The Questioning Christian

Reality Testing Wanted

There's a certain breed of religious leader that is willing to make dogmatic pronouncements about the divine order.  For example, Luther proclaimed justification by faith; Calvin, the doctrine of election; Pius XII, the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven. 

And let's not leave out other traditionalist claims about Christianity.  For example:  God consists of not two, not four, but exactly three Persons.  Jesus was God Himself.  The authors of the Bible were protected from error by the Holy Spirit.

We should thank God for these ideas.  They embody humanity's ceaseless hunger for explanation and understanding. 

But the real-world data in support of these particular ideas — the evidence of what God in fact is, or has done, in these respects, as opposed to what we imagine he is or has done — is sketchy at best (to put it charitably). 

Deuteronomy 18.22 explicitly counsels testing of prophetic ideas against real-world evidence:  "If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken."

If that's not enough, we can usefully learn from recent controversies in the world of physics:  NY Times science writer George Johnson reports that "new ideas, some physicists complain, are a dime a dozen.  What they crave is new data, perhaps from the Large Hadron Collider scheduled to go online near Geneva next year. What is discovered there might do for physics what the COBE measurements did for cosmology in 1992: provide some long-needed reality testing."  (Emphasis added.)

Catholicity isn't all it's cracked up to be

Apropos of whether the Episcopal Church will be separating itself from the Church Catholic if it doesn't comply with the Windsor Report suggestions:   Catholicity, in the sense of a doctrinally-uniform church, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Variation is life. The history of the creation shows that progress comes from continually generating lots and lots of variations; testing them in the rock polisher of reality (cf. Deut. 18.21-22); and reproducing the ones that seem to work.

In organisms, a “catholic” gene pool can be exceedingly vulnerable to environmental changes, such as the introduction of a disease pathogen. [1]   And if there's one thing we're confident of in this life, it's that environmental change is a constant.  It’s not unreasonable to wonder whether organizations might have the same vulnerability — even the Body of Christ.  Maybe catholicity of doctrine isn't such a good thing after all.

---

NOTES

[1]    The Irish Potato Famine is a testament to the dangers of "catholicity":  In the mid-19th century, Ireland depended heavily on a single food crop, the potato.  Because the potato reproduces asexually through vegetative reproduction, the potato population in Ireland had had little or no genetic variation — and turned out to be vulnerable to the fungus Phytophthora infestans.  When the fungus struck the isle in the 1840s, the potato crops were ravaged for several years; deaths and emigrations resulted by the hundreds of thousands, and the ripple effects of the Great Famine are felt to this day.

Wikis and Theology

Theologians would do well to be mindful of eBay's advice for users of its new Wiki:

Wiki articles are written with factual information and an objective point of view.  When it’s possible, you should reference other sources to add credibility to what you write.  When an article is based in verifiable facts, members will be able to trust and use the information immediately.  [Emphasis added]

The ur-Wiki, Wikipedia, has come under considerable scrutiny in recent months because of the ad-hoc, uncontrolled way that its knowledge base gets edited, which can lead to information corruption.   Some traditionalist scholars, e.g., N.T. Wright, claim that Christian doctrines weren't subject to that phenomenon because of something called "controlled oral tradition."  I wonder; it seems to me that much of the traditionalist Christian "knowledge base" — that is, doctrines — evolved in just such an uncontrolled manner.   Many such doctrines, such as those codified in the Nicene Creed, don't hold up very well under a test of verifiability, which naturally leads to skepticism.    That just might have something to do with declining church attendance.

"Truth at all cost"

"If there is an Anglican way, as Rowan Cantuar reminds us, it surely would be our insistence on truth – truth at all cost."  So writes Michael Nai-Chiu Poon of Singapore, identified as the director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia (HT: T19).  Fine words, to be sure — but impossible to take seriously from folks who insist that Truth lies exclusively in a particular (closed) canon.

A Reexaminer, Not a Reappraiser

A while back, Episcopal über-blogger Kendall Harmon adopted the term "reappraiser" as a non-perjorative label for the so-called liberal side of the Episcopal Church.  Kendall's intention was praiseworthy, but his specific choice of words seems just a shade off the mark.  I want to propose another term:  "Reexaminer."

Here's what concerns me about Kendall's coinage:  To me at least, the term "reappraiser" connotes someone who studies a closed evidentiary record, one that has already been scrutinized by other experts, and announces his own very different conclusions about what it supposedly means.  And to some, this reappraiser may come across as expecting everyone else to recognize the superiority of his analysis; I'm sure the liberal ranks of the church include at least some people like that.

If that's what "reappraisers" are, then I agree with traditionalists that we do well to be skeptical of their views.  I also understand how some trads might react strongly to what they might perceive as implicit condescension.

In Kendall's nomenclature, the opposite of a reappraiser is a "reasserter."  From my extensive observations of reasserters in the wild, I would characterize them as claiming something like the following:  The existing scriptural record was properly compiled and closed by our forefathers.  It is all we will ever need to study in matters moral and spiritual.  Highly qualified experts have studied that record for hundreds of years.  All these experts — save for a few misguided heretics, to whom we need pay no attention — agree on what the record means; and their conclusions are so compelling as to be practically irrefutable.  Say no more; end of story; QED.

Many reasserters would really rather we didn't look in the direction of an elephant in the room, which is humanity's impressive track record of getting things not-quite-right (and often flat-out wrong).  To these reasserters, it shouldn't be but usually is a shock that a lot of people — especially among the unchurched — simply don't buy their closed-record approach.

Let me propose a third category, that of "reexaminer."  I would characterize a reexaminer as someone who doesn't accept that the evidentiary record can ever be closed; who in principle is always willing to consider new evidence as it is revealed to us, let the chips fall where they may.  In the mind of the reexaminer, evidence from whatever source, together with memory, reason, and skill, are gifts that help us to tentatively grasp what God has actually wrought (as opposed to what we imagine, or wish, he had wrought).  These gifts lead us to a sense of awe, and guide us to a trust in God that all will be well.

It won't surprise regular readers to learn that personally, I strive to be a reexaminer.

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.

We already have an Anglican covenant - Tobias S. Haller

"I would like to suggest that we already have an Anglican Covenant, and it resides in the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council, and any more than that is only perceived as needed at this time because of the unwillingness of some in the Communion to accept that there is disagreement on a fairly narrow range of particular issues.

"The Anglican Consultative Council is officially recognized in the Canons of the Episcopal Church (I.4.2) and we should by all means resume our seats as part of it."

Doing The Lambeth Walk, In Circles.

Anglican Communion Covenant: Why Should the Primates Have Veto Power?

The proposal to develop a covenant for the Anglican Communion is now online.  The lengthy proposed process for drafting and approval suggests that we're not going to see significant changes in governance of the Communion anytime soon — if ever.   One thing caught my eye in particular, and that's the proposed requirement in paragraphs 23-25 — derived from a suggestion in paragraph 118 of the Windsor Report — that the primates have the right to approve not only the first draft, but also the final draft, before either draft is circulated for review (of the first draft) or adoption (of the final draft) by the various churches of the Communion.

I see no reason to entrust the primates with that kind of gatekeeper authority.  The very idea rests on the outdated notion that the church is a flock, of which bishops are shepherds.  This notion apparently derives from patristic times:  Before leaving for Jerusalem, Paul reportedly exhorted the elders of the church of Ephesus to keep watch over "the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers," and to "[b]e shepherds of the church of God" (Acts 20.28).  Perhaps taking their cue from Paul, some early church leaders wrote in a similar vein, notably Ignatius.  All this presupposes that the rest of us are sheep who must be led by their wise, benevolent human overseers.   Nonsense.  Bishops are not divinely-appointed monarchs; they're "hired help," with specific jobs to do.  Their opinions are important and valuable.  But when they try to overextend their authority — as seems to have been happening of late — they should be gently but firmly reminded of their place.

Query:  How much of the kerfuffle about +Gene Robinson's consecration is due to an overly-high episcopology?

"A willingness to face up to the best analysis" -- NY Times

"The thought that we might be descended from the mating of ancestors of separate species — that in our origins we are hybrids — is a bold one, and a reminder, once again, of what we always forget: that humans are animals too, closely related to all of life on earth. It's also a reminder how hard it is to do away with Victorian views.

"If these results hold up, we will have some reimagining to do, not only of our own history but of the processes of speciation as well.  And even if this particular analysis of our family tree doesn't survive, there is certainly more in store as genomic research becomes increasingly refined.  We will need to learn a certain agnosticism about the nature of our origins, a willingness to face up to the best analysis of who we really are. This should be an invigorating task. "

Our Hidden History - New York Times (Emphasis added.)

Anglican Covenant Unlikely in Less than Five Years - Living Church article

From Anglican Covenant Unlikely in Less than Five Years:

The report proposes a five-phase implementation process, and it estimates that it would require six to nine years to be adopted depending on whether the text was submitted by the central assembly of each province or incorporated into the constitution of the ACC “subject to confirmation by the Provinces.” Other methods of adoption are also possible, according to the report. A draft could be brought to the full meeting of the ACC in conjunction with a meeting of the primates in 2009.

For the covenant to work, it would have to consist of a single formulation “which is not subject to negotiation and opt-outs by each Church or Province … there comes a point at which Provinces and Churches will have to say about the Covenant that they will ‘take it or leave it’.”