“The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context” by Myron B. Penner

God is transcendent and not contained by the cosmos that he created.

@Dale, a bit more context:

Dale, I’ve included Penner’s quote that I was responding to. I believe it makes a difference in how my words should be understood. Penner was not talking in this section about our concept of God or God’s identity or nature. And I wasn’t either.

I don’t really know how to answer your charge except to give examples of why I have and do seek input from non religious people, even in matters of faith or no faith:

I learn what my lived hermeneutic is. How do I represent Jesus? What is my real faith praxis? Fastest way to find out is to talk with someone who doesn’t believe He exists but who knows me.

I can offend anyone. I have real skills. I don’t even have to try. And those skills, I think, can have eternal implications. If I am turning someone off and away with the way I represent Jesus or a life of faith with Him, I am complicit in something really horrible.

Many people I love/d, like my dad, other relatives, people I’ve worked with, people all around me are not believers. Input I get from them helps me understand what they think, believe, what stumbling blocks are in their way, what beef they have with God, and the like. If I have no insight in to people, or how they think, I really am just a clanging gong. One they just want to have shut up.

Learning what people think and demonstrating that I care about that (because I do) is an opportunity to build real trust, which is foundational for relationships. It’s a trust that I intend not to violate, while I rely on the Holy Spirit to to do whatever work He intends to do. And maybe that work is simply to show that there is at least one Christian who seems to that person to be trustworthy.

I’ve learned from nons that I have a LOT to learn about everything, and they’ve probably studied it more, know it better than I do and have thought it through a lot more.

I’ve learned that God uses anybody and everybody He chooses to carry out His plans, however he does it. God has put kind, merciful, gracious, patient, respectful people of all stripes or no stripes in my life when I needed their help. I didn’t deserve their kindness. They didn’t withhold anything from me, because I wasn’t like them. I need to do the same.

When my dad ran across an old neighbor on hard times and gave her most of what he’d just gotten from the bank, because he knew what it was like to be poor and on the edge, he did what was right, even as a Gentile without the law. May I follow his example.

I won’t go on with more examples. Even though I could.

Since you mentioned Mark, I will say, that Mark and I have been talking for quite a long time in public, in small groups and in private with thoughts and questions. There’s a lot we don’t agree on. We probably will never agree on. Ok. I’ve learned a lot from him that I need to know about how he and other people think, what questions they ask, why they find belief in God something not for them. People who read our public conversations will recognize this.
I talk to other people, too. I’ve been talking to people my whole life, and actually I think I’ve gotten a bit better at it, learning better to listen more and maybe ask better questions. It’s how I learn and how I build relationships with people And without relationships with people I really don’t know what I could possibly tell them that they would want to know about my experience with Jesus.

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PERFORMANCE

The performative turn

Previously used as a metaphor for theatricality, performance is now often employed as a heuristic principle to understand human behaviour. The assumption is that all human practices are ‘performed’, so that any action at whatever moment or location can be seen as a public presentation of the self. This methodological approach entered the social sciences and humanities in the 1990s but is rooted in the 1940s and 1950s. Underlying the performative turn was the need to conceptualize how human practices relate to their contexts in a way that went beyond the traditional sociological methods that did not problematize representation. Instead of focusing solely on given symbolic structures and texts, scholars stress the active, social construction of reality as well as the way that individual behaviour is determined by the context in which it occurs. Performance functions both as a metaphor and an analytical tool and thus provides a perspective for framing and analysing social and cultural phenomena.

What is performance?

Performance is a bodily practice that produces meaning. It is the presentation or ‘re-actualization’ of symbolic systems through living bodies as well as lifeless mediating objects, such as architecture.[1] In the academic field, as opposed to the domain of the performing arts, the concept of performance is generally used to highlight dynamic interactions between social actors or between a social actor and his or her immediate environment.

Performance is an equivocal concept and for the purpose of analysis it is useful to distinguish between two senses of ‘performance’. In the more formal sense, performance refers to a framed event. Performance in this sense is an enactment out of convention and tradition. Founder of the discipline of performance studies Richard Schechner dubs this category ‘is-performance’.[2] In a weaker sense, performance refers to the informal scenarios of daily life, suggesting that everyday practices are ‘performed’. Schechner called this the ‘as-performance’.[3] Generally the performative turn is concerned with the latter, although the two senses of performance should be seen as ends of a spectrum rather than distinct categories.[4]

I wanted to point out the importance of the term (and concept of) “Performance” before we move to the next chapter or before I forget. It’s a real and important concept in much of postmodern theory, and an essential concept for Penner.

Penner takes the opportunity to begin building a contrast between what can be performed on page 63:

We might call this a preformative nihilism that performs or displays our secular condition.

We don’t usually think of nihilism as something performative. But he repeats the concept a few pages (66) later in speaking of the economic aspects of the apologetics industry:

When this happens, “defending the faith” boarders on a nihilistic performance.

By talking about nihilism in this way, Penner is not only describing the futility of the modern apologetics paradigm, but reminding us that what we do, reflects or puts to public view and scrutiny what we believe. It shows the world what our faith is and is like.

This gets to Penner’s oft-repeated phrase “how we believe.” While he does mean “the way in which” as well as “how we come to”, there is more. Believing, having faith, is something we do with our bodies in the context of our lives. We carry our beliefs out and demonstrate the content and objects of our faith as we perform the day to day of our lives.

Perhaps even more important, critical reflection in a hermeneutical paradigm is focused on and grounded in our everyday practices and claims. It subjects our practices and claims to rigorous examination for their explanatory power and fidelity?! Epistemological issues do not drop out of view altogether, and, in fact, hermeneutics in the sense I mean can be construed as a type of epistemology? It remains concerned with beliefs, truth, meaning, and a host of other episte-
mological questions, because most of its basic concepts contribute to intelligibility and meaning.
(p. 69)

And then on p. 70, he nails it:

What marks off the hermeneutical paradigm from the modern epistemological one is its emphasis on the embodied, contextual nature of human reasoning and understanding. In one sense, of course, hermeneutics is a kind of epistemology—at least insofar as it is a reflection on the nature and limits of human knowledge.

I think all of us have mentioned at least once having noticed Penner’s emphasis on our faith expressed through the the way we live. THAT is our apologetic.

Actually, it always has been. For everyone. Every person’s lived hermeneutic IS the apologetic for their faith. We can look at people of the past and see the flaws in their faith by the way they lived. And the whole world and anyone from the future, who has the ability and cares to look, can see ours, too.

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“All the world’s a stage…”

Thanks for the background and explanation. It really does a lot to help me understand his perspective.

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Duplicitousness and insincerity aren’t good either, nor are the failures to recognize and address them. But there are surely more gracious ways to uncover their darkness and bring them to light than I have done.

As per Merv’s suggestion here is his response to my [post] (Dealing with antitheist and “new atheist” rhetoric - #10 by Terry_Sampson)
In a different thread.

This would be an excellent insight to add over on the apologetics thread too (not that we need to move it or anything). But I think it shows that apologetics is not something exclusive to Christiainity or even necessarily to organized religion (though it may have been the Christian west that turned it into an art-form and spawned so much antithetical reaction.)

Would it be safe to say that nearly anyone, so long as they feel they’ve got something of value in their life, will be an apologist for that thing ? If I’ve got something good going on in my life, I want to share it. And I suspect that’s a reflection of wider human nature regarding anything from a great book to an enjoyable movie watched, or of course, a fulfilling religious experience. Some things are more ephemeral (like a movie) and probably won’t much be remembered a decade or two hence, but other more substantial things that stick with us (and for the better) will likely be the sorts of things we most want to pass along to others. Christians just have a head start on formalizing all this and (for both better and worse) turning it into an artform with a specific name: “Apologetics”. But we are by no means the only ones who so often approach the world and others around us “agenda first”. Atheists like Dawkins would seem to be every bit the apologists that believers are (and again - both for better and worse, as you remind us, Mark).

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Taking some time this morning to go over Chapter 3 posts I’ve read but not had the brain power to respond to.

I think this is a really useful comparison and lovely pun.
I think a more organic or integrated approach is absolutely necessary and desirable. Not only are most lay people unable to understand the professionalized apologetics they know about, but the person on the street wouldn’t either.
I believe that Penner proposes that the outworking of a person’s faith in their life IS the apologetic itself. (“Put your money where your mouth is.”) Do we live in a way that even remotely supports our claims about our faith? If not, why? What does that failure communicate?
There is nothing “professional” about living in faith.

Having been on the receiving end of all sorts of door to door callers and pamphleteers in public, I know my own reaction just to that initial, contact. I don’t want to have this conversation. I don’t want your stuff. I don’t … I imagine that’s the response many people have to similar contact attempts from Christians, which don’t even get to "apologetics. By insisting someone be professionally apologized, I’m very concerned that we are simply alienating them from any conversation about anything of importance.

Lots of us are wrangling with our theology and traditions regarding these questions as well. (They don’t all have easy answers for me.) Maybe the one benefit of the Culture War to anyone from the U.S. church right now, is that a few more Christians are recognizing that these power-obsessed games that seek dominance and control over culture, that is other humans, rather than faithful living within the culture, are ineffective and damaging in every possible way. Everyone loses and Jesus is shown to be unworthy of our faith, because our faith relies on the tools of dominanc and control.
Last chapter is called Politics of Witness. I think we’ll find Penner addressing some of these issues very soon.

I read this differently, Mark. Penner has remained overtly Christian in his discussion so far, in spite of being open to input that in many Christian circles would be rejected. But I don’t think he, or Lewis, are interested in entirely reworking the faith, certainly not the object of it. Lewis, and I think Penner, are humbly acknowledging that in spite of our best efforts to get theology right and pray right, we cannot know God as he is. Every possible human conception of God falls short in egregious ways.

Penner has not, at least so far, defined clearly what he means by apostolic message, but he does refer a number of times to Christian tradition and the texts we use. Here is one of a number of examples:

I want to think of theology and Christian belief hermeneutically, as Cavell views philosophy: as a set of texts that are part of the ongoing conversation of a widening community of people (i.e., the church). If the modern epistemological paradigm is focused on the question, “Is it (belief about the world/reality) true and justified?” the hermeneuti­cal paradigm I want to replace it with puts at the center of its inquiry the question, “Is it intelligible and meaningful?” The pressing issue is not solving an abstract set of theoretical problems but interpreting the symbols and texts of a received tradition in order to understand their meaning and significance in relation to a concrete set of problems and exigencies that we encounter…To be sure, there will be arguments, logic, evidence, and so on that are crucial parts of the process of arriving at conclusions within interpretive traditions, but these are invitations for response from differing points of view rather than an attempt to foreclose on them. These alternate points of view that emerge through dialogue are not barriers to understanding but enable us to gain greater insight into the text (as well as ourselves, our world, and others) as we submit our interpretations to critical tests that are free and open to critique and response. (pg. 68)

Phil, this post of yours was enormousy encouraging to me. Just get through the chapter. I listened to a good chunk of it all at once, and that actually helped, because the screen reader just plows through, whether I understand every word or not, and I couldn’t turn it off, while I wore gloves, cleaning up the kitchen.

This was a great exchange. I had never thought of the event that way, which I expect is the norm. Which is sad.

Thank you very much for this, Terry.

Worth the (full) price of the book. Amen and amen.
What a challenge to me (us?)!
Speaking for myself, what a lot to reevaluate and also confess and repent of!

In spite of our entirely different views of god/God, we are unified in this statement!

Oh, thanks, Mark. I had thought to ask you about this, too, but didn’t have a chance. RL again.

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I had actually just started to respond to this statement in your post in the other thread:

  • [quote=“MarkD, post:8, topic:49860”]
    My theory is that the most hard bitten of these anti religionists
    [/quote]

I feel like I’ve led a sheltered life. Who knew Clark Kent could get so upset?
@Marta has informed me about some of the things that she has read on-line that I was unaware of or oblivious to. But what happened this last week was direction of my attention to “a debate”, if you can call it that, between William Lane Craig [who is not my most esteemed debater] and Lawrence Krauss, the theoretical physicist, to whom I recently sent my short paper on "The Problem of The Now.

Without a whole lot of sympathy for Craig, I thought to myself that it’s a pity somebody didn’t add this note to the invitation to debate Krauss: “Bring your guns, we’re expecting trouble.” :rofl:

In that “debate”–for those who still insist on calling it that–Krauss gave me my first introduction to a “hard-bitten anti-religionist”. Breath-taking. to say charitably. I made a note to myself: “Don’t ever show one of them your “toys”, new or old.”

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I, too, have lived a sheltered life. Often by choice. I can’t imagine enduring even one debate of the more civil type. Nothing about the format recommends itself to me. The format alone is distasteful, utterly offputting. I honestly have no comprehension what the appeal is.
Hockey makes sense to me. A rousing punch out between two handy hockey players, who need more than sticks to defend the goals makes sense to me.
A timed tussle in which we sort out eternal truths that have yet to be settled over centuries of forward -moving dialogue between chorus of some the greatest minds that have so-far lived is just incomprehensible.

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Okay, Terry - your “frustrated reader” cartoon reminded me of this …

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That is not to say that he is nothing like our conceptions. His Fatherhood and his his multiple ‘omnihoods’ are certainly able to be apprehended, as in perceived and touchable, and of course not comprehended, as in their depths fully fathomed. So your ‘egregious’ is maybe overstated and could almost be inferred to say the degree to which he has chosen to reveal himself is maybe his fault and reflects some kind of inadequacy in him. The non- or antitheist could concur with that.

From Texas pastor, Austin Fisher’s book: “Faith in the Shadows”. (I know …it isn’t our book discussion book, but it tracks sooo well with what we’re discussing!)

When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus did not say it was to have faith so as to move mountains without the slightest shred of doubt. No, Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love God and love neighbor. The virtue of faith is that it trains us to love and be loved. It is a posture of trusting surrender to the love of God. It is necessary because love requires vulnerability, and vulnerability requires surrender, and surrender requires trust. As Alexander Schmemann writes, “Faith itself is the acceptance not of this or that ‘proposition’ about Christ, but of Christ Himself as the Life and the light of life. . . . [Faith’s] starting point is not ‘belief’ but love.” I suspect many of us cannot shake our doubts because we are striving for faith instead of love. And while the relationship between faith and love is close and complex, this much is clear: the simplistic formulation in which faith and love relate in a strictly linear fashion wherein faith produces love is wholly inadequate. Faith can produce love, but love can also produce faith. Many have so emphasized faith’s ability to create love that they have forgotten love’s ability to create faith. To return to an idea mentioned in chapter nine, we have vastly overestimated our ability to think ourselves through the world. We think we can think our way into proper actions and beliefs. We think we can think our way into faith. Sit around thinking about that all you want, but the results are in: it doesn’t work. Sitting around and thinking about faith conditions you to be a person who sits around and thinks about faith. But when Jesus asks us to follow him, he is not asking us to sit around and think about faith. He is asking us to get up and do things with our hands and feet. A thick instead of thin faith does not precede following Jesus; it follows following. So emphasized text if you’d like more faith, quit trying to think your way into faith and instead, empowered by the grace of God, go love your way into faith.

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Austin’s book has been on my mind a lot, since I first held Penner’s book in my hands, standing in the book store in Grand Rapids. Faith in the Shadows was great preface to The End of Apologetics.
Thanks for sharing this passage, Merv. There is a lot to chew.

I think you might be sharing this quote with a somewhat different emphasis in mind, but I want to placard this section more (which I have truncated for brevity) and think a little “out loud” about the effect of an individual’s love on another individual’s faith.

If there really is a faith-building effect in obeying God’s command to love our neighbors, I wonder what kind of hinerance to faith my disobedient lovelessness may cause. The thought that my common disobedience may in some way hinder another’s faith should bring me to my knees.

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I thought this was particularly damning of modernist apologetics as practiced by your average do it yourself, pushy apologist who just wants you to say the words so that the guy can discharge his responsibility and get back to doing something with someone who actually matters to him.

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That includes loving God.
 

Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.
1 John 5:3

That means obedience to ‘the laws of love’, starting with the Big Ten in the OT – all of them, including the Fourth* (Reformed numbering), and in the manifold ways they have been expanded upon in the New – the gospels and epistles.
 
This is interesting:

He who is having my commands, and is keeping them, that one it is who is loving me, and he who is loving me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
John 14:21, YLT

Faith gets strengthened when you are given objective manifestations of his providential interventions.

 


*If you think the Fourth is null and void, then the irony is more than curious:

…and his commandments are not burdensome.
1 John 5:3

Thus says the LORD: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 17:21

That is talking about doing routine commerce on the day of rest, the seventh day of the week in the OT and the first day of the week for Christians. The Lord’s Day of Rest

We are in the home stretch! Two chapters to go, and then a lifetime of processing.

From p. 110, Penner gives a new perspective on the question: “What does it profit a man to gain the world …”?

The more I seek to objectify the world and myself, the more I lose my self. And what does it profit a person if they gain the maximal set of justified, true beliefs but lose their own self?

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That hit me like a 2x4 as well.

Here is another. From the busiest page in the chapter (at least up until the conclusion):

As I have mentioned several times already, the truth to which Christians witness is not the sort of truth that one has, but the sort of truth that one is.

The idea is that belief in whatever direction you choose, even in one you’re not aware of making, shape the self you become. Do your choices leave you defensive or open? Modest or quick to judge? Brittle or resilient? Kind or I’ll tempered? This is the witness we bear of how our choices have shaped us.

I think this idea is especially applicable to that self absorbed twit you mentioned here, @Terry_Sampson, who ‘debated’ at WLCraig (a person whose charm glows by comparison and I am not a fan of him either):

In that “ debate ”–for those who still insist on calling it that–Krauss gave me my first introduction to a “hard-bitten anti-religionist”. Breath-taking. to say charitably. I made a note to myself: “Don’t ever show one of them your “toys”, new or old.”

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Referencing just a bit of this:

and this:

Throughout The End of Apologetics I’ve had the book of James in mind. At least in my church traditions, I’d say James is one of the most misused books in the Bible. I’ve seen it used to justify all sorts of legalism. But I think, when read faithfully, this book gives us the common-person view of the heart of Penner’s overall message. I’m thinking particularly about chapter 2:14-26:

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless[a]? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”[b] and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Like Merv said, the stakes are higher, when we have to live our hermeneutic (interpretation of the texts) out as a witness.

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