I haven’t read much of the American lay theologian William Stringfellow, but what little I have read seems to resonate with the writings of a couple of thinkers I admire, Jacques Ellul and Walter Wink. Here is a sample of what he has to say on approaching the contemporary world from a Christian perspective:
In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with truth and potency and the efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, define the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience. (from A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow, ed. Bill Wylie Kellerman, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994, p. 354)
Stringfellow died in the mid-1980s, but his emphasis on living the Word (and hence, living the truth) resonates strongly in this ‘post-truth’ era. And, of course, it is as old as Christianity itself. Irenaeus, for example, pointed his readers to the ‘rule of truth’ as the hermeneutical key for understanding Scripture and for confronting the falsehoods that abounded in his era.
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