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.
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.
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?”
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.
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!
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!
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?
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.
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.
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 studiesRichard 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.
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.
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).