"Discerning the Dawn: History: History, Eschatology and New Creation" by N.T. Wright

[Kendel]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

My impression now from other sources and readings - and I think from these Gifford lectures too - is that the challenge to our faith today has a new front of engagement, in addition to the old existential one that is still there. And that new front is this one: Nevermind whether God really exists outside our own heads or not - a new question raised among the young is: is such a God desirable? Why should we want that? So, to put that more succinctly, the question has shifted partly away from “Is God there?” to “Is God good?”.

That’s an interesting point. I’m not connected to young people like I was when I was teaching. The women I talk most with now about “spiritual things” are both Christians, but 17 and 22 years younger than me. They’ve endured the “purity” movement and other such high-pressure, damaging fads, that have driven a lot of people their age away from church, and often faith in Jesus. So many of their peers have just had it with the things that are put onto God or put into his mouth, that they want nothing to do with it or him. “What could there be of value to me here? The MSRP is just to high.”

@Mervin_Bitikofer

This is a complete surprise to me! And I’m flabbergasted that both you and @mitchellmckain feel like this is what he’s been doing and has done in this lecture! Because my own impression has been exactly the opposite of both of yours.

Honest, @Mervin_Bitikofer, I worked hard to leave my feelings out of this. I think there’s enough evidence throughout the lectures that he is doing some sort of apologetic work here. At the same time, I don’t think he is guilty of attempting anything like that of the Modern Apologetic Industry.^TM

In Lecture 1, Wright states his goal for this project to his mother thus:

06:53 I explained that some people used to think you could start from the natural world and think your way up to God from there that other people thought that wasn’t such a good idea but that fresh thoughts about history might lead to fresh ideas about Jesus and thence to God after all and that on the way we might learn something about the nature of knowledge itself.

This does sound like some kind of “soft apologetic” plan to me.

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Even what he does present … all the broken signposts, are only put forward with the caveats that of course other explanations can be made for each of them and they need not be seen as compelling, much less coercing belief. He goes out of his way to keep saying this - only showing interest in how a backward look (from an already accepted, and risen Christ) can also make sense of all these things too, but in a new way.

Yes. I am grateful that he’s done it this way. I would have been inclined to give up on these lectures, if he had attempted coersion.

@mitchellmckain

It might sound a little pun-ish considering the context

Ha!
Good one!

@mitchellmckain

@Kendel

I think the subtle difference in the word you used, “knowledge” and that Wright used, “knowing” is important. You refer to a variety of types of knowledge in your posts, but I think Wright’s term is more “elastic”, and that “elasticity” makes a big difference.

The only reason to make so much of a distinction is to make the point that knowledge/knowing is not so much something you have as something you do. And that frankly resonates very much with my idea that knowledge is what we live by. On the other hand it is always both (by virtue our ability to pass it to others) and I think most of the substance of the distinction you refer to is captured by my distinction between objective and subjective knowledge – though perhaps a clarification can help. While objective knowledge has some epistemological superiority when it comes expecting others to agree, it is subjective knowledge (personal experience) which is more immediate and gives the greater personal certainty. Objective knowledge is after all more of an abstraction.

@mitchellmckain

@Kendel

Not everything we say we know (verb) fits into the category of “knowledge” (noun).

That would imply there are things you know which you cannot communicate to others. Is that what you are saying? I would be reluctant to call such things knowing – sounds more like feeling or experiencing to me.

Yes, I think, to both of your posts. I’m not a scientist and don’t think like one, certainly not as a matter of habit. You are and do. I think that difference has made it essential for the two of us to negotiate meaning quite a lot. Thanks for doing that.

Your points about subjectivity and personal experience are what I had in mind. However, for some reason, this morning that awful thread came to mind about dooming women to an eternity of child birth. There is no substitute for the kind of knowledge that comes from some forms of personal experience. In the case of THAT personal experience, there is no question of “epistemological superiority” or the inability to communicate that knowledge. Some knowledge is beyond our grasp, simply because of what we are not able to experience.

So, thinking about Wright’s lectures, not mine, In lecture 6 he talked a great deal about various ways of knowing, and two examples stand out to me:

04:25 It is love that believes the resurrection because love is the most a complete form of knowing and the resurrection is the most complete form of event.

and

36:15 The creational love now revealed in the gospel launched the new world of ecclesial and moral possibility. Thus Jesus’ resurrection, by unveiling the creator’s love for the world, opens up the space and time for a new holistic mode of knowing – a knowing which includes historical knowledge of the real world by framing it within the loving gratitude which answers the creator’s own sovereign love.

I’d like to read your (plural) take on these descriptions of ‘knowing.’ This is not the bare rationalism that some apologists pretend to attempt. Wright seems perfectly content to combine (what he understands to be) the objectives of history with subjectivity.

@mitchellmckain I am also curious about thoughts you’ve stated in this discussion as well as others regarding subjectivity, objectivity and faith. I believe you said you think it is a subjective matter entirely and should remain so, and this:

@mitchellmckain

I think the belief in God must be a choice and a matter of faith – all about what kind person we want to be and what kind of existence we want to be a part of.

Do you think there is any reason to believe that Christianity has a basis in reality, and is that even important to you? If not, how DO you see it all, please?

@mitchellmckain

@Kendel

I think he and Smith (and Myron Penner) are in agreement on this, in spite of Wright’s stated concerns about Postmodernism,

Even when we can extract some value from postmodernism, it doesn’t mean we don’t have considerable reasons for concern about it as well.

Precisely.
However, Penner and Smith are both Christians who see real value in it, while not swallowing entirely. They are the first two that I’ve encountered just to represent it faithfully.