6
Millard Erickson, in The Word Became Flesh, contends that Taylor's book,
Erring, is intended to be read as an apologetic work. We would not be so inclined to
agree. Erickson points out that Taylor is attempting to cling to some type of belief
network while drawing upon elements in historic Christianity. In order to address those
people who are struggling in the "margin" of belief and unbelief, Taylor uses the
insights of contemporary philosophical innovations in deconstructive thought to address
their struggle.
31
In this age many simply ignore all elements of Christianity, yet Taylor
actively takes many Christian ideas and thoughts and interacts with them in view of
contemporary culture.
32
We may credit Taylor for taking recent intellectual
developments seriously as Erickson suggests, but it is difficult to understand Taylor's
proposals as apologetic in any typical use of the term. Although he clings to fragments
of Christian vocabulary, the fragments become only truncated specimens of a lost
Christianity. In our estimation, this has little or nothing to do with either positive or
negative apologetics in the broadest sense of the term.
B. "Mazing"
We may notice a parallel between Taylor's notion of "mazing grace" and
Derrida's notion of the messianic. Both involve a continual wandering and "hoping" of
sorts. Both are seeking endlessly seeking in earnest expectation of that which is to
come yet never will arrive -- the continual viens viens toujours. Perhaps, there are
some positive aspects of such notions for the evangelical Christian -- opening us up to
unlimited expectations of hope and promise for the coming eschatological kingdom.
33
Taylor does describe, through his notion of "mazing", a perpetual predicament of
humanity. We are extremely limited in our knowledge of outcomes. We do walk or
"wander" through life not knowing or understanding the course of our lives. Qohelet
certainly instructs us in this in Ecclesiastes 3:11. God has "set eternity in the hearts of
men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (NIV) But is
this wandering to be embraced as joy and freedom in the sense that Taylor seems to
characterize it? We do wander and "maze" through this enigmatic life unaware of what
it may bring either in forms of happiness or extreme grief and suffering. However, for
Qohelet, this "mystery" or "mazing" through life, being unaware of the outcome, is not
31
Erickson, The Word Became Flesh, p. 317.
32
Ibid., p. 327.
33
This idea is nothing new of course. (We may think of the notion of perpetual progress "from glory to glory" as
advocated by St. Gregory of Nyssa, et al.).