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<\/a>Last week I was putting up a shelf using a molly bolt. These are bolts that you use to hold something in drywall. I took my drill put the 1\/2 in. diameter hole into the wall, then put in the molly. Theoretically this is to hold the screw so then you can hang your self. This particular molly bolt I had purchased was heavy duty, made to hold 100 lbs. After I installed the molly I screwed the bolt into the metal anchor, but the screw just turned and never tightened. Very frustrating! It took three more bolts and two trips to Lowes to get the thing to work.<\/p>\nInterestingly, Martin K\u00e4hler (1835-1912) once\u00a0compared\u00a0\u201chistorical science\u201d in the study of Jesus to \u201ca never-ending screw\u201d. By which he meant that the assured results\u00a0of one generation\u2019s historical scholarship are disputed by the next. And, so, they cannot serve as a reliable basis for a believer\u2019s faith. His conclusion was: facts about the person and work of Jesus cannot rest on the changing results of historical criticism of the gospels. We can never reach beyond provisional validity and probability K\u00e4hler beleived.<\/p>\n
While I would not wish to go all the way with K\u00e4hler, his concern about to what\u00a0one\u00a0looks for surefooted conclusions about Jesus, is not misplaced.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless,\u00a0I would question the tactic assumption of\u00a0the necessity of certainty in faith. The\u00a0quest\u00a0for a\u00a0vantage point\u00a0that can apprehend Jesus beyond<\/em> provisional validity and probability is misguided given the condition of our humanness. We\u2019ve attempted of course to find certainty in doctrines of inerrancy (\u201cif the Bible is fully trustworthy we can be certain of our faith\u201d) or revelation (\u201cif God revealed himself in person of Jesus we can have certainty\u201d) or in subjective feeling or experience (\u201cif I experience\u00a0something, I can be certain), but even though these all in one way or another have the potential to strengthen faith, these are but grasping for wind. Of what, in anything, can a human\u00a0in this life have perfect certainty?\u00a0Should the arena of faith be different?<\/p>\nEven in something for which I have the most human certainty, there is are shades of doubt.\u00a0Not only does my body not always trust Karla\u2019s\u00a0words when\u00a0she\u00a0speaks words of\u00a0respect, admiration and love for me (and this is to Karla\u2019s frustration), but also since Karla is independent of me, I cannot be without any shadow of doubt. It is at least in the realm of possibility, although extremely unlikely to be sure, that she is deceiving me. I hear, as you do, almost weekly of spouses who awaken to a\u00a0reality about their wife or husband\u00a0they were completely unaware \u2014 be that of an affair, a secret habit, or, in the case of the recent death of Robin Williams, the depth of depression.\u201dCertainty\u201d, in the words of Daniel Taylor, is \u201ca myth\u201d.<\/p>\n
So\u00a0K\u00e4hler was\u00a0right that historical criticism is a\u00a0\u00a0\u201cnever-ending screw\u201d, but certainty, more fundamentally, is the \u201cnever-ending screw\u201d for faith.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I was putting up a shelf using a molly bolt. These are bolts that you use to hold something in drywall. I took my drill put the 1\/2 in. diameter hole into the wall, then put in the molly. Theoretically this is to hold the screw so then you can hang your self. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>Last week I was putting up a shelf using a molly bolt. These are bolts that you use to hold something in drywall. I took my drill put the 1\/2 in. diameter hole into the wall, then put in the molly. Theoretically this is to hold the screw so then you can hang your self. This particular molly bolt I had purchased was heavy duty, made to hold 100 lbs. After I installed the molly I screwed the bolt into the metal anchor, but the screw just turned and never tightened. Very frustrating! It took three more bolts and two trips to Lowes to get the thing to work.<\/p>\n