Fair enough.

Was the question unfruitful? Or perhaps was it the interlocutors who made the question unfruitful?

I’m inclined to say that we pursued the question in ways that were unfruitful and not all that graceful either. It was that way of pursuing that was not enjoyable.

The question is what we make it. That is, if we are willing to recognize the question as worthy of pursuit.

Of course, we could just avoid the question. We could exclude it from our conversation and not look at it. But that doesn’t make the question go away. It’s there, nagging like a stranger at the door. How do we greet that question? As hosts? Or shall we leave it on the door step?

One reason I blog is for the enjoyment of it. I have not shrunk from controversy. The type of controversy we had over questions like this in the past was a) unfruitful, in my opinion, and b) not enjoyable; mostly because of the reasons I stated in my previous comment. So I’m not willing to go there again.

Today, I asked a simple question. And I quoted a philosopher/theologian that is far more articulate than I to support my question.

Wouldn’t you agree, though, that my question is appropriate to your original post? And if today’s question is appropriate, does it not deserve a response or at least some thought?

I’m not interested in chasing that goose again.

The gospels speak at great length about knowledge and truth; Jesus stood for truth, he spoke truth, he was truth. Sure, the resurrection requires interpretation, but if he rose from the dead, he rose from the dead, and that’s solid.

And if you disagree, let’s just agree to disagree, because last time we went ’round and ’round in fruitless circles. I’m not open to that discussion being repeated again.

Here is a quote from James K. A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism.

“Christians who become skittish about the claim that everything is interpretation are usually hanging on to a very modern notion of knowledge, one that claims something is true only insofar as it is objective–insofar as it can be universally known by all people, at all times, in all places. On this account, the truth of the gospel–that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself–is taken to be objectively true and thus capable of rational demonstration. (Classical apologetic buys this epistemology, or theory of knowledge)…. The problem with this very modern construal of the gospel is that it doesn’t match up with the witness of the New Testament. It is clear from the Gospel narratives, for instance, that not everyone sees what the centurion sees. Of course, they all see and encounter the same material realities–crosses, bodies, and eventually corpses–but these material phenomena are texts that need to be interpreted. Thus the very fact that both the centurion and chief priests are confronted by the same phenomena and yet see something very different seems to demonstrate…[that] even if we are confronted with the physical and historical evidence of the resurrection–even if we witnessed the resurrection firsthand–what exactly this meant would require interpretation. Only by interpreting the resurrection of Jesus does one see that it confirms that he is the Son of God….. Our confidence rests not on objectivity but rather on the convictional power of the Holy Spirit (which isn’t exactly objective)”