Sometimes that happens to me, too.
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I had similar feelings over the heavy use of the term ‘irony’. I felt like I was hovering a bit in and then out just along the edges of understanding it - just enough to sort of “feel” that I’m there (sometimes), but not well enough that I could articulate it well and get it really pinned down. But actually - I think that may be something of the point! [and maybe part of what Penner wishes us to understand about it!]
Think about it like our concept of “humor”. We all recognize humor (most of the time - if it’s at ‘our level’) when we hear it, but if we try to define it exactly, we find it’s a slippery fish to catch - or trying to nail jello to the wall, so-to-speak. I recall a sci-fi novel I read decades ago (“Stranger in a Strange Land”) in which somebody was trying to explain to the visiting Martian what humor is, and it was quite a struggle to help him make that connection when he didn’t “just know” due to shared cultural experience.
I feel like “irony” is a bit in the same boat. I can use the word correctly - I recognize quite clearly when I’m being ironic or when something else is ironic. But to know why that should be a significant category for us, or why it should amuse us - that starts to get harder to pin down. And it seems that Penner is recognizing something even yet more significant in it: a kind of “freedom space” to deliberately allow for varied or even opposite reaction. And I’m not sure I came very close to following him in all that either.
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One thing that’s a common element in all humor is an unexpected incongruity, like marvelously spherical pill bugs having rectangular to squarish poop. XD (At least I think that’s pretty funny. I laughed out loud when I became aware of it. ; - )
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I’m not sure I’m buying Penner’s esoteric use of [prophetic] irony. P. 93:
But in reflecting on prophetic speech, one must take careful note of the nature of the prophetic speech-act. As we mentioned…, apostles or prophets are not speaking on their own and delivering messages they take responsibility for; they are speaking on behalf of God and by God’s power or Spirit.
Prophetic irony disavows all human attempts to justify the message while maintaining its authority over us and its ability to speak truly to us. The form of the message—its human messenger—belies prophetic speech as an authoritative word from God.
If we look at the Gospels, Jesus is accompanying his message with concrete evidence supporting it, and so too the disciples:
Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
Mark 16:20
And from the parable of Dives and Lazarus – it also mentions evidence:
“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Luke 16:21
Paul as well. His preaching and arguments were accompanied by his life. It’s a little difficult on an internet forum for us to demonstrate the latter, but I’m quite confident that most of us would help a stricken person by the roadside, à la the Good Samaritan and then some.
Irony in prophetic speech has been in my thoughts, and perhaps ironically, it seems that is the point. Irony demands an element of participation on the listeners part. Rather than a prophet merely proclaiming a point, by using irony they bring the listener into the midst of the message.
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While our modernist selves reactively reject PoMo’s “we just make up our own truth”, Penner is approaching truth from a whole different angle where that postmodernist cliche actually takes on some significant meaning and warrants revisiting. In terms of propositional truths (to the extent that those correspond with reality - and yes - I realize Penner contests this, but I’m setting that aside for now) it makes sense to acknowledge that we do not manufacture truth. But in terms of being truth, and living out truth, the claim that “we make truth” suddenly comes into new light for me, by changing the forcus from the proposition to the person.
Penner writes (p. 102):
Whether the truth I proclaim is true for me will be evident from how I live—if that truth is appropriated by me as an integral part of how I live and act. This means the act of witness is much more like a confession of personal conviction than a logical argument for the objective truth of its propositions.
This really raises the stakes and the challenge for what prophetic witness must entail. Now it isn’t me saying something (a comparatively easy way for me to let myself off the hook), but I must now live something out in front of and to my neighbor (a much harder and higher challenge). And in my visible life, my neighbor sees whatever truth I may have to share. My words and propositions to my neighbor are little more than a decorative overlay on all that, and succeed only in either confirming what the neighbor has already observed, or else turn me into a hypocrite when it is obvious to my neighbor that I don’t live up to them.
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In this chapter (3), Penner has helped me clarify how there is definitely an ethic of belief that is just as (or even more?) essential than the propositional content of that belief. If proposition alone were adequate for our spiritiual welfare, then the believing demons would be just fine. Probably even better off than we are, if they perceive theological truths with even more certainty than we do. Edification of people is where the spiritual rubber really meets the road, and that isn’t to deny the importance of propositional accuracy along the way. If I lie to my neighbor in my zeal to try to edify him, that is problematic obviously. But no more so than my tearing my neighbor down by wielding some truth. [Propositional] Truth is important. And yet it is worthless without love - worse than worthless even. It can often be destructive. Truth, as embodied in a person, is inseparable from love and will not be found without it, and will always be willingly tied to the service of love. That’s my take away from Penner so far.
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Finally, I was able to pull some thoughts together from this chapter. I was encouraged by you guys to quit obsessing about the parts I wasn’t getting through and work with what I do have. I will not be done with this book (or topic of postmodernism and Christianity) when the group discussion is over.
Penner’s description of Ethics of Belief contains a number of valuable components that feel like they could radically change the church, not only apologetics. That there could be ethical considerations about the way we believe or carry out that believing in the world is beyond the pale of most Christian thought (as I know it). This focus on how we believe rather than merely what we believe even seems dangerous. I’m used to the emphasis being on correct doctrine, which appeals to me. But absolutely the how is at least equally important. Not all the few spiritual giants I have known have been doctrinal greats, but have been people who live their faith beautifully. When our stated message and our lives don’t agree, we exhibit the worst kind of irony, the one that highlights hypocrisy.
(page 99)
[E]dification …is about the formation of self which certainly happens in and through social relations but is a task for each person to perform individually before God. To be edified is to be built up as a self before God.
Edification, rather than winning arguments by gaining assent, is the apologetic goal Penner proposes. In the process of edification, the selves of both the speaker and the listener are are built up. This building up is not anything like the self-centeredness of the stereotypical view of PoMo, which is equivalent to building up pride. The edification Penner has in mind relates to the building of the self that comes through a better understanding of the truth and to a life exhibiting faith, resulting from that edification.
This edification is relational and personal. The witness extends relational credit (pp. 89-90) to the hearer.
To believe someone, then, is “to give, or better yet, open a credit account to someone,” so that belief changes how I am in the world and even who I am… In belief “I lend myself” to the other person, not in a way that binds me to the other person, but in such a way that indicates how I intend to be toward that person, “my position with respect to [them],” or the starting point for my relationship to that person. My beliefs, then, are connected not to an abstract, theoretical position I occupy cognitively but to who I am, how I comport myself in the world, and, even more, how I relate to other persons.
Honestly, what a foreign idea. This model of apologetics as well as church life is foreign to me. Over the years, it’s felt less possible in my experience, as within my church the depth of relationship seemed bounded by willingness to conform to the local culture, and the length of time one lived in the area. The kind of relational credit that Penner talked about seemed was not a part of the picture.
But what if we in the church really did this, really treated people like they’re worth knowing, worth hearing and worth believing, extending them relational credit? And thinking wildly here, what if we treated people outside the church the same way?
I love Penner’s concept of and description of the apprentice to the truth. It’s both humbling and encouraging. While learning and maturity are expected in this model, learning never stops. No one is seen as the absolute master of truth. Instead of demanding a lifetime of consistent views and actions, we recognize that change, as a result of an ever edified faith, is a desirable part of the model. Likewise, as with an apprentice, one is not only learning information but integrating it into faith lived out.
A final component of Penner’s Ethics of Belief is its dialogic nature.
On page 84 he says:
Thus in witness, as I engage in dialogue with others, I speak and understand God’s Word differently because of my personal interaction with them. But witnesses are not necessarily people who understand their confession in all its theoretical details and rational implications. What is of primary importance is that the witness believes it and is committed to understanding it, and in that commitment is edified in all the ways truth edifies others. To say it differently, prophetic witness is good hermeneutical practice and is crucial to making an interpretive tradition a living one. (emphases added)
This is understatedly radical, largely because Penner does not circumscribe the group with whom valued dialog should occur. Does he mean Christians may actually seek input from nonreligious people or sources? I think so. Or he’s admitting that we already do and should seek better sources of edification. What if the wider church (at least in the U.S.) actually did this kind of thing? Rather than add a few more courses of socio-theological brick to the top of our walls to fend off “worldy influences,” what would happen if we gave some of them a judicious hearing?
Penner’s model of apologetics actually extends far beyond the field of defending the faith into what the church is and how it operates. Throughout the chapter I wondered constantly, “How can this be done?”
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Paradoxically this way feels dangerous precisely because it requires actually trusting God to provide insight continually in life as it happens rather than providing formulaic maxims you can apply with a sense of self reliance. What supports God belief is real, dynamic and important. You just don’t get to know just what that is or how it works. We’re not in this alone. What would really be ironic would be if those who think of themselves as God’s people went through their whole lives without cultivating that trust in insight in the moment we call intuition. The only real advantage of rational deliberation is the sense of self reliance and control it provides. Obviously both are important.
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You already do this and you’re not the only one here who does. This post of your makes so much better sense of Penner than what I’d been able to get. Thank you!
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Nicely put! Indeed, what happens if people listen for real, and not just as a waiting tactic for the purpose of delivering their apologetic payload? There is danger to be had there. The listener might learn something!
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In more ways than one. I’m not talking about any apologetic payloads, but it is oxymoronic to suggest for those who don’t even believe in the God who is and who has acted into Christians’ lives to tell us what God is like according to their subjective preferences and what is comfortable for them. Do you really think that is what Penner is saying? I certainly hope not, and I don’t think he necessarily is, but that is what I’m hearing you say and Mark agreeing. That my Father has some immutable and communicable attributes and that he has utilized them to objectively affect lives is not up for negotiation.
I don’t know how Penner would answer your charge - but I’ll speak for me and reply with a question: Do you or I ever do this, Dale? …see God’s shape and characteristics according to our subjective preferences? Have Christian believers ever been guilty of “re-making God” in our image? This isn’t a denial of a very real God with real attributes that exist quite independently of what you or I think. But it is to invoke the confession of C.S. Lewis that Penner mentions, in which every believer’s prayer must necessarily be a kind of blasphemy the moment we pretend that our words or praises or mental images must be adequate to the reality of God. It never will be. I won’t speak for Mark either as he is free to disagree even with this: Is it possible that for some atheists, Dale, that it might be our cultural icon of God that they are reacting against? This isn’t to suggest that atheists aren’t really atheists. Many truly are, and do not believe in any transcendence no matter how that might be described. But is it also possible that some of them may simply be choosing not to believe in the particular image of god that an evangelical culture has constructed for itself? And if so, would that necessarily be such a bad thing?
Every relationship between two parties is unique to them. There is no cookie cutter pattern or template. You and I as believers will recognize Christ as present to all of that, but others won’t necessarily use or own that language which for them may now be burdened with dogmatic and even political baggage of the ugliest and even most Satanic sort. That doesn’t mean God isn’t actively interacting and cultivating relationship with others where they are, though.
I hear you but… A God with real Personhood, supernatural – transcendent is a better word, and not contained by the universe – is that cultural, a cultural icon?
Don’t forget that C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters.
No, but your and my images of God sure are. Lewis also wrote “The Great Divorce”.
My ‘image’ surely includes his transcendence.
Not all of it, it doesn’t.
I don’t disagree. That accords with what I think Penner thinks.
I read this online as I tried to make sure I was remembering the “I am what I am” quote correct: “God replies, ehyeh asher ehyeh, which translates to “I Am who I Am”, “I am what I am”, or “I will be what I will be.” According to the New Oxford Annotated Bible, it can also be understood to mean, “I cause what which is to be.””
Whatever else it might mean, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean I am who the pope thinks I am or who Dale or any other particular believer thinks I am. This is just the modernist impulse to define and pin things down, even God apparently.
God is transcendent and not contained by the cosmos that he created.