Lessons from the Church
So while we have suggested that evangelicalism may be addicted to propositionalizing, it is another thing entirely to deny the legitimacy of the proposition. Many writers have been so effusive in their praise of the postmodern agenda that words are practically relegated to the realm of the meaningless. It is most certainly true that words are only logical symbols. But that fact does not therefore void them of significant semantic content. If it did - as a host of Christian authors have pointed out - then postmodernists’ assertions of the inadequacy of words would itself be a self-contradiction. If words are thoroughly inadequate to the task, postmodernists cannot marshal them to defeat the barbarians of modernity, It is one thing to say language is impotent to convey fully the depth and profundity of God’s love for those who’ve rebelled against Him. It is quite another thing entirely to assert that language cannot express “Jesus loves me.” We can say that statement is meaningful while agreeing that our understanding of the statement is not complete. To exhaustively understand just the word “man,” for example, with complete comprehension would require one to be God! And would it not be tragic in the extreme if God gave us the most profound desire to communicate with Him and others and then provided us with completely insufficient tools to use to fulfill our desire: our minds and language.

One of the most radical and foundational concepts of Christianity is this:

He has given us information that we simply would not have otherwise. He has revealed Himself to us. He has given us some truth. There is, to borrow biochemist Michael Behe's phrase, an “irreducible complexity” to Christianity that, if denied, voids Christianity of any unique value and divine revelation of any significance.

Scripture itself hints at a core set of truths. Jesus speaks of it. He tells his disciples,

All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

John 14:25,26 (emphasis mine and so in every biblical passage)

and

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

John 16:12-15

Jesus prays to His Father,

…I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them.

John 17:8a

Of these words we would do well to remember

For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.

John 12:49

In his prayer Jesus continued,

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

John 17:17

Similarly, in his second letter to Timothy the apostle Paul's counsels his protégé,

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you - guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

2 Timothy 1:13,14

and again

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

2 Timothy 2:2

In his second letter to the church at Thessalonica Paul writes,

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by mouth or by letter.

2 Thessalonians 2:15

Indeed salvation itself comes through belief in the truth

…God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.

2 Thessalonians 2:13b

Again Paul advises

[The elder] must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

Titus 1:9

Timothy is to exercise great care with the truth with which he has been entrusted.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15

Here we see not only the assumption of a core set of Christian truths but also the Apostle’s expectation that Timothy will continue to pass those truths to others and that Timothy’s auditors will do the same.

But just as we’ve earlier indicated that limiting our relationship with God to mere information denies us the greater understanding that comes from experiencing God, so also we see that the truths mentioned in these passages are not encapsulated in a set of sterile, interlocking, propositions. They are rather highly relationalized: The transfer of these doctrines occurs in the context of relationships, both horizontal and vertical.

So Paul writes that the “pattern of sound teaching” is to be kept “with faith and love in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:13). Orthodoxy is maintained in the midst of a vibrant, passionate, and living vertical relationship with Jesus Christ.

Moreover, these truths speak directly to our horizontal relationships. Reading the way Paul actually uses the word “doctrine” gives one a different impression than is today connoted by the term. Note that after Paul writes

You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.

Titus 2:1

that he then launches into

Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent…

...they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children….

encourage the young men to be self-controlled…

teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything

and then Paul summarizes

These, then, are the things you should teach.

Titus 2 (various)

“Doctrine” - as the term is used here - contains an intrinsically relational component.

But the terms of “doctrine” and “teaching” connote not only relationship but also are infrangibly connected with the notion of obedience. Note what Paul writes to his followers in Rome,

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

Romans 6:17,18

Paul’s concept of “doctrine” or “teaching” breaks down the heart-mind dichotomy that we are so fond of in the West. Recall our earlier disapproval of information divorced from experience. Similarly, the Western heart-mind differentiation is shown by the biblical data to be artificial. Note that Paul writes that his readers obeyed the teaching ek kardias,” from the heart” or, as the NIV, “wholeheartedly.” Teaching is something to be obeyed.

Paul’s verbiage above is reminiscent of Jesus’ post-resurrection remonstrance of the disciples on the way to Emmaus recorded in Luke 24. Recall Jesus asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along” (Luke 24:17b,). The disciples went on to detail for their inquirer “the things about Jesus the Nazarene” who

" was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.

The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;

but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.

In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning

but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive.

Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see”

Luke 24:19b-24

These disciples seemed genuinely confused. They spoke as if they just simply didn’t get it. But the Lord saw it a bit differently:

And He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

Luke 24:25,26

Jesus held them morally culpable for what to all intents and purposes appeared to be merely a cognitive misunderstanding on the part of his disciples. He speaks of their current state of confusion as if it were the result of wrong choices. In Western heart-mind terms, Jesus presents the understanding of their minds as being inextricably tied up with the commitments and decisions of their hearts.

So we must conclude: Insight itself comes from our choices, our obedience, and the integrity and health of both our horizontal and vertical relationships. It is not just from deeper study or reflection.

So while we acknowledge that our relationship with truth, as Paul speaks of it, connotes more - much more - than our recognition of the mere accuracy of factual propositions - again - we also simultaneously maintain it is not therefore less.

We must never allow the realization of the limitations of man’s paradigmatic powers and symbol systems to in any way diminish the fact or the reliability of divinely revealed truth. God has spoken because of our inadequate knowledge and wisdom. Yet because He has spoken, the church is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We must never be hesitant to confidently assert that we know because God has told us. That he has told us makes the knowledge more certain. It is ironic that Christians are sometimes accused of hubris because they claim certainty when, in fact, it is their humility that leads them to trust what God says more than what they are able to independently affirm. It is a theocentric epistemology versus an anthropocentric epistemology. A man-based theory of knowledge must be saddled with a forever tentativeness: Man is limited in both his knowledge and intelligence. Certainty about God is only available when God reveals; but once He reveals, it is certain.

A Christianity so postmodernized that the fact or reliability of divine revelation is called into question can no longer can be called Christianity. It is something else.

Foucault wants us to understand that knowledge is oppression. That the one who claims to know is really only asserting his desire to exercise control over the auditor, or to advance his agenda in a way that bends the listener’s paradigm to his will.

Recently I was facilitating an introductory workshop on theology and wished to illustrate our natural tendency to be narcissistic. I confessed that when I was traveling on my company’s expense account, using my corporate American Express card, driving a Lincoln Continental rental car, wearing a suit, staying in the concierge floor of the hotel, and visiting a fine restaurant, it was easy for me to buy into the deception that I was somehow living a higher quality of life than my waiter. But it was during the course of that same class I realized the depth of my own desire to impress. Only once when traveling for USA TODAY have I received a complimentary upgrade to a Lincoln Continental. - usually my rental car is smaller. Even in the midst of warning others against the vice of self-aggrandizement, I manipulated my words in a self-absorbed act of impression management. I displayed a desire to adjust my auditors’ paradigm in a way that artificially inflated their impression of me. The same mechanism is at work when I’m jogging and speed up when I see a fellow runner so that he or she might not be aware of my generally far more modest pace.

So surely there is a great deal of truth in Foucault’s suggestion that words are a powerful tool that are used time after time to craft an impression, to impose an agenda, to exercise control over others. The penetrating and soul-searching analysis of our words that a serious reading of Foucault demands can serve the church. Foucault’s error is not in his estimation of language’s ability to oppressively impose mindsets; his mistake is presupposing such negative manipulation is intrinsic to language itself.

As a symbol system, language is amoral; it is but a tool. The speaker determines the goal. Words are shifting paradigms in an attempt to manipulate or are influencing mindsets in a desire to serve or enlighten. If language systems only served a Machiavellian will to power, then that charge could also be leveled against Foucault’s efforts to enlighten! Foucault robs his reader of the diagnostic criterion that enables accurate discernment of any discourse’s intended effect: the intention of the speaker. Certainly Foucault would protest any interpretation of his words against his own intention.

Despairing of man’s ability to discern or communicate truth, Richard Rorty emphasizes the practical: the community must determine its own truth and values. Meaning is found through community dialogue and interaction.

This contrasts starkly with the rampant modernity-inspired individualistic thought one sees across a variety of disciplines for the last 200 years. American individualism, reflected and encouraged by democracy, tends to emphasize the ability of the individual to discern truth. Modernity laid this foundation with its emphasis on the vast ability of the independent mind. Kant, for example, characterized the enlightenment as the “emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy.” He continues, “Infancy is the inability to use one’s reason without the guidance of another. It is self-imposed when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of the resolve and courage to use it without external guidance.” One can easily argue that the earliest expressions of this newfound freedom from external authorities helped empower Luther and others in effecting the Protestant Reformation. Mentioning the Reformation is relevant in this connection because that same principle - that I can determine what is true and I needn’t be bound by my tradition, my teachers, or my community - has contributed to the current fragmented state of Evangelicalism and - one could argue - the even more fully variegated panoply of theological positions within Protestantism. Furthermore, this religious individualism can be seen as a basis for the current consumer mentality in many religionists. If this church isn’t meeting my needs, I’ll simply shop until I find one that does.

There is much, then, to commend Rorty’s emphasis on community in determining truth in distinction from the modern emphasis on strictly individual discernment. While, in contrast to Rorty, the biblical authors never doubt the existence of a category of a foundational truth, as we’ve noted above, they nevertheless similarly contend that it is in community that individuals come to apprehend truth. Core truths are passed on in the context of relationship.

Note Paul’s charge to his protégé in his 2nd letter to Timothy:

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them.

2 Timothy 3:14 (NASB, emphasis mine).

What is instructive here - in contrast to the modern emphasis on the independence of one’s own mind - is that way Paul conjoins Timothy’s knowledge of his teachers with the content of their teaching. The knowledge transfer is inextricably tied to the relationship that is its context. This echoes Jesus comment

A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher

Luke 6:40

Just as there is no distinction between the teacher’s content and character; there is similarly no arelational transfer of knowledge. Just as dividing ourselves from an experience of God causes us to misunderstand Him, as we implied in Part 2, so also Christian discipleship that is collapsed into the mere transfer of naked information divorced from its relational context is similarly impotent. This, of course, has profound implications for how churches train their leaders and for how Christians disciples.

So we must affirm with Rorty that there is a richness to discussion in community.

Further, just as the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom can’t be arbitrarily divided from relationship in community, so also the way in which we dialogue about disputed matters of theology, ethics, etc must be done in a relationally honoring way. I’ve already mentioned Senge’s concept of “balancing advocacy with inquiry.” When I balance advocacy with inquiry I hold my position somewhat loosely. I believe my position, but I remain humble enough to realize that you might have information or analysis that could move me to change my position. In respect to you, I hold complete certainty in abeyance for a moment. I don’t believe I have the corner on truth in all areas. It is the necessary application of Paul’s advice to the Philippians to theological discourse:

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.

Philippians 2:3 (NASB)

It implies irenic, humble discussion.

However, those who follow Rorty go too far if they limit the validity of truth arrived at in the context of community to only that community. The subjective process by which truth is discerned does not thereby invalidate that same truth’s objectivity. This is similar to the point that the subjective experience of truth does not vitiate its objective fact. The subjectivity and objectivity of truths are two sides of the same coin and are both equally necessary to the process of truth acquisition. An example might help to illustrate:

If you are bored with this article, but for some reason feel compelled to continue reading it, then time will seem to move slowly as you meander through its mind-crushing obscurity to the bitter end. If - however - you are finding this material intellectually stimulating as you think of implication after implication, then the time may seem to go by faster. But whether time seems to pass by quickly or slowly for you, for every second while you are reading your quartz watch still vibrates 32768 times. The subjective experience of truth does not invalidate its objective nature.

So we find that the limits of language and paradigm do not mean that language and mindsets lack actual meaning. Language and the mind are adequate to the task of communicating and understanding something about God.

We conclude that while language can oppress, language is not inherently malevolent.

And while some truth is best discerned in community, truth loses neither its universal appeal nor its objective character. Neither objectivity nor subjectivity trump the other. Similarly, when one is denied the other suffers.

Put positively and more biblically: Motivated by His love, God has spoken to us and we hear Him best when we listen to Him being mindful of both His presence in the moment and His faithfulness to us in the past. And we understand Him best when we experience Him in community and explore Him in the context of our everyday relationships.

Or,

…His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

2 Peter 1:3b,4a (NASB)

To be continued next month: Some final considerations for assessing the impact of postmodernity.

Stephen Shields is a Technology Manager with USA TODAY and the former Pastor for Cedar Ridge Communities at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD. He lives with his wife Bethany and three daughters - Michaela Siobhan, Skye Teresa, and Alia Noelle - in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. He graduated from Grace Theological Seminary with an M. Div. He can be contacted at stephen@shieldsplace.org and his website is http://www.shieldsplace.org.