While we’re spending the bulk of each day reading and then discussing our readings, some of us have been recruited to blog a bit about the happenings and discussions in the seminar. It’s an effort to engage a wider audience than our small group of participants. Perhaps it will give a taste of what is challenging us in our discussions. Perhaps it will serve to inspire others to read what we’re reading. Perhaps it will nudge others to engage with the questions we present in the blog itself.

If you’re interested in checking it out, visit http://worshipweblog.com. I’ve written two post there thus far. Consider using the “Like” function on your Facebook profile or “tweeting” the links in an effort to get even more people involved in the conversation. There are multiple seminars happening concurrently, so if you want to keep up with the one in which I’m engaged, look for the tag “From Worldview to Worship–Summer Seminar 2011.”  Happy reading.

The brief moment I’m speaking about occurred during the children’s sermon. While the sermon itself was leading to a very significant yearly ritual in the congregation involving parents and their children, what I saw only emerged as a response to a particular object involved in the sermon, not to the sermon itself. As the speaker was beginning the introduction to the sermon, a variety of objects were brought out which would help communicate the lesson. One of those objects was a Green Bay Packers helmet. As the helmet was raised out of the bag containing the objects, a middle-aged woman in the pew in front of me nearly jumped out of the pew with excitement. I found in this particular reaction rather striking. It was one of those moments, I think, where the church’s liturgy inadvertently became complicit with a secular one. That is, unwittingly, unintentionally, and unpredictably, the use of that Packers helmet, at least in the life of one person (if not a handful of others), suddenly brought a burst of excitement about a sports team and their future role in Super Bowl XLV. What stood out to me was the difference between the kind of excitement that could be engendered by the use of a football helmet in the midst of a Christian worship service over and against any excitement (or emotional display, involvement, commitment, enhancement, etc) for  Jesus. I became concerned in that moment, how the church had simply reinforced that woman’s devotion to the Green Bay Packers over and against Christ.

[What do I mean by liturgy here, such that I can use it with regard to both the church and the secular? Quite simply I mean this: liturgy (understood broadly here) is a set of practices meant to shape and form our devotion in a particular manner toward a particular object or way of being. Christian liturgy is meant to shape our devotion toward Jesus. A secular liturgy, such as nationalism is meant to shape our devotion toward a country, such as America. An exemplar practice here would be the recitation of the pledge of allegiance. For this general understanding of liturgy and for various themes in this post, I am borrowing from James K. A. Smith's work, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation.]

Before I go on to comment on this event, let me explain a few things. First, I want to be clear that the use of a Green Bay Packers helment, or reference to a sports team, or any other cultural artefact may well have a place in Christian worship–I think those places are limited, to be sure, but I’m not saying such things do not belong there outright. This is because we bring our identities as sports fans, Apple product fans, Coldwater Creek fans, Williams Sonoma fans, Lexus fans, into church every single week. It is impossible not to do so. And since, as Martyn Percy (Shaping the Church: The Promise of Implicit Theology, 40) and others have pointed out, religion is part of culture and culture is part of religion, avoiding their interaction is impossible. So a sermon might have a cultural reference. The question is, why is it there? How you answer that is particularly important. Second, I am not condemning, criticizing, or ridiculing the preparer of the children’s sermon for their use of cultural objects (the Packers helmet wasn’t the only one). Third, as I mentioned above, there could have been no possible way to predict the reaction I witnessed. It must be assumed that all motivations behind the children’s sermon were innocent and/or praiseworthy in this regard. What else is a children’s sermon for than to bring the pure Word of God to the children (and often, more clearly than many “adult” sermons, to adults)?

What should stand out here is only this: the reaction of this woman to a cultural artefact in the midst of a Christian liturgy was symptomatic of her involvement in a different, secular liturgy, wherein her devotion toward the Green Bay Packers had already been shaped–and this phenomenon occurred in the midst of Christian worship which is supposed to shape and form our devotion otherwise, that is, toward Christ. The question that bugs me (and should bug you) is this: How often is the church inadvertently, unwittingly, and certainly unintentionally (I hope) complicit in forming the devotion of its members toward something other than Jesus Christ by invoking, involving, or using secular liturgies? How often, in the church’s self-perceived faithfulness, is it in fact subtly complicit in a simultaneous unfaithfulness? One might argue that the answer simply is, all the time, since the church is constituted by sinners. My question for us all strikes more pointedly. Are there times when the church is complicit which can be countered, corrected or undone? Can we become aware or conscious of our complicity such that we can make moves against it? Is the church willing to be considerate and self-critical enough to look for those places where such complicity might exist, and subsequently do something about it?

Here are some examples of where such complicity might be present in the life of the church in the 21st Century:

Nationalism

Many congregations have the American flag (and often a state flag) present in their sanctuary. Various post-Constantinian authors have argued implicitly that the practice of having these flag present is a form of Constantinianism–that is, that the presence of the American flag in the sanctuary of a Christian church reveals a certain implicit confusion about the relationship between Church and State. Under Constantine, Church and Empire were united. Such a relationship no longer exists, technically speaking. However, I have heard Christians speak about America as God’s promised land. In the minds of some Christians, and possibly many, there is still an implicit sense that the church is the same political body as the state–and hence, within many Christian circles, there is a significant effort to return the US to its roots as a “Christian” nation (various examples and the attending problems with this belief are highlighted in the first essay of James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World). The post-Constantinian authors are attempting to recover a more faithful understanding of the church–that is, that the church has a politics of its own, that it is a unique political body with citizens of its own (even if they are simultaneously citizens of various other communities, societies, clubs, nations, etc.). I have written about this a little here. Theologically speaking then, having an American flag present during Christian worship confuses the point that Christian worship is meant to be a public disturbance–one which announces Jesus as Lord and calls everyone to account for their allegiance (or not) to Him.

In addition to the presence of the America flag, what kind of language is used in the celebration of Veteran’s Day, or Memorial Day? While I am definitely thankful for the service of members of the military and those who work to preserve the safety of our nation and many others, I am concerned about the language (or better, grammar) used when we refer to people who have lost their lives in the midst of their service, choosing to call it “the ultimate sacrifice.” Should not that reference of “ultimate” be used for Christ alone? What reference might we use then for the sacrifice they made, since it is still important to be thankful for that work? I am not sure. But in our shared use of the term “ultimate” with the rest of American culture, Christians are potentially complicit in a liturgy which works devotion toward something other than Christ.

Individualism

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has written (in his work Unleashing the Scripture) that the Bible should be taken out of the hands of North American Christians. He notes this especially regarding the fairly typical practice of churches giving them out, perhaps to confirmands or visitors. Why has he made this rather striking argument? Because he believes, and I think rightly so, that the Bible is not just any other book, but one which people must be taught how to read. The Bible is a book which belongs to and forms a particular community. To treat it as something every individual has a right to, or to make some sort of missional effort at simply giving them away without any ongoing and intentional connection to a church community in which one might learn to read it, is problematic. Interpretation, which is treated in so much of the North Atlantic world as the native right and ability of any person, is actually quite the opposite. From our youngest moments, we are learning and being taught how to interpret. We don’t simply “just know” how to interpret. Reading the Bible is another way of saying interpreting the Bible, since all reading is interpretation. And since the Bible is the special book of the church–the very people of the Book–should those new to the church not be taught how to read and interpret faithfully? The church must continue to form the communal relationships which are the work of Christ, rather than simply further promote such individualism.

Commodity-Fetishism

Somehow, companies that sell products know how to get us to need their products–not just want, but need. Somehow, they are able to capture our devotion, even through simple things like television, internet, or print media ads. For example, Apple creates something new, and in so many words says to us, “Look what we made for you. See how it will make you life better? See how by having this product you will be the envy of so many? See how it will make you feel special?”

In our culture, our imagination has in many ways been passively formed to the extent that we see our lives as being filled with work so that we can have things. Indeed, in many ways this is true almost beyond our ability to resist. How can one have food, shelter, and other basic necessities as well as support a family with the same things, without working? Fair enough. But in many ways we take this too far. Our culture, it has been argued (by such thinkers as Josef Pieper, in his Leisure, the Basis of Culture), is one of total work. We work more than we have to. We work in order to have, and to have even more than we need (Apple knows how to make us need through its own liturgies). We work because work defines us. We work, because somehow we were taught that to be a good citizen in our society, we need to productive (with the underlying agenda there being, so you can be a good consumer, and so the economy can keep booming, and so we can keep being happy–another liturgy working devotion to a particular image of what it means to be human).

Many church workers that I have known work more than 50 hrs per week (in some cases that’s too much already). Some work 80 or more. How is this a witness to those in the church who also hear these same workers speak about Sabbath, rest, peace, the light burden of Christ, resisting busyness, and other topics which imply that work for the sake of work is not honoring Christ? Church workers who work so much, for whatever their justification for doing so, are complicit in living an implied theology which serves as an unspoken (and likely unintentional) witness to those whom they serve. The devotion they teach is not toward Christ (as much as one might say they work so much for His sake, because He would not want one to do so), but rather toward the secular imagination’s image of a good citizen–one who is productive, and therefore a good consumer. There are a handful of problems here, and I’ve written about some of them here. Suffice it to say that the church’s complicity in this cultural liturgy is widespread, and likely quite harmful.

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What shall we conclude? That’s probably not the right question. Since I write to try to “do” something to my readers, the question is more directly, what should we do? The answer is simple: pay attention. I’ve written this to raise awareness, to bring to conscious thought something we might simply be taking for granted and therefore missing altogether–something which is immensely influential for the church, yet subtly and subversively so. But don’t just pay attention. When you notice the possibility of something you or your church is doing that might be complicit with a secular liturgy, think, converse, and analyze with others about whether your estimation is on track. Then begin to explore how you might change your practices for the purpose of being more faithful and helping those around you to do so as well. I write this as someone who is regularly haunted by these questions–AND regularly convicted about my own complicities. Christ comes to give freedom. The liturgies of His church are meant to work that freedom and form us in devotion toward Him. Thanks for reading.

To define the “suppressed binary opposite” is to say that behind whatever someone might be arguing for, there is something that is left unsaid, usually the very idea which the argument being made is trying to protect. So for example, in keeping with the argument of this blog as of late toward a non-foundationist way of seeing the world, there hasn’t been a suppressed binary opposite because I’ve been rather clear about what I’m trying to argue against: foundationalism. But, if I were a foundationalist, the suppressed binary opposite would likely be harder to detect. Foundationalists are, in my mind (because I used to be one), trying to protect a certain view of something. Within Christian apologetics and the practice of theology, usually the desired object of protection is a certain view of God, truth, or morality.

Thus these are at least three of the suppressed binary opposites of foundationalism, at least as far as theology is concerned. Here is how they tend to be argued (or assumed) and a few problems which non-foundationalists try to point out.

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God is generally held to be a logical necessity. The arguments which assumes this tend to reflect on the Big Bang and Creation ex nihilo, and conclude that someThing had to start everything, someOne had to create from nothing (the operative concept being “had to”), and that someOne or someThing is GOD. In addition, it is argued that for there to be a meaning to life, there must be a someOne to give life meaning or purpose.

The problem here can be identified with a simple question: who is God is this case? Christianity tells the story of who God is by telling the story about God’s Son, Jesus Christ–the very Word of God, God’s self-revelation to the world, God-in-the-flesh, the God-man. We receive the story of Jesus Christ through the Church and through the Scriptures (simultaneously – a theological point that I won’t elaborate upon here).

To say that God’s identity is known in the narrative of Jesus Christ might seem quite obvious to most Christians. As it should be. What stands out in this particular conversation however, is the nature of the issue that the God referred to by foundationalists is a God WITHOUT a particular identity. That God is the so-called “God of the philosophers.” (In case you didn’t notice, that God is also an idol.) It is the platonized God, the God of logical necessity, required by reason to justify a story we made up. What is that story? Well, it is one which claims that the world around us was created. Was it? How do you know? Could the cosmos not be an eternally recurring thing as is argued by some astrophysicists? Or could it not be an illusion, as is argued in the East?

The point of those questions is to point up the debatability or contestability of the particular story which says the world was created. What is argued (or assumed) first is that the world was created. But should that be the first point of argument. Do not the Scriptures begin in another way? They proclaim God’s existence, then His subsequent creation of the world. Why start with the world and then demand a God as its creator simply by logical necessity? Such a claim is not, in fact, Christian.

I mentioned above that the story of the world/cosmos is one we made up in which we invoke a God of logical necessity in order to explain its existence. A second feature of that story is the assumption that there must be meaning to life. That begs the question, must there? Who says? Again, the problem is beginning with a certain story about the way things are and then making up a way to justify it.

It may seem a trifle or a mere nuance to argue that we should tell our stories in the right order, but this works out to be vitally important. If we only begin with the features of the world/cosmos we see around, if we only tell a story which works by simply stating propositions (i.e., there is meaning to life, something can’t be created from nothing, etc.), then we end up formulating a sophisticated means of justifying those premises, justifications which may work out to be nothing but great falsities and problematic stories which future generations will have to work hard to undo (see what I did there?). If on the other hand, we simply tell our stories the way they have been given to us–that is, if we simply proclaim the story of the Christian narrative and go on to make sense of the world through the story it tells of the world, we in fact do not have to deal with complicated fabrications like a “God of the philosophers” because we meet the God of Jesus Christ instead.

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Truth is understood to be Absolute, simply because the opposite of Absolute Truth is Relative Truth, and relativism regarding truth is absurd. Thus, truth is Absolute in a self-evident manner, or so it is argued or assumed.

What to do with this…? I’ve written in some of the other posts (as well as noting in personal conversations) that when we deal with truth, we always do so as if whatever we are saying is true REALLY IS TRUE. That’s how we do it. We can’t argue for something being true without this phenomenon (except when we’re doing something different, like pretending, fantasizing, or lying – but that would be SOMETHING different).

I’m making a descriptive argument here. Truth may indeed be Absolute. We tend to operate as if it is. The problem with the above assumption of foundationalism is this: it does not admit that when we speak of truth we are making a claim about truth. Whatever we take to be Absolute Truth is not incontestable (unless of course you think you have perfect knowledge of everything – but why would you be reading this blog?). There may be good or bad reasons for thinking one claim is the truth as opposed to another claim. But our claims to truth are made in faith. There’s no other way about it.

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Morality is God’s Will for how we should live. Get rid of truth or God (which foundationalists are afraid non- or anti-foundationalists are doing), and morality falls apart because morality always needs some sort of foundation–an eternal Law-Giver–so that morals are unquestionable and all are accountable.

This argument is simply naive. There is not room to go very far into the issue here, but the naivety of this argument is shown clearly in the written records of the experience of missionaries to foreign lands where the local people’s don’t live like people in the West – their moral code is simply different. Historical studies also show that morals have changed over time – not necessarily on the continuum of good to bad or vice versa. Morals adjust to social situations. Sociological observations of this sort simply demonstrate that morals differ among peoples and among time periods and that it is ultimately within cultures and communities that morals are established, agreed upon, change, and measures for accountability or transgression are constructed.

How does this line up with biblical morality? First of all, is there such a thing? The obvious answer might seem to be, duh, of course there is. How about the 10 Commandments? What about Natural Law? Regarding the 10 Commandments, where is the perfect interpretation of how to carry them out? Consider how exactly one might honor one’s mother and father…What if someone is orphaned? What if honoring one’s parents means respect and doing what you’re told as a child, yet doing what’s best for your parents (as you understand it) when you’re older, even if it’s not what they want (which might still be honoring and respecting them)? Regarding Natural Law, what exactly is it? Natural Laws are human efforts to use language to describe reality. Who’s to say that gravity, a so-called natural law, won’t someday work differently – might not something fall UP? What about murdering someone? What about lying? These may seem more simple, yet there are complicated questions which surround these issues as well, making the interpretation of how to carry them out difficult to sort through (think end of life issues, think of when an ax-murderer shows up at the door asking for someone whom you know is present).

These questions are enough to compel one to rethink the uncritical adoption of such foundationalist presuppositions about morality.

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The three assumptions are what foundationalists are AFRAID of losing in the challenge presented by non-foundationalism. Because of such fear, there is an effort in their argumentation to protect these presuppositions. In that way, they stand as at least three of the suppressed binary opposites of foundationalism. They often go unspoken. Apologetics will at times deal with these arguments explicitly, but that is the at times simply the role of a particular kind of apologetics. However, more often than not, these assumptions stand behind a Christian foundationalist view of the world – they are the assumptions that we cannot give up because if we were to do so, we would no longer be Christian. My argument is such a position is hopelessly unChristian. They begin outside of the Christian narrative and are smuggled in the backdoor, as if the Christian narrative were talking about these ideas all along.

The significant issue which compels this writer to challenge the assumptions of a God of logical necessity, absolute truth, and absolute morality is simply this: faith. Underneath these assumptions is a distinct inability to prove any of them, and thus, they are maintained only by faith. If that is the case, they might be at the very least, rephrased or reframed so that if they are going to be associated with the story of the Christian faith, they might be articulated in a manner that shows how they distinctly emerge out of it, and thus are more faithfully Christian. At times (and this is more often than not), truth remains a debatable question in some way, as does morality. The question of God, even though we have a distinct revelation of Him in Jesus Christ, is constantly under fire in a self-critical way. Jesus Christ always comes to us through the Word to challenge our understanding of Him as the revelation of God. Thus theology and theologizing go on, indefinitely, until He returns. Such is the way of non-foundationalism.

Today was the end of the 21st Theological Symposium at Concordia Seminary. This year the topic was on Scripture, asking whether it was “formative, or formality?” Clearly the question was rhetorical, but the challenge of the Symposium was to think critically once again about things we generally take for granted. Regarding Scripture, we know the right answer is of course, “formative,” but the challenge is to go on to further answer, “in what way?”

One presentation in particular, which argued about the fact that there will never be an objective, certain, absolutely correct interpretation of Scripture–an argument that extends from a non-foundationalist approach to theology, which I have argued for in previous posts–really bothered some people. That’s not surprising for a couple of reasons. First, to even begin thinking about theology from a non-foundationalist approach is not really something one can do after only an one-hour-long presentation, especially when that presentation simply assumes non-foundationalism (which this presentation did–it simply operated within that kind of framework). To think as a non-foundationalist about theology, one must take the time to wrestle with it. Second, and this will constitute the topic of this post, a non-foundationalist presentation of theology seems to beg certain questions for foundationalists which cause certain visceral, emotional responses. In so many words, for foundationalists, non-foundationalist theology freaks them out.

What do I mean? Well, in the course of the presentation on interpretation, which argued that in the end, all we really have the is ability to argue persuasively through offering our good reasons for holding a particular position or adopting a particular interpretation, some hearers felt like they were left with NO means for arguing or establishing their positions. Why did they feel so helpless? My sense is because for so long, they have lived with the assumption that there is a perfectly correct interpretation of Scripture (God’s interpretation, the author’s intention) and if we all just act sensibly everyone would simply come to accept the “right” interpretation, which is what we believe we have. I’m not sure what thinking sensibly would mean. Remember, it cannot mean jettisoning our biases and approaching Scriptural interpretation objectively because that’s simply impossible; our presuppositions are what we think WITH and without them there would be no thinking.

What I believe those people felt–the ones who were disturbed by the implicit non-foundationalism in the presentation–is a sense of loss, and further, a sense of not being grounded anymore, of not having an anchor, of not being able to defend their position, and quite possibly, that all theology is now thrown out the window and maybe God is gone too. I don’t blame them. I think that’s a perfectly natural reaction to something so unfamiliar. And I must admit, there was a time when I had that feeling too. That feeling scared me. It made me worry. It haunted me. And for a long time, I was a foundationalist, if only to avoid having to feel that feeling. I was worried about relativism, anything-goes interpretations, and lacking the ability to adequately defend what I believed. How could I even hope to convince other people of the truth of Jesus Christ, the existence of God, and the promises of the Gospel if I didn’t have the foundation of Objective Truth to cling to? How could I go on arguing for and exhorting people to a certain way of life–morals and an Absolute Morality–if there was no such thing as Absolute Truth?

These are all valid concerns and questions. And there are answers. Many of them have been hinted at in the previous posts. But, in this post, I want to address the valid emotional and visceral responses that are raised in a presentation of non-foundationalism or one in which non-foundationalism is operating.

For foundationalist, the operation of non-foundationalism, and many of the conclusions that one might draw as a non-foundationist (for example, that there is no “correct” interpretation of the Bible that is at least available to us, thus we’re left with a particular interpretation which we assert, argue for, defend, and try to persuade others to share), seems to be the very thing that Christians are meant to guard against. Non-foundationalism is the danger of the devil, we’ve been taught. It’s all postmodernist relativism, that Parisian perversion that proves Paris has nothing to do with Jerusalem.

All this thinking results from the fact that the foundationalist has read the non-foundationalists wrongly, but because he couldn’t do otherwise. Trying to present a non-foundationalist argument to a foundationalist is like trying to send a fax to someone who doesn’t have a fax machine–there is absolutely no way to translate the message so that it is received properly because the appropriate apparatus, namely the fax machine, doesn’t exist. The foundationalist simply cannot understand the non-foundationalist because he doesn’t have the proper apparatus. His terms, his concepts, his logic makes the non-foundationalist seem like a living contradiction who is merely oblivious to his “error.” So, common reactions of foundationalists to non-foundationalists include dismissiveness and a superiority complex that adopts the stance of, “well, once they let go of all that mumbo-jumbo, they’ll come to their senses and see that they’ve been wrong all along, then they’ll come back to our sensible position.” Foundationalists act as if everything is perfectly clear (or at least, that it can be if you think like them)–and that’s the problem. So much of the world does appear perfectly clear, both to foundationalists and non-foundationalists. The difference is, one group knows how to handle things when there is disagreement (the non-foundationalists can account for it–basically, they already know it’s gonna happen); and the other doesn’t. The foundationalists scoof, shake their head, rub there eyes, and wonder if they’re really seeing what they think they’re seeing (that is, a whole bunch of people who don’t think like they do, as if it’s a logical impossibility; but there it is, right before their eyes)–they’re always making an effort to get everyone to join some universal point of view, as if it’s obvious and sensible, and they just cannot understand why people disagree.

Hence, when Christians, who stake their very life on what they believe, teach and confess, run into non-foundationalism, they often react in highly emotional ways. Non-foundationalism opens the door to doubt, agnosticism, and demands at the very least an effort a re-accounting for the beliefs they hold. That’s a lot to face down. It’s ominous and threatening. Foundationalism is safe. The tendency is to be reactive, retreat, or hunker down and hope that big bad devil will just go away.

But what if foundationalism really is wrong. Further, what if it’s theological unfaithful? What if certainty, the “correct” interpretation, and our “sensible logic” has become an idol? Well, those are threatening questions too.

How do we work through those questions? How can we face down the challenges of non-foundationalism? How can we try to listen with a hospitable spirit to non-foundationalist presentations from people who purport to be Christians (that is, people like you and me, who share the same convictions about God, Jesus, salvation, hope, the end of all things, etc.) without reactively dismissing them? How can we seek to understand, so that maybe somehow, we can develop the apparatus of translating our understanding of them into something other than sheer dismissiveness?

My answer, which is also my own experience as someone who has been through it, is this: Listening. Patience. Humility. And by clinging to the promises of Jesus through prayer. Moving from foundationalism to non-foundationalism is undoubtedly a bit of a traumatic experience. It is very much a “conversion.” And I treat it with that sort of sensitivity. This isn’t just a game about logic, or different kinds of logic, or about one person being smarter than another. It’s serious business, especially when the emotional and visceral responses center around the fact that all of these ideas directly impact our faith convictions, the very beliefs we stake our lives and our eternity upon.

This post has been an effort at highlighting and taking seriously the emotional/affective elements of our journey toward non-foundationalism and the ability to give up concepts like “Absolute” truth and “Objective” truth–yet not Truth, but still admitting that what we call truth is our claim, our take, our conviction based on good reasons. I cannot in one post, or even in one conversation (but perhaps over the period of many) sooth all the fears, questions, doubts, frustrations, etc., that come with the challenge posed by non-foundationalism to foundationalists. I cannot in one post rid Christians of the sometimes haunting sense that to be a non-foundationalist means God, morals, and truth go out the window. I can only tell you that such conclusions are not warranted–you don’t have to give it all up. But in order to see whether or not I could be right, you have to stick around long enough, you have to participate in the conversation long enough, to see that it only means re-situating those beliefs within a framework of faith and confidence (rather than certainty). That transition (or if you wish, conversion) is not easy. This post is a means to freely admitting that fact. Been there; done that. I’m with you.

I leave you with these words from Lesslie Newbigin, British missionary to India for more than a quarter century and highly respected missiologist, who wrote them upon returning. It’s one of my favorite quotes because it demonstrates with humility a non-foundationist Christian perspective.

If we are in search of the kind of indubitable certainty which Descartes claimed, the Bible must be set aside. The Bible claims to be a true interpretation of universal history. Since we are not yet at the end of history and since it may yet contain many surprises, we cannot have indubitable certainty. The only possible responses to the claims that the Bible makes are belief or unbelief. There can be no indubitable proofs. No one has seen God so as to verify the claim that he exists. No one has seen the end of the world so as to be sure of the direction in which we have to go. There is no scientific way of testing the claims and promises that the Bible makes. There is no way of being indubitably certain that this is what history is really about and that this gives us the direction of our lives. It must be, as the church has always said, a matter of divine revelation accepted in faith (John 1.18). Proper Confidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 54–55.

Narratives provide the supporting rationality for all of life. They make life intelligible at every level, even accounting for what might be considered unintelligible, by making room for mystery or anomaly. Narratives, or what are sometimes referred to as traditions (e.g., in MacIntyre) constitute what has been called the “cultural imaginary” (see Ward, but also Taylor, Ricoeur, and others)—the very fabric of life in society in which actions and interactions are both driven and understood through a “magma” of images, metaphors, myths, and signs.

This paper will explore the phenomenon that truth is carried and constructed, in and by stories. Through a conversation with some of the figures noted above, as well as others, the paper will highlight the situational nature of truth as intimately connected to the narratives and traditions of local contexts. From within these local contexts, particular practices of treating the truth and reflecting on it emerge. Every context has a particular hermeneutical tradition, one which both conceives of truth and provides a normative guide for judging truthfulness and pursuing truth through, for example research and learning. In other words, every context or community has a sense that it knows what it is looking for when it speaks of truth, and it also has some way of judging whether or not it has found the truth.

Yet the above construal raises a serious question. If truth is bound by the limits of narrative or cultural imaginary, and if additionally, each society, community, or tradition has a unique way of construing the truth as well as a means of getting at the truth, then how might we deal with the general assumption that there is an underlying, singular truth definitive of all reality? Certainly, modernistic rationalism and empiricism, which rely so heavily on certain procedures or methods of argumentation, have failed in the endeavor to arrive at a universal conception of truth or any sort of universal method for arriving at definitively truthful conclusions—various sorts of postmodernism make this critique, both Anglo-American and Continental. Some have feared, then, that on this basis we must conclude relativism. But we need not conclude such an “anything goes” perspective.

That truth is carried in narrative is the assumption of this paper. But we are not left to concede that every narrative has an equal corner of the market on truth. As Charles Taylor and others have noted, there are good reasons for accounting for reality in some ways rather than others. Or to speak more in line with the present argument, there are good reasons to believe that certain narratives carry the truth account for reality better than others. This is not to say that these reasons are not up for debate—in fact, Taylor’s argument assumes they are debatable. It is only to say that in the pursuit of truth narratives, traditions, and cultural imaginaries are all semper reformanda. Through debate, conversation, epistemic gain, and persuasion, narratives are both formed and reformed. The paper will pursue this reasoning regarding the plurality of both narratives and truth, as well as how narratives might change.

The paper will also offer suggestions for further reflection: What might these conclusions offer to a new conceptualization of truth? One possibility is the encouragement of a much deeper analysis of our how cultural practices both communicate truth as well as how they form persons of a particular kind to the extent that they are truthful reflections of the narrative which underlies their identity as members of a particular society or people.

Another possibility is a deeper exploration of how individuals come to take certain narratives to be their narrative. Is it a process of indoctrination? What are they deep mechanisms of production which are at work in forming individuals to be particular people? It seems there is also another very important question here: to be aware of these processes, mechanisms, or systems of indoctrination is of value on the epistemic level of understanding, but how does such awareness do further work in forming and informing practices? In others words, what is the point of simply knowing about the phenomena at work in cultural production, as opposed to putting that knowledge to work?

The second paper is entitled “Narrating the City from a Sacred Refuge.” I’ll be delivering that at the Religion and Modernity in a Secular City conference, hosted by the Katholische Academie (Catholic Academy) in Berlin, Germany in September. The abstract is below.

Jaques Derrida has advocated for cities of refuge for writers who were persecuted and silenced in their local contexts of authorship. Might this concept of cities of refuge and the focus on writing and writers be of great importance for a consideration of religion in the secular city? As a refuge from the city but still within the city, the church can bring the marginalized and persecuted voices of private citizens into the public sphere, effectively blurring the line between the realms. These voices write the story of the city as its citizens—not just with words, but with ways of being. Without such voices—voices which have been silenced publicly—the city does not exist, for as Graham Ward has noted, writing and the city are so inextricably linked. The church is the very place which can best write the narrative of the city, from the very beginnings of the city and cities to the narrative of the city as it should be—an image of the eternal city. The church can best narrate the story of the present and local city for, as a place of refuge it is a place which houses the stories of the city in the voices of its people. In so narrating, might not the church offer a transformative politics through the story it tells? This is the story which represents the city as it is and the vision that calls to it, that haunts and has haunted its being since the first city—the story of the eternal city. This paper will argue for such a view of the church in the secular city. The church is a community of refuge which can narrate the city’s present and its future through practicing the citizenship of the eternal city in modern times.

I’m hoping to meet Graham Ward at this conference. I have been particularly influenced by his work. He’ll be the keynote speaker.

The main point of my argument thus far is this: Christians seem to think that to be Christian, they must argue for the existence of Absolute/Objective Truth, which they then proceed to equate with God/Jesus/The Bible. The whole sense of a “requirement” for this kind of argument in Christianity is unnecessary and has dangerous consequences. Two reasons.

First, to make the argument for the existence of Absolute/Objective truth, Christians have to borrow from a grammar that is not distinctly Christian, thus forcing them at times to make arguments that are not distinctly Christian (take for example Intelligent Design, which many Christians wholeheartedly support – it argues for a “god” any monotheist could accept – a “god” who is not distinctly the God of Jesus Christ).

Second, the borrowing of this grammar is done as an effort to defend Christianity (or justify it) usually in scientific or philosophical ways. In the end, the goal of Christians is to argue for the truth of their beliefs and the authority of their worldview over and against all others. However, by making purchases from a grammar that is not distinctly Christian, compounded with the sense that there is a need to justify Christianity to the secular magisterium (that is, philosophical rationality or scientific empiricism, or some combination thereof), Christians unwittingly relativize the authority of the Christian view to the authority of a higher court.

In the end, Christians will fail about both projects–Christianity will not be taken as authoritative because that position has already been granted to the secular magisterium in the decision made be Christians to argue following the magisterium’s rules and using its grammar; and the opportunity to claim Christianity as the Truth Objectively/Absolutely will fail for the same reason, that is, because those concepts are distinctly a part of the magisterium’s grammar, NOT Christianity’s.

In that last few posts, I’ve tried to situate where this argument comes from. In other words, I’ve tried to show how an uncritical commitment to foundationalism has driven Christians to argue for the existence of Absolute/Objective Truth. Christians simply assume we “must” argue this way. My argument is we need not feel so compelled.

As a viable alternative, I presented the idea of non-foundationalism, primarily through links to two well-written articles on the topic from the web–useful resources for Christians. Because non-foundationalism exists more as a “critique” of foundationalism (it tends to specifically reject the assumptions of foundationalism), non-foundationalism does not necessarily hold assumptions that have specific consequences.

For example, foundationalism assumes the existence of Absolute/Objective Truth and thus works toward the end of discovered indubitably “what” that Truth is. Non-foundationalism, on the other hand, rejects such a way of speaking as unnecessary and untenable, preferring to speak more of the provisionality of knowledge rather than certainty, of truths in the plural but not necessarily of truths that are equally valid or even necessarily in contradiction, etc. Non-foundationalism is thus not a “hard” or “strong” way of speaking, in a “last word” sort of way, as foundationalism is. This lack of specific consequences is frightening to some upon a first encounter with non-foundationalism. I will deal with this affective element in my next post.

As an alternative to foundationalism, non-foundationalism offers to Christians the ability to makes claims and the truthfulness of the Christian narrative while not borrowing from the grammar or submitting to the authority of the secular magisterium. Non-foundationalism allows Christians to more effectively critique other views while simultaneously (and importantly) being open to their voices so that conversations can proceed with care, understanding, learning, and humility. Later posts will offer examples of this kind of conversation and engagement.

It should be noted, as has been done by many scholars, that the Enlightenment was not explicitly a focused attack on Christianity, nor a necessarily intentional attack. At times, through various thinkers, it was both of these things. However, at other times, thinkers and writers were making very serious and engaging efforts at finding ways to reconcile the thought of the Enlightenment with Christian revelation. They meant to find a way to show that what was coming to be understood through Enlightenment rationality and science was indeed a deeper and further understanding of God’s created world. So, note well that the word “attack” is used with some trepidation, especially regarding the earliest stages of the Enlightenment. As enlightened thinking became more encased in the imaginary of the Western world, the idea of an attack is more justifiable from certain angles. Nevertheless, throughout the Enlightenment up to its birth of modernity and even within our current postmodern (late modern, late capitalist, hypermodern) mood, there continue to be significant efforts to justify Christianity. You can consider this series of posts and effort at severely critiquing one of those methods of justifying Christianity–one which plays by the Enlightenment’s rules and adopts modernity’s grammar. My argument is essentially that Christianity need not justify itself in this way–it has its own rules and its own grammar.

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The Enlightenment was a time in which men thought they were no longer in need of a religious perspective to explain the world. Through the power of their own reason, men believed that they could understand and explain the world better than religious and/or superstitious ideas. This kind of thinking arose probably for numerous reasons, but two come to mind.

First, as man’s abilities in scientific discovery grew, even though science as a discipline was at first meant to be a study of God’s Creation and therefore God Himself (according to Romans 1.20), eventually man’s confidence began to overtake his need for reflection upon God or even the need for God to answer what questions man was unable to answer. Man found himself eminently more able than ever before to answer questions about the nature of reality through his scientific endeavors that even for the questions that remained unanswered, man lived in hope that his abilities or other advances would eventually allow for the discovery of answers by means of his own efforts.

Second, because of the presence of many conflicts based on religion, religion itself came to be questioned. For, in general, Christianity, the religion that dominated the region from which the Enlightenment emerged, taught peace instead of conflict. Yet many of the conflicts were themselves religious disputes, or worse, Christianity was used to endorse certain other disputes. Thus the contradiction between the call for peace by Christianity and the use of Christianity in perpetuating conflict caused some to question religion altogether, in an effort to understand it better (not necessarily attack it, at least at first, although that is eventually what happened) and possibly correct it. However, such investigations into Christianity resulted in a culture of perpetual questioning of religion, to the extent that Christianity itself would eventually be challenged at the most fundamental level—its entire validity as a worldview would be undermined.

Thus science and criticism emerged as the dominant forces uprooting the hold the Christianity had upon the culture at large. Some of the challenges of science came at the level of history, archaeology, literary criticism, and naturalism. Efforts were made at disproving the story of the Scripture one event at a time by claiming that the biblical narrative was untrue, that it was not real history. These challenges took the manifestation of archaeological investigations which sought to prove certain people and places did not actually exist, or that events recorded as miracles did not actually happen or could be explained otherwise. The Bible itself was challenged in terms of authorship, internal contradiction, textual critical problems, and interpretive discontinuities. Naturalism questioned supernaturalism by offering natural explanations for what were once taken to be supernatural events (or by dismissing supernatural events altogether as impossible or mythological). Naturalism took the form of biological arguments in competition with the biblical narrative like evolution and natural selection, or as geological and astronomical/astrophysical arguments that gave alternative accounts of the age of the earth and universe. All of these efforts were thought to be validated by some sort of empirical measure, through the use of the unbiased, disinterested scientific method that, as noted above, had no need of supernatural explanation or a “God of the gaps,” and was therefore significantly more powerful in a simple manner for explaining all that is.

The challenges of various kinds of criticism came at the level of philosophy, like in ethics where the God of the Old Testament is challenged as being different from the God of the New Testament because He is wrathful rather than graceful—this was important because of the religious disputes noted above (such views of a wrathful God perpetuated them because of God’s endorsement of the sword) but also for the simple sake of interpersonal relations and the implications which could be drawn from Scripture on how to live ethically and peacefully as compared to the emerging ethical philosophies that posited man’s ability to live in a peaceful social contract with one another. Moral philosophy altogether was redirected away from the teachings of Christian theology through thinkers like Kant who posited man to be an autonomous moral subject who could know (and do) right and wrong according to his own reason.

The Enlightenment was a time when man believed himself to be illuminated/enlightened in his own reasoning abilities beyond the need for religious revelation. Its influence is still present today in modernism and its flavors—it continues to challenge religion in a general, but Christianity most explicitly.