The Certainty of Faith as the Deprivation of Security
Let me talk about the elephant in the room. Well, the elephant has been in my room, maybe no one else's--or to switch metaphors something has been stuck in my craw for the past few days (maybe we could blend the two? The elephant in my room is now stuck in my craw? "Man Attempts to Swallow Elephant, Fails" sounds like an article that would have some great pictures attached). Whats been confusing me is the vitriol I noticed in many of the responses in my recent post regarding theology and relationship and Donald Miller. For the sake of my own amusement I created a character "profile" which contains a summary list of all the things I was called, which leads to a pretty monstrous picture of me as an individual should all these things pan out to be true: I was (to begin with my favorite) someone who should get his ass kicked (he prefaced this with "I mean this in the most nonoffensive way possible," of course. How polite of him!). I was told to get a life, asked if I had any real friends. I am "full of it," and a coward. My post was "spineless," and "mean." My small blog apparently had such a rapacious control over people that it "was hurting dialogue with the church" (!). (I should voice my thanks here for providing me this list of adjectives, with which I am planning to create a fake eharmony account with. Apologies in advance to all the ladies sure to be pulled in, the charming fellow described above is not real). The main thing that bothered me was not that they were impugning my character (clearly they have such a keen insight as to not only penetrate flesh and bone into my soul, but also countless miles of fiber optics and the noticeable lacuna that none of us have ever met). Rather I was bothered at the tenor of the responses themselves--like I asked above, whats with all the agitation?
Now I realize that per its nature the internet's sheltering coves of anonymity allow for serious breaches in good conduct, personal hygiene, proper grammar and the like, yet still given the fairly mild nature of my post and--as has rightfully and numerously been pointed out--the obscurity of my blog (to which I can only assume, the squall having passed, to be my beckoning point of return) why there was such an outburst? It could be merely symptoms of the aforementioned anonymity--we all set forth in the virtual expanses to don our harlequin masks to revel in slapstick Harlequinade (sorry I felt like living up to my accuser's chants of "intellectualism" by throwing in an obscure reference, dont let it fool you, I am not really cultured at all) and some good ol' fashioned debauchery. Yet I felt it was something else. Maybe it was merely the renown of Donald Miller who--as my friend Matt commented to me yesterday--is the new sacred cow of pomo Christian culture, against whom no blasphemy must be uttered. And certainly that had to be a part of it. Yet still that doesn't quite explain it. Like I said I felt my critique of Miller was fairly tame, and by no stretch of the imagination could I really accept such a cause and effect explanation by itself--the proportion of the cause falling as short as it does to the magnitude of the effect. So what the heck happened?
There were a couple options, but to keep this post short (my verboseness being one of the few criticisms that stuck) I should say I think I stumbled upon a theme amongst the chaos. A.J. at Sola Intellectum as I noted wrote a great post overturning a common misconception of what "Academic" theology is all about--it is not about system, control, eliteness, the tool of prideful intellect or our substitutes for the living God (however much these things can happen, they are a sign of bad theology, not of its natural conclusion). it is rather, in its most pristine moments, a profound act of humiliation (in the sense that it produces humility), it is a constant driving force for us to move ever forward. Or in the words of Augustine if theology is both "faith seeking understanding" and, as he also said "my heart is restless until it rests in you," then theology is ideally a combination of these two statements: a restless seeking after God and dissatisfaction of everything prior.
On the other hand, what I saw amongst many who were very negatively inclined to what I wrote (and I should state for the record here that I have never ruled out the possibility that I am wrong and their more substantive criticisms right) was faith serving as a sort of absolute assurance, an impregnable security and stillness. Where the vitriol came in its many forms--defending Miller, attacking my "intellectualism" etc..--all seem to find their basis in this: if my post was true, it would disrupt the certainties that these people have taken from Miller's writings into their own relationships with Christ. The most frequent responses were along the lines of "I dont want to have to become an academic to be saved/we just need to love Jesus" to which I should say I never said one has to become an academic to be saved, nor that somehow we should demote loving Christ. Merely that loving Christ is theological, and theology is loving Christ. Much like Evagrius of Ponticus' old adage: the true theologian is s/he who prays; s/he who prays is the true theologian."
Ironically then, I perceive in many of the responses the very thing that they (and in his own way, Miller) were accusing academic theology of in its worst moments: the construction of an inviolable system, an impregnable fortress, an idol which has substituted for the true, living God. Faith can become sure of itself rather than the free action of God, it can become settled in pre-worn channels and roadways in which it wants to keep walking. They perceived only menace in a disruption of their previous understandings--they did not want to be unsettled. And certainly there is a truth in faith as assurance: as Hebrews said it is the assurance of things hoped for. Yet simultaneously I think the responses, because they saw in my post, rightly or wrongly, a threat to their security of "simple relation" to Christ, a threat to the stability of that certainty, perhaps missed the fact that it is assurance of things hoped for, things which are not fully here, fully under our control. That one need not have a sophisticated understanding of theology to be saved is a truth that I never refuted (despite many claiming to the contrary)--yet residing within the staple that it is "your relationship with Jesus" which simply is what Christianity is and one need not worry about it being otherwise, is just as complacent, totalizing, and controlling as any of the strictures of the most intricate Scholasticism. This is not an attack on simple faith, it is a call forward and outwards from a faith which uses simplicity as a citadel to avoid delving into areas it considers difficult. Faith, if it is faith in the true God, is not the maintaining of security against attack, or newness, it is rather the deprivation of security as we move outside all of our constructed walls into the wilderness, chasing after God's voice which has always already called us forward.
Eberhard Jüngel is particularly adept at describing this (the title of this post is actually a section title in one of his books):
What Jüngel means, I think, is that faith is precisely an openness to the new, to the difficult, to that which is not previously accounted for, and all this not merely because we have misunderstood (though that also) but because it is the very nature of our relation to God. Even if we were to describe faith in terms of a "just you and Jesus" phrase (which is probably not a very good way to describe it at all) then nonetheless we would drop the "just": Jesus is the creator of all things, past present future. Thus your relationship to Him is an open invitation to the ever newness of all things. Wolfhart Pannenberg, in a similar manner to Jüngel, speaks of faith as attentive to its true object, namely God, and so is constantly open to all things which lay beyond the believer:
This of course does not mean we should blindly accept criticism, or that there are never times for harsh language (Christ himself was no stranger to the art of the insult, as his interactions with the Scribes and Pharisees attests). But it can resituate our attitudes towards it. God is in charge, and this means, in John Howard Yoder's words, we do not need to play the game of a "politics of effectiveness", we do not need to hide within our systems of effect or receive every criticism as a stab to our power structures, be they built by intellect or faith ill conceived. We can dialogue with others without immediately blasting their character because we all understand our own deficiencies on this journey, and that, beyond that, the journey itself and our very lives are marked by this future-oriented journey towards God. As Jürgen Moltmann puts it:
Now I realize that per its nature the internet's sheltering coves of anonymity allow for serious breaches in good conduct, personal hygiene, proper grammar and the like, yet still given the fairly mild nature of my post and--as has rightfully and numerously been pointed out--the obscurity of my blog (to which I can only assume, the squall having passed, to be my beckoning point of return) why there was such an outburst? It could be merely symptoms of the aforementioned anonymity--we all set forth in the virtual expanses to don our harlequin masks to revel in slapstick Harlequinade (sorry I felt like living up to my accuser's chants of "intellectualism" by throwing in an obscure reference, dont let it fool you, I am not really cultured at all) and some good ol' fashioned debauchery. Yet I felt it was something else. Maybe it was merely the renown of Donald Miller who--as my friend Matt commented to me yesterday--is the new sacred cow of pomo Christian culture, against whom no blasphemy must be uttered. And certainly that had to be a part of it. Yet still that doesn't quite explain it. Like I said I felt my critique of Miller was fairly tame, and by no stretch of the imagination could I really accept such a cause and effect explanation by itself--the proportion of the cause falling as short as it does to the magnitude of the effect. So what the heck happened?
There were a couple options, but to keep this post short (my verboseness being one of the few criticisms that stuck) I should say I think I stumbled upon a theme amongst the chaos. A.J. at Sola Intellectum as I noted wrote a great post overturning a common misconception of what "Academic" theology is all about--it is not about system, control, eliteness, the tool of prideful intellect or our substitutes for the living God (however much these things can happen, they are a sign of bad theology, not of its natural conclusion). it is rather, in its most pristine moments, a profound act of humiliation (in the sense that it produces humility), it is a constant driving force for us to move ever forward. Or in the words of Augustine if theology is both "faith seeking understanding" and, as he also said "my heart is restless until it rests in you," then theology is ideally a combination of these two statements: a restless seeking after God and dissatisfaction of everything prior.
On the other hand, what I saw amongst many who were very negatively inclined to what I wrote (and I should state for the record here that I have never ruled out the possibility that I am wrong and their more substantive criticisms right) was faith serving as a sort of absolute assurance, an impregnable security and stillness. Where the vitriol came in its many forms--defending Miller, attacking my "intellectualism" etc..--all seem to find their basis in this: if my post was true, it would disrupt the certainties that these people have taken from Miller's writings into their own relationships with Christ. The most frequent responses were along the lines of "I dont want to have to become an academic to be saved/we just need to love Jesus" to which I should say I never said one has to become an academic to be saved, nor that somehow we should demote loving Christ. Merely that loving Christ is theological, and theology is loving Christ. Much like Evagrius of Ponticus' old adage: the true theologian is s/he who prays; s/he who prays is the true theologian."
Ironically then, I perceive in many of the responses the very thing that they (and in his own way, Miller) were accusing academic theology of in its worst moments: the construction of an inviolable system, an impregnable fortress, an idol which has substituted for the true, living God. Faith can become sure of itself rather than the free action of God, it can become settled in pre-worn channels and roadways in which it wants to keep walking. They perceived only menace in a disruption of their previous understandings--they did not want to be unsettled. And certainly there is a truth in faith as assurance: as Hebrews said it is the assurance of things hoped for. Yet simultaneously I think the responses, because they saw in my post, rightly or wrongly, a threat to their security of "simple relation" to Christ, a threat to the stability of that certainty, perhaps missed the fact that it is assurance of things hoped for, things which are not fully here, fully under our control. That one need not have a sophisticated understanding of theology to be saved is a truth that I never refuted (despite many claiming to the contrary)--yet residing within the staple that it is "your relationship with Jesus" which simply is what Christianity is and one need not worry about it being otherwise, is just as complacent, totalizing, and controlling as any of the strictures of the most intricate Scholasticism. This is not an attack on simple faith, it is a call forward and outwards from a faith which uses simplicity as a citadel to avoid delving into areas it considers difficult. Faith, if it is faith in the true God, is not the maintaining of security against attack, or newness, it is rather the deprivation of security as we move outside all of our constructed walls into the wilderness, chasing after God's voice which has always already called us forward.
Eberhard Jüngel is particularly adept at describing this (the title of this post is actually a section title in one of his books):
An addressing word is also now here when it addresses someone. But in that it addresses the ego [person] about something which does not necessarily belong to the identity of the person-now-here, it refers the person now addressed beyond the 'here and now.' This experience of the person's being referred beyond the Here and Now is the...distancing of the person...which takes place through a word which interrupts reality...If then...the thing to which the person is related through an addressing word is something absent [i.e. future, not yet] then the person is related, spatially put, to something which is Not-Here, or, temporally put, to something which is Not-Here-Now...It is only through the distancing of the person [from their immediate present] which differentiates that identity, a distancing in the direction of a past and a future ascribed to the person [by the word] that the person's own status can be described as 'present here and now.'..Theologically man is relevant as the being which is defined [in this way] by the Word of God. The Word of God is to be understood as the abbreviated formulation of the entire fact that God addresses us about himself and thus about ourselves. In that process, what happens is that a word which addresses us 'surpasses our being-here' and this happens in a...radical way. In that man is addressed by God about God, a total distancing of the person from themselves takes place over against its being-here and being-now, and accordingly a completely new qualification of man's state of being present results...every word of God which addresses us surpasses our being-here in that it places us before God...it discloses to the person a new way of being present, it discloses to it wordly presence as presence defined by God, an eschatological, [future-oriented] presence. (God as the Mystery of the World pp.172-175)
What Jüngel means, I think, is that faith is precisely an openness to the new, to the difficult, to that which is not previously accounted for, and all this not merely because we have misunderstood (though that also) but because it is the very nature of our relation to God. Even if we were to describe faith in terms of a "just you and Jesus" phrase (which is probably not a very good way to describe it at all) then nonetheless we would drop the "just": Jesus is the creator of all things, past present future. Thus your relationship to Him is an open invitation to the ever newness of all things. Wolfhart Pannenberg, in a similar manner to Jüngel, speaks of faith as attentive to its true object, namely God, and so is constantly open to all things which lay beyond the believer:
"we are to think here primarily of faith's knowledge of its own basis and object. This insight of the apostle [Paul, citing 1 Cor. 13:12] which flows out of primitive Christian eschatology, converges with our own modern sense of the historical relativity of human experience and interpretation of its contents...faith's assurance of salvation does not rest, then, on human self-experience or self-certainty...faith newly constitutes the actual person...the assurance of faith as assurance about God has always an anticipatory character on account of the involved reaching out toward the consummation of both individual life and cosmic reality...Hence faith can accept questioning of the knowledge of its object as an assualt on the brokenness of its knowledge by God himself, and with a readiness to receive further instruction about the basis of its confidence." (Systematic Theology vol.III pp.156-171).
This of course does not mean we should blindly accept criticism, or that there are never times for harsh language (Christ himself was no stranger to the art of the insult, as his interactions with the Scribes and Pharisees attests). But it can resituate our attitudes towards it. God is in charge, and this means, in John Howard Yoder's words, we do not need to play the game of a "politics of effectiveness", we do not need to hide within our systems of effect or receive every criticism as a stab to our power structures, be they built by intellect or faith ill conceived. We can dialogue with others without immediately blasting their character because we all understand our own deficiencies on this journey, and that, beyond that, the journey itself and our very lives are marked by this future-oriented journey towards God. As Jürgen Moltmann puts it:
The raising of Christ is…God’s contradiction of suffering and death…Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest, but unrest, not patience, but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means…restlessness. (Theology of Hope p.21)
Comments
The only certainty is that the current meat-body that you are so fearfully identified with is going to die.
That having been said please check out these references which point out that Right Life only begins when you have thoroughly understood the meaning and significance of death.
www.adidam.org/death_and_dying/index.html
www.dabase.org/dualsens.htm
www.dabase.org/tfrbkgil.htm
www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon
By the way, excellent post.