The Myth of Certainty

I am not going to go into a lot of detail here, but I have been in a dialog with someone about some issues in my life and one of the issues brought up was the above title for this post.

It appears that within certain pockets of the Evangelical Christian subculture that some believe that certaintly is a myth. I probably need to do some further digging and exploring the issue but to me this statement seems to be very counter cultural to the teachings of the Bible.

Perhaps the early Christians had less room for doubt because of the shorter span of time between them and the alleged events found in the Gospels. Perhaps today there would be more room for theological uncertainty in this age of religious pluralism.

If I were to look at this issue through my formerly believing eyes, I would have to say that in order to accept the idea of the myth of certainty, then either we have a very flawed presentation on the meaning and manner of certainty in the Bible, or those portions of the Bible are no longer valid for today. In either event, how could one know? How wide is the playing field for this uncertainty? What issues demand certainty and which ones are open to ambiguity? And who makes those decisions as to which are which?

Where is it?

This post is brought to you by reading about history.

Today I was looking at some websites that chronicled the writings of various "church fathers/leaders" from the beginnings of the Church. What struck me was not that they had things to say, or even what they had to say, but I found myself wondering how these guys received the status that they did.

Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Ignatious, Clement, etc. These guys were all bishops of the church in various places after 100CE, but how did they get there? What was in place that made it recognizable for these men to hold the positions that they did?

The Apostle Paul mentions various roles that were found within the Church in his letter to the Ephesians. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers. How does he know this? When did Jesus ever mention pyramids like this? What other writings were out there before Paul's to affirm such an idea? Were there any?

Perhaps this was the beginning of the ability to play "Chinese Baseball" with the Pauline version of Judaism. (the term "chinese baseball" comes from the idea that since the rulebook was incomplete that they could make up and change rules as they went along)