A Friend posted a comment to my last blog post and, in responding to it, (here’s a shock) I wrote much more than fits into the comment box. I am putting it up as a new post. For context see the comment.
Dear Friend
Thanks for taking the time to leave your comment. I need all the help I can get looking at all sides of this thing going on with me.
First, let me say again that the primary thing to me is moral outcomes--being transformed so as to re-produce in me the characteristics that have been identified with Quakers (and some others) for centuries. These are the result of actions I take, not things I believe or think. I need guidance about what to do, not about what to think. Christ gives me plenty of the former, directly, but not about the latter. "Faith" and "belief," to me, mean having the confidence to do what I am told, as hard or frightening as that might be. It doesn't mean accepting unknowable intellectual propositions about the nature, character and plans of God.
Second, let me say again that I don’t claim that people who find theology an edifying spiritual discipline, something that improves their condition and contributes to their conversion of manners, are deficient in anything. I know what being considered “deficient” feels like. I have heard it said about me plenty of times by people who cite chapter and verse about such things as war, sexual orientation, the state and the place of my daughters in the church (and in the world). Ouch.
You have struck the nail’s head true: my view of spiritual authority is anti-intellectual, which is just another way of saying that it is not based on reason. To say it is not based on reason, however, is not to say it’s not empirical (because it is). It is also not another way to say that this experience and its outcomes are not predictably reproduce-able (because it has been in both method and consistent outcomes, within the Society and outside it, for centuries). It is also not to say it’s irrational. It’s non-rational. I am sure you understand the distinction.
It is true that the “rational” Protestant establishment—which has gained far more than a toe-hold in the Society of Friends since the “great walking back” that saved the second generation of Quakers from being persecuted out of existence--has certainly used that term as an effective epithet to refute—to the satisfaction, at least, of children of the Enlightenment—any spirituality that doesn’t fit in with the notions that form the ideological base of its orthodoxy. This orthodoxy is the set of speculations about the character, nature and plans of God from which it reasons its theologies. At its least common, but most “pure,” such rationalistic religion is what people today—mistakenly—are most apt to call “fundamentalist,” where scripture is a closed data base and only arguments that come from and are consistent with it are “valid.”
I can say that the intellect, reasoning, has proven at best, for me, to be beside the point in matters spiritual. At worst it has been a hindrance to me in re-producing the kinds of outcomes that make my life better for both me and for those who have to live with and around me. It has also proven the quickest way for me to get on the wrong side of Christ in regard to basic morality and ethics.
You are correct that reading Barclay is “experience” and I have a hard time, from my life’s outcomes, with the idea that an intellectual or an emotional experience—such as reading a book or hearing music—is a spiritual experience. First, because one is engaged with a work of art (or letters) and not with Christ (however one conceives of the Transcendent Reality that moves in our lives). In the second place, and most telling, these are intellectual experiences, or emotional experiences, that have not proven, for me, capable of creating the lasting transformation of my character, the set of outcomes we call Quaker testimonies (old or new).
As I have often said, if the transformation that is at the root of the Quaker experience were reproduced in me as the fruit of intellectual or emotional experiences that’s what I would be doing. It hasn’t, for me. I have written at length about how that has worked in my life.
For example, I can’t figure how I could possibly say that “God is love,” with intellectual integrity. It’s beyond my knowing. There are things I can know and those I can’t know. I can very clearly know that God is forever on my case to be loving toward other people. If I don’t do that, in some actual situation in my life, I hear about it and hear about it until I shape up.
But to get from “God tells me to be loving” to “God is love” is a leap. If I wrote that on a paper in a class on logic I’d get a big red check mark. My Dad used to tell me to be all kinds of ways that he wasn’t, and I recognize a little of the Elmer Gantry in a lot of people who go on and on about love in regard to things spiritual. If telling me to be loving makes one "love" or even "loving" then why aren’t my Dad and Elmer Gantry “love?” These are the kinds of problems I see the intellect giving me in such matters of theology.
Leaping to belief that “God is love,” and proclaiming that to the world—which is completely unnecessary to get done what I am told to do—creates problems because almost always someone says something like “what about childhood cancer?” Consider the mental gymnastics I have to go through to square a loving God with that. No one has ever come up with a satisfactory answer for the question of how an omnipotent and loving God can allow evil to exist in the world—and they never will.
How many people remain "turned off" to Christ because they cannot buy the speculative notions about the nature, character and plans of God that are totally beside the point in living in, as it is written, the Kingdom? People need not "believe in" atonement, the trinity or a lake of fire to have Christ transform them such that their lives reproduce the fruits of the spirit. That not only squares with our observations about people through history but it also lived in Quaker "theology" at least through Penn's writings.
I don’t know if God is omnipotent or loving—none of us does, notwithstanding the fierce belief among us that “He” is—because I can’t know those things. Those are notions—speculations. Those things don’t square with the evidence at hand--although that does not disprove them. It is a good thing I don’t need them to know what I am supposed to do and to get those things done—and in that process becoming the kind of person doing them is turning me into, in that process have the outcomes associated with Quakerism reproduced in me.
What matters is that I am loving. I know that because I've been told by Christ who keeps the heat on me if I get out of line on that score. I don’t “know” it in the sense that I figured it out or it “made sense” to me. I have relied, in my life, on a lot of things that “made sense” or that I figured out but that, it turned out, were not true. Bad berries for me and, too often, for other people.
I trust my capability to reason for a lot of purposes. I am not anti-intellectual, in general. The first thing I do when facing a novel problem is to find a book (or, anymore, something Google finds for me) for guidance.
Back to Barclay, I would never say that reading The Apology was of no use or value to me. I read from it frequently, although not as frequently as I do from the Bible. It’s about discernment, though, and that doesn’t mean, to me, “thinking things through” (except, perhaps for comparing things to my own outcomes).
My experience, for example, with Christ made me wonder what Barclay meant when he talked about “the day of visitation.” It is a time limited offer for salvation, as he explained it. That did not fit with my experience of Christ who, over a lot of years put up with a lot of being ignored by me and never went away, was always trying to get my attention and develop my condition—even when I loudly trumpeted that I was an “atheist.”
At one time I wrote down all the scripture that Barclay quoted to “prove” that the day of visitation was not an open-ended offer of salvation and, after studying them I concluded that they did not actually “prove” his point, not in the sense that I once was required to decide if some lawyer proved that his client was entitled to prevail in a legal case. That is, all the verses Barclay strung together did not add up to his notion of the day of visitation, logically. I shared that with Friends, by the way, and none thought Barclay “carried the day,” either, when they read his “proof,” rather than accepting it on the basis of his reputation.
Does that mean he was wrong? I don’t really know because I can’t know that, one way or the other (and neither could he—or you—or anyone). But I do know that, intellectually, rationally, Friend Barclay did not, as he set out to do and as he claimed he had done, prove that one should take up the offer of salvation now because it would be too late, later.
Maybe Christ told Barclay that it was time-limited but Christ never tells me stuff like that. If Christ told that to Barclay that's fine with me. I'm thinking, however, that he parsed it out of scripture as a means to bolster Quaker evangelism. Doesn't matter, though.
To be fair, Barclay finishes his argument much as the public health people do, today, about the dangers of smoking. As it is possible that the effects of smoking won’t catch up to you before you die, it is also possible, Barclay says, that your “day” of visitation may last until you die. To also be fair, however, that does not “save” Barclay’s argument rationally, intellectually. It only saves mine; whether there is a day of visitation is a question we can never really answer, for sure. Either way we answer it is speculative: it’s a notion and it’s not important. Reproducing the Quaker transformation in our lives is what is important.
Thank you for providing me the occasion to, first, restate that I am not advocating that all throw theology over the side like so much ballast in a storm. If it is a spiritual discipline that contributes to reproducing the set of outcomes called "Quakerism" it’s fine with me.
If people, however, are “into” theology but are arrogant, prideful, argumentative people seeking to dominate others with an orthodoxy and divides their meeting, creating factions and strife, then they might consider whether intellectual theology is doing their condition—or the condition of the Society--any good. I have been there, myself, and found it very uncomfortable. I see it in the history of the Society and I mourn its outcomes, here. Righteousness, not "right thinking," makes a person a Quaker--a Christian--saved from being bonded to the world.
Thanks, again.
Off to Annual Session!
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 04, 2010
sharpening the definition of "theology"
A correspondent asked me, in an email, whether my my chosen definition of theology might use some careful examination. I think that I can distinguish the kind of writing and discussion of spiritual and religious "doctrine" with which I have become so dissatisfied.
In contrast to the act of talking up and elaborating on that kind of doctrine, there is something that Marge Abbot writes about (To Be Broken and Tender, p. 58--get this book, by the way, for yourself and your meeting's library) called “narrative theology,” which does not appear to me to be exactly the same as the Narrative Theology “movement” that is said to have begun with Niebuhr.
What she has in mind, she writes, is the kind of writing found in traditional Quaker journals. Friends wrote (and write) about their encounters with God. This kind of narrative amounts to telling our stories and by so doing we help point others to that essential connection to the Light and with their own developing sense of discernment.
This speaks to me because my experience is that the faculty of discernment is basic to living in the Spirit, to recognizing which “spirit” is speaking to me at a particular time or what it means when more than one such spirit is. This faculty of discernment is different from the faculty of reason, which is what we use to figure out choices we should make based on an ideology or a theology pieced together out of second hand sources like the Bible or some other "received tradition." (This paragraph is my own, not part of Marge’s, take.)
This kind of narrative opens the heart, Marge writes and, to me, it models the process of convincement of which George Fox wrote, this kind of narrative takes people to Christ and leaves them there; it takes people to the base of the mountain so that they may climb, themselves, to experience the transformational thunder, lightening and shaking of the earth/soul that is where the spiritual perfection and maturation Quakers seek, and others have undergone before us, takes place.
This kind of narrative speaks from one’s own experience (and not from, as I say, “second hand” or “hearsay” religion) and, if one does not run ahead of one’s measure of light, this narrative will not incude unwarranted, speculative and divisive conclusions about the nature, character or purposes of God that are not part of and do not come from the experience, itself (even though we might be led to defend such speculation because it fits in with, or we can rationalize it into, some pre-existing ideo-theological framework or a notional part thereof).
I also appreciate this "kind" of theology because it supports the appropriate relationship between the Spirit and the letter: the former should validate the latter, not the other way around. I continue to be amazed the people believe the notion that the Bible provides some kind of constant meaning that curbs the danger of "unanchored" revelations claimed to be "from the Spirit." Human rationalizing capacity has led to many completely delusional "leadings" straight out of the book. Whether one is listening to the Spirit or using the Bible like an oracle, seasoned discernment is essential to keep from being overcome by the power (or the powers) of one's own ideas and agendas. "Moral relativism" is about reasoning/rationalizing, whether one reasons from a propositional data base that is secular or religious.
Finally, it seems to me that the kind narrative theology of which Marge writes tends to support orthopraxy/spiritual practice rather than orthodoxy/religious belief, focusing on what is functional, on what reproduces the transformational outcomes that Friends (and others) have experienced in the past. These common, consistently reproduced, unifying outcomes are a stronger basis for community than is intellectual assent to a set of propositions about who and what God might be. It was this shared transformational experience, rather than a set of intellectual beliefs about God, that initially gathered Friends, at least according to Barclay in Universal Love.
With my take on "narrative theology" I contrast, then, theological works such as Barclay’s Apology (published a year later than Universal Love) which does not open the heart to God but floods the mind with human wisdom, that moves the reader toward an orthodoxy that is rational, abstract (and often speculative), incorporating Protestant notions (chief among them the subordination of the Spirit to scripture—reversing the proper relationship between the two). (I know that Fox said that, after his experience with Christ, everything he was taught he found in scripture did he also say that he found in that experience everything that is in scripture? I can't say that--there are a lot of things in the Bible that are not confirmed and, instead, are contradicted by my experience.)
That rational religion (or religion of rationality) is one of the main "gifts" that the Enlightenment, with its deification/idolization of human reason, gave to us: a rational "spirituality" (or a spiritual rationality) that literally tries to talk me out of the trusting the experience of God and instead into trusting my ability to figure things out (or the ability of "certified smart" theology types who know more about such things than I do) based on what I know or have been told and my ability to reason. Dr. Dobson, just like Dr. Dawkins, looks to reason as the ultimate authority. Both point me away from the work Christ is trying to do in me toward their own notions about what God or reason "wants." (If I am unsure what God wants me to do I listen to what God is telling me to do. No "figuring" necessary.)
It was this kind of rationalistic theology that, on legs provided by revivalism, ran the Society to distraction, division and disintegration in the 19th Century. That outcome should not have come as a surprise given that, whatever else The Apology may have set out to accomplish, it was a part of a conscious "walking back" of radical (from the root) Quakerism that was necessary to purchase toleration from the Protestant establishment.
It is the value of this rationalistic theology—which I think is most of what I hear people talking about--that I have of late been questioning. It is actually the outcomes of this rationalistic theology, and the human reason that animates it, that has me turning my back on it.
I quickly add that if reading and studying the Bible, and reasoning from it, has the outcome for some people that they are drawn into the spiritual unity (or humanistic consensus) that is summed up in the Fruits of the Spirit, the Quaker Testimonies of the so-called Liberal domain of the Society or the Golden Rule, then it's fine with me for them to reason away. My personal experience is that trying to live that way led me to be characterized by completely different lists. I don't care if people paint themselves blue and wear mismatched socks--if it leads to spiritual transformation, maturity and completeness, as Friends (and others) have experienced it for centuries then I am heard to have no complaints. I am more concerned, in myself, with righteousness than I am with orthodoxy. Harvesting to feed the hungry, and healing the infirm, are fine with me anytime--even on the Sabbath.
In contrast to the act of talking up and elaborating on that kind of doctrine, there is something that Marge Abbot writes about (To Be Broken and Tender, p. 58--get this book, by the way, for yourself and your meeting's library) called “narrative theology,” which does not appear to me to be exactly the same as the Narrative Theology “movement” that is said to have begun with Niebuhr.
What she has in mind, she writes, is the kind of writing found in traditional Quaker journals. Friends wrote (and write) about their encounters with God. This kind of narrative amounts to telling our stories and by so doing we help point others to that essential connection to the Light and with their own developing sense of discernment.
This speaks to me because my experience is that the faculty of discernment is basic to living in the Spirit, to recognizing which “spirit” is speaking to me at a particular time or what it means when more than one such spirit is. This faculty of discernment is different from the faculty of reason, which is what we use to figure out choices we should make based on an ideology or a theology pieced together out of second hand sources like the Bible or some other "received tradition." (This paragraph is my own, not part of Marge’s, take.)
This kind of narrative opens the heart, Marge writes and, to me, it models the process of convincement of which George Fox wrote, this kind of narrative takes people to Christ and leaves them there; it takes people to the base of the mountain so that they may climb, themselves, to experience the transformational thunder, lightening and shaking of the earth/soul that is where the spiritual perfection and maturation Quakers seek, and others have undergone before us, takes place.
This kind of narrative speaks from one’s own experience (and not from, as I say, “second hand” or “hearsay” religion) and, if one does not run ahead of one’s measure of light, this narrative will not incude unwarranted, speculative and divisive conclusions about the nature, character or purposes of God that are not part of and do not come from the experience, itself (even though we might be led to defend such speculation because it fits in with, or we can rationalize it into, some pre-existing ideo-theological framework or a notional part thereof).
I also appreciate this "kind" of theology because it supports the appropriate relationship between the Spirit and the letter: the former should validate the latter, not the other way around. I continue to be amazed the people believe the notion that the Bible provides some kind of constant meaning that curbs the danger of "unanchored" revelations claimed to be "from the Spirit." Human rationalizing capacity has led to many completely delusional "leadings" straight out of the book. Whether one is listening to the Spirit or using the Bible like an oracle, seasoned discernment is essential to keep from being overcome by the power (or the powers) of one's own ideas and agendas. "Moral relativism" is about reasoning/rationalizing, whether one reasons from a propositional data base that is secular or religious.
Finally, it seems to me that the kind narrative theology of which Marge writes tends to support orthopraxy/spiritual practice rather than orthodoxy/religious belief, focusing on what is functional, on what reproduces the transformational outcomes that Friends (and others) have experienced in the past. These common, consistently reproduced, unifying outcomes are a stronger basis for community than is intellectual assent to a set of propositions about who and what God might be. It was this shared transformational experience, rather than a set of intellectual beliefs about God, that initially gathered Friends, at least according to Barclay in Universal Love.
With my take on "narrative theology" I contrast, then, theological works such as Barclay’s Apology (published a year later than Universal Love) which does not open the heart to God but floods the mind with human wisdom, that moves the reader toward an orthodoxy that is rational, abstract (and often speculative), incorporating Protestant notions (chief among them the subordination of the Spirit to scripture—reversing the proper relationship between the two). (I know that Fox said that, after his experience with Christ, everything he was taught he found in scripture did he also say that he found in that experience everything that is in scripture? I can't say that--there are a lot of things in the Bible that are not confirmed and, instead, are contradicted by my experience.)
That rational religion (or religion of rationality) is one of the main "gifts" that the Enlightenment, with its deification/idolization of human reason, gave to us: a rational "spirituality" (or a spiritual rationality) that literally tries to talk me out of the trusting the experience of God and instead into trusting my ability to figure things out (or the ability of "certified smart" theology types who know more about such things than I do) based on what I know or have been told and my ability to reason. Dr. Dobson, just like Dr. Dawkins, looks to reason as the ultimate authority. Both point me away from the work Christ is trying to do in me toward their own notions about what God or reason "wants." (If I am unsure what God wants me to do I listen to what God is telling me to do. No "figuring" necessary.)
It was this kind of rationalistic theology that, on legs provided by revivalism, ran the Society to distraction, division and disintegration in the 19th Century. That outcome should not have come as a surprise given that, whatever else The Apology may have set out to accomplish, it was a part of a conscious "walking back" of radical (from the root) Quakerism that was necessary to purchase toleration from the Protestant establishment.
It is the value of this rationalistic theology—which I think is most of what I hear people talking about--that I have of late been questioning. It is actually the outcomes of this rationalistic theology, and the human reason that animates it, that has me turning my back on it.
I quickly add that if reading and studying the Bible, and reasoning from it, has the outcome for some people that they are drawn into the spiritual unity (or humanistic consensus) that is summed up in the Fruits of the Spirit, the Quaker Testimonies of the so-called Liberal domain of the Society or the Golden Rule, then it's fine with me for them to reason away. My personal experience is that trying to live that way led me to be characterized by completely different lists. I don't care if people paint themselves blue and wear mismatched socks--if it leads to spiritual transformation, maturity and completeness, as Friends (and others) have experienced it for centuries then I am heard to have no complaints. I am more concerned, in myself, with righteousness than I am with orthodoxy. Harvesting to feed the hungry, and healing the infirm, are fine with me anytime--even on the Sabbath.
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