Building Bridges Not Walls
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Building Bridges Not Walls

An Engineer's Guide to Theology

Peter Bold

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eBook - ePub

Building Bridges Not Walls

An Engineer's Guide to Theology

Peter Bold

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About This Book

Aged 28 Peter Bold left his original profession as an engineer to study theology and train for ministry in the Church of England.Studying academic theology initially came as a shock and challenged him to reflect on the way he had previously thought about his faith. In this book he tells his story of how the way he had learnt to think as an engineer helped him – and can help others – to think about their faith and what it means to live as a Christian in the modern world.

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Year
2020
ISBN
9781789590968
Chapter 1

Why Write?

When I was twenty-eight years old, I stopped working as a research engineer, specializing in metal fatigue in railway lines, and started training at Durham University to become a Church-of-England vicar. The transition was quite a shock. This book tells some of my story: how I as an engineer have struggled with the world of faith and theology, and how for me an engineer’s approach has proved helpful. I hesitated to call the book An Engineer’s Guide, as I wasn’t sure I was qualified to be a guide. I write as someone who has “been this way before” rather than as an expert.
I had thought of calling the book An Engineer’s Struggle with Theology, but that would be too negative. I have found the struggle life-giving. By working through some of the academic debate, and questions concerning suffering, my faith is on firmer foundations. It has also kindled a passion for putting my conclusions into practice and sharing my journey. I believe that good theology is vital for the health and unity of the Church, and its mission in the world. It has been a fruitful journey, though I am left with unanswered questions.
My training as an engineer emphasized the need to communicate with those who are not experts. Part of the struggle I had with theology was that I found many academic books difficult to read, and unnecessarily long and complicated. As an engineer’s guide I am aiming to communicate what I consider to be crucial theology in a concise, comprehensible form: my complete or systematic theology in 60,000 words.
As an engineer, there was no point doing research or designing a machine, if the work just stayed on a computer, or a drawing board. The whole point was to move forward the boundaries of knowledge, sell a product, or make money. In writing this book, my motivation is different, but I still want to make a difference. Hence the title, Building Bridges Not Walls. I don’t want theology stuck in ivory towers. I don’t want to build walls just to defend the Church or my faith and keep other ideas out. A bridge built on solid foundations enables interactions with those from different backgrounds, and hopefully through that we can all learn and make the world a better place.
I might have also called the book “a vicar’s guide to theology”, because like engineers, vicars are involved in the real world. At Durham, we studied theology in a rather academic setting, answering the questions the examiners set. Now, as a vicar, the issues and approaches are different. The book is not just about my time at university, but about my journey from childhood until now, the interaction between academic theology and the real world. A journey that has at times been a delight, and at times a struggle. A journey that is not complete.

How do we “do theology”?

The first section of this book concerns how we actually do theology. How can we know anything about God? How can we judge between conflicting answers? In engineering, we tackled problems and disagreements by going back to first principles: Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics or the “scientific method”. When I did my degree in engineering, I started with those foundations and built on them. In contrast, when I arrived at university to study theology, we leapt into questions and ideas about theology, without giving much time to the process. I felt rather at sea. We explored Old Testament theology, Pauline theology, Johannine theology, liberation and feminist theology. We considered, “What did St Paul think?” rather than, “Was St Paul right?” All ideas were considered to be good ideas.
The real world I inhabit as a vicar is very different. Some groups claim that one particular set of beliefs or practices is right and beyond dispute, while others claim infallibility for a contradictory set. There is no agreement as to whether God exists, let alone whether the Bible or the Qur’an gives a more accurate picture of him. Sadly, all too often our response to those who disagree with us is to avoid the subject, or to avoid the people. So evangelical Christians go to evangelical churches, Anglo-Catholics to Anglo-Catholic churches, Muslims go to mosques, and atheists avoid church altogether. Tragically at times disputes have led to violence, verbal or physical, rather than listening.
And yet, as an engineer, I wanted to know why people thought different things. If one engineer thought something would break while another thought it was safe it would be criminal not to find out why they disagreed. Key to understanding disagreements was to ask how others came to their conclusions. How do they do their theology? To ask them to tell their stories. I want to build bridges, not walls.

Do the answers matter?

In engineering, getting the right answer matters. At the beginning of my research in metal fatigue, I designed some new grips and specimens to try to recreate the stresses in a rail when a train passed over it. Most of my research budget was spent making these specimens and the grips before I could begin my testing. If my design was not right, the grips could have broken instead of the specimens, and all the money would have been wasted. After producing my first set of drawings, I showed them to a technician, who immediately spotted a problem. I was glad I asked and followed his advice. He was right. In engineering outside of universities, people’s lives as well as their money can depend on getting the answers right.
In theology, many people think that getting the right answer doesn’t matter. Faith is considered a private affair and to discuss it likely to cause offence. And it can cause offence. But some of the issues of faith are far more significant than my engineering. My faith led me to change career. For millions of martyrs over the centuries their faith has led them to lose their lives, trusting that a better life awaited them. For most of us, our faith or lack of it has consequences for how we live our daily lives, spend our money and conduct our relationships. It is not a purely academic exercise. The answers matter enough to listen to others in case I am wrong.

Surely faith and science have nothing in common?

At school, most of us have performed experiments in science lessons, demonstrating perhaps that the current in an electrical circuit is equal to the voltage divided by the resistance, or that acceleration is proportional to force divided by mass. As a result, many people think that all “science” can be proved in laboratories, and that therefore questions of faith are unscientific.
However, science isn’t all like that. The theories of evolution or the “Big Bang” cannot be proved in a laboratory. They result from observations of our world and universe as it is now, including fossils and the movements of galaxies. The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are logical deductions from those observations. I believe in both, but technically they are theories. They cannot be proved by recreating them in experiments, as we can with Newton’s laws of motion. From my own field of engineering, when something breaks, you cannot find the cause of the fracture by putting it back together and testing it. But you can look at the pieces. The history of the object may be revealed in concentric markings on the fracture surface, growing out from a crack origin.
My approach to my faith is similar. We cannot reproduce the events of the Bible, but the fact that we have the Bible, and in particular the New Testament documents, and the fact that we have the Church today, means that we have somewhere to start. Their existence is an undisputed fact. My faith is in part my reasoned response to these facts.
Christopher Hitchens, in his arguments against the existence of God, states:
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.1
As an engineer, with a scientific background, I agree. However, unlike Hitchens, I believe there is evidence for my faith. It is like sitting by a pond and hearing a splash, looking up and seeing ripples moving out from a point on the surface. Something must have caused the noise and the ripples. However, from the noise and ripples alone you could not tell whether the splash was caused by a fish, or by a stone being thrown in the pool. Unless there is another splash, you can only use reason to narrow down the possibilities.
The result of my study and reasoning is that in some areas of faith I am confident to declare what I believe. I would not claim they are a proof beyond all doubt, but they have convinced me enough to radically change how I live my life. In other areas I am less certain.

Approximations and tolerance

In science, disagreements still occur. But, by going back to first principles, the reasons for them and the range of uncertainty can in theory be seen. In the current discussion as to the effects of greenhouse gases and the dangers of global warming there are differences in the predictions made by groups of scientists. However, these disagreements are not about the fundamental process. All agree that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that carbon dioxide is produced by burning fossil fuels. The differences arise because the world and our weather systems are so complicated that it is impossible to create an exact model with an exact answer. No scientist would insist that their model was perfect. The common understanding of the science and the modelling process allow real discussion to take place as to the merits of the different models and the range of uncertainty. Among climate scientists, there is agreement about the heart of the process, and also agreement about the uncertainty of predictions.
Equally in engineering, it is impossible to make something to an exact size or weight. With the right technology and expense, the error may be minute, but the errors remain. In the world of engineering answers are generally given as approximations. Where size or weight is critical, specifications are given with tolerances: instead of 10mm, 9.99 to 10.01mm.

I cannot tell, but this I know

In my approach to theology, I think a similar tolerance is crucial.
When I was growing up in Birmingham, when people said, “I’m not bothered”, it meant they didn’t mind either way. Moving to South Yorkshire I discovered that for others, “I’m not bothered” means “I don’t like”. The same words can mean different things in different contexts and cultures.
The New Testament was written nearly 2,000 years ago, in Greek, and in a different culture. Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Greek. He often taught using parables, which are subject to interpretation. We cannot tell the tone of voice he used, or fully understand the cultural context in which he spoke. When we add to that the vastness of the Bible and its many and varied forms of literature, we should be cautious in declaring what we think it means.
I love the hymn, I cannot tell . . . . But this I know. There are some historical facts that I consider to be beyond all reasonable doubt. The heart of my faith is built on them. There are also significant issues that raise doubts for me, in particular the fact of so much suffering in the world. I believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus with a confidence that affects how I lead my life every day. But I cannot give a good answer as to why there is so much suffering, and so I respect those who disagree with me.

Modernism and Postmodernism

So I believe that by looking at evidence, going back to primary sources, we can know the truth, or we can estimate uncertainty. In philosophical terms I might be described as a modernist, relying on logic and the scientific method. At Durham we were told that our culture had become “postmodern”. The horrors of war and environmental disasters, made possible by modern engineering, were said to be in part responsible for this cultural shift. Alister McGrath in his Introduction to Christian Theology states that in our postmodern culture we have stopped having confidence in the power of reason to provide universally accepted foundations for knowledge, especially in the areas of faith and morality. Instead, relativism and pluralism—the belief that contrasting “truths” are equally valid—has flourished.2
In a lecture, postmodernism was described as having a pick n mix approach to truth—selecting what you like.
The strength of postmodernism is that it has encouraged people to think for themselves, rather than being dictated to by the Church or any other “custodian of truth”. Scepticism, not trusting everything we hear, is a strength when it leads to proper investigation. But I worry that instead of investigating, many are simply choosing what to believe or not believe based on a personal preference.
In his novel The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown alleges that Jesus was married and had children, but that after his death the Church hid these facts and distorted his teaching. The Church hierarchies were described as a male conspiracy hiding the truth. I enjoyed the book as a thriller, but was frustrated to hear of many people who thought that it might be true. I watched interviews on the BBC where two male clergy stated that it wasn’t true—but if you believe that the Church is a misogynistic conspiracy, what else would they say? I didn’t hear of the BBC going back to historical sources or any other evidence. People were believing what they wanted to believe. I found it frustrating. Then Graham Norton on his show mentioned the book and said “if you don’t want to know what it is about look away now”. He then held up a card which said it is all b******s. Many people stopped taking the book seriously after that.
I was grateful for Graham Norton’s contribution, but worried that many people’s beliefs were based on what celebrities say or popular culture, rather than looking at the evidence.

Making a difference in the world

As an engineer I am concerned for practical action, not just head knowledge. As the letter of James says, faith without deeds is dead (James 2:17). So, in the final chapters of the book, I will consider issues about how we put our faith into practice.
Engineering in the real world lives with uncertainties, but by building on solid foundations, it has achieved extraordinary feats. Engineering includes approximations, safety margins, and sometimes having the humility and honesty to say we don’t know. But that humility has not stopped us putting people on the moon.
All Christians agree, at least in theory, that Jesus commanded us to love our neighbours, and that this includes our enemies. Sadly, we have often failed to put that command into practice. Yet where Christians have put aside their differences, and have united around what they agree on, they have made an amazing difference in our world.
Christians have played a significant role in abolishing legalized slavery, bringing peace in Northern Ireland, and developing charities and fair trade around the world. Indeed, it is extraordinary to think that Christianity has spread all over the world, despite the imperfect way that many have attempted to share their faith over the centuries.
Rather than uniting around all that we agree about, the Church has often fallen out over matters that are uncertain. We have spent our energies debating things of lesser importance, rather than looking at the crucial questions and working together with our common faith to make the world a better place.

The myth of objectivity?

As an engineer I was taught that in reports we should always write in the passive voice: “a force was applied” rather than “I applied a force”. The theory behind writing in this passive voice was that the person doing the experiment should not be significant in the findings. However, when reading reports, we always considered who wrote them. In the world where big business and science interact the author is even more significant—are they representing a particular vested interest?
Equally in academic theology, the accep...

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