Certainty and Flux of Faith 3.21.2024

     My major professor in graduate school James Strauss used to repeatedly say “You don’t have to have exhaustive information to have accurate information.” This illustrates very well why so many otherwise intelligent people shy away from theological thinking. Accepting the Bible to be true and Theology to be an accurate presentation of Biblical information, there is a fear that we may leave something out or give an important topic short shrift. Rather than discouraging us this should be a relief! You are correct, you cannot know everything. But what you do know you should know deeply and intimately. Certainty and flux are both a part of deeply held faith and a hallmark of the best scholarship: Biblically, Historically, and Theologically. 

    The best, most profound thinkers are constantly rethinking, reevaluating, and recalibrating.  Dogmatism, used according to its least flattering definition, describes an attitude of inflexibility, intolerance, and insularity. The best in Christian thinking is none of those things. It is inquisitive, inviting, and integrative. Theology is about God. Not God. He is perfect. I’m not. He knows everything. I don’t. When people say they “don’t like theology”, what they mean is “I’m scared”. The cause of that fear is not information overload but anxiety about their own personal faith. 

Hermeneutics

    “Text” is the operative term in Hermeneutics and related fields such as semiotics. In this sense “text” may indicate any kind of media presentation, written, auditory, visual—even architectural. For the pastor-theologian, our primary texts are Biblical, Historical, and Theological—as we have been discussing since January. At some point, each of us must step down from our theoretical and objective soapboxes and clarify “This is what I believe”. This is step #1 towards not being afraid of our own theological shadow. 

    For those who preach this means balancing a sense of certainty with the very human fluctuations of faith. Fluctuations are not doubts, they represent the eddies of genuine inquiry. Rivers flow in a general direction. An eddy is a break in the current that temporarily changes that general flow. 

    Sometimes humans think reactively rather than reflectively. Flailing and failing to prepare for the various eddies in our intellectual rivers we substitute an unnatural and unobtainable certainty for the actual condition of humanity; we are limited beings, and our horizons always change. Certainty exists amid the flood not apart from it. 

    A consistent hermeneutic helps to channel that intellectual current so that we can work through an eddy without getting swamped. Before the advent of railroads on the 19th-century American frontier the way that rivers were harnessed was the artificial construct of a canal. Straight and true canals eliminated all eddies so that riverine traffic could continue unhindered. 

    There are far too many preachers who travel on intellectual canals, using limited hermeneutics, unable and unwilling to deal with the realities of either contemporary circumstances or the Biblical text. This seems safer and seems to free the inquirer from doubt. Such intellectual canals are artificial and incapable of dealing with the world before us. Real rivers have eddies, rapids, and obstacles. Avoiding them does not make them go away. We have to learn to read the current and shoot the rapids. 

    A sound hermeneutic grounded in scripture, aware of historical development, and in conversation with a variety of theological perspectives provides the discipline we need to get through the shifting currents of the Postmodern world. There will be times that you sense you are tipping. There will be times that you feel a sense of foreboding, that you have made a mistake or miscalculation. When you are solidly planted in the river of faith, in the great tradition common to all believers at all times and places, your vessel will make it through those rough patches. You will be a better preacher and your people will be better informed. We have to learn to be certain of what we can and we must be open to the fluctuations in the current that allow for growth.