Roundup time

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What's all this about!?

In this blog my intention is to throw around wild ideas to provoke further thought. It is not my purpose to claim that I have the truth of the matters discussed, but to try out new insights and slants on an old intractable problem.

Christendom is disunited. It is almost a thousand years since the Great Schism of 1054 and we are now past the five hundredth anniversary of Luther's protest.

A thousand years give or take, not much progress to show for our efforts on the unity question. . . Maybe kicking around some new and different thinking will be useful. At the least, it couldn't hurt.

I find I am now out of ideas, or rather, have reached the limits of what is new that I can say. I am repeating myself when I post. Indeed, my remarks below contain some redundancies. Some of the ideas uncovered in the course of this blog's investigations, though, seem to me to be central in any consideration of the unity question; I recap those in this post. I may find better ways to present the key ideas but I feel I have identified them correctly.

• The solution is not in theology. In the West, in particular, philosophical tools applied to holy truths lead us farther apart the longer we ply with them. When a line of reasoning leads you astray from loving and indeed honoring your sibling Christians, you have passed into error, even if your justifications are sound philosophically. While it is needful to oppose heresy, we have done much more than that, condemning as unrighteous what are merely differing views in disputable matters. If theologians are to use philosophy's tools, let them use also its rules. The philosophical enterprise consists of constructing and comparing rival theories. Theologians, too often, have tolerated no rivals to their own views.

• The essential business of the church is that we love one another. In that is unity, and not only unity with one another, but unity in God and with him.  Christ's new commandment should be the forefront of preaching when the subject is how to be the church; instead, it is often treated as a footnote. (John 13:34-35 ff.)  But there, in love more than in the forensic self-justifications of theological argumentation, is to be found our solution to questions about unity; it was right there in the text all along, hiding in plain sight.  This, again, does not mean tolerating heresy, but it should make us cautious about giving the name of heresy to things that do not truly warrant the name. Many imperfect understandings are held in good faith; one knows no better. It will be a bit of a revolution in our thinking if we regard such imperfection as possibly true of ourselves as well, and see anyone with a good heart toward God and toward godly truth as on the right track, at least.

• It may be that the pope, as Peter's successor at Rome, has a role of special leadership as a unifying figure. That is certainly the theory put forth out of Roman Catholicism. But by long centuries of imperious conduct, the Roman hierarchy lost its connections to half the world's Christians: first the Orthodox, then the Protestants. They did so out of confidence in the supremacy of their leader. As the pope is supreme, Rome's degrees must be obeyed regardless. Styling the pope "the servant of the servants" is unconvincing in light of the history of the office and the conduct of the attached hierarchy. At times there have been few signs of servanthood evident. It appears that new separations from Rome are soon to follow: likely nothing as dramatic as the Great Schism or the Reformation, but declining numbers attending church as people 'vote with their feet.' What concerned Catholics today might not recognize is that the structural problems they are now seeing in the hierarchy are not new, but have become more difficult to hide in the age of the Internet.  Perhaps, in some future era, the papacy can be revitalized as the hub of Christian unity, but it will require much repentance by a church that is very slow to admit past mistakes. I see much trouble on the way for Catholicism before the church reaches that point.

• I do not think the solution is primitivism, the idea that the church should do what it sees in the New Testament and reject as unwholesome innovation any practices or ideas that have arisen since. The biggest problem is that it says by implication that God stopped talking to people in the first century. While the first-century gospel is saving, and indeed the only saving truth, it can be framed differently in different times, places and cultures, with practices and ceremonies that honor and do not contradict the core truths of the apostolic era's church.  I must, though, insist on non-contradiction of the apostles' gospel, and preservation of their key points, as necessary for anything calling itself Christianity.

• None of the above implies that all practices, beliefs or theories are of equal merit. There are better and worse renditions of the gospel's truth. We will find that out as soon as we stop insisting on our own denominations' rightness on every point and listen to why others have other views. Only then can we consider whether ours are in fact best: polemical rejection of other views is not a way to learn anything. We all need to have the idea that when we think about the gospel we are dealing with a truth that is bigger than we are, the fullness of which exceeds our capacity fully to understand. Then it will be quite reasonable to suppose that the other fellow's mistakes are honest--and so are our own.

• Adopting a polemical stance against views other than our own is dishonest, in the sense that any unbalanced argument is: It does not put first things first. It condemns what we should instead celebrate: Baptists are saved, though they believe several things I find odd, principally about baptism. But very well, they honor the savior, preach from the Bible, and are orthodox Nicene Christians though they do not recite the creed. Good for them for believing in Christ, and glory to God for making them his children. They can be doctrinaire, as bad as Catholics in that way. But they are your brothers and sisters, and you should praise God for them. Religious debate looks rather different on that ground.

• Thank God that he hears us when we pray despite flaws in our theological understanding. If he did not, would anyone be heard? Is your understanding perfect? Is anyone's? If a little child with no training in theology is heard, does a doctor of divinity fare any better? I have come to the view that even the best-crafted theologies are human approximations of the reality they point to, poor shadows of the truth.

• I likewise feel that odium theologicum, the contempt we feel for those fellow Christians with other religious views than our own, shows profound spiritual immaturity, and is forbidden in what Christ says about calling one another raca and fool. (Matt 5:22) It may be that what psychologists have dubbed "the narcissism of small differences" plays into the tendency of fellow Christians to despise and condemn one another's ideas and practices.

• There was an era when theologians felt that logical consistency was a mark of holy truth, and acted as if their logical conclusions should, therefore, be compelling upon everybody. Someone who disagreed could be burned at the stake, no problem. In the same era, music theorists thought that their discoveries in harmony echoed the music of the spheres. The elevation of theological argumentation (and music theory) to such high status began in a medieval over-optimism about the power of human thought to capture metaphysical reality and bring it down to earth. It lacked humility. So I see as prideful the long-winded disputes about theological minutiae that remain in Christendom, hear them as echoes of a great mistake made long ago.

• In fact, there are huge areas of agreement across the denominations of Christendom, inevitable points without which one is not Christian in one's thinking, at all. I regard that as miraculous--the core of agreement that exists regardless of time or place. When one becomes a Christian, the Spirit begins revealing certain core truths that end up remarkably consistent wherever in the church world you go. Let us regard that as a miracle, and celebrate it. Let us remember, as a part of what we celebrate, that spiritual growth is a process of years. We can allow each other to be imperfect in understanding. I know of no one who has gotten all knowledge and wisdom in an instant: We are all of us works in progress. If you do not like someone's understanding now, you may be gratified when you check back later. He may have changed his ideas, or possibly you will have changed yours.

Love and humility are the things we need for unity. Where we have brewed schism brewed, those are the very things we have lacked. I look forward with hope to a church world that honors other Christians just because they are Christians, and compares notes to find the best understandings of the issues that trouble us all. We are only sojourners in this world, after all, in search of another country where all will be explained.