As far as I can tell, being honest with ourselves requires us to confess that we now live in a world where it is impossible to recognize any infallible, completely trustworthy authorities.  Or, even if we grant the existence of any such authority (as I actually do), we must confess that we have no unmediated access to that authority.  What access we have is always mediated by that which is inevitably fallible and not completely trustworthy.  Thus, we are all in the same boat, whether or not we affirm the existence of any infallible, completely trustworthy authorities.
So, for example, although I believe in a God who is, in my opinion, infallible and trustworthy (I’m willing to give God the benefit of the doubt!), I can never claim direct access to God, or knowledge of God, or God’s will, or whatever else.  Access to God is always, in some way, mediated.  Thus, things like Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all function as mediators — but neither Scripture, nor tradition, nor reason, nor experience is completely infallible or completely trustworthy.
Let us explore this point.
Although Scripture functions as an authority for Christians, it cannot be treated in an overly simplistic or naive manner.  Sometimes Scripture is inscrutable, sometimes it is contradictory, and sometimes it’s a crap shoot as to how we are to relate to the two or four thousand year old events contained therein.  Besides, God didn’t write Scripture — people, with all of their foibles and limitations did, and no matter how fancy your exegetical footwork (Scripture in its original [but now lost] form was perfect, God actually dictated the original [but now lost] biblical texts to the authors verbatim, etc.) the point remains that, Scripture as we know it, cannot be treated as infallible.  This does not mean we must then go on to refuse to recognize Scripture as an authority.  Far from it, Christians can recognize Scripture as an authority — but it is an authority we must engage critically.
I think that the complexities involved in both understanding and applying Scripture are becoming increasingly obvious, even to those who have tried to remain rooted within premodern views of Scripture.  This, in my opinion, partially explains why Evangelicals who previously had fairly loose ecclesiologies and little regard for Church history are now becoming increasingly fascinated with Roman Catholicism and the Christian Tradition (just note all of the contemporary Evangelicals who have taken to calling themselves ‘Augustinian’!).  Thus, for various Christians, Tradition (capitalized and in the singular) is treated as an infallible and completely trustworthy authority.  However, it is worth questioning if this is really the case.  When we ask this question, it quickly becomes apparent that it is difficult to see how this could be true.  First of all, an honest look at Christian history requires us to note that there is no single authoritative ‘Tradition’; rather, there are many different, often competing and contradictory, traditions.  Consequently, any who propose a single authoritative ‘Tradition’ are engaging in a highly selective reading of history that ends up being (intentionally or not) rather dishonest.
However, the case could be made that, despite differences, there are some elements of Christianity that appear consistently throughout history.  Therefore, one might wish to argue that these elements are the part of the Christian traditions that is authoritative and infallible.  However, this cannot be the case as, for example, the oppressive use of power (in order to abuse, marginalize and oppress women, children, people with disabilities, and other minority populations) is a fairly consistent thread running through many Christian traditions over the last two thousand years.   We cannot simply appeal to majority views, as majorities (yes, even majorities within the Church, and over the course of Church history) are often mistaken.  Futhermore, the Bible itself teaches us that the majority of those who call themselves ‘the people of God’ have often lost their way.  Thus, there are constantly minority movements arising to correct the majority (for example, schools of prophets in the Old Testament and the Jesus Movement in the New Testament).
However, this does not mean that majorities are always wrong and that minorities are always right.  Indeed, I believe that the Spirit of God can move in such a way that a majority of people can — independently of one another — come to the same appropriate conclusion for any given situation.  It also doesn’t mean that minorities are always right.  Often minorities fracture off of groups and spiral into self- and other-destructive behavior.
Therefore, we are once again required to critically engage with the Christian traditions.  What we cannot do is simply accept ‘Tradition’ as a single, infallible, completely trustworthy source.
This then leaves us with reason and experience.  But neither of these can be treated as infallible, completely trustworthy authorities.
Reason, in my opinion, is the least trustworthy of all.  More than any of the other authorities mentioned here, ‘reason’ is an almost entirely amorphous cultural construct.  Simply stated, what is ‘reasonable’ is only reasonable to particular people, at a particular place, during a particular moment in history.  At different places, in different moments of history, it was completely reasonable to think of the earth as flat, as created in seven days, or as existing on the back of a turtle.  Nowadays, many people consider this sort of thinking unreasonable and find it reasonable to think of the earth as round, as coming into being over a very long amount of time, and as existing in time/space (which it is now reasonable to think of as a single ‘thing’).
Of course, by highlighting this I am not suggesting that we abandon reason as an authority.  To do so would be next to impossible, given that all of us are culturally-conditioned people, and will remain culturally-conditioned, in one way or another, regardless of our best efforts.  ‘Reason’ ends up being an authority, whether we like it or not.  However, this line of thought does require us to critically engage reason (which, by the way, is what Wittgenstein does when he encourages us to talk non-sense).
We are then left with experience which, in my opinion, actually exists in something of a privileged place, especially when it comes to how we relate to God as an authority.  After all, one may read about the God of the Scriptures, one may learn about the God revealed in the Christian traditions, and one may come to some positive conclusions about God based upon reason, but if one has no experience of God, then all of that reading, learning, and thinking, will likely be for naught.  So, by saying experience exists in a ‘privileged place’ I am not saying that it is more authoritative than these other sources; rather, I am saying that it needs to be recognized as authoritative (at least in some way) before any of the other sources can be meaningfully engaged as authoritative.
However, just as with the other authorities mentioned above, experience cannot be treated as an infallible, completely trustworthy authority.  No matter how dramatic (or traumatic!) our experiences of God, we must critically engage every experience.  What if we are mistaking something for God that is not God?  What if we are being emotionally manipulated by our environment?  What if we are mentally ill (I’ve worked with many schizophrenic people who refused to take their medication because ‘God stopped talking’ when they were on the medication — but refusing to take the medication also led these people to be trapped in cycles of poverty, homelessness and violence)?  What if we are just using ‘God’s still small voice’ to justify our preconceived notions or to allow us to indulge in harmful or selfish desires?  And so on and so forth.  Thus, although experience is an authority, it cannot be considered infallible.
Consequently, we remain stuck in the state I described at the opening of this post.  We must confess that we no longer have any infallible authorities, and even if God is recognized as just that kind of authoritiy, we must confess that we have no infallible, unmediated access to God.
What then is the result of this?  The loss of certitude.  An honest confrontation with our situation requires us to confess that we can no longer be certain… about anything.  Maybe we are eisegeting the Scriptures.  Maybe we are highlighting the wrong parts of the Christian traditions.  Maybe our reason is fatally flawed.  Maybe we have misunderstood ourselves and our experiences.  Maybe that which we have taken to be God, is not God at all.  We must confess that any and all of the above is possible.
So we must abandon certainty, and we must flee from anyone who promises us certitude lest we become lured into false comforts and a world of illusions.
This, I think, is what it means for a person to ‘walk humbly with God’ (cf. Mic 6.8).  Walking humbly with God means confessing that, hey, maybe we’ve got it all wrong.  Maybe, instead of being part of the solution, we’re part of the problem.  Maybe we’re just making one giant mess of everything.  So we pray: ‘Lord, have mercy’.
Finally, I have recently come to the conclusion that this movement into uncertainty is actually an expression of one’s maturation in one’s faith.  This goes against what I was led to believe about faith when I was growing up.  When I was younger, I though that uncertainty was a sign of ‘spiritual immaturity’ and that ‘spiritual maturity’ would be expressed in an increasing sense of certainty.  Indeed, I think many Christians were led to believe that this is how ‘spiritual maturity’ is expressed.  I no longer believe this.  I now believe that it takes a great deal of maturity to confess that one is uncertain (about everything), and the reason why we have difficulty confessing this is because we remain in places of immaturity.  This, at least, has been my own (neither infallible nor completely trustworthy!) experience: the more deeply rooted I have become in my faith, the more I have been able to abandon certitude in order to walk humbly with God — and with my neighbours as we, together, strive to do justice and love mercy (Mic 6.8, again).

Recently, I’ve become increasingly fascinated with the theories and trajectories that are being expressed in contemporary physics.  Now granted, I don’t understand much of the math and notation involved, but what I am able to grasp of astrophysics, quantem mechanics, Einstein’s reflections on space/time, and so on, is absolutely mind-blowing.
However, one of the things that has struck me as I have been digging into all of this is just how much science in general, and physics in particular, are misrepresented at the popular level.  At the popular level, science is presented as though it is based upon universal laws, empirical evidence, irrefutable conclusions, and concrete ‘facts’.  Often, this is then contrasted with religious faith, which is said to be counter-intuitive, counter-empirical, and insubstantial (or unsustainable).  Science, in other words, is said to be entirely sensible, while faith is said to be entirely nonsensical.
In response to this charge many Christians, have engaged in a form of apologetics that has tried to demonstrate that faith is also a sensible enterprise based upon certain laws, proofs, empirical evidence, and other facts.  Now, I’m not convinced that any apologist of this type has actually converted his or her opposition, but I think that these apologists have probably at least convinced a few people in the public that, at the very least, people of faith aren’t complete morons.  I guess that’s something.
A more encouraging response (to me at least), is that taken by those who argue that many of these apologetic Christian approaches have allowed themselves to be dominated by the limitations and paradigms of ‘modern science’ (by that I mean science as it developed from the Enlightenment until the start of the 20th century).  As a result of this many contemporary (or ‘postmodern’ if you prefer that term) Christians now feel like apologetics that persist in that paradigm are still reflecting a type of Christianity that was overly conditioned by a particular culture and moment in history (‘modernity’).  And so, in many ways, contemporary Christianity has moved beyond this apologetic engagement with the laws, proofs, methods, and conclusions of modern science.  Instead, they have tried to make Christianity credible by living more Christianly.  I reckon this is a good step to take.
However, just as significantly, contemporary (or ‘postmodern’) science has also moved beyond the culturally conditioned reason, method, and certitude expressed within the science of modernity.  At the moment, contemporary physics requires us to move beyond certitude, beyond laws, beyond empiricism (even, in a way, beyond logic) in order to grasp the workings of the universe.  For example, the rules and conclusions of astrophysics (which works with bodies with large amounts of mass) cannot be applied in the realm of quantem mechanics (which works with bodies with tiny amounts of mass), and vice versa.  These two areas of science cannot be brought together into a single system without contradicting each other, yet each in isolation seems to provide workable conclusions for their own areas of study.  So much for universal truths or the law of non-contradiction.  Or, to take a second example, in astrophysics it seems as though a vast amount of ‘dark matter’ is required to exist so that we can explain the movement of galaxies (amongst other things).  However, the existence of ‘dark matter’ is taken on faith — we cannot (yet) prove its existence… but we can’t explain things without it.  Similarly, quantem mechanics now requires us to speak of ‘probabilities’ and not ‘laws’, while also leading us to think that there maybe be a good deal many more dimensions (11+?) than we first imagined.  Or, to provide a fourth example, Einstein’s theories require us to think of space and time as a single unit — space/time — thereby collapsing what empirically (and logically?) strike us as two distinct ‘things’.  And on and on it goes.  Examples like these could be multplied almost endlessly (string theory, anybody?).
Therefore, if many Christian apologists get it wrong because they still continue to think of Christianity in the terms established by a culturally-conditioned moment in Western history, many of those now classified as the ‘New Atheists’ get science wrong for precisely the same reason!  Oddly enough then, members of both of these opposing parties are (perhaps unwittingly) simply longing for the world (or, um, the West) as was 150 or so years ago.  Many Christian apologists seem to want to get back to a time when Christianity was in a more dominant position in our society, and many ‘New Atheists’ seem to want to get back to a time when science claimed to possess certitude.
However, probably for the best, that world has come and gone.  So now, when we listen to this or that ‘New Atheist’ debate this or that Christian apologist, we can consider ourselves lucky to witness a reenactment of what it might have been like to discuss these matters if we lived 150 years ago.  It is almost as if we get the chance to witness two dinosaurs who, unaware that they have become extinct, are putting on a spectacular show fighting each other.

Sometimes I wonder if those who barricade themselves within certain interpretations of ‘Traditional’ or ‘Orthodox’ or ‘Conservative Evangelical’ Christianity are actually doing so because they are desperate to believe in God… but have never actually tangibly experienced God-as-Event (in Badiou’s sense of the word ‘Event’).  When ‘Tradition’ is all that you have of God, then it is no wonder that challenges to ‘Tradition’ (or how that ‘Tradition’ is narrated and interpreted by this contingent) appear to be so threatening.
I sometimes wonder this, not because I think that these so-called ‘orthodox’ Christians are more closed to God than the rest of us, but because I spent 7 summers working with teens and young adults who came from Conservative Evangelical families.  During those 7 summers, I discovered that, although Conservative Evangelical kids are taught to speak of having a ‘personal relationship with God’ almost all of them have never actually encountered God in any meaningful, transformative or concrete way.  I remember when I first awakened to the observation that I was actually an oddity for believing I had actually had such experiences and this so surprised me that my first thought was: “Well, why the heck are you guys Christians then??”
Not surprisingly, it turned out that many of these people only identified as Christians because their parents had trained them to do so.  Consequently, when they moved on to independence and to other environments, their Christian faith (sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually) disappeared.
However, others could not face the trauma of walking away from their faith and so, in the absence of a lived encounter with God, went on to immerse themselves in apologetics, and the history and doctrines of various (in this case, Reformed or Evangelical) Christian denominations.
Several of these people have ended up within the walls of the Christian Academy.  Consequently, it does not surprise me that Christian academics often end up speaking condescendingly of those who talk of having a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus or, to provide another example, those who speak of the notion of exploring ‘God as a lover’.  Thus, those who have never experienced God-as-Event end up building theological systems that downplay the significance of one’s personal encounter with God (i.e. one’s personal experiences are not to be trusted or treated as any sort of authority), and end up overemphasizing the history of Christian doctrine (although it should be noted that this narration of history is almost always fraught with value judgments and acts of exclusion in order to end up confirming previously established views).
However, those who have encountered God-as-Event cannot view this (fictional!) Tradition with the same urgency or authority.  Granted, the various streams of Christianity, and the multiple traditions that trace their way throughout the last two thousand years, are an important witness to the activity of the Word of God in history… but one has now been freed from the need to desperately cling to one particular ideological interpretation of that history — in fact, one can even more critically engage with these things because, after the Event, one’s faith in God will remain regardless of what one discovers in the traditions or in Christianity’s many orthodoxies.
Thankfully, this at least was the experience of a minority of the people with whom I worked for those 7 summers.  Awakening to the realization that God could be known as Event, these few were lucky enough to look for that experience, and to be found by it.  Would that we were all so fortunate!

Mel, Charles and I are back from our travels and getting settled in, once again, to life in Vancouver.  That means I can now return to my ongoing book giveaways (which I’ve initiated as one way of celebrating the birth of wee Charlie).  Just to remind everybody of how this works — if you want the books listed below (and you have to want all of them) just leave a comment and I will put your name in a random draw.  If I draw your name, I will mail the books to you, free of charge.  Simple, right?  Here are the books up for grabs this time:
1. Joyful Exiles: Life in Christ on the Dangerous Edge of Things by James M. Houston.
2. The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on the Tough Questions of Faith by Christopher J. H. Wright.
3. Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil by John G. Stackhouse Jr.
4. Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
5. Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve by Lewis B. Smedes.
6. A Tale of Three Kings: A Study in Brokenness by Gene Edwards.

Just a few scattered and questioning thoughts regarding a couple of statements that are treated as truisms within certain contemporary Christian circles.
First truism: ‘God loves everybody equally.’
Is this really true?  Doesn’t it seem a little suspicious that this statement is one that is repeated ad nauseum by Christians who are well-situated in places of comfort and privilege within predatory and death-dealing societies?
So, even if this statement is true, shouldn’t we instead be emphasising that God’s love is one that calls the oppressed to liberation and the oppressors to repentance?  Isn’t it a little irresponsible and self-serving to neglect to mention that God’s love calls us to particular historical actions and ways of being?  Doesn’t this mean that, for those Christians mentioned above, it might be better to say: “God loves you, but God sure as hell hates what you are doing with your life”?
Second truism: “All sins are equal in God’s eyes.”
Is this a true statement?  Does it really reflect the way in which God engages sin within the biblical narrative?  In actuality doesn’t the biblical story show us that God thinks some actions are far worse than others?  After all, to pick just one example, doesn’t God permit drunkenness amongst the poor, while simultaneously condemning the wealthy who spend their money on booze instead on sharing their wealth with others?
Once again, isn’t it a little suspicious that this sort of thinking is popular amongst Western Christians of status and privilege?  Given that almost all areas of their lives are saturated with the blood of others, shouldn’t we think twice before we believe them when they tell us that ‘all sins are equal in God’s eyes’?

[At the ‘Amidst the Powers’ conference, I was invited to issue a five minute response to Stanley Hauerwas’ plenary, which was on the topic of war, its concomitant sacrifices, and the Christian alternative.  This is what I said.]

First, of all let me say thank-you to the organizers of this conference for providing me with the opportunity to respond to Dr. Hauerwas. Secondly, let me say thank-you to Dr. Hauerwas himself for presenting us with a lecture that honestly confronts the realities of our war-torn world, from the perspective of the Christian faith.

As I find myself largely in agreement with what Dr. Hauerwas has said, I would like to spend the bulk of my response proposing one possible way of filling out his understanding of how the existence and worship of the Church brings an end to war. I would like to propose that embodying God’s preferential option for and with the poor is a practice that reforms the habits of our imagination and offers us the moral equivalent of war, so that war becomes superfluous to the narration of our life together.

However, before I pursue this thesis, I feel that it might be useful to emphasise that Dr. Hauerwas’ remarks are just as relevant to those of us who live in Canada as they are to citizens of the United States. It is important to emphasise this point because, ever since Lester B. Pearson, Canadians have tended to view their international military exercises not as acts of war but as an essential element of peacekeeping. Thus, while we may view the US as a war-mongering nation, we have tended to view ourselves as a peace-loving people, engaging in peace-building activities around the world. Unfortunately, this view is entirely false. As has been well-documented by independent journalists, media critics, and various non-governmental organizations, the language of ‘peacekeeping’ is all too often an ideological gloss used by the Canadian government to disguise overt acts of aggression and war. Thus, for example, in 2004 when Canada was instrumental in overthrowing the democratically elected Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide (in order to continue a brutal class war against the people of Haiti) operation “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) was created and Canadian soldiers were sent in with a UN peacekeeping force. Now “Responsibility to Protect” sounds a great deal more admirable than operations like “Desert Storm” or “Shock and Awe” but the actions taken and the end results are the same. The same should be noted of other Canadian military exercises – from the Balkans to the Horn of Africa, our so-called peacekeepers have have been used to exploit local conflicts in order to advance the interests of the Canadian government and various transnational corporations. These are the same interests that Canadian forces are serving in Afghanistan today. Therefore, when we residents of Canada listen to Dr. Hauerwas speak of the moral practice of war, we should be looking at ourselves and not at our neighbours to the South.

Having said that, I return to my suggestion that embodying the preferential option for and with the poor is the way in which the worship of the Church puts an end to war. Dr. Hauerwas has argued that the worshipping Church, existing as a social ethic, offers us an alternative to war and its concomitant sacrifices. This, I think, is an excellent point to make, but we must ask ourselves: how does the Church exist in this way? This is a question Dr. Hauerwas does not address in much detail, although he does touch upon the importance of being shaped by the liturgy and of living in a manner that is consistent with participation in the Eucharist. Again, another important point to make, but without filling out the concrete details of what it might look like to be shaped by the liturgy in general, and the Eucharist in particular, we risk continuing to live inadvertently contradictory and compartmentalised lives. Thus, while I’m sure that Dr. Hauerwas does not wish to divorce the spectacular from the real, or the spiritual from the political, the manner in which he addresses this topic risks allowing the listener to engage in this divorce and think that he or she is acting as an agent of peace by partaking of the body of Christ on Sunday – even though he or she goes on to support acts of war and violence simply by participating in middle-class life from Monday to Saturday – for war is not simply a force that gives us meaning, amongst other things it gives us the stolen resources and the bloodied but cheap goods upon which our daily lives depend.

Therefore, I would like to fill out Dr. Hauerwas’ conception of the worshipping Church as a social ethic be making explicit that this requires members of the Church to embody God’s preferential option with the poor. This, after all, is what true catholicity requires – the unity of the Church only takes place when the confessing members of Christ’s body (the churches) are united with the crucified members of Christ’s body (the poor). It is in this practice of concrete economic and political solidarity that the Church comes to embody a moral practice that is equal to the compelling, fascinating, and perversely beautiful moral practice of war.

Now there are many stories I could tell to illustrate this thesis – I could speak of acting as a human shield in front of a young drug dealer and the gunman hired to kill him, of giving the clothes off my back to a woman who was stripped naked by her pimp, of hosting sex workers at our home for dinner, and of allowing an old bank robber to find sanctuary on our couch – and all these things would try to express the intimate bond created amongst those who pursue this trajectory, not to mention the passion, beauty, and genuinely cruciform sacrifice to be found in such people and places. However, much like war veterans mentioned by Dr. Hauerwas, those who try to live this way, often find it difficult to speak of their experiences in normal, even Christian, communities. Such stories are too alien, too easily romanticised and perverted by both the teller and the listener, to mean much to those who do not share in them. Indeed, I suspect that the listener only comes to know the compelling nature of such stories, when he or she chooses to move into those narratives and personally embody them.

Therefore, I believe that Dr. Hauerwas’ plenary needs to be complimented with an invitation – come, taste and see that the Lord is good and to be found in the company of ‘the least of these’. For I know this much to be true: members of the Church cannot come to the table of the crucified Christ if they are not also sharing a table with the crucified people of today. To try and do so is, as Paul says, to eat and drink judgment upon ourselves.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations to Ian, the winner of last weeks ‘Biblical Studies’ book giveaway!  This week, the theme of the book giveaway is social and political commentary — as per usual, the winner will be selected at random.  Here are the books that are up for grabs:

• Two by Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World and Profit Over People: neoliberalism and the global order;
• Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations by Michael Walzer;
• Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Unclear Age by Frank Furedi;
• The Globalization of Nothing by George Ritzer.

First of all, congratulations to Josh Chin, winner of last weeks Emergent giveaway.  This week, as we continue to celebrate the birth of Charles (by spreading the love), the theme of the books being given away is ‘Biblical Studies’.  The books included are:

• Encountering the New Testament: A Historical and Theological Survey by Walter A. Elwell and Robert W. Yarbrough;
• The New Testament: An Introduction by Norman Perrin;
• New Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors by Gordon D. Fee;
• The Cross of Christ by John R. W. Stott;
• Old Testament Exegesis: A Primer for Students and Pastors by Douglas Stuart;
• Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries) by Derek Kidner.

I should conclude with a reminder and a clarification.  The reminder is that all of these books are used and most contain at least some markings made by prior readers.  The clarification is that only those who are interested in receiving all of the books mentioned will be included in the draw (this saves me hassle and money on postage).

As a part of celebrating the birth of my son Charles, I will be doing a series of weekly themed book giveaways.  If you want to receive the books mentioned just leave a comment to let me know, and the winner will be randomly selected.  Each week’s winner will be announced the following week when I post the next set of books to be given away.  Also note that all of these books come from my own collection and may contain some (usually minimal) markings in the margins and the body of the text.
That said, the theme of this week’s giveaway is the Emergent church and the books are:

• Brian McLaren’s ‘New Kind of Christian’ Trilogy (A New Kind of Christian; The Story We Find Ourselves In; & The Last Word and the Word After That);
• Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile by Rob Bell & Dan Golden;
• The Moral Quest: Foundations of Christian Ethics by Stan Grenz.