Sense? Or Nonsense?
She was just a little girl in the second grade. It was my first teaching assignment in a
little Christian school, and she came to school with red spots all over her
face and arms. I looked at my health
sheet. "You have chicken pox,
honey," I said. "I will have to call your mother to
come to take you home."
"Oh, no," she said.
"I had the chicken-pox, but daddy prayed for me last night, and I
was healed."
I was in a spot. I did not
want to cause her to doubt her faith, but it was against the law for her to
come to school. She obviously had the
chicken-pox. I called her parents, and
everything got worse. "How dare
you doubt God," was the response of her mother. Her father: "We do
not judge things by what we see. Jesus
said that we can ask what we will, and he will hear us and answer us. Do you trust God's word, or do you trust
your eyes?" I was pretty naive
theologically, but I did not think that God's word and the testimony of our
senses should be in conflict. I have
not seen any reason to change my mind.
I sent her home then, and I would send her home now.
Colossians 2:8 warns us to "Beware lest any man spoil you
through philosophy and vain deceit."
We are not to allow vain, deceitful words to empty us of our treasures,
and carry them away captive. God does
not deceive us either by the Scriptures or by our senses; only vain and
deceitful men would teach us otherwise.
Jesus did not tell his disciples, "Now I promise you that I
will rise from the dead. You will not
see me, but you must believe even though it will appear that I have remained in
the grave." Instead, Jesus told
Thomas, "Look, and behold my hands.
Put your hand into my side."
The witness of John the Apostle:
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,
of the word of life; ... That which we have seen and heard declare we unto
you...." (I John 1:1,3)
Francis Turretin teaches us that there are three kinds of
knowledge: those known by faith; by the senses, and by the intellect. It is certainly true that the things of
faith are beyond the reach of the senses, yet in their proper area, and given
their proper functioning, the testimony of senses is ignored by us at our
peril. According to Turretin, this is
proved:
(1) By the example of Christ: "Handle me and see" (Luke
24:39). His resurrection was subject
to the verification of the physical senses of the witnesses. To deny this is to overthrow the Christian
faith.
(2) By the angel at the
tomb: "He is not here; for he is
risen, as he said. Come, see the place
where the Lord lay" (Matt. 28:6).
The angel didn't rebuke the disciples for not believing the bare
word. If Christ has risen, he will not
be in the grave, and His absence can be verified by the senses.
(3) By the Apostles in
Acts 1:11: "This same Jesus, which
is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen
him go into heaven." Against the
Jehovah's Witnesses, we affirm that when Christ returns every eye shall see
him--literally and physically; not by some eye of "faith."
(4) By the Apostle in I
John 1:1-3, cited above.
(5) By the Apostle in 2
Peter 1:17 "For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when
there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased. And
this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy
mount." It is well worth noting that
in the last place, Peter goes on to say that there is a more excellent
testimony, a "more sure word of prophecy," and goes on to commend the
absolute authority of Scripture, but he affirms that he heard what he heard in
the holy mountain, and there was no contradiction.
(6) By the nature of
faith: which comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Men cannot call on him of whom they have
not heard (Rom. 10). God has appointed
preaching as the ordinary means whereby men receive the gospel and come to
Christ. God certainly has not limited
Himself to the physical preaching and the physical hearing and physical reading
of the Scriptures, but neither are we to deny the testimony of our senses, if
we read that Jesus is born of a Virgin.
We see the words as we see the words.
I know that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary because I saw and read it
in the Bible. I wasn't drunk, the words
didn't shift on me, the translation is correct, and others have confirmed it
with the use of their senses. There is
no philosopher that will take this from me.
I know why faithless philosophy would take this witness from me. After all, even the heavens declare the
glory of the God and the firmament shows His handiwork.
Those who are familiar with the history of Helen Keller knows how
terribly difficult it is to impart any knowledge at all without the use of the
senses. She lost both sight and hearing
from a disease early in her life. It
was only through the use of the sense of touch that "Crazy Annie" was
able finally to connect with Helen, and teach her the meaning of the word
"water," which Helen could only discern by touching Annie's mouth
with her hand.
(7) By the description of
the Holy Spirit who uses the senses as illustrations of the operations of the
soul: "Taste and see that the Lord
is good." "Hear and your soul
shall live." "Feel after the
Lord." Our offerings are a "sweet odor" to the Lord. How could these be illustrations of the
operations of the soul if their testimony is slippery and uncertain, as
Turretin says. (See Vol. 1: First
Topic, Q. XI of Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology)
This does not mean that we can start with the senses and obtain
truth independently of Scripture. The
history of philosophy shows the dead end where all empiricism ends. In rejecting Scripture, the natural man
loses not only the witness of his reason, but even the testimony of his
senses. The believer comes to Christ
and finds both his reason and his senses.
I do not want to be wiser than Christ: if He tells Thomas to look at His
hands and His feet, then the witness of the senses is valid.
(8). By the Faithfulness
of God. He will not suffer us to
believe that He wishes to "trifle with men by referring them to a
testimony which could deceive and be false." (Turretin)
This is the reason that God has given us the sacraments. They are a "visible preaching of the
Gospel," (Calvin) and testify to our senses what the Scripture witnesses
verbally. As the Heidelberg Catechism
so eloquently puts it:
Q. 75. How is it signified
and sealed unto thee in the Holy Supper, that thou dost partake of the one
sacrifice of Christ on the cross and all His benefits?
A. Thus: that Christ has
commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken bread and to drink of this
cup in remembrance of Him, and has joined therewith these promises: First that His body was offered and broken
on the cross for men and His blood shed for me, as certainly as I see with my
eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me and the cup communicated to me; and
further, that with His crucified body and shed blood He Himself feeds and
nourishes my soul to everlasting life, as certainly as I receive from the hand
of the minister and taste with my mouth the bread and cup of the Lord, which
are given me as certain tokens of the body and blood of Christ. [Emphasis mine].
The wise man of Proverbs tells us, "The ear that heareth the
reproof of life abideth among the wise." (Prov. 15:31). Certainly, the Scriptures are profitable
for reproof, and they are ignored at our peril; but there is also the reproof
of our senses, and these are also ignored at our peril. This was the error of the parents of the
little girl with the chicken-pox those many years ago. Their senses should have warned them of the
error of their theology. They are to be
commended for believing the Bible. They
are to be commended for praying. They are
to be commended for putting the authority of the Bible above that of their
senses. They are to be commended for believing
that God can work miracles in the world.
They are to be commended for acting on their faith. Their mistake: if God works a miracle in the world of sense, then that miracle
will be discerned by the senses. The
fact that their little girl still had spots should have been a huge rebuke to
them and stirred them to return to the Bible for better instruction. They would have learned that God does not
jump through our hoops, but keeps his miracle-working power for His own
purposes and for His own glory. He is
not some sort of cosmic vending machine, to spew out miracles for our own
pleasure and purposes.
To ignore the testimony of our senses is to lapse into
gnosticism. Christ really did become
man. He really did come into our world
and into our real history, not the Geschichte of Karl Barth's imagination. Biblical faith does not call me to place my
faith in my imagination, but in the real Christ who lived among us, walked
among us, spoke to us, really died, and really rose from the dead, and will
really come back again. This reality
will often rebuke me when I fall into religious enthusiasm, fanaticism, or
wishful thinking. The Scriptures are
infallible and authoritative, and sense can never correct them, for they are
perfect. But sense CAN correct my
understanding and my foolishness and my ignorance. Ignoring the witness of my sense is non-sense.
But this reality will also confirm the certain words of Scripture
and give me a certain hope, not only in this world but also for the world to
come. As David said, "I had
fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of
the living. Wait on the Lord: be of
good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the
Lord." (Psalm 27:13,14) We do not bear witness of dreams and vain
imaginations, but reality both in this world, and in the world to come.