It's High Time We Reexamined Creed and Canon

Traditionalist commenter William Witt offers a critique of arguments offered in support of partnered same-sex relationships.  The Salty Vicar has posted a long and nuanced response, from which I first learned of Dr. Witt's piece.   My own response is less sophisticated, focused on one passage in Dr. Witt's essay where he says:

The document [Let the Reader Understand] claims that it is particularly the local or national church that has the right to make these decisions about which biblical prohibitions are binding or may be set aside, claiming for a local diocese the authority to set aside the moral teaching of the universal Church, and the Scriptures. 

One cannot help but ask where this principle could lead.  

[1] Would the local church be free to set aside non-moral principles as well, e.g., the Nicene affirmation that the Son is homoousios with the Father?   

[2] Could a national church or local diocese decide to add contemporary materials to the canon?   

[3] Or omit material from the canon that did not conform to contemporary sensibilities? ...  [Emphasis, extra paragraphing, and bracketed numbers added.]

My answer:  You betcha.  As history has made abundantly clearly, it's never prudent to declare any body of knowledge to be per se off-limits to reexamination.  In the particular cases Dr. Witt mentions, reexamination is amply warranted (for reasons I've discussed at length in other postings); it's high time we got started — cautiously, of course, especially in the case of #3.

Comments

[SB]

Which comes with the implicit claim that we are both more intelligent and wiser than those who, guided by the Holy Spirit, set down those canons in the first place.

If we are in fact so much more advanced than those quaint, superstitious, naive persons of the past (regardless of whether an honest reading of them might prove to us otherwise), why are we still worried about following some backwater hick Jewish rabbi at all? Let's proclaim ourselves the true Messiahs and bring heaven to earth right now!

(Certainly that same hubris couldn't have lead to hundreds of millions of murders in the last century, as under the guidance of our own godlike reason and ability some sought to do precisely the same. We're more advanced, discerning, and wiser than them, too. And this time, of course, we're also right. For my "conscience" tells me so.)

[bls]

Hmmm. I guess I come down - as usual - somewhere between the positions of the post itself and the first comment.

I really don't agree that the Canon and the Creeds don't make sense. (Not that you're saying that here, D.C., exactly.) I think they do make sense - in the sense, that is, that they're not required to make "sense." They're supposed to open our Third Eye, so that we can quickly understand in a flash something that we can't understand using our normal linear thought process.

I do agree that human beings have gotten up to some dastardly things - many quite recently - and that we ought to go slow before we make wholesale changes in support of "our better modern understanding." And I'm pretty sure we are not only not wiser, but actually less wise these days. Wisdom is accumulated experience, and does not necessarily have anything to do with intelligence or scientific understanding. We are in many ways less wise because we don't look back enough anymore, IMO. I'm with Lot's wife, I guess.

I would ask, though, D.C.: with what would you replace the Gospel of John, and why? (I'm assuming this is the canonical issue you refer to, but maybe I'm wrong?)

[D. C.]

C'mon, SB, you can do better than that. Undoubtedly, some of the canonizers were more intelligent and wiser than some modern-day Christians, but the reverse is also true. Please see a posting I did two months, ago, entitled Are We Smarter Than the Apostles?

[D. C.]

BLS, I wouldn't replace the Gospel of John; it is what it is, and some of what it is, is valuable. What bugs the heck out of me is when the trads treat it as unchallengeable, especially the Prologue — they treat it as though it were a golden calf, an object of worship instead of a tool for our use.

[bls]

OK, yeah. I'm with you there, D.C. I don't do "Golden Calves" either.

Well, hopefully not, anyway....

[John Wilkins]

I'm glad you said this DC. Doctrine was decided like so. The worry for me is not about the fringes, but one of organization and authority. What words to we use to organize ourselves? What is our common language?