Issue 032 PDF Version - Christian Ethics Today

The Untraveled World
[This article first appeared in Brook Lane Health Services
Bulletin, Hagerstown, MD]
Why is it that history is replete with accounts of people
killing each other in disputes over theological matters,
which we believe but about which we can know nothing,
while we have no record of similar conflict over the tangible,
readily observable matters associated with science?
Perhaps the nearest approach to an answer is that we desperately
crave the security of certainty in our lives that are so
full of impenetrable mystery.
In earlier times, religion had no rivals. Modern science is
no rival, either, because scientists are seekers, never finders, of
the comforting ultimate truth we cover.
Perhaps, then, we seek and find our desired certainty by
committing ourselves unreservedly to some gospel that can be
neither proved nor disproved. But this sort of certainty seems
often to be troubled by doubts. Yet, despite our doubts—or
perhaps to conquer them—each group tends to defend its
gospel vigorously against all opposition.
What to do?
Perhaps we should begin by coming to terms with what
seems to me to be the fact that, whether or not we are aware of
it, we finite human beings are all agnostics. We are agnostics
because the finite can know nothing of the Infinite. Happily,
however, we can be believing agnostics.
Probably it is only after entering into immortality that we
can actually know about spiritual matters. A sacred book can
offer little assurance since it must be interpreted—but equally
learned and equally devout scholars arrive at significantly different
interpretations. Even the profoundly ignorant who
16 • FEBRUARY 2001 • CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY
Two Essays:
By Ralph Lynn, Professor of History Retired, Baylor University
insist that “it is all clear in black and white” are interpreting it.
Perhaps the way out is for Christians to approach the Bible
with the humility which characterizes the approach of scientists
to their “book”—which, of course, is our earth and the
vast cosmos of which our planet is but a miniscule part.
Scientists are aware that they can learn only by asking
humbly how Nature works. They are aware that their most
cherished axioms are vulnerable and must be discarded with
new discoveries. They must, in a word, be prepared to make
changes in orthodoxy.
Should Christians be less humble in our search for the
Infinite?
For all of us, religious or not, to quote Tennyson, “All experience
is an arch where through gleams that untraveled world
whose margin fades forever and forever when we move.”
Perhaps we should remember and applaud that 19 th century
Scottish expositor of the Bible, Alexander MacLaren,
who—apparently in a moment of both despair and confidence—exclaimed,
“There is more light to break from the Old
Book yet.”
Rogue Ideologues
Advocating Enmity
[This article first appeared in the Waco Tribune-Herald,
September 27, 2000]
Ours is a complicated world.
Responsibility for this column must be divided between
the editor, my wife and the late Alfred North Whitehead—a
world-famous philosopher who left England for the United