“One influential Christian speaker says Nietzsche should be burned rather than read, and suddenly, reading Nietzsche is strangely attractive.” (p. 37)
This was one of several moments in which I totally identified with Mr. Taylor as I read his 1986 book The Myth of Certainty. Basically the book responds to the query “How can a thinking person with a keen, sometimes crushing, awareness of the complexity and contingency of all things make passionate commitment to act in the service of any contested cause?” (p. 98) Taylor is a professor who finds himself straddling the line between two very different worlds, that of the secular academy and that of the conservative Christian church. And yes, he is an English professor, which explains the alliteration of that last quote. In this book he shares his struggles and wisdom, and takes a lot of cues and epigraphs from Karl Barth, Flannery O'Connor, Soren Kierkegaard, and Blaise Pascal.
It's not an amazing book that shook my world, but it did affirm me in a lot of what I've come to believe. It's kind of cheesy at times, as he includes fictional accounts of a character which mirror the reflections of each chapter. Some interesting quotes from the book:
"While a little learning alienates, much learning often reconciles" (18).
“[Kierkegaard] recognized how subtly intertwined are our beliefs with our instinct for self-preservation, and counseled the greatest sensitivity for those who seek to lead someone from error into truth:
First and foremost, no impatience… A direct attack only strengthens a person in his illusion, and at the same time embitters him. There is nothing that requires such gentle handling as an illusion if one wishes to dispel it. If anything prompts the prospective captive to set his will in opposition, all is lost… [T]he indirect method…, loving and serving the truth, arranges everything…, and then shyly withdraws (for love is always shy), so as not to witness the admission which he makes to himself alone before God—that he has lived hitherto in an illusion.
...Only those with great confidence in the truth they hold can risk Kierkegaard’s approach.” (25-26)
“T.S. Eliot sees a certain kind of doubt as inevitable in matters of faith and correctly suggests that one’s attitude toward doubt is more significant than one’s having doubt: ‘Every man who thinks and lives by thought must have his own skepticism…that which ends in denial, or that which leads to faith and which is somehow integrated into faith which transcends it.’ The notion of transcending doubt by accepting it into faith, rather than by suppressing it (for it can never be destroyed), is crucial. Perhaps doubt, rather than something to be crushed, can be made to serve faith.
“T.S. Eliot sees a certain kind of doubt as inevitable in matters of faith and correctly suggests that one’s attitude toward doubt is more significant than one’s having doubt: ‘Every man who thinks and lives by thought must have his own skepticism…that which ends in denial, or that which leads to faith and which is somehow integrated into faith which transcends it.’ The notion of transcending doubt by accepting it into faith, rather than by suppressing it (for it can never be destroyed), is crucial. Perhaps doubt, rather than something to be crushed, can be made to serve faith.
“Doubt can only be robbed of its paralyzing and destructive qualities when it is admitted for what it is—which isn’t nearly as much as it appears when not admitted—and is accounted for in the process of faith. Normally doubt is seen as sapping faith’s strength. Why not the reverse? Where there is doubt, faith has its reason for being. Clearly faith is not needed where certainty supposedly exists, but only in situations where doubt is possible, even present.” (80-81)
“The reflective Christian must steer between unfounded claims of certainty on the one hand and an equally spurious absolutizing of relativism on the other.” (92). “The Christian should neither seek to deny the risk inherent in faith nor accept the implication that the secularist is on surer ground.” (97)
“Truth cannot be adequately evaluated on an objective or propositional level. How one holds a truth, one’s intention in regard to truth, the use to which a truth is put, the position against which a truth is asserted, the relationship between one truth and an equally valid balancing truth—all these and more determine the ultimate character of truth in our lives. Sadly, even truth can be made to function as falsehood when it is fragmented, distorted, or isolated from its position to the whole.” (129)
"We should avoid being sucked into negative struggles that are characterized primarily by what they are against, depending often on fear, suspicion, and even hatred for their primary motivation. Seek out, instead, constructive tasks that bring healing, enlightenment, and encouragement rather than bitterness and enmity.... Criticize the church when such criticism is called for, but also seek ways with your own life to make it what it should be. And aside from controversial things, there should be paintings painted, plays performed, poems written, discoveries made, ideas explored, causes pursued, and tasks accomplished which have nothing to do with partisanship of any kind, simply because we are human beings whom God has given many, many things to do." (136).
“Truth cannot be adequately evaluated on an objective or propositional level. How one holds a truth, one’s intention in regard to truth, the use to which a truth is put, the position against which a truth is asserted, the relationship between one truth and an equally valid balancing truth—all these and more determine the ultimate character of truth in our lives. Sadly, even truth can be made to function as falsehood when it is fragmented, distorted, or isolated from its position to the whole.” (129)
"We should avoid being sucked into negative struggles that are characterized primarily by what they are against, depending often on fear, suspicion, and even hatred for their primary motivation. Seek out, instead, constructive tasks that bring healing, enlightenment, and encouragement rather than bitterness and enmity.... Criticize the church when such criticism is called for, but also seek ways with your own life to make it what it should be. And aside from controversial things, there should be paintings painted, plays performed, poems written, discoveries made, ideas explored, causes pursued, and tasks accomplished which have nothing to do with partisanship of any kind, simply because we are human beings whom God has given many, many things to do." (136).
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