Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek magazine, introduces a long article on religion in last week’s edition. Meacham is an Episcopalian and I’ve seen him on a number of television programs surrounding issues of faith. In reading is long introduction, the influence of his Anglicanism and the Prayer Book come through.
For instance, the article asks the question, “Is God real?” and then enters into a “debate” between Rick Warren, pastor of perhaps the most influential mega-church in the country – Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA – and author of the very popular “The Purpose Driven Life,” and Sam Harris, atheist and author of two books on why there can be no God (“The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation”). In his introduction, Meacham describes Warren as one who “…believes in the God of Abraham as revealed by Scripture, tradition, and reason.” (emphasis mine) This three part formula of “Scripture, tradition, and reason” will be quickly recognized as the Anglican “Three legged stool” and describes how Anglicans deal with issues of Truth.
Now, Warren may well have taken to referring to the Anglican formula as his own, and more power to him. However, I wonder whether Meacham is graciously applying his own Anglican understanding upon Warren. As an Evangelical, I don’t know whether Warren would include Tradition and Reason as two authorities in discerning Truth. Anyway, I think it great that Meacham’s Anglicanism comes through.
Second, Meacham is discussing the perennial and eternal, it seems, debate of whether God exists or not. He writes, “There are, of course, religious counter-counter arguments to these counter-arguments; the debate goes on world without end.” (emphasis mine) Again, here we see the influence of the Book of Common Prayer in Meacham’s word selection. We can also see the influence of the 1928 Prayer Book or Rite One from the 1979 Prayer Book, whether because of the poeticalness of the combination of these three words or whether he truly prefers Elizabethan English I don’t know. But again, being an Episcopalian comes through in his writing, at least for this article.
Now, Meacham quotes Harris in the introduction as saying, “I doubt them equally [the Biblical God, Zeus, Isis, Thor…] and for the same reason: lack of evidence.”
My first thought was, “It is a different way of knowing.” Meacham describes Blaze Pascal’s descriptions of his vision of God that resulted in his writing what we know as the “Pensées.” The brilliant mathematician tries to describe this seemingly unexplainable experience of the voice of God speaking to him. It is a different way of knowing.
Michael Polanyi did much research in the concept of “knowing” and how we judge what is knowledge and how we prove we have such knowledge. He came up with the notion of the “Tacit Way of Knowing.”
Polanyi said something like: in the West, this rational system we have, knowledge is judged by what we can reproduce through tests and other such “proofs.” He said that if we had to have a serious operation, we would want to make sure the surgeon was the best – that he knew what he was doing. Yet, if that surgeon where to go back and retake some of the entry-level exams during his first year of medical school – chemistry, physiology, etc. – he would probably flunk the exams. We in the West would tend to say he did not have the knowledge necessary to be a competent doctor or surgeon, yet we know he is. Polanyi then says to look at our grandmothers. They make bread by touch – no recipe, no list, and if we demanded that they write down exactly the measured ingredients and the process, they couldn’t. The bread is made through a way of knowing that the rational West has a difficult time acknowledging. Tacit knowing, intuition, and perhaps this knowledge of God.
We cannot “prove” that our grandmothers REALLY knew how to make bread if we demand a rational detailing of the process. We cannot “prove” that God does not REALLY exist because we cannot give a rational detailing of empirical facts of evidence. Knowing God is a different way of knowing than chemistry and its empirical evidences.
We want to demand that there really is only one way of knowing – Western, rational, materialistic, and empirical. In some ways, these guys are “Rational Fundamentalists” (use of the word “fundamentalist” is perhaps unfair, but…) – there is little or no recognition or allowance that there can honestly be other ways of knowing or interpretation of observable evidence. They close themselves off to perhaps a whole different means of discovery, expansion, and knowing beyond ourselves.
Meacham writes about Pascal’s Wager: “It is smarter to bet that God exits, and to believe in him, because if it turns out that he is real, you win everything; if he is not, you lose nothing. So why not take the leap of faith?”