Immanuel Kant was a philosopher from the 1700s, and is a driving force behind today’s higher criticism method of evaluating scripture. He called questions such as ‘How do we know one is led by Holy Spirit?’ “antimonies.” That is, they were questions that could not be answered by reason, which he regarded as his sole tool of evaluating religious matters.
Specifically, said Charles B. Jones: (Great Courses: Introduction to the Study of Religion): “Immanuel Kant . . . pointed out that there were philosophical problems that he called antinomies. Antinomies were problems that were important but which could not be solved by the pure application of logic. such questions might be Is there an immortal soul or is there not? Are there rewards and punishments in life after death or are there not? Purely abstract scholastic reasoning could lead you to both affirmative and negative answers to those questions and both the affirmation and the negation could be equally well defended with equally good logical arguments.”
Thus, he pretty much regarded ALL religious tenets that way—undecidable through reason, and thereby off the table as something that could be established. But the EFFECTS of believing any given tenet was not. The effects were things he thought reason could evaluate, even if if the tenets themselves were inaccessible to reason. With this viewpoint as a backdrop, and it is now the mainstay of theological seminaries, religion almost cannot be anything else but a discipline for advancing (or infringing upon) human rights.
Nonetheless, I’ve long viewed headship in the worldwide congregation the way Kant did. It’s not something you can prove to others. It is only something one can prove to oneself, per Romans 12:2. I don’t obsess over it. However, one CAN regard the question in terms that every project needs leadership and that Witness headship is overall doing a good job. They are doing at least as well as the early Christians following the death of the apostles in keeping essential spiritual understandings unsullied. Such matters as name of God upheld, Jesus not himself God,, Kingdom is a real government, need to preach, no immortal soul, resurrection to paradise earth, the reason God permits suffering, obedience to headship be it family or congregation, “keeping the marriage bed undefiled,” and so forth. They’ve kept those concerns intact, whereas most others long ago integrated teachings that Witnesses would consider non-scriptural—such as immortal soul, and bending to the changing sexual norms of overall society.
Of course, on this subreddit, open to anyone, people can and will challenge any of those essential spiritual truths associated with Witnesses. But such teachings are not new. They all go back over 100 years. None have ever been hidden. Quite the contrary, they are relentlessly announced. If you don’t identify with those teachings, you do not become a Witness to begin with.
Not only has Witness headship kept essential truths (per the Witnesses) uncontaminated, they are the descendants of those who aided spiritual understanding to me in the first place, and for this they deserve loyalty and respect. Let others haggle it out what ‘led by holy spirit’ means. Their overall record is good enough for me. Otherwise, one can begin bickering internally and easily lose sight of just who the real enemy is. They can be and are accused of being “insular” (generally bad connotation). Alas, “no part of the world” (generally good connotation from a biblical standpoint) is the other side of the same coin. What IS insulation if not a stratagem for keeping two incompatible things separate? It does have a way of making Witness headship slow to respond to concerns of the greater world.
Questions of accountability toward God over the latest update, I considered in Part 1, speculating both ways, with greater emphasis on how most Witnesses are likely to view it. One can do no more, as gauging God’s judgment is another one of Kant’s antimonies. Time will tell. Perhaps, weight will be given to how people have often lost their lives for causes that were later reevaluated. War and politics offer a steady torrent of examples, with lives lost often in the millions. Losing life for science that turns out to be wrong is also common. In medicine, people are routinely coerced through advertising into taking drugs that may kill them—the voiceover plainly states it on those ubiquitous pharma ads of the United States. People even lose their lives over such trivial matters as sports, particularly extreme sports, coerced by coaches and societal pressure into pushing the boundaries.
All people in the above roles are lionized. It is only when lives are lost in a religious context that the perception of noble sacrifice changes. Somewhere in the equation perhaps it will be accounted that Witness insistence on avoiding transfusion spurred the development and advancement of bloodless surgery and curtailed widespread but inappropriate use of blood transfusion (once as common as “topping off the tank” after surgery), a developement saving many times more lives among the general population than have been lost among Witnesses. Somewhere, too, it might be taken into account that Witness beliefs in aggregate make it by far the safest religion out there. As a result of their beliefs, they don’t do illicit drugs, tobacco, don’t abuse alcohol, don’t do war, and shy from unnecessary overly risky activity on all fronts.
Questions as to how God leads his people (or if he does) surely must to answered by those who have acquiesced to such leadership—headship, the Bible calls it. Thing is, Kant’s insistence that spiritual considerations are unknowable via his tool of logic changes the very nature of religion into something unrecognizable to those who practice it—again, it can become nothing more than a forum for human rights. The core tenets discussed above, though important to Witnesses, are dismissed once atheism or agnosticism comes to rule the roost. When one negates the upside, all that there is left to focus on is the downside. The apostle Paul freely acknowledged that “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) As a starting position, Witnesses maintain that it is not “in this life only” that they believe in the Christ. They cannot be properly assessed by atheists or agnostics who suppose it is.
****** The bookstore
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