II. METHODOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

My world view begins with persons.  That is the humanistic side of my “label.”  My reason for that position is quite clear to me—I have nowhere else to begin.  A human “person” is who I am.  I am bound by what can be called a “spatio-temporal continuum”—that is, all of my experiences, concepts, and language are boundaried by space and time: everything is for me either here or there, then or now, and that is where I must start.  I may not end there. I may come to believe in something trans-human, something non-spatial and non-temporal, but those beliefs are human beliefs and the packages in which they come to me are human packages.  That is to say, even scriptural accounts—or, for that matter, testimonials from contemporaries—of “contact with” or “messages from” God, by whatever name, are human accounts of such experiences. So, even if I come to believe in the primacy and priority of a Supreme Being, I shall have come to that from where I am, not from the perspective of the “Great Mystery.”

I am reminded of a story I heard as a youngster.  Moe and Joe were building a house and were having a fierce argument about where to start.  Unable to agree, Moe sought out a third party to arbitrate.  Moe insisted they had to start with the foundation, but Joe, he said, was adamant that they should start with the roof.  The arbitrator said, “You silly morons, of course you have to start with the foundation.”  “That’s what I thought,” said Moe gleefully. “Come on down, Joe, we have to start down here.”  Every value, every belief, every judgment is always—necessarily—accepted, shared, articulated by somebody “on the ground”.  Wherever I end up, I have to start down here; I have no place else to begin.  Which leaves the theological and biblical issues of “special and general revelation” in the “parking lot” to be addressed at a later point.

Now, from there, I could move with equally valid logic to several ways of knowing but I want to acknowledge what I choose to call an “inclusive empiricism:”

• a way of knowing that affirms the centrality of sense experience and sensory evidence in the formation of ideas—that’s empiricism—
• but also the wider ranges of experience, including the exercise of reason and of intuition—and that’s the source of the “inclusive” modifier. 

That is to say, I cannot agree that all truth is available to reason or that we have “innate” ideas, but I do celebrate the awesome power of the human mind and the crucial role of reason in the ordering of experience.  

Furthermore, although I’ve never been able to experience or empathetically identify with the psychic withdrawal of the mystic, I do acknowledge as a part of human experience an ability neither narrowly sensory nor narrowly rational—

• the ability to grasp patterns,
• to comprehend meaning in the world by what might be described as an intuitive process or experience,
• the ability to “see,” without additional data, what one did not “see” before.

It is the experience that cartoonists symbolize by the light bulb over the head, the “aha” moment, when, as Ian Ramsey says, “the penny drops,” or the experience in the psychotherapeutic process that my clinical psychology professor called “galloping insight.” And so I do affirm, that in spite of the undeniable ambiguity of the world, it is possible that we may find more sense than chaotic nonsense in it. 

My epistemology—my way of knowing—then, tends to be methodologically humanistic and broadly experiential.  I find myself, in making judgments about truth, looking for “empiric fit” as I have broadly defined it. In Biblical interpretation, for example, I am initially interested, by virtue of education and profession, in historical setting and literary style and original intent, etc., but finally I find myself looking for empiric fit—i.e. is there anything there that is or may be reproducible in my own experience.

That leads me to the other half of my “label.  In what sense may my humanism legitimately be called a “reverent” or “spiritual” humanism, and why not simply say a “Christian” humanism?  Without going off the rails too far, I have long had difficulty with the use of the term “Christian” as an adjective or a noun when it seems more appropriately like a verb—that is, it is not so much something one is, as something one is doing and something one is becoming: not primarily a state, but an activity and a process.

That said, I must reference my background—

• being raised in a conservative Baptist family and a fundamentalist Baptist church;
• pursuing my undergraduate and graduate education in Baptist-related institutions
• spending my entire professional career in institutions of higher education that described their mission as providing education in a “Christian” setting (there’s that adjective again!).

It was primarily these latter experiences that provided the context for a religious, theological and, I venture to say, a spiritual perspective that has been a long and reflective journey. 

Along the way, I have come across a number of other world religions and while I am neither an expert in nor have ever been “immersed” in any of them, I have recently been involved in a study of World Religions with Jim Thomas and  Kimberly Myers, two of my very best friends, using as the basic source Huston Smith’s classic book, The World’s Religions—although I went “off the rails” a number of times to pursue some issues or topics in a variety of other sources—and engaging in lengthy conversations about each of the religions in turn. They have many differences, of course, but I am fascinated by how many elements and beliefs they share with one another and, sometimes, with basic Christianity. As Harry Emerson Fosdick—my early mentor and the subject of my doctoral dissertation—often pointed out, when one sees the same idea, belief, or observation “popping up” in various cultures and religions, one should pay careful attention: there is likely profound “truth” to be discovered there. I won’t pursue that further here, since I have already addressed it in a number of recent blogs that arose from this just completed study of world religions..

All of that is to say that I perceive my humanism to be reverent, even spiritual, because, against the background of the widening perspective of my journey, the basic clue to meaning in human experience was provided to me primarily in Jesus and what historic Christianity has taught me about him. In honesty, I must note that this is the beginning point for me, not the end. It is a beginning point, however, that seems to me consistent with what I have said thus far—that we must begin with persons because we have no place else to begin.  I stand by that, but it makes sense to me to begin with personhood at its best.  Whatever else Jesus was, he was a man—a person—and by beginning with him, I contend, one begins with humanity at its best.

My interpretations of the person and significance of Jesus are probably not orthodox—whoever decides what that is—but I find in his life and message, as they have been transmitted and interpreted, a frame of reference for confronting the world which has, for me, empiric fit and a historically profound source of meaning.  Human relationships are central in that point of view—it is not persons in their solitariness that I find most significant, but persons in relationship.

From the life and teachings of Jesus and Socrates I have become convinced that truth and meaning are dialogical.  In a world where, as modern psychology has taught me, personhood as we know it develops only in relationship with other persons, so in such a world is truth and meaning available primarily in “conversations of consequence.”  Thus, from the perspective of human experience—which is, again, the only perspective I have—the supreme value of human personality is not so much a doctrine or an inference from argument as it is a given.  That Jesus not only clearly taught that, as did others before and after him, but exemplified it, as perhaps no one has before or since, offers a profound insight into the nature of things—an indication of empiric fit.

I am reminded of the words of a classic hymn: “I have decided to follow Jesus, No turning back, No turning back.”  As noted, that doesn’t mean I may not turn “aside,” since I have learned much, and continue to do so, from a wide variety of persons and sources. But there is in Jesus, his life and teachings, a sensible “core” to the “reverent” humanism I have tried to describe.

From here I must move out in a less random and more concise fashion to make some statements about my views of persons, of nature, and what may lie beyond both.  I should preface what follows with a confession that there is a certain tenuousness in these more content-oriented facets of my world view, not because I haven’t thought them through, but because I have. 

As the preceding observations may have suggested, there is in me a fair amount of what I would call a “reverent agnostic.”  For anyone who may be put off by the term “agnostic,” be reminded that it means simply “not to know” (and the “reverent” modifier— which is, to be fair, my own addition—I have already spoken about and will return to later). 

The longer I have lived and learned—and the learning never stops—the more conscious I have become

• that the larger the “circle of what I know or think I know” becomes, the more the circumference of that circle touches the vast expanses of “the unknown;”
• and the more I have become aware of and humbled by all that I don’t know;
• and how overshadowed my “certainties” have become by all that remains beyond my grasp in that great repository of the unknown and, perhaps, of the not-to-be-known. 

While I do not believe I can live my life balanced on top of a question mark, neither do I believe I have the truth neatly packaged.  I may choose to accept—to embrace, to act on, to believe—many things without claiming to “know” them beyond the shadow of a doubt.

So let me pause here briefly and ask, what is the difference between “knowing” and “believing?” I could give you a dozen definitions from far brighter minds than mine, but—garnered in part from an earlier post—let me offer some basic definitions that make sense to me.

• Based on the epistemology I have already owned, knowing is the result of first-hand awareness of something we have personally experienced, primarily through our five senses, reflected upon, and which our rational mind has processed, ordered, and confirmed. Such knowledge, while dependable and evidentiary, is, like science, not absolute, undeniable, unchanging truth.
• Believing in something is a choice we make because we have come to accept it by inference from our experiences, by a rational argument, an intuitive conclusion, an authority we trust, or even a hope that it is true.

So what does this mean and why does it matter?  Based on the epistemology that I accept and the definition of believing I have posited, neither of them provides absolute certainty. But that does not stop me from thinking, feeling, acting, living on the basis of some things I claim to know and some that I choose to believe with far more certainty than they can legitimately provide.

I am a person-in-relationship-and-in-process.  The fact that what I started as a child—and am momentarily “freezing” here—is not finished and will not be finished until I die, argues for open-mindedness and intellectual humility.  And my humility certainly increases as I move out from my view of persons—in the next post—to my view of nature and to The Great Mystery beyond both. 

I hope you will continue to join me in this long and thoughtful journey.