THE NATURE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH

People who have been reading my blog would have already discerned my desire to engage modern culture from a theological perspective. The blog description, saying that “it is the theologian’s task to think critically... for the evangelization of cultures” already reveals my very theological orientation. I would not deny it: it is a blog with an agenda. By now, readers would have already recognized my great apprehensiveness concerning theology-culture or theology-philosophy dialogue in general. I also would not deny it: I lean towards what people judgmentally label as “conservatives.” But if by “conservative” it means being biblical and rooted firmly in Jesus Christ alone, sola Christus, then I happily and unashamedly accept such a label. In the words of DC Talk:

What will people think when they hear that I’m a Jesus Freak?
What will people do when they find that it’s true?
I don’t really care, if they label me a Jesus Freak
... there ain’t no disguising the truth

So, my suspicions about theology as influenced too much by other ways of thinking, whether cultural, philosophical, or anything anthropological, could not but lead to questioning the validity of the so-called contextualization. In here, I will discuss one of the [many] reasons of my qualms about the idea of contextualization: my theological understanding of the nature of truth.

I

Tacit in contextual theology is the idea that we can use the thought patterns of culture to make the Truth plainer to persons. It is believed that there is some truth even in the unchristian culture, and it is the responsibility of the missiologist to appeal to such truth-structures, immediately upon discernment of such structures, so that the targeted recipients may understand the communicated not-so-new Truth of the gospel. Karl Rahner, the twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologian, in speculative theology, strongly advocated this view. In fact, Rahner calls the unevangelized population as “anomymous Christians.” His view has two premises: (1) grace is universally at work, and (2) grace is none other than Christ. Thus, he concludes that Christ is actually experienced by each person, whether they have heard the gospel or not, albeit such possessed “knowledge” of Christ is implicit, unexpressed, and unthematic. The evangelist’s role is not to communicate something new to anyone, but to make the implicit explicit, or to explain the tacit experience of Christ in everyone. Rahner argues that every person, touched by prevenient grace, possesses a “pre-apprehension” or “pre-grasp” of the Gospel truth.

Rahner’s view is appealing, probably especially among Wesleyans. But this is a misunderstanding of Wesley’s view of prevenient grace (which is not the subject of this essay). What Rahner and missiologists advocate, whether they are aware or not, has its ancestry in philosophy, particularly Plato, rather than the scriptural teaching of grace. For Plato, pedagogy, and the purpose of instruction is not so much to teach new truths previously unknown by the student. Rather, the goal of teaching is to facilitate a sort of remembering of innate truths hidden within the soul of the person, waiting to be tapped. This is what is popularly well known as Plato’s anamnesis. In the words of Kierkegaard, there is assumed a “Socratic religiousness” in humanity (cf Philosophical Fragments). The truth is not from without, but is all the while, within. Truth is not received, but is achieved. As a Christian philosopher, Kierkegaard rejected this whole paradigm. For him, humanity is in sin. The individual could not recollect any innate truth, for there is no innate truth to recollect. Fallen humanity, personally and corporately, possesses no truth, and is therefore in untruth.

If Kierkegaard is right, then the missiologist/evangelist cannot be a Socratic teacher, for there is no truth in the human being which such a teacher can bring to birth. The sinful person needs a different type of teacher, one who possesses the truth and is able to impart it to the untruthful, sinful human being. And yet this is insufficient, for the human being, in bondage to sin, does not innately possess the resources either for recognizing or for appropriating the truth the teacher brings. Even what the Enlightenment glorifies in, namely, Reason, cannot be the means by which the human being accepts the truth offered by the teacher. Thus, we can affirm with absolute certainty, with Kierkegaard, that the only condition for knowing the truth is faith (Fear and Trembling). And faith is a gift of God. Both the content of truth and the condition for accepting the truth is from without and comes to the recipient in a profoundly new way. Truth always shocks.

II

I have established above that truth comes from without, not from within any truth-structure assumedly found innately in the individual human being or in a human society (culture). This has profound implications, especially when we think of truth as essentially transformative, and that the transformation required is a radical metamorphosis. The transformation that happens when untruth encounters truth is a total ontological transformation. And although such a transformation can be gradual, it is not a partial transformation, but a total transformation, meaning, that all the faculties of the transformed human person is affected: disposition, way of thinking, way of acting, and so on.

The story of Israel can shed light to our discussion. Yahweh, the One God, established a special covenant partnership with Israel. Out of the many peoples of the world, Yahweh has chosen Israel, not by merit, but by grace, because the Israelites are apparently the most stubborn and stiff-necked people under the sun (Exo 34:9). This special election, however, is not just about the glory of being called the “people of God.” The ever-deepening, spiral movement of God’s Self-revelation was far from being an easy or painless process. Yahweh’s dialogue, Self-giving and Self-revealing relationship with Israel was a long process. Israel suffered before Yahweh precisely because she was in covenantal relationship with Yahweh. The OT shows that Israel was subjected to the most appalling suffering as she is being shaped by the presence and truth of Yahweh. Reception of Yahweh’s Truth could not be easily received without the inevitable conflict with the deeply ingrained habits of human thought and understanding and without the development of new patterns of thought and understanding and speech. Revelation was like fire in the mind and soul of Israel burning away all that was in conflict with God’s holiness and truth.

The more Yahweh drew himself closer to Israel and the more Yahweh fashioned Israel according to his holy will, the more the innate resistance of the human soul and mind resulting from the alienation of humanity from God inevitably become intensified. This thus resulted again and again in rebellion against God, for it is the nature of the sinful mind and heart to oppose God’s will and purpose. The agonizing battle between obedience to God’s will and human self-will was experienced by Israel at its fullest and in the grandest scale. Thus, the history of Israel not only reveals the will of God but also reveals the natural offence and rebellion to God deeply entrenched in the human heart. The encounter between God and humanity is an encounter that could not but result in war, because such an encounter means the calling into question of the sinful habits and patterns of human existence that needs to be transformed.

Hence my argument: truth comes from without, and because it comes from without, it could not but stand in direct conflict to the previously held untruth of the receiver. This is precisely what happened between God’s Self-communicated truth and the Israelites. What contextualization does and aims is actually to prevent such a conflict. But such an endeavour is futile. In fact, should not the conflict between the truth of God and the untruth of humanity be highlighted, so that its recipients are made aware of the demand for total transformation being asked from them? Truth hurts, but it also sets people free from their bondage to untruth. Should we comfort people with diluted truth or confront them with substantial truth?

III

In Christianity, Truth is not something that can be constructed or deduced from a series of inferences. It is also not an eternal formless body residing in the kosmos noetos (realm of intellect or intelligible world) that can be discerned by the ascetic, mystic or most serious thinker. Thus, in contrast to philosophy’s abstract view of truth, in Christianity we have what Irenaeus and Kierkegaard called an “embodied Truth.” Jesus affirmed that he is indeed “the Truth” (Jn 14:6).

The most astonishing (and to many, even appalling) consequence of the fact that the Truth is embodied in Jesus Christ is that Truth has taken a historical and concrete form. In this radical particularization, God has manifested himself to humanity not only in a decisive finality, but also in absolute specificity. This is why the Apostle Paul can call the Athenians a bunch of ignoramus thinkers, and whose ignorance is no longer acceptable to God (Acts 17:30), for God has already set a day to judge the world through “the man he has appointed” (Acts 17:31). Because the Truth is already embodied, hence, also specific, Truth can no longer be found elsewhere. People who thought they knew the truth from what their culture and philosophy provide are now asked to acknowledge their ignorance, and turn to the man in whom the fullness (pleroma) of God resides (Col 1:19). People who wish to know the Truth can only look at Christ, because he is the only one “in the form (morphe) of God” (Phil 2:6), the “image (eikon) of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), the mystery already revealed (Rom 16:25; Eph 3:3-6; Col 1:26-27), and “the radiance or reflection (apaugasma) of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:3).

             

Consequently, in Christian communication, the particularity of the embodied Truth must press itself to us as communicators. In fact, because the Truth is already embodied, we already have a Truth-content that has also provided the final form through which the Truth should be communicated. This is the simplicity of the Gospel. We should learn from the apostles themselves, who, whether their audience were Jew or Gentile, had only one sermon: Jesus Christ the Son of God, crucified, died, buried, rose again, and is coming back (Acts 2:14-40; 17:16-34; 25:23-26:32). The Four Gospels also are apostolic kerygma. There are no tricks involved, nor should there be. Sometimes it is the missiologist/evangelist himself who makes what is absolutely simple to being complicated. This is the “scandal of particularity” referred to in theology. Because the Truth has particularized itself (or better, himself) in the one God-man Jesus Christ, other pseudo-truths cannot but be in inherent opposition to this embodied Truth. Similarly, all other attempts to communicate this embodied Truth using other forms cannot but be an evidence of unfaithfulness to God’s own Self-particularization.

IV

To summarize, here I tried to show that (1) Truth comes from without. Humanity or a collection of human beings (culture) do not possess an inherent truth. Rather, truth comes to all in a shocking and forceful way, and only receivable when we allow the Truth to shatter our untruth. Thus, (2) when Truth and untruth meet, the initial reaction from the untruthful person is opposition, because the ingrained habits and patterns of thought cannot assimilate the claims of the Truth. So receiving Truth is a painful process, because it entails the subjection of human will and mind to what is from without. Self-centredness can stand against God’s desire to shape us into his people. And the more God gives himself, the more we realize our arrogant ignorance and entrenchment in sin. The more light comes near us, the more we see our true colour. Our response, though, should not be to return to the darkness, but to allow God to cleanse us from all revealed iniquities. Finally, (3) Truth is embodied in Jesus Christ. Hence, Truth can be found only from one particular source. Nature is mute and culture is blind. Only the embodied Truth speaks. To encounter God’s Truth, one has to look at Jesus, for he is the only Way, Truth and Life.

(This essay has taken longer space than I originally planned, but I still have not discussed the fact that Truth is Self-revealing, grounded in the fact that God is a dynamic, eloquent being. Perhaps I can deal with this next time.)

IT'S RELEVANT

“Relevance” is a slippery term.

It seems that today, the relevance of something (which we will now refer to as the package) is understood to be predicated upon two premises: (p1) that the package is important, and (p2) that the recipient appreciates the package. Only when these two conditions are fulfilled that the package is judged to be relevant. Thus, negatively:

(a)    The package is irrelevant if it is an unimportant thing, no matter how the recipient appreciates it.

(b)   Similarly, the package is irrelevant, no matter how important it is, if the recipient does not appreciate it.

This kind of thinking, however, when transposed into evangelism and mission, has radical consequences. In fact, the above formula is probably the common mentality of today, made evident by the rise of contextual and sociological studies in missions. The necessity of the so-called “indigenous theology” is also grounded in the drive towards “relevance.” The problem with this is that the trend tends to emphasize (p2) in the equation. I wonder whether there are still contextual theologians around who still consider the package as essentially important regardless of whether it is appreciated or not by its recipients. In short, is the Gospel still the good news if it is considered “foolishness” by Gentiles and “scandal” to Jews (1 Cor 1:23)? Is it worth it to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ when it arouses animosity against the God and the Church that proclaims it? Does the Gospel lose its essential importance when it is not understood?

Here we must distinguish between evangelical relevance and intellectual relevance. Going back to the equation above, intellectual relevance emphasizes the presentability of the package in such a way that it is understood and appreciated (p2). To accomplish this, the evangelist might need to remodel (or worse, add ingredients to) the Gospel so that it fits the taste of the recipient. Worst still, the evangelist might need to prune the Gospel content (John 3:16) in order for it to be appetizing. For the evangelist of this type of relevance, the Gospel content, like the one preached by the early apostles and presented in the four Gospels, possesses no integrity on its own, and has no power on its own to effect transformation in the lives of its hearers without prior careful crafting. This is a highly anthropological model of evangelism. I believe that intellectual relevance is important too, but I wonder: Is the exalted position we ascribe to it a lot more than what it should really have?

Evangelical relevance, on the other hand, grounds relevance not on the appreciability or acceptability of the Gospel, but on the primary fact that God saves. I am not arguing, however, that a sloppy presentation of the Gospel is sufficient. (My argument does not need a reduction ad absurdum response.) My contention is: in mission, the category “relevant” should not be grounded upon appreciability, but upon the essential importance of the Gospel. To reverse the order, and to argue that evangelical relevance is irrelevant without prior intellectual relevance displays an unspiritual way of thinking. Of course communication is essential. To be understood is important. But the Gospel we are communicating is not a human insight; it is rather a spiritual truth (cf 1 Cor 2:4-5). The Gospel in its scandalous claim that humanity is sinful and in need of redemption through Christ the Son of God needs to be presented unashamedly (Luke 9:26; Rom 1:16).

 Perhaps the main reason we want to be pleasing to the world is that we want to avoid persecution. We are pressured by the world to be in uniformity with its standards, and failure to be so is equivalent to persecution. Of course suffering is unpleasant. Pain is an event that we do no wish to encounter. And if pain still meets us in the way, our first reaction is to seek the comfort of a pain-negating medicine. But we should wonder whether by avoiding suffering we are also avoiding the call of Christ to take up our crosses and follow him (Matt 10:37-39; 16:23-25; Mark 8:33-35; Luke 9:22-24; 14:26-28). We should wonder whether by avoiding persecution we are actually anti-Christians, people who are qualitatively different from that of the early Christians and martyrs. The early Christians, (except perhaps the apologists), did not seek social and intellectual acceptance at the expense of witness. Rather, they sought to be witnesses at the expense of social and intellectual acceptance.

We should really ask other related questions: Does our noticeable avoidance of persecution not in itself a counterwitness? If we do not want to suffer for something that we think is true, then how can we persuade others to commitment to such truths? Are we not actually communicating that the truth we proclaim is not worth suffering or dying for? Are we not presenting a Gospel that no longer calls to repentance, but only calls for acceptance? Are we not promoting a Christianity that does not offer something that the world does not have? Does the fact that we do not have the confidence to speak the Gospel of Christ in its simplest form (which is already given to us in God’s accommodation) express our unbelief in the power of the Holy Spirit to make clear to all what is foolishness to Gentiles and scandalous to Jews? If we do not believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of its sin and ignorance, then how can we even communicate the Gospel of repentance? If we do not have faith in the Holy Spirit, are we not actually asking people to join us in believing something we ourselves do not really believe in? Should we conform to the pattern of the world’s reasoning, or be transformed by the renewing of our minds? (Rom 12:2) Should we obey rather obey human stipulations than God’s commission to make disciples of the Servant-Lord (Acts 5:29)?