Recent reading on this site, and also at Rick’s blog, has got me wondering why emergent thinking appears so threatening to many church leaders, some of whom in their own heyday were considered quite radical themselves. This is just one guy’s perspective (mine) and I’m not too fragile, so feel free to unleash intellectual hell (or careful critique) on me if you feel the urge.
My personal feeling is that postmodernism carries us to CS Lewis’s cliff experience a la pilgrim’s regress. We must, under a postmodern critique reach a kind of spiritual agnosticism that can never be resolved by knowing, critiquing, or analysing, and must instead be solved with beautifully idiotic faith.
To me it was always this simple stupidity of choosing to believe that is why “the simple things confound the wise”. As long as we are determined to “know with certainty” we’re not living by faith, we’re actually just using dissociative mind-tricks to convince ourselves we are certain. Faith must occur in an environment of doubt.
On that basis, however you slice your postmodernism, it must leave you with the agnostic premise: there may be absolutes, but we can never be certain what they are. Then in choosing to put our faith in the best representation and interpretation of the ancient tradition that we can find, we make an honest choice of faith.
To do anything else is not a higher morality or a more stable belief system; it’s simply poor logic, and bad psychology. There’s nothing new under the sun. Modernism constructed an increasingly complex and diverse worldview-cluster based on some assumptions. Post-modernism is mostly just the equal and opposite reaction, the re-questioning of the assumptions.
To me, whoever claims to have a certainty, however strongly they believe it, is likely being self-deceived. We do not have, we never have had certainty. We only believed that we had it.
Those who fight so doggedly, with closed eyes and ears to defend these ‘absolute tenets’ of their faith against what appears to be an unquenchable relativism, do so because when they chose faith, they chose it in a falsely constructed environment of certainty. The psychology of certainty demands the dissociation of any thinking that indicates possible doubt. The story that is told about the certainty comes later and is built to justify the pre-chosen response to ‘cognitive dissonance.’
The problem is that those opposed to the questions raised by emergent’s are genuinely threatened by them… they are at risk of bigger problems if they can’t resolve the tension between question and belief. I think Christ knew the dilemma of certainty when he said to Thomas “You believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who believe, even when they have not seen.”
I’m learning to be compassionate to those who are threatened by an environment of uncertainty… their world does come crashing down, at least for a while, if they accept the truth about doubt.
6 Comments
Right, well it’s late, but a few things I’ve briefly thought about. Appolgies for rambles in advance.
Studying post-modernism or modernism recently, particularly in the context of design, but I think it translates across, that post modernism an extension of modernism (which was very radical in it’s time > forward thinking) rather than an opposite - but I think that is what you’re getting at… There is this ‘must’ have doubt/faith coexistence of the now (and the before when ‘we’ didn’t get it/chose to ignore it).
I’m reading a semi-non fiction Amy Tan book at the moment The Opposite of Fate and she has this curious dichotomy of a having grown up with a very down the line Christian father and a (go along with it but believe other bizarre stuff at the same time)mother… her life questions (Amy Tan’s) point at faith and at fate simultaneously.
Fate must occur in an environment of doubt?
What happens when things like coincidence etc are bought into the conversation as another kind of absolute/non-absolute? Is it simply the ‘non-Christian’ slant of the stuck in modernity of Christians?
Questions, as you say, are beautiful things but there are some things I think we need to be definite on, even if we don’t have the specifics sorted.
And with the Thomas thing, is it enough/satisfactory to believe if you recognize you have not seen, even if you don’t pull out a full blown ‘emergent’ way of thinking? Surely even those who sit in their traditional churches do understand that they don’t know it all?
…good guess that half of the about is repetitious, misunderstanding of the post, ill-said and mostly works just in my mind.
Well I think most of what you’ve said made sense to me, unless I missed something myself.
The thing about making things definite is an interesting point… because in fact there are some things I’m pretty definite about… But I would’t say that I “know” they are right, because for me the very nature of “knowing” has been called into question. I would instead say, I choose to believe that these things are definite.. sometimes on the basis of only ambiguous ideology.
So because I am a Christian, I do choose to believe in the external objective existance of God, however I shy away from saying “I know there is a God” because at least in todays English the term knowing is linked to the idea that there is a sound rational argument for something… and that is not how I “know” (in a different sense) God.
I believe in God, because I don’t believe that the universe can be blamed on random chance in a vacuum. I believe in God because kindness is worthwhile even when it undermines evolution. I believe in Christ because it seems like exactly the kind of thing the God I believe in would do to re-ballance the universe. But I probably believe these things because I’m a white westerner who grew up in a christian family.
I have met Arabic people with the same certainty that there is no God but Allah and Mohamed is his prophet, as the christians I have met who know without doubt that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father but by him. For this reason, I don’t put my faith in certainty, I put my faith in choice. As for me and my house…
If christianity is correct, and if Jesus teachings were right and true, then they will be fulfilled, regardless of whether I defend them or attack them. What becomes more important then, at least to me, is finding the best way to live out what I believe were the key principles Jesus taught about living… and hope that in so doing, I am playing a part in God’s purpose for reconciling humanity to himself.
In an environment where no one needs to be ‘certain’ that they have all the answers, we can be much more gracious, and I believe, much more effective, in discussing our values and beliefs. While this may perpetuate liberalism and allow certain ‘herecies’ I think it is vastly preferable to an oppressive atmosphere of absoluteism, where any deviation from an institutionally established interpretation of scripture and life is immediately repressed.
But maybe I’ve missed a ballance point somewhere in the middle?
“The thing about making things definite is an interesting point… because in fact there are some things I’m pretty definite about… But I would’t say that I “know” they are right, because for me the very nature of “knowing” has been called into question. I would instead say, I choose to believe that these things are definite.. sometimes on the basis of only ambiguous ideology.”
If you read that back to yourself Tim, doesn’t it just sound like classic postmodern epistemology? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re saying that there are a stack of things that you believe to be more reliable than anything else - so much so, that you’re willing to make them influential in your life direction.
The way I see it, there is an implicit weighing up of alternatives in that process - some of which are undoubtedly influenced by upbringing and environment - but choices made nonetheless.
Thus, my question is, what makes you want to hold these beliefs, convictions, choices, etc in an open hand? Is it just a nice postmodernist way of being nice to others who have differing views and journeys?
I strongly suspect that even for you, there have been and will be moments in life when the chips are down and you do stand your ground. There will be an issue where you have to take up an ethical, moral or spiritual position. When it happens, in that moment, doesn’t your choice effectively become an absolute? At least in the short term? And if it does, then what’s the point of claiming to be even slightly relativistic in the first place?
To an extent I know I’m just arguing the modernist viewpoint back at you. But if there truly is nothing new under the sun, then “right vs. wrong” will always be there, even if you try to carry it loosely to distance yourself from modernist arrogance.
Can your reluctance to say “I know” become an easy way to avoid owning your absolutes because that’s more palatable for the culture that we live in?
I disagree with your apparent premise that certainty denies faith. Hebrews 11 is fairly clear that faith is the same as certainty. In my understanding faith has far less to do with believing whether God is a reality here and now, or that we have picked the right religion from among the masses of ideologies we are constantly in the midst of, and far more to do with the certainty that God has the ability and intention of acting out the promises He has made to us. It is the certainty that future events will be as God has revealed, the certainty that we can trust God’s judgement in our lives.
When Jesus says that those who have not the proof of Jesus’ physical body are blessed, I understand that to mean that it is those who are convicted by less evidence, those who do not hold back belief until they receive more concrete proof, who are blessed. Note that I say “more concrete”, because believing with no scrutiny or evidence is a poor state of affairs indeed, and can lead down any path.
I was in error when I said “far less to do”. It has much to do with believing God’s reality here and now, and the future promises.
Reinhard, I don’t think you can justify that faith is the same as certainty. Or if you can, then we havr different semantic definitions of the term certainty. Perhaps for you, certainty is faith… in my world, certainty is an empiracal reasoned conclusion. You have a faith based ‘way of knowing’ which is incompatible with contemporary thought.
I don’t believe that God can be ‘proved’ through reason, or that belief requires certainty. I believe the Taj Mahal is white but I am not certain of it. Some christians seem to divorce rational thinking in favor of blind acceptance… which is a choice they should not make doctrine, nor enforce on others. You think you must ‘be’ certain to be saved. I think maybe you have to only want to be. Faith to me is choosing to belive what you hope to be true. That doesn’t mean you have to be in denial about your potential to be mistaken.