Thinking, not dogmatism
Recently I have received a few comments that are themselves worth commenting on. I can’t actually reprint them as I deleted them for their offensive nature (I want to encourage debate but, as the saying goes, there is a difference between free speech and shouting ‘fire’ in a cinema). However, one of the things that I found interesting about the comments related to the underlying assumptions embedded within them. One of these being that whatever I print on my blog represents my personal view on what is ‘true’.
I am not sure what these individuals would find more frustrating, the fact they disagree with some of the things on my blog, or the fact that I do too (I get the feeling however that the later would be even more frustrating as it means that they can’t pin me down as easily).
It would appear that the people I am referring to assume that the job of someone like myself is to print only the ‘truth’. The fact that I don’t always print what fits with my current thinking, my current idea of ‘truth’ (but rather often things that challenge it, interact with it, expand it and interrogate it) is totally foreign to such thinking. They would prefer to treat theological enquiry as if it were a mathematical problem that we already had an answer sheet for. Where one says, for example, ‘I don’t want to see your working out, just tell me, what is the correct way of interpreting the death of Jesus’?
My hope is that by interacting with my blog the reader will find food for thought rather than a dogmatic system that they need to adhere to. Of course I have my views on political theory, cultural criticism, and theological discourse, and these views will find expression here. But I would much prefer a person to disagree with me in a thoughtful and reasonable manner than unthinkingly agree (this can be described as my metaposition). The obedient disciple, after all, is the one who disobeys.
Tags: disagreement, fidelity, Peter Rollins, truth
April 4th, 2009 at 5:11 am
Pete – I find your writing (thinking) very challenging. When I disagree with your writing, it makes me think hard about why I disagree; and after considerable deliberation/meditation, if I continue to disagree, my faith gains confidence. However, what I find most often is that you are challenging beliefs (better described as accepted teachings) that I’ve never discovered (vetted) for myself. Until my wife and I were badly burned by the SJB (Southern Judgmental Baptists), I never questioned anything. For the past 9 years, I’ve made this statement many times – “I have a question, and don’t give me a Sunday School answer because that doesn’t cut it with me any more.” So, thank you for continually challenging us. Don’t we always seem to remember most the teachers who challenged us to think for ourselves? The SJB won’t allow you to think for yourself. They’ve already given up on me, but I know Jesus hasn’t. And I’ve finally realized, that’s all that matters. Thanks, again!
April 4th, 2009 at 5:29 am
BTW – I’ve never looked at your writing as your beliefs. The ugly replies probably come from those who are incapable of reading “The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels and Demons”, or the “Harry Potter” series strictly for entertainment.
April 4th, 2009 at 6:44 am
April 4th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Personally, I think you’re full of shit.
April 4th, 2009 at 7:47 am
lol… thanks KB. But remember, I know who you are!
April 4th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Pete – Thanks for posting this. It challenges me to hold my own writing loosely (and to take it with a grain of salt!). I greatly enjoy reading your work, both here and elsewhere. Sorry about the spam comments. Keep it up!
April 4th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Cheers, I only disagree because I am an ideologue.
April 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I kind of like the ancient notion that Socrates’ job was more like that of a midwife: help bring something to birth…
April 4th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
That comes with the territory – I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been called a nutjob, wingnut, heathen, accused of slander/libel and other comments too filthy to print. Almost all of these comments come from folks after I satirized their deeply held belief systems. Sometimes when you skewer someone’s sacred cow, they often moo very loudly and in some cases implodes into a bunch of cow patties. The trick (which I often fail to do) is when they’re mooing to just walk away and not try to out-moo them as it were. That never works as you always end up mooing more than you’d like, which result in blog battles and other fights you never intended to launch.
April 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
The obedient disciple is the one who willingly walks in volitional fellowship with the Outcast from Nazereth…in unselfish love (even for enemies).
I highly enjoy your writings Peter. What makes them even more enjoyable is knowing that you are wrestling while also imperfectly obeying.
We must wrestle with what it means not to follow in order to actually follow.
Grace and Peace,
Michael
“Conclusive evidence of God’s existence would be purposively available to humans, given God’s purpose to engage humans in terms of what they truly need and thus to avoid trivializing (evidence of) divine reality as a matter of casual human speculation. The relevant evidence of God’s existence would thus be available to humans in keeping with God’s vital purpose in making it available, and this purpose would reflect God’s morally perfect character. In particular, God would have a significant, morally relevant purpose regarding how humans are to receive the evidence, and this purpose would set requirements for human reception of the evidence. A central divine purpose, characteristic of a perfectly loving God, would aim noncoercively but authoritatively to transform human purposes to agree with divine purposes, including a goal of divine-human fellowship in perfect love. God would aim, accordingly, to have us willingly attend to the relevant evidence in such a way that it would emerge saliently for what it is intended to be: an evident authoritative call to volitional fellowship with God. Three crucial divine purposes, as indicated above, include (a) God’s revealing the adequacy or inadequacy of one’s moral and cognitive standing before God for the sake of inviting one into fellowship with God, (b) God’s entering into volitional fellowship with one on God’s morally perfect terms, and (c) God’s transforming one noncoercively toward God’s perfect moral character. As I experience via conscience, if vaguely at first, God’s evident authoritative call to volitional fellowship and I attend to it in a way that allows it to become a salient challenge to my life relative to God’s perfect love, I then face a volitional crisis, and must respond in one way or another. Of course I might refuse to attend at all to the experienced call (in any way that allows it to become salient in my experience), and that would be a response with potentially obstructing consequences. My main options would be (i) I subsequently ignore the evident authoritative call to volitional fellowship, perhaps with intentional diversion of my attention toward something else, maybe even something rigorously philosophical or theological; (ii) I dismiss it as ultimately fraudulent, perhaps with help from an alternative explanation of my experience, say one from clinical psychology or psychiatry; (iii) I withhold judgment on its reality, perhaps with the accompanying proposal that my evidence for its reality is too mixed and thus inconclusive; (iv) I decide to disobey what it asks of me, while granting the call’s reality, perhaps with the judgment that what it demands of me is too inconvenient given my own purposes; (v) I willingly conform to its demand, if imperfectly, and welcome the anticipated change in me, in volitional fellowship with God. Each of these options enjoys support among some people, and we would be accountable to God for how we settle on an option. In each of options (i)-(iv), I would choose not to obey the evident authoritative call, and I would do well to make such a choice carefully, given the significant consequences if I’m wrong. In taking option (v), I would follow the volitional attitude of Jesus in Gethsemane. I would then reasonably expect a perfectly loving God to continue noncoercively, in terms of the direction of my will, with self-revelation and to emerge as my authoritative God, in virtue of my obeying God’s evident authoritative call to volitional fellowship. I thereby would become God’s willing servant in virtue of God’s authoritative call to reconciliation in volitional fellowship. Only in such volitional yielding on my part would God become my authoritative God, as I obediently receive purposively available conclusive evidence of, and even know, God’s reality firsthand. A perfectly loving God would desire this for every willing person, as each person willingly yields to God’s perfectly loving will. As a result, God would supply purposively available evidence to humans that includes an authoritative call via conscience to yield to God’s will. Any less demanding evidence of divine reality would be relatively incidental and certainly inadequate to guide a life or a death in fellowship with God. A perfectly loving God would, as a matter of moral character, call others to fellowship with God in perfect love, and obedient acceptance of this authoritative call would require volitional fellowship between a human recipient and the divine giver. The alleged evidence of much traditional “natural theology,” including first-cause, design, and ontological arguments, is at best incidental, even a dispensable sideshow, in comparison, given its relative laxness in supplying evident divine volitional demands on recipients. We can’t, in any case, adequately live and die by such alleged evidence. So, it usually ends up as just a speculative discussion topic, if not a theoretical swamp, for philosophers and theologians, among others. We need not, at any rate, be distracted by it, given our more robust cognitive goals.” (Paul K. Moser (philosopher), The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology, 23-25)
“Would a perfectly loving God allow us to undergo death even though God seeks to help us to overcome death? If so, why? A noteworthy answer…comes from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “The creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but by the will of the One who subjected it, in (that One’s) hope that the creation will be freed from its slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8: 20-21). Paul’s reference to futility echoes the following lament from the world-weary author of Ecclesiastes: “Futility of futilities! All is futility.” Both writers have in mind what is ultimately pointless, in vain, when left to its own ways and means, apart from a perfectly loving God. Paul thus suggests that God introduced death to show that the ways of creation on its own, apart from God, are ultimately futile, pointless, and meaningless. In particular, as part of creation, we humans ultimately come to naught on our own, apart from God, and this is the good intention of a perfectly loving God. Human death, in other words, leaves us with a hopeless destiny if we are left to our own resources. All of our own projects, purposes, and achievements, even our intellectual labors, will meet the same fate on their own, apart from God: namely, futility. They are, apart from God’s sustaining power and authority, all destined for the abyss of destruction, never to be revived. This seems to be nothing but bad news, but there’s actually an elusive silver lining, even Good News, we can find on the basis of purposively available evidence. Paul suggests that a certain “hope” lies behind the apparent futility of death: that is, God’s hope of freeing people non-coercively from the threat of futility to enter divine-human fellowship in the lasting kingdom family of God.” (Philosopher Paul K. Moser, The Elusive God, 254-255)
April 4th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
That’s one hell of a signature.
April 5th, 2009 at 1:28 am
[...] Keep in mind the standard disclaimer that I may not always agree with myself. [...]
April 5th, 2009 at 2:48 am
I guess you weren’t tooooo mad about my “a(n) Hegelian” quip.
April 5th, 2009 at 3:45 am
lol… I just about let you away with it Colin
April 5th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Pete,
thanks for your open dialogue and challenging heretical orthodoxy. It has allowed me to be honest with those around me and begin the same process in a community rather than merely shamefully by myself, and through this i’ve begun to falter and stumble towards Jesus and some notion of G-d instead of merely faking and conforming to the dogmatic fundamentalist church i grew up in.
April 5th, 2009 at 9:53 am
oh and of course G.K. Chesterton is always a good example.
“It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it.”
That should be the footnote to all apologetic works.
April 5th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Note how different Chesterton was from so many of todays “apologists.” Certainly he was conservative in that he believed the divinity of Jesus and the Apostle’s creed. But can we imagine today’s defenders of orthodoxy being comfortable enough with secularists like G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells that they can go to their houses and share a beer with them?
The fact that these defenders of orthodoxy feel the need to attack fellow Christians like Peter Rollins, and Mclaren, and company with such mean-spirited language shows how uncomfortable and fearful they are in their own beliefs. From my perspective they defend the ancient creeds out of a sense of fear rather than love. If they really trusted these creeds, they would believe that the Spirit would sustain them without the need for tearing down their supposed enemies. Ideally, civil and mutually beneficial debates over creeds and orthodoxy should be central to the Christian church as it moves into the next millennium. But when all these people can do is scream and throw out “heretic” at their opponents it doesn’t really leave much room for civil and truly Christian debate.
April 5th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Several potatoes wept…
April 5th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
great post. thanks for being provocative and stimulating for us at your own expense! i don’t comment much here because it seems i don’t speak the same language as most (whether i’m trying to express “truth” or just trying to be provocative), but interpreting your writings provides much in the way of mental gymnastics for me.
thx again!
markb.
April 6th, 2009 at 4:58 am
People aren’t happy with the wrestling, it inteferes too much with the rest of their life. What we want is answers and we want them, now… and we want bigger and better answers than we had the last time…and YOU must tell us the answers to our complete satisfaction and specifications or we might just be obliged to crucify you.
Yes I am an heretic, and a lot bloody happier for it.
http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/686/
April 6th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
if you want to serve the age betray it. ~ brendan kennelly
April 7th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Thanks for your thoughts and books Pete, keep writing and enjoying exploring because I am enjoying reading your explorations.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I agree with myheartsinlynchburg in that folks who are “offended” or attacking are incapable of entertaining an idea without adopting it.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Peter, thanks for being open about your process in search of truth. If we are to truly trust in God, then we can have the freedom to be in flux. Sometimes theology (in the broadest sense) is like science, sometimes it is like poetry, but we must admit that it is always like the explorer cresting the ridgeline and seeing new ridgelines. I wonder if (self)righteous anger is frequently just a bursting forth of the fear that comes from not being able to finally trust in God when it comes to working out our faith.
I had an interesting response to one of my posts that you might find interesting – here
April 9th, 2009 at 12:37 am
I’m a former Korean American pastor who has practically given up on Christianity and have been living as an agnostic-but-not-quite-an-atheist for the past 5 years. your books, which I picked up a few months ago, have given me some glimmer of hope that perhaps I can return to the faith of my childhood–as an adult. I’m still confused as hell and doubt that God exists (as I knew God), but perhaps there is a God beyond my notion of God…
April 12th, 2009 at 12:24 am
A couple years ago I would have been one of those people who felt compelled to attack your challenge to my once stalwart defence from fear and uncertianity. I think that some of us have to attack anyone that challenges us that we don’t have it all figured out. Its unfortunate that its hard for many of us to just appriaciate the mystery that is our reality.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Pete , thanks for share your thoughts!! We love you here in Brazil!
Keep the good faith.
Cheers