Search
Risking a Christian Mind
-
March 11, 2021Probably for most readers of this piece there is the thought that you are not really called to study theology because being a faithful Christian obviously doesn’t require it, and theology is like other sciences in the sense that there are dedicated, talented, educated, and (in the case of theology) more spiritual and prayerful people who do study it and pass their knowledge down through the ranks until it eventually gets to you in forms that you can digest as a non-expert, to the extent you sense the need for the knowledge. Otherwise you have your own field of expertise—perhaps even in some hard science or a technical field like engineering, accounting, law, medicine, teaching junior-high mathematics—or whatever it may be that you are excellent enough in to make a good living at. It’s enough for us all to stay in our own lanes and otherwise try to profit from the cross-currents as best we can.
I understand this outlook, I think, and I certainly don’t condemn it straight out. In principle we Christians could even admit that, of all “second subjects” we might should be studying, theology is probably the one. But then we probably also think that of all second subjects we could try to take up, theology is the most difficult when it comes to knowing where to begin.
Politics is our second field of expertise
There is, of course, another science that all of us have expertise and fluency in, where we are ready to exercise opinions and views at the drop of a dime. That science is politics. This is confirmed for me as a Sunday preacher. Whenever any sermon I give touches on the political and especially during election seasons when something I say will certainly be taken as touching upon voting, no matter how gentle and indirect the allusions, the level of feedback goes through the roof. This is proof that politics are all-important to us, indeed the “universal science” in our society, and that when it comes to politics we “are always ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within” us (1 Peter 3:15), by which I mean to say that our hope is placed in politics. Politics is the replacement theology for our time. A great many Catholics in our country imagine that they’re reflecting Church teaching when commenting on a socio-political issue when in fact they’re merely parroting talking points from one or another of the dominant and competing political factions.
An Easy 120-second Process for Discovering that You’re Already a Theologian, at Least, Sort of.
I argue, however, that we do know a great deal more theology than we realize, and we are tapping in much more deeply to sources of theology than we realize. Let’s see if I can prove this to you with a thought experiment.
Imagine you are in a lunch circle with colleagues at work in a secular job, or conversing on a Saturday morning in a café with a few neighbors. In any case, you’re with a set of people you don’t know well or trust deeply, but nevertheless you like them and want to get along with them just because you are colleagues or neighbors. You know or suspect that they aren’t particularly “practicing” or even “believers” in the traditional sense. The subject of religion will come up as it often does, probably tangential to some other question with political ramifications.
[Take 30 seconds to game out the scene].
In such a situation you can consult yourself and realize that you would know just what sorts of things you’d need to say (and not say) about God, faith and religious knowledge, morality, Christianity, Catholicism, politics, ethics, the Idea of the Good and the Meaning of Life, in order to maintain or increase trust and goodwill and approval in this conversation.
As it turns out you do know some theology after all. In a certain sense you are a master of theology, which is to say that you know both the basic assumptions and notions of secular, upwardly-mobile Americans and those of your own Catholic faith such that you know what to say and what to avoid saying to keep the conversation light, amicable, and trust-building. You would be able in that moment to project confidence, a great deal more confidence, perhaps, than you would project in a circle of faithful Christian friends with whom unlike at work or in the neighborhood you can enter into deeper trust and mutual understanding, thus allowing yourself to express doubts, questions, and ignorance about your faith without being ashamed or fearful that you will commit a harmful social sin.
A secularized theology and philosophy is offered us constantly through the social background (our media, our schools and secular university courses, our various professional seminars and in-service training sessions, and our many social networks) and we have been paying close attention.
Another Quick Test: Let’s take things a step further.
Let’s suppose that in just such a conversation among secularized acquaintances you in fact elect to please them and satisfy them (or least avoid offending or contradicting them) for just those good reasons we’ve mentioned: to keep things on an even keel and to build trust, to avoid needless trouble or to advance your personal stock in a web of relationships (which include your professional supervisors or other up-and-comers or maybe that person you’re attracted to), a web of relationships your good standing in which can either help you attain temporal goods in your life and career and the failure in which can hinder them or even threaten to block them. One could do this without directly falsifying one’s beliefs. One could say things like “we are all on a path to God” (true), “God is love and love forgives all things” (true), or even “there are as many ways to God as there are people” (true, Pope Benedict XVI said this), or “Christian faith is much harder in our time than it was in former, less scientific and more superstitious ages” (false, but you might honestly believe this because so many people do).
My interest here is not to scold or shame, but to point out two things: first, we have greater mastery in theological discourse than we admit or realize, and second, we do have a substantial confidence in formulating theological expressions for others. This confidence, though, is likely to be weighted against our believed and lived faith: we know how to pass ourselves off as friendly to secularism in philosophical, ethical, and theological statements, but we cannot so easily project rational, non-ideological confidence in the faith we actually possess, confess, and seek to live out. We are simply more fluent and more willing to be fluent in the language of secular philosophy, ethics, and politics (and certainly of pop-culture) than we are in the language of Christian thought.
The Double-Minded Christian and the Loss of Faith
This is a strange state of affairs. It means that though we are in one sense convinced and faithful Christians we do not have integrated Christian minds and so are in fact “double-minded” and therefore “unstable” in our thoughts and ways of speaking and living.[1] But this is more than merely strange. The instability of double-mindedness brings with it a great risk for the believer, for one who is unwilling to speak from the heart of his faith in the unbelieving world will eventually find that his faith has abandoned him. The one who simply refuses to speak his faith in the great neo-pagan outdoors has in the end abandoned his faith.
Certainly as we reflect upon it we can see that this state of affairs is undesirable, intolerable, even. How to remedy it? We’ve already begun to get at the problem by thinking about how well we do know our faith as proved by the fact that we know well what we cannot risk saying in certain company. The next step might be to ask ourselves whether we are willing to risk speaking our faith in secular company. It might appear that only if we can give the answer yes to that second question—am I willing?—would it make sense to ask the third question, how do I speak my faith in the company of those at least some of whom will likely not only reject what I say but negatively sanction me for speaking, even for holding, Christian faith? I’d like to argue, though, that our ability to articulate the faith with clarity and confidence precedes our willingness to do so and is a cause of our willingness.
There is something to be said for finding “common ground” with those outside of Christian faith, to affirm everything we can possibly affirm in the worldview of the non-Christian, especially that non-Christian whom we desire to get along with, to work alongside for a more just society, or at least whom we like very much and so do not wish to offend. What’s more, it will be precisely on common ground that real conversion happens, for we do not convert simply because we find a contradictory view to be unanswerable. Rather, we convert when our deepest commitments are fulfilled in a rationally superior way from within a rival view, and when this rival argument touches our heart. At that moment, it isn’t so much that we convert but rather that we find ourselves converted. Common ground is a starting point for evangelization.
What happens, however, when we reach the inevitable moment of contradiction? However much a Christian may agree with a non-believer, the one who holds an authentically Catholic faith will ultimately be in profound contradiction with an evolutionary pantheist or a radical Marxist, for instance, or a pure hedonist. One who believes and lives and sees the world and himself in the light of the revelation of God given in the man Jesus Christ simply does not agree with one who does not so believe and live and see himself. The differences of interpretation of the world mean that the value-judgments and moral and ethical commitments of the Christian are radically re-contextualized from those of the non-believer, even where those judgments and commitments overlap (which in many ways they will, since we all possess the same human nature made “in the likeness of the image” of God). For the Christian it matters decisively not only what he holds, but why—and the “why” is part of the “what.”[2]
“Finding Common Ground” vs. Engaging in Dialogue
Unless we can expand the range and depth of our knowledge of Christian theology, however, we won’t even be able to determine the scope of common ground we do have, not only with secularized people but also with people of other religions, or, as Catholics, with non-Catholic Christians. The famous American theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues that our first goal should not be to “find common ground” with those we disagree with. Rather, he says, our priority should be to explain to others what Christians believe, and for Hauerwas this means not just “what I believe” but what the Church believes, teaches, and proclaims. It follows then, says Hauerwas, that our priority should also be to listen to others in order to let them tell us what they believe. This is what Pope Francis means by “dialogue” and he invokes the concept regularly in terms of “parresia” (boldness).[3] I can be bold in a declaration of faith because I can also be an open listener, and my confidence allows me to listen openly without being threatened in my own position. Furthermore, by offering to listen first, I open the way for others to listen. I preemptively ask, as it were, for permission to speak by first giving the other my permission, my open invitation, for him to speak. At this moment we’re already moving closer to authentic peace and reconciliation.
Hauerwas and Francis are right. In the global city we are well aware that there are many worldviews and that these views are often in profound conflict with one another. As the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor points out, we’re all aware that every worldview including our own is “contestable”—that there are arguments against any worldview including our own, any given one of which we may not be able to address or deal with easily or even at all. The temptation is to give up the dialogue and merely seek “common ground,” as a matter of protection for others and for ourselves. But we cannot overcome differences simply by seeking common ground since the conflicts we experience are about deeply held theses of fundamental importance which we cannot negotiate away or compromise, since to do so would be either to surrender ourselves to untruth or to subjugate others to a truth they do not accept.
The Meaning and Risk of Dialogue
While dialogue is not the end of peace, it is the beginning of it. A “dialogue” is a kind of conversation. But it isn’t small talk and neither is it arguing, nor is it a moralistic, adversarial harangue. Rather as its two Greek roots suggest it is a speaking of and through logos, a meeting of persons as speakers, as possessors of a word, a statement, reason, and account of themselves as those who seek, perceive, and are shaped by truth.
I made brief allusion earlier to 1 Peter 3:15 when I said that when it comes to politics and political answers we’re always “ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us.” Here’s the entire verse:
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:”
The word in the original Greek for “reason” in this verse is logon (λόγον), the accusative form of that word logos we just mentioned. It translates variously as “word, statement, reason, account.” But that’s not the end of the appearance of “logos” in the verse. Also the original Greek word translated into English as “answer” is apologian (ἀπολογίαν), or “apology.” Notice the root “log,” from logos, in apologian/apology. The word ‘apology’ doesn’t mean here that we’re saying we’re sorry or asking forgiveness for mentioning our Christianity in public or for being Christian—this we must never do. It means that we’re giving an explanation which amounts to a defense of the “hope within us,” which we proclaim. Far from “being defensive,” an apology for the faith is an “appeal to reason”—not just my own reasons or reasoning, but to the universal reason that is not only in every created person but is rooted in every created person as “likeness of the image” of the Logos, the very pattern of existence, the “Word” through whom “all things were made” and who became incarnate among us (John 1:3).
We Christians believe that the very words we speak are made for reason and truth. This reason and truth which we possess in a special way in virtue of our Christian faith also possesses in a more general way all human persons, since all are made in the likeness of the image of God himself, the Eternal Word. This is what the Church believes, teaches, and proclaims. Therefore the dialogues we engage in about truth and faith are a sharing in the creation of a sacred space where the Holy Spirit makes present through us the dialogue of love between the Father and the Son, which is an eternal speaking-and-listening, giving-and-receiving, the dynamism of Eternal, Interpersonal Communion, of Love Itself.
This is why the Apostle says that we must initiate and carry on this dialogue “with meekness and fear”: meekness, because we are not (contrary to Foucault) disguising a power-claim in our truth claims but rather are prepared to suffer for the truth we humbly offer; fear (awe, profound respect), because in this mode of speaking God himself has come among us in a special way, the “Spirit of Truth” who guides us as we speak from the heart of our faith and makes our words fruitful in the hearts of those whom he is working and to whom he has in fact sent us to give witness.
The issue of settling for “common ground” can be a mask for a refusal to listen. Oh yes, of course, we agree on that, and so let’s just move along, shall we? But I am not truly prepared to speak until I am prepared truly to listen, and so risk of speaking begins with the risk of listening.
Jean-Louis Chretien, in his great work The Ark of Speech, says that
“The first hospitality is nothing other than listening. It is the hospitality that we can grant to others, with our body and our soul, even out on the streets and on the roadside, when we would not be able to offer a roof, or warmth or food. And it is at any instant that this hospitality can be granted….And is not the ultimate hospitality, that of the Lord, the hospitality that falls, dizzyingly, into the luminous listening of the Word, listening to it so as to speak, speaking so as to listen to it? Listening is big with Eternity” (The Ark of Speech, p.9).
Theology: where to begin?
We must commit to the discipline of allowing God to reorder our minds in order that our words can bring light to others. This is one way to describe the Christian path. Let me not simply attend Sunday Mass but prepare by spending some time on Saturday with the Mass readings for the following day. Let me also set aside daily time to follow in some way the Church’s daily commitment to the Word of God (say, through the Magnificat publication, a simplified Daily Prayer and theological commentary). Here’s a big one: let me begin the book—surely a best-seller among Catholics second only to the Bible—called The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and make it a six-month read-through project. Again, second only to the Bible, the CCC is likely the most-owned and least-read and studied book on a Catholic’s bookshelf. It is a truly monumental achievement of the Church and its elegant organization, direct language, thoroughness, and harmonization of authoritative theological resources makes it an indispensable beginning for the student of theology.- - -[1] “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:5-8).
[2] If you’re following me so far it means we’re doing theology together, a part of theology academic theologians call “Fundamental.”
[3]“It is better to be courageous and face problems with ‘parresia’ and truth, always following the indications of the church, who is a mother, a true mother, and responding to the demands of justice and charity…” (Pope Francis, Address to Members of the Focolare Movement, 8 Feb 2021).
Fr. Byron S. Hagan is the Parochial Vicar of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Northeast Minneapolis. He is a frequent contributor to MSPCatholic.
