Huebnerian Explorations on “reliable criterion” and God-talk

I was asked to write a one page response to the question “What constitutes the most reliable criterion for evaluating the adequacy of our use of the symbol, God?”

Initially I thought I’d write something about Israel, Jesus, the church, etc., but I couldn’t help but be struck by the language of “the most reliable criterion” in relation to talk about God. What I ended up writing obviously reflects what I’ve been reading, particularly the work of Chris K. Huebner and Rowan Williams, in some pretty fundamental ways. I’m really not sure if I completed the assignment at all, and I do think that there is a lot more to be said as a response to this question, but I was limited to one page.

To begin to speak of any “reliable criterion” by which to evaluate the adequacy of Christian speech about God already presupposes that Christian “knowledge” about God is something that can be secured or possessed. This admittedly enigmatic and provocative statement is not an attempt to dodge the initial question posed nor is it just another way of saying that all speech about God is always and entirely subjective and therefore utterly relative to “context.” Although there is a great deal of truth to the latter suggestion, it is not the point I wish to dwell on here. Instead, I want to suggest that questions about the adequacy of Christian speech about God, which is to say the truthfulness of a Christian account of God does not finally rest or depend on any “reliable criterion” that can be formally or rationally secured. Christian truth confronts its hearers as a gratuitous gift—and as such it is not some object over which we can claim ownership. Nor does this gift give us access to what Rowan Williams calls a “total perspective.” The point of these remarks is to remind us that all questions of knowledge and particularly questions of how we know and speak of God are always and already bound up with violence and peace.

Christian speech about God, if it is to be truthful and peaceable, is paradoxically both precarious and certain: it is precarious in that it does not rest on “reliable criteria” but on a gift that is received with open hands, and it is certain in that it receives its very being, as gift, from God. The character of this certainty is perhaps best exemplified by the Christian martyr, for the martyr non-possessively witnesses to the certainty of God’s truth. Admittedly, perhaps we have avoided the question altogether—but are we not always working with some conception of what constitutes right speech about God?