From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Christianity, etc.
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 14:15:10 -0600
John McConnell said:
Thanks, David. We seem to get along much better in semi-private dialogue than
on the MD forum. Please seen my reply to Anthony’s email that followed yours.
dmb says:
We get along much better in private? That must be some kind of optical illusion
because I did not respond in private. The issues involved in this debate are
perfectly suited to those with an interest in the MOQ and we are not discussing
issues of a personal nature. Excluding the MOQers from such a debate seems like
a squandered opportunity and a very bad choice to me. I hope that's not a
problem for you.
John McConnell said: (to Anthony and dmb):
Thank you for the opportunity. The recurring theme of arguments
against religion in David’s contribution and in Lila is premised upon religion
being a static social pattern. Religious institutions are undisputedly social
structures. Theology, however, is an intellectual pursuit on the same level as
any other intellectual pursuit. Theology is not the same as religion.
Spiritual patterns of value are transcendent; they are not the same as social
or intellectual patterns. The source of Christianity is an event of spiritual
(mystical) significance. It is a dynamic event, and the immediate static
patterns coalescing from it were not intellectual. In its evolution from that
inception, theological patterns (intellectual constructs) developed. These
were not of the same order as the direct spiritual experiences of faith, but
man being a reflective being, always requires an intellectual representation of
experiences. That’s what theology is.
dmb says:
I think you've made some very doubtful assertions there John. One is left to
guess what "spiritual patterns of value" are and what "the source" and
"inception" of Christianity is, for example, but your basic point is pretty
clear. You are claiming that theology "is an intellectual pursuit on the same
level as any other intellectual pursuit". I'd like to focus on that claim
because it strikes me as the most plausible one. It's a fact that one can earn
advanced degrees in theology and the word does contain the latin root "logos,"
just like biology, psychology, and all the other ologies.
But please notice that the word also contains "theos," which is the latin word
for "God," of course. This is very telling. It marks a commitment to theism and
so it begins with God as a basic premise. This is very different from the other
modes of intellectual scrutiny. Philosophy of religion. comparative mythology,
and psychology of religion, for example, are intellectual pursuits which also
focus on the meaning of the various forms of representation and they focus on
spiritual experience as such - but they don't have to begin with any prior
commitments to theism. Unlike their counterparts in the theology department,
they aren't being trained to be an officer in the Church.
As I see it, the difference between institutional religion and theology is
simply one of rank or class. It's just the difference between the clergy and
laymen, between the altar and the pew. There are excepts, of course, wherein a
theologian becomes an academic or the other way around but this is just a
matter of specific individuals sorting out the two rival value systems in their
own quirky way. I mean, people struggle with this conflict just as whole
nations do.
There are historical reasons why it's not always easy to distinguish theology
from philosophy. They were intimately intertwined until recent centuries and it
was only a century or so since one could graduate from Harvard without studying
Divinity. Newton thought of science as an investigation of God's order and
God's mind. John Locke thought of reason as a Divine gift. But Darwin and
Nietzsche were serious turning points. In philosophy, even in the philosophy of
religion, "metaphysics has come into disrepute" and this directly impacts
theology above all precisely because it's so quintessentially metaphysical. A
book titled "Religion After Metaphysics" was on the required reading list when
I took philosophy of religion in grad school. It's a collection of essays by
some of the biggest guns in philosophy, edited by Mark Wrathall. As the editor
puts it, the central question of the book is...
"How should we understand religion, and what place should it hold, in an age in
which metaphysics has come into disrepute? The metaphysical assumptions which
supported traditional theologies are no longer widely accepted, but it is not
clear how this 'end of metaphysics' should be understood, or what implications
it ought to have for our understanding of religion. At the same time there is a
renewed interest in the sacred and the divine in disciplines as varied as
philosophy, psychology, literature, history, anthropology and cultural studies.
In this volume, leading philosophers in the United States and Europe address
the decline of metaphysics and the space which this decline has opened up for
non-theological understandings of religion."
This is where I was coming from last time when I was making a case against "any
static representations" of DQ and "against theism precisely because it's a
static representation of DQ, a definition of DQ". This is exactly what Pirsig
says we can't do without undermining the whole deal. "I mean, theism is
prohibited for exactly the same reason that intellectual definitions of DQ are
prohibited," I had said, because "in both cases, DQ is converted into static
forms, which is exactly what DQ is NOT". But the mystic says reality is outside
of language, prior to conceptualizations, and metaphysics is disreputable to
the extent that it tries to do that. And when you stop doing that, it's not
really metaphysics anymore.
"Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is
a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A
metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there isn't any
metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical
definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that
a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical
absurdity." (Lila, chapter 5)
sectarian |sekˈte(ə)rēən|adjectivedenoting or concerning a sect or sects :
among the sectarian offshoots of Ismailism were the Druze of Lebanon.• (of an
action) carried out on the grounds of membership of a sect, denomination, or
other group : they are believed to be responsible for the recent sectarian
killings of Catholics.• rigidly following the doctrines of a sect or other
group : the sectarian Bolshevism advocated by Moscow.nouna member of a sect.• a
person who rigidly follows the doctrines of a sect or other
group.DERIVATIVESsectarianism |-ˌnizəm| nounsectarianize |-ˌnīz| verbORIGIN mid
17th cent.: from sectary + -an , reinforced by sect .
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