Obscurum Per Obscurius
How mystery mongering and spooky theology wards off skeptics and contributes to our own intellectual decline
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
- 1 Corinthians 2:4
Obscurum per obscurius means to explain away the obscure via further obscuration. When questioning theology among religious people, Christians for example, one might encounter something such as the verse above. Responses of this type tend to leave the curious one somewhat dissatisfied or confused, and who can blame them? To subscribe to any religion requires a great deal of sacrifice and accepting of the fact that not all of the religion’s philosophies will make perfect sense, but it should make enough sense should it not? Gravity does not always obey the discovered laws of physics in the reaches of space but it makes enough sense for our terrestrial condition. Doctors may be surprised by rapid recoveries or sudden bouts of sickness but our knowledge of physiology certainly makes enough sense for us to grow and continue practicing medicine on our current trajectory. The demands various religions make for our subscription should make enough sense to elicit a rational and logical degree of our understanding.
I identify with the Christian religion and throughout this writing I will primarily draw from this faith practice, however I am confident that the points I lay out here will find- in various degrees- similar examples in other religions such as Islam or Hinduism. I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the level of obscurity that secretes from many religious tenants, more so I believe the acceptance of axioms predicated on these obscurities leads to damaging effects on society and stifles progressive movement. I argue that the tolerance of obscurity found within Christians and other religious individuals to explain phenomena leads to a further tolerance of obscurities and arcane ideas unrelated to the religion entirely, say science, politics, or history.
In this work I will make notice to the obvious natural and obscure nature of God and the knowledge available to us as believers, but I shall not dive too deep in Bibliology or theology as these are in depth topics that demand a more focused work related to obscurity. I will cover the nature of epistemology and its value to progressive societies, conspiracy ideology and religions’ effects on that ideology, loyalty to orthodox figures, and the way forward. I have been deemed heretical or a faucet for heretical ideas in many corners of my religious faith. I will note that most, if not all of my ‘heresies’ revolve not around what we do know, but what we do not, more so, what we can not know. This appears to not be so tolerable under the current epistemological canopy of Christianity. I argue that the most effective display of fidelity and authenticity in religious belief centers around admitting what one does not know. Rather than attribute to ignorance or curiosity what we do not know, modern day Christianity demands we submit all mystery to workings of God and the Holy Spirit. However, when one seeks to understand and contextualize the Holy Spirit’s dictations and directives within one’s life they are often met with obscurum per obscurious. The only place one is permitted- within the epistemological dogmas of modern day Christianity- to learn about the intentions and role of the Holy Spirit is in the Bible, the Scriptures. However, a little more digging with the shovel of the curiosity might prompt one to ask about the reliability of the Bible. Alas, this is where the circular dead-end logic of generic Christian thinking meets the intellectually curious individual in an epistemological Mexican Standoff.
When inquiring about the canonization process of the scriptures, you might often hear the words ‘infallible’ and ‘inerrant’ thrown around. Infallible means to be without mistakes or error while inerrant means incapable of being wrong or having error. Amusingly, you might come across different Christian sects arguing that the Bible is one or the other, or both! Strangely, the Catholic denomination has a noticeably unique set of additional books offensively labeled by Protestants the Apocrypha. There is too much to unpack regarding the finer details of the canonization process but ironically, not too much to where you would tire yourself trying to figure out how the Hell people chose which books to use and which ones to discard. Do we have the names of those who helped establish our current Bible, or in including the Catholic tradition, Bibles? Hardly, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem led a team that put forth a similar set of book to our modern Bible in the mid fourth century, but one might be disappointed when attempting to figure out who exactly was on this ‘team’. I provide this back story because the curious individual is likely to ask… ‘how do we know to trust Cyril’s decision on the final product?’ ‘Was there a prophecy regarding Cyril giving advance notice to his fidelity?’ ‘Did Cyril perform a miracle to establish his superior knowledge on the scriptures?’ The same questions can be asked of the Council of Laodicea and of Athanasius of Alexandria who also contributed to our New Testament formation. The answers to these questions leave one’s intellectual hunger rather un-satiated. There was no prophecy regarding Cyril, the council, or Athanasius. There were no performed miracles either. Rather, we have come full circle: to learn about the Holy Spirit we are told to look into the scriptures. To trust the scriptures and the canonization process we are yet again to rely on the Holy Spirit. I am not arguing for us to replace our current understandings or traditions, but we must learn to be more intellectually mature and honest with what we do in fact not know. Are we Christians the victims of insults and derogatory finger pointing by enlightened academics or have we committed an epistemological crime in postulating circular arguments with enchanted linguistics?
Epistemology
I have long celebrated the epistemological advancements that were gifted to the human race by The Enlightenment. I began identifying as Christian around 2018, at this point I had no issue or qualms regarding the Enlightenment. I did an entire four year undergraduate degree at Dallas Baptist University and rarely encountered disdain for the Enlightenment. I did however encounter disdain for the time heavily within my studies at Dallas Theological Seminary where I received my Masters in Theological Studies. I was taken aback at the criticism against the Enlightenment which established rationalism and logic as epistemological groundings for determining reliable truths. Unsurprisingly Dallas Theological Seminary often defends notions of a 6,000 year old Earth, a literal Ark with two of every species on Earth, a talking snake in the Garden of Eden, and the circular logic of the Holy Spirit being our true guide to understanding the documents that explain the Holy Spirit. DTS’s disapproval of the Enlightenment makes sense when you look at their hermeneutical viewpoint- it is everything the Enlightenment would seek to challenge.
Christians that are critical of the Enlightenment often base their disapproval on the facts that it caused significant de-conversion and skepticism from and towards religion. However, I argue there is a distinct reason for this. Up until the Enlightenment’s intellectual revolution, the West was governed by political monarchies, families that based their political reigns and decisions on divine appointment. As history tells, many of these kings and queens were at best incompetent at their roles and at worst tyrants who filled the streets with the blood of dissenters. The American Revolution’s philosophical foundations were grounded in the Enlightenment; John Locke, Rousseau, Baruch Spinoza, and Adam Smith contributed significantly to the structure of the United States’ economy and laws. These thinkers also laid the foundations for what many treat as the second Bible, the Declaration of Independence. Prior to Enlightenment, science was deemed heretical if it trespassed on dogmas defended by the Church, people were worried of ‘the evil eye’ of their neighbors, sickness was a sign one was out of the will of God, and other less developed civilizations were merely conquerable subjects for God’s favored group. With intense political oppression, religious manipulation, and gatekeeping curiosity, events like the French Revolution begin to make a lot more sense and even seem justifiable. I argue that if the faith of ‘faith leaders’ such as the monarchs and church leaders was grounded in rationalism and authentic spiritual curiosity, the Enlightenment would have only bought good and prosperity to religion. But it appears that during the time, religion was hijacked by demagogues and populists, bending the enchanted minds of their followers and leading not on merit or liberty but on spiritual manipulation. This does not seem too far from our current religious-political frameworks.
The Enlightenment brought us in definite terminology, the idea of rationalism and logical thinking. But as I argue regarding the terms capitalism, authoritarianism, nihilism, and other philosophies, these modes of thinking existed long before the terms were bestowed, the terms merely solidified them as central products in the human mind. Rationalism argues that truths should be grounded in reason and knowledge rather than superstitious religious beliefs. Rationalism is not in opposition to religion as it still allows religious truths to breathe and grow. Rationalism asks the question, ‘if you can not verify or trust- outside of emotional desires- an axiom, then why devote so much intellectual effort to its defense?’
Willingness to Not Know
Rationalism does not seek to replace or destroy religious dogmas, rather it seeks to allocate them to the realm of ‘possibility but not certainty’. Rationalism does not say we should not trust the Bible but rather that its trustworthiness is not certain. Rationalism claims that we cannot have a free will with autonomy, a democratic republic with voted in leaders, and also have a divine God who picks the leaders Himself. Rationalism certainly does feel like sandpaper when applied to many religious claims today, and thus my religious certainties have waxed and waned over the years. René Descartes’ famous ‘I think, therefore I am’ ensures that all we can truly be certain about is our own consciousness. Everything that extends beyond our consciousness must be processed rationally and critically. The capacity for experience that we all have provides us with more than enough tools to navigate the world in safe intellectual modes. Our observations of the world around us are plentiful and rich in providing for an inductive navigation of life. Obscurum per obscurius need not find a home in our minds for us to still have spiritual experiences. Rationalism is a philosophy that can not be applied to every sector of our life, as a matter of fact, rationalism deems it impossible for something to come from nothing which leads to the curiosity of the Big Bang and our universe’s genesis. The Spirit of God might very well be interacting with us and persuading us, I hesitantly admit I affirm this idea, but in the same breath I concede that all dimensions of the Holy Spirit that can be explained by natural processes should be explained first by natural processes. Again, this does not detract from the marvels of God as the next inquiry is to what birthed the natural processes.
I have found liberty and joy in conceding what I do not definitely know to be true. The only areas where this has shaken or disturbed by spiritual faith is in realms that my spiritual tradition demands I do not dig with the shovel of curiosity. To admit ignorance on certain intellectual matters does not mean that spot will never be filled, it might be filled this week after you finish that one book, watch that one lecture, or philosophically meditate on the rationale of the subject. There is danger with using God’s hand as place holder in mysterious matters.
The train of reasoning that we all instinctively do, even subliminally, might lead one to rather arcane or damaging axioms of thought. If one believes, as many did at both of my academic institutions, that God ‘has them in a place in life for a reason’ they must then apply that across the board to all people lest they be accused of establishing a divine hierarchy of God’s favorites. If God has them getting a communications degree at a private university for a reason, does he not have starving Sudanese children in famine for a reason? Did the hacked victims of the Rwandan Genocide meet their fates with machetes for a reason? Do all aborted lives end for a reason of divine of appointment? If we attribute the works of the Holy Spirit to all of our deeds is it only the good ones? Many might say yes, but what of the good deeds that have unseen harmful consequences? As Sam Harris notes, when good things happen God is blessing us, but when evil happens we are told God is mysterious. Christians will go through many verbal and intellectual obstacle courses to explain away these incongruences, oftentimes they lean on the thousands of years of traditional thought on the subject. However, the notion of tradition does not give any weight to a subjects verifiability. There very much might be hundreds of years of consensus on the idea of the Trinity, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the church model. But there are thousands of years of tradition regarding other religions’ practices as well, are these any more or less true due to their tradition? The plot holes in Islam and Hinduism often get exposed by Christians who utilize rationalism and deductive reasoning, but when the same lines of thought are used against Christianity the Christian will deflect and criticize the intellectual methods he or she just used.
Indeed mystery can be unsettling and uneasy for many of us, we long for control and order, we are allergic to chaos and disfunction. But could it might just be that mystery and intellectual exploration is a gift from God to us? Is there a need for us to deem His story finished and our reaches of understanding closed off? The difficulties in theory of mind, space exploration, biology, evolution, and moral philosophy are not hinderances to a perfect God, but rather a joyful and challenging endeavor for His creation to embark upon. We can find liberty in conceding what we do not know, and even more freedom in admitting what we should not deem objective certain truth. The capacity to better explain phenomena is within our reach, and once obtained, the explanations will not harm the spiritual realities of the Nature of God, and if they do, was He ever even God, or just our creation made in our image?
Conspiracy
My quality of life has blossomed upon deleting TikTok 3 years ago, but occasionally I will come across an obscure and intellectually painful entity known as a ‘Christian TikTok’. Christian TikTok is a realm that one must not enter unless truly prepared. Gas masks and assault rifles will not defend you, rather you must arm yourself with an iron fortitude to second hand embarrassment and a well conditioned degree of patience for the truly confused people who have submitted their intellectual freedoms to dopamine, click bait, and flashing colors. Christian TikTok is a pulsating orgy of conspiracy theories, ill-founded prophecies, sexism, spiritual manipulation, MAGA subordinates, bacteria ridden hermeneutics, and low-res jpegs. To really experience this environment from a safe distance I find the best page to follow is
which is also on Instagram. I am not interested in continuing to waste this writing on demeaning and insulting my fellow believers, rather I am interested in how a belief in what the God-Man did roughly 2,000 years ago on a cross constitutes a link between MAGA fanaticism, vaccine conspiracies, Q-Anon allegiance, and 5G hysteria. I believe the line of obscurum per obscurius is guilty of enabling this link. My reason for exhausting so much time and space of this writing on contextualizing the Enlightenment and epistemological axioms is to square the link between conspiracies and religious thought. I believe the reason we see such a strong link between crackpot conspiracies and religious belief is partly tied to the expectations of evidence and verifiability within the subject. In the case of those who despise the Enlightenment and view rationalist thinking as hostile to religious truths, there are no expectations of evidence and verifiability. The religious beliefs of many Christians today are grounded in preference, a convenience, or the infamous dogmas of tradition.Michael Butter is the author of The Nature of Conspiracy Theories and will soon appear as a guest on my podcast Veridical to discuss the thesis and observations of his book. Regarding the religious texture of conspiracy believers’ nature, the narrative of religion appears to be a culprit in solidifying adherence. Butter notes that the idea of waging a war through a clear good-evil duality means that one side is purely good, fighting for justice and wellbeing while the other side is explicitly evil, fighting for a demonic narrative. Hillary Clinton and Obama are much easier to take down as child-raping-devil-worshipping-cannibals than as politicians with different economic and social policies. When one aligns themselves with the ‘God team’ then all actions and contributions made to the war effort are excusable as they contribute to bringing about God’s desires. Likewise, any opposition to one’s efforts are not people occupying a middle ground, but rather they are directly aiding the demonic forces by hindering progress. When one elevates the conflict to an unobservable realm, those who are confused or not fully invested are dimwitted and simply cannot see the bigger picture.
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” -Ephesians 6:12
Butter notes that when a conspiracy group is attacked or criticized, this affirms the group’s moral integrity. Any attempt to dissuade a conspiracists painfully roots them deeper into their crackpot worldview. If someone would like to argue against the idea I am putting forth, they not only have to deconstruct my link between conspiracy theories and epistemological foundations within religious people, but find another way to explain the strong linkage between conspiracy theorists and Christianity. Obscurum per obscurius is a valuable tool to the religious person who denounces modern epistemological models in favor of enchanted traditions. Is there a way to have religious and spiritual experiences, and even reasonably argue for religious truths while adhering to rational and logical modes of thinking? For religion, particularly Christianity, to have any relevance in this brave new era, it must adapt its presentation and relieve the spiritual gatekeepers of their duties. If it cannot, then Jesus and His beautiful sacrifice are destined to fade to the annals of human anthropology, only to be recognized in the eschaton, a time too late for many.
The Way Forward
There are solutions, though few in number and without reliable efficacy, that can salvage Christian faith for the populace and preserve our epistemological models. On one hand I strongly despise the ideas and attitudes produced by ‘progressive Christianity’ as I see it as neither ‘progressive’ nor ‘Christian’ in any valuable use of the terms. On the other hand I am quite critical of tradition as it is strictly man-made and man-regulated. Though I enjoy reading Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Origin, and Anselm, their minds were not superior in capacity to ours today. Their ideas are worthy of criticism as much as anyone else. I read no prophecy and heard of no miracles as to why these men’s documents cannot be criticized. Granted, people such as these have contributed immensely to Christian philosophy and doctrine, but it appears that at a particular point in time, around 1,400 years after the death of Christ, Christian doctrine was set and grounded, deemed unmovable and unquestionable. Who and what decided this fixing? I am not saying any of these individuals were wrong on specific ideas but no doubt they were wrong in some assumptions and postulations. What I am saying is that the growth and expansion of religion does not have to stop at one point, progressive revelation is a reasonable idea that is taught across vast swaths of theology discourse. We must ask why God would gift this brave creation with reason and rationalism only to devise a story that eludes all of it? If the Earth really is only 6,000 years old and genetic diversity really does occur at an extreme rate, then why did God create the Earth to hold a strange puzzle like composure causing us all to fall for the Pangea lie? Why did God leave kangaroos to be native in Australia, are we to suppose that two kangaroos disembarked Noah’s Ark in Mesopotamia and swam to Australia to begin their entire population? Rather than deem the Christian story true in one particular lens or flat-out false, can we not posit that we are misunderstanding it? Can we not hold the idea that we simply have been reading God’s story through human history wrong? Must the Bible take prevalence over observable phenomena? If you believe so, did the Bible tell you so?
One way forward is to champion theologians and philosophers that generate rational and intellectually sound arguments that hold firm under scrutiny. Matthew Bates comes to mind with his book Salvation by Allegiance Alone. Bates’ thesis is that we have been vastly misunderstanding the notion of ‘grace’ and ‘piety’. Bates argues that Salvation requires allegiance, and allegiance entails a very detailed and demanding life, not the lackadaisical leisure many Christians seem to be taking advantage of. Another rational thinker in the Christian realm who receives more criticism than necessary is William Lane Craig. Though I certainly do not align with Craig on many points, I find his thought process is both rational and void of obscurum per obscurius. By championing theologians and philosophers (especially ones whom we might even disagree with) who demonstrate a love and passion for rational discourse, we can amplify the noise of clear thinking religious discourse. Likewise, by relinquishing devout loyalty to both modern and old figures like John MacArthur, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin we can feel safe when we disagree and speculate one of these people to be wrong, as they very much might be.
The question as to why so many Christians are associated with so much mystical and conspiratorial ideologies appears to be more complex the further one investigates the matter. No doubt the grand duality narrative of ‘good versus evil’ and ‘light versus darkness’ creates radical binaries, and no doubt the feeling that one is affirmed and justified in rather despicable acts is gained by accrediting their reason to divine ordination, and no doubt the existential dread of experiencing silence from the all powerful God in this world will compel one to search for a voice that might not be there. Though these all play a role in why Christians are mocked and scorned at in the social discourse today, I believe the primary culprit to be the standard of epistemology that Christians (and other religious people) employ to make sense of truth claims. By demolishing these non-sensical standards- that remain factories for self-contradictions- Christianity will be able to maintain much of its doctrinal truths and revelations, while also presenting itself as a logical, reasonable, and worthy philosophy for humans to subscribe to. If there is no radical epistemological revolution soon, the statistics of declining Christian numbers is destined to plateau at zero.