By my evaluation, traditional Christians are being consistently dishonest about what their faith actually entails.
They talk and write that real Christianity is about humble obedience to the obvious and necessary truth of that external authority which is The Church.
Meanwhile, all the time, top to bottom they are making personal subjective choices.
They have chosen their church, chosen to regard it as the real church, the true church, the necessary necessary church.
They have chosen the evidences by which they argue for all these - they have chosen how to interpret these evidences.
They have chosen which among the leaders and administrators and practitioners of their church they will regard as true and worthy of obedience - and conversely they have chosen which voices are heretical, wicked, foolish etc.
They have chosen what is vital and significant among sins and virtues, and one a daily basis they choose how to live their Christian lives among the almost limitless possibilities.
These are just facts about religion, about Christianity, here and now, as it actually is. They have been and are exercising personal choices all the time.
And speaking and writing about the need for humble obedience to the obvious truth of their Church - as if that was possible - makes any difference to the facts.
It is therefore dishonest, in-denial, and grossly misleading.
To have an honest and relevant discussion, it is first vital to acknowledge the realities -- and the reality is that not a single person in The West actually practices the humble, obedient, Church-led religions so insisted-upon by Traditionalist Christians.
They do not, and neither does anybody else - and it is impossible.
Such plain facts of Christian living ought to be the agreed and basic starting point; if what is desired is coherent and helpful discussion.
10 comments:
False dichotomy. Obedience is obviously a personal choice. There's no way to obey without it, inasmuch as to obey is to act.
So far as I know, the only Christians who are systematically committed to obedience are monastics.
@Kristor - I'm afraid you are throwing dust.
I have tried to keep it simple - this isn't (just) philosophical. By denying the (inescapable - here and now) facts of their own faith, those who espouse traditionalism are arguing from premises they cannot and do not themselves inhabit - the argument becomes purely "as if"... a playing with hypothetical models.
Self-consciousness, choice, personal responsibility, default alienation - these are (now and for several generations) facts of life for all of us: facts; whether this is regretted, accepted, or celebrated.
At some point, the pretence otherwise ceases to be merely mistaken, and becomes actively dishonest - even if that dishonesty is self-excused by purportedly being put in service to doing overall good.
Public discourse hardly matters. In a world where systemic dishonesty is increasingly mandatory in all social institutions (including the Christian churches); it is overdue for Christians to be much more honest with themselves about themselves.
The distinction between child and adult is useful. Today, the obedience of a seven year old boy is a different thing to the obedience of a 30 year old man. If I understand you correctly Dr Charlton, you are saying that in the quite recent past, the obedience of a 30 year old man might have been the same thing as that of a seven year old boy: a childlike obedience. Is that correct?
@C - Sort of, something like that - but it could be a misleading comparison. You would need to add in that the seven year old was living in a pre-mass media society in a monolithically single church Christian family, society and school.
These discussions never seem to go anywhere.
"The Church" or "the Tradition", as espoused by the traditional Christians, appear to me to be something like an idol in a Barfieldian sense. You have a multitude of dogmas, opinions, statements expressed by a multitude of men over a vast historical space separated by great differences in cultures. All this is then integrated, sometimes convincingly and sometimes not, into a giant cultural artifact "that is always right" and that all beliefs are supposed to be measured against.
The Trads would no doubt provide arguments for how everyhing are held together, by reference to the chains of apostolic succession or the ins and outs of different church council. But they seem unable to accept that others do not (in good faith) share their premises. So others must be in active rebellion, or disobedient, or want to pick and choose what they want to believe. In other words there cannot be any honest dissent.
Then the whole thing gets more difficult when, as you write "those who espouse traditionalism are arguing from premises they cannot and do not themselves inhabit". There is something defensive about the repetitive appeals to authority. It is like many of them are trying convince themselves as much as they try to convince others.
@AB - Of course, I mostly write this blog for my own purposes - to clarify things for myself. And, as such, it is becoming ever clearer that there is something profoundly evasive and dishonest and responsibility avoiding, about the way that "these discussions never seem to go anywhere".
Of course I have myself been a traditionalist (up to about 2012-13), so a lot of this comes from reflecting on my own states of mind.
The basic problem with traditional Christianity is that (in various ways, according to particular Christian churches) it is all or nothing. The whole logic is circular in such a way that if any link in the circuit is broken the whole thing falls apart - as as happened with the liberalisation movements. To doubt or challenge any one thing leads out of the church, sooner or later.
But the same now applies to the actuality of traditionalists - as revealed by 2020. The only way that a traditionalist can now function is to apply frequent and deep personal discernments to his church - so that he regards only certain chosen parts of his church as "real".
The dishonestly is in denying the actuality and fundamental nature of these many and vital personal discernments - these unprincipled exceptions; and instead pretending that they flow objectively from obvious and undeniable assumptions.
When has any traditional Christian ever written that Christianity entails the renunciation of personal discretion?
There is no way out of the unremitting necessity of personal discretion, at every moment of life. This has always been true, and shall always be true.
Where have you gained the impression that deciding to join a church involves a commitment to becoming a robot? *Of course* such a commitment cannot be kept. So no church expects it.
On the contrary, being Christian means deciding to be Christian, minute by minute, again and again; and decision per se requires discretion among alternative courses of action. The monk who has taken a lifelong vow of poverty, chastity and obedience must decide to keep it, again and again. Not a few of them decide not to keep it. So, even the monastics who *have* taken vows of obedience *are continuing to exercise personal discretion.*
Christian praxis involves – famously, publicly involves, indeed insists upon, and consists essentially of – endless work on the improvement of personal discretion. It is the quest of saintliness.
Traditional Christianity proposes and engenders the *opposite* of the dishonesty you here decry. Not that Traditional Christians are not dishonest. Of course they are. Everyone is, at least a bit. But we can say at the very least that Christians credit a religion that preaches the evil of dishonesty, and treats it as a profound characterological defect, and a mortal sin. Their religion teaches them that they ought to try their best to be honest in all things; that cannot but tend to increase their honesty at the margin, over what it might otherwise have been.
I can think of another world religion that preaches otherwise. It is in many ways more like your caricature of Christianity than any Christian communion. It so insists on permanent, irrevocable commitment to its precepts and practices that it punishes apostasy with death.
@Kristor - Perhaps one day you will try to understand what I am saying, rather than repeatedly refuting straw men of your own construction.
Bruce, my dear, I try hard to understand you, always. Because why? Because I have admired your thought for – what is it now, 20 years? You keep telling me new things that I had not thought of myself, and that help me then think more straightly.
That’s why I keep checking in on you, every day.
We disagree on this or that, but I take that as normal to friendly interlocutors.
As to straw men: if you could show some evidence of the Trad Christianity you have in your post here condemned, I would be massively edified. My own fairly massive experience of Trad Christianity has revealed nothing like your caricature thereof – I see it just nowhere – and I beg to be schooled and corrected as to my lacunae, if such there be.
As it is, it seems to me that you are in your deploration of that supposed “Trad Christianity” tilting at a straw man that is not out there really, but is rather a fantasy, weakly suggested by other stuff you find appealing, that the fantasy of Trad Christianity somehow threatens. It seems to me, frankly – I say this as your wonted ally and brother of many years in a common fight, interested most in your sempiternal salvation (and so in our everlasting fun conversations) – that you are trying your best to avoid what is for all of us an unavoidable confrontation with the Ultimate (this much has death vouchsafed to us, at least; thanks be to God for death).
I.e.: you disavow him, categorically.
If he is real, that’s a bad move.
Or: if death is real, that’s a bad move. For, if death is real, then to disavow him is to embrace death –chaos – as ultimate.
In the absence of any documentation of that “Trad Christianity” you deplore, I cannot but conclude that you are tilting at quintains *that are not even straw;* that are not out there to begin with. You are astride your charger galloping at ... nothing.
Where are the trad Christians who abjure personal discretion? Even Calvinists admit it in practice, and count upon it.
Is it not obviously true that anyone who writes anything public *has not abjured personal discretion*?
Where are the trad Christians who abjure personal discretion?
@Kristor - I am not going to argue about this (and especially not with you!).
As I've often said - there is no such thing as proof, evidence, logic etc except on the basis of metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. And that is what I am usually trying to elucidate.
In this blog I write about how I see things. It's up to any readers who are interested enough to make what they will of whatever I am saying.
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