"Honest" unbelief
In his little book The Great Divorce C.S Lewis insists that sins of the intellect are sins as surely as sins of the flesh are sins.
He has a ghost in bishop’s dress speaking to one of “the Bright People” about religious matters. The bright spirit tells the former bishop that he is experiencing “hell” because he is an apostate and the cultured ghost wants to know, “are you serious?” “Perfectly,” said the bright being.
“Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.”
"Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?” the bright spirit wanted to know.
“There are indeed…There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed—they are not sins.”
The cultured ghost went on to insist that not only were his opinions honest and fearless—they were heroic because in proclaiming his denials he “took every risk,” he said.
The bright spirit wanted to know, “What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came—popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?”
The cultured and scholarly ghost protested but the bright spirit went on to ask, “When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?”
Again the scholarly and cultured ghost protested and defended his intellectual conclusions as honest and brave and sincere. "Yes, but having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way a jealous man, drifting, and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend…[your] beliefs are sincere in the sense that they occur as events in [your mind]. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere….But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.” In the end what the bright spirit says to the cultured and scholarly, "honest" ghost is this, “I am telling you to repent and believe.”
When the Pharisee said he didn’t believe in Jesus he was being honest and in that sense sincere. [I wonder that Jesus did not praise them for their honesty.] There wasn’t clear proof, you see; there were too many arguments unmet and questions that needed answering and what could they do but walk away from him disbelieving?
In John 7:17 Jesus made it clear that it wasn’t a question of “proof” but a question of willingness. In another place he dismissed the subterfuge (though it had an appearance of being defensible) that they couldn’t believe because there wasn’t satisfying evidence. He said they couldn’t believe because they sought things other than the glory of God (John 5:44).
In Romans 1:18-32 Paul looked at an unbelieving Gentile world and not only roundly accused it of “fleshly” sins—he bluntly condemned their intellectual rejection of God as sin (1:21-25, REB); that "knowing God they refused to honour him as God…Hence all their thinking has ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in darkness…they have made fools of themselves.”
So a non-believer can’t see anything redemptive in the suffering of a little child—is there something new in that? No one saw anything redemptive in the suffering of God’s own Child.
I think I prefer the intellectual doubts of a trusting heart (the Bible is filled with them) to the intellectual doubts of a trustless unbeliever.
I think we’re a bit “too understanding” of intellectual sin.
To make something of a “hero” out of a non-believer because he honestly disbelieves is not only bad for the non-believer, it may be tragic for the immature in faith.
He has a ghost in bishop’s dress speaking to one of “the Bright People” about religious matters. The bright spirit tells the former bishop that he is experiencing “hell” because he is an apostate and the cultured ghost wants to know, “are you serious?” “Perfectly,” said the bright being.
“Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.”
"Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?” the bright spirit wanted to know.
“There are indeed…There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed—they are not sins.”
The cultured ghost went on to insist that not only were his opinions honest and fearless—they were heroic because in proclaiming his denials he “took every risk,” he said.
The bright spirit wanted to know, “What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came—popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?”
The cultured and scholarly ghost protested but the bright spirit went on to ask, “When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?”
Again the scholarly and cultured ghost protested and defended his intellectual conclusions as honest and brave and sincere. "Yes, but having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way a jealous man, drifting, and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend…[your] beliefs are sincere in the sense that they occur as events in [your mind]. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere….But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.” In the end what the bright spirit says to the cultured and scholarly, "honest" ghost is this, “I am telling you to repent and believe.”
When the Pharisee said he didn’t believe in Jesus he was being honest and in that sense sincere. [I wonder that Jesus did not praise them for their honesty.] There wasn’t clear proof, you see; there were too many arguments unmet and questions that needed answering and what could they do but walk away from him disbelieving?
In John 7:17 Jesus made it clear that it wasn’t a question of “proof” but a question of willingness. In another place he dismissed the subterfuge (though it had an appearance of being defensible) that they couldn’t believe because there wasn’t satisfying evidence. He said they couldn’t believe because they sought things other than the glory of God (John 5:44).
In Romans 1:18-32 Paul looked at an unbelieving Gentile world and not only roundly accused it of “fleshly” sins—he bluntly condemned their intellectual rejection of God as sin (1:21-25, REB); that "knowing God they refused to honour him as God…Hence all their thinking has ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in darkness…they have made fools of themselves.”
So a non-believer can’t see anything redemptive in the suffering of a little child—is there something new in that? No one saw anything redemptive in the suffering of God’s own Child.
I think I prefer the intellectual doubts of a trusting heart (the Bible is filled with them) to the intellectual doubts of a trustless unbeliever.
I think we’re a bit “too understanding” of intellectual sin.
To make something of a “hero” out of a non-believer because he honestly disbelieves is not only bad for the non-believer, it may be tragic for the immature in faith.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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