I'd like to pick out a few bits for further comment and for highlighting. First off, a reason why it is important to look at this more fully: without a good leverage point, we risk public debate and policy that rests on ...
"... significant misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that affects both popular thinking and public policy in our own country; and I think we need a bit of theology to help us to a more sensible position."
Part of what I tried to do in Bradford University as it began to recognise and try to take constructive hold of religious diversity, was to try to make sure that we didn't fall into the trap of assuming that there was some kind of neutral standpoint in all of this -which happened to coincide with a secular stance. This mistake would mean that secular beliefs (and they are such) would be exempted from consideration. The problem with that would be that part of the problem for some 'religious' viewpoints is precisely the assumptions that made for a secular public space; especially where those viewpoints didn't share a history with western European traditions.
The dangerous assumption ... the world as we see it is pretty clear; we can agree about it – whereas the powers that religion tries to connect with are invisible, so that we can't expect to agree about them.
This essentialises religions as basically the same and secular viewpoints as different. The European legislation sees it, wisely, differently: it mentions religious and other philosophical viewpoints. The playing field really should be level! Using the parable Rowan comments on; no-one can assume they are the seeing person in the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
The point is, "What we have instead is rather a variety of styles of living, each of which has a very different account of the world as a whole, life as a whole. " In other words, even a secularist standpoint is a 'style of living' with a different account of the world as a whole. And it is because we are dealing with 'accounts of the world as a whole' that we cannot assume a neutral standpoint: we can only create together 'spaces' where we can debate, argue, agree, compromise, agree to differ and otherwise find modi vivendi.
I find the way Rowan characterises religious discourse helpful and it is capable of embracing 'non (or anti-) religious' viewpoints too.
The passion in religious disagreement comes not simply from abstract differences as to how the holy is to be talked about, but from differences as to how human life is to be lived so as to be in fullest accord with 'the grain of the universe'.
This is helpful, because a non-religious take on life is also concerned with living in accord with the grain of the universe.
The helpful insight I mentioned earlier was that +Rowan talks about religions as answering fundamentally different questions. There is a degree of incommensurability about religious and non-religious life-stances which means that dealing with everything in simple 'right or wrong' terms is not helpful and even oppressive. The other implication is that it unmasks plaralism:
there is no perspective from which someone can say, 'These are all different ways of looking at the same material'. If I am a person of faith, a person whose life is lived in a comprehensive relationship with what I understand to be the source and context of all life, I cannot appeal to someone out there in the neutral public world to provide me with credentials. So I don't think that religious relativism or pluralism will do, as this seems always to presuppose the detached observer (the one who sees the whole elephant); but neither can we expect to find a tribunal to assess right and wrong answers.
Many of the points I make above are, in principle, covered by this really useful paragraph:
The point I am moving to, however, is that the 'contest' over religious truth happens most effectively and authentically when a real sharing of worlds is possible. And that in turn happens only when we do not live in a social order that totally controls the possibilities of experiencing the Other. To this extent, the modern revolt against theocracy, against the religious control of social options, is justified. But I think that the implication is actually the opposite of what is usually thought. ... in fact a non-theocratic society allows real contention about religious truth by the mere fact of giving space for different experiences and constructions of the universe to engage with each other, to be themselves
This is a perspective deeply difficult to a Christendom-style Christianity (and cognates in other religious and philosophical life-stances), but I think that it is actually part of the genius of a Christian faith free of Christendom leanings. It is part of neigbour-love, I believe. In fact ...
... If we start retreating to theocracy, we are by implication admitting that our religious tradition can't sustain itself in a complex environment; states (Christian, Muslim or Hindu) that enact anti-conversion laws or penalise minority faith groups may have an understandable wish to resist unfair pressure or manipulation in proselytising, but they confess a profound and very disturbing lack of confidence in their own religious resourcefulness.
Now, I recognise that for some Christians this is disturbing and may even seem to risk 'selling the family silver'. It may be reassuring to read how +Rowan describes a Christian understanding of Christian faith (and I find I resonate with it very much) which can emerg from the approach he is outlining:
Christian theology says that the world exists because of the utterly free decision of a holy power that is more like personal life than anything else; that we can truthfully speak of as if it had mind and will. It says that the purpose of this creation is that what is brought into being from nothing should come to share as fully as possible in the abundant and joyful life of the maker. For intelligent beings, this involves exercising freedom – so that the possibility is there of frustrating one's own nature by wrong and destructive choices. The purpose of God to share the divine life is so strong, however, that God acts to limit the effects of this destructiveness and to introduce into creation the possibility of an intensified relation with the divine through the events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, above all in his sacrificial death. This new relation, realised by the Spirit of God released in Jesus's rising from the grave, is available in the life of the community that gathers to open itself to God's gift by recalling Jesus and listening to the God-directed texts which witness to this history.
And, of course, there are still disagreements; this is not a perspective that says in anyway that we are all saying the same thing really, just using different languages and cultural expressions:
It must argue against other traditions that the world comes from and as deliberate gift (Buddhists would disagree), that our self-deception is so radical and deep-seated that we cannot be healed by the revelation of divine wisdom and law alone (Jews and Muslims would disagree), that our healing is a 'remaking' effected through a once and for all set of events (Muslims and Hindus would disagree). The Christian must argue that because this picture of the universe makes the fullest allowance possible for human failure and self-deceit and gives the most drastic account possible of divine presence in addressing this failure (God coming to inhabit creation in Jesus), it has a good claim to comprehensiveness as a view of how things are. But it is assailed by those who say that its doctrines of original sin are self-indulgent excuses for the weakness of the will, that its concentration on history limits it to parochial perspectives or ties it to a remote and disputed past, that its view of the common life is weak and fails to make the necessary bid for social transformation in a comprehensive way (a particularly strong Muslim point).
Now, I take a broadly inclusivist view of the atonement and salvation. I find that this approach is consonant with that theological stance, indeed deepens it and enable it to think through the practical ramifications of an open yet committed stance. And I am hopeful that the kind of inter-faith/philosophy encounters being forced upon us by globalisation will prove productive in the fulness of time (sometimes we have to 'play the long game' -as I say in lectures on intefaith encounters and mission). This is because
Our doctrine is still in formation; and the question of how holy lives can exist outside our own tradition has throughout Christian history led to some of the most searching and far-reaching extensions of our language about the significance of Jesus. I trust that this will go on being the fruit of such questioning.
This article is the sort of thing that should be on reading lists dealing with intercommunal faith relations.
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