Indifferentism? Not exactly!


Some people's reaction to the ideas I talk about here is that I must be a latitudinarian indifferentist. I deny the charge. I think there is exactly one right answer to any theological proposition. That said, we Christians do not seem to be very good at agreeing on what the answers are.

I think of myself as a realist. Unity is of a higher priority than uniformity. We can't get uniformity, in the sense of lockstep agreement on every doctrinal question someone may think up and claim is important to him. Can we get to unity without that sort of uniformity? It must be possible. Christ would not call us to unity if there were no way for it to happen.

We should extend to each other a bit more charity and tolerance when our reasoning does not line up, one's with another's. There are great questions on which all Christians are bound to agree, else we are not Christians at all, and then there are lesser questions. "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity." Unfortunately, we do not always agree even on what is an essential and what is not. Is transubstantiation an essential? Justification kept doctrinally distinct from sanctification? Purgatory and indulgences? Communion in both kinds?

There are two problems here. We do not always agree on what the right answers are, and sometimes we do not even agree on what the central questions are. That leads me to a suspicion, based on the outcome of our reasoning, which is dissension, that we have over-intellectualized the whole thing.

Saying so is not indifferentism, it is pragmatism. There are many points on which people may disagree and be, none the less, saved and beloved of God. That is what we mean when we say 'separated brethren.' Else what separates us? And what makes us brethren?

We are brethren by God's calling to all of us and our acceptance of it. We are separated by institutional matters, doctrinal matters, arguments over theology in general and ecclesiology in particular, and by our ready tendency to judge one another. I hold that there is only one right answer to any yes-or-no question, so long as the pathology of paradox is avoided, and that is not indifferentism. I certainly think, though, that some questions are much more important than others.

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