So, what am I trying to say? –

Only what I believe to be real.

So, what is that exactly? –

Firstly, God. If not Him, than nothing.

That is, perhaps, abstract at best and obvious at worst –

Although, have you ever considered the humble position of a child? They know hardly anything. Yet, they know it so well. I would submit that they are aware of this position. This status is enjoyed as a kind of romantic curiosity. We then, as learned adults, often come along and say something to them like:

“You think you know everything but you really don’t understand anything.”

I would argue that the opposite is closer to the truth. In fact, I would go further and say that the above is a more proper description of most adults in the world.

You see, children are born into a world of absolutes. Everything is black and white, right and wrong. It is a world populated with clear distinctions. Theirs is a worldview characterized by utter dependence. Rightfully so, as the child is utterly dependant on its parents and, in a more philosophical sense, all things external. As no one can give birth to ones self. Rather, we come to realize that we were something a victim in the whole affair.

So, the child knows that it is a victim of circumstance right from the very beginning. Whereas, we wise adults spend our whole intellectual development trying to convince ourselves of the opposite. We rebel against the slightest suggestion that we are dependant in anyway on anything or anyone.

It is incredible because the child’s innate understanding of things (hardly well thought out and devoid of any pretense) is very much the way things are. That is, they understand that there are things to know (that can be known) and also, I think, that they know hardly any of them. This makes them quite curious. They do not, and mark it well, throw up their little hands in despair and say: “Even if absolutes do exist, I can never know them absolutely!”

No, they go on about the happy business of discovery – knowing, all the while, that there is more to be uncovered.

The point of all this? –

We are called to have faith like a child.

What if faith had a revelatory function? –

This function could be described like this:

Faith is the means by which God reveals that which is (reality) to whom he wills.

A child looks at the world with wonder, not because reality is ultimately uncertain. Understand this, not entirely. Rather, he views the world with wonder (a curious child-like faith) because it is almost too certain. That is, there are seemingly endless things to know and they can seemingly be known endlessly.

There is always a positive and a negative way to view anything. I would argue that most people today view romanticism in terms of the negative to the tragic exclusion of the positive. A Christian Theistic view of the romantic – we could call it: Christian mysticism – is rooted, as is all else, in the very person of God. More particularly, it is rooted in his being incomprehensible.

So, in order to view romanticism correctly, one must have a correct view of the incomprehensibility of God. This is a doctrine that arises from God being infinite. Consequently, it is not so much that he cannot be known. In fact, God is that which is most knowable, simply because there is more to know about him than anything else. Just because we will never know him fully, does not mean that we cannot know him truly.

In this way, God is the very essence of inexhaustible certainty. I believe that this is the proper basis for romanticism – or the intangibles in life (i.e., beauty, love, that feeling you get when a cool breeze hits you on a warm summer day, etc.). This is certainty we come to through experience. We all experience the world around us, insofar as we have been born into it. So, consequently, we all have experienced certainty.

Having seen so much, we all make a choice. It is a decision. We all have to answer the question:

How do I account for such certainty?

Or

How do I explain reality?

The child knows that it is not his place to write his story, but rather, to live it. Isn’t it strange that, as adults, we often come to reject this most obvious state of things? The very state of ourselves in our world. We attempt to support everything in and of ourselves. The tragic result, however, is that we lose the very possibility of supporting anything. When all we need do is enjoy what has been given us, we all too often feel the need to claim responsibility for it. So, through our sense of entitlement, we reject the very gift of life.

I believe all this to be consistent with Christian Scripture:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”

- Romans 1:16-23

Note, particularly, verse twenty:

“…his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

This is a picture of certainty. We are only condemned on the basis of what we know and never what we do not. Certainty is only possible if rooted in some authority. The only authority large enough is that of God himself. God has revealed himself. As a result, we can have real certainty. We can have real knowledge.

All that to say,

To deny certainty is to deny God.

To suggest that certainty can only come through a human institution is to do the same.

These two sentiments are, very much, the basis for my agreeing and disagreeing with various things that have been expressed here. I trust that I have not assumed too much in these disagreements. If so, I am sorry and quite thankful.

It is at a total loss that we come to know Him, the greatest of gains.

At a total loss,

C. W.

You know, being a recuperating fundamentalist, my first inclination is to pick apart your passionate discourses. It is to find fault. O how I hate that inclination. There is so much beauty in your words and their meanings.

So, I will glory in that instead. They are the things that draw me to worship in your words. First, and foremost, it is the longing after the God who is real. I do not classify myself as a ‘postmodern Christian’ and I suspect that you would say the same of yourselves. Yet, I do love the spirit that looks outside of men (and their hierarchical constructs) for authority.

Moreover, I delight in and am quite satisfied to join your struggle against the institutionalization of spirituality. The body that presumes to be the visible manifestation of the Church universal in the west is, I believe with you, little more than empty human religion. Indeed, they negate God in their very preaching, liturgy, and endless methodologies.

The attempt to systematize the spiritual disciplines results in little more than Christ-less legalism.

The somewhat blasphemous hypothetical illustrates this wonderfully:

“If God did not exist, what would change in your church?”

Far too often the answer comes back… “nothing”.

The church that does not need God for its every movement is utterly bankrupt and has nothing to offer a dying world. Rather, it is, itself, in want of a savior.

Fundamentalists find their certainty in the authority of Scripture. Well, that’s what they say. However, with a concept of priesthood tragically and unwittingly adopted from Romanism, they far too often place the authority in the interpretation of a man (the senior pastor) – rather than that of God.

How to say – - – certainty is possible. It is the essence of the gospel. It is who God is. However, it will never be dependant on any interpretation of man. Yet, it is found – in varying degrees – in the heart of every man.

I believe in common grace, and in general revelation. I also believe that it often manifests itself strikingly in the things we cannot deny. Every culture gets some of it right and some of it wrong. Culture can be seen as the corporate personality. So, as a microcosm each individual gets some things right and some things wrong which are intrinsic in their personality.

That which is most undeniable to a man is often that part of reality that God, in his mercy, has allowed him to see most. These are the sweetest and most beautiful things in life – they become the basis for philosophies and countless, more tangible, works of creativity.

The tragedy is, I believe, that we often see them as significant in and of themselves – not recognizing that they are the reflected glory of God – and we are meant to enjoy (worship) Him in them. We are called not to love the world to the exclusion of God, but rather, God to the inclusion of the world.

It is left for God to reveal, by grace and through faith, what is real. It is not an accident that He always starts with Himself. For, He is that which is most real.

In this way, Jesus is not some icon – or even – just some profoundly important and genuinely perfect person – He is, in the words of (for my money) Apollos:

“The radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…”

- Hebrews 1:3

“At many times and in many ways,” we read before the above statement, “God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son.”

God is real. It is no happy accident that faith in Christ is the only faith that reveals that which is most real (God) and by his light, all that is such.

It is in these things, my brother and sister, that we part ways. And may I be damned if I speak of them out of arrogance or with a haughty spirit. For I own none of it – save from God lavishing it upon me as a gift.

To give up the only legitimate epistemology (or theory of knowledge) in the name of love – is to destroy the very possibility of love.

I love you all,

C. W.

Authority. It is a concept that is necessary if one is to establish anything. It is little wonder than that in our day, when all authority is questioned, there is nothing established. Indeed, some begin to postulate that there may never have been or is currently anything to establish. Glorious and romantic, these vague wanderings are elevated to the position of the holy. In this way, that which is set apart becomes that which is vulgar and marked by no more than normalcy.

If the holy is the normal, it is the normal seen as strange. What a different view of Christianity we have today. Forget the religion though, what a different view of reality we have today. Postmodern Christendom has offered a great deal to the church. This cannot be disputed. It is a shame that most who criticize it do so out of utter ignorance – and often times – arrogance. The most important contribution you self-proclaimed “progressive” saints have offered is a successful and crucial criticism of Modernism. Recognizing that it cannot support a belief in absolutes.

However, the tragedy of such quick pretense to knowledge and progress was the resulting denial of absolutes altogether. It is the death of certainty. O saint of God, if you could hear – - – If there is no certainty, there is no true mysticism. Sincerity. It is what our generation longs for. However, true sincerity can only come from certainty – not the other way round.

In this way, we have traded one false religion of man for another. The apparent nobility of the new order is in the eyes of men, not those of God. For God, if it be he who works, works in no uncertain terms. He will never be robbed of his glory.

It is a question of commitments and it is a question of beginnings. Wisdom is found in the answering of both.

That wisdom has a name. It is called faith.

It is the answering. It is God who answers.

Asking the questions with you,

C. W.