Subversive Christian Unity

There are two ways Christians talk to each other about the Christian faith. One way is "What Christianity means to me." Archbishop John Sentamu excels at this mode of explanation. Pope Francis's heartfelt if misunderstood forays into new thinking are of the same sort. Indeed, laymen are told and encouraged to "give their testimony," so it is a widely used mode of Christian expression, perhaps the widest. The other is to ask what Christianity timelessly is and requires. C.S. Lewis, Augustine, J.I. Packer and writers of that slant seek to separate the "me" out of it. Such people make everyone uncomfortable by implying that what it means to me might not be right, or at least, that my understanding might not be the central part of the story. One way looks inward. One way looks upward. Before arguing with someone, you should be very sure you know which kind of statement you are arguing with. It is seldom fruitful to inform someone that his interpreta...

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Wikipedia on Hanlon's razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor On razor principles in general:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_(philosophy)

In the medieval era, Roman Catholicism became fascinated by elaborate reasoned arguments and took them to be the gold standard of theological truth. When the Protestant Reformation happened, the Protestant sects carried forward this tendency. Now there were several strands of argument, each claiming superiority. There is an underlying assumption in all of this that having the better argument means you have the better truth. I see this as an error of the Roman church, inherited by her Protestant daughter churches. Or, to put it another way, Protestants felt that in answering Rome they needed to be sophisticated in their arguments. It was, in their understanding, the way that theology needed to be done, with lots of complicated details worked out. The result? Root and branch, Western Christianity is obsessed with the intellect. Where this becomes a problem is at the point where intellectual justification supports unloving attitudes and actions. In the name of reasoned argument...

Deconsider: To remove from further consideration; to treat something as an irrelevancy. Ex: "It is time to deconsider a number of ideas we formerly thought essential." The word looks very useful and I hope its use catches on. The church world is going to need to deconsider a number of cherished divisive notions. Re considering our baggage from the Great Schism, the Dark Ages and the Reformation does not seem to do much good. We just go round and round and end up at the same loggerheads we started at. The East will not have a papacy of supreme power, the Protestants think church history began in 1517, or at least did something very important in that year, the Catholics think themselves unassailably right because, well, they're Catholics, and going over all of that again is a waste of time for everyone.