Friday, July 22, 2011

A Christianity Worth Believing, Part Two

Pagitt is all about contextualizing - understanding and articulating Christian faith – any faith – in contemporary culture.  We get into great trouble, he says, when we pull the cultural assumptions and values of the past (the distant past at that) into the present, confusing the eternal, living faith with cultural expressions of that faith.  As Jesus might say, putting new, living, fermenting wine into the stiff and decaying wineskins of the past will not come to a good end.  The wine will be lost, and the skins too.

Says Pagitt: “Every theology is grounded in a culture and a set of culturally based assumptions and concerns.  To hold to these theologies in the fifth century was to be faithful, for they were created as explanations for the understanding of the world at that time. But to hold to those same conclusions today, when the worldview that demanded them has expired, is simply foolish.”  (Page 48).  And “foolish” is a good word for a good deal of Christianity these days.

Chapter Six of the book takes on the foundation of Christian thought and experience – the Bible.  Pagitt wants us to know that it is not a weapon – anyone remember having “sword drills” with their Bible?  Can anyone think of a worse image for sacred writings?! 

Nor is the Bible a reference book, as many want us to think.  Got a question about anything?  Anything at all?  The answer must be in the Bible . . . somewhere.  It may be waiting yet to be discovered, but it’s there!  But of course that is NOT what the Bible is, that collection of diverse and conflicting writings created and re-created over centuries of time. 

“I just don’t think that the Bible is always the best starting point for faith.” (Page 64) Amen to that, especially if the reader is educated and inquisitive, not prone to simply take the word of the biblical authorities, most of whom disagree with one another.

The Bible does not make the claims for itself that its more ardent followers make for it.

Chapter Seven introduces Pagitt’s emphasis on “holism.”  A key concept that reminds me of what some of our previous writers , especially Haught, have been saying is this: “What we interact with in a normal day is not all there is; there’s more going on than we can see.”  (Page 76) Here is the divide we’ve seen before: between those who “believe” only what they can see, touch, measure – the scientific naturalist; and those who “believe” there is more . . . lots more.   Holism for Pagitt helps him understand how body and spirit are really the same . . . energy in different forms . . . Creator-cosmos congruency.  (Page 88)  “That’s just the way things are.”  (Page 78)

“The theology of holism is a theology of invitation, of welcome, of God saying, ‘Look what I’m doing.  Come and join me.’” (page 91)

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