Smith’s fancy shorthand expresses a desperate devery society has a rulebook, but living in termination: the incompatibility of theologies, such one’s birth culture creates a blind embrace as Arminianism and Calvinism, mandate theologiof its practices, norms, and expectations. We cal uncertainty. believe certain things about speech, social cues, and even driving habits with little awareness of what we Evidently, we cannot trust our Bible, but not beprize or why we prize it. Behavior witnessed out- cause, as classic liberalism argued, the Bible itself side the cultural rulebook tilts us off center, lead- is untrustworthy. Rather because we are. The aring us to a myriad of responses including inexpli- guments go like this: “Bible reading requires Bible cable indignation. Identifying underlying cultural interpretation. Humans do Bible interpretation. Huassumptions often requires an international friend mans produce disparate interpretations.” The conor a sociologist to hold up a mirror before our eyes. clusion? “All theological conclusions are inherently provisional.” The logic is formulaic: Same Bible Even then we may resist its telling reflections. + Different Conclusions = Uncertainty. The theological world is no different. There is much to celebrate in recent studies of ancient languages, Battle weary, yet longing for a foothold, most conAncient Near East culture, Second Temple Judaism, servative Bible students stumble through the fog, and biblical theology. Volumes of publication have hoping to land somewhere close to the truth. But informed the Church usefully. But for all the good, in the journey, the demands for “epistemological theology possesses its own contemporary rulebook, modesty”—that allegedly essential framework for which has adopted a number of fallacies. I hold up contemporary theological discourse—swallow all a mirror here for us to reflect on three of the most confidence whole. Inconclusiveness offers the only socially acceptable posture toward biblical doccommon ones. trine. Some have even argued that the very desire Fallacy 1: All theology is tentative for certainty exposes psychological dysfunction. Certainty is impossible; longing for it is personLike a riptide sweeping away even the Michael al weakness. So if you seek theological certainty, Phelpses of theology, a societal vortex has snatched you may elicit an additional diagnosis for the next every confident voice from theological discourse. DSM: the PTCD—Professing Theology as Certain Theological statements, it is contended, never can Disorder. be certain. For Smith, the apparently irreconcilable difference Such claims of theological uncertainty range from between Protestant theologies issued him divorce the mildly humorous—“Put 10 theologians in a papers, so he left his Presbyterian heritage and wed room and get 17 opinions on a doctrine or a Scrip- himself to Rome. Our goal here is to critique neiture text”—to the sophisticated—as represented ther Rome on authority and certainty, nor Smith on by the former Protestant turned Roman Catholic, his new theological marriage. But note well. He has sociologist Christian Smith, who sees in Protes- grossly (and confidently) overstated the disparate tant theology a “pervasive interpretive pluralism.” character of various evangelical theologies.
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