WE CANNOT SEPARATE DOING FROM BELIEVING AS MANY WANT TO DO

In the Myth of Certainty, Daniel Taylor makes the absurd claim that:

• “Faith in God, then, is not a belief system to defend but a life to live out!”

Taylor is half-right. Christianity is a “life to live out.” However, we cannot live this life out without instructions and the rationale or reasons to believe in these instructions – the Word of God.

For Jesus, bearing fruit – living the life – had to begin with embracing the Word of life. In His Parable of the Sower, Seeds and Soils, He highlighted the primacy of His Word for bearing fruit in His conclusion:

• “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:15; ESV)

In order to bear, they first had to hear and then adhere:

• “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away… My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” (Luke 8:18, 21) 

According to Jesus, loving Him and living out the life He prescribed wasn’t possible without keeping His Word:

• “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Therefore, for the Christian, love isn’t a matter of living a “virtuous” life but rather, through faith, the life that He had commanded. Therefore, Jesus parting words commissioned His Apostles to “to observe all that I [Jesus] have commanded you.”

• “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

Clearly, this is not Taylor’s commission!

Doubt and Faith: Daniel Taylor and Scot McKnight

Guru of doubt and author of the popular Christian-postmodern The Myth of Certainty, Daniel Taylor, has written once again on this subject: The Skeptical Believer. New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight has begun a blog series praising this book. He writes:

• “The Skeptical Believer. No, it’s not a contradiction in terms. It’s a simple, everyday reality for many people of faith” And, he contends (and I agree), “it’s acceptable to God.”

While doubt is acceptable to God, trials are also acceptable to God. However, these tools aren’t supposed to be the end-product of the Christian life but just the means to get us there. Here’s my response to McKnight’s glowing review:

Taylor writes with the same postmodern skepticism as unbelievers do. And it’s an illogical jumble. Let me just take some of the statements you’ve affirmatively quoted:

• Another point he makes in his opener: “the suspicion that anyone who claims to know most anything with certainty is Blowing Smoke”

According to Taylor, claims of certainty are claims as empty as smoke. This would mean that Taylor is also “blowing smoke,” because this is a statement of certainty! Here is another example of Taylor “blowing smoke”:

• With this he closes down the intro: “All evidence is resistible. All arguments are assailable. … All Arguments… leak.”

With this, he also invalidates his own arguments! The tool of Taylor’s trade is radical skepticism. If only he would apply this same standard to his own statements!

This is not to demonize all doubt. As F. Buechner stated so graphically: “Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith.” Indeed, doubt is a tool to build great faith. Doubt is not its final destination, as Taylor suggests. Nor is doubt the pinnacle of faith!

Taylor's position is not only illogical, it is inconsistent with the Christian faith.

Postmodern Christianity and Uncertainty

This is my response to a dialogue among post-modern Christians who doubt that confidence and assurance in the faith are possibilities:

Thai families that are selling their daughters into the sex trade were offered money by a Christian group to not do so. However, they scorned the offer and continued to do what had become culturally acceptable.

I wanted to understand what was so attractive about the rejection of certainty that they would continue in this destructive behavior. I struggle with the same perplexity as I try to understand the influence of Daniel Taylor’s “The Myth of Certainty.”

While I understand that his thesis enables us to accept our less-than-optimal Christian experience – he tells us that we lack certainty because we are the deep, sensitive and contemplative Christians – I fail to understand why you all continue in this “certainty” that undermines the very joy and confidence you can have in believing. However, it is not merely a matter of the fact that Taylor’s thesis will hurt you in the long run; it is actually problematic on other levels:

1. Most obviously, it is incoherent. Taylor claims “certainty” about his thesis while he denies certainty regarding the Christian faith. How is it that he expects his readers to embrace certainty about Christian uncertainty? Meanwhile, his certainty is destructive of the Christian faith and of Christians who try to embrace both Christ and Taylor at the same time.

2. Taylor’s thesis is entirely unbiblical. Although the Christian life is filled with struggles – doubts, uncertainty, fears, temptations – this doesn’t mean that certainty or assurance aren’t possibilities. The Bible talks much about the reality of certainty, confidence and assurance:

• Moses’ father-in-law confessed assurance: “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly." (Exodus 18:11)

• God made it possible that even the “whole world” would know of Him:  “Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.” (1 Samuel 17:46)

• He gave Israel unassailable proofs of His protection: “You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.” (Deut. 4:35-36)

• Paul expressed a high level of confidence in the things of God (Phil. 1:25; 2:23; 2 Tim. 1:12).

• We too are promised this confidence and assurance (Eph. 3:12): “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:22)

• Assurance is also something to pursue: “Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall.”  (2 Peter 1:10)

3. Sadly, Taylor’s embrace of uncertainty undermines this pursuit of certainty. “We have not because we ask not” (James 4:3). Taylor instead wants to make us comfortable with our uncertainty.

I write these unsettling words because I want to build bridges among Christians. Even more importantly, to show you that you have found the wrong “comfort.” I pray that you will understand.