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A PLAIN GUIDE TO ... When we don't or can't see the bigger picture, it's easy to perceive the Great Divide in terms of its symptoms. One such is ongoing conflict between so-called traditional and liberal Christians, between those who operate from a supernatural world-view and those who think in scientific terms, between the official church and a secular outlook. The conflict isn't
confined to Christians. It rages throughout the world in many
aspects of our lives, and is seldom remarked upon except in
The common foe of all the world's religions is this so-called secular world-view - yet they continue to dispute with each other. Strife within each religion also continues. Unfortunately, in the process of conflicting, we attach labels to others, formulate stereotypes, and test whether others conform to our ideologies. What we don't often do is wonder if the conflict has underlying, unseen origins. These ideological battles are seldom won or lost. Why is there no resolution? Is it not possible that the two sides can't meet because neither really comprehends what's being argued about? Before the Great Divide How did they settle such questions? We know that until the late 1400s in Western Europe, and probably throughout the world, the source of truth lay primarily with "authority". In the intensely hierarchical society of the age, authority was rated according to a person's place in the social pecking order. The higher the status, the greater the authority. A philosopher might have great authority; the Pope had greater. The words of an Apostle were true but the words of Jesus, Son of God, were supremely true. Because the essentials of society were thought to be essentially unchanging, everyone looked to the golden past for the best sources of authority. As one author puts it:
Lest this seem somewhat outrageous, it should be noted that the medieval respect for, and dependence on, the past was itself of revision of a much more ancient standpoint. The intellectuals and rulers of the Roman Empire thought that their society was definitely inferior to that which had gone before. Looking back into the past they saw their ancestors performing deeds far greater than anything they knew. We now know that these were more mythical than historical. But that didn't diminish the power of the past. Writing about the Jewish historian Josephus, Steve Mason describes this view of the past: [3] This way of thinking may seem strange to us today. What if, for example, a President of the United States told us that he could make gold out of lead? Would we believe him because he was President? Or the Pope if he said he could personally cure cancer by touching the sick? What Prime Minister of Britain would get votes by claiming that things were better in King Henry the 8th's time? If people once looked to authority for truth, that's not to say they didn't use their powers of reason. But the point is that reasoned answers were regarded as less weighty than those derived from authority - preferably past authority. Ultimate truth was derived from the past. One Bible scholar has described such truths as "doctrines felt as facts" [4]. That is, the authority of the past was so much a part of people, so deeply embedded in their nature and culture, that it was largely beyond their awareness.How the Great Divide began Lawyers began to interpret the contemporary meaning of legal language, rather than deriving rulings from past authority. This new investigative mode quickly took root in other disciplines. If one could investigate the contemporary meaning of language, then why not also chemistry, astronomy and even theology? Truth gradually began to change its shape. It began to involve attempting to describe things as they actually are, rather than as an authority says they are. One aspect of working out how things are was to analyse them, to take them apart and describe them. This new way of thinking took centuries to develop and involved many aspects of life. Before the end of the 17th century the Great Divide of the present from the past had become more apparent. In Western Europe, a significant number of people had begun thinking in an entirely new way never before known to mankind. This is a vital point to appreciate. It was not a revision or reformation of older thought modes. It was radically unlike anything before. That is, it differed not in the branch but at the very roots. In passing, it's worth noting that Socrates did think logically and analytically, as we attempt to do nowadays. But note that his analysis was of language, not of the physical world. Note also that his death sentence was imposed not for thinking like this, but for "corrupting the youth" by challenging the authority of the gods. Herodotus and then Thucydides evolved something very close to the analytical, evidence-based methods of modern history, but the latter couldn't quite carry it through in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Muslim mathematicians preserved and developed algebra while the West lost it. That and other glimmerings of what gave birth to our modern culture have no doubt arisen and been extinguished many times. The Great Divide grew at a particular point in history, it seems, because a large enough group of people and cultures was able to nurture what we now call modern analytical thought long and pervasively enough to reach critical mass. Changes in perception took place, of course, within the context of larger cultural movements. Karen Armstrong describes how modern Europe evolved its questioning, probing, sceptical outlook. It is
In contrast, the conservative cultures of Islam
And so the fate of the Ottoman, Safavid (Iran) and Moghul (India) empires was sealed. By the mid-twentieth century, all three would have been largely conquered by Western culture, despite rearguard actions by fundamentalist extremists. The Great Divide grows If one were to contrast the pre-modern way of deriving truth with the modern, some of the main features would be:
A penetrating but little-known scholar put it this way at the beginning
The Great Divide today
and, of course, a host of other doctrines, dogmas and religious images. However, if one examines the situation it turns out that Christians The main divide is that great river which separates the religious from the a-religious. The Great Divide is not between believers and atheists but between two mutually exclusive modes of perceiving reality. The so-called atheist no longer responds with "I don't believe" but with "So what!" The reason is that not only do such people regard traditional Christianity as irrational but, more importantly, they cannot understand it and its presuppositions. Explaining traditional Christianity to a modern a-theist is like trying to Can the Great Divide be bridged? Nevertheless, a tiny minority in Western Christendom, who might be They argue that Christians must reformulate every aspect of their faith if it is to have long-term intellectual credibility. Faith, though it goes beyond reason, must be based upon it. A majority of humanity will one day cross the Great Divide. What then? New heretics would say that there is something about being a Christian which should be able speak to any culture, in any age. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Christians (and, indeed, religious One writer put it well more than 30 years ago:
Some foundations of a reformulation would, I think, be that:
To sum up: A Great Divide has opened up between two ways of interpreting the universe. On one side are those who, while living cheek-by-jowl with the paradigms and technology of modern Western society, think that the pre-modern essentials of Christianity are unchangeable. The old, old story is sufficient. On the other are those whose lives are no longer deeply touched
by pre-modern faith. In response, they seek to speak of God and
Jesus in terms which harmonise with their world. They seek to
write a new story. [1] Christian Faith at the Crossroads, Polebridge Press,2001 [2] Ernst Troeltsch, Collected Writings (Gesammelte Schriften) [3] Josephus and the New Testament, Hendrickson, 2003 [4] Dennis Nineham, The Use and Abuse of the Bible, SPCK, 1976 [5] The Battle For God, HarperCollins, 2001 [6] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press, 1962 [7] J H Plumb, The Death of the Past, Penguin Books [8] Harvey Cox, The Secular City, SCM Press Ltd, 1965 |