Here I continue discussion of Daniel Tayler’s book The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian and the Risk of Commitment with Chapter 3: The Reflective Christian in the Secular World of Ideas. If you have read this chapter, feel free to comment. If not, feel free to ask a question.
Speaking of his many encounters with secular academics (most likely at professional society meetings) Dan says “If I maintain my role as an academic, or good old boy, there is no problem. But to the extent that I reveal what makes me tick, what shapes my whole view of reality, I am not likely…to be much more than a caricature, an anachronism, an object of condescension or a raised eyebrow and a knowing look.” (47-48)
Dan goes on to make a very important point about “reason” and “logic.” He argues that many people, especially secularists, confuse the two. They are related and overlap, of course, but “reason” is not necessarily “logic.” What is called “reason” is often linked to a particular and debatable worldview. Logic, on the other hand, is, well, logic. He argues rightly that there is nothing illogical in the essential nature of Christianity. Yet, he also argues, many secularists claim Christianity is unreasonable—because it does not fit with their secular worldview. (50)
Then Dan digs into tolerance and intolerance. “What is not to be tolerated, currently (among secularists), are any views that make absolute claims, particularly if they suggest that all competing views are in error.” (53) Dan has experienced, as I have, intolerance in secularists contexts. OF COURSE he and I both know, that intolerance is not unique to secularists! What he is arguing is that MOST academic secularists are big on tolerance while rejecting from their allegedly open-minded contexts (such as some academic and professional organizations) anyone who is openly Christian. “The intellectual world, like its Christian counterpart, exercises power first for the purpose of self-preservation, and only Munich less for the sake of intangible qualities such as truth.” (54) That is a harsh judgment. However, I would say that THOSE IN CONTROL of all institutions and organizations TEND to exercise power FIRST for self-preservation.
Dan concludes with this truth: “God’s will and work is not coterminous with the conservative Christian world as it claims. Neither is reason, learning, humaneness, and insight the sole possession of secular thought.” (62)
Dan’s main point is that the reflective Christian is likely to find it challenging to participate in either the conservative Christian subculture or the secular one. I certainly agree. I attended a fundamentalist college. After seminary I attended a secular university. Later I was a member of a pluralist society of theologians and of a pluralist association of religion scholars. I’ve personally felt the “sting,” as it were, of intolerance in all of them. I found that insofar as I “toed the line” with the prevailing orthodoxy in each I was okay. Insofar as I questioned it, I was excluded.
Somehow or other I managed to keep one foot in each context—relatively conservative Christianity (I speak there of its sociological side) and secular/pluralist intellectualism (again I speak of its sociological side). I find much with which to agree in both subcultures, but I find myself out of step with some “sacred cows” of each. For example, among conservative Christians I am often rejected as “liberal” because I do not believe in the Bible’s “inerrancy.” Among secularists/pluralists I am often rejected as not truly intellectual because I believe in a living God who sometimes acts supernaturally.
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