[MD] FW: Christianity, etc.

[david]

From: dmbuchanan at hotmail.com
To: jlmcconnell at bellsouth.net
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 .