By Rosemary K. Otzman
Independent Editor
Daniel Martin, former advertising manager for the Independent, is back from Florida for two book signings in Belleville for his newly released novel “Covenant”.
This is his first book and it was released March 19 by Energion Publications in Gonzalez, FL. Many of the scenes in the book are set in Belleville and nearby locations, including the Wayne County Jail and Frank Murphy Hall of Justice.
On Sunday, April 1, Martin will speak during the worship service at Great Lakes Assembly, 105 N. Liberty Street, Belleville, and then sign books after the service. April 1 is his 50th birthday and he will speak what this his Jubilee means to him.
Church begins at 1 p.m. and everyone is invited. The book signing follows at 3 p.m.
At 7 p.m., Thursday, April 5, Martin will be featured at a book signing at the Belleville Charhouse restaurant, 524 Main Street.
Those who can’t make it to the book signings can order the novel at http://energionpubs.com/books/covenant/ and scroll down to Energion Direct. Price is $17.99.
“Covenant” is the story of a man named Samuel who skids into alcoholism, his return to the faith, and then an automobile accident on Bemis Road, where he hits and injures his guardian angel, who then is healed and disappears.
Samuel is pursued by Van Buren Township police and other agencies down I-94 after an elderly neighbor to the Bemis Road accident tells police she saw him hit a person and then flee the accident.
Martin, who left his job at the Independent to pursue God’s work, has plenty of time to preach in his novel, but it’s in brief, enjoyable bites.
The angels in his novel are playful, the dark forces powerful and ugly, and the people trying to survive and lead Christian lives are human and likeable – except for a snarling wife-beater.
God, Himself, listens to prayers and looks through portals in Heaven to see what’s happening and then sends his messengers to wield his power to enforce his promise to his children – his covenant. But, the angels cannot interfere with free will.
Unforgettable characters in the novel include the irrepressible Large Marge, a pushy television reporter, and a Belleville congregation that keeps the prayers and good works coming. Then, there’s the defense attorney who struggles with narcolepsy and falls asleep during trial.
The story leads up to a courtroom climax where the guardian angel testifies (and refuses to do tricks or miracles, but disappears a lot) while the world of skeptics and believers watches on television.
It’s a fun book, with lots of twists and turns and, of course, The Message.
It’s easy to imagine “Covenant” as a family movie – with lots of angels in the air riding motorcycles and then later sliding down George Washington’s nose at Mount Rushmore before appearing to comfort a little girl in a red hat.
The Message? The most important thing to do in your life is to form a relationship with God the Father and His Son, which brings with it the help of the heavenly host. It’s a promise.
Author: empower
-
Review of Covenant
-
Is Sacrificial Living the Solution to America's Abortion Holocaust?
10:10 AM Is sacrificial living the solution to America’s abortion holocaust?
I don’t think morality can or should be legislated. I think if Christians want a woman not to have an abortion, then they should offer that woman however much she demands to not have an abortion.
We often talk about the value of human life, but we seldom are actually willing to pay for it. Suppose the mother demands $10,000 for the baby. Many would be willing to pay that price. Suppose she demands $1 million. Well, you tell me, is the child’s life worth that much to you or no? There comes a point at which purchasing that child’s life might threaten your own child’s life. Which is to be preferred? Which is more valuable? What would Solomon do?
There is usually a presumption that the woman should be responsible for keeping the baby and bearing the cost herself. This I suppose comes from a belief in Truth. But I don’t see God imposing Truth on us. Instead I see Him making sacrifice to exemplify truth.
Read Evangelicalism = Christian Legislation. Followers of the Christian Right might be shocked by this suggestion, but Christian love demands that we take our faith to the street. Those who are the most sincere about fighting injustice are the ones who are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
(From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm, Why Four Gospels? and Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?. Used by permission. Crossposted from The Jesus Paradigm.)
-
Elgin Hushbeck: Prager, Irrationality and Religion
by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr.
In his latest column, “Mormons Have Irrational Beliefs? Who Doesn’t?” Dennis Prager falls into some common errors concerning the concepts of faith, belief, reason and irrationality. First, let me point out that I do not disagree with all of the claims in his column and those made during the discussion of his column on his radio show, in particular the importance of behavior.
Where I do disagree can be seen when Prager says, “I read and hear these dismissals of Mormonism with some amusement — because everyone who makes these charges holds beliefs and/or practices that outsiders consider just as irrational.” While true, this is completely irrelevant, and in fact only makes sense if one accepts a sort of intellectual relativism.
Continue reading at Hushbeck.com …
(Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. is the author of Energion titles Preserving Democracy, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.) -
LOOKING AT CATHOLICISM’S RECENT CONTROVERSIES
by Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle
Over the last several weeks, media headlines have highlighted significant controversies which have emerged in the Roman Catholic Church. These controversies, though different, are intricately related to one another. In one situation, the Vatican has expressed grave concern that the leadership among religious sisters (nuns) in the United States has espoused an agenda of what church leadership has termed ‘radical feminism’, a situation in which these sisters have, in fact, endorsed positions which run contrary to official church teaching. In another matter, church leadership has declared that Sister Margaret Farley’s 2006 work Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethicsincludes conclusions that run contrary to Catholic teaching on a number of issues related to human sexuality. Sister Farley’s text, according to the Vatican, is in effect unfit for use in Catholic courses in moral theology.
These two situations have stirred up significant reaction within the Catholic community. Many Catholics, individuals who consider themselves as active within the church, have spoken in support of both women religious as a group and Sister Margaret Farley as an individual. Others within the Catholic Church have supported what they see as the hierarchy’s attempt to insure that orthodox Catholic teaching is proclaimed both within its institutions and to the wider world.
In my recent book Crossing the Street (Energion, 2012), I explore the ongoing tension within the Catholic Church between those who seek to hold on to ‘traditional’ teaching (often on matters of sexuality) and those who, while remaining Catholic, are more willing to explore dimensions within moral teaching that may lead to what they perceive as legitimate conclusions of conscience that fall beyond the parameters of Catholic orthodoxy. I also explore data which indicates that the so called ‘dissenting’ positions often represent the current state of thinking among American Catholics who consider themselves committed to the church. In fact, the data to which I refer in my book indicates that the active Catholic community is closer to Sr. Margaret Farley’s conclusions on matters of sexual ethics than they are to the official teaching of the church as promulgated both in the church’s encyclicals and in its universal catechism.
It is important to frame this current reality within a historical context. Both recent struggles have precedent within the Catholic Church. As a matter of fact, one could argue that the tension between ‘official teaching’ and theological exploration has simply been historic reality within Catholicism. In other words, there is a long history of Catholic theologians raising questions and floating proposals for different teachings to emerge within the church. Doing what Sr. Farley has done and utilizing knowledge gained from the social sciences, from Biblical study and from world culture and science, theologians have approached theological tasks from different starting points from that traditionally used by those theologians who have already accepted ipso facto that the official teaching of the church remains unchangeable. Those holding this position understand these teachings to be fixed either in natural law or as part of the historic authoritative teaching of the church which human beings have no right to alter.
Others, and in this category I would name such theological giants as Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, Hans Kung, Charles Curran, and Teilhard de Chardin, among many others, operate from a different starting point and see the theological task as illumined by the best available material from a wide variety of disciplines. In her work Just Love, Sr. Margaret Farley draws from a studied exploration of relevant disciplines in shedding light upon the pressing moral issues of which she writes, issues that are legitimately within the interest of the church.
Likewise there is a long standing tension in the church between those who are serving in pastoral situations and who see unnecessary inflexibility in how the official church teaching deals with moral questions. A brief exploration of the history of religious sisters in the United States indicates that they have been in the forefront of working with women who have suffered from inadequate health care and who have borne the burden of unhealthy relationships which have often led to unplanned pregnancies. The pastoral experiences of these women, multiplied exponentially by those of their colleagues in some of life’s most problematic situations, coupled with their profound commitment to Christ’s call to truly love one’s neighbor, has led many to question both the universality and the sensibility of particular teachings of the church.
As I note in Crossing the Street, American Catholics faced this disconnect in the late 1960’s as the church hierarchy reaffirmed church teaching on birth control. What we see happening now is what we saw happening then: We are looking at the ongoing tension in the Catholic community when the authoritative decisions of the church run contrary to the decisions individual Catholics must make in the privacy of their consciences. How one handles this as a Catholic has been an important issue in my life, an issue in which one will find a variety of possible responses. It is an issue most certainly present in these controversies that have found their way to center stage in these recent days.
(Robert R. LaRochelle has a Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Chicago Theological Seminary. He is both pastor of the Congregational Church of Union, UCC, and a high school counselor. He has published many articles and conducted workshops throughout the country. In addition to his recent work, Crossing the Street (Energion 2012), he has written Part-Time Pastor, Full-Time Church[Pilgrim Press, 2010].)
-
Book Review: The Questioning God
Reviewed by Robert Danielson, Ph.D.
Faculty Associate and Affiliate Faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary
Wilmore, Kentucky
Ant Greenham presents an intriguing analysis of the world’s monotheistic religions and their view of God, through the lens of how God is perceived to relate to the questions of human beings. Using broad strokes, he paints a generalized picture of this situation. In essence, he argues that Islam suppresses the questioning of God through its focus on submission to the will of Allah. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Greenham presents the Jewish faith as being so open to questioning God that this questioning has undermined an ultimate certainty in God. This leaves the Christian faith, which Greenham examines in both its Roman Catholic and Evangelical forms. While Vatican II opened the Roman Catholic Church to a more positive view of questioning, it has left certain theological positions too sacrosanct to be questioned. Evangelicals, in the meantime, have become too closed to the questioning of authority (both political and religious) and Greenham outlines some of the potential dangers inherent in this lack of questioning.
The author presents some very solid scriptural arguments for his position and he outlines a strong biblical view of questioning from the example of Christ’s words to his followers in the gospels. He recognizes several times that he does not have the space to do a thorough analysis of each religion’s position and Greenham also validates that individuals vary within each religion presented. Beyond these obvious concerns, I found myself left with several additional questions.
First, the author presents this spectrum of current positions regarding questioning as the norm for these religious traditions. He would be better served to bring out the temporal and cyclical nature of questioning. Judaism was forced into a greater openness to questioning as a result of the Holocaust and its horrors, which replaced a much closed rabbinic tradition. Christianity as well was forced into a more open position with regard to questioning by the Enlightenment. Even then the Church fought Copernicus and other scientists through the Inquisition and the Counter Reformation for their questioning of the theology of their day. The Islamic world was the seat of scientific knowledge and openness during the Dark Ages, when the Christian Church demanded blind obedience to the faith. Greenham mentions a number of these factors, but does not really tie them into a theory which would be more cyclical. While Islam may be going through a current phase that is closed to questioning, this does not mean this period is permanent or unable to be changed given historical events. Evangelical Christianity may be going through a similar cycle of closing itself to questioning stemming back to the Scopes trials and a distancing of Evangelical Christianity from scientific inquiry. All religions may go through such cyclical transformations.
Second, Greenham does not really tie in the role of mystery and faith in religious traditions. While questioning is indeed one important aspect of how people interact with God in religion, all of these traditions also call for some ideas to be accepted as matters of faith. The mystery of the Trinity, faith in the divinity of Jesus, acceptance of the faithful transmission of the Qur’an to Muhammad, or the acceptance of the Jewish nation as a specially chosen people of God, are all matters which a believer must chose to accept by faith. No amount of questioning can prove or disprove these fundamental concepts. Religion, in its basic difference from science, is found in its concepts accepted without question by faith.
Third, in terms of mission and evangelism from an evangelical perspective, the author does not really deal with the role of the Holy Spirit. In terms of previenient grace (from a Wesleyan point of view), the Holy Spirit is active in all parts of the world, all cultures, and all religions, before Christianity even appears. It is the Holy Spirit who compels people to begin to question what they believe and why. It is the Holy Spirit that is the reason for individual variations in how people move to conversion and personal transformation. In the same way, it is the convicting power of the Holy Spirit that moves us to self-critique our own ideas and values as Christians. The dynamic power of questioning would be nothing without this theological groundwork from a Christian perspective.
From my reading of Greenham’s book, The Questioning God, I feel he understands these issues and concepts, but lacked time and opportunity to elaborate on them. Nevertheless, I feel they are important, even vital additions to this conversation. Greenham has provided a fascinating foundation for a beginning discussion on how people should deal with questions about God, both from inside and outside the Church. His biblical principles for Christians are sound and need to be heard in the Evangelical Church today. While his perspective of questioning in the Muslim and Jewish communities provides a good starting place for a discussion on evangelism, it is not the end of the discussion. Much more remains to be said and analyzed in terms of history and the theology of world religions, but it is a refreshing place to begin to develop new and more fundamental questions to ask about what we believe. -
The Gospel Secret
by Henry E. Neufeld
Energion Publications
One of the areas on which various Energion authors have differing perspectives is the relationship of the gospels to history.
Energion author Herold Weiss, author of Finding My Way in Christianity and Creation in Scripture (forthcoming), writes about the gospels and the ‘messianic secret’ in his column in Spectrum:All future generations of believers are contemporaries of Jesus who can remember his mighty deeds because the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, teaches them and “re-minds” them of what they have neither seen nor heard. Once the disciples received the Holy Spirit who taught them all things and reminded them of all things in the light of the Scriptures, then and only then did they understand what Jesus had been about. This is the Johannine definition of the memory that is guided by the Holy Spirit. It understands what it did not know and remembers what it had neither seen nor heard in order to actualize in labors of love the life of Jesus on earth. To all his disciples Jesus says: “Remember the word that I said to you” (15: 20).
Read the entire column.
As is often the case, differences in the way we read the gospels lead back to differences in the way we understand inspiration. On this topic Energion Publications currently lists History and Christian Faith and From Inspiration to Understanding, (Edward W. H. Vick) as well as my own When People Speak for God.
Taking a completely different view of the origins and historicity of the gospels, we have Why Four Gospels? by David Alan Black. Of course I have read all these books as an editor, but I have also found it very helpful to read these very different approaches in other people’s works as well, or books with even more extreme differences, such as Stein’s Jesus the Messiahor Bock’s Jesus according to Scripture
on the one hand and Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
.
-
American Politics and the Christian
D. Kevin Brown has an interesting essay written as he watched the most recent Republican debate. I think a key sentence is this:
The only way to change a person is on the inside.
Read Kevin’s post and comment.
-
Mohammad El-Tebow
I read an interesting editorial this morning at Fox News: What If Tim Tebow Were A Muslim? The author suggests that the frequent mockery he receives would be largely absent if he were a devout Muslim instead of a devout Christian:
Imagine for a second, the Denver Broncos quarterback is a devout follower of Islam, sincere and principled in his beliefs and thus bowed toward Mecca to celebrate touchdowns. Now imagine if Detroit Lions player Stephen Tulluch and Tony Scheffler mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown, just like what happened in October.
I know what would happen. All hell would break loose.
Stinging indictments issued by sports columnists. At least a few outraged religious leaders chiming in on his behalf. Depending on what else had happened that day, they might have a chance at becoming Keith Olbermann’s Worst Person In The World.
And there would be apologies. Oh, Lord, would there be apologies — by players, by coaches, possibly by ownership with a tiny chance of a statement by NFL commish Roger Goodell.
You cannot mock Muslim faith, not in this country, not anywhere really.
I think that is a good question but maybe not for the same reasons.
I certainly do think that Muslims get treated differently than Christians, in part because the pseudo-Christianity that marks our cultural religion is the majority report in our society and Muslims of all stripes get lumped in with the 9/11 hijackers. Mocking Christianity is a popular sport for academics, media types and others. What I wonder is why Christianity is not more reviled by a culture that is antithetical to everything the Gospel stands for.
When I think about this, I also wonder: What if Tim Tebow were Muslim? Would Christians embrace his faith and devotion and defend him from critics?
I doubt it. Nor should we.
So why should we expect the unbelieving world to applaud someone open and devout about a faith that that same world hates? How many times does the Bible assure us that in this life we will have trouble, that we will be blessed when persecuted and reviled, that the world will and should hate us because it hates Him? There are two kingdoms and every human is a subject of one or the other, the kingdom of this world and its infernal ruler or the Kingdom of Christ where He and He alone is King. As subjects and ambassadors of Christ the King, we should expect nothing less than hostility from the world. So let’s stop wringing our hands about the vitriol directed at a famous athlete, an athlete who shows more Christ0like character in responding to those attacks that those who purport to defend him. The same people mocking Tebow are the people we are called to love and take the Gospel to. -
The Nature of Hope
If the man of Old Testament days were asked how he had come by his understanding of the world, how it was that he had come to have a standpoint on the meaning of reality, there would be little question as to how he would answer the query, after it had been put in concrete enough terms so that he could understand it. He would refer to what God had done, to the ‘mighty acts,’ and to the traditions by means of which such past acts had been preserved in remembrance. He would speak of the expectation which the recalling of these remembered acts had awakened in him. For his God was not simply the God of his fathers. The teaching which had been handed down was not simply a memory of what was past and done. Yahweh was not the God of the past only. He could stride across the length of the future leaving newly fulfilled promises and newly awakened anticipation in His train. Yahweh was a living God, He had made his will known in His doings. These doings had passed into history and yet were not past. They had passed into history, but they were present in being remembered. But not only that, the God who had performed them then was the God who acted now. The Hebrew lived between memory which was no mere memorial, and anticipation which was no mere wistfulness. He was the man he was because of the God in whom he believed. He had been shaped to be the man he was by his trust in the God in whom he believed. He hoped because he knew God’s promise, and because he knew that it was not exhausted even when it was being fulfilled. He knew that the fulfilment itself pointed beyond itself to what was yet to come in the activity of God’s future.
It was this forward looking that came to distinguish the Hebrew people, and the Hebrew book, the Old Testament, from other peoples and from other books. It appears in different ways, but it is always there, ‘All presentation of history in the Old Testament is in one form or another inherently open to a future . . . in this connection ‘future’ is always a future to be released by God . . . . This forward looking is certainly not always the same. Sometimes it is more obvious, sometimes less: but it is present everywhere . . . . the prophets looked for the decisive factor in Israel’s whole existence — her life or her death — in some future event . . . . Thus Hosea foretells a new entry into the land, Isaiah a new David and a new Zion, Jeremiah a new covenant, and Deutero-Isaiah a new Exodus.’1
We are constantly borne forward to what is to come. Faith in the God of the covenant, who is the God of promise and of fulfilment, has its natural accompaniment in the hope that can face the future, not only without fear, but with confident expectation. The greatest acts of God are not those from the past. They are yet to be. God has begun what He has not yet finished. The believer lives between the times, and thus in expectation. His faith is a hopeful faith. ‘Not only words of promise, but also the events themselves, in so far as they are experienced as ‘historic’ events within the horizon of promise and hope, bear the mark of something that is still outstanding, not yet finalized, not yet realized.’2 Here everything is in motion, the accounts never balance, and fulfilment unexpectedly gives rise in turn to another promise of something greater still. Here nothing has its ultimate meaning in itself, but is always an earnest of something still greater.
The very fact that the Old Testament is a Christian book means that this distinguishing characteristic must be retained in any adequate Christian thought about God. The concreteness of the Old Testament attitude to ‘religion’ (they, of course had no such word), and the concreteness of the Old Testament understanding of God stands guard against different kinds of attempt to forget or to minimise this intrinsic tie to what is past, and the anticipation of what is yet to be which was the distinguishing feature of biblical faith. To put it in other words, faith rests upon that which has been done. It thus has a stake in speaking about history. It anticipates what will be. Genuine faith is never unaccompanied by hope. It knows what hope is because in its history it has seen hope fulfilled.
We are thus led to the need for clarifying an important term. It is the word eschatology. The Greek word eschatos is an adjective and means ‘last.’ The English term ‘end’ might serve also as a translation. But the English term ‘end’ has an interesting ambiguity which this Greek term does not have. For as well as ‘last’, the English term ‘end’ also means ‘purpose’ or ‘fulfilment.’ To ‘achieve one’s end’ is to ‘get one’s purpose fulfilled.’ Now if we take the Greek term, transliterate it into English (adding a transliterated Greek suffix) the term ‘eschatology’ emerges. It means the doctrine of the end. The term comes to have an interesting ambiguity however. The end can be temporal or it can be purposive (When we learned Greek and Latin, final clauses were purpose clauses). Traditional eschatology has held the two meanings of the term together, when it asserted that the purpose of God was fulfilled at the end of the world. The problem of eschatology was then to relate the final (that is, the last) fulfilment of God’s purpose to that which is here and now being fulfilled in the life of faith. For, it was rightly realised that in an essential sense of the term God’s purpose is fulfilled in the life of faith here and now. The believer has eternal life. This was balanced in the traditional view by the assertion that that was not all that needed to be said, but that it must be insisted that there was life, fulfilled life after this one.
It is clear that a divorce can take place in two quite different directions. Eschatology can become exclusively futuristic or exclusively ‘presentative’! The former takes place when schemes of eschatological geography, of end-time mapping, replace the proper concern, which should (if the emphasis is going to be put on the future) be the fulfilment of life in the future which follows the events of such neatly mapped-out schemes. The latter takes place when emphasis is placed on the reality of present faith to such an extent that the content of hope is pushed out of range. All that matters is that one believe, that one decide. These are the dangers of fundamentalism and of existentialism respectively.
There is yet another danger. It is that of holding the importance of hope (however the events of the end-time are mapped, or whether they are at all) in one compartment and the importance of faith in another. One knows that faith in Jesus Christ is essential but this faith is not brought into intrinsic theological relationship to an understanding of the last things. The doctrine of the eschaton, and those of the life of faith and of the Spirit and of the church remain as disjecta membra, never brought into essential connection (that is, integration) with that of the eschaton. As with the doctrine, so with the preaching of the church. It is then that the preaching of the Christian hope, or as it is sometimes called of the ‘Second Advent,’ becomes something less than Christian. Christian hope is secularised even with the retention of the symbolism that points beyond such secularisation. Sometimes it may take on crass form not entirely different from the eschaton promised to the Islamic warrior, as in the case of the Tennessee preacher heard by the writer for whom fulfilment consisted in having a large boat, a magnificent house, every imaginable comfort. He simply transferred these (in the name of Christian fulfilment) to the eschaton. It requires little insight to see that this has nothing to do with Christian hope. The moral of the piece is that in preaching fulfilment, the Christian preaches Jesus Christ, no less. He is to preach Jesus Christ even when he preaches eschatology, rather one should say, especially then. Jesus Christ points to the fulfilment of our needs and provides for what is involved in being a real person. The future is thus first and foremost God’s future, and this means the future of faith and of holiness.
Thus the subject of eschatology is God. The decisive question which talk of fulfilment raises is simply, What sort of God is it that the Christian believes in, trusts and hopes for? The kind of future and of fulfilment on expects will be determined by the kind of God who (or which) is the object of one’s ultimate concern. All questions in theology finally come back to this one — namely, the question of God. If we cannot speak of God, we cannot speak of God’s future. If God is known by reference to Jesus Christ, the future of the Christian will be the future of Jesus Christ. But if Jesus Christ has not revealed the future of God, must we not say that that future is completely unknown? ‘Only when the present of Christ is an anticipation of the future of God, can it be understood as germ and beginning of that which is to come.’3
At this point we return to the Biblical understanding of God with which we began. We saw that for the Hebrew, the future was God’s future. The future did not simply come, it was not simply inevitable. It was shaped by the initiating activity of God, and thus quite the opposite of that which would simply happen. In the future, God was expected to come, with power, deliverance, revelation, fulfilment. What God would do, — that was one side of it. What man might expect, — that was the other. The future of the believer was a different future from that of the non-believer. For the believer it did not simply come, it was initiated by God. One spoke of God rather than of fate. This is signified by the Latin adventus, from which we get our English word ‘advent’. The Greek equivalent is parousia, which quite appropriately has come to stand for the ‘end.’ The parousia in the New Testament is the future that Jesus Christ will initiate. The advent, the parousia, is that which will come. It is the actualisation of purpose not simply the passage of time. Without the actualisation of purpose, there is no future. The Christian affirms that Jesus Christ anticipates the future of God in the present in that in Him the purpose of God has come to fulfilment. So as faith is directed toward Him, the possibility of His future is shared by the believer.
1Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Volume II, pp. 361, 117.
2Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p.107.
3Jurgen Moltmann, Diskussion uber die Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 212-213.
-
On Being Certain
Edward W. H. Vick
We had gone away for a vacation, were far from home, had left it all behind and in spite of the weather were enjoying ourselves. Now it was Thursday evening. Before turning in for the night, we decided to listen to the news on the radio. So we turned it on. To my very great surprise the announcer said it was the Friday news. Friday? But it was Thursday. Since announcers make mistakes, and since events are not reported before they happen, we waited. But he went on acting as though he knew what he was talking about. I was certain that it was Thursday. But it turned out that I was wrong. It was Friday.
Someone whom I knew very well celebrated his birthday on the fourteenth of September, and had done it for years. on one occasion he had reason to examine his birth certificate, which informed him that he was born not on the fourteenth but on the fifteenth of September. He was for a very long time certain that it was the fourteenth. But he was wrong.
A family of expert naturalists went into the woods as they had done many, many times before. They were especially good at mushrooms. They went home with a bagful and ended up in hospital, fighting for their lives. They were certain the fungi were edible. They were wrong.
One thousand five hundred and thirteen people boarded the great boat that was making its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. It was the year 1912, and she was the most advanced liner ever built. She was called the Titanic. They were certain of comfort, luxury and of safety. One thousand five hundred and thirteen people never reached their destination. They were certain but they were wrong.
A young couple were quite certain that their proposed marriage would be a happy one. Other people were not so sure. The psychologist who counseled them advised them that the marriage would be disastrous. But they were certain it would be all right. They were married. The marriage ended in disaster. They were certain, but they were wrong.
So we could go on.
It is a fairly common human experience to be quite sure about something and yet to be wrong. Now that raises a very real and very interesting problem. What’s the point of being certain if you may be wrong? What is the status of your certainty? When I say, I’m certain or ‘I’m quite sure’ that says something about me, as much about me as about the way things are. In fact, as our examples show, it often says more about me than about the way things are. To be certain about something does not mean that what I’m certain about is true.
You can put it in a sentence. Certainty is not the same as truth. Now that is something well worth thinking about.
I learned, when they taught me about public speaking, that I must speak with confidence, even if I may not feel confident. After all, you can’t convince people about what you have to say if you don’t act as if you were certain. The fact is, I’m sure you’ve noticed it, that when people speak as if they were certain, other people will take what they have to say as true. But that is a confusion. When the speaker says, ‘Let me tell you something I’m quite certain about’ we can’t then simply assume that he is right. To be certain is not the same as being right.
If one hears something long enough one is apt to believe it. If you go on telling people something long enough, there is a good chance that they will end up believing what you tell them. The fact is that most of what we believe we have taken on authority. We do not, we did not question everything in all of the books that we were given to read. In fact we were in no position to be able to do so. So we had to rely upon being taught what was reliable.
But, instead of saying, ‘I’m certain’ people sometimes say ‘I know’. Then there is real trouble. You can, as we have seen, be certain of what is not true. But you cannot know what is not true. So when someone says, ‘I know’ when they only mean, ‘I’m certain,’ it is easy to be taken in if one is not careful.
Some things you should only be certain about if you have sufficient evidence. There is evidence which settles whether it is Thursday or Friday, whether one’s birthday is one day rather than another. If we are not aware of or have not given due weight to such evidence, our certainties are neither here nor there.
You have heard people arguing. Sometimes they argue about their certainties. ‘I’m sure it is’, says one. ‘I’m sure it is not’, says the other. But what are they arguing about? Nothing is more fruitless than a futile and unnecessary argument. Being certain is a state of mind, and you can get yourself into a state of mind. You can get with people who are more sure than you areor read only the arguments which support your own point of view, or refuse to listen when evidence is discussed. But the state of mind we call being certain may be neither here not there. It may not be worth a fig.
This means that some people who appear very serious are not half serious enough. I mean, you can make confident noises and gestures about your certainties and never really get down to brass tacks and ask not only, ‘What am I certain about?’ but also, ‘Why am I certain about it?’ and the more important question, ‘Do I have grounds for being certain?’ For the fact of the matter is that we ought to reserve our states of certainty for what is in fact true We should be able to give reasons, cite evidence for our certainties. I believe that it is a moral obligation to examine our certainties with these and other questions in mind. Only so can we call ourselves honest. But we cannot, if we are honest, be superficial about it. It may go deeper than we thought. So ask yourself three questions and stay with them for awhile, for a life time. That should be long enough. What are you certain about? What do you claim for your certainties? Why are you certain? That means, What grounds do you have for being certain.
What all this implies is that some certainties are unreasonable however much they may please us and however much the prospect of giving them up may distress us. Perhaps in the most important areas of our human life, our illusions are just too expensive. A bigot or a fanatic is certain beyond what is reasonable, beyond what the evidence warrants. And a facade of certainty may be a cover for a real insecurity. But that is another matter – an important one, mind you. Very important! Since some certainties are unreasonable, and we ought to be as reasonable as we can, there is a moral aspect to our question. We ought to examine our certainties.
Have a look at the following argument and see what you make of it. It sums up what we have so far been saying.
We are sometimes mistaken when we are certain. To be certain cannot mean that we know the truth. To know the truth some other conditions besides being certain must be fulfilled. If such conditions are fulfilled then a feeling of certainty is irrelevant. Such a condition is the presence of evidence, or of sound reasons. So we ought to seek for evidence and for sound reasons when we wish to attain to the truth.
The pilot will trust his instruments in spite of his own feelings. His instruments are the windows to reality, his indicators of truth. However, intuitively, he may be certain, he must not trust his intuition in defiance of the readings of his instruments. They provide him with appropriate evidence. So when it is a matter of checking my certainties there is often appropriate evidence to which I can appeal.
However certain I may be that it is Thursday, if I have not examined the evidence for that certainty then my feeling of certainty is irrelevant. I could get the morning paper, or look at the calendar, I could recount the days from the one I was last certain (!) about, no not that – you see how easily we say the wrong thing – from the one I knew. I could have kept a diary.
Some people who have considered the matters we have been talking about have ended up by abandoning all claim to be certain. But we must not do that. In fact you can’t
do it. Just think for a moment about the claim, ‘You cannot be certain of anything’ and you will find it very unusual. It’s queer, this skeptical claim, since it seems to say no and yes at the same time, to deny and to affirm simultaneously. To say, ‘You can’t be certain of anything!’ means that you must be certain of that. So it is self-contradictory, or rather self-refuting, as the following conversation shows.
‘Anyone who says he’s certain is a fool.’
‘Are you certain of that?’
‘Of course I am certain.’
Even if you try to question every certainty you’ll find that you can’t doubt them all. So watch out.
Now, there are predispositions to believe certain kinds of people, provided they speak confidently. If a scientist says you can be certain of it, especially it he has a white coat on, people are apt to believe that what he says is true and in turn to speak with certainty about the matter. But the history of science shows that one man’s certainties were another man’s questions. One person’s answer is another person’s quest. One person’s orthodoxy is another person’s scandal. But it is only when the appropriate methods and evidence are forthcoming that one can speak about truth, or even a quest for truth.
The history of science also provides us with instances of certainties which were abandoned with the understanding of the evidence. It also provides us with examples of bigotry and of foolishness in clinging to long-held positions. At the outset of the modern era, most people who asked the question held that the universe was earth-centered They were certain. They were unanimous, but they were wrong. There are some things the truth of which is not settled by the counting of hands, by disputations, but by the appropriate interpretation of the evidence. The Aristotelians appealed to Aristotle and produced their arguments, but Galileo offered them his telescope. When they refused to look through it, and instead demanded a discussion on Aristotelian lines, they could no longer be said to be reasonable. Since they were no longer reasonable, their certainties were not longer reasonable certainties. Moreover they were in error.
In religious matters we hear a lot about certainty. So we have to be especially careful, and it must be said – deliberately honest in such things. To say, ‘We are certain’ is not the same as saying ‘We know the truth.’Of course religion is a disputed matter, inside and outside Christianity. You can usually be sure either of long silence or of a good discussion when the question comes round to religion. Since one person’s certainty is another person’s query, the question arises very seriously here. What is the status of my certainty? May I not be projecting my certainties on to reality and calling it by religious names, such as God, revelation, heaven, immortality? Of course I may. It does happen. Not all believers worship the same God, even in the same community. So we must beware.
The believer confesses the certainty of his faith. The preacher declares it. The theologian examines it. The theologian, if he is worth his salt, refuses to let you take your certainties for granted. He asks the why, the wherefore. He faces outward to the non-believer and asks the questions from without. What are the grounds for your faith, for your beliefs? What are your grounds for your claims about Jesus Christ, for the authority you accept, the Bible, the church? What are the grounds for your understanding of God, as for example, Trinity? What are the grounds for claiming that there is some relation between what you believe and how you live?
The honest Christian theist is not afraid to face the hard question, to try for an answer. Honesty is one of the Christian virtues most to be valued. If you seek it, you will need patience as well – the ability to face the crisis, to suffer the unknown and to keep trusting when perhaps much seems lost. The prize is theological, intellectual and personal integrity.
But let is now put the glove on the other hand. For our observations work both ways, for the theist, the believer in God, and for the non-theist, the one who does not believe in God. For it is true of the atheist that his certainty is not necessarily relevant, when he claims, ‘I’m quite certain that God is not as Christians claim him to be, a God of love’, or ‘I’m quite certain that there is no God’, or ‘I’m quite certain that God is not a God of strict justice.’ There is such a thing as a superficial and unreasonable atheism, as there is such a thing as a superficial and unreasonable theism. In neither case can one simply appeal to one’s certainty.
We feel, I think, that being certain, the mental state of certainty, is only really warranted when it has due support. In our off moments, we may well be fooled by someone’s certainty, especially when we want to believe what he commends. But when we reflect we are not so easily taken in. We’re not taken in when the lunatic says he’s Julius Caesar, or when the actor declaims that he is Richard III, King of England. We then have our critical wits about us. But in cases where the matter is not so clear-cut, we have ways of getting at the truth or falsity of the matter, if we are serious enough.
Yes, it’s when we value truth that we must examine our certainties. So what are you certain about? Take a long hard look at it. Remember, it ain’t necessarily so.************
PS. And now I want to write a postscript. I’m quite aware that there are some certainties which my being certain about is enough to show that they are true. It is true that I am awake, that I am thinking (when I am thinking), that I am in pain when I am awake , thinking and in pain, and that is enough for me to know the truth in these instances. It’s quite different for me to say, ‘He’s awake, he’s thinking, he’s in pain,’ because I am not directly aware of some one else’s states of mind. But the religious certainties are about beliefs and relationships and these are mediated. Someone witnesses to me about God. I read things in books which someone has written about Jesus Christ. So they are unlike my immediate self-awareness, and I must therefore seek to show that the religious certainties I have are well grounded. I must talk about them being true and in doing so produce reasons and evidence which point to their truth. Then I can be reasonably certain.
(Edward W. H. Vick is author of History and Christian Faith, The Adventists’ Dilemma, and the forthcoming Energion title From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully, which will begin shipping next week.)
