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.)