HIDDEN THREADS Essay, Research Paper

There was a time, not long ago, when the evangelical commu-nity had considerable consensus on lifestyle questions and socialissues. We generally agreed on what we should eat and drink and how we might spend our weekends. There was little debate over definitions of vulgarity or morality, and questions of fashion were rarely a matter for discussion. In those days, everyone knew how a family should be raised, and aberrations such as divorce and abortion were simply that: problems found only among hose outside the fold. All of that has changed.

Today there is considerable disagreement on such questions, and where there is not disagreement, there is often a reluctant silence or unwillingness to enter into discussion on these questions. The problem is complicated by the fact that these issues do not always fall neatly into those familiar gaps found among genders, generations, and geographies. Too often we find uneasy disagreement among parishioners or even among clergy in the same denomination. Similarly, tensions are found among teenagers or among parents and not simply between those two groups. In each case where such tensions exist, clear biblical and objective bases for evaluating our modern society are usually not found. Consequently, theological answers to these questions have generally not been helpful. That is not to say we should expect them to be. Much of the difficulty in dealing with contemporary social issues can be attributed to modernity with its tendency to pose problems that all outside of theological answers. Theology is designed to defend the faith and not to interpret modern culture or to help the believer live in it. It is the province of social science to understand modernity and to explain how it affects all of us. Theology cannot be expected to interpret the impact of computers on modern life any more than social science can be expected to explain the Trinity. What theology can do is to elucidate those universal principles given to us by God that social science may then interpret for modern living.

My claim is that modern life has re-defined many of the practices that theology traditionally addressed. State lotteries, for example, have defined gambling in ways unfamiliar to theology. The revocation of blue laws concerned with Sunday openings has challenged the traditional meaning of the Sabbath. In a modern economy, the biblical meaning of poverty differsgreatly from the meaning found today. In each of these cases, traditional biblical interpretations do not address the questions experienced today. Consequently, there is a lag in theological thinking when contemporary social issues fall outside the boundof traditional theological answer.

Our problem is to locate some common ground where theology and social science can join forces, some bridge between biblical truth and the application of that truth to modern social problems. I would argue that concepts found in scripture as well as in social science form a common, hermeneutical base for the analysis of modern social issues. Referred to here as “hidden threads,” these concepts tie together, so to speak, the meaning God intended us to find in the world with meaning as we find it today. What is the meaning in the modern marriage that is faithful to God’s plan and what has been added by humans? What is the meaning of money that God would have us keep and what modern thinking should be discarded? These questions can only be answered when theology and social science join forces.

The harmful impact made by modernity on society and Christian thought justifies such an approach. To support that claim, I intend in this paper to: l) clarify the crises posed by modernity, 2) develop the conceptual foundation referred to here as “hidden threads” as it relates to these crises, and 3) encourage the development of a hermeneutic which benefits from the interpretations offered by theology and social science.

Crisis of Meaning

Much of traditional life was governed by the belief that society’s rules and norms were appropriate for governing human relationships and were worthy of respect, if not full acceptance. Developments in Western culture over the past 30 years or so have reversed much of this belief and substituted the notion that people shape rules as they interact. Instead of fitting relationships into normative expectations, those relationships may now be used to define new norms for behavior. Consequently, there is no clear agreement on the meaning of either the norms or the behavior.

In effect, modern culture is re-defining much of the meaning attributed by God to social life. Divorce has increasingly been accepted as the norm rather than the exception in marriage. Leisure has gradually become a substitute for work rather than a respite from it. The motivation to be first has replaced the willingness to be last. In each case, a traditional meaning for some practice ordained by God has been replaced by a counterfeit.

The Assumption of Consistency

Believers have generally made two assumptions about those issues produced when modernity challenges traditional values. The first assumption is that there is a consistency of meaning in scripture which can be objectively accepted and applied in modern society. Since scriptural meanings are often more subjective than objective and require interpretation before they may be understood correctly, this assumption cannot be made with good conscience or absolute confidence.

The case of murder and what it means in scripture is a case in point. From the Ten Commandments, we understand the simple, direct prohibition of the act of murder (Exodus 20:l3). This is an objective meaning given by God to His people which, traditionally, has been interpreted to mean that any act of murder is prohibited. The assumption is that a person will refrain from the act out of fear of punishment, if for no other reason. Traditionally, this meaning of murder has avoided some of the traps inherent in a broader interpretation of the question.

But Jesus gives such an interpretation in Matthew 5:2l-26. His concern is not with the outward action but with sin committed in the heart before the act is committed. The person who is angry with a brother is as great an offender as the one who commits the act of murder. Since the Mosaic Law could only deal with the act, Jesus sets a higher standard, one that is less objective than the act and also open to subjective interpretation. Especially if the phrase “without cause” is added as in some manuscripts, murder becomes an attitude of the heart. Consequently, murder has now a subjective as well as an objective meaning. In Jesus’ view, some interpretation of the meaning of murder is required. The need for such an interpretation is even greater today as murder and anger can be expressed in a variety of new and unpredictable ways.

The Assumption of Separation

The second assumption about modernity’s challenge of traditional values is that believers can clearly separate their lives into that which is worldly and that which is not. Thinking they share a biblical system of meaning distinct from worldly systems of meaning, believers often assume their world is also separate from and immune to the evils of modern society. In fact, such separation doesn’t exist. The problem as Newbigin sees it is that “the layman and woman are themselves part of modern culture and cannot with integrity divide their mental world into two parts, one controlled by culture and the other by the Bible”.

Newbigin’s statement suggests the problem of meaning is both mental and cultural. Believers are “in the world,” culturally, and cannot assume they are “not of the world” without asking, mentally, what that involvement might mean. There must be some personal interpretation of that culture and its meaning for the believer. While scripture is fundamental for making such an interpretation, a broader hermeneutic may be needed. Thus,

Newbigin calls for:

a genuinely missionary encounter between a Scriptural faith

and modern culture. By this I mean an encounter which takes

our culture seriously yet does not take it as the final

truth by which Scripture is to be evaluated, but rather

holds up the modern world to the mirror of the Bible in

order to understand how we, who are part of modern culture,

are required to re-examine our assumptions and reorder our

thinking and acting. 2

A crisis of meaning, then, is largely a crisis of interpretation, first, as it applies to scripture as objective, but also and more importantly for our purposes here – as interpretations of scripture are to be worked out in our culture. From the earliest times, events in scripture had been interpreted in traditional ways for a traditional culture. But as Newbigin claims, “the interpretation has to be reinterpreted over and over again in terms of another generation and another culture”. 3 Modern culture challenges many traditional meanings of scripture which may require new interpretations for living in our world.

A Crisis of Culture

The principle of culture refers to some shared meaning among persons. Traditionally, people agreed on the meaning of behavior that they experienced in intimate settings. Contracts were not 7 needed and all understood the meaning and necessity of work. Moral behavior was readily defined, and good and evil were clearly separable. Strong consensus developed as moral definitions were accepted and supported by the community.

Much of the crisis of culture today results from the forces of modernity that have redefined traditional meanings for many evangelicals. Gambling and divorce, for example, are often seen as less “worldly” than they were 30 years ago. Other changes such as the definition of biological life in terms of brain wave patterns or poverty in terms of statistical indices, are now open to personal interpretations that may challenge the traditional culture. In each case, modernity has abstracted traditional meanings or activities in ways that some believers accept and others oppose with equally good consciences. How to interpret these formerly shared meanings now becomes problematic.

The Assumption of Prioritization

One of the assumptions of modern evangelicals is that their decision-making is based on values derived from more ultimate and often traditional value commitments. They assume that decisions are largely principial, rather than pragmatic, and guided by cultural values that all agree upon. In fact values are not necessarily given priority in the evangelical community. They may be just as problematic for believers as non-believers when they are too abstract or remote from everyday life.

Modernity has eroded much of the influence that values have traditionally had on the decision-making of evangelicals. Although “culture as values” has been considered an integral part of the Christian heritage, Swidler argues that people give more priority to “strategies of action” than to the values guiding that action. 4 She suggests

that all real cultures contain diverse, often conflicting

symbols, rituals, stories, and guides to action. The

reader of the Bible can find a passage to justify almost

any act, and traditional wisdom usually comes in paired

adages counseling opposite behaviors. A culture is not a

unified system that pushes action in a consistent

direction. Rather, it is more like a “tool kit” or reper-

toire from which actors select differing pieces for con-

structing lines of action. 5

Evangelicals are not immune to such a “tool kit” approach to culture. Like everyone else, they experience the discontinuities caused by the inability to maintain traditional lifestyle patterns. They may also choose among a host of new options for behavior. Swidler refers to such persons as those with “unsettled lives” – “those involved in constructing new strategies of action” – and suggests they are unlikely to depend on values for decision-making. Only those with “settled lives” – “those for whom culture is intimately integrated with action” – will depend more on values for deciding actions. 6

The Christian ideal of settled lives, as Swidler describes it, is weakening. The trends to increased divorce and dysfunctional families in the evangelical community, for example, suggest the increase in unsettled lives there. The trend is also seen in Hunter’s data on evangelical students which suggest there is a drift toward androgyny as students question traditional roles of men and women. “Singleness as a life-style option for women has then become increasingly legitimate not only for the larger population of Americans but for Evangelicals as well.” 7

Modernity offers a plethora of new and attractive options for old behaviors. Priority is now often given to these options instead of traditionally agreed upon values. Increasingly, believers shop on Sunday and replace evening services with the Super Bowl. The priority given to the traditional meaning of the Sabbath as a day of rest is now open to interpretation.

The Assumption of Integrity

Another cultural problem in the evangelical community involves the assumption that a fundamental integrity in the Christian culture assures a lifestyle that is consistent and unified. It centers in the belief that orthodoxy provides a shield against worldly choices and that Christian culture, by definition, stands above the world’s. Moberg suggests that such integrity cannot be taken for granted: “Many Christian group tolerate internal sins…even while they condemn similar failings of others as ‘dirty sins’”. 8

Swidler implies that cultural integrity weakens as diverse and conflicting symbols become more influential in rapidly changing cultures. 9 Suggesting that “specific cultural symbols can be understood only in relation to the strategies of action they sustain,” Swidler argues that old belief systems break down and are replaced by new. l0 In the case of young women today, “they are not driven by their values, but by what they find they have become good at, or at least accustomed to.” ll

This same tendency to rely on personal interpretations of conflicting current symbols is also seen in Hunter’s data on attitudes of evangelicals toward traditional parenting roles. l2 He argues that although evangelicals maintain more traditional views of parenting than the majority of society, these views are changing. While supporting the value of traditional familism, evangelicals are less supportive of traditional parenting skills. This is especially true of younger evangelicals, for example, who tend to share society’s view that a working mother can have just as secure a relationship with a child as a mother who does not work.

A culture of traditional, shared meanings is strained by the explosion of new symbols generated by modernity and supported by the mass media. Words traditionally deemed to be profane or vulgar are now commonplace. Even the accepted definitions of life and death have been reinterpreted by modern symbolic meanings. The person is left to choose among the offered symbols and the cultural lifestyles they represent.

A Crisis of Concepts

In a traditional society, people experienced the reality of life in a way shared by others who had the same experience. There was consensus as words clearly described the shared experience and the meaning it had for the culture. Modernity has fragmented that consensus as words no longer have the clear meaning they used to have. The meanings of marriage and family, for example, have been opened to biased interpretations that accept a variety of referents for the concept. Language has eroded as conceptual clarity has been replaced by conceptual ambiguity.

The Problem of Erosion

In his discussion of symbolic realism, Bellah claims that biblical language originally carried a truth that could not be reduced to empirical propositions. l3 There was a noncognitive quality to symbols that expressed reality as true. Modern consciousness looked behind this symbolic meaning to find the precision in thinking that science required. The result was “symbolic reductionism,” the search for truth in the experiences represented by the symbols rather than in the symbols themselves.

Bellah believes there has been a return in social science to an acceptance of a higher view of symbols. Reality is not found only in objective symbols but also in non-objective symbols which depend on an interaction of subject and object for interpretation. His claim of symbolic realism rests on this subject-object complex and the wholistic position which accepts symbols as constituting reality rather than just describing it.

Modern culture, however, has difficulty with the notion of symbolic realism and continues to espouse symbolic reductionism. The biblical notion of wisdom is a case in point. The concept suggests an insightful use of knowledge which is not reducible to empirical means. But today, any knowledge not based on what is considered to be “facts” is often deemed invalid. Consequently, wisdom loses much of its credibility as a modern form of knowledge. In a computerized age, information has taken the place of wisdom and fact replaces faith as the basis for knowing truth. The erosion of biblical language has led to symbolicreductionism.

As modern life incessantly produces new meanings to replace the old, biblical language gives way to symbols that relate those meanings to modern life. In biblical language, the meaning of a work-life was described by the concept of a vocation to which a person was called by God. In a secular society, the biblical meaning of a vocation has little relevance. In its place, the concept “career” has evolved to describe work as “a race…which affords opportunity for progress or advancement in the world” (Oxford English Dictionary). With the erosion of biblical language, new concepts and the modern life they describe fill the void.

According to Bellah, theologians and social scientists share some responsibility for restoring the integrity of biblical language in everyday life. Cooperation is possible because “theologian and secular intellectual can speak the same language. Their tasks are different, but their conceptual framework is shared.” l5 The task of the theologian is to describe reality with biblical language and to assert its truth. But according to Bellah, concepts constitute reality when they are put into practice. The biblical principle should be interpreted for modern life so it becomes part of a believer’s lifestyle. This task of interpretation is to be shared by the social scientist.

The Problem of Ambiguity

Bellah suggests that, although current language is saturated with terminology that is biblical in origin, the language of popular psychology provides an alternative and often conflicting system of symbols. Consequently, “the Biblical and the contemporary or psychological terminologies are hopelessly confused, and it does not always seem that the Biblical discourse carries the determining weight.” l6 Conceptual ambiguity occurs when we lose sight of this fact.

Many believers blend, often irresponsibly and unconsciously, language that is both biblical and modern. Biblical concepts such as wisdom and vocation may be used interchangeably in the same text with the modern concepts of information and career. Used out of context in this way, each concept loses its proper meaning. When such concepts are treated as abstractions with no clear referents, it is not always apparent they represent competing worldviews.

That is not to say that clear separation between biblical and modern concepts is possible or even desirable. Living “in the world,” we need information and we need to understand which career concerns are appropriate. But not being “of the world,” the believer first needs to seek wisdom and be guided by a calling. Our objective should be to understand how biblical concepts are to be given priority and when modern concepts are to be used with discrimination.

Theologians and social scientists, together, can work toward this objective. Sharing a conceptual framework supporting biblical and modern language, they can establish principles to help the believer to be more conscious of competing conceptual systems. They must also reach some agreement on the interpretation of conceptual meanings and the application of them to individual situations.

The Hidden Threads Paradigm l7

When Bellah suggests that theologians and social scientists share a common “conceptual framework,” he seems to imply two things. First, that some concepts have a biblical meaning that is still appropriate today. Second, that social scientists may share with theologians in the interpretation of that meaning in modern life. Specifically, theologians may interpret the meaning of the concept then, while social scientists may interpret its meaning now.

It is this suggestion that underlies the idea that there are “hidden threads” in scripture: “Christian principles for social behavior in agreement with social theory.” l8 Such principles describe a reality found not only in scripture but also in modern life and, especially, in the application of scripture to modern life. Much of the study of hermeneutics, I’m suggesting, should center in the description and analysis of these hidden thread

The Dimension of Continuity

Modern life demands new language for the new experiences it generates. Either new concepts must be developed to refer to these experiences or old concepts must be adapted to describe them. Some experiences, however, are not unique to modern life and have the same meaning they had in biblical times. These experiences may be appropriately referred to by biblical concepts.

The dimension of continuity refers to the extent to which the meaning of an experience is or is not limited to a particular culture. An experience lacks continuity if its meaning is limited to a particular culture and could be referred to as culture-bound. Another experience would have continuity if its meaning is not limited to a particular culture.

The modern experience of a work-life directed only by the modern corporation or profession, for example, is culture-bound. It has no continuity from biblical times and should be referred to as a career. While the social scientist might interpret the meaning of such a modern work-life, it would have no meaning for the theologian.

But the experience of a work-life which pursues “a task set by God” is not culture-bound. It has continuity from biblical times and may be referred to as a calling. This type of experience may be interpreted by the theologian as well as those social scientists who accept the validity of such a work-life experience.

At least three questions must be asked to determine whether an experience may be referred to with a hidden thread on the dimension of continuity. Does the experience have a meaning bound by culture or not? If not, does the experience have a biblical meaning that finds expression in modern life? If so, can the interpretation of that meaning be shared by both theologian and social scientist?

The Dimension of Universality

The dimension of universality refers to the concepts used to describe experiences that are not culture-bound. Concepts are not universal if they can only be used to describe the meaning of experiences that are culture-bound. A concept that has universality cannot accurately describe the meaning of an experience that lacks continuity and vice versa.

The calling, for example, is a universal concept that appropriately refers to “a task set by God” as a work-life experience that is not culture-bound. It should not, however, be used to refer to the modern work-life experience that is culture-bound and best referred to as a career. Similarly, the concept of career might best be reserved for a modern culture-bound experience and not one that is continuous.

Since a hidden thread is a concept that describes a non-culture-bound experience, it is both continuous and universal. At the other extreme is a concept that is neither continuous nor universal because it appropriately describes a culture-bound experience. Between these two extremes are two other types of concepts: those that are not continuous but are universal and those that are continuous and not universal. Combined, these four types of concepts describe a wide range of experiences found in the shift from a traditional, biblically-based culture to one controlled by a modern world view.

Although these last two types of concepts are not our primary concern, they offer intriguing questions for analysis. The “career missionsary,” for example, is a non-universal, continuous concept. It describes a process whereby someone presumably called “to a task set by God” has made such a calling a career. Does this concept point to possible motivational shifts in the missionary’s work-life or is the term merely an inappropriate use of the concept. Similarly, the idea that one may be “called to a career” (universal-non-continuous) raises other questions of motivation. Does the use of such a phrase imply the socialization of some secular interests?

Most hidden threads are valued highly, especially by believers. Consequently, they may be used rather loosely and without a clear referent. Joy is such a concept. As a biblical concept, it refers to a sense of gladness in time of difficulty as one has faith in God. But secularization in modern socierty has weakened this meaning and the idea that gladness and difficulty might be found together is gradually lost. In its place, the culture-bound concept of fun is used to describe a form of happiness without seriousness. Gradually, fun becomes the preferred concept to describe happiness in modern life. While joy may still be used, it has lost much of the integrity of meaning it had as a biblical concept.

At least three questions must be asked to determine whether a concept qualifies as a hidden thread on the dimension of universality. What is the inherent meaning of the concept as developed in scripture? Does the concept refer to some experience found in modern life? If so, can the meaning of that concept be interpreted by both theologian and social scientist?

In modern life, the integrity found in a hidden thread and the experience it refers to should be maintained as the concept is applied to daily living. The experience it refers to should be described so it is faithful to the biblical meaning while losing none of its usefulness in the modern world. In this way, hidden threads offer biblical constants that may be used to measure and interpret those inconsistencies in faith and practice found within the church as well as in the world.

Conclusion

A major concern of this paper has been the current problem of modernity and its erosion of biblical concepts. In l970, Bellah suggested that “modernization itself is so endlessly subversive of every fixed position, no matter how great an achievement it may have been originally.” l9 Developing this subversion theme, Guinness notes the seductive quality of the process of modernization: “Something new is assumed, something old is abandoned, and everything else is adopted. In other words, what remains of traditional (religious) beliefs andpractices is altered to fit the new assumption.” 20 At the same time, Hunter argues “that modernity is inimical to traditional religious belief… Its symbols and its structure are deeply contrary to religious, supernaturalistic presuppositions.” 2l Consequently, he predicts religion will either “seek to preserve its religious heritage” or offer a bargaining creed as a compromise. l9

The dilemma of the church involves plotting a careful course between these two options of preserving and compromising. If the church is to maintain a viable ministry in a rapidly changing world, it must avoid the traditional separated approach while also avoiding the worldliness that comes from unwitting approval of modernity’s attractions. Without such avoidance, religion’s cultural style rather than its orthodoxy is likely to suffer as a syncretism of evangelical faith and modernity emerges. 22

Looking for a wedge into this syncretism of modernity and Christian orthodoxy, the argument has suggested that social science and theology, together, may interpret those inherent truths found in that conceptual framework shared by them. Basic to this conceptual framework, hidden threads provide a link between a traditional world of religious meaning and a modern world devoid of such meaning. Our culture needs an engagement of scripture and social science, in which a tension must be both perceived and maintained if any basis for applying biblical principles to modern life is to be discovered. The church and the believer need to recognize this tension and deal with it realistically if the hermeneutical task is to be pursued with faithfulness and integrity.