Where Is Fundamental Certainty?

March 17, 1985
Lakeland
Port Charlotte

A human trait is the need for security. In religions, this need for security has been, for most of history and among most people, a faith response to a creed or authoritative teaching, or placing a complete trust in a savior. W.H. Auden’s phrase “The Age of Anxiety” has become a cliché, but is a cliché that denotes the fears that characterize 20th century men and women. The impressive growth of TV ministries of fundamentalist gospel churches is due not only to catchy music, magnetic preachers, and excellent public relations, but also because a basic security is offered. The rock of ages, when accepted by a leap of faith, provides a firm base of hope amid the storms, shifting tides, and uncertainties of living in a precarious age.

The source of authority for religious beliefs spells the difference between liberal religion and more orthodox beliefs. An informed idea of a person’s religion can be inferred from an answer to the question, “By whom or by what are you directed or commanded in your religious beliefs and actions?”

I would seek to review briefly this central directive of living we call authority. In the 1920s, Walter Lippmann asked liberals the same questions then that are asked today, “Where is your fundamental certainty? What are the credentials of your authority? Where is the faith that will strengthen the nerve of your people? [or be] a ‘preface to morals?’”

A whimsical story I came across helped me to sort out the matters of authority for religious beliefs:

The U.S. Customs Service requires that all imported merchandise be labeled with country of origin. (CONTEXT, August 1984) A religious organization, unaware of this provision, tried to import kaleidoscopes made in Hong Kong, marked only “All good things are made by Him.” Discovered at customs, there was a hasty attempt to comply, and the wording came out “All good things are made by Him in Hong Kong.”

After a chuckle, it seemed to me that this was like a parable. That all good things are made by Him in Hong Kong is absurd. But are all good things (about religious faith) made any other particular place? Jerusalem Rome? Mecca? Found in a sacred book? Discovered in a conversion experience? Partaking of sacraments? Where is authority found?

In civil life, the lines of authority are much more clearly defined. In republican government, authority rests in the constitution and statutes of the political structures. Elected and appointed officers legislate and enforce, and the judiciary interprets the law. Authority ultimately rests with the citizens who exercise their vote and make the effort to monitor their legislators and register convictions.

In research, the seat of authority is the scientific method. Discoveries, theories, and inventions are examined by testing procedures designed to demonstrate the truth or error of the hypothetical proposition. This is the authority of experiment and testing discoveries.

Most religious groups seem to find no difficulty or confusion in locating the seat of authority. They profess to know in whom or where truth originates, and they acknowledge its commands. Is this unquestioning reliance on authority persuasive to Unitarian Universalists and other religious liberals? For me, the answer is “no.” I would put before you my justification of this negative and contrast it with what I believe to be the basis for liberal religious beliefs.

First, the Bible as authority for religious beliefs is no longer a source of unquestioning trust (some who may have shared in our Wednesday night discussion groups may remember our detailed discussions). In this stance, we have separated from the main bodies of Protestant religion who still seem to accept the Bible’s authority. For religious liberals, there are analogies, folk stories, poems, ethical pointers, and literary values in the writings treasured by Christian and Jewish believers.

But for us there is no doubt that biblical writings have gone through a social process of additions and alterations in order to accommodate the varied ideas of differing religious leaders and groups in many historical periods. An open-minded study of only small portions of scripture disclose many contradictions that cannot be reconciled. Acceptance of critical biblical scholarship has been a common-place attitude among Unitarian Universalists and other religious liberals for more than 100 years.

The Bible as the seat of authority in religion is also on dubious grounds when we realize what history plainly demonstrates. Even if the origins of scripture were literally from the hand of the Creator, the meanings inferred and the power that has been claimed have always been a matter of individual interpretations that frequently contradict each other.

Most Protestants would affirm that the authority of the Bible was the spark that ignited the Reformation. Although there is some ground for this belief, it is a generalization that needs qualification. John Hus, John Wyclif, and Giralamo Savonarola all were famous Bible preachers and leaders of the pre-dawn of the Reformation, “the morning Stars” as they have been called. Luther was the instigator of religious revolt in Germany; Calvin in Switzerland. Both insisted with assurance the authority of the Bible. John Calvin was quite sure that only he knew what God intended men and women to know from scripture. Luther was equally positive that his position was authoritative.

It has been pointed out (RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM, p. 25) “While Luther understood worship, like faith, to be determined by scripture, his understanding of the Bible was such that anything in Christian worship was permissible which was not explicitly prohibited. Thus Luther was able to justify the continuance of vestments, candles, rituals, and liturgy. For Calvin, only that which was specifically authorized had precedent and [validity] in Christian worship. Therefore he was outraged by images, stained-glass windows, altars, vestments, and pipe organs.”

Beyond the obvious difficulties of locating the seat of authority when such different interpretations have been made, the historian, reasonably free from sectarian bias, notices that most of Calvin’s interpretations had the effect of security and maintaining his political power in Geneva. Martin Luther studied the Bible intensely, gave the German people the scriptures in their own language and preached Bible-centered sermons with oratorical power. But when the Reformation became a political reality, the seat of authority was not the Bible. The seat of authority was found in the decision of the individual who headed each of the many small German principalities and estates. The princes considered their political future and economic well-being at least as much as evangelical conviction. The princes made the choice – Latin Catholicism or State Lutheranism – and all their respective subjects had to abide by that authority, disregarding any individual convictions people may have had about the authority of either the Bible or Church. Imagine Jesus saying that a political prince had the right to choose religion for every one of the people!

Consequently, the high-sounding principle of placing the seat of authority in the Bible is not simple, but a vague, complex, and inconsistent task.

The inevitable dilemmas and questions that confront any serious student who attempts to use the Bible as a complete authority has led persons back to Rome as the seat of authority.

John Henry Newman (“Lead, Kindly Light”), Anglican minister and scholar, became not only a convert to Roman Catholicism but a prince of the church, receiving the cardinal’s hat in 1879. He traveled the road to Rome because he came to believe that only in the authoritative church could he find the religious certainty he wanted.

Most Christians in the world are Roman Catholic. Not an infallible book, but an infallible church is the source of teaching and power. St. Ignatius Loyola once wrote, “There is no greater mistake than to suppose the mass of mankind sincerely crave for liberty. They crave for comfort and convenience.”

But however much the authoritative church may be a comfort to those who will not guide themselves in religion, it is apparent to many of us that assertions of unlimited authority for the church have been made by limited human beings like ourselves; that selfish institutional ends have many times been served, individual brilliance squelched, and political and economic considerations have displaced the gospel as priority.

Then many will say, “let’s really get down to fundamentals. We cannot accept the seat of authority in a book or church, but we can find it in the God-man Jesus.”

Certainly his disciples and followers were impressed that Jesus was a source of trust – at least until he got into trouble with the governmental authorities. Jesus must have possessed unique personal appeal and impressive moral power (“the common people heard him gladly”, “He taught with authority and not as a scribe.”) To accept Jesus as “Lord and Savior” is an attractive invitation to persons in troubled times. But as Professor Henry Cadbury, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and many other scholars have pointed out, there is a “peril to modernizing Jesus.” He moves back into his own time and his own Galilean ways and is an elusive source of authority for specific instructions on today’s problems.

We can’t be sure he said everything attributed to him. The documents have gone through much religious editing. Even if we knew with certainty exactly what Jesus said, we would need much courage to accept the authority of a rebel who rejected religious authority, who was considered a threat to the established government, who thought so little of the religious institutional life most people prize that he did not even have the simplest kind of established gathering place for followers of his movement, and [who] was publicly executed.

Where then is the Unitarian Universalist or other religious liberal [to do] when he/she finds no sure foundation in a sacred book, holy church, or a redeeming savior?

The first principle in the purposes of the UUA is the key: “Support the free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of religious fellowship.” For me, truth is not a fixed point like the North Pole, but a process, a sifting, a discarding of the old, when the old no longer measures up to reason, common sense, or ethical requirements. I believe it was Spinoza who argued that freedom is not anything which is given us, it is something which with certain limitations we can acquire by insight and effort (Fromm, p. 1545, HEART OF ...)

This is guidance by inner honesty, reason, freedom, and [it] has a long history. The Friends have always held all other authorities secondary, giving first priority to the voice of the inner spirit. Jeanne D’Arc was burned at the stake because she obeyed her inner voices, rather than yielding to the authoritative church. I remember years ago being told following service by a layman, “We are a people who take our beliefs so seriously that we will not even permit our church to tell us what to believe.”

I’m acutely aware that to place our trust in reason and individual conscience presents as many problems as it solves. Persons of equal sincerity will arrive at different decisions because the voices of conscience do not agree. We are programmed early in life and changing [one’s] mind-set, many times, is a painful and lonely task. As a proverb from the Talmud has it, “truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.”

In Christopher Fry’s play, “The First Born,” Moses tells Pharaoh the reason why Moses had to return to dangerous Egypt from safe Midian:

“A man has more to be
Than a Pharaoh. He must dare
to outgrow the security of partial blindness.”

Shortly after, Moses says to his brother Aaron:

“Though civilization become perfect?
What then?
We have only put a crown on the
skeleton.
It is the individual man [CJW note: woman]
In his individual freedom who can
mature
With his warm spirit the unripe world.
What would you make
of man? If you diminish him
To a count of laboring limbs,
you will also dwindle
And be an unmeaning body,
decomposing
Imperceptibly under heavy ornaments.”

There is a cautionary statement to be made. Individual freedom of belief can never be fully achieved in isolation. “The free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of religious fellowship.” [CJW note: operative words are disciplined, fellowship]

In his classic of medieval Catholicism, MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES, Henry Adams notes, “Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore the ideally free individual is responsible only to himself. This is the philosophical foundation of anarchy ... and fatal to all society.”

Our process of refining truth, finding new insights and uniting when we can is the foundation of religious fellowship. Finding truth is a sharing process, too. Such is authority for Unitarian Universalists, for religious liberals. The liberal conscience, a process of sharing experiences and insights, builds on a foundation of faith. That faith assumes that truth is a process, that the human individual is of supreme worth, that humankind always has the potential to be free, and that the highest purpose of the human enterprise is increasing involvement and identity with freedom, fellowship, and human dignity of persons everywhere on this planet, our home.