Truth or Power?

There's a new direction being taken by one of our commenters--new to this blog, that is.

Jacob has weighed in with opinions like this one on January 20:

"Whether ID is true of false is the wrong way of looking at it. We should pay close attention to what they are doing--the tactics and strategies of those trying to establish themselves as a legitimate voice that people actually listen to."

And later that day:

"In other words, it is a dominant assumption that people on this blog make that politics and truth are separate. Perhaps this assumption is worth rethinking."

And again,

"Finally, that is precisely why I say that this blog is primarily focused on abstract, metaphysical debate, rather than getting down to the nitty gritty of political struggle that goes into the establishment of truth in our era."

Also this one on February 5,

"When Tom says that forgiveness is an essential aspect of Christianity and that those who do not share this belief are not Christian, that is the act of exclusion. It creates a boundary between those with the correct interpretation and those with the incorrect interpretation.   . . .
"Carlton Pearson preaches the 'gospel of inclusion.' In some ways, Tom seems to be advocating an exclusivist gospel, a gospel composed of Right Beliefs (forgiveness would be one of those Right Beliefs)."

And this earlier today:

"Nowhere did I claim that I was speaking the truth. The truth is your hangup, not mine."

Elsewhere he argued (see this comment and the following discussion) that it's illegitimate to say the Bible speaks of human free will. His objection is not, apparently, that he is convinced the Bible does not teach a concept like that, but that "free will" is a recent term and should not be imposed on the Bible. (I corrected a few spelling errors in these quotes, in lieu of using exact quotations and inserting "[sic]" in several places.)

The thread running through all this is what many readers here would probably call postmodernism. If these were disembodied words without a person behind them, I would run with a discussion on that, because that's how it appears to me, too. Postmodernism takes multiple, often somewhat contradictory forms, though, and this is the first time I've used that word to describe what Jacob is saying. As a matter of courtesy, I don't want to lock him into an ambiguous label without giving him opportunity to comment on whether, and how much, he thinks it fits him.

But there has been enough back-and-forth on these opinions of his that I'm confident what I've quoted here is representative of his more provocative opinions. Jacob is quick to speak of power and slow to speak of truth, even hypothetically. He considers it an abuse of power to say that Christianity involves forgiveness, and that we're imposing on the Bible when we apply a modern term to what it teaches.

The most instructive of these is his belief that there is something exclusivist about saying Christianity entails belief in forgiveness, and that there is a (presumably superior) form of Christianity that is more inclusive than that. To preach "Right Beliefs" is somehow distasteful or offensive, in ways he hasn't quite spelled out. Yet forgiveness is probably the least controversial of all Christian doctrines; accepted (in different ways, but still accepted) by fundamentalists, evangelicals, liberals, and probably even deists. Various forms of the word appear at least 57 times in the New English Standard version of the Bible (New Testament. It's a central part of the preaching of the gospel. How could it be exclusivist to say forgiveness is a necessary part of Christian doctrine? Only by assuming that Christian doctrine should not make any definite statements at all.

This seems to take a completely skeptical stance toward any understanding of truth whatever. (You can disagree whether Christian beliefs are correct; it's extremely over-skeptical to maintain that Christian beliefs do not include forgiveness among them.) Jacob appears to be doing this. From his earlier comments it seems he's putting power and its manifestations in the place of truth. But how can one speak of anything at all without some apprehension of, and commitment to, the concept of truth? Note that at this time I'm not speaking of whether one has confidence one has found the truth. Jacob seems to be saying that any reference to truth as a category is illegitimate. Jacob, am I understanding you correctly?

I draw your attention to three versions of imposition here. Jacob has said that we I am imposing something on Christianity if I say it includes forgiveness. He says we are imposing on the words of the Bible if we say we can infer free will from it. And I came close to imposing a label of postmodernism on Jacob, but I have refrained, pending his response to that label.

The first of these seems to be no imposition at all, by any stretch of the term; if we cannot know that Christianity, the religion (probably in every one of its forms, orthodox or not), includes a doctrine of forgiveness, we cannot know anything about it at all.

The second is admittedly less clear-cut. Free will is not the Bible's terminology, as Jacob has pointed out; further, there disparate philosophical opinions on whether free will exists, and if it does, what it really means. Nevertheless, it is at least the case that a common-sense understanding of the Bible's instructions and commands implies a belief that we have free will. So although it is not as clear that free will is a core Christian doctrine as forgiveness is, it is also not at all obvious that we do violence, that we are exercising illegitimate power over the Bible, by saying it conceptually it is found there.

And then there is the matter of imposing a label on Jacob. I did not do it because the label is far more ambiguous than even the philosophical doctrine of free will, and because I have only a tiny sampling of Jacob's beliefs from which to draw conclusions. He is available, if he comes back to this blog, to provide us more data.

So there are indeed times when to call something what it appears to be may be an imposition. If postmodernism is seen by any reader, especially Jacob, to be pejorative, then it's an imposition of power, a poisoning of his position. Can we say that about the doctrine of forgiveness, though? Clearly not. It takes no special arrogance to call it a Christian doctrine. It takes a strange, and I think distorted, view of truth, to say that we can't be confident about something that is as well established like that.

Jacob, what is your view of truth? I know you consider it our "hangup," not yours--but should we consider it the case that you believe anything you write is true? If not, then how should we view it?

Posted: Wed - February 7, 2007 at 07:58 PM |

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Truth or Power?

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson