Tag Archives: theology

The Role of Doubt in the Journey of Faith—Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 4

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My first two posts in this series addressed some of the unanswered questions I have; and my last post focused on what it takes to embark on the quest for truth. Here I want to suggest that doubt can have a positive value in the life of faith.

When I think of my own life, a prime example of unanswered questions concerns God’s guidance (or seeming lack of guidance) at crucial junctures in my faith journey.

A Faith Crisis

My most significant faith crisis came when I was around thirty, during a time of great difficulty in my life. Many external supports had failed (it’s a long, complicated story) and I was in the throes of a personal and vocational crisis. I wondered what I was living for, and why God had (seemingly) placed me in such an intractable situation—or, at least, why God had allowed me to get into such a situation. It was as if my life had hit a dead end.

I didn’t doubt God’s existence, but God’s rather goodness. I found that it’s difficult—if not impossible—to pray when you don’t, in your bones, believe that God really has your best interests at heart. So over a period of time I found that I simply stopped praying.

The Lament Psalms

What started me praying again was my discovery of the Psalms, particularly those psalms known as the psalms of lament, or complaint, or protest. These psalms make up about one-third of all the Psalter; they’re the largest single group of psalms in the Bible. These psalms honestly challenge God with the suffering the psalmist is going through, often even accusing God of doing terrible things (like Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”). And they forthrightly ask God to intervene and change the situation of suffering.

It was only when I was able to pray that darkest of all lament psalms, Psalm 88, and then preach a sermon on that psalm at the memorial service of a young woman who had just died of cancer, that I found I was able to pray again.

A New Understanding of God

And now, I have a very different view of God, as one who is willing to hear us out fully when we’re honest about our difficulties—including our doubt—and who accompanies us in our sufferings (even in our doubt).

Through the psalms of lament I was brought back to the core truth of the Christian faith that God—through the cross—has suffered with us and for us, more than we can ever imagine. This is not a God above the fray, but one who knows the depth of human evil and suffering—from the inside. And this God is willing to graciously host our honest questions.

Loving the Questions

Beginning in those dark times, when no clear answer was in sight, I learned to “love the questions themselves,” as Rainer Maria Rilke put it.

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke pleaded with the young man to whom he was writing (back in 1903) “to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.”

Been there; done that.

Rilke goes on to suggest to the young poet that he not even try to search for answers yet.

I’m not sure I would (or even could) follow that particular advice.

But Rilke is surely wise when he continues: “And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I’m not sure I’ll ever get all my questions answered. But the asking of them has been significant for the person I’ve become and am still becoming.

The Truth Is Out There—Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 3

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In my last post I noted that my questions often leave me perplexed, and even confused. But I’m not in despair.

Like Mulder of the X-Files, I believe “The truth is out there.”

That doesn’t mean that I will find it; but I’m sure going to try. I’m on a quest, and this quest has led me to try to puzzle out this world, and in the process to study theology, philosophy, and the Bible—as well as to take human experience seriously.

The Need for Faith

I’ve found that the quest for truth requires two things.

First, it requires a certain faith. You have to believe that it is a worthwhile quest and that you won’t come to the edge of the world and fall off; you won’t fall into the unknown, never to return. This means that the fearless quest for truth—motivated by doubt, by what you don’t know—is nevertheless undergirded by trust or faith. (Is this faith in God? It is at least faith in the trustworthiness of reality.) The quest for truth (to use Augustine’s idea, made famous by Anselm) is “faith seeking understanding.”

However, there is no guarantee that throughout this quest for understanding your faith will remain unchangeably the same. Hopefully it will deepen and become more mature.

The Need for Humility

The other thing the quest for truth requires is the humility to realize we don’t have all the answers, and might never find all the answers. There are no guarantees for success in the quest.

Plus, we could always be wrong—in anything we currently believe. This is not a matter of psychological doubt (of actually doubting any particular belief), but simply the logical possibility of being wrong. There is no belief that I currently hold that is strictly “indubitable,” that I can’t doubt, that isn’t subject to the possibility of change.

Of course, I would need to be shown (in a manner that convinces me) that I need to change my belief on a particular matter. But I have to be open to that, in principle.

The Problem with Fundamentalism

The alternative to acknowledging the possibility of being wrong is fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism isn’t a matter of any particular beliefs, but rather a way of holding to beliefs. A person who doesn’t actually think they could possibly be wrong (not that they are wrong, that they could ever be wrong)—that person won’t give another person’s viewpoint the time of day. They might even believe the other person has no right to their beliefs, since they contradict what is obviously true.

Fundamentalists of a philosophical type (typically called foundationalists) tend to label people they disagree with as irrational. I’ve met such people and been so labeled (when I was in grad school).

Fundamentalists of a political or religious type tend to regard people they disagree with as evil. In its mild form, such people are thought to have ulterior motives; in its extreme form, they are “of the devil.” I’ve encountered religious fundamentalists and had the latter phrase applied to me (by a prominent church leader, in public).

Given the problems of fundamentalism, I’m fine with the possibility of being wrong; I’m even fine with doubt.

I’ll talk about the positive role of doubt in my next post.

Does Tom Wright Believe in the Second Coming?

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Tom Wright (a.k.a N. T. Wright) is a brilliant theologian and biblical scholar, who has shaken up many people’s assumptions about what the Bible actually teaches. He is especially well known for arguing that the Bible teaches a renewed earth, instead of our “going to heaven.” And he has attempted to redefine our interpretation of “justification” in Paul’s writings, by paying attention to first-century Judaism instead of reading later ideas back into Paul.

What makes Wright so interesting is that he affirms (and models) that it is possible to come up with new ideas and fresh interpretations of Scripture while standing firmly in the non-negotiable tradition of classic, orthodox Christianity.

This is not the place to comment on his view of justification (it’s not my expertise). And I have already indicated (in an earlier post) my basic agreement with his ideas of a renewed earth. Here I want just to clarify one point of his eschatology that is often misunderstood.

The need to clarify this point arose when I was writing my book on eschatology (A New Heaven and a New Earth), especially as I read those who were misinterpreting Wright.

Wright’s Preterism

Like most biblical scholars today (including myself), Wright affirms what is sometimes called a “preterist” position in relation to much biblical prophecy. Preterism is related to the grammatical term “preterite,” which refers to the past tense. So a preterite understanding of prophecy would say that the prophet was speaking about events in his own context (which is now past to us) and not referring explicitly to some distant future (the way prophecy is typically taken in dispensationalism).

For example, Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 was originally addressed to the court of faithless King Ahaz, and “the young woman” who would bear a son was either the prophet’s wife (mentioned in 8:3) or a member of the royal court (I lean towards the latter; note that “the young woman” suggests he is pointing at someone). In the original context, the royal son is probably Hezekiah, who is a sign of hope for besieged Judah.

Later, Matthew applies this prophecy typologically to Jesus (Matthew 1:23), in the context of another faithless Judahite ruler, King Herod, thus drawing a significant parallel between the crisis of the eighth century and his own day, where the birth of Jesus is the new and decisive sign of Immanuel (God-with-us).

Now, Wright is famous for being a preterist when it comes to interpreting the Olivet discourse, the dire predictions of the “end” of the world that Jesus gave on the Mount of Olives (in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21). So he interprets the signs in the heavens, including the sun and moon being darkened, the stars falling from heaven, and the powers of heaven being shaken (Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24-25; Luke 21:25-26) as a picturesque way of referring to momentous historical events (the Roman-Jewish war and the fall of Jerusalem).

Wright often cites the Jewish historian Josephus, who used similar language to describe these events.

But Wright also has good Old Testament precedent. As chap. 6 (“The Coming of God in Judgment and Salvation”) of my new eschatology book tries to show, OT judgment theophanies use extreme language of cosmic shaking to refer to what are clearly historical/political events of the time.

In the case of the Olivet discourse, most biblical scholars also think that a preterist interpretation works for much of what Jesus says there. But Wright thinks it applies to everything Jesus says there; according to Wright, Jesus isn’t referring at all to what we usually mean by the Parousia or the Second Coming.

What About the Second Coming?

This doesn’t mean Wright thinks the Bible never refers to the climactic return of Jesus to judge the world and usher in the kingdom of God in all its fullness. Otherwise, how could he be famous for teaching a doctrine of cosmic redemption, that God’s plan is to bring about “a new heaven and a new earth”?

Well, one way would be if language about “a new heaven and a new earth” was just a picturesque way to speak about momentous historical events (as it arguably is in Isaiah 65:17-25; but not, I think, in 2 Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1).

And there is, indeed, one stream of preterist interpretation in contemporary evangelical theology known as full or consistent preterism that assumes that no biblical prophecies refer to the distant future; all has already been fulfilled. Thus we are already living in the new heaven and new earth (and the resurrection has already happened).

This form of preterism is an outgrowth of post-millennialism, the idea that God is at work through the church to gradually bring the world to full submission to his will—except that there is no climactic second coming here (the post in post-millennialism referred to Christ’s return after the world had reached it millennial state).

Based on his interpretation of the Olivet discourse, Wright has often been read as if he supports consistent preterism. Sometimes this reading comes from adherents of this view who want him as an ally. In other cases, he is critiqued for holding this view.

A recent critique comes from Edward Adams, who frames his important book, The Stars Will Fall from Heaven: “Cosmic Catastrophe” in the New Testament and Its World (Library of New Testament Studies 347; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007), in terms of a disagreement with Wright on this point (pp. 12-13). Adams takes issue with Wright’s claim that language of cosmic destruction does not refer to “the end of the space-time universe” (The New Testament and the People of God [Christian Origins and the Question of God 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], p. 300), but rather speaks of historical events (such as the fall of Jerusalem).

Setting the Interpretation of Wright to Rights

The problem is that Adams conflates two claims Wright makes, which are actually quite distinct.

On the one hand, when it comes to the Olivet discourse and Jesus’ parables about the returning master/king, Wright indeed thinks that the referents are historical events in the near future (the fall of Jerusalem). We can certainly quibble about that (I actually think that Jesus’ teaching here could have double referents, as I explain in my forthcoming eschatology book, chap. 9: “Cosmic Destruction at Christ’s Return?”).

On the other hand, Wright’s claim that language of cosmic destruction does not intend the ending of the space-time cosmos makes an entirely different point, namely that God intends to redeem and renew the cosmos instead of destroying it and taking us to “heaven.” (I’m fully on board here.)

Wright actually made a concerted attempt to clarify his eschatological position as far back as 1999.

In The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), Wright explained that he was not denying a future cosmic coming of Christ: “Let me say this as clearly as I can (since I have often been misunderstood on this point)” (p. 117).

Although Wright indeed thinks that Jesus’ teaching in the Olivet discourse addresses immediate future judgment, and not the literal end of the world, he acknowledges that Jesus also anticipated a final cosmic redemption (for example, his mention in Matthew 19:28 of the coming “regeneration” or renewal of the world). Thus Wright states: “The belief that the creator God will at the last recreate the whole cosmos and that Jesus will be at the center of that new world is firmly and deeply rooted in the New Testament” (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 117).

This explains why Adams is confused by Wright’s interpretation of passages like Hebrews 12:26-27 and 2 Peter 3:5-13. Adams thinks that Wright is inconsistent to see these texts as referring to genuinely “cosmic change,” given his take on Wright’s “general claim” about New Testament eschatology (pp. 15-16). Adam’s perplexity surfaces especially in reference to Hebrews 12, when he twice mentions the interpretation “we might have expected” Wright to have (pp. 192–93).

The long and short of it is that Wright’s view of the local referents of the Olivet discourse should not be generalized into his overall eschatological position. Whether or not he himself would call it the “Second Coming,” Tom Wright clearly does believe in a future cosmic renewal of all things.

I’d call that the Second Coming.