What truth isn't

"What is truth?"
--Pontius Pilate

A couple of months ago, Irish philosopher / theologian / pastor Peter Rollins visited Edmonton. I first heard of him last year when the Wittenburg Door interviewed him. He intrigued me. (Sample quote: "God spoke to me, repeating four simple words: 'I do not exist.'") But I got quite sick when he was in Edmonton, so I didn't get to see him. I decided to order a book of his instead. The one I got is called, "The Fidelity of Betrayal." Here's an excerpt:

When the truth affirmed by Christianity is thought of as constituting a series of factual claims open to being assessed by intellectual experts, Christianity opens itself up to a corrosive form of doubt that threatens to destroy it...

Thus the truth affirmed by Christianity ends up being treated like any other set of factual claims, claims that are provisional and open to being proven wrong. Even if one believes that the various claims within the Bible are wholly accurate, it is always possible that a new discovery in archaeology, history, or biblical scholarship will overturn the current body of evidence. Apologetics, in its attempt to defend the factual claims of the Bible through the use of reason, thus implicitly affirms the very philosophical outlook that undermines its own project, placing the truth of Christianity in the realm of rational reflection and thus into the realm of reasonable doubt and provisionality.

This has the effect of placing the Christian idea of truth upon a very tentative and fragile foundation, one that could not possibly justify an individual's unconditional commitment--one that would not be able to embrace Jesus' statement that one ought to lay one's life down for one's faith.

--page 92-93

By the way, for those of you who don't speak Christianese, "apologetics" is the rational defense of Christian beliefs.

I can identify with this. I get pretty irritated when people use bad arguments for the truth of Christianity, but I've come to realize that I can't possibly thoroughly evaluate every argument for and against the existence of God, resurrection of Jesus, etc. Even if I put a ridiculously large amount of time into it, I probably wouldn't even come close, and meanwhile I'd miss out on actually living the life God created me to live. But when I am confident that a particular argument sucks, it makes me feel like these people want me to turn my back on my rationality.

The book makes it clear that we don't need to turn our backs on rationality, but our faith shouldn't be subject to rationality either.

This leaves a glaring question: why make an unconditional commitment to Christ? I haven't finished the book yet, but I think he's going to explore this question. I don't know if he's going to give a clear answer. But based on the track record of this guy and other writers who think like him (like Brian McLaren), I'm sure I'll find his reasoning more satisfying than Pascal's wager and plenty of other arguments for being a Christian.