Introductory remarks presented by Jonathan Bryan to the Socratic Club at CBU on September 13th, 2007.
There are obviously some major differences between the Oxford Socratic Club of C.S. Lewis and our Socratic Club at Cal Baptist. For one thing, Oxford, at the time anyway, was not a Baptist University. In addition to not being a Baptist University, Oxford was slightly more prestigious, and as such attracted slightly more prestigious minds. Unlike the likes of Oxford, we might not be able to convince someone like Antony Flew or Michael Martin to come to our Socratic club and read a paper for us. It is perhaps inevitable that our Socratic club will primarily involve a discussion between believers and believers, rather than a discussion between believers and non-believers. In short, it seems likely that our club will easily fall prey to what C.S. Lewis calls “complacent dogmatism,”[1] in which we find it all too easy to defeat the arguments of those who are not here to defend themselves. To a certain degree this is unavoidable. This is a Baptist University, not Oxford, and we do not, therefore, have access to a great deal of non-Christian thinkers. Nevertheless, I would like to make some suggestions which could help us avoid this problem as best we can.
First, if we come to know (or already know) anyone here who isn’t a believer, and who has genuine intellectual questions concerning Christianity, we should welcome and encourage that person to join our discussions. CBU, unlike many other Christian Universities, does not require its applicants to sign any confession of faith to become students, and there is thus more than a few students here who do not believe in Christianity.[2]
The second way we can attempt to avoid the problem of “complacent dogmatism,” I think, is to make use of the primary texts written by those we disagree with. If any of us wishes to write a paper concerning the problem of evil, we should not derive our understanding of the problem solely from Christian Apologetical works, but from primary texts from those who actually make the argument. In a limited way, then, we will be able to engage the arguments of those we disagree with, and not merely the versions of those arguments as they are presented by Christians.
My third suggestion is to remain, as best we can, intellectually honest with ourselves. Let us not accept an explanation merely because we agree with its conclusion. It is easy to carefully scrutinize an argument from the other side, while at the same time accepting an argument for our own side without carefully considering what it means. We must guard against this tendency if any arguments we make are to be worth anything. We should try to be as critical of our own arguments as we are against our enemies’.
Such are my suggestions on how to avoid “complacent dogmatism.” With all of this talk about how to engage the arguments from outside of Christianity, however, it should be remembered that our Socratic club need not be exclusively or even primarily concerned with debating the truth of Christianity. I would welcome a discussion of subjects within Christianity. If we truly follow Socrates’ motto: “follow the argument wherever it leads,” there is no telling where we might end up by the end of our meetings. As Lewis points out, argument “has a life of its own”[3], and will likely lead to places we have never been before. Perhaps, if we are fortunate, such discussions will lead us to some truth, or at least to see some truth as we have not seen it before. Perhaps we will merely discover that we know less about things than we thought. In any case, if we are to remain men rather than rabbits (that is, if we are truly concerned with truth and not just what is “practical”), I think we must do our best to “follow the argument wherever it leads,” and not, as it is so easy to do, “lead the argument wherever we want it to go.” But perhaps you disagree. If so, you are more than welcome to write a paper explaining why.
[1] C.S. Lewis. “The Founding of the Socratic Club.” God in the Dock. Ed. Walter Hooper. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids: 1970. Pg 127.
[2] We have been rightly told, I think, that arguments are not what bring people to faith in Christ. Unfortunately, what has often been overlooked is that many non-believers (if we are to put any stock in what they say about themselves, and I think we should) genuinely find Christianity to be unreasonable. And we cannot, in good conscience, ask someone to embrace something they genuinely believe to be unreasonable. Argument, then, does not bring anyone to Christ, but it may often be necessary to overcome some intellectual stumbling blocks.
[3] C.S. Lewis. “The Founding of the Socratic Club.” Pg 128.
