However, in our own experiences, there is still a highly personal element of the bodily resurrection that we have to contend with. Jesus alluded to it in his encounter with doubting Thomas. Jesus doesn’t give the world uncontestable physical evidence of his resurrection. The risen Christ doesn’t stroll down Main Street for all to see. He doesn’t appear to nonfollowers. One day he will. But until that time, he entrusts the news of his resurrection to the church. The apostles were eyewitnesses. They testified to what they saw, and in order to come to faith, people had to believe their testimony. And in order for people to believe their testimony, they had to be personally credible and trustworthy. And Jesus said that those who believe on the basis of that testimony are blessed.

Yes, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is a matter of reality. But, like so much of what we count as knowledge in this world, we come to believe it or not in ways that are highly personal and subjective. That personal character of knowledge is something that postmodernism understands pretty well.

http://www.ubfriends.org/2010/10/28/committed-to-absolute-truth/

Paul held that there was a truth, and that truth is that Christ was resurrected. He did not say “if you don’t think Christ rose again that is fine for you, i will continue to think he rose again for me” Nor did he say “if you don’t think Christ rose again that is fine for you, because it is of no consequence”. Paul was orthodoxy, truth was objective for him. he saw it no other way.

“The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

If then, I repeat, there is to be mental advance, it must be mental advance in the construction of a definite philosophy of life. And that philosophy of life must be right and the other philosophies wrong. Now of all, or nearly all, the able modern writers whom I have briefly studied in this book, this is especially and pleasingly true, that they do each of them have a constructive and affirmative view, and that they do take it seriously and ask us to take it seriously. There is nothing merely sceptically progressive about Mr. Rudyard Kipling. There is nothing in the least broad minded about Mr. Bernard Shaw. The paganism of Mr. Lowes Dickinson is more grave than any Christianity. Even the opportunism of Mr. H. G. Wells is more dogmatic than the idealism of anybody else. Somebody complained, I think, to Matthew Arnold that he was getting as dogmatic as Carlyle. He replied, “That may be true; but you overlook an obvious difference. I am dogmatic and right, and Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong.” The strong humour of the remark ought not to disguise from us its everlasting seriousness and common sense; no man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. In similar style, I hold that I am dogmatic and right, while Mr. Shaw is dogmatic and wrong. But my main point, at present, is to notice that the chief among these writers I have discussed do most sanely and courageously offer themselves as dogmatists, as founders of a system. It may be true that the thing in Mr. Shaw most interesting to me, is the fact that Mr. Shaw is wrong. But it is equally true that the thing in Mr. Shaw most interesting to himself, is the fact that Mr. Shaw is right. Mr. Shaw may have none with him but himself; but it is not for himself he cares. It is for the vast and universal church, of which he is the only member.

You wrote: “I find fault with the author’s conclusion, because to have “order, meaning, and truth” we must insist that it is desirable to have.”

> Aren’t there many kinds of “order, meaning and truth”? To use a bible reference, doesn’t 1 Corinthians 15:1-58 expound on the marvelous array of “order, meaning and truth”?

George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) lived in a time when he could not possibly have understood the value of the postmodern thinking. I find his quote about the golden rule to be a gross mis-characterization of what postmodernism taught us.

For all the bad press postmodernism has gotten, I realized there is some highly insightful value postmodernism has given us. It is a gift from God, if you will bear with that phrase.

Jim’s book clearly makes my point and shows us a rather good summary of the value the postmodern lens gives us, such as the value of perspectival truth and subjective reasoning, which is really how we all process reality. Postmodernism also gives us a way out of the mechanical wordlviews, views that see mankind and nature as “machines”. Postmodernism restores a bilogical view of our “self” and the world around us. And for that I rejoice.

Welcome to our little part of cyberspace… I think we should dwell on the Sermon on the Mount more, and it was a nice surprise to do so in your book.

I love this part of what you commented: “Since we constantly drift away from an awareness of God’s presence and therein grieve God’s heart, every time we return to God’s presence (say in prayer) it is an experience of God’s forgiveness…”

But you lose me when you continue: “…although unless we see our return as repentance we are oblivious to receiving God’s forgiveness.”

How could we experience God’s forgiveness and yet be oblivious to God’s forgiveness? Perhaps what you’re saying is that we may really enjoy eating a peach, and experience that peach in all its tastefulness, but not realize we are eating a “peach” nor understand all its benefits? Maybe once we have greater knowledge of the peach we can then realize the health benefits (vitamins, etc) and then we would want to eat more peaches?

UBF tends to use the bible this way. It’s clear doctrines are marriage by faith, complete abstinence of drinking, no dating, works earned discipleship, obedience to shepherds, and campus mission. UBF also believes the bible to be less of a way of learning about this thing we call the universe and more of a way that God speaks directly to man. When I read the bible it is held that God speaks into my heart and changes me. Sadly this means the vast body of knowledge over the past 2000 years from the saints goes unnoticed.

1. The pursuit of religious truth (i.e. correct doctrine) at all costs is often a misguided one. As people get closer and closer to systems of thought that they believe are doctrinally correct, they themselves may be drifting farther and farther away from God.

2. Everyone is inherently subjective, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s how we were meant to be. Purely objective knowledge is not only unattainable as human beings, it is a temptation of Satan (“You will be like God,knowing good and evil”).

3. To hold positions #1 and #2 does not necessarily make you a relativist. You can hold those positions and yet firmly believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

4. It’s a mistake to read the Bible and think that the terms you encounter mean exactly the same thing to you as they did to Jesus and to other people in first-century Palestine. That does not mean that you can make the Bible say anything you want (although people are very adept at that). But it should foster a healthy, cautious skepticism in your own ability to understand the text.

5. One way to think of the Bible is that it is a divinely inspired, vivid and realistic account of human interaction with a God whom they often deeply mischaracterize and misunderstand. To say this is not to diminish the Bible’s importance at all. In fact, it makes the Bible much more understandable and real.

6. God deeply respects human culture. He allows people to have all sorts of mistaken notions about him and interact with him on the basis of those incorrect assumptions (for example, that he loved rules and regulations and bloody animal sacrifices) for the sake of developing a relationship with them.

7. Human cultures have very different ideas about justice and about how to achieve reconciliation between adversaries. The atonement theologies in the Bible are sufficiently rich and varied to allow just about anyone to enter into a relationship with the God of the Bible on their own terms. You don’t need to force everyone into your own culture’s ideas of justice to make them receive the gospel as you understand it.

If you haven’t read this book yet, what are you waiting for?

I love this truth which I state often, and which often stuns people when they hear it: “our relationship with God is not based on the good that we do, nor is it destroyed by the sins we commit.” I would say something like, “You cannot sin your way out of your salvation (which is by God’s grace).” Young people feel delighted hearing it. Older people look upset, because they think I am saying, “It’s OK. You can keep on sinning (which I did not say!)” They also assume that I am saying, “You don’t need to repent (which I also did not say!)”

Personally, I find no dissonance with Dannaher also saying that we need to be in a “constant state of repentance.” It is similar to Martin Luther who said in the first of his 95 thesis that “all of life is repentance.” Even repentance is a gift of God’s grace. We simply need to avail ourselves to God, who gives us his grace, that then helps us to repent and believe the gospel of the kingdom of God (Mk 1:15).