A Symbiotic Relationship
Dominic Erdozain’s The Soul of Doubt cuts a wide theological swath through the Reformation, Enlightenment, and into the Modernistic era of the 21st Century. He asks why was there so much religious violence when the command for Christians was to love one another. His hypothesis, drawing from a historical-religious analysis from Luther to Marx, concludes that the violence caused Christians to feel alienated from their own religion.[1] He offers an illuminating narrative that explores the post-Reformation world and devotes much of his work to exposing the necessary relationship between religion and secularism. Erdozain says his thesis “traces an unbroken tradition of dissent from the Reformation to the Enlightenment.[2] This post will examine the religious-secular relationship and look for connections, ideas, and solutions to the problem of spiritual warfare.
First, I reflected on some Bayard and Adler practices as I approached Erdozain’s theory that posits present-day Christianity was assisted and influenced by the post-Protestant Reformation movement of historical secularism and individual consciousness. My Bayard tools helped me stay on the periphery of Erdozain’s debate and helped me avoid making it personal or emotional as his reader. I looked for themes, ideas, connections, and correlations between Erdozain and other authors, critics, fields of study, and ideas.[3] The first connection I saw was on the book cover, which I suspect is an excerpt of Luther’s 95-Thesis. I translated one section “over the cliffs” and wondered if that would reflect his narrative, that religion fell or was about to fall over the cliffs in the past 500 years.
I used Adler’s “Rule of 8” to search for any of Erdozain’s answers to the problem of violence and alienation that drove 16th Century religious leaders like Luther and Calvin towards opposing and secular positions against the Catholic Church.[4] One answer to the “years of religious wars” was bad theology[5] Erdozain said the bad theology was the type that tempts Christians to “withdraw” from nature’s law, believe their passions are God’s will, and rejecting morality.[6]
Second, as I surveyed Erdozain’s narrative, internal sources, and controversial conclusions on how God’s Kingdom advanced during the past 500 years. I related his relationships between religion and secularism to a type of symbiosis. In other words, is there a symbiotic relationship between religion and secularism? Is it good-bad, spiritual-worldly, or helpful-hurtful for the Good News of Christ? To answer that I will present some interesting relationships between the religion-secularism and spiritual warfare. My opinion about Erdozain’s conclusions is that he did not go far enough to emphasize the influence of Satan during the 500-year span of time. Here is some interesting data from a simple word search of The Soul of Doubt compared to spiritual warfare’s 3-P’s; Put it on, Pray, and Persevere.[7] P1-Put it on (belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the spirit), P2-Pray, and P3-Persevere.
The following results show how many times these words were used in the book: Truth-106, Rigteousness-27, Peace-35, Faith-413, Salvation-66, Spirit- 126, Pray-6, and Persevere-2. In addition, I ran some spiritual warfare terminology with the following results: Warfare-17, Devil-30, Satan-12, and Stand firm type comments-2. What I see from this data and after reviewing his historical review from the Reformation forward is that “Faith” is his number one answer, solution, and spiritual position that readers of his work should adopt when trying to make sense of all the violence, struggle, non-religious, and un-Christian acts that were manifested in the past 500 years. 42 times Erdozain attributes the problem of violence and associated influences on the evil and destructive nature of Satan or the devil. When Erdozain used Luther’s analysis of the problem of violence I could see how Erdozain connects to a greater problem of spiritual warfare. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal” and the author says that “religious violence was not only a sin” but failed the Church’s spiritual mission.[8]
And fail it did, repeatedly as many Protestant Christians were accused of heresy. Here is another example of spiritual warfare at work: “Who dare to attribute to Christ that which they do by the command and at the instigation of Satan!”[9] This shows how Christian’s they called “heretics” were tortured and killed in the name of God. Henry VIII was notorious for killing 60 Protestants accused of heresy during the Reformation[10]
Third, the outside-in look at Erdozain’s work through reviews was quite interesting. One of his loudest critics is Jennifer Hecht, a self-proclaimed Jewish atheist. She challenges Erdozain’s assumption that “secular ethics, not intellect” was the driving force that challenged and alienated Christianity during the post Reformation era.[11] Hecht concludes that Erdozain’s version of secular ethics are just Christian ethics used to fight immorality and violence while also protecting the churches established privilege.[12] I tend to agree with Hecht on her point that the key leaders of secularism like Spinoza, Voltaire, Darwin, and Marx were not motivated by a “moral conscious that had Christianity at its core.” Instead, my research into the problem with Spiritual Warfare suggests that these leaders were motivated by Satanic forces, which influenced their philosophy of secular morality, relativism, and a widespread rejection God.
I appreciate Erdozain’s reference to the problem of evil, which resonates strongly with my problem of spiritual warfare research. He cited an 1893 ethics lecture by Huxley who used Scripture to call out Satan as the “Prince of this world” also warned his audience that “Science could not brush aside the problem of evil.”[13]
In conclusion, Erdozain convinced me that there is a symbiotic relationship between religion and secularism. From the Christian point of view, I can see how the relationship exists, but conclude that it is not necessary for Christianity to survive. While I commend the author for opening the eyes of his readers to the real and ever-present threat of Satan, I wish he had gone further and pulled in the Pauline theology of the metaphorical principle of self-defense through the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. I will forever be convinced that it is only through our obedience to the Word of God, to “put on the whole armor of God” that we can be fully used by God for His Divine Kingdom building purposes.
Stand firm,
M. Webb
[1] V.M. Ehret. “Erdozain, Dominic. The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx.” CHOICE: Current
Reviews for Academic Libraries 53, no. 7 (2016): 1034.
[2] Dominic Erdozain. 2016. “A History of Unbelief.” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 18. 11. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed January 23, 2018).
[3] Pierre Bayard. How to talk about books you haven’t read. (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2007) Kindle Edition, Location 245.
[4] Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. How to read a book: The classic guide to intelligent reading. (Simon and Schuster, 2014) 133.
[5] Erdozain, Soul of Doubt, 138.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Eph. 6:10-18.
[8] Dominic Erdozain. The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015) 19.
[9] Ibid., 56.
[10] “Heresy,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy (accessed January 24, 2018).
[11] Jennifer M. Hecht. “How Secular Are Secular Ethics?” The Chronicle of Higher Education 62, no. 24 (2016): B17.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Erdozain, Soul of Doubt, 187.
About the Author
Mike
12 responses to “A Symbiotic Relationship”
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Hi Mike,
I was especially looking forward to your Blog this week, as I surmised you would connect it well to the AOG. I was not disappointed.
Especially when our author talked so much about “doubt” of which I was taught, is a main tool of Satan. Agreed?
I also very much like the author you quoted who said, “Science could not brush aside the problem of evil.”
Jay,
Thanks brother! I am looking forward to seeing and hearing from the author of this book.
Stand firm,
M. Webb
Mike, you incorporate our learn tools expertly with every post you make. Keep up the good work.
I appreciate the light that you brought on the violence of the Christian movement expressed in the reading. I had a discussion with a member at church a short while back that discussed the reasoning for Christ making sure His disciples had swords before heading out to the Garden the night of His arrest. “But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” Luke 22:38. Later in the story, we see Peter eager and ready to pull that sword and use it against the guards that come to arrest his Master, and Jesus actually rebukes him for it. So why the double sided message? The reality was that Christ knew that God’s people had a history of gaining recognition and progression through war…but Christ was showing that this would not be the way anymore. And yet, even with that message, we still see a remarkably violent history of the church since then.
So since you are passionate about putting on the Armor of God, how do you see is the best way to show a fighting spirit for Christ, without actually coming to a physical fight for your views?
Shawn,
Excellent comments and question. Putting on the Armor of God does not mean we are going to be in a physical fight, the battle was already one at the Cross. Putting on the Armor of God is our act of submission and obedience and prepares us to Defend against the attack of Satan. We are to Stand Firm.
With that said, the supernatural weapons of warfare, truth, love, righteousness, faith, and prayer are what we appropriate, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to “tear down strongholds”. Yet again, it is not us, never us, doing the battle, it is the Christ, thru the Holy Spirit living within us, who comes in behind the frontal assault of Satan, and works on the person, the philosophy, the principle, to reveal the light and love of Christ which eventually overcomes evil, and the strongholds are reduced and removed.
Hope that helps….more discussions to follow I am sure!
Mike, Thanks for bringing in previous texts to do good analytical work. I have two questions for you regarding your post. First, you mention the symbiotic relationship early on as potentially good-bad, spiritual-worldly, and so on. And in the end, you came to the conclusion of there indeed being a symbiotic relationship but did not give it a type as such. I wonder if you would categorize this in a particular way.
Second, when you analyzed the text through word searches around the armor of God, did you look up terms where cited to see if the content matched or was even relevant to the armor of God? I don’t dispute your conclusion of faith being Erdozain’s primary focus but I do wonder if there may have been another way of going about it or if the search for the missing armor of God could be found through other means?
Trisha,
Thanks for your comments. Question 1- I did not settle on a position, other than I recognize there is a symbiotic relationship, but do not believe the church needs secularism to survive, but acknowledge that it was a tool at the time to move Protestant Christianity out of Europe and put it on a road-trip to the rest of the world.
Question 2- I did not put a lot of thinking into the word search. It was a raw data collection and just let the numbers speak to me. Faith was clearly the main focus and solution to the problem of violence and alienation during the Reformation. I did look at all the references on Satan, devil, to see how it was presented in context, and happy to say the Erdozain “gets it” in naming and calling out the source of evil in the world. I do hope to challenge him to “finish this” with connections to the solutions that Paul offers, in the offensive and defensive aspects of spiritual warfare.
The world has become so blinded, many Christian leaders and scholars included, to the schemes of the devil. Pray for the scales to fall from our eyes, submissive spirits to the Lord, and bold appropriation of God’s Armor, His son Jesus Christ, to defend, overcome, and resist Satan.
M. Webb
Good reemphasis of the author’s thesis. Way to tie in good reading techniques of the past. We do indeed fight not against flesh and blood…Appreciate how you continue to remind us of the enemy that we fight against. Erdozain’s challenge to see God moving in the midst of those speaking out against the leaders of the day, should remind us that we as leaders ourselves do not always recognize the hand of God. Thanks Mike for your stand for God and the reminders to keep our eyes and hearts protected.
Greg,
Thanks for your comments. I see you “get it” when it comes to the flesh and blood aspects of spiritual warfare. Most pay it lip service, but Paul makes not mistake, Satan is behind every wile, scheme, deception, lie, division, and attempt to kill and destroy the Christian or at least render him-her useless in their witness and testimony to the lost world.
Stand firm,
M. Webb
Hi Mike,
I found your highlighting of the symbiotic relationship between religion and secularism to be helpful, just as Erdozain juxtaposes faith-doubt. Often we need to see both in our midst to value and treasure what is most needed. Does not faith arise newly born out of the ashes of doubt?
This comes with my prayers for you in the ME.
Mark,
Thanks for your comments. Regarding doubt, my response would be “it depends.” Many times, most times actually, doubt is a ploy of Satan to create confusion. It all depends on who said what. Is it the Holy Spirit speaking and helping you process thru the doubt, or is it Satan heaping on guilt, division, deception, and regret associated with the feelings of doubt.
Stand firm,
M. Webb
Mike,
Is there any book you read which you cannot find a path back to your problem. I wish I was as good at that as you are my brother. Great insight and argument from the tools you have been given. I wonder what the hardest part of seeing the doubt their theologies wrought was on Calvin and Luther. I am not sure I could ever be as angry to demand that others kill for my beliefs.
Jason,
They stepped over the Christian spiritual line when they demanded killing. Nevertheless, as ugly as all of that was, God still reins, and his sovereign purposes move forward despite Satan’s best efforts to genocide those of real faith and relationship with Christ.
Stand firm,
M. Webb