This is the 3rd and final part of my interview with R. Scott Smith. He is the author of Truth and the New Kind of Christian, our A-Team Blog Book of the Year for 2005.

How have some your own experiences with Christianity differed from those of McLaren?

One major way that we differ is that I found some believers who modeled for me a solid, robust confidence in their knowledge that Christianity is indeed true, yet all the while not embodying the nasty traits he says have come from modernity’s influences on the church.  In chapter 6, I describe my experiences at Talbot, where I met professors who dearly loved the Lord, embraced foundationalism and the view that we can know objective truth (i.e., the way things are in reality, in a mind-independent way).  Yet, they were not pompous know-it-alls.  Many of them had shepherds’ hearts, tenderly caring for the flock of God entrusted to them.  Many had been deeply wounded and were very real and vulnerable, showing me that they were not rigid, uptight, or controlling.  Instead, they embodied both truth and grace, as well as the love of the Lord, and that combination was a powerful tool in my life, to help set me free from my own woundedness and other influences, which had helped to shape how I often viewed my life as a Christian, and who God is.  They helped extend grace to me, which was just what I needed.  In addition, I was able to see that it was not an either-or proposition; that is, it was not the case that I could have grace if I also gave up foundationalism and embraced instead what Murphy would call “holism.”  Instead, I found people how believed they could know the truth, and they could give good reasons why they thought that.  They also embodied grace and love.

You argue that Christianity cannot survive transformation into a linguistic approach such as those advocated by McLaren and Jones. What’s one area of Christianity that will be negatively impacted by this shift?

This approach ends up being, I think, a constructivist one, such that we construct our worlds, and the truths of those worlds, by how we talk in our community.  If so, then core doctrines would become true due to how we talk.  But I don’t think that is what the biblical authors had in mind when they wrote.  Paul would never have agreed that the truth of the resurrection (not to mention the incarnation and atonement) of Christ to be something that is true due to how Christians talk.  Rather, it is true in a mind-independent way; it is true whether or not anyone believes it or talks about it.  I think that the doctrines of God (who He is), revelation (especially, our ability to know what God had in mind when He communicated these truths to us), hamartiology (sin), justification and sanctification, and lots more all would become true depending on how we use our language, within our community.  Let me refer readers to chapters 5, 6, and 7 for more details, since I have just summarized the conclusions I come to, without mentioning all the reasons and steps leading up to that result.

Why is our ability to know some objective truths important to Christian faith?

I think I touched on this above, in the discussion of the resurrection.  Christianity claims to be the true religion, that Jesus Christ is the only way to God.  Christianity also affirms certain claims as being historical facts, ones that actually occurred in history, and are knowable as such (e.g., the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus).  One point is this: I think that Jesus and the apostles taught in ways that wanted us to enter into the rich confidence we may have that their claims are, in reality, true.  As but one example, Jesus wanted Thomas to have that kind of confidence, and He graciously appeared and showed him His pierced hands. 

As another point, in general, if we cannot know some truths about how reality actually is (i.e., objective truths), then we are forever working, as Husserl said, within the “circle” of ideas, or of sense impressions, language, etc.  That is, we are working within something, and we cannot somehow escape the pervasive influences of that factor (or sets of factors).  In that kind of scenario, we end up (in effect, at least) living in a world that we have to make, since we cannot know that the world we make matches up with the real one. 

How has your study of postmodernism and the emerging church personally impacted your faith in Jesus Christ?

I think that in some ways, it has helped bring into clearer focus that a big issue in my life has been the way I was taught (and even caught) more legalistic, rigid, and highly controlling ways of living as a Christian.  That is, I caught the mind-set that I had to be perfect, and in very tight control over my own life, lest I fail in some small way and be rejected by God.  I knew (cognitively) that that is not true, and I could preach sermons on grace, eternal security, and the like, but down deep were some emotional wounds that came from the anxiety-filled environment in which I grew up.  Those anxieties were magnified due to fears that my folks had of losing their salvation, but their roots were from deeper sources, and not merely theological views.  (I describe this in more detail in chapter six.)

I wrote bits and pieces of this book over a few years’ time, and during that period, the Lord has helped bring healing to my soul, such that I now am able to engage from the heart in deeper, more intimate worship of Him.  I can enter into a much richer experience of Him too.  The Lord is making Himself known to me in ways I just haven’t known before, and much of this stems from healing in my soul at the level of the wounds I referred to above.  He is helping me to know Him intimately as Abba.  As a result, I am able to experience His love, grace, and joy in ways I just haven’t been able to before.  However, interestingly, knowing the riches of His grace depends upon my knowing truth, too.  What makes His grace so freeing and liberating is that it is rooted in truth, which gives me confidence as I live my daily life that I am indeed under grace, due to what Jesus actually has done for me (e.g., Heb. 10:14; Rom 5:1, 8; Rom 8:1).  That is a powerful combination.

When those two factors (knowledge of His grace and truth) combine with God’s making Himself known to me intimately and personally, the results are explosive and incredibly freeing at the level of my heart, and they well up in me in a deep, rich experience of who He really is.