What matters most? Spiritual Experience vs.Apologetics

[Deadworm]

Christianity is first and foremost an experiential relationship with Christ based on faith. It stands or falls with the validity of our self-authenticating assurance of our salvation based not on apologetics, but on the inner work of the Holy Spirit.

(1) Though apologetics is needed to open minds to the claims of the Gospel (1 Peter 3:15), it is no substitute for a life-changing experience of the Holy Spirit.
the validity of our apologetic arguments is based on our foundational assumptions, but these assumptions come from our experience. So our arguments depend on the validity of our spiritual experience.

a. A reliance on the authority and inspiration of Scripture is not enough; it will kill you spiritually: "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6)." We need more than a doctrinal profession of faith and must beware of the sin of bibliolatry.

b. A mystical experience of the Spirit's power is more important than rational apologetics:"My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest on the wisdom of words, but on the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)."
The theological rationality of rival teachers in Corinth is nothing compared to Paul's experience of the Spirit's power: "I will find out, not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk, but on power (4:19-20)." Paul sums up his own experience of this power this way: "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13)."

(2) The unwitting loss of this experiential priority puts one in grave spiritual danger.
a. "Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing (Galatians 3:3-6)?"

b. To be saved, we must be exempt from the demands of the Law. It is the experience of being led or guided by the Spirit that exempts us from the demands of the Law and bestows on us the status of children of God:
(i) "For all who are led by the Spirit are children of God (Romans 8:14)."
(ii) "If you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the Law (Galatians 5:18)."
The abstractness of the doctrine of the Trinity creates the danger of overlooking the essential role of the Spirit as the way we can experience God's presence.

(3) The validity of our experience of Christ's presence within us needs to be tested:
a. "Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test (2 Corinthians 13:5)!"
Thus, Paul raises the question of whether the Corinthian rival teachers can pass the test of demonstrating their experience of the Spirit's power (1 Corinthians 4:19-20).

b. The risen Christ warns the Laodiceans that He'd rather they be "cold" than "lukewarm." Because they view themselves as spiritually adequate, they need to reexamine their spiritual condition and issue a fresh "dinner" invitation to Christ:
"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you, and eat with you, and you with me (Revelation 3:20)."

c. Similarly, becoming a Christian and thus entering the body of Christ includes an actual experience of divine nourishment ("drinking"):
"For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into the one Body...and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13)."
This nourishing experience can be variously described as "fellowship in the Spirit (Philippians 2:1)" and "Christ living in me (Galatians 2:20)."

 

[Eryk]

It stands or falls with the validity of our self-authenticating assurance of our salvation

We don't simply have beliefs - we aren't simply sure of anything. The mind is an observer of its own thoughts and that gives us an objective distance from them. So there is a part of us - our ability to think - that is never fully convinced by our beliefs. We have to convince ourselves over and over again. We are never done with thinking about anything. If we were, we would cease thinking, period. This is the goal of the fanatic and the mystic - the mind struggles with itself, trying to shut itself down.

We will never be able to stop questioning. These questions - and the times of spiritual dryness - will not destroy our faith. But our beliefs will not shut down our restless minds.

No one is required to have perfect, unremitting assurance. No one can have that. It's completely unrealistic.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Christianity is first and foremost an experiential relationship with Christ based on faith.

No it's not. Not at all. Christianity is first and foremost the religion that confesses Jesus as the Christ, Lord, Son of God, and which has received and confesses the Gospel of and about Jesus Christ.

It stands or falls with the validity of our self-authenticating assurance of our salvation based not on apologetics, but on the inner work of the Holy Spirit

Again, absolutely false. Christianity stands or falls on the validity of person and work of Jesus Christ: His life, death, and resurrection. Without that any "self-authenticating assurance of our salvation" is meaningless nonsense, St. Paul is pretty clear, if Christ is not risen then our believing is in vain and we are a pitiable people.

(1) Though apologetics is needed to open minds to the claims of the Gospel (1 Peter 3:15), it is no substitute for a life-changing experience of the Holy Spirit

Apologetics is not needed to "open minds to the claims of the Gospel", the Gospel is sufficient, for it is God who converts men, and this He does through His Word and Sacraments. We are to have an answer to the hope that is within us because the preaching of the Gospel has been commissioned to us, the Church. And we should have a basic grasp on what it is that we believe.

the validity of our apologetic arguments is based on our foundational assumptions, but these assumptions come from our experience. So our arguments depend on the validity of our spiritual experience.

Good apologetics should focus on defending the Christian faith from false accusations. That is, after all, the meaning of apologia, a defense.

a. A reliance on the authority and inspiration of Scripture is not enough; it will kill you spiritually: "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6)." We need more than a doctrinal profession of faith and must beware of the sin of bibliolatry.

Since the validity and authenticity of the Christian religion is dependent upon the insistance on external, objective realities: Jesus Christ, His work and person; then it follows that our personal experience is non-sequitur to the validity and authenticity of our religion. We must point outward, not inward.

b. A mystical experience of the Spirit's power is more important than rational apologetics:"My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest on the wisdom of words, but on the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)."
The theological rationality of rival teachers in Corinth is nothing compared to Paul's experience of the Spirit's power: "I will find out, not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk, but on power (4:19-20)." Paul sums up his own experience of this power this way: "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13)."

And yet the Apostle never depended on a "mystical experience of the Spirit's power" but instead depended upon the objective reality of the Gospel, saying, "For I delivered to you of first importance..." (c.f. 1 Corinthians 15)

(2) The unwitting loss of this experiential priority puts one in grave spiritual danger.
a. "Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing (Galatians 3:3-6)?"

The Apostle understands that the power of the Holy Spirit is found in the Gospel, not in any personal spiritual experience; that is, after all, the entire point of his letter to the Galatians who had fallen into believing another gospel other than the one they had received from Paul and the rest of the apostles. The Galatians' error was doctrinal, not experiential.

b. To be saved, we must be exempt from the demands of the Law.

Utterly false. To be saved we need the one Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave His life for us and who, by His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead has freely justified you, me, and the whole world. This is the Gospel of our salvation apart from which there is no salvation. We have been justified apart from the Law, because the Law was powerless to make us just for in the Law our sins were magnified, and what the Law commands that we do we not only do not do, but cannot do, on account of sin; and so we need the external gift of God that comes to us as grace, received through the efficacious Means of grace which He has given us--that by the preaching of the Gospel the Spirit works to grant us faith, and through faith we are justified freely because we have received the alien righteousness of Christ.

No man is exempt from the just demands of the Law.

It is the experience of being led or guided by the Spirit that exempts us from the demands of the Law and bestows on us the status of children of God:

No, it is the gift and promise of God in the Gospel, found in Jesus Christ alone, that freely saves and justifies us by His grace; granting us the Spirit as the assurance and promise of the reality of what Christ has done and that it is for us. The Spirit does not exempt us from the Law, the Spirit in us is God's assurance that we are His by His promises, by His grace, that we have been freely adopted and have the Spirit of God's Son in us calling out, "Abba, Father" and that we are therefore heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

(i) "For all who are led by the Spirit are children of God (Romans 8:14)."
(ii) "If you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the Law (Galatians 5:18)."
The abstractness of the doctrine of the Trinity creates the danger of overlooking the essential role of the Spirit as the way we can experience God's presence

It is the Spirit who proceeds from the Father [and the Son] who draws us into the life of the Father and the Son, for the Spirit's presence in our lives is--as already stated--the assurance that we are God's children, and belong to Christ. And so the entire Trinitarian action is found in our life of faith and salvation.

(3) The validity of our experience of Christ's presence within us needs to be tested:
a. "Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test (2 Corinthians 13:5)!"
Thus, Paul raises the question of whether the Corinthian rival teachers can pass the test of demonstrating their experience of the Spirit's power (1 Corinthians 4:19-20).

And Paul's authority as an apostle, as opposed to the false teachers, is in that he preached the true Gospel which he himself had received from the beginning--again, 1 Corinthians 15.

b. The risen Christ warns the Laodiceans that He'd rather they be "cold" than "lukewarm." Because they view themselves as spiritually adequate, they need to reexamine their spiritual condition and issue a fresh "dinner" invitation to Christ:
"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you, and eat with you, and you with me (Revelation 3:20)."

c. Similarly, becoming a Christian and thus entering the body of Christ includes an actual experience of divine nourishment ("drinking"):
"For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into the one Body...and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13)."
This nourishing experience can be variously described as "fellowship in the Spirit (Philippians 2:1)" and "Christ living in me (Galatians 2:20)."

That baptism which we have received when we, entering into the water, had the threefold name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit spoken upon us, by which we received the Holy Spirit, were united to Christ in His death and resurrection, clothed with Christ, and all the other things which Scripture says concerning holy and precious Baptism.

Again, it is the outward, external things--the objective things--of God that we look to. Not the internal, inward things. For inside myself I can find only death and hell, it is only outside of myself, looking upon Jesus Christ, that I have hope and salvation.

By telling Christians to look to themselves you seek to make them children of hell. Instead point them to the real, living Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried, dead, who on the third day rose from the dead, who ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father in glory, from whence He will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and His kingdom shall have no end. Teach this, or else you teach a false and fake gospel.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Gregory Thompson]

I think basis of experiential spirituality in Christianity is that the Holy Spirit brings back sayings of God back to remembrance. So when when experience life with God, and are reminded of scripture as we live with God, it provides an understanding of what the scripture says through our lives. This is kind of why the scripture cannot be a unifying factor, because we all experience God differently through Jesus Christ.

 

[Deadworm]

Most modern Christians (Like Via Crucis) seem oblivious to just how mystical Paul's theology really is. 8 of his points require brief refutation:

1. Via Crucis: "Christianity stands or falls on the validity of person and work of Jesus Christ: His life, death, and resurrection. Without that any "self-authenticating assurance of our salvation" is meaningless nonsense."

You miss the point and thus fallaciously beg the question. Yes, "the person and work of Jesus Christ" is foundational, but in itself it is meaningless nonsense," apart from the inner witness of the Holy Spirit: "The natural man does not receive the things of God; for they are foolishness to them; and they are unable to understand them, for they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14"

2. Via Crucis: "Apologetics is not needed to "open minds to the claims of the Gospel", the Gospel is sufficient."

No, as I have demonstrated, the Gospel is only made credible by the inner work of the Holy Spirit; and the Spirit can be grieved by hardened hearts. Countless testimonies document to value of apologetics in helping people launch their spiritual quest. But they are converted neither by the Gospel preaching itself nor by rational proof, but by the conviction and witness of the Spirit.

3. Via Crucis: "Since the validity and authenticity of the Christian religion is dependent upon the insistance on external, objective realities: Jesus Christ, His work and person; then it follows that our personal experience is non-sequitur to the validity and authenticity of our religion. We must point outward, not inward."

You miss the point, and so, I must repeat myself : the case for the Gospel is only as valid as our assumptions, and our assumptions come from our experience. Therefore, our case for the gospel is only as valid as our experience.
Our experience of the Spirit is primary, just as Paul explains, and is therefore what matters most to us.

4. Via cruces: "The Apostle understands that the power of the Holy Spirit is found in the Gospel, not in any personal spiritual experience."

Nonsense! It is other way around! The Gospel is irrational "foolishness to those who are perishing (1:18)," apart from "the power and demonstration of the Spirit (2:4)" and must be "spiritually discerned" through the work of the Spirit (2:14)."

5. Via Crucis: "The Galatians' error was doctrinal, not experiential."

a. True, but irrelevant to the point at issue. Their doctrinal error needs correction:
"You who want to be justified by the Law have cut yourself off from Christ; you have fallen from grace (5:4)!" But this in no way minimize the crucial role of the experience of the Spirit? The only thing that ultimately counts is their way of being, not their doctrine: "In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision (doctrine based on practice) counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love (5:6)." And that way of being is made possible "through the Spirit, by faith (3:5)."

b. The decisive consequence of the Galatian doctrinal error is their loss of the experience of the Spirit. In 3:3-5 does not oppose their legalism to the Gospel of grace per se, but to their resulting loss of the miracle-producing, life-changing experience of the Spirit.


6. Via Cucis: "No, it is the gift and promise of God in the Gospel, found in Jesus Christ alone, that freely saves and justifies us by His grace."

Not quite! The believing and confessing envisaged in Romans 10:9-10 does not bestow the gift of salvation, apart from the indwelling work of the Spirit: "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of God does not belong to Him (Romans 8:9)."

7. Via Crucis: "The Spirit does not exempt us from the Law."

On the contrary: "For the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the Law of sin and death (Romans 8:2)."
You don't seem to grasp the significance of 2 Corinthians 3:6: "The letter (of the Law) kills, but the Spirit (not the Gospel per se) gives life."

8. Via Crucis: "By telling Christians to look to themselves you seek to make them children of hell."

Wow, you don't read carefully, do you? I repeat: Paul instructs the Corinthians "to look to themselves" (as you crudely put it) by examining themselves--their way of being, not their doctrine: "Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you (2 Corinthians 13:5)?" He is directing them to examine their subjective experience, indeed, their whole way of being.

 

[Kersh]

For me, the relationship is first and foremost. The intellectual assent is secondary. For others, faith comes first in the form of the intellectual assent, and the relationship is secondary. I can't say that one is right and the other is wrong, but I think that mature believers will have both aspects of faith.

 

[Deadworm]

The thread's title, of course, considers the "contest" between apologetics and Spirit-inspired experience. Without the self-authenticating inner witness of the Spirit, the odds of the Gospel being true are like betting in Las Vegas. In 2 thousand years of history, too many factors can create myth-making and gross historical distortion for the Gospel to be a compelling bet. This is true, despite all the evidence I present in my other thread connecting Jesus with eyewitness testimony. The Spirit's witness, fellowship, guidance, and miracles make the decisive difference. As noted on my NDE and ADC thread, the evidence for the afterlife from NDEs and ADCs is far, far superior to the evidence for the truth of the Gospel, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.

 

[bling]

The word “knowledge” in the Greek is the same word for “experience”, so to really “know” something you might have to have experienced it?

The gospel message went out from Jerusalem without there being a Bible, so what did those early Christians present to the nonbeliever that had no knowledge of Christ?

The message (Gospel) was and is to go out into the world directly by Jesus Himself living in and through true Christians. The nonbeliever needs to have the opportunity the apostles had in that Jesus spent lots of time with them, Loving on them, listening to them, teaching them, sharing life with them, questioning them, and sending them out.

If people do not see, feel, experience, and receive Godly type Love from their teacher, how can they desire and accept that charity for themselves? You can explain stuff to the nonbeliever, but if it is not done with unselfish Love what message are they getting?

Via Crucis makes some very valid points, since it is Jesus and not the individual Christian’s personal experience we are trying to “sell” the nonbeliever on, but if Jesus is living in and through the Christian working “directly” with the nonbeliever then it is Jesus that is being presented?

 

[W2L]

Love God with heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. Walk by faith not sight. Everything else will take care of itself.

 

[FireDragon76]

I think people are talking past each other and being needlessly polemical.

I used to be a Methodist, and I attended an Orthodox church at one time... so I know where Deadwood is coming from. But I see some valid points in what VC is saying, especially because he has had some bad experiences in the Pentecostal church. I am sympathetic to some of the things in the Charismatic movement (I'm sort of agnostic about speaking in tongues though), but the hazards of Pentecostal spirituality are obvious, especially the crushing legalism of many of these churches. And sadly enough, the way spiritual experiences can be handled in these churches can be part of that.

 

[Deadworm]

In the original languages of Scripture, "faith" means both "trust" and "faithfulness;" it means "trust in key spirituals truths and "faithfulness" to the spiritual life called for by these truths. Beyond that, authentic biblical faith depends on a proper relationship between belief and intellectual understanding, a relationship neatly expressed by eminent church father like St. Augustine, and later, St. Anselm, whom I now quote;

"I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that ‘unless I believe, I shall not understand’ [Isa. 7:9]." (Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, ‘The Major Works,’ 87)

Implicit in Anselm's prayer is the futility of striving first to demonstrate the rationality of Christian truth in order to justify belief in it. Why? Because apologetic arguments are based on assumptions, and assumptions derive from experience. So the right type of assumptions must derive from the right types of spiritual experience.

My faith-producing experiences provide what seems like self-authenticating certainty, but do not provide full understanding. Instead, they provide an anchor for my quest for deeper understanding. My experience-based faith is both passionate and provisional--passionate in the sense that faith calls me to be "faithful"--to surrender to God with all my heart, but provisional in the sense that subsequent reflection and research might undermine aspects of the belief system engendered by my experiences. My spiritual quest can be fruitful, if it remains honest and humble--that is, if I never lose sight of the need to know what I don't know.