What In The World Will Be Postmodern Catholicism?

Tibetan monks with their 

dunchen or Dharma trumpet; 

now that guitar Masses are 

passé, can we look forward 

to hearing these in church?

One of my former students came by to visit a few weeks ago.  Tran is now ordained and has been sent to Rome to the Pontifical Gregorian University to earn a Doctorate in Systematic (Dogmatic) Theology.  It was great to catch up and I was fascinated by what he had to say about his studies.  He was all afire about the problem of God in Postmodern thought. 

Now, Postmodernism is something that has always baffled me.  As a medieval historian, I never really understood Modernism, much less Postmodernism.  Modernism is a school of thought, prevalent in the second half of the 19^th century and into the 20^th, that like so many of the intellectual movements before it, rejected the received tradition and insisted on radically new interpretations of whatever phenomena it was considering.  In theology then Modernism questioned the received tradition of the faith and its doctrines.  Modernist thinkers discarded central ideas of the Christian faith such as the Divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the Divine Source of Scriptural Revelation, and even the relevance of any idea of God. They attempted to reduce the faith to Myth without understanding the function of Myth to encapsulate levels of Truth that transcend articulation.  Unfortunately the Catholic Church was no better at appreciating the superior levels of Truth contained in Myth and in reaction to Modernism encouraged not only a retreat into re-constructed thought processes of the past (e.g. Neo-Scholasticism) but even an abandonment of serious intellectual fields such as Scriptural Criticism to a morbid anti-intellectualism, even a rabid fundamentalism that it took the Church decades to reverse. 

In theology, as in other fields such as architecture or literature, Postmodernism is a reaction to Modernism.  Unlike the intellectual freeze imposed by Leo XIII and Pius X, however, Postmodernism does not retreat into the embalmed remains of the past but seeks to find ways to express the essence of our faith in modalities that speak intelligibly to our contemporaries.   

Maybe we can look at it more concretely.  The familiar concept of “heaven” has lost any credibility for thinking men and women today.  When we were children heaven was “up there”; hell was “down there.”  That—and especially regarding heaven—was pretty much a literal conception.  But within my lifetime (I am in my mid-sixties) our understanding of the “up there” has shifted radically and allows no place for heaven. While we have known for several centuries that space is a vast and almost limitless entity, over the last five decades it has sunk into our consciousness that there really is no “up there”; only an “out there” that could not be transversed in a hundred million lifetimes.  And not only is heaven a spatial improbability, but reflection on Sartre’s play No Exit has confronted us with how much a hell it would in fact be with a relentlessly eternal existence from which we could never find an end.  (Sartre’s play is set in hell but the problem of a relentless eternity transcends the particularities.) The sort of a nightlessly eternal picnic in the park afterlife, an unending family reunion as it were, becomes not only improbable but terrifying.  So what do we do about an afterlife?  How do we make sense of it?  And would it really be blissful without Häagen Daz Vanilla Swiss Almond?  And Fido.  What about Fido?  I can’t leave Fido behind.  I would only suffer an eternal melancholy without Fido.  We need to find new ways to talk about our conviction that life transcends this mortal coil and when we shed it there is a life in God. 

It is not only Heaven and Hell but a huge range of religious symbols that need to be rethought and re-expressed in ways that make sense to people of the 21^st century.  Indeed, as Tran pointed out to me, even God needs some new clothes if s/he is not to appear dated.  But the task is not to invent faith new from whole cloth—though some have tried to do this with rather bizarre results—but to retrieve and reinterpret the essence of what has always been at the core.  We need to look at the past and realize that the doctrines and dogmas and even the biblical text with which the Truth has been revealed are all simply the reliquaries or ostensoria that permit us to see the Truth and are not themselves the Truth.  (Go and look up ostensorium—the singular of ostensoria—and you might be surprised.  I chose to use the fancier term so as to avoid the connotations the more normal word would convey.)  We do not necessarily abandon or reform those doctrines and we cannot abandon or change the scriptural text but we can seek new interpretations and historically contextualize them in an effort to separate the wheat of the impermeable Truth from the chaff of variable intellectual constructs. 

This cannot be done lightly.  In my series on the History of Anglicanism I have “taken some shots” at what I think has been some very sloppy abuses of sound Theological discipline, not only by those in the Episcopal and Anglican Churches, but by liberal Protestantism in general.  On the other hand when I look at our Catholic Church confronted by the challenge of a world in which, for example, gender roles and an understanding of human sexuality has so rapidly changed, I see our theologians stunned like deer in the headlights or a rat caught in the stare of a cobra, transfixed and unable to move for fear. 

I had coffee yesterday morning with the son of a friend of mine; an interesting man not much younger than myself. He is a hospice nurse but also produces video documentaries, only one of which I have yet seen.  That particular documentary is on the collaboration of religious leaders from various traditions—Buddhist, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant—in their neighborhood on the lower East Side of Manhattan.  It was a very interesting documentary and it revealed much about the religious perspective of its producer.  I might say more about the video on another occasion but I spoke with him—I was already contemplating this posting—on how an educated and fairly sophisticated man of middle years views religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.  He spoke about his own spiritual journey.  He was raised in the Catholic Church with a devout mother and a father who had been somewhat rigidly Catholic until the late ‘60’s and then went overboard in the other direction.  He had gone to Catholic schools but in his late 20’s drifted away from the faith.  His father had introduced him to Eastern Meditation and that gave him a spiritual foundation as he was on somewhat of a seeker’s pilgrimage (my term, not his) but ended coming back into the Catholic Church but in a very new way.  He said he was drawn back to the Church by just finding churches or other religious spaces to be places where he could sit away from the hubbub of Manhattan.  In particular he said that the vastness of space in churches and synagogues appealed to him as a respite from the city.  But he also uncovered in religion tremendous energy for building a better world.  He is comfortable again with his Catholicism but it is not a Catholicism of doctrine or of rules.  And he also finds himself at home in the various other faith communities around him and with which he has ties.  A Sabbath service in the Synagogue or Vespers in a Russian Orthodox Church or listening to a Tibetan monk sound his dungchen (or dharma trumpet, the long deep bass trumpet used in Tibetan worship) all speak deeply to him of the same Divine Mystery he finds at Mass.  I think he reflects the next generation of Catholics, people for whom religion is more about a spiritual journey than about doctrine, more about experience than intellectualization.  The Dalai Lama speaks to this when he writes: 

“The aim and purpose of religion is to cure the pains and unhappiness of the human mind. …. I would like to point out that the purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples; it is to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity, and love.  Fundamental to Buddhism and Christianity, indeed to every major world religion, is the belief that we must reduce our selfishness and save others.” 

It should not surprise us that the Dalai Lama speaks more effectively to contemporary Americans 60 and under than any Christian leader, including the Pope.  The sad thing is that with all due respect to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Gospel offers us the same insight in even more concrete and (I believe) more profound ways, but so much of our leadership and so many of our co-religionists have forsaken the invitation of Christ to let our hearts of stone become furnaces of the Divine Compassion and focused instead on rituals and ceremonies and are hell-bent on emarginating those who don’t measure up to the Pharisee standards.  It is not that I think we have to abandon the key doctrines of the faith: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and it is certainly not to give carte blanche for any arbitrary morality: but I believe those in Church leadership who have shifted their emphasis from theological abstractions to applied Christianity are breaking through a moribund “faith” into a credible Christianity.  The Franklin Grahams and the Archbishop Chaputs or the Cardinal Burkes and the Pat Robertsons are not the effective evangelizers in this Post Modern World.  You don’t have to preach a loosey-goosey Gospel to be effective: look at Mother Teresa or Archbishop Tutu, but you do have to be a witness to the mercy and compassion of God and not to the severity of dogmatic and judgmental religion.  

Rethinking God VII

Massacio's Crucifixion, typical

of late medieval art emphasizing

the humanity of Christ

Well, let’s get back to our postings on revisioning God (see entries for November 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17).  I had mentioned how our concepts of God have evolved over the centuries since that point at which what are known as the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—made their first contact with Y-WH Sabaoth some four thousand years ago when He first picked up with this wild and unshaven band of nomadic outlaws from Ur of the Chaldees.  I mentioned in previous postings that it took the Hebrew people some thousand years or more to come to monotheism and to realize that this God of theirs was not one of several gods but is God Alone.  In the process too they seem to have consolidated Him with another deity they knew and worshiped—Elohim.  And then it took some time more to realize that while this Deity was far from vegetarian, human sacrifice was not on His menu.  Along the way various new stories emerged about Him and how the world and all its inhabitants came to be and sometimes those stories conflicted with one another.  That was not a problem—the People of God could live with some ambiguity.
Christianity provoked new developments in our understanding of God as the believers in Jesus as mashiah gradually came to appreciate that Jesus somehow shared in the Divine Nature of the Deity he referred to as his (and our) Abba.  From this awareness developed the notion of the Trinity—that God is One in Divinity but three in distinct Persons: The Father (Y-WH, The Son (who is become incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth) and the Holy Spirit.  This did not happen at once—nor was the awareness complete in biblical times but only in the second and third centuries with substantial disagreements lasting into the fourth and fifth and—at least in regards to what the Divinity of Jesus means—even later. 
With Christianity and the emergence of a Trinitarian awareness, the Second Person of the Trinity—incarnate in Jesus—eclipsed the primacy of the First Person (Y-WH, the Father) not in theory but certainly in the devotional life of the faithful.  Jesus, as the Mediator with the Father, became the Presence of God most familiar and most adored.  Jesus was seen primarily as the Great Heavenly High Priest who stands at the heavenly Throne of Grace interceding for us.  He also was seen as the King who will come at the end of time as Judge and Ruler.  But this perception too would change in time.  In the late eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury wrote Cur Deus Homo, a theological treatise explaining why (cur)  God (Deus) had become human (homo)  in the Incarnation of the Divine Son as Jesus of Nazareth.  We won’t go into his answer here, but we need to note that historically this would also cause a great theological shift as Christians from the twelfth century through the fourteenth centuries would greatly emphasize the human nature of Christ whereas for centuries from the sixth through the eleventh they had emphasized his Divinity.  Now we see less and less of the King seated on the throne of Judgment and more and more of the tender babe in his mother’s arms or the naked and dying savior hanging on the cross.       
Now why I have been writing about this is so that we can see that the faithful—the People of Israel in their Covenant and the Christians in ours have not been passive recipients of doctrine but have played the active role of shaping the faith.  It is not the role of a Magisterium to define the Truth and for God’s people to passively accept their word as dogma.  The faith as it bubbled up through the sacred writers of the Scriptures and in the decrees of the Councils and later in the teachings of the Church bubbled up from the hearts of God’s people as they reflected on their experience of God.  Again—I am not writing theologically here and have no interest in this blog of doing a “theology of revelation.”  I am writing from a historical viewpoint.  It was not Abraham nor even Moses who came to “define” God in a monotheistic understanding.  They were long in their graves before the People of Israel were weaned away from polytheism.  It was not Paul, much less Peter, who defined the hypostatic union of the Divine and Human Natures in the One Person Jesus Christ or taught that God is one in Divine Nature but Three in distinct Persons.  If this had been taught definitively by the apostles there would have been no arguments over it in the third and fourth centuries.  These understandings arose over time within the hearts of the Christian people.  It was not the bishops who insisted that Jesus was one in Divine Nature with the Father.  Newman reminds us that the majority of the bishops had bought into the Arian heresy hook, line, and sinker.  The issue wasn’t even settled with the Council of Nicea—Arianism flourished for a further two centuries after Nicea.  It was the faith of the faithful that clarified the doctrine.
And so too today—the problem is not that the faithful are not listening to the bishops; the problem is that the bishops are not listening to the faithful.  Our faith in not static.  There are serious issues facing the Church today, issues that require some key teachings of faith and especially of morals to be critically reexamined.  Pontifications will not resolve these issues but rather the Church—the entire Church—magisterium, theologians, and faithful need to build consensus.  All three voices must realize this is not a time we can afford disunity but rather where we must bravely enter into deep and prayerful reflection and dialogue to come to understand the faith the Church—the whole Church—holds.   

Rethinking God III

Model of the Jerusalem Temple where

sacrifices were long offered to God in

the period of the Hebrew Scriptures

After reading the previous post about how our ideas of God have evolved since the historical periods  in which the Hebrew Scriptures were written one of my readers sent me this letter which had been circulating on the internet some years back.  You may remember Dr. Laura Schlessinger, physiologist turned advice counselor/radio personality, whose nationally syndicated radio show ran from 1994 to 2010.  From 1998 until 2003 Dr. Schlessinger practiced orthodox Judaism and often brought her religious insights to bear on the advice she dispensed to her listeners.  For the most part this very rich tradition was well received but people who did not share her religious convictions sometimes found her opinions off-putting.  These adversaries were not necessarily non-believers but often Christians and Jews who had a “different read” on the meaning of Scripture for contemporary society.  I want to print a letter purportedly directed to Dr. Schlessinger  that was circulated about twelve years ago that spoofed her biblical literalism.  I do this not to support the views of those who disagreed with Dr. Schlessinger but rather to show how different our understanding of God is today—even Dr. Laura’s understanding—than it was two or three millennia ago.     

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.
a.              When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
b.              I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
c.               I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
d.              Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
e.               I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
f.                A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
g.              Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
h.              Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
i.                 I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
j.                My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan,

J. Kent Ashcraft

 

Rethinking God II

The Return of Jephtah by

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini,

or, God likes his virgins

roasted

My last posting in which I said that I find that I am rethinking God—reconsidering what “God” means to me in the light of my actual experience—has shocked some people and led to a number of comments, both positive and negative.  The ultra-orthodox are quick to remind me that “God is unchanging.”  Of course, I am not quite sure what it means that “God is unchanging,” but as a historian I am well aware that the human understanding of God has changed frequently over the approximately four thousand years that God and humankind have been on speaking terms.  I have never read Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000 year quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam but it is on my next order to Amazon.  I do recall from days as a theology student that “back in the day” when God introduced himself to Abram of Ur of the Chaldees, that there were many deities in the Abramic pantheon and that despite the careful editing of the stories by later editors at the time of the Babylonian exile (or even later) Abraham (as Abram was later known) and his son and grandsons worshiped a number of deities.  I remember that God as known under the soubriquet  Y-WH was originally a warrior-god in the Canaanite pantheon.  (I am very reluctant to use the full name or even the full Tetragrammaton as there is a strong tradition—in Judaism a law—that the Name of God is never pronounced or written and while we Christians do not feel so compelled, I do think we should not be cavalier with the Name.)   Of course God was known under several other names in the Hebrew scriptures, most notably El Elohim. In the Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible, or the  Torah—God is referred to sometimes by one Name, sometimes by the other.  All that is well and good, but they seem to have actually been two distinct deities who are over a period of time conflated into a single deity.  Moreover, even the name “Elohim” is a plural form and not singular.  While when it refers to God, the word employs a singular form of the verb (taking the plural when it refers to the “gods of the nations”—i.e. the “pagan” deities of Israel’s neighbors) the fact that it is a plural form indicates that it originally did refer to a plurality of gods and that later editors cleaned up the text to reflect the monotheism that eventually replaced Hebrew polytheism around the time of the Babylonian exile.  So here is one example of how even in ancient times God was being rethought.  God went from being two (Y-WH and El Elohim) deities among many to be One and One only with no other deities.  
But God has changed—or rather our understanding of God has changed—in other ways as well.  In the 11^th chapter of the Book of Judges, Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to Y-WH to fulfill a vow he had made—a vow to perform human sacrifice should God make him successful in battle against the Ammonites.  This indicates that in the 11^th century before Christ Jews still believed that God found human sacrifice acceptable.  Yet clearly this practice was done away with fairly early on as subsequent biblical texts do not mention human sacrifice being offered to God—indeed prohibit it—and by the Christian era it is an embarrassment to the rabbis who alter the story to say that the girl was  not in fact killed but sentenced to perpetual spinsterhood. 
These examples don’t imply any change in God but they clearly spell out that our knowledge of God is evolutionary.  We continually refine our understanding of God and of his law.  It is not a fixed reality.  I will bring up other examples of how in Christianity the concept of God changes radically as we come to understand God at ever deeper levels.  Some will claim that during the period in which revelation occurs that God tells us more and more about himself but once the canon of scripture closes—with the death of the last apostle—all that can ever be known is known.  But we will see that the Christian concept of God has continued to evolve long after the apostles.  Scripture reflects the experience of God—it does not “reveal it.”  God has revealed God’s Self to humans over the course of centuries—millennia—and continues to do so.  This does not mean that every human articulation of the encounter with God is of equal weight.  There is a tremendous amount of subjectivity in religious experiences of which we must be very careful but it is simply untrue to claim that we no longer learn anything new about God. 
Of course there are those who are terrified of not being able to control what others believe about God.  One priest I know says that in the almost forty years of being a priest, the subject that most angers his listeners when he preaches is “The Mercy of God.”  “You would be surprised,” he says “of how many people demand God to be ‘just’ by which they mean that God should follow the same moral code to which they hold, and when you say that his Mercy overflows our sins—or rather, it overflows the sins of 'others'—such as abortion, homosexual intimacy, entering the United States illegally, thinking for oneself rather than blind obedience to “The Church”—they go nuts.  Of course these are the children of those who thought that God wanted black children to go to a different school than white children or be nursed in ‘separate but equal’ hospital wards and the great-grandchildren of those who thought God wanted some people to ‘own’ others.”  Ah yes, there are many of our presuppositions about God to which we had better give some thought.

Turning Religion On Its Head

Don't ever go to Rome without

seeing Caravaggio's "Inspiration

of Saint Matthew in the Church

of San Luigi Francese.

I had a fascinating conversation on the airplane last evening with a man who teeters between agnosticism and atheism.  He identified himself as an atheist but when he actually outlined his beliefs he is more at the rationalist perimeter of agnosticism than pure atheism in as that he admits, indeed somewhat warmly embraces, the notion of a spiritual dimension to reality by which he posits the existence and immortality, after a fashion, of what a Christian would call the “soul,” though he himself refrains from that word.  He actually more closely resembles the rationalist Deism of the American Founding Fathers such as Jefferson or Franklin in as that he denies the existence of a personal—or as he said personalist—deity but does subscribe to some sort of what one might call an “Eternal Order” of being.  I have met atheists before and found them, without exception to be fools.  I don’t think atheism itself is foolish; I believe that one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god.  (God being the deity of the three monotheistic religions; god referring to some sort, any sort, of a deity including the Jewish-Christian-Islamic deity.)  As I said, one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god and to date I have only met the stupid ones.  By stupid I don’t mean uneducated—education has long ceased being a bulwark against ignorance, much less stupidity, once it abandoned requiring philosophy as a foundation and allowed the houses of the sciences, mathematics, and technology to be built on the sand  of data rather than the rock of metaphysics.  To what purpose is knowledge if it does not impart understanding?  Agnostics, on the other hand, I often find to have the best minds because they are not afraid of the great and important questions but go fearlessly into the dark night of the unexplored queries that relentlessly lead the soul to deeper and deeper searching.  I have much more confidence in the faith of the true agnostic (as opposed to the intellectual sluggard whose laziness leave him or her indifferent  to the search for truth) than the rattler of dogmatic formulae—whether that be the Mormon missionary with his prepared answers or the catechism toting Catholic who thinks all theology lies digested in his (or her) brain once they had memorized the old Baltimore claptrap and calendar of saints.   

     This fellow on the plane is no fool.  Though he works in the technology field he has a Master’s degree in French literature from a prestigious east coast university.  In our wide ranging discussion—most of the way across the Atlantic—I found myself fascinated by his insights on politics, economic, sociology, anthropology and even religion.  It was our discussion of religion—where he confessed he was an “atheist, or perhaps an agnostic”  where I found myself articulating some basic beliefs, the methodology of belief rather than dogma per se, that gave me an interesting insight into my own way of thinking about religious faith as well as why there is tension both between believers and non-believers and among believers who see things from (at least) two very different perspectives. 

     When Patrick—his name—mentioned that he rejected religion and didn’t want his children exposed to it except as a sociological phenomenon, he said that religion claims to be authoritative over the human intellect and thus stifles the human mind in its pursuit of truth.  I know what he meant.  There are plenty of people who think “God said it; I believe it; that settles it, end of discussion.”  This might reflect an “evangelical” (I prefer to say pseudo-evangelical as I don’t think most evangelicals today are true evangelicals, i.e. those who shape their life according to the Gospel.  I think too many take the “Good News” (evangelion in Greek) and make it bad news, something with which to hit  people who disagree with them over the head.  Or it could reflect a lot of super-Catholics who agree unflinchingly with Church authority, or at least as long as Church authority agrees with them.  You know: the Pope is dead right on abortion and same-sex marriage, but when he talks about capital punishment, economic  justice, health care, war, and distributive justice—well that’s just his personal opinion.  What these “evangelicals” and “faithful” Catholics share in common is a highly vertical understanding  of how God communicates himself (I am not into inclusive language when we talk about God, though I don’t have a problem with those who are as long as they don’t get silly.) 

     Now before I go further, let me reaffirm that this blog is not a theological blog and I am not going to approach this question as a theologian, but as a social scientist—that is from a historical/anthropological point of view. 

     The books of Scripture all had historical authors.  Whether or not the Holy Ghost came down and sat on their shoulders, whispering words into their ears as their pens glided across the papyrus and parchment sheets, is not relevant to the historian.  They had human authors and they were written in historical contexts.  The Book of Daniel, for example, was written, or at least much of it was written, in the context of a Hebrew society that was being religiously challenged by Graeco-Syrian political overlords who were trying to move the Jews of their time from traditional belief to a more universal synchronistic religion that would unite the diverse peoples and cultures of their rule.  The Gospel of Matthew was written for a community of Jewish Christians who were trying to harmonize their ancestral faith with some startling new insights developing among the disciples of the lately crucified religious leader, one Yeshua from Nazareth and Capernaum in the Galilee.  And nobody has ever been able to figure out what the author of Revelations had in mind, though there are plenty of theories.  This historical context issue is not limited to Judeo-Christian revelation.  Mohammed wrote in the context of sixth century Arabia with is warring tribes, religious strife, and a society in which alcohol abuse was a significant problem.  He also wrote with a personal exposure to Judaism (less than favorable) and Nestorian Christianity (which was overall a positive experience for him).  The Buddha came out of a Hindu society and culture where he was veddy veddy upper crust and he seems to have had a traumatic introduction to the question of human suffering that shaped his life and doctrine.  Ignatius Loyola wrote his Spiritual Exercises in an attempt to share his own spiritual awakening with his followers.  Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith is rooted in Saints Paul and Augustine but also was profoundly influenced in the way it was formulated by his own scruples and crises, not to mention his alleged digestive tract issues.  We could go on but there is no need.  The point is clear.  While some of these writings may claim to be of “Divine Revelation” that question is of no concern to the historian but only to the religious believer.  There is no objective way to determine with any objective certainty what is and what is not of divine revelation—if there were then faith would not be a required component of the equation. 

      Now, again, I am not writing from a theological perspective but solely from the historical/anthropological point of view, but religion, viewed from the social sciences, is not a matter of “Truth” being imparted from the top down—from God to the Pope, or some Chief Rabbi or Grand Mullah, or even the Dalai Lama (whom I admire tremendously.)  From a historical/anthropological perspective, Truth rises from human experience and crystallizes in the shared experience of a community of believers who shape it into doctrines and practices that reinforce it.  That is not to say that God is not involved but the historian or social scientist (in their role as a historian or social scientist) cannot speak of God but only of what he or she observes.  Of course, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and others can be men or women of faith as well as professionals in their fields.  As men and women of faith they can supply the God-piece to the puzzle but not in their work, at least not directly.  So while as a historian I believe that Christian Revelation –as all other religious systems—rises from human experience, as a man of faith I believe that the truths of Christian Revelation reveal themselves through human experience by the Grace of God.  What is the faith of the faithful is the crux question for me.  In the Catholic Tradition this called the consensus fidelium   and while it has generally been ignored for the last five centuries (some would say the last fifteen) it once was the crucial element in defining Christian orthodoxy. 

      Does this mean that all religion is on a level playing field?  Is the “truth” of Buddhist experience equal to the “truth” of Muslim experience and equal to the “truth” of Christian experience?   As a historian I affirm that each must be taken with the same respect and openness as the others.  I can also see, however, as a historian, that not all religious doctrines have the same success rate in articulating well the core human experiences.  Why has Buddhism lasted when Celtic religion died?  (I think the current revival of paganism is little more than a very ahistorical playing at nature cults.)   Where is Osiris now?  Where is Athena now?  While a host of deities have disappeared,. Jesus has lasted so far.  So have Allah, Shiva, and the Great Spirit.  Time shows that not all religions capture the Truth with equal resonance.  As a Christian, I believe that the religious experience around the teachings and person of Jesus of Nazareth have a unique depth of human truth, that is to say that they reflect the Divine inbreaking into human experience with a unique and superior authenticity.  In other words, I believe they are Divinely Revealed, or better, capture the Divine Revelation, with a unique truthfulness.  As a historian, however, I can only observe they are one of the major religious traditions and comment on how they function in comparison to other belief systems. 

      This view of revelation as rising from human experience is problematic for Churchy people because it moves the cheese.  It takes power from the select few and distributes it through the whole body of the faithful.  It overturns power structures—casts the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly, so to speak.  This is why I think, as a Catholic, that we must restore the balance of power between the magisterium, the theologians, and the consensus fidelium.  Do you remember in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the image of Professor Snape dressed up in Neville’s Grandmother’s clothes?  I am afraid, as a historian, that that is what the magisterium looks like when left unsupported by serious theological research and rooted in the everyday faith experience of the everyday believer.  And that is why so many people walk away from religion—it has just too often become ridiculous looking to too many good thinkin’ folk.