Exposing the Liberalizing Effects of My Theological Higher Education
... my meandering has been far less about liberalization than it has been about liberation.
“You’re the poster child for why so many Christians are adamantly against higher education.”
This comment was the lead-in to a conversation (paraphrased here) I recently had with an acquaintance who felt the need to explain why he could no longer endure friending me on Facebook.
“You do realize,” I asked, “with the exception of undergrad, my entire education has been at evangelical schools, right?”
“You think that makes any difference? Progressives have infiltrated all of it,” he cautioned. “Marxist ideology permeates the entire institution of education. It’s just so low-key you can’t see it.”
“But you, who hasn’t been in a classroom for like thirty years ... you can see it?”
“Yes, I see it in people like you.” He sort of shook his head as he paused, then added, “It’s really disappointing what a liberal they’ve turned you into.”
With that, here is the story of what “they” have done to me, and the liberalizing effect of my education.
Some Context
I’ve said it frequently: I have never been more certain about the correctness of my personal beliefs and opinions than I was the day before I started my seminary journey. Now, nine years and three degrees later, I am about to enter the final term of coursework in my fourth program—a doctor of theology in historical theology and church history.
Education has been quite an eye opening journey … and that mostly has to do with what I am learning about myself.
In retrospect, I recognize a majority of the certainties I once held are no more. Some of that is due to the intentional demolition of old ideas. Some of it is due to a slow and imperceptible erosion—the sort you never realized happening until you return to a shoreline upon which you once stood, only to find it washed away.
The few certainties that do remain, exist as a limited set of essential core convictions, and they are more solid and healthy than I ever imagined they could be.
Theological education has been a process of paradox in this respect, one that has been complexly enriching and strangely impoverishing at the same time.
This process has been something observable to those who have known me longer than the last decade. Many of those observers have told me as much (no one, however, quite like the guy above). Some are encouraged by the shift. Some are suspicious of it. Some don’t care either way, but have simply noted that they see it.
They see how my thought processes have changed and how different my entire worldview is, compared to what it was. I don’t think it would be unfair, if I may speak for any of these observers, to confirm the shift has been noticeably toward a comprehensively more “liberal” outlook. This would be in regard to social, cultural, political, and most certainly theological aspects of my thought.
Why toward the Liberal?
To explain it, I have to dip back in time a few years and share a short story with you.
In only the second semester of my first graduate program, I received the most profound humbling of my academic career (to date). And as I look back, I recognize it now to be one of the most valuable and formative experiences of my life—especially as it relates to the way I process the world around me and humbly seek understanding of the “big questions” as best I can … which in turn is at the root of all of this.
It started with a single grade—an F to be precise (as in 40%). Being a conscientious student, who at times can tend to put too much attention and exacting effort into their work, to say I was upset would be a tremendous understatement of just how much it concerned me.
The professor only commented: “You need to meet with me before the week is out. Let’s Skype.”
We set up a virtual meeting for two days later, and I exaggerate not when I say I was so upset I could barely eat or sleep in the meantime. When we met, he first noted how I was a very a good writer, well-versed at making arguments and stating cases. Blah, blah blah. His usual cordial set up, I figured.
He then hit me with this very unforgettable (and unsettling) question … “Do you want to act open-minded, or do you want to BE open-minded?” He paused just long enough to recognize that I was stung by his insinuation.
“Because,” he went on, “you will be better off finding satisfaction in theological education, if you just drop façades, and be one or the other of two things.” This time he paused long enough for me to feel like he was waiting for a reply. But I was off balance, and I didn’t even have one. He sensed it, and moved on.
Moving in toward his camera, he said, “Jon, let me frame it to you with another question. Why are you studying theology? Is it to seek out understanding of things beyond what you may ever be able to fully grasp, or are you wanting to learn how to better defend your fortress?”
He then added, “Either way is OK, because at least they’re both honest. But tell me, which is it?”
“I want to seek truth,” I said. I think I meant it, but all of this was making me a bit unsure.
So, with that, he proceeded to destroy my work. And this is why.
A few weeks earlier we had to declare a thesis for the big term-end paper. I chose to argue against a theological position I had heard about only in passing, but decided was wrong anyway. How had I decided it was wrong? It conflicted with my prior certainties of what God must be like. That’s why.
The graded assignment was my initial bibliography, which (wouldn’t you know it) contained a dozen or so sources that all, every one of them, took the same negative perspective against that theological position. It also contained a proposed abstract carefully crafted to read like I was approaching the topic neutrally.
That is what really irked him.
What had been accomplished was nothing short of a blueprint for an echo chamber. I assembled a cadre of voices that would affirm me as I erected a straw man which could be triumphantly burned to holy hell. Worst part was that I got caught trying to smuggle across the notion I was approaching it with honest deference to the position of those I had already determined were complete heretics. All without consulting a single one of them.
I was acting, but not being.
I figure the whole thing was a very well-conceived way of mentoring a “young” seminarian about approaching issues dialectically. That means getting after it from every angle of the discussion, so as to contribute to that discussion with understanding of those angles. This is the key to constructing academically honest positions that are well-reasoned and not prone to fallacy.
The professor graciously permitted me to re-do the work and I ended up delivering a paper he said he was very proud to see me produce.
SIDE NOTE: The theological position I assumed to destroy was that held by folks labelled “open theists,” a group of theologians I now, having engaged the dialectic considerably across several projects, count myself among. It is a position that has aided me personally in making sense of my own theological doubts and coming to more healthy terms with many of the needless tensions created by alternatives to it. It is not too much of a stretch to say this view has greatly strengthened my faith, if not kept it from crashing in altogether. Had I never examined it, from the perspective of its actual proponents, that gift would have been missed.
To this day, I greatly appreciate exactly how the professor handled me, and the value of that lesson has never been spoiled on me. I pray it never is. Because as embarrassing as it is to admit, my approach to that paper was pretty much my approach to everything. And prior to the deeper lesson I got from that course, I must fully admit that my very strong and staunch opinions were all similarly grounded in pre-assumptions about the alternatives, based in how they were represented by my side, my tribe, my echo chambers.
The Meanderer
It would be a few years after this incident when I realized my professor’s point about defending fortresses was likely inspired by a man named Clark Pinnock, a figure who, over the years, has become immensely influential in shaping my own theological outlook.
Pinnock (d. 2010) once remarked, “The meanderings of a pilgrim can be infuriating for defenders of a fortress.”[1] Given his journey, it was clearly an autobiographical observation.
Mentored by the renowned F. F. Bruce, Pinnock entered the academic theological scene of the early 60’s, swiftly proving himself to be a gifted thinker and writer among the very conservative circles of the evangelical Reformed tradition. Yet, over the following decades, Pinnock wandered beyond those walls into broader theological landscapes that would help him to reconsider many of his prior views, sometimes adopting stances completely opposite those he once held.
In his book The Scripture Principle, he challenged the idea of literalist biblical inerrancy, a position he vigorously defended years prior. With A Wideness in God’s Mercy, he imagined a gospel that was more pluralistic than the exclusionary one he once embraced as a strict Calvinist. He became a prominent advocate for the doctrine of annihilation, which rejected Dante's classical medieval depiction of hell. And he was among a handful of theologians who, in the mid 1990’s, launched the open theist movement.[2]
Pinnock's critics (and he amassed many) proposed his “waffling” on long held beliefs was evidence of great intellectual weakness that constituted an invalidation of his ideas.
A contention to which he responded:
"I do not apologize for admitting to being on a pilgrimage in theology, as if it were in itself some kind of weakness of intelligence or character. Feeling our way toward the truth is the nature of theological work even with the help of Scripture, tradition, and community … A pilgrimage, therefore, far from being unusual or slightly dishonorable, is what we would expect theologians who are properly aware of their limitations to experience."[3]
Still, every one of his theological shifts was in a certain direction that his critics could not resist charting, because each trended away from the traditional (conservative) view. This opened the door for Pinnock to be draped with the most lethal label in the conservative evangelical arsenal … the dreaded “L Word.”
Pinnock was branded a LIBERAL.
If You’re Not for Us …
Having read volumes of the man’s thought, most of it more than once, I would argue that Pinnock was not much of a “liberal” at all. Of course, he wasn’t conservative either.
Yet, in this arena, under the constant threat of “slippery slopes,” where faith is strangely synonymous with certainty, and the toeing of doctrinal lines with prescribed uniformity and precision is demanded, he may as well have been a Pinko Commie.
Because it has gotten to the point that if you’re not conservative (or even conservative enough) … You. Are. Liberal.
And to be completely fair about it, that’s not unique to conservatives. It goes both ways. The nature of the current cultural climate is such that if you’re not defending a fortress … you’re attacking one.
My educational pursuits have brought me out of a fortress, in the sense that they have lead me to confront earlier presuppositions, assumptions, and certainties.
This is where those like the aforementioned individual, or people similarly suspicious of education, will assert that the Marxist, Unitarian, wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing “have lured” me away from “the truth” with siren songs of secularism, postmodernism, or whatever "ism" is their boogeyman du jour.
The reality however, is far less sinister. In none of my experiences has a professor even remotely hinted that I, or anyone I know, jettison our beliefs, positions, or convictions.
Nevertheless, the very common approach has been to require that a thesis (or opinion) be thoroughly researched and presented in a logical and well-articulated fashion, all while being defensible with a respectable level of credible supporting data.
How that has succeeded in liberalizing me rests in the fact that the rigors of this academic process have exposed where my presuppositions, assumptions, and certainties were/are flimsy, baseless, and untested.
And where I, by self-intellectual audit, have found those things to not be credibly or rationally defensible, you will witness me cut those anchor lines. Being as I was previously tethered to a strongly conservative perspective, it is true my movement has been toward the opposite polarity.
Here, though, is a crucial point that cannot be missed.
“Toward the opposite side” does not imply “TO the opposite side.” While I understand that many will jump hungrily onto that idea … it is in no way the case.
I figure most thinking people will “get” that. So then too will they “get it” when I say that while this all has liberalized me, I'm not a liberal, any more than I am (no longer) a conservative. Nor will I likely be.
The reason is twofold:
First, while I have cut anchor lines, I have definitely not cut them all. Those that remain are the essential core convictions I referred to above. My education has exposed me to how formative and precious they are. Additionally, it has helped me learn just how solid, foundational, and defensible they are. These lines are long enough to allow drift toward, and even into, the waters of liberalism and conservatism, but never quite far enough to fully BE either.
Second, there is the revelation that each extreme simply represents opposing fortresses. The difference between liberal and conservative fortresses, as I see it, is this. Conservatives typically (not always) look at how something would be better if we had just forced it to remain faithful to the way things were. Progressives (again not always) look at how something could be better if we just force it to change in order to get there. Each side has a theory of what a certain something should be that sees it's promise built upon the negation of the other. Thus it holds that each alternative will be equally intolerant and authoritarian in the end ... in essence, a fortress.
Thus, to expound on Pinnock and my professor, who both used the fortress metaphor, I would like to suggest that for me, the fortress I was in would be better viewed as a prison. How I can make that claim is simply by this appalling realization of myself:
The unyielding surety of my own correctness was such that a decade ago, my thought lines were more similar to the acquaintance mentioned at the opening of this article then they are currently. What this means, horrifyingly enough, is that had I known then what would take place within me … had I been able to forecast how education would change the way I think … I would not have jumped in.
Inasmuch as that frightening truth is the case, I am relieved God pushed me. And I am grateful for the drive to keep going. I see now that the best way to have broken free of my fortress' gravitational pull was through the loss of contact that comes only by way of distance.
When I say education has taught me about myself more than anything, the present ability to discern this point is exactly what I mean by that.
In this respect, my meandering has been far less about liberalization than it has been about liberation.
Boiling It Down
For that reason alone, if at the end of this journey I find I am no doctrinal fit for any institution in which I may teach theology (and I have learned that will likely be the case), I will still be forever grateful God placed the burden to do this upon my heart.
I will be forever humbled that the myriad sacrifices required for earning a doctoral degree amounted to an investment in my own personal freedom ... one I hope may be an example to my son. Namely, what it looks like, and the intentionality it takes, to be a genuine seeker of truth in a world where truth is highly concealed in the fortresses that dot the terrain around us all. Maybe it will be an example that inspires a few others as well.
The thought it could, or may, excites me beyond measure.
I thank the Lord for giving me the endurance (assuming I can finish). He knows I've desperately needed it, as those on the sidelines often operate more to the deflate this goal than cheer it on.
No matter. It has been along this path where finding liberation from the blindness of my own intellectual darkness has taken place. So, whatever the finish line holds, it will be likely of lesser value than that.
Thus, I praise God anyway. Praises for bringing me here, if for nothing else than to teach me that much.
_______________
[1]. Clark Pinnock, unpublished paper delivered at the 1997 Evangelical-Process Dialogue convened at Claremont School of Theology, quoted in Barry L. Callen, Clark H. Pinnock: Journey Toward Renewal (Nappanee, IN: Evangel Publishing House, 2000), 122. [2]. Clark H. Pinnock, “From Augustine to Arminius: A Pilgrimage in Theology,” in The Grace of God and the Will of Man, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1989), 16.
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