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What is Truth? 2017 edition

1/30/2017

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facts - empirically verifiable realities in the world of space and time; of diminishing value as "facts" the more they are expressed in generalities; can sometimes be expressed mathematically and in relation to other mathematical facts (e.g. "greater than," "less than," largest, smallest, etc.)

alternative facts - an appropriate expression for different-but-comparable data sets.
            Appropriate: at one point, alternative facts told us with some accuracy that there were more slaves in the world today than ever before in history AND a smaller proportion of the human population was enslaved than ever before in history - because of population growth, these are both "facts", though somewhat generally expressed and needing further definition
             NOT Appropriate: the crowd in a particular American city on a particular inauguration day was the largest ever AND the same crowd in the same American city on a particular inauguration day was NOT the largest ever - because of the specificity involved, these are NOT appropriately termed "alternative facts"

opinion - unverifiable expressions of personal/individual preference; often articulated in qualitative judgements like "good" or "bad," "best" or "worst," etc., but prone to reasonable and rapid dismissal without argument by others who merely disagree

T/truth - sometimes used interchangeably with "fact," but unlike "facts" T/truth is not always verifiable, but is usually worth an argument; often depends on some authority larger than the individual, like divine revelation or widely and strongly held communal ideals; a story that points to a larger truth can be deemed true, even if it is not factual (eg. "The Little Red Hen" "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" etc.). Since it is not always verifiable, and authorities may only be recognized by their particular communities, humility is needed and agreement should not necessarily be expected, but contradictory claims that cannot be reconciled through clarification should not BOTH be granted the status of "truth"

paradox - apparently contradictory truth claims that, upon closer examination, turn out NOT to be contradictory, for a variety of reasons (terms are used differently, different times, places and circumstances are being referred to, different perspectives or angles are being offered)
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The Living Memory of Centenarians

4/21/2016

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The living memory of centenarians struck me hardest a decade ago, in October 2006 when Enolia McMillan died a few days after her 102nd birthday. Her father, John Pettigen, had been a slave.* Joseph Medicine Crow, the last Crow war-chief (an a WWII vet/hero, historian, anthropologist and educator) turned 100 in 2013 and died just this month. He knew men who rode with Custer against the Sioux, with whom the Crow had a long feud. Rode... with... Custer. He knew them. Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn is 116, born in 1899 (100 years after the death of George Washington), is the oldest verifiable living human. 

Try, just for a minute, to make a list of all the things this woman has seen and lived through, technological developments, legal developments, geo-political development. Today, there are in the order of 50,000 centenarians living in the U.S. and our history is so incredibly short. It's 2016. Next year is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, if you count from Luther's 95 Theses (which most people do, though there are certainly arguments to the contrary). Our country turns 240 this year if you count from the Declaration of Independence, 229 if you count from the ratification of the Constitution, 151 if you count from the end of the Civil War. The last person to sail on the HMS Beagle with Darwin died in 1914. The last veteran of Ft. Sumter died in 1919 when Susannah Jones was 20. The last witness of Lincoln's assassination at Ford's theatre died in 1951, when Jones was 52. The last U.S. and Native American veterans of the Little Big Horn died in 1950 and 1955 respectively, when Medicine Crow was in his forties. Geronimo died in 1909. Joe Medicine Crow was not born yet, but of course Susannah Jones was 9. Like one of my sons is right now.

*The last living American who had been a "legal" slave under the chattel system of the South was Sylvester Magee, who died in 1971 (the historical reality of "Slavery by Another Name" is a different question).
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Young Folks' God (or De-colonizing Theology): Teaching and Theological Process Part Two

3/17/2011

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The conversation above, for all of its flaws (it is an unedited part of a longer documentary by Tony Jones based on his 2009 book The New Christians) is a good demonstration of how I think "Reformed" or "traditional" Christians and more "postmodern," "progressive" or "Emergent" Christians (PPECs below) are missing each other. I planned to write these posts weeks ago, before the Bell's Hell controversy broke (here), but never got to it.  Now it seems urgent.

As I teach theology at an ecumenical Christian college with a thorough but hospitable faith statement, I make it clear that we aren't a church and aren't in the indoctrination business.  I most frequently drive my students back to the Bible with their theological questions while explaining how various groups in church history raised "big issues" and made sense of them.  In the last post in this series I noted that many of the young (often nondenominational) Christians I teach want to opt for a "lowest common denominator theology." However, at around the same age, many young Christians discover the joys of tradition, as well as critical thinking and the like. Some have sunk their teeth into church and theological traditions ranging from Eastern Orthodoxy to Reformed while PPECs(now for about 14 years) have essentially been asking for (demanding? taking?) the same freedom that new churches of the global "south" have taken in their post-colonial contexts (see especially the writings of Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako). 

The PPECs are essentially saying, "We have history with various traditions of Christianity that were imposed upon us, but we now claim the right to take the best from what we received and to develop theology for today that fits our context."  Like most of the young Christians I meet, PPECs seemed to have minimal (initial) connection to the enculturated dispositions and intellectual frameworks of any traditional denomination, though some have church/family loyalties and their beliefs packed for them. Nearly the same could be said for the church culture of Anabaptists; radical reformers who hit "reset" on the church in the 16th century much harder than Luther or Calvin and took it in a different direction  Perhaps it is no surprise then that many PPECs have read Anabaptist theologian John Howard Yoder and Western-culture missiologists like Lesslie Newbigin and his descendants.

In 1659, Rome’s Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith had the sense to ask 3 French missionaries to China:  "What would be more absurd than to import France, Spain or Italy, or any other country of Europe into China?  Don’t import these, but the faith." Granted, they assumed the "venerable antiquity" of Chinese tradition (and the controversy went on) but they had the right question and imperative. The overwhelming density and pervasiveness of current Western cultural influences (popcompared to anything that might be called "venerable" amounts to the accrual of culture for young Westerners today that is arguably as removed from the major theological traditions of "old World" Christianity as Chinese culture may have been in 1659. 

Jewish legend states that 70 isolated Jewish elders each made exactly the same Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures for Ptolemy. Sometimes Christians who have embraced a traditional systematic theology act as if all other Christians should arrive separately at the same systematic theology from their readings of the Bible.  Or, barring this, that they should skip the theological process and just buy the systematic theology they are offered. Neither of these options is likely. If this has NOT been the case missiologically on other continents, should it be the case in Europe or North America as the church seeks to re-evangelize its old territory? Some may embrace a traditional theology expressed in new or old ways.  Others need the freedom to engage in theological process for themselves, in community, from the scriptures; finding different points of connection, priorities and emphases than their Christian ancestors.
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    Matt Hunter, Ph.D

    Multidisciplinary religious scholar and practitioner

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