hughbiquitous

I’ve been on a little Ravi Zacharias kick in my drive-time listening habits, listening to a ton of podcasts and lectures of his that I’ve packed into my MP3 player over the last couple of years.

One thing I’ve noticed: I really like the way he deals with issues at the level of the heart as well as the mind. To believers, he challenges them to be passionate in the way they follow Christ in a thoroughly biblical way; with unbelievers, he confronts them with the painful emptiness of the soul that they are experiencing — but does so with warmth, empathy, and sensitivity.

Along the way, Ravi will often address existentialism. Now, I’ve never really been able to get a firm grasp of what that means; I only knew it had something to do with Søren Kierkegaard (as came up in the comments of my July 10 post, Becoming What You Understand — remember that thread, John Lee?). But in his September 3, 2006, podcast, taken from his Leadership and Worship lectures, Ravi finally gave me some traction — and explained a bit about Kierkegaard too.

The clearest way to explain it is by contrast:

• The Christian says, “What we are determines what we do.”
• The existentialist says, “What we do determines what we are.”

But Ravi insists that Kierkegaard was not an existentialist in this sense (read the quote below); he was merely focused on the existential, or experience-driven, aspects of life. Christians have plenty to offer when it comes to existential questions; it’s existentialism as an -ism that is incompatible with the Christian worldview.

From a Reformed point of view, this difference is important — we are regenerated first, and then we believe. We are new creations, and because of that, we confess Christ as Lord. As I see it, this means that to reject unconditional election is to take an existential view of man’s fallenness; that is, to say that one can choose to trust God and thereby become a Christian is to say that what one does determines what one is.

If you’re interested in the fuller treatment, here’s an extended quote from Ravi’s podcast and links to the MP3’s. It’s well worth taking in; I’ve only finished part 1 and I look forward to hearing how he develops his thesis that worship is the answer to man’s existential angst.

I’ve talked about the existential predicament. What do I mean by that? … I would call it “the passion of existence.” “The passion of existence.” In other words, whenever a philosopher uses the word, “existential,” he is at least meaning your existence. All right? He is at least meaning your existence.

But in the classical term, what it really means is there is an awful lot of feeling and passion in this existence of mine, and if I can digress a little bit, so that you can build a philosophical base on this as we go along, the fundamental difference between the Christian and the humanist or the existentialist is right here: the Christian, because of who he is, determines what he must do.

The Christian, because of who he is, determines what he must do. I am a creature created in the image of God; therefore, I shall not lie. I am a creature created in the image of God; therefore, I shall not have an overly inflated opinion of myself, as being a mini-creator myself, I am a created, independent individual. “Essence determines existence” is the way I would put it for the Christian. Who I am essentially determined how I exist practically.

If you were to go to the atheistic existentialist — and the reason I’m using “atheistic” before that is because sometimes you might hear someone saying Søren Kierkegaard was the first Christian existentialist, and if that is possible, what you are really hearing them say is, Kierkegaard’s Christianity was highly experience-oriented. That’s all they’re saying. He kept talking about his feelings in the Christian faith, rather than coming up with doctrines. So if you ever asked a fellow like Kierkegaard to write out a doctrinal statement, he’ll say, “Look, that is completely immaterial; I don’t need to know anything about the eternal lostness of man, I don’t need to know anything about the second coming, I don’t need to know anything about the nature of God and this, all I want to tell you is that in my heart I feel a need, and that need is met as I serve God — that’s all that matters to me.”

Basically, atheistic existentialism would say, “what I do determines what I am,” so if a man says, “Look, I find myself running around and being unfaithful to my wife, and you turn around and say there’s something wrong with it, I say, what do you mean there’s something wrong with it — I’m doing it, aren’t I?” We’re all doing it, aren’t we? And you see, this is where they’re coming from.

What I do determines what I am; it’s what I call a “salvation by survey syndrome:” you know, you find out what everybody’s doing, and on the basis of that, decide what everybody ought to be doing. It’s the Masters & Johnson “what’s average is normal; what’s normal is average; what everybody’s doing is good,” and just leave it at that.

Now there is this one thing though: in my experience, what do I feel? I am a creature of feeling; I don’t get up in the morning detached from my sensations and my desires. And may I suggest to you that one of the things we all feel (and sometimes the women are more honest in admitting it than us men, and young people are more honest in showing it than us adults) is what I call the “feeling of loneliness.” We all feel it..

This feeling of loneliness is man’s existential dilemma. Which basically tells me he is driving outside of himself for some kind of fulfillment, and my thesis is going to be how worship ultimately answers these needs that no other relationship can answer.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6

If a person does not become what he understands, he does not really understand it.

— Søren Kierkegaard

At first this quote got me thinking about my understanding of the Gospel. Have I become what I have beheld in the Gospel of Christ? That’s a good question to be asking oneself. Sanctification cannot be mere intellectual assent. It must be the working out of a vital and vibrant faith—but this certainly includes the discipleship of our minds.

But then another thought hit me: what about the atheists, the naturalists, the materialists, the nihilists… have they become what they have understood?

I offer that they cannot. Their worldviews are incoherent and cannot be lived in. On those views, any notion of understanding is ruled out because it is immaterial: understanding is a supernatural phenomenon, so if you desire understanding, you must reject a merely naturalistic view of the world.

Rather than try to explain, I’ll let Professor Lewis do it (emphasis mine):

The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this. When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonising it with some particular truths which are imbedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams; I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner; I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific points of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

— C. S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry?, in The Weight of Glory