On Relationship and
Certainty
January 23, 2026
I just read a meditation by Cameron Trimble, someone to
whose meditations I and others I know have subscribed. In it she says wisdom
arises from relationship. It does not arise in certainty. It comes when people
who disagree remain in dialogue with one another. Trimble sees certainty as a
bad thing. I’m not so sure she’s right about that with regard to at least some
certainties. Some people are just flat wrong, Undeniably wrong. MAGA morons,
for example. Nothing good could come from remaining in relationship with them
other than the relationship of hostility. And I kept thinking of my theological
beliefs. I’m damned certain that at least many of them are right. That at least
some of the beliefs of some others, like the beliefs of Biblicists, are just
wrong. The only reason to stay in relationship with them would be to have a
chance to convince them that they are wrong.
If anyone is going to challenge my theological certainties,
it’s me. Not that I claim ultimate knowledge of God. I’ve never made that
claim. But that we don’t have ultimate knowledge about God is one of my core
theological beliefs, and I am certain that it is right. I am certain that God
is “joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing,” to quote
Brian Wren.[1] I
can’t, and won’t, let go of a certainty about that truth. Did it arise from
relationship the way Trimble says wisdom arises? Maybe. After all, I spent more
than three years in seminary studying and talking about the Christian faith,
and those three years of study certainly affected how I think about God and the
Christian faith.
Or is it something I came to on my own? I don’t think I came
to any theological thesis entirely on my own. I learned a lot from Paul Tillich
and Douglas John Hall, for example, though I learned from them by reading them
not be being in conversation with them since I never met either of them in
person. So perhaps Trimble is at least partly right. Wisdom can arise from
relationship. I would add that it doesn’t have to be a face to face
relationship. It can be the relationship of the reader to the author, or of the
hearer to the speaker.
Yet I am not willing to give up all of my certainty. I am
certain that Donald Trump is a fascist who is out to destroy American
democracy. I am certain that Hitler and Stalin were profoundly evil. No wisdom
could arise from remaining in conversation or other relationship with anyone
who contended otherwise other than a relationship of hostility and condemnation.
And I am certain that God is “joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet
than breathing,” both unknowable and intimately knowable at the same time. Anyone
who claims truly to know all there is to know about God because they’ve read
the Bible or for any other reason is absolutely wrong, and I am absolutely
certain that that is true.
So, I value relationship. I know that wisdom can arise from
some relationships, but it does not and cannot arise from all relationships. There
is such a thing as being absolutely wrong. Soviet Communists and German Nazis
were absolutely, unquestionably wrong in their foundational beliefs. So are
MAGA Trumpists. I will never accept that they were and are not absolutely
wrong.
That there is such a thing as being absolutely wrong is
clearer than that there is such a thing as being absolutely right. In the realm
of theology, for example, I know that I may be wrong about some or even about
many things, though I am certain that I am not wrong about the paradox of God
as utterly transcendent and intimately present at the same time. My belief in
the truth of that statement is so much a core of my theology and of my life
that I can’t help but understand it as universally true, not just true for me.
So, it seems, I have a complex relationship to truth and
falsehood and how truth arises. Or better, how anything can be absolutely true.
Wisdom can arise from some relationships but not from all relationships. There
is at least some foundational absolute truth. And yes, I know that that
statement contradicts at least some of what I have written over the years. Perhaps
it contradicts much of it. So be it. As I write today, I accept it as true. So
I live with both certainty and uncertainty. I trust that I have discerned at
least some foundational truth myself and that much of what I trust is true has
risen in relationship with others. Perhaps that’s true of you too.
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