On Being Intelligible

It has been such a long while. Yet because I said that I would be explaining my previous post, I am bound to that! Of course, you can read this without reference to that post as well.

Happy new year - is 2021 going better than 2020? So far, so same?

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Step by Step

In order to bring a person to light, to understanding, to a state of illumination, we must wade into the dark where they are, and not pull down the sun to them in their darkness - not at first, at any rate. 

It is important, when speaking the truth, to speak it in a way that is understandable. 

Does that mean dispensing with the language that must be known, the Scripture? No!

It means, however, that as we might teach a child his letters and then from there to form the idea of "just" and then onward to "justice" and, as these have sunk in, to arrive at that glorious and indispensable idea of "justification," so the same goes for all things, and more important when the path to a felicitous eternity, a happy eternity, rests in knowing these words. 

Does that mean we dispense with the language of Scripture and never teach people those things integral to faith in God? If "faith comes by hearing the message" then it must be a sharp "may it never be," to that idea. For us to cast out those words difficult to understand is to seal our descension into willful ignorance. Things such as Grace, Atonement, Reconciliation, Ransom, Wrath, Sin, Justification, Faith, the Word of God, Jesus - these must be explained, first simply, then more profoundly, step by step. 

Two Dangers

We must aim to listen, to understand where people are, and to then speak in such ways as will remove all but the God-averse heart; and speak so clearly that people could say of us as they did of Luther: "he was impossible to misunderstand." As I remember a biographer say of someone who heard Spurgeon speak, "he preaches the old gospel in new clothes" - we need the same. It means acknowledging that we are in a sort of Babylon, a place where people speak foreign tongues. But in this Babylon, there are dangers when we seek to preach the gospel.

First Danger: Assuming to be correct and becoming arrogant 

One is that we say something that is completely unintelligible without realizing it. I find this the case even with a simple presentation of the gospel - "Jesus died for your sins" - which contains so much that is debatable and incomprehensible to the hearer. Immediately questions would burst forth like a geyser:

"Who is Jesus?" "Why did he die?" "Who asked him to die?" "Who asked him to die for me?" "Why does he have to die for me?" "What is a sinner?" "Are you calling me a sinner?"

Now, I believe all these questions are valid, and when Christians are faced with them, they can tend to two directions. One is that we immediately assume - and this is key - we assume that they should know better, and we take a position of the beleaguered righteous. Key words here would be things like, "Of course you are..." or, "Obviously..." - fill in the rest. But those words assume the hearer has prior knowledge which our culture simply does not have at hand. To a person who argues that, "they suppress the truth by their wickedness" (Rom 1:18), fair enough. However, I would say that their sin is pretty far out of sight and mind for people, buried down deep inside them. It will take a wise person to draw the heart of the unbeliever so they can see the truth (Prov 20:5). People will quickly say that sin is madness, but then go ahead and speak to the sinner as if they are perfectly cogent about their sin - if sin induces madness, then I cannot expect them to see it clearly, at the first. We must not belligerently assume our position makes sense, and become warriors against the culture - more often, we simply become warriors in the worst sense, attacking people who oppose us, even as they don't know any better.

Second Danger: Seeing theology as too difficult and not engaging in it at all

The other danger is that we realize that we do not quite understand what we have been saying all along - we realize that we've simply been using borrowed language. This is good, in part, because ignorance, if acknowledged, can make us wise. The danger here is simply that one can fall into despair - "It's all too much!" - and leave off the entire enterprise of deep, studied reflection. This, however, can devolve into something far worse over time. We can become those who leave "theology" to the professionals and take no time to become acquainted with God's words and what they mean, never asking questions like, "what does the Bible say about sin?" or "why did Jesus have to die as he did" - these questions, while nourishing to a believer, may be thrown away in despair, and one can languish in studied ignorance. 

The Common Tongue

So then, how can we hope to be understood unless we first aim to understand others?

Schaeffer's foreword to his book Escape from Reason is marvellous in giving us the beginning of an answer: anyone moving to a foreign country must learn the language of that country. We must aim to not babble on, speaking our dialect to a country that speaks their own. We must pray that we would not be people speaking in unintelligible tongues - but rather, interpret our words to others. 

"To conclude - you must translate every bit of your Theology into the vernacular. This is very troublesome and it means you can say very little in half an hour, but it is essential. It is also of the greatest service to your own thought. I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then yours thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one's own meaning." 

- C. S. Lewis, "Christian Apologetics", in God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 98.

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If anyone has questions or comments, feel free to message me privately, or comment on the page or on Facebook! This is not a settled blog - most thoughts are introductory, even when they are conclusive. 

May the love of the Lord be known to you, as you abide in his love.