Ivory towers

Erasmus makes a very important point in the preface to his Manual of a Christian Knight. What most Christians need, most of the time, is good practical everyday Christianity, and that has little to do with the abstract wranglings of learned theologians. When put to practical use, in resisting evil and serving the cause of good, Christianity becomes a good deal simpler than the theologians make it out to be.

If theology and the academic study of the faith is an ivory tower, the real work of the gospel gets done down at street level, and on the sidewalk out in front--in acts of kindness, mercy, forgiveness and truth telling, and in defying evil as it attempts, under one guise or another, to find its way into our lives.  What goes on in the upper floors of the ivory tower has little to do with the everyday, street-level work of the gospel.

A point I've made before on this blog is that in the practical work of the gospel, Christians of various denominations look more alike than different. There are only so many ways to help those lacking food or clothes, or the sick, or those in prison. There are really very few ways to say "I forgive you," and only one Christ toward whom to direct people's attention.

It is tempting to conclude that Christian divisions are the fault of our theologians. It is they who devise and argue and justify the points that divide us. That is, though, over-simplifying things a bit. We need at least some theological work done to clarify the faith--Athanasius versus Arius is a case in point. It was a long argument but an important one, and in my view the truth was preserved by having it.

But very few theological questions rise to that level of importance. The trouble starts when some believers hold out for a particular point of interpretation as an essential point of the faith when it should be treated as an interesting, not a compelling point. Christianity cannot say "in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty and in all things charity" until we agree on what the non-essentials are. We have for centuries made no progress, or very little, in reaching such an agreement.

That is where theologians create trouble. They propose and defend positions without due attention to how important, or unimportant, the matter is. The tendency is to treat every question as important. At bottom, the problem is that we take our reasoning too seriously, placing onto our own derivations and conclusions a holy importance they do not merit.

On my view, Athanasius was right for two reasons, he was in accord with what scripture taught, and Arius's view diminished what God had actually done in the Incarnation. Theology was in this case a tool to get at a core truth and clarify it. When theology steps beyond that role it is a curse not a blessing.

A clear way to put my objection is that our theologians, far too many times, take their own ideas and turn them into sacred principles, investing human reason with the importance of divine precepts. We need to reconsider the role of theology. It should be no more than handmaiden to the truth, but we treat her as a queen, even as a goddess; we bow down to her and worship at her altar.