Consciencebound

“You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart”. So goes the song. This is the almost universal testimony of any who would call themselves a Christian. Even for those who may not be as comfortable with that kind of language or who are more accustomed to giving reasoned arguments for their faith, they still will come back to this same point of contact and assurance. The Holy Spirit told me so. This certainly was my testimony. I “knew” that Christ lived because I knew that I had experienced him and that my sins had been forgiven. I had a “personal relationship” with Christ that was undeniable to me and seemingly to those around me. I was a sinner and was “convicted” of my sin by the Holy Spirit and I knew that if I did not repent of my sin that I was going to burn for ever and ever in Hell for all eternity. I knew this. I knew it as much as I know that there is a computer in front of me.

But now? Now I am not so sure. Now I am not so sure about what I used to have no doubts about. I am not so sure about what I felt so compelled to “preach” to others whom I worked with. The more that I look at and observer Christianity and Christians the more that I am just not so certain about the whole thing. Why is it that I am not so sure?
I have come to find that all Christians no matter what their education, station in life, or understanding of the Bible will always come back to one sure thing in the area of spiritual truth. The testimony of the Holy Spirit. It is the testimony of the Holy Spirit that a Christian knows that he knows that he knows that God is true, Jesus has risen from the dead, that Islam is a false religion, etc. The Holy Spirit does this for them. The Holy Spirit makes this clear to them. And anyone who disagrees with their views of God or the Bible or any other “essential” doctrine of the Christian faith must obviously not have the Spirit. And if a person at one time seemed to have the Holy Spirit and now does not believe the same things that they are supposed to believe any longer, than either the Holy Spirit has left that person and they are now “lost” or they “really” never had the Spirit in the first place.

My question is this: Is the testimony of the Holy Spirit something that can be known and distinguished from other strong feelings or beliefs, or is it just an easy “spiritual way” of saying, “there is no way for me to know this thing and so instead of using reason I will abandon reason and just “rely on the Spirit”? Is it just a pass for getting a person out of a difficult intellectual situation? Or is it our get out of jail free card which is to be redeemed whenever we don’t have the intellectual capability of explaining something rationally? The more I examine my own past commitment to the “revelation of the Spirit” and the more that I question other people on what the spirit “bears witness with their spirit” about, the more I see that the testimony of the Spirit is whatever we want to make it. It is not distinguishable from other “impressions and beliefs”. It is just a way of “knowing” that we have the truth. “It was revealed to me by the Spirit”. Once we say that, nobody can criticize us and nobody can question our conclusions. Nobody can say that we are illogical because as Paul said, “The natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit”. Once we state that we know something by the Holy Spirit we have an immunity to critique and question. Oh people can go ahead and question us all they want, but the only answer I need give them is that The Holy Spirit told me so.

I have spent time in many different Evangelical churches that have very different view on the Spirit’s teaching and enlightening. I grew up in more charismatic circles where the Spirit was attributed to every day activities of guidance in life, understanding of the Bible, healing of sickness etc. I have also spent a significant amount of time in non-charismatic circles where these sorts of beliefs are simply not found. In fact they are argued against and they are even scorned in some sense. In these non-charismatic circles, we are to understand the Bible by using the faculties of reason that God gave us. Since the Bible is a book of history, it is said, we can use the normal historical tools that we have to interpret the text just like we would any other book. We build our theology by reasonably articulating doctrines as we tie them logically together with the “whole counsel of God’s Word”. Now something has stood out to me in recent years that I did not fully notice before. Both of these groups (and there is not only two groups but for the sake of discussion I want to deal with these two expressions of the Christian faith by way of example) will at some point cling to the testimony of the Holy Spirit at one point or another. The charismatic group will talk about and rely on the testimony of the Holy Spirit from their conversion to understanding Biblical texts (in ways that may not agree with reason) to knowing where to go to college. The non-charismatic group will look and see if the Bible tells them to do something and if it is not clear, they will make an informed decision based on counsel, the Bible and good reason. They usually do not elieve that the Holy Spirit “tells them” things specific any longer. They will spend more time learning the original languages and studying the historical and cultural settings of the Bible to find their interpretations. They will also defend the truth of the Christian faith by using an apologetic of reasonable arguments, philosophical proofs, historical facts etc. But if you push them hard enough and take them to a place for instance where they do not have an answer to a difficult question about the origin of the Bible or about a supposed contradiction in the Bible they will eventually take the same stance that the charismatic believer takes. That is, they will say that “we know that the Bible is true or without error by faith and by the testimony of the Holy Spirit”. And for them, this is the end of the discussion. It indeed cannot go anywhere else unless we question also the testimony of the holy spirit itself. But that of course can never be done.

The questions that I am left with is why is it not acceptable for the charismatic believer to say for instance that the Holy Spirit told them that Calvinism is wrong and that they don’t need to show why that is the case by refuting Calvinism using reasonable arguments from the Bible (this actually happened to a friend of mine), but it is perfectly acceptable for them to say in the face of difficult questions that the only way that we know that the Bible is true is by the witness of the Holy Spirit and that the “natural man cannot understand the ways of the spirit”? I see no difference in these two positions. The former simply takes the testimony of the Spirit and continues to see it throughout their life and the later position only uses it for their entrance to the Christian faith and then sets it aside after that. They will always fall back on that testimony of the Holy Spirit when times are tough and when they are not able to give a good reason as to why a person should reject Islam or Mormonism. I find it strange that this is acceptable to the non-charismatic believer since they critique it so much in their charismatic brethren.

Jeff

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