Notions of Certainty
In a conversation / review of his new book Fidelity of Betrayal, Peter Rollins wrote:
The less we know about the theories which guide us the more we are enslaved by them and the more we impose them. When one understands one’s theoretical positioning one can be more self-consciously careful about how one employs it and thus be less likely to just see it as ‘the way things are’.
Peter is one of today’s bright lights in progressive faith and thought. His first book, How (not) to Speak of God, was one of my favorite reads of 2006 – and one of the best (and only) books I’ve read on religious paradox. Rollins reminds us that religion all too often becomes an exercise in maintaining a self-constructed personal identity – in God’s name. Rollins frames faith not as a static matrix of possessed knowledge, but as an ongoing, fluid awakening of God’s infinite wisdom and creativity.
In a recent post, Trent Yaconelli shares some related thoughts on the tension of living in the realm of interior possessions.
Beloved author and philanthropist A.W. Tozer once wrote, “if someone can talk you into Christianity, someone can talk you out of it.” In this simple yet profound statement, Tozer reminds us that while we can grasp a range of truth, the immensity of Christ remains infinitely greater than our tiny, finite collections of religious information. And while knowledge creates the entirety of orthodoxy, it is only the beginning of wisdom - a wisdom that propels us to life-changing awe and wonder via ever-new mysteries of creation.
As my interior life is defined more and more by curiosity, my identity is less defined by positions of religious certainty. I have increasingly more questions than answers. I’m coming to understand that in abandoning the hardest questions we are probably missing out on life’s greatest adventures. Stagnate systems cannot renew.
Christian pedagogy explains Christ (resurrection, remission of humanity’s fallen nature, etc.). But embedded in such knowledge is Tozer’s caution to eschew a religion reduced to knowledge. Rollins makes a similar distinction: that propositional spirituality can become an “idolatry” of religious biases – of possessing all the answers rather than moving into the living realities described by static text.
In a broad sense, Tozer’s maxim illuminates the tension between knowledge and wisdom. St. Paul similarly cautioned against “leaning unto your own understanding” – reminding us, as Tozer, that religion easily confuses knowledge with inward / spiritual transformation. And while knowledge undergirds wisdom, it can quickly (and often does) become a counterfeit for wisdom.
French thinker Marcel Proust distinguishes between that which can be read in a book (text / information) and that which must be experienced through passion, inspiration, time, and the desire for something greater than linear understanding.
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness that no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us.
Writers such as Tozer and Rollins remind us that ancient knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, not an end in itself. I would add that the NT practice of worship (prayer, silence, reverential love, any directed and intense focus on God, etc.) is a wisdom vehicle, not a knowledge vehicle. Einstein noted, “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
Wisdom is never contrary to right knowledge, but like an ocean collects drops of rain, so the infinite ocean of wisdom contains droplets of knowledge. And rather than abandoning knowledge, wisdom sustains it in healthy perspective - as stars to the universe, as raindrops to the ocean.
Religion without transcendence becomes little more than a head full of rationalistic details. The “right dividing of words” becomes a substitute for conversion of heart. In a letter to the Corinthians describing legalistic religious practices, St. Paul equates wisdom with love: knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Later Paul reminds them that love is superior to faith itself. Perhaps in some ways knowledge is to orthodoxy as wisdom is to orthopraxy.
As Trent Y points out, knowledge is a collection of static ideas, but wisdom is (re)generative - it sparks revelation and makes all things new. Wisdom is the essence of new birth. It does not stand still. Unlike knowledge, it cannot stop and think “I have found it” - rather, it must continue to grow and mature, like all of nature itself, into a more complete element of being. Wisdom is asymptotic – growing closer to its heart’s desire, yet never able to say “I have arrived.”
Even in death, Bob Carlton reminds us that wisdom is a precursor for new birth.
Romanian Orthodox playwright Eugene Ionesco writes,
There has always been at every living moment of culture a will to renewal… All history is nothing but a succession of crises: of rupture, repudiation and resistance. When there is no crisis, there is stagnation and petrifaction. (from Notes on My Theatre).
We live in a dynamic, creative universe. It is even said that we are created in God’s image – as broken ikons of Perfection. We are the offspring of the Source of all creativity, reflecting a universal architecture. Our very DNA reflects the innate need to create. Knowledge stands on the riverbank and observes what it can, while wisdom throws itself into the River and becomes part of its immense roaring determination. Wisdom drowns, only to live again.


My friend and honorary Wikiklesia editor 