"If it's true at all, it's true already"

Hypercognitivism revisited, Capon, religion of the bench

Hypercognitivism revisited

A hypercognitive culture is one that forms strong links between intellectual capacity and being human—where getting dementia is more to be feared than getting cancer. Because at least the person fighting cancer is “still themselves.”

Julianne Moore is Still Alice

When hypercognitivism goes to church—and let me assure you it does—it problematizes discipleship for large categories of Christians, e.g. children, those with intellectual disabilities, or those with Alzheimer’s.

But hypercognitivism doesn’t just disparage certain persons—it also reduces the Christian gospel itself. It takes that which is true and makes it half-true.

Half-true

N.T. Wright says that Christianity is about something that happened. It is an announcement. It is news. It is an event—a series of events that transpired in and around Jerusalem, over the course of three days, around the year 33 A.D. We celebrated these events earlier this month. Good Friday is an event—not an idea. Easter is an event—not an idea.

But in the hands of hypercognitivism, Christianity is no longer an event, but an idea.

It is no longer an announcement, but a theory. It is not something which is already true, but only possibly true. The news of the gospel becomes true only after humans take the necessary mental and emotions steps to make it true—wrapping our heads around it; getting our mental furniture in order; and feeling all the proper feels that ought to follow.

Religion of the Bench

Historically, one can trace these developments back to “the anxious bench.”

Charles Finney and the revivalist preachers of the 1800s incited large crowds with their emotive sermons, and then folks would go sit on a bench to contemplate their eternal state and make an emotional decision for Christ.

John Williamson Nevin called it religion of the bench. Christianity became “justification by feeling rather than faith.” Being a Christian became highly individualized, cognitivized, and emotionalized:

yikes

• Individualized—insofar as the wider Church is no longer the being (or esse) of the Christian, but only for the well-being (bene esse) of the Christian. Church is a merely a community of atomized people who come together out of a shared common belief, rather than a body that is ontologically united to itself and to Christ. Going to church is “good for me” because it catalyzes my individual faith—but Church does not = me, or me = it.

• Cognitivized—insofar as the gospel becomes something to “get.” People either “get” the gospel or they don’t (i.e. they cognitively “understand” or “comprehend” it). And “getting the gospel” requires a fair amount of mental exertion—whether sitting anxiously on a bench, or sitting on a Crazy Creek in the woods with a journal.

• Emotionalized—insofar as one must “go to the bench” and work the ideas of the Gospel down into their bones in order for it to really take effect.

Does the gospel take root in individual human minds and hearts? Yes, cf. the parable of the sower.

But in the world we’re describing, it is hard to say which piece of furniture matters more—the bench or the cross.

True Already

Not only is hypercognitivist Christianity misleading, it’s also not-fun.

This past week—bc Spring—I have been reading Robert Farrar Capon’s The Youngest Day, a series of reflections on the four seasons and how each relates to God’s grace and judgment.

(FWIW, here is Capon on Springtime: “Spring is the youngest, freshest day of the world, the definitive disclosure of what life was meant to be and of the resurrection that won’t take no for an answer.” Spring is when God says: “Here: this is what I had in mind.” Well then.)

if you google “spring” they have some paintings—like this van gogh one

Reflecting on John 3 and those who “believe in” God’s Son, here is what Capon writes about faith (emphasis original):

Believing, you see, actually does nothing. It is not a transaction by which we cause some effect, by which something that was not the case is made so by appropriate action on our part. It is simply our willingness to trust that a work we never did know how to do—and that we couldn’t have accomplished even if we did—has been done for us by a gracious other. Faith is not an act by which we enter into a deal that we’re responsible for bringing to fruition; it’s just saying, ‘Sure, why not?’ to somebody who claims he can deal out all the fruits to begin with. And therefore faith is not a matter of more or less, not something to be judged by how confident we feel or by how much or little we know. It is a dumb and blind yes… ‘No man,’ Luther said, ‘can either know or feel he is saved; he can only believe it.’ Luckily though, he needs only to believe, because if it’s true at all, it’s true already."

Playing into the wrong hands

If C.S. Lewis is right—and I dare you to say he isn’t—then getting Christians to prioritize their conscious thoughts and emotions is not only misleading and decidedly un-fun, it’s also exactly what the Devil has in mind. Over and again in the Screwtape Letters, the devils attempt to make their “client” obsessed with his own inner life:

Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him and towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills.

Perhaps instead of disparaging the faith of those who cannot articulate their inner thoughts or feelings about God in ways we can understand, we should instead learn from them. Because unlike us, they do not waste their days manufacturing religious feelings and taking their spiritual temperatures.

Maybe this is why Jesus said, “you must become like a child.” Because children don’t want to sit on a bench. To children, something is either true or it isn’t. And something is either fun, or it isn’t. It’s like in E.T.—there’s an alien in the house, raiding the refrigerator and drinking dad’s beer, but only the kids believe it.

If it’s true at all, it’s true already.