Some comments by Parklife down-thread got me thinking, in connection with my previous post, and I thought I would be up front with some of my own biases and reasons for questioning the intellectual depth and seriousness of fundamentalist Christians.
When I entered seminary, I had little understanding of the history of Christianity. I had read, as an undergrad, of some of the early Christian apologists, and of course I knew of people like St. Thomas and Martin Luther. Beyond that, the amount of Church history I knew could be summed up in a paragraph or two. It was having the door opened to the diversity, the depth, the breadth, and continuing plurality of Christianities that made me realize that my own faith was not only provincial, but shallow. That can be a shattering experience. For me, though, it was liberating. I continue to read histories of the Church, from the early post-Apostolic church to my current reading in the American liberal tradition, and am continually astounded at the various turns and stages the various incarnations of the Christian faith take. While I stand by my own personal confession, I also recognize its contingency, and rather than threatening my own sense of faith, I am glad that the depths of faith are not limited to me, my denomination, or even my tradition. Such would be a limit to God and God's revelation I find both silly and contradictory.
At the same time, the history of the Church and church teaching renders a blow to all those secularists (which is not the same thing as all those who profess no belief; secularism is the idea that we are better off without religion; it is a prejudice rather than an intellectual position) who insist that we surrender our intellect and reason when we become Christians. Even a cursory glance at the history of the church should remind us that, during the long slog of the Dark Ages, learning and thought were kept alive by the Church. The Aristotelian revolution that was part of the intellectual heritage of the Crusades was not a rebirth of learning, but only of one style of reasoning. Historian of science and devout Catholic Pierre Duhem, writing in the early decades of the 20th century, made a persuasive case that much of what many still call the "Scientific Revolution" of the 17th century was in fact an outgrowth of various debates that extend back to the controversies between St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. While I think he overstates the case a bit, there is no doubt that Galileo, Kepler, and even Newton (a devout religious convert who wrote a huge commentary on the Book of Daniel) relied partly upon an intellectual legacy they gained from the Church.
History, for me, is a chastening rod for any attempt at religious or theological or secular or intellectual triumphalism. We are just bit players in a drama that extends backwards thousands of years, and will continue as long as people try to make sense out of what it is they believe. As such, I find the kind of finality and holism professed by fundamentalists historically inaccurate and theologically mendacious. I would rather spend an hour or two with William of Ockham, or Scotus Eriugena, or even that hyper-Platonist the pseudo- Dyonisius, that with J. Gresham Machen or James Heidinger. The God of the latter is just too small for me.
Virtual Tin Cup
