If You Have Not Life Together

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

2It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;

3As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

Psalm 133, KJV

I would respond to this at Thought Criminal, but my browser, for reasons inexplicable to me, won't let me comment on Blogger anymore.  Besides, this is going to take awhile:

I don't know if Muslim countries will find the potential in potent enough quantities that Islamic egalitarian democracy will come into being, I don't know if Hindus will discover that potential in potent enough form to make India a real egalitarian democracy.  I do know in the contexts in which egalitarian democracy arose in the United States, in Europe, it was through the morality taught by or taken up from the Gospel, the Law of Moses, the Prophets and that as those fade, egalitarian democracy has faded, too.  The idea that a de-religionized Europe will retain what was gained in the moral revulsion to the world wars, to the Holocaust and other mass murders of the Nazis, is dissolving right before our eyes.  I think the de-Christianized Christianity that wants to be nice more than it does in asserting the teachings of Jesus is not going to revive that.  I think the central issue is the choice to really believe the most audacious claims in the Scriptures that support that moral force as the will of God.  To really believe that you are commanded to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

My heart is not entirely with the idea of bending to the "will of God" as one bends to social constructs or governmental laws.  I'm not sure that's what's meant here, but it's the way I take it at first, because I grew up among fundamentalists and "Bible-thumpers" and believers convinced there were many wrong ways and one right way, and that way was only their way and the sole reason to follow their way was to avoid damnation.  As I read the prophets the command to do unto others is less a forceful directive than simply the best course for co-existence and human society.  But put that way it's indistinquishable from Rawls' theory of justice, and Rawls' theory has nothing more to commend it than that it's a reform (and a patch) on utilitarianism, which is a pernicious doctrine, as Dostoevsky understood.  Part of the problem is we aren't part of the covenant with Abraham, which makes the "will of God" more sensible to daily (and national, in the broadest sense) life.  That idea was behind the "social contract" theory which is a wailing ghost by the time it gets to Rawls.  But without some such theory, what comity have we?

So maybe I just need to re-examine my notions of the "will of God" and take the brutal punishment of authority out of the picture, but not toss the baby with the bathwater.  I agree with this, in other words, but I have to find a way to agree with it.  "Help thou my unbelief," as the centurion said.

I think the "winter Christianity" that Karl Rahner predicted would be the Christianity of the future, in the modern, scientistic, secularized, de-religionized era certainly is centered around the form of the Jewish creed, The Shema, confirmed by Jesus,  to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love others as you love yourself.  From the second part of that wherever it is expressed all ideas of egalitarian democracy certainly come, they can't come from anything else.  But I don't think it's possible to really believe it is possible for enough people to do that with enough force in reality TO MAKE IT REAL if you don't believe that it is a law, a requirement given by God.  The secular notion that is something like that, the secularized notion of equality is not found by or in science and, so, remains as a habit of thought which doesn't stand up in use.  

"Winter Christianity" sounds like some variation on Bultmann, who was a better Biblical scholar than he was theologian (all Biblical scholars are, but too many of them tried their hand at it.  It's probably what made Tillich think he could be a theologian:  if they can do it, I can do.  But that wanders into my dismissal of Tillich, so let's leave that the rabbit trail not taken.).  Bultmann wanted to "demythologize" Christianity because he thought the modern world demanded it.  But that got us no further than Eliot in 1930:  "Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something/Upon which to rejoice."  Which is a lovely poetic image, but hardly an inspirational one (the "Spiritus Sanctus" is supposed to inspire, not just be admired).  It's the God of the philosophers, a not unusual dilemma as theology enters Christianity through Hellenism, not Hebraism (Jews have philosophers, and rabbis, but not theologians.  The concept is too Hellenistic.).  Theology too easily turns into philosophy, but not strongly enough into philosophy of religion, where among academicians Christianity today, in the generic guise of "religion," often finds its acceptance and "credibility."  But religion is not meant to be credible:  "Religions is responsibility, or it is nothing at all."  And that responsibility has to be due to what matters.  Acceptance and credibility among certain groups (philosophers, scientists, academicians) is nothing more than a measure of status, and responsibility is shifted to pleasing the ever-changing whims of those cultural worlds.  The responsibility Derrida was talking about was the responsibility of the individual to society, of people to each other, of the person called, to the God who calls them.  Think Abraham on Moria, not religion in Socrates' dialogue with Euthyphro.

On the other hand, Christianity is not mere pietism, nor holy rollers in ecstasy (or the Christian mystics in ecstasy, either).  Again, I'm not sure the "law" is a "requirement" by God, so much as a valid directive, a wisdom that is, in being wise, also true.  But then (again, without the covenant or the social contract) are we followers of Sophia (identified in the scriptures as from God, practically as an aspect of God similar to what the doctrine of the Trinity describes; but Sophia is female, and we seldom let that be identified with God, even though we should, and have.), or of the Christ?  And maybe that's where the reality comes in, at least for Christians:  is Jesus real?  Was Jesus a real teacher (John calls him "rabbi," "teacher", already a distinct term in the 1st century), and were his teachings reliable and leading us to truth in how we then should live?  That claim would extend beyond the Shema directly to the Our Father, which is another prayer, and different prayer, indeed.

My other problem with "winter Christianity" is that it breathes too much the dust of the past, as if Christianity itself were near to dying, and could only be resurrected in spring, a wholly new institution/set of beliefs/doctrines.  There's Bultmann, again, shoveling out all the "mythology" while trying to keep what is valuable; but what is that?  If Jesus is not resurrected, if he was just a wise philosopher or rabbi, if all we have of him is what the Gospels and Paul recorded, then why aren't we studying Socrates more closely?  If the experience of the risen Lord recorded in the gospels and the Book of Acts and testified to by the clouds of witness since, is all mere fantasy, then what Christianity do we have after winter is over?

But what Christianity do we have now?  The 19th century hymns of my mid-20th century childhood are as archaic to my daughter as Shakespeare's early modern English, or maybe more accurately Chaucer's Middle English.  To paraphrase Wordsworth and speak for her as if she were her generation (I know the risks, I'm still goin' in!):  the hymns are out of tune, they move us not.  Great God, we'd rather be a pagan suckled on a creed outworn:

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

She wouldn't use Wordsworth's stilted poeticisms anymore than I would, but the sentiment he sings, the cri de coeur he shouts, comes from the heart of us all (well, almost all):  our religion, our worship, our praise, must have an object and it must be one we feel.  We, too, need glimpses that would make us less forlorn.  There very concept of the possibility of an encounter with the living God in some manner means more than any well-intentioned theory of ethics and behavior, no matter how well argued and reasons it is, can ever mean.  Still, maybe we need to relinquish the Christianity I knew, so we can discover the Christianity she can now.

But does it have to be that revolutionary?  Luther didn't break with Rome, he took Rome with him.  Calvin didn't start from zero, he argued for merely a new understanding (a bold enough undertaking in itself).  Even the Campbellites in America who tried to go back to the church of the Acts of the Apostles didn't abandon Christian doctrines and ideas and teachings developed over 1900 years, though they told themselves they had.  Revolutions are never ab initio; "original conditions" can never be recreated, the clock rolled back, the past expunged and built on anew.  We aren't going to create a "spring Christianity" by declaring the funeral ("God is dead") or the winter (Time to Die) of Christianity.  Maybe we should instead recover the wisdom we once had, and in that wisdom find the faith to put our trust in the Holy Spirit:

Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.

HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.

It's not an explanation; but it is an answer.  An answer because it's better than invoking metaphors that speak of death and termination; and an answer because it asks for continuation, even as the forms are replaced and the whole may even be unrecognizable to the older generation, as the younger takes it up with joy.  Perhaps the church is like a person:  we can give it life, but we cannot tell it who or what to be.  In that sense it would be like the Holy Spirit; the "wild goose" or the wind, that goes where it wants to, and isn't under our control.

In view of the rise of neo-fascism, under that name or unadmitted, the decline of workers rights, of egalitarian democracy, it's worth considering that while Christianity might exist in a personal form, equality and democracy cannot exist except in a society, in a polity.   There can be no "winter democracy".

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My increasing skepticism in the secular liberalism of my youth as a potent force as I saw its decline after the mid 1960s preceded my re-engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition which, oddly enough, came from reading John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus.  As much as I am skeptical, now, of the "Historical Jesus Seminar" that book came from, it was probably the decisive step in choosing to see, choosing to believe.   I saw that the only really successful pursuit of justice in American history, in European history seemed to be powered by people who believed in their obligation, imposed by God to treat others as they wanted to be treated.  As a secular notion or even a feeling of niceness - a vestige of post-Christianized societies - it just doesn't get the job done. 

I was trained by the "Historical Jesus Seminar," so I'm a bit less skeptical of them, even as I was very affronted and even skeptical of them when some of their members were training me.  YMMV, as mine does.  I worked my way through my skepticism, to reconciliation of a sorts.  It was certainly a decisive step for me in choosing to believe, or perhaps better, to decide what it was I put my faith in.  I would still say not "imposed by God" but offered and accepted, as the covenant with Israel through Abraham was understood.  The imposition was a Christian variant meant to make the God of Abraham universal to those not children of Abraham, and I think on the whole it's been a mistake and a misreading of the Scriptures.  But that doesn't make me right and everybody else wrong.  It's just a point for discussion; a kind of Christian midrash, if that's possible.

But even discussion is just a condition of community:

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD .
--T.S. Eliot