Intellectual Assent or Emotional Trust?

In my last few terms in Seminary, I have had multiple opportunities to mull over the "call" of God on our lives, what it entails, what it implies, what it demands, if anything. As my hermeneutics professor made clear, we come to the interpretation of Scripture with a measure of both personal subjectivity and cultural bias. I've begun to recognize at least some of this in myself.

It seems to me that we are in the midst of a cultural shift, as powerful as the one that led humanity from Mediaeval times into the Enlightenment. Except this shift is leading us OUT of the Enlightenment (or Modernism) into post-Modernism. And right now, the shift straddles the generations currently living on this planet (or, should I say, in the West).

I think the Baby Boomers are the last of the Moderns, the generation during which Modernism finally crumbled. Generation Y is the first generation of true post-Moderns, leaving Generation X as the transition generation, belonging to neither Modernism or post-Modernism - a generation filled with both angst and ambivalence. As the Brits would say: poor sods!

Here is what I see as the key differences in these world-views:

The Modern Western emphasis is on rational belief in objective truth (usu. with scientific or mathematical proof)

The post-Modern emphasis despairs of objective truth, admits to none but subjective (individual) truth, and will trust only in clearly demonstrated and evident character

Each of these are different yet again from the Mediaeval (and prior) pre-Modern emphasis on faithfulness to duty and to the essential nature of a given relationship (esp. master/servant, governor/governed)

When it comes to religious belief, pre-Modernism was defined by duty to the Creator and to the Creator's given order of things. It was simpler and more clearly defined: there were the obedient... and the disobedient. The standard was clear, and humankind was measured against the standard.

Modernism in religion led to either rational adherence to humanism (humankind became the standard - man as the measure of all things), or to a non-rational unquestioned belief in fundamental doctrines about God which are essentially unprovable, but necessary to sustain against creeping scientific Modernism.

Post-modernism, when applied to religion, is divided between disbelief in objective, universal truth, and a longing for some solid footing on which we can stand to deal with moral questions (hence the looking back to ancient traditions which is becoming more and more common).

So as Christ-followers today attempt to articulate the truth of the Gospel to the post-Modern generations coming up, we must abandon the methods that spoke to Moderns: apologetics, a defense of the historical Biblical record as proven to be reliable by archaeology, critical analysis, etc.

Instead, we should focus on those things that connect with post-Moderns: community, living your beliefs and commitments, character demonstrated in actions - something in which to place trust at a personal, emotional, experiential level, not take a mainly intellectual and scientific approach.

The Modernist focus on rational belief definitely influenced the evangelism techniques of the last several generations. The emphasis has been on intellectual assent rather than on emotional trust. Take, for example, this oft-quoted verse, John 3:16:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

The word for "believe" in John 3 can also be translated as commit, trust, be faithful to. The feel of the verse is much different if the key phrase is rendered "whoever commits to Him", or "whoever trusts Him", or "whoever is faithful to Him". We are no longer talking about intellectual assent, about rational belief in objective truth. We're talking about emotional reliance on proven character, about committment to a trustworthy and Holy person.

The Evangelical church we're now attending has this little summary on it's weekly bulletin cover:

Believe
Accept
Switch
Express

It starts with intellectual assent, which leads to life change. Hmpf. Well, at least it's an improvement from the way Evangelical churches have often expected newcomers to assimilate into the church:

Behave
Believe
Belong

First, clean up your act, then sign this statement of belief, and then.. you can join. Yuk. Better to reverse the process:

Belong
Believe
Behave

In other words, come join us, hang out, catch the vision. When you see that it's for you, commit yourself to follow. The life change stuff will happen as a matter of course.

A better metaphor for "conversion" might be the process of apprenticeship. When a person is considering taking up a trade, there are several stages to it. You have to move progressively from neophyte to journeyman. First, you hear about it, then you check it out, then you sign up, then you show up, then you watch & learn, then you practice what you learned. The same stages could apply to becoming an apprentice to Christ:

Hear/Observe/Consider
Seek/Inquire/Discover
Identify/Accept/Sign on
Participate/Belong/Connect
Follow/Submit/Commit
Learn/Imitate/Practice

And somewhere in there, you trust. Trust the process, the teacher, the experience, the group, the Master Craftsman. And that trust, that emotional commitment, is the stuff of conversion to a new life.