| Reality, rhetoric and constructed
faith
To
disentangle what “really happened” from its rhetoric is a serious quest; constructing
what will be is a serious imperative. These dynamics are antithetical to Christian
faith that anticipates a sure future in a word of promise recalled from testimony
in a past unable to be certified by historical methods, even if it is historical. Christian
origins and continuing testimony represent a unique problem for historical methods.
What happened is articulated from a composite of New Testament writings proclaimed
and heard in every generation of Christian faith and community as present not
past realities. Faith and history are inseparably entwined in hearing the word
of God; neither is diminished nor independent of the other. The
quest for past reality seeks to distinguish such reality from rhetoric about it,
even if historians also seek to ascertain why certain questions are asked of history
and not others or how questions of the past are framed. Historians seek to disentangle
what really happened in the past as they also seek to distinguish past events
from the way they were perceived and interpreted. Historians make interpretive judgments
in the belief that they are moving toward the facts not toward fictive constructions
or yet the entwinement of fact and faith. At best, historians claim to
observe historical “effects” generated by communities adhering to faith. Historical
engagement attempts to get behind assertions of faith about what happened, generally
with a different interpretation than faith, such as political or sociological,
on the effects of faith in history. What really happened is supposedly distinguished
from “Christian rhetoric” of what happened, even if the same historical effects
are observed. These effects are given a different explanation. For
example, instead of citing transformation of human lives through the gospel to
account for rapid growth of Christian churches, a historian might attempt to demonstrate
the following—the sociological context was ripe for endorsement of the individual
in the face of oppressive political forces that diminished a sense of personal
identity. In this approach, a Christian “construction” of transformative reality
based on the gospel of Christ is merely an ideal from the market of diverse human
ideals that gelled with social and political realities at the time! v Historical
engagement attempts to disentangle what really happened from rhetorical or “constructed”
realities—whether these are imaginative, oppressive or delusionary. Historical
research seeks to get to the reality in spite of the constructed. Yet people assert
both the right and the ability to construct future reality and its meanings. Janus
faced, people look to two modes of reality—the past, in which historians attempt
to dismantle rhetoric about the past in order to get to the truth of what really
occurred; the future, toward which the freedom and necessity of constructing our
reality is asserted. Such reality could be political, religious or secular. A
quest to identify past reality beneath its rhetoric, while advocating the freedom
to construct future reality is effectively distending reality between real and
constructed. The value of unearthing the real story, for the historian, is to
facilitate our present construction of future social and political reality. This
is articulated in the following way—“we need history so we can interpret life
toward the future.” The
quest for reality beneath rhetorical constructions concerning the past—as it was
politically or sociologically—is valued in order to construct a future reality.
What is dismantled with the right hand in quest of unconstructed reality becomes
a resource for what is feverishly assembled with the left as a constructed reality!
Yet the contradiction here is seemingly not discerned. If
the past can be recovered, the future, it is assumed, can be constructed. Yet
the future cannot be sought as either unconstructed or reconstructed according
to will. In anxiety before the pending horizon of death, humans frantically construct
a future that will ensure the highest degree of security—medical, financial and
social—and assumedly within such security, our personal longevity. In
anxiety over the future, any quest to construct a particular future is also to
launch human anxiety into the same future. We project and carry our compromised
selves into the future. People
might seek to construct a future free from anxiety and compromise, inaugurating
universal harmony, yet dreams of such a future are continually usurped by human
anxiety carried within their constructions. Anxiety before the universal horizon
of death, along with perennial human compromise, generates less than ideal constructions,
whether in politics or religion. The
future, despite our providential projections, defies our constructions. The future
can be unexpected, unsettling our constructions or inducting crises that destroy
any investment we can make with certainty about the future. This is why in biblical
testimony it is imperative to look to God as the only sure reality amid variegated
human constructions and their inevitable demise. The
word of God as promise gives a future that only God can give without compromise.
God, who gave reality by speaking a word, calls
to be things that are not, speaking the future by the word. The future in
biblical testimony is wholly reliable. By
contrast to human constructions of reality, biblical testimony offers a new reality
that is known as anticipated in faith because its focus is the word of God and
not the rhetoric of a constructed future. Human life is only known in hearing
the word of God. v Human
constructions remain ambiguous as antithetical to faith in the word of God; they
are a source of the word’s diminution. To speak then of “constructing faith” is
contradictory. It is a polite way of saying that God of biblical testimony is
no longer believed. To
speak of constructed faith is currently fashionable. It is also articulated as
“meaning making.” Yet constructed faith is only what a person makes of it. It
has no power or influence beyond personal investment. In the absence of extrinsic
possibility, constructed faith leads to malaise because people know implicitly
that their faith is only constructed. If
meaning is perceived only to be a construction, it has no power to influence beyond
a pragmatic desire for its effects—like making New Year resolutions. New Year
resolutions are constructed and observed in order to achieve desired effects.
Yet people know that such resolutions are constructed and therefore without any
power to influence, other than by personal investment as self-motivating resolutions.
Constructed faith is the same. In
the word that calls to faith we are encountered by another whose future is otherwise
than any construction toward a desired ideal. We are encountered in intimacy and
accountability as responsible, within real and personal difference that is the
possibility of relationships and communion. In the word of God, the future is
the locale of hope and possibility that faith can engage without apprehension.
To seek an unconstructed past for a future that is constructed is to miss every point at which the reality of God beyond human construction can intersect our lives. Christian faith accepts God in Jesus Christ as the source and presence of a future that is unique, invoking present effects beyond personal investment in having been called to be by the word. |
