Monthly Archives: July 2011

“If it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right” or “I don’t want to be right, even if that’s wrong.”

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In the July 8th issue of The Guardian, David Hare has an interesting interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Yes, get your “Mr. Bean” jokes out now.

Williams has been an outspoken critic of the New Atheist movement happening in his backyard, but his critiques have been mostly what I would call a “failure to engage.”  But as I read more and more about Williams, his theology, and his argumentative style, I would classify his critiques less as a failure to engage and more as a choice not to talk over.

That is, after all, what most of these shouting matches between atheists and theists have been: talking over one another.

So when one can boil the Archbishop’s responses down to the simple, awfully British, phrase, “Oh, please…” I now understand better why.  Williams finds the whole process of argumentation to be an exercise in futility.  And one, I might add, that leads to more bitterness and entrenchment than anything else in my experience.

I, too, came to this realization about a year ago.  In my search to mine the depths of my own skepticism, I finally came to much the same conclusion that Williams appears to have known for some time (if only those with ears would hear): argumentation in this arena is a futile attempt at making oneself believe by mind what is only known by heart.  Or, as St. Ambrose reminds us, “It does not suit God to save (God’s) people by arguments.”  Williams apparently often recites this.

This realization is not an escape, mind you.  That’s ultimate Truth.  And if you think you know it, I would question if you do.

Willaims explains this idea much more satisfactorily in the interview:

“Oh, look, argument has the role of damage limitation. The number of people who acquire faith by argument is actually rather small. But if people are saying stupid things about the Christian faith, then it helps just to say, ‘Come on, that won’t work.’ There is a miasma of assumptions: first, that you can’t have a scientific worldview and a religious faith; second, that there is an insoluble problem about God and suffering in the world; and third, that all Christians are neurotic about sex. But the arguments have been recycled and refought more times than we’ve had hot dinners, and I do groan in spirit when I pick up another book about why you shouldn’t believe in God. Oh dear! Bertrand Russell in 1923! And while I think it’s necessary to go on rather wearily putting down markers saying, ‘No, that’s not what Christian theology says’ and, ‘No, that argument doesn’t make sense’, that’s the background noise. What changes people is the extraordinary sense that things come together.

In reading Harris and Hitchens, in reading Craig and McGrath, I’ve come to this conclusion: I enjoy the reading.  On both sides.  I find myself nodding to Hitchens about just as much as I find myself nodding to McGrath.  And I find myself shaking my head in the same places, too: where the argumentation devolves into silly straw-people stereotypes and supercilious name calling.

(Harris and Craig, actually, I find pretty tedious because their anger is not mixed with enough sarcasm.  I prefer my agitants to be laced with humor.  It helps the hate go down better.)

But all in all this interview with the fine Archbishop has helped me to hone in, once again, on what it is that I am giving up in this life constantly, and that is the need to be “right.”  He notes:

Put it this way, if I’m not absolutely paralysed by the question, ‘Am I right? Am I safe?’ then there are more things I can ask of myself. I can afford to be wrong.

My dance with religion has led me to find that I’m not dancing to learn the steps, I’m dancing to dance.  And perfection is not the goal of this endeavor; dancing is.  I’ve given up my need to have the right steps.

But if that’s the case, why are so many Christians concerned with orthodoxy?  In my own church, my own denomination, we’re continuing to struggle with issues over orthodoxy, and yet, if we’ve given up the need to be right as the Christ has freed us to, it appears we haven’t given up the need to fight about it.

It is at this point that many will say, “Sure, but your point certainly doesn’t mean that anything is permissible!”

Quite correct (I’ll refrain from using the word “right”).

But must we argue and divide and split on account of it?  Williams’ own tenure as Archbishop has shown that diverse opinions can be pillars that hold up the same house.  And whether it’s because his eyebrows are too threatening to tussle with, or because he’s actually on to something here, he truly believes in the church in a way that makes me not want to fight him on it.

But I’ll allow his belief to be my own for the present time.  For while I want to believe in the church, the church often makes me a reluctant Christian.  Christians make me a reluctant Christian. While I find myself free from the need to be right, it appears my sisters and brothers throughout the church do not.

Sigh.

And sure, the one last argument the dissenting reader will throw out is true, “But don’t you think you’re “right” in believing its correct to give up being right?!”

Fine.  Incurvatus in se.  I won’t argue with you on that…because arguing will get us no where.  But I don’t believe in the rightness of my belief.  I don’t believe in the rightness of religion; no way.

Instead, I’ll just say that it’s my lens. I lean on it.  I look through it. Or to put it another way, I’ll quote someone else much smarter than me:

“Religion is not primarily a something to be believed…Religion is first and foremost a way of seeing.” (Kushner, Who Needs God)

So, I guess I don’t want to be right, even if that’s wrong.  Because in my reading and my experience, being right or needing to be so, well, it just leads to blindness.

Books about Theism, Atheism, and the Intersection of Belief

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The book behind the minister. Or vice versa?

I first read Timothy Keller’s book, The Reason for God, after reading an article on him in Newsweek.  I was intrigued by his approach to ministry and his interactive preaching style.  Although his theology is a bit more conservative than my own, I think he’s quite a good scholar, and quite good at message conveyance.

The Reason for God did not disappoint in either its scholarship or its clarity.  Keller’s impetus is to provide for the reader his reasoning for belief in a God, specifically the God known through Christ, and you get an adequate picture of both what his belief is and the pillars that sustain his logic.  And I have to say that I found myself nodding more than shaking my head.

The book is configured into two primary sections: “The Leap of Doubt” and “The Reasons For Faith.”   Both are intertwined with narrative and questions that Keller has received over his years of ministry at Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA), with Keller providing responses and answers.

Actually, I would call them “pseudo-answers,” because, while they appear to answer the question, Keller writes with an overconfidence and overstatement that I just can’t fully stomach.

In Keller’s attempt to wrap things up tightly for the reader (and convert the reader, I suspect), he leaves large gaping holes that go unacknowledged.  You don’t need to read far in the work to fall into one.  Chapter 2, “How Could a Good God Allow Suffering,” is one such example. Although I think Keller is on the edge of some really wonderful thinking on the issue of systemic suffering (his section entitled “Evil and Suffering May Be [If Anything] Evidence for God” deserves a second and third look…despite the appalling title), he ends spouting the same old argument heard before and wished for by anyone who has ever suffered: that the past suffering makes the future joy that much better.

I don’t think that’s true.  And even if it were, I don’t think it’d be helpful to say.  Ever.

Chapter 7, “You Can’t Take the Bible Literally” is another example of taking an argument too far, and represents, I think, the lowest point in the book for me personally.  Although he makes some perfectly good arguments, he often ruins them with ridiculous rhetoric.  One example can be found on page 105:

Mark, for example, says that the man who helped Jesus carry his cross to Calvary ‘was the father of Alexander and Rufus’ (Mark 15:21).  There is no reason for the author to include such names unless the readers know or could have access to them.  Mark is saying, ‘Alexander and Rufus vouch for the truth of what I am telling you, if you want to ask them.’  Paul also appeals to readers to check with living eyewitnesses if they want to establish the truth of what he is saying about the events of Jesus’ life (1 Corinthians 15:1-6).  Paul refers to a body of five hundred eyewitnesses who saw the risen Christ at once.  You can’t write that in a document designed for public reading unless there really were surviving witnesses whose testimony agreed and who could confirm what the author said.  All this decisively refutes the idea that the gospels were anonymous, collective, evolving oral traditions…

Really?  Decisively? Keller drops the ball here in scholarship, and going against the overwhelming view of modern theologian/historians, claims too much.  While it does seem that the author of Mark (conveniently often called “Mark”) is name dropping for a particular reason, we can only speculate why.  Perhaps it was because Rufus and Alexander were still around.  Or could their insertion be an interpolation?  And I completely disagree with his idea that Paul’s letters were meant for public proclamation.  I think it is reasonable to believe that Paul expected his Corinthian letter(s) to be read to that church, but can we really claim that to be “public” or that the church that received them would scrutinize them?  To me that sounds like a Western mind (Keller’s) trying to put its own lens on Eastern thinking (Paul and the church at Corinth’s).

I found his strongest thinking in Chapter 9 where he addresses morality and the knowledge of God.  In looking at a number of conventional arguments on the subject, Keller provides a very accessible description of the popular thinking of how morality is found, configured, and reinforced in this world, citing both Annie Dillard and Ronald Dworkin in his formulation.  Yet again, he goes too far in answering the question for the reader, instead of just letting the question hang (as, I think, all theological questions should).

This book is worth the read if you can take the over-confidence.  Keller presents wonderful arguments.  But, like with all things, one shouldn’t be totally persuaded.  Over-confidence in one’s own arguments can lead to idol worship, and Keller’s conviction of his correct beliefs borders on that.

But, then again, I really have yet to find an author on this subject that isn’t over-confident.  Including the author of this blog.