Toward a solution. Part One: Overthinking and its alternative
We cannot say "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity" until we agree on what is, or isn't, a nonessential. Only one church has had the courage and foresight to hold an ironclad definition of adiaphora.
I have now been thinking long enough about the problem of Christian unity to see the way forward to a solution. The first step on the journey is to find out what an essential of the faith is, and what is nonessential.
Christians everywhere, and particularly those in the West, way overthink things. We have taken the simple offers and assurances made by the Savior and over-complicated them, sometimes in efforts to reassure ourselves that we really can believe them.
The heavy-handed scholasticism of the medieval era gave way to a free-for-all in the Reformation era, as churches defined their differences from Rome, and each other, by means of often tedious philosophical demonstrations that, often, left Christians farther from one another but not nearer to Christ.
To undo the Reformation schisms, we need, all of us, to take ourselves far less seriously than we now do. We over-value intellect. If we serve the God who brings to nothing the wisdom of the wise, we should be careful about how wise we wish to make ourselves appear. Where a line of reasoning brings division to those God declares his children, and one another's brothers and sisters, we should be leery of the way we're reasoning.
Reasoned argument is argument, and the word connotes conflict. It may be a friendly contest of wits or the grounds for a bloody religious war, but contention is a part of it either way. Are we contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, or are we only contending for its own sake?
I do not think it is a solution to try to enforce one brand of theology as acceptable to everyone, for people think very differently when their thoughts turn to abstractions. Rome tried enforcing a party line in theology, sometimes with bloody consequences, in an unhappy former error. The result was to drive the contending parties farther away, not back into the fold. We need not try anything of the sort again.
Of course I am not an indifferentist. I think there are better and worse theological ideas and I even think I have a good idea which are which. But I would with only a light hand guide the flock toward the better viewpoints, noting that the old aphorism is true. One convinced against his will/Is of the same opinion still. We can do more by setting good examples than by reasoned arguments to draw the faithful toward our views. I do not object to anyone, even those I disagree with, proceeding on that basis.
What's fundamentally needed is a downgrading of the importance we attach to abstract questions, a more easygoing understanding acknowledging that different sorts of people may look at the questions differently--which cannot help influencing their answers.While we will always, while the world stands, need to stand against heresies, we ought be sure that is what we are doing, for sometimes that is what we say we are doing when we are nitpicking.
We cannot say "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity" until we agree on what is, or isn't, a nonessential. Only one church has had the courage and foresight to hold an ironclad definition of adiaphora. The rest like to leave the question open enough that they can call anything an essential that they feel particularly strongly about. That practice stinks a bit because it also allows essentials to be demoted to nonessentials when they get in the way.
That one church is historical Anglicanism. The church is today torn by heresies within, but the stalwarts are fighting back using a uniquely eirenic strategy that shows a good bit of promise of returning the church to a godly course. I will have more to say about that fight in a later installment, for it is instructive.
The courageous and brilliant way that Anglicanism classically has divided essentials and nonessentials is found in the 39 Articles and in the Ordinal. Nothing can be claimed as an article of religion, or necessary to salvation, that cannot be shown pretty clearly in the Holy Scriptures. That is something like a Reformed position, but it is not quite sola scriptura. Anglicans may, and some small numbers of them do, pray rosaries, venerate relics and petition the Blessed Virgin. A great many do none of those things but if they wished to do so there is no particular obstacle.
Anglicans have the right to have their confessions heard by a priest, and likewise the right to work things out in their hearts as between themselves and God. In either case, restitution where practical and amendment of life are seen as the key things. (One may hear an echo of an old bon mot that the best penance for any sin is to stop doing it.)
So then traditional developments without clear warrants in scripture, such as rosaries and the rest, are not ruled out altogether for Anglicans, but they are not normative either. Christians holding the Anglican understanding may think anything they like of such matters, except to think of them as essentials. All the essentials were laid out in the records the apostolic community bequeathed us in the scriptures, for if we say otherwise, we make out the apostles to be a bunch of liars, for they said that what they were giving us is the way to be saved. What was efficacious in the first century works also in the twenty-first and shall for as long as the world stands. It may be that the Anglican who is very Reformation-minded in all his views and has no truck with prayers to saints and the rest of it is missing out on something, but what he is missing out on is surely not salvation.
Some Anglicans are Calvinistic in their views, others have no use for that. Some are charismatics and others look at that askance. So on, so forth: The church is a big tent and intentionally so. Everyone is expected to hold scripture as God's word and to be creedaly orthodox (in the sense of Nicea) as to the nature of God.
Anglicanism, then, contains a definition of nonessentials that the rest of the church world will need if it is to step away from its bickering. Unless the church world will agree to such a definition we never will find peace with one another because what one man treats as an indifferent matter, and neglects, another may take as an essential of the faith and be deeply offended.
I have now been thinking long enough about the problem of Christian unity to see the way forward to a solution. The first step on the journey is to find out what an essential of the faith is, and what is nonessential.
Christians everywhere, and particularly those in the West, way overthink things. We have taken the simple offers and assurances made by the Savior and over-complicated them, sometimes in efforts to reassure ourselves that we really can believe them.
The heavy-handed scholasticism of the medieval era gave way to a free-for-all in the Reformation era, as churches defined their differences from Rome, and each other, by means of often tedious philosophical demonstrations that, often, left Christians farther from one another but not nearer to Christ.
To undo the Reformation schisms, we need, all of us, to take ourselves far less seriously than we now do. We over-value intellect. If we serve the God who brings to nothing the wisdom of the wise, we should be careful about how wise we wish to make ourselves appear. Where a line of reasoning brings division to those God declares his children, and one another's brothers and sisters, we should be leery of the way we're reasoning.
Reasoned argument is argument, and the word connotes conflict. It may be a friendly contest of wits or the grounds for a bloody religious war, but contention is a part of it either way. Are we contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, or are we only contending for its own sake?
I do not think it is a solution to try to enforce one brand of theology as acceptable to everyone, for people think very differently when their thoughts turn to abstractions. Rome tried enforcing a party line in theology, sometimes with bloody consequences, in an unhappy former error. The result was to drive the contending parties farther away, not back into the fold. We need not try anything of the sort again.
Of course I am not an indifferentist. I think there are better and worse theological ideas and I even think I have a good idea which are which. But I would with only a light hand guide the flock toward the better viewpoints, noting that the old aphorism is true. One convinced against his will/Is of the same opinion still. We can do more by setting good examples than by reasoned arguments to draw the faithful toward our views. I do not object to anyone, even those I disagree with, proceeding on that basis.
What's fundamentally needed is a downgrading of the importance we attach to abstract questions, a more easygoing understanding acknowledging that different sorts of people may look at the questions differently--which cannot help influencing their answers.While we will always, while the world stands, need to stand against heresies, we ought be sure that is what we are doing, for sometimes that is what we say we are doing when we are nitpicking.
We cannot say "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity" until we agree on what is, or isn't, a nonessential. Only one church has had the courage and foresight to hold an ironclad definition of adiaphora. The rest like to leave the question open enough that they can call anything an essential that they feel particularly strongly about. That practice stinks a bit because it also allows essentials to be demoted to nonessentials when they get in the way.
That one church is historical Anglicanism. The church is today torn by heresies within, but the stalwarts are fighting back using a uniquely eirenic strategy that shows a good bit of promise of returning the church to a godly course. I will have more to say about that fight in a later installment, for it is instructive.
The courageous and brilliant way that Anglicanism classically has divided essentials and nonessentials is found in the 39 Articles and in the Ordinal. Nothing can be claimed as an article of religion, or necessary to salvation, that cannot be shown pretty clearly in the Holy Scriptures. That is something like a Reformed position, but it is not quite sola scriptura. Anglicans may, and some small numbers of them do, pray rosaries, venerate relics and petition the Blessed Virgin. A great many do none of those things but if they wished to do so there is no particular obstacle.
Anglicans have the right to have their confessions heard by a priest, and likewise the right to work things out in their hearts as between themselves and God. In either case, restitution where practical and amendment of life are seen as the key things. (One may hear an echo of an old bon mot that the best penance for any sin is to stop doing it.)
So then traditional developments without clear warrants in scripture, such as rosaries and the rest, are not ruled out altogether for Anglicans, but they are not normative either. Christians holding the Anglican understanding may think anything they like of such matters, except to think of them as essentials. All the essentials were laid out in the records the apostolic community bequeathed us in the scriptures, for if we say otherwise, we make out the apostles to be a bunch of liars, for they said that what they were giving us is the way to be saved. What was efficacious in the first century works also in the twenty-first and shall for as long as the world stands. It may be that the Anglican who is very Reformation-minded in all his views and has no truck with prayers to saints and the rest of it is missing out on something, but what he is missing out on is surely not salvation.
Some Anglicans are Calvinistic in their views, others have no use for that. Some are charismatics and others look at that askance. So on, so forth: The church is a big tent and intentionally so. Everyone is expected to hold scripture as God's word and to be creedaly orthodox (in the sense of Nicea) as to the nature of God.
Anglicanism, then, contains a definition of nonessentials that the rest of the church world will need if it is to step away from its bickering. Unless the church world will agree to such a definition we never will find peace with one another because what one man treats as an indifferent matter, and neglects, another may take as an essential of the faith and be deeply offended.
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