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S. Easter 2.26 John 20:-19-31

‘These are written that you may believe…’

The story of Thomas is a difficult one for post-Enlightenment rationalists (all of us some of the time, most of us all of the time) to get our heads around. That’s our problem—the idea that we need to get the right idea about something before we can do anything with it… See, it’s not what you do with the Word, but what He does with you!

My old tutor Paul Holmer called this “The Myth of Intellectualism”. Soren Kierkegaard had helped him both see the Myth and see that it is stupid. For me, that is the only real contribution Kierkegaard makes in philosophy or theology, but despite his other significant issues, that’s a big contribution…

The Myth of Intellectualism (Kierkegaard doesn’t call it that. He doesn’t call it anything but teases around it because of his stupid belief in indirect communication. But, fortunately, Holmer would state it plainly—though only in conversation and unpublished manuscripts, so it’s a bit of a Secret still today, one that cost me a great deal of time, intellectual effort and endurance of many cryptic little R-rated parables from Mr. Holmer—which I didn’t really mind truth be told—to uncover, myself. The Quest for Truth is an arduous and difficult path; but happy to walk it for you 😉 Anyway; the Myth of Intellectualism goes like this:

You have to get the right idea, the right theory in your head about how the world works and stuff before you can apply this information to solving the practical challenges earthly life throws in your way. This is an old myth that started in earnest with Plato and Aristotle back in 4th century BC Athens (because they had too much money and leisure time, I think 😉 For a long time, it only engaged the upper and leisure classes and the few others who could read. The so-called ‘Dark Ages’ of the West—late 5th till early 13th century which Peter Brown rightly thinks were perhaps actually a lot lighter than the ages before and after ;-)—provided a welcome lull in the Myth’s march to Conquer. But it hit the church hard in the late 13th century with Aquinas and the rediscovery of Aristotle and Plato…

In the 16th century, the Myth of Intellectualism was the scam that put the eggheads in charge of the West and led to many rapacious and pointless wars and piling up of material wealth in the hands of the Proponents of the Myth. Luther was one of the few who saw and opposed the Myth, but the winners write history and so the Myth of Intellectualism is not even seen as a Myth, today, but simply as The Way Things Are and justifies an enormous amount of rapacious violence, hoarding, cowardice and stupidity that is the hallmark of Modern Life and why sensible folks kinda hate it…

At the core of the Myth is the idea that there are neutral “facts” about everything: time, space, cause-effect, money, health, and the weather that disinterested Science and History and Philosophy discover and then create data and fact based theories of causality—law-like generalizations about how things work—that allow those with the Inside Information to wield for their benefit over the lowly plebes who do not have the Right Ideas about how things work… 🙁

One of the Key Ideas of the Myth is that “God” is just a word uninformed people use to describe the random events of Nature which—with the Laws of Science!—the informed can utilize to control events and and other people for their personal benefit. So “Emergent Evolution” became the “Truth” about the world that Christianity had previously mystified in order to make us dependent on an Imaginary Being in the Sky who doesn’t really exist, but that Emergent Evolution first figured out and then replaced as Masters of the Universe their-own-selves.

Kierkegaard saw—and Holmer was good enough to demonstrate in relatively plain language—that there are no law-like generalizations about how the world works, no theories by which Intellectuals can actually control events/people to their advantage—it’s all ACTING, sweetie. Alasdair MacIntyre—who was also onto the Myth and its pernicious effects—called it the Myth of Bureaucratic Managerial Efficiency and in After Virtue shows why it has enslaved us to the worst of humanity…

There are no “facts” about which we can have ‘neutral information’ to use to our advantage to cheat death and our fellow man. There is only the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who, in Jesus, became incarnate to save us from our rebellion against him, our rapacious greed and stupidity which is the real cause of the sin, death, and hell which hold sway over our world today… 🙁

GOD runs everything for our good, out of his pure love! But getting people who hate God and want to be God themselves to see the truth that our sin and greed and ‘running the verbs’ our-own-selves is the real source of all our misery is a difficult thing 🙁

The bottom line is that you don’t need a theory of the ‘finite and infinite’ and how they can join, or what ‘Sin’ is a Metaphor for before you can follow the grain of the Universe by the child-like faith in Jesus that makes us happy just to follow him wherever he goes. You don’t need a theory of ‘forensic justification’ in your head before you can live a Christian life…

Nah… You just need Jesus in your heart, ‘running the verbs’ of his Story (in which we’re bit players 😉 The Light gets in through the cracks, by Word and Sacraments, taking you down a dangerous but incredibly FUN Road…(!)

Little babies and children—who don’t believe in the Myth of Intellectualism and skip the whole Information Thing!—are best suited to walk this Way. This, BTW, is the problem with modern “missions”: it thinks Information about Jesus is what you need, when all you really need is faith, the non-rejection of the Word!

Thomas isn’t searching for empirical proof that Jesus is ‘in fact’ risen. He’s not a Intellectual. No, he’s an Apostle! He wants to SEE JESUS so that he can be on equal footing with the other Apostles. Hey; everyone wants to see Jesus—especially after his Crucifixion and Resurrection! Such seeing grants status, makes you… somebody special.

Faith does not come by seeing. It comes by hearing and believing the WORD. Seeing is cool! The Apostles who saw him in Person are Pretty Great! But, in the church, the least are greatest. And believing by hearing only, being led like Jesus’ little lambs by the the shepherds who see and actually know Jesus is more blessed than being High Status Apostles, ourselves.

The things John wrote are written not to give information, ideas, or myths about God that you can apply for a slight… uptick in daily living. No, these things are written to impart God Himself to you—that you may know Jesus and the power of his Resurrection and be conformed to his Image, that believing, you may have Life in his Name. And Peace, surpassing all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.