulate all of this as He sees fit when it comes to our theology, but experience and research suggest that He certainly does not do so within His church - we all still adopt a multitude of aspects in our worldview from our cultural surroundings which almost universally predict what our theology will be. And Scripture does not suggest God wants to manipulate this too much either - instead, the Spirit's primary activity seems to be in inspiring love in our hearts (as already discussed), and bringing the experience of the expression of Jesus to us in a more personal way. The Scriptural concept of 'mind' is actually closer to our modern idea of 'will' or 'intentions' or 'attitudes' than anything else, and not detailed cognitive information. And when Paul does speak of doctrine's importance, he uses much the same language as when he talks about works - important, but not God's fundamental aim or method. When we insist that God must routinely enable us to overcome our cognitive weaknesses when it comes to e.g. 'salvation doctrinal issues', we usually do this as a blatant attempt to protect our worldview (by maintaining the importance of detailed accurate cognitive information). God seems to have left us with a very flawed and tainted cognitive interpretation of our otherwise healthy Spirit-wrought relationship with Him - which, like everything He does, must be a deliberate decision for a good purpose. So particular accurate cognitive information is not as important to God as we tend to think. 

But I'm NOT saying that cognition as a process (fallibility and all) is unimportant to God. There are actually several ways that cognition is unique as a mode of experiencing someone, despite its limitations, and thus becomes uniquely  important. First of all, the process of cognition is still required for us to actually consider a relationship 'valid'. You can't enjoy and experience another person in relationship, when their expressions seem to you to be merely a bizarre set of unrelated random experiences. You must engage your cognition to form a picture (incomplete and evolving) of the other person. This picture also enables a relationship to persist when the experiences are limited in some way. And it enables us to grow in a relationship far beyond the concrete limits of our experience - We take our experiences and extrapolate back to what the person must (or could) be like, and where our relationship could take us, exploring this in our minds and 'experiencing' it in an abstract way. This cognitive picture has serious problems as mentioned above - but the process of engaging the cognition in this way is essential to relationships. Second, cognition is required for a relationship to mean anything to us. Relationships have qualities attached to them, like love and hate, which are necessarily driven to be expressed. This drive is partly experienced in our cognition, and requires the cognition to make deliberate decisions that express love or hate - if it is love, the drive is to seek further experiences of the other person, and to express yourself and your love back to them. If these drives are able to be expressed, the relationship quality is enhanced, otherwise it seems incomplete. Its not that you must cognitively understand what you love in detail, but love necessarily engages the cognition in its drive to express itself. This means love's expression may change as it 'discovers' itself more and more in a cognitive sense. 

Communication

Cognition has another purpose - it IS part of the expression of someone. For most of us it is a very inaccurate and distant window into our heart, but even God's perfect cognition is a poor representation of His heart - that's just the nature of cognition. But it is a window into the heart, an expression of the person, and so it is important in relationship to experience the other person's cognition. Which requires our cognition to function. The process of deliberately targeting the other person's cognition is called communication. This does not necessarily mean that the mode of communication is verbal or even cognitive, or that the ultimate distant aim is necessarily cognitive either. Communication is simply a means to an end through the use of targeting cognition.

Communication suffers from three extra steps of terrible and extremely variable accuracy when it comes to capturing cognition (EVEN IF the cognition of the author is 'perfect' in accuracy, like God's arguably is). The first step is translation of cognition into communication. Communication can NEVER capture the fullness of our cognition, because it would take years to do so in any 'language' (and I doubt any 'language' has the capacity to capture all the subtle nuances of cognition). Instead, communication must have specific prioritised cognitive targets and intended effects. The second step is the interpretation of communication, which obviously (naturally and appropriately) varies between different recipients. We NEED to introduce bias into our communication if we are to help another different cognition understand our cognition - and this should never apply equally to every individual. This means that IF we are attempting to generalise our communication, we must pay even more attention to prioritising our messages, accepting that efforts spent reinforcing one message to as many people as possible, will probably sometimes have opposing effects on other associated messages or on other individuals. The third step is the impact this cognition has on individuals - in terms of integration into their existing cognition, associated non-cognitive effects, interpretation of other associated cognitive messages, etc. This varies between individuals EVEN IF they all accurately interpret the intended cognitive message.  These three steps mean that communication can simply never be a 'pure' transmission of the authors cognition, and that biased interpretations MUST exist - but this is not a problem if this very bias works towards the best interpretation of the main intended message, or toward the main purpose.

God has also specifically elected to use communication (i.e. Scripture, prophecy, doctrines, prayers) as a one of the primary tools through which we interpret the hearts of others and reach out to them, and establish and grow a relationship of love with God. This does not necessarily mean that God has elected to use PURE communication toward these ends. I don't think this makes sense (as discussed above), but also progressive revelation deliberately included some very unbalanced cognitive presentations of God. God may wish one person to grasp a particular truth strongly at the expense of other truths, while he wishes something different from a different person. In fact, since God's intentions for Scripture are relational, He must have deliberately designed the particular pattern of bias in scripture for this purpose. The fact that a particular doctrine was useful for me at a particular point in time, to grow my relationship with God, does not mean it is the 'most accurate' or 'best' (in some other way) understanding of God, or that I will never change my beliefs to give my relationship better expression in the future. I may see flaws in a particular doctrine, but it may be just as true as my doctrine (just in a different way), and it may spring from a heart that is more established in a loving relationship with God than mine - making that 'wrong' doctrine fulfil its purpose better than mine. Just like our highly fallible interpretation of works and fruit are a useful but dirty window into another's heart, so too are our highly fallible interpretation of another person's doctrines. 

Summary

You can see that I'm contrasting two things here: the spiritual relationship of love is the important underlying reality. Whereas cognition (the conscious reception of God's expression) is a dim (but important) reflection of this love. We don't have to properly understand this love in order for it to exist - and some of the improper aspects to our cognition are deliberately designed by God, which must fit with His fundamental aim of relationship with Him. Cognition & communication have many flaws and fallibilities by virtue of their very nature, and are never intended as full encapsulation of the relationship. Instead they are meant to be based upon the relationship, partial expressions of the relationship, and dirty windows into the spiritual relational realities occurring in our hearts.

Comments? Questions? Please discuss below :) Do you agree that relationship is God's fundamental aim? Do you agree with my description of relationships? Are there other ways that our cognition is meant to function in relationship? Are there other limitations to our cognition or communication? 

Coming Soon...

• Next week I'll quickly talk about morality as very similar to communication - a flawed but important expression of cognition (itself a flawed but important expression of a person). I would have slotted it in here, but the post got too long!
• After that we get a bit more theological and discuss why God allows bias and ambiguity and confusion about His nature. This is, after all, something I keep insisting He is doing deliberately. This discussion will specifically re-address progressive revelation, but will also expand to the general problem of evil. I'll also (hopefully, space-allowing) talk a little about how faith relates to this fundamental love relationship (as I've been calling it).
• After that I think we'll be ready to summarise how God intends for us to approach Scripture. And then we can explore this in more detail over some of the phases of progressive revelation. 
• Then we can talk about the Jewish and Christian MIS-approach to Scripture and the problems its created. And the inverse implications that properly approaching Scripture can have. 
• Finally we can discuss some contemporary issues with this approach to Scripture in the back of our minds, to see how it informs our discussion and approach.

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition (this post)
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 2 - PROGRESSIVE REVELATION)

Last post I introduced the importance of  approaching Scripture honestly to allow it to speak to us as God actually intended. I expressed my concern that our subconscious faithfulness to our extra-Biblical worldviews has led to us (Christians) to add additional (unnecessary) 'requirements' to our approach to Scripture. In particular, modernism inclines us to approach Scripture as if 'detailed cognitive understanding' was of ultimate importance, because modernism requires detailed cognitive information about God in order to place Him in the grand scheme of things, and inform us how to relate to Him. We often simplify Scripture in order to allow it to fit with our worldview, and end up being faithful to a curated form of Scripture, rather than to the real deal in all its uncomfortable fullness (including those aspects that don't fit well with our worldview).

I'm not implying that these 'uncomfortable aspects' are the major themes of Scripture, and that there is little evidence for e.g. a consistent thread of doctrine, common unity in the faith amongst the authors, God's mercy in the OT and his judgment in the NT, etc. But no one needs encouragement to be faithful to these aspects! We need encouragement to be faithful to the uncomfortable aspects, because this may require us to challenge our worldview (and this is difficult because it gives us a framework for how we think and feel about, well, everything).

Our worldview may also have us believe that considering these things faithfully is actually violating the 'faith' God expects us to have. So I reiterate again, my aim is not to challenge things for the sake of it. I just want us to be willing to challenge our worldview IF being truly faithful to Scripture and God requires it.

Progressive Revelation

Today, as a kind of expanded 'introduction', I wanted to focus primarily on unpacking ONE particular aspect of Scripture that we simplify - the progressive revelation of God's character. It nicely demonstrates the uncomfortable complexity of Scripture, probably more than any of the other aspects I mentioned. And it opens up more discussions at once, than any of the others.

Most obviously, progressive revelation refers to the Scriptures as they were recorded. For example, the law was given progressively over the course of a generation, and not instantaneously. Subsequent additions were made as the Jews unpacked their culture and history in the promised land. There were many prophets, many of whom we have no record of, though some were recorded and eventually deemed 'inspired'. The NT was written over many years, and much of the church for years only had access to a mix of SOME of these materials (as well as many additional letters, which were lost over the years).

But I'm not just talking about new 'facts' being revealed about God over time. This is hardly controversial. There's also the progression in the amount and fallibility of the 'communication' available to God's people. Jews were being circumcised into the covenant community, and having faith that pleased God, for many generations PRIOR to Moses writing a word of the OT. They relied primarily on oral tradition taught by many varied 'rabbis' with varying degrees of training and experience. We could (potentially) argue that God preserved 'direct perfect and unbiased) communication through this diverse array of human instruments, but I contest this is unlikely, and we tend to argue this mainly to protect our worldview. The bottom line is that a huge number of godly saints did not have access to any 'direct perfect and unbiased' communication about God, or to the subsequent 'detailed cognitive knowledge' we deem so important today. The NT also did not exist for many years of the early church, yet these people were baptised into union with Christ. Again, they had access mainly to oral stories passed around (verified of course by the Apostles, but many of these Christians never heard directly from the Apostles - it was all third or fourth hand). And for much of the early history of the church, the OT was minimised as a source of useful instruction (either because it was deemed to be 'evil', or allegorical). So again, these believers had restricted access to any 'direct perfect and unbiased communication' about God.

Finally, and most importantly, Christ Himself - the fullest revelation of God, this time in a more 'relational' kind of communication - took his timing in coming, and even his first coming was only a partial revelation, while we await His return. Even in heaven we will continue to experience Him, meaning that He will not have finished 'expressing' Himself for eternity.

A Changing 'Image' of God

'Progressive revelation' inevitably extends to the broad picture of God presented by Scripture. We minimise this a lot to protect our worldview, but God presents a picture of Himself that markedly changes over time. Try it for yourself - read the Torah as a Exodus Jew would have read it, without any of our modern sensibilities (e.g. about Justice, slavery, women's rights, violence, etc) and without the rest of Scripture to 'balance' things out. This is just one example, but it becomes clear that in the initial stages of the OT God expects His Holy people to willingly and brutally massacre foreign children, without qualms. The God we see now (given the whole story from OT to NT) would expect people to have a heart which naturally flows out in efforts to STOP such behavior, and which would certainly question that command to massacre (was it really from God?), and at least have some qualms about it.

If we argue that God is truly unchanging (as He says), what we're saying is that for much of the OT, God blatantly restrained Himself from revealing these incredibly relevant and important 'balancing' aspects of Himself,  and thus was deliberately creating bias in how His people perceived Him. And it was not just the general populace - it was the judges, prophets, priests, holy warriors, kings - God expected His people to perform in a way which is only consistent with a lopsided view of God.

God may have been slowly weeding this deliberate bias out with subsequent revelations, and working toward a more harmonious 'accurate' picture of His unchanging Himself. But we are still left with the NT apostles differing quite radically on their doctrinal emphases. While this might not seem as drastic as claiming that they held to contradictory doctrinal 'facts', it's still saying that the God that James saw was rather different to the God that Peter saw, that Paul saw, that John saw, etc. We could go so far as to suggest that they disagreed over aspects of God's character or priorities. A common example is the relationship between works and salvation - as a broad generalisation, Paul placed works as a definite outflow of salvation, Peter places some works as a requirement of salvation (e.g. baptism), and James and John placed works and faith alongside each other. Again, we could protect our worldview by drawing attention to the 'balancing' beliefs that the apostles held, which minimised the eccentricities they communicate in Scripture and make their theologies harmonious - or sometimes, when we can't find the doctrines we're looking for, we just assume the apostles held them. But I want to value the Scriptural tendency to communicate the eccentricities very clearly, sometimes more clearly than the harmony. Scripture doesn't seem as concerned with this 'harmony' as we are.

Dividing Scripture

This discussion obviously raises questions about 'dispensationalism' vs 'covenant theology' vs other variants. As you've probably guessed, I think both views are simplifications. Progressive revelation contains components of both.

There is a consistency to the way God relates to people throughout the ages - through multiple, varied, deliberately biased (and incomplete) expressions of Himself. I'll delve more into this in later posts, but the point for now is that 'progressive revelation' is NOT saying that some 'phases' of revelation were superior to others. All of history has been in constant a state of incomplete revelation, where God has NOT yet made known his fullness in a cognitive sense. Instead, every incomplete revelation naturally combines with others over time / exposure to produce a more and more complete communication - hence the term 'progressive'. The flip-side is what I think is an obvious conclusion from any straightforward reading of Scripture - that our view of God and how we behave as His people is meant to change, between e.g. the Exodus and now.

The difficulty is trying to describe how we are meant to approach this change. Some attempt to arbitrarily divide Scripture into sections that apply in different ways to us (and some don't apply at all). But I think this approach is not faithful to Scripture. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest a division between some parts of the OT which are relevant to us today, vs those which are not. It was always considered as a whole by every Biblical author. Even when we try to 'divide' it up, we run into trouble - e.g. we want to keep SOME of the laws about money and property, but not others. We want to keep SOME of the laws about sex, but not others. We want to keep some of the basic laws of the 10 commandments, but want to avoid the punishment associated with disobedience. Jesus and Paul both affirmed the permanent usefulness of the WHOLE law as a unified unit, and condemned the legalistic use of the WHOLE law as a unified unit. There is very little suggestion that how we fundamentally relate to the law is meant to change now that we are in the NT era - the verses commonly used to support this position tend to demonstrate instead that our relationship toward the law was ALWAYS meant to be a particular way (including in the NT era). So if our approach to Scripture has not fundamentally changed, and all of Scripture is approached in a consistent way, how does the Bible expect our behaviour as God's people to change over time? Its because as revelation progresses, the clarify of our vision of God naturally progresses as well, even though our approach to every revelation is fundamentally the same and unchanged. And our relationship to God assimilates this change.

Summary

A faithful approach to Scripture must value the fact that detailed cognitive knowledge did not seem like a priority for God throughout much of the history of His people. It must value the fact that God seems to deliberately create bias in the minds of His people, which has evolved over time. What does it look like when we value these things? That's the sort of question I'm hoping to answer in this series.

OK more comments please :) How does this discussion make you feel? Are there other ways that progressive revelation manifests itself? Or other questions that it unearths? Do you think God is pleased when we consider these things?

Coming Soon...

Next week I'll start a little more logically:

• I'll discuss that God's fundamental aim in us is a relationship of faith, and that everything (including Scripture) works for this fundamental aim. I hope this will pave the way to discuss the usefulness and limits of cognition and communication (two important aspects of Scripture) when it comes to relationship. 
• From there we will discuss WHY God seems to not only allow the intrinsic weaknesses of cognition and communication, but seemingly encourages it (demonstrated nicely by e.g. progressive revelation). This requires us to engage with the broader issue of why God allows ANY confusion to exist about his nature (e.g. the existence of evil, sin, etc). 
• I'll discuss how the faith relationship works in this context (i.e. in the real world of confusion regarding God's nature). And we'll specifically explore how the faith relationship responds to three phases of progressive revelation (the Torah, Christ's first coming, and the possibility of further revelation). 
• I'll discuss how the Jews approached Scripture in an unfaithful way and the problems this created, and then re-visit how we Christians do the same. And then I'll discuss some implications for Christian unity, discipleship, missions, etc. 

A lot to get through! It'll take time...

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation (this post)
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read