Work In Progress
Copyright by Charles Don Keyes, 1996
The author wrote the Prologue
of Christian Faith for the 21st Century and began the
following Work in Progress to commemorate the 150th anniversary
of The Church of the Transfiguration, New York, NY.
What Is Faith?
Faith is "not an opinion but a state"
(Tillich 1952). It is a certain way of thinking, acting, and feeling.
It is Søren Kierkegaard's "passionate inwardness"
in the face of "objective uncertainty" that shows how
faith depends upon having the right kind of doubt. He knows that
"Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between
the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty"
(Kierkegaard [1843] 1992). Faith, as he sees it, not only requires
doubt, but it even begins on the far side of where the best atheism
ends. He writes that "If I want to keep myself in faith,
I must constantly see to it that I hold fast the objective uncertainty,
see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am 'out on 70,000
fathoms of water' and still have faith." Kierkegaard detects
the fact that faith is largely an act of the will in which "the
individual relates himself to a something in such a way that his
relation is in truth a God-relation" (Kierkegaard [1843]
1992).
Faith does not passively submit.
On the contrary, it actively struggles to hold on, as St. Paul
suggests: "Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding
to your faith" (II Corinthians 13:5). Faith does not acquiesce
to an external rule or potentate. The opposite is the case; it
freely keeps what it is already inside. Philosopher Daniel Dennett
notes that each of us is a "center of narrative gravity"
(Dennett 1991). Our "narrative selfhood" is the product,
not the source of the tales that we think we spin, but which actually
"spin us." Dennett does not mention religious narratives,
but they do, in fact, spin us. Believers safeguard the rhythms
and harmonies that constitute the narratives that spin them. Faith
does not destroy reason. It is not irrational for faith to blast
the dungeon of trivial opinion to pieces. On the contrary, faith's
power to challenge conventional triviality attests to its potential
practical rationality.
Faith Does
Not Conflict With Science
Conflict between science and religion
exists in the popular mind, but not in reality, as Immanuel Kant
shows in Critique of Judgment. This decisive work, the
most enlightened product of Enlightenment, completes his system
and goes entirely beyond the spiritual narrowness of the 18th
century. Section 59 reconciles the supposed conflict between science
and religion by distinguishing between scientific and aesthetic
intuitions, assuring the legitimacy of both as different. They
present categories (concepts) like causality and substance two
different ways.
Scientific knowledge presents categories
directly, namely according to our experience of nature. As a result,
it is "demonstrative," uses language literally and never
looks for supernatural causes and substances. It is strictly limited
to "sensible intuitions," i.e., factual information.
Aesthetic knowledge presents categories
indirectly, namely by a "double function." It takes
an object of "sensible intuition" and "reflects"
(bends back) on it analogically. As a result, aesthetic intuition
and the language required to express it is "symbolical."
It is the beautiful and the sublime. Religious faith is a certain
kind of aesthetic intuition, since "all our knowledge of
God is merely symbolical" (Kant [1790] 1968).
We have to use caution two different ways
to avoid misinterpreting what Kant means by "merely":
First, the word underscores the difference
between science and aesthetic symbols (including religion), but
in no way suggests aesthetic experience is less important. On
the contrary, Friedrich Nietzsche and some Christians argue that
aesthetics justifies our existence.
Second, as I argue elsewhere, the fact
that symbols cannot be tested empirically does not mean that they
are "arbitrary as the many suppose, since we can explain
them with phenomenological rigor and practical cogency" (Keyes
1996).
The Holy
Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy
analyzes religious feeling with phenomenological rigor as the
mysterium-tremendum- fascinans. More simply, he calls its core
the numinous to identify the aesthetic quality of the Holy as
similar to Kant's sublime (and that of Edmund Burke which Kant
uses).
Interest in the sublime has much earlier
roots, both pagan and biblical, as I explain:
Pagan Longinus detects the sublime in
Genesis: "'God said'--what? "let there be light,'
and there was light. 'Let there be earth,' and there was earth."
... Despite the amusing misquotation, Longinus has perhaps inadvertently
identified the nature of religion as such. It is aesthetic experience
recast entirely as the "weight, grandeur, and energy"
of "transcendent sublimity."
Longinus inspired a tradition of sensitivity
to the sublime that extends through Kant to Rudolf Otto, who
describes the "holy" as "inherently 'wholly other'"
than ordinary experience. Faith exists only if it has the "awefulness"
of the "mysterium tremendum" at its center. Its narrative
has to be "uncanny" and overpowering in the massiveness
of its plot. This gravity uplifts and does not press down. The
sublime "elevates" and is "joyous," according
to Longinus, just as Otto claims the mystery of the holy "captivates
and transports" and can fill us with a "strange ravishment."
(Keyes 1996)
Otto cites a number of biblical texts
to illustrate the wholly otherness and strange ravishment of the
numinous quality Holy, including Isaiah 6:
In the year that King Uzziah died I
saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up,
and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims;
each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and
with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And
one cried to one another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the
Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his Glory.
Music expresses this sense of the Holy
in an extraordinarily powerful way, according to Otto: "Music
stands too high for any understanding to reach, and an all-mastering
efficacy goes forth from it, of which, however, no man is able
to give an account. Religious worship cannot therefore do without
music. It is one of the foremost means to work upon men with an
effect of marvel" (Otto [1917] 1969).
Sublime Magnitude
of Plot
Narrative plots are not extended in space
like graphic art which is normally immobile. Like all the arts
of movement, plots exist in time; they are sequences bound together
into a meaningful whole. Sublime magnitude of a plot is clearly
not infinite extension in time, but a certain musical quality
deployed within a finite beginning, middle, and end.
The musical quality of a plot's sublime
magnitude is pre-verbal and supremely elevating. Its immanent
life-affirming effect springs from the transcendent beauty of
holiness.
Pre-Verbal
Music
Plato's Republic (Book III) observes
that music consists of words, rhythm, and harmony, and argues
that the latter two are more sovereign than the words. He has
Socrates say that
rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate
themselves into the inmost part of the soul and most vigorously
lay hold of it in bringing grace with them; and they make a
man graceful if he is correctly reared, if not, the opposite.
Furthermore, it is sovereign because the man properly reared
on rhythm and harmony would have the sharpest sense for what's
been left out and what isn't a fine product of craft or what
isn't a fine product of nature. ... He would blame and hate
the ugly in the right way while he's still young, before he's
able to grasp reasonable speech. And when reasonable speech
comes, the man who's reared in this way would take most delight
in it, recognizing it on account of its being akin? (Plato [c.
339 B. C.] 1968)
This means that musical rhythms and harmonies
affect the rhythms and harmonies of everyday life. It also suggests
that the patterns of everyday life are like rhythmic sequences
bound by harmony or torn by strife. This preverbal music might
account for much we call subliminal experience. And the art of
living is itself a kind of musical play.
Furthermore, the words of music seem to
emerge from rhythm and harmony. According to Allan Bloom, "Music
is the soul's primitive and primary speech or reason." Perhaps
the words are subordinate to the musical tune (rhythm and harmony)
because poetic language as such emerges from rhythm and harmony:
Even when articulate speech is added,
it is utterly subordinate to and determined by the music and
the passions it expresses ... Music, or poetry, which is what
music becomes as reason emerges ... Out of the music emerge
the gods that suite it, and they educate men by their example
and their commandments. (Bloom 1987)
Aristotle's Poetics tends to support
the argument that poetry emerges from music. Plot is a type of
rhythm, and plot-making is the essence of the poetic art: "the
poet must be a 'maker' not of verses but of stories, since he
is a poet in virtue of his 'representation,' and what he represents
is action." Plots also have to be harmonious to be beautiful,
since of any work of art or organism "must not only be orderly
arranged but must also have a certain magnitude of their own;
for beauty consists in magnitude and ordered arrangement"
(Aristotle [c. 340 B.C.] 1965).
Life-Affirming
Music
Ovid's Metamorphoses narrates the
journey of Orpheus to hades playing his lyre and singing to rescue
the soul of his wife Eurydice. Even though he found her and she
followed him, he failed to bring her back. Despite the tragedy
of his second loss of her, his music caused punishments to cease
as long as it could be heard in the region of the damned:
As he spoke thus, accompanying his words
with the music of his lyre, the bloodless spirits wept; Tantalus
did not catch at the fleeting wave; Ixion's wheel stopped in
wonder; the vultures did not peck at the liver [of Tityus];
the Belides rested from their urns, and thou, O Sisyphus, didst
sit upon thy stone. Then ... conquered by the song, the cheeks
of the Eumenides were wet with tears; nor could the queen nor
he who rules the lower world refuse the supliant. They called
Eurydice. (Ovid [c. 8] 1976)
Modern sources attest equally to the life-affirming
power of aesthetics. Kierkegaard asks "What is a poet?"
His answer is remarkably similar: "An unhappy man who in
his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned
that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed
into ravishing music" (Kierkegaard [1843] 1959). Nietzsche,
reflecting on the tragedies of Aeschylus out of the spirit of
music, writes that "It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon
that existence and the world are eternally justified" (Nietzsche
[1872] 1967). How odd it is that "Nietzsche's claim about
the aesthetic justification of existence ironically helps explain
biblical redemption" (Keyes 1996).
Beauty of
Holiness
Eastern Orthodox philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev
thinks the gospel brings aesthetic justification. He writes that
"Beauty will save the world, i.e., beauty is the salvation
of the world. The transfiguration of the world is the attainment
of beauty. The kingdom of God is beauty" (Berdyaev [1931]
1960). This is what I mean when I write that "religious symbols
gain their validity from their aesthetic power to transfigure
suffering" (Casserley 1990).
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ([1965] 1989),
possibly the 20th century's most significant Roman Catholic theologian,
also attributes extraordinary importance to the aesthetics of
the Christian faith.
The sublime magnitude of the narrative
of Christian faith, revealed in Scripture and summarized in the
Creeds, is musical. Like all significant verbal narratives, it
emerges from pre-verbal rhythms and harmonies and resolves itself
back into them. Faith is ultimately based less on language than
on events, God's mighty acts in Christ. The narrative order starts
with Creation and ends with the Second Coming. Its uncanny "wholly
otherness" overthrows dehumanizing mundane perspectives.
Its immanent life-affirming, hence humanistic, effect springs
partly from that "transcendent sublimity." Christian
faith for the 21st century must recover this sense of the Holy
and not cloy with sentimentality, but confess only robust events
devoid of anything small scale and marginal. The rhythm and harmony
of hope that run through the narrative generate a plot with uncanny
simplicity and epic brightness.
He Who Is
God told Moses from the burning bush that
His name is "I AM WHAT I AM," according to Genesis 3:14.
We cannot comprehend "I AM" as such. Therefore our names
for God are "analogies," as St. Thomas Aquinas and Kant
both agree. Symbols that stretch imagination to its limit are
the only kind that fit this task: God is "an infinite sea
of being" (St. John of Damascus [c. 730] 1955), "pure
act" (Aquinas [c. 1265] 1945), "ground and abyss of
being" (Tillich 1951).
Since "I AM WHAT I AM" is necessarily
"without body," God is beyond gender. The Bible and
liturgy symbolize God with personal pronouns because He is personal.
Most attributes of God tell us what God is not. For instance "God
is infinite" means God is "not finite." Love is
God's most essential attribute, because saying "God is love"
comes closest to saying who God is. Love is the supreme personal
symbol of God.
Doctrines are symbols that summarize the
symbols of faith. Their authority is non-authoritarian since they
are interpretative categories. Every Christian doctrine asserts
something about the personal nature of faith. The supreme instance
of this is symbolozing God as Trinity.
The Holy Trinity
The doctrine that the one God is also
three Persons is the final summary of the symbols of Christian
faith. A widely-held mistaken belief holds that it is impossible
to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. This error has two
faces. One of them says "Submit to the doctrine through blind
faith since you can't understand it." The other one says
"Throw the doctrine out the window because it is incomprehensible."
Of course, nobody can comprehend God as such, whether symbolized
as the Holy Trinity or some other way. But contrary to the popular
opinion, the doctrine of the Trinity is completely intelligible
in the sense that it means God is personal.
Personal existence is always a dynamic
interplay of one and many. Mere things are more static. For instance,
I can't have three marbles and one marble in my hand at the same
time and in the same way (unless I'm joking and actually have
four). Personalities are not mere things. They are identical to
themselves and yet different at the same time. This is true of
intelligent life on earth, human or otherwise. An individual human
being is both self-related and outwardly directed. Relations among
human beings are similar, one group, yet many members. The doctrine
of the Trinity means that God as revealed in Scripture is personal
in an analogous way. It means that we either think of and relate
to God as personal or not at all. The doctrine of the Trinity
locks the door on the possibility that God could be impersonal.
The First
Person
God the Father creates all that exists
through the Word He speaks: "And God said, Let there be light:
and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). Creation is not merely
something that happened in the past; it is also the process by
which God sustains creation. It would be simplistic to say that
we need God to explain the Big Bang. God the Creator is more adequately
symbolized as the ground that makes the Big Bang possible and
sustains what follows from it. The First Person of the Trinity
precedes and goes beyond what He grounds and sustains as Creator.
The Second
Person
God the Son is the Word the Father speaks
to create (Genesis 1:3-29). The symbol of the First Person "begetting"
the Second Person states the radical difference between their
relation to one another and what they create: "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by
him; and without him was not any thing made that was made"
(John 1:1-3). The Second Person of the Trinity, the divine nature
of Christ, precedes and goes beyond our fragile earth's beginning
and end.
The Third
Person
God the Holy Spirit is the immediate point
of contact between God and the cosmos. The Word became flesh on
our fragile earth through the Third Person of the Trinity. The
Holy Spirit overcame the chaos of Babel at Pentecost by restoring
communication: "And now hear we every man in our own tongue,
wherein we were born?" (Acts 2:8) Even though the First and
Second Persons go beyond the cosmos they are also present to it
here and now through the Holy Spirit. St. Gregory of Nyssa writes
that "every operation which extends from God and is designated
according to our differing conceptions of it [has] its origin
in the Father, proceed[s] through the Son, and reach[es] its completion
in the Holy Spirit" (Gregory [c. 375] 1954).
The Holy Spirit is also love. Western
Christians expand this symbol with a "triangular" model
that deviates from Gregory's purer "linear" model. The
Western deviation expands the idea that God is love by claiming
that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son."
This "double procession" suggests that God is outwardly
loving because the interplay of difference and identity among
the Three Persons is the love that constitutes the divine Being.
Aquinas, for instance, argues that name
of the Holy Spirit is Love on account of the double procession:
The name Love ... is the proper name
of the Holy Ghost, just as Word is the proper name of the Son
... The Holy Ghost is said to be the bond of the Father and
the Son, inasmuch as He is Love ... from the fact that the Father
and the Son mutually love one another, it necessarily follows
that this mutual Love, the Holy Ghost, proceeds from both. (Aquinas
[c. 1265] 1945)
Anglican theologian John Macquarrie, grounded
in 20th century continental European philosophy, defends the Western
symbol in a somewhat different way:
For the operation or function of the
Spirit is precisely to promote a new and higher level of unity
between Being and the beings, so that it arises from a double
movement, on the one side from primordial Being (the Father)
as the ultimate letting-be and on the other side from expressive
Being (the Son or Logos) as the agent in the bringing into being
of every particular being. The Spirit proceeds from both sides
of the divide, from primordial Being and from expressive Being,
and leads the beings back up into new and richer unity with
Being which let them be in the first place. (Macquarrie 1966)
Creation
There is something and not nothing only
because God creates, and the creative act involves all three persons
of the Trinity. Aquinas states this when he writes:
Now to produce [B]eing absolutely, and
not merely as this or that being, belongs to the nature of creation
... the proper act of God alone ... God the Father made the
creation through His Word, which is His Son; and through His
Love, which is the Holy Ghost. (Aquinas [c. 1265] 1945)
Interpretations of the two biblical accounts
of creation (Genesis 1-2:3 and 2:4-25) such as this have pushed
clarification to the limits of thought: (1) Creation is not merely
a past event but also a constant process and in which the (2)
existence of creaturely beings depends entirely upon God, (3)
but not vice versa. They (4) are different from God (not a part
of God, and God is not a part of them), and (5) are created "out
of nothing" (not from anything that already exists).
The ironic result of such traditional
interpretations of Genesis is that they are equally applicable
to scientific cosmologies. Since they explain Creation ontologically,
they are concerned with the existence of the cosmos as such, not
with the causality at the level at which science operates. This
means that the Christian doctrine of Creation, taken to its necessary
conclusion, does not conflict with science, as Macquarrie correctly
states, since
questions about whether the universe
(cosmos) "had a beginning in time ... must be turned over
to scientific cosmology ... [and are] capable of being settled
by empirical observation, and ... probably will be settled as,
by radio-telescopes or other means, science probes further into
the remote history of the universe. We shall then learn whether
there was a time when the cosmic process began, or whether it
has always been going on much as we see it now. Theology can
have nothing to say on this matter, and, on the other hand,
whatever answer science may produce, this would not affect the
doctrine of creation, ... [which] is not an assertion that things
began at a given time in the past, but is an attempt to describe
the characteristics of creaturely beings. (Macquarrie 1966)
The Incarnation
of Christ
The en-fleshment (Incarnation) of the
Second Person of the Trinity contains the Life, Death, Resurrection,
Ascension, and Second Coming of Christ. The Incarnation is the
"primal Christian symbol" (Keyes 1996) because it is
all of these redemptive events in a single flash. This event is
the whole of salvation history because it brings Christ's acquired
human nature together with His original divine nature.
Richard Hooker apprehends with simplicity
and precision how the early ecumenical councils expound the union
of Christ's two natures:
To gather therefore into one sum all
that hitherto hath been spoken touching this point, there are
but four things which concur to make complete the whole state
of our Lord Jesus Christ: his Deity, his manhood, the conjunction
of both, and the distinction of the one from the other being
joined in one ... In four words ... truly, perfectly, indivisibly,
distinctly, the first applied to his being God, and the second
to his being Man, the third to his being of both One, and the
fourth to his still continuing in that one Both: we may by way
of abridgment comprise whatsoever antiguity hath at large handled
... in the declaration of Christian belief ... (Hooker ([1594]
1954)
I argue that "This doctrine has authority,
not because it was externally imposed by church councils, but
because it is the interplay of divine and human difference and
identity stripped down to definitive simplicity" (Keyes 1996).
This simplicity is not simplistic. The doctrines of the Trinity
is similar to that of the Incarnation in this sense. The interplay
of difference and identity at the bottom of both stands in the
way of reducing personal existence to trivial simplistic schemes.
These doctrines safeguard the concrete sanctity of personality,
human, divine, and the two together.
"Furthermore, the Incarnation
validates our existence by bringing the divine and human natures
into a dialectic of difference and identity" (Keyes 1996).
It validates our bodily existence and significance as biological
entities because it is stridently "antignostic" and
life-affirming about flesh on earth.
The Second
Coming of Christ
The same earthly human species that the
Incarnation validates will eventually cease to exist, along with
life on earth and even the earth. Physical necessity alone means
that neither these nor the sun they orbit will last forever. We
cannot be certain whether the world will end suddenly on account
of some cosmic disaster or in stages stretching over millions
of years. How long the human species will last is even less certain.
But if we use the 18 billion years it takes light to cross the
cosmos as our standard of measurement, the interval between the
beginning and end of life on our earth would be unnoticeably short.
When Christian faith is true to itself,
it welcomes the cosmic shock because it sees all the way to the
end of the cosmic perspective and beyond it. The Second Coming
of Christ is the final mighty act the Incarnation already contains.
It validates the earthly end of the human species because it has
already redeemed the end of the world. Even though the Second
Coming of Christ is already present in the symbol of the Incarnation,
it belongs to the future as we measure time. It is God's supreme
unfulfilled mighty act in Christ: "and he shall come again
to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have
no end."
Even though nobody knows when or how it
will happen, the Second Coming of Christ means we have a purpose
here and now since God's love will be completely victorious at
the end of human history. Christ Himself is the end of the narrative
that "spins" believers. "My heart ever faithful,
sing praises, be joyful, thy Jesus is near. Away with complaining,
faith ever maintaining, thy Jesus is here."
The Second Coming of Christ repeatedly
situates humankind on the critical edge of God's constantly impending,
yet postponed, final victory. This unique symbol conduces to humanism
by bestowing meaning backwards in time. It generates a field of
meaning within which we can construct finite future purposes.
It also creates an ethical necessity for us to construct them
for the benefit of human beings.
Christian Humanism
The humanism that springs from Christian
faith does not benefit human beings on account of their merit.
William Franklin writes that
In the humanism created by the gospel
of Christ, men and women and children discover a God who affirms
their full humanity in the midst of weakness and suffering,
not one who makes divine love conditional upon human success
... Christian humanism rests on God taking human form, the doctrine
of the Incarnation, and God's Son being rejected and killed,
the doctrine of the Atonement. This news is good for all humanity.
(Franklin and Shaw 1991)
Christian humanism is inclusive and aims
at benefiting others because they are human, not because they
hold certain religious or political views:
Conservatives and liberals alike, non-Christians
as well as Christians, have nothing to fear in opening themselves
to this humanism based on Christ and the gospel. The church
needs to articulate for this new age its humanizing mission
and the world needs to see that the Christian view of reality
strongly and graciously affirms human beings in ways that are
particularly suited for our era, for the sake of God and for
the benefit of humankind. (Franklin and Shaw 1991)
Wouldn't it be inconsistent with the gospel
affirmation of all sorts and conditions of human beings if Christians
selectively excluded intellectuals? Franklin notes that
As Harris Kaasa wrote, Christian humanism
is not ashamed "to love God with the mind." Intellectual
statements of faith offer a deeper understanding of how Jesus
Christ is now acting in the world. Early humanism took reading
and learning beyond the universities out to a wider public.
Christians have repeatedly discovered, over hundreds of years,
that without knowledge of literature, philosophy, languages,
and history a strong faith can not long endure. Humanistic study
as an ally of the gospel has fitted countless believers for
handling the biblical record skillfully and with depth of understanding.
(Franklin and Shaw 1991)
Wouldn't it be tragic if Christians ever
tried to destroy anyone's cultural heritage, including their own?
Wouldn't it be barbaric if they treated anti-taste as a virtue
in doing so? Franklin answers once again by a life-affirming statement:
Christian humanism includes the view
that church people should seek, present, and enjoy the treasures
of human culture, for "the God who is at work in creation
and redemption alike is named Beauty no less than Truth and
Goodness. Man's life for its healing and fulfillment needs the
touch of all that is gratuitous and inexplicable, evanescent
and lovely." (Franklin and Shaw 1991)
Pious Banalities
One is proudly to set sail in the wind
of cultural decadence. Naivete about how to gain numbers of followers
can breed trivial sermons, boring liturgies, and cute sentimentalities
that temporarily pad budgets but devastate hope.
Overabundant sanctification of anti-taste
by much of the institutional church has produced an overabundance
of disbelievers. Some congregations work hard at sanctifying anti-taste.
They drive academicians out (together with grass-roots believers
in the beauty of holiness) and then wonder why only the "cultured
despisers of religion" seem to be left to educate future
generations.
Much the institutional church does
contributes generously, even though often indirectly, to our culture's
hostility to God. This increasingly entrenched hostility has other
causes as well, including secular banalities like triumphant egotism
and power worship.
Pseudo-Doubts
Cultural hostility to God distorts faith
because reliable ways of interpreting religious symbols are largely
absent in such a culture. That absence nourishes pseudo-doubts,
disbelief for the wrong reason, such as confounding religious
symbols with what they are not. This creates misleading stereotypes
that turn into subliminal, as well as conscious, prejudices against
the Christian faith.
Pseudo-doubts also include the supposed
conflict between creation and evolution, hackneyed attacks on
the historicity of Jesus, and inability to see beyond the errors
of organized religion while ignoring those of secular institutions.
Faith must go beyond the wrong kind of
doubt, which is largely a hold-over from a sterile version of
18th century Enlightenment that does not take Kant's Critique
of Judgment properly into account.
Nonauthoritarian
Authority
Franklin writes that
Christian humanism is anchored solidly
in the Bible. It takes its starting point not within the human
situation as such but with the fact of divine activity extended
downward to the human race in the good news of the gospel of
Christ. The authority of the Bible is not expressed in the inerrant
perfection of a book but in the fact that God addresses humans
through the Word as delivered it to the community of believers.
The genius of the Bible is found in its power to convince, convict,
and persuade hearers of the gracious fact that God expresses
love and purpose for humanity in and through human beings and
their circumstances. (Franklin and Shaw 1991)
The doctrine of the Incarnation does not
have authority because the councils defined it, but the councils
have authority because they discovered the truth of the symbol.
Julian Casserley argues similarly about "dogmas," religious
and otherwise:
Our dogmas are logical tools of the
utmost importance. They are not so much ideas which we question
as concepts in terms of which we ask questions. A set of dogmas
establish and compose a point of view from which we experience
and interpret the world. To us dogma means very much the same
thing as presupposition in Collingwood and category in Kant.
Of course our dogmas can always be questioned, but that does
not prevent them from being presupposed in most of our questions.
A good example of one of the dogmas that have made the growth
and development of the modern sciences possible is causality.
(Casserley 1990)
True ritual authority liberates Christians
from authoritarianism, since it bows to neither of the "twin
tyrannies." One is passive submission to a doctrine because
an external power determined it. Another is the individual ego's
private opinion. Nonauthoritarian authority shuns both, just as
it also flees the narrowness of fundamentalist literalism and
devastation by secularist subtraction. This is one reason Anglicans
must safeguard the historic Book of Common Prayer. It expresses
the core of Christian faith liturgically while permitting a great
variety of styles of worship. We ought to conserve the Prayer
Book's roots of tolerance. Who cares if it doesn't fit the spirit
of the times now? It is our gift to the third millennium. Conserving
the faith in its wholeness will nourish humanism and its power
to liberate in time to come.
Acknowledgements
and References
Back to the
Prologue of "Christian Faith for the 21st Century"
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Musical Tradition
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