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| Tomorrow's Faith Adrian B. Smith, O-Books, 2005 This is an important book for anyone committed to bringing Jesus Nazareth into the 21st century. First, it reaches out from the bastions of the Catholic Church to try to grapple with the Vatican's demons of secularism and relativism. Second, it indicates why those who remain in traditional territory find it so hard to cross the last river onto the far bank of the contemporary world. The author is concerned mainly with traditional doctrines. Central to those are the Bible and revelation. The latter is key to the credibility of Christianity in the future. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that unless this doctrine can be effectively maintained by the Church, the entire edifice of traditional teachings will eventually crash to the ground. For the only way official doctrine can continue to carry weight is for it to remain special in the sense that it purports to be outside the scope of reason. According to this teaching, reason may be applied to revelation, but revealed truths themselves must be held as sacrosanct. This implies that we don't need to think certain things out for ourselves. Fr Smith doesn't seem to realise that if revelation is redefined, then everything else is up for inspection. If the pillar of revelation is removed or undermined, then the builder would be wise to check if the building will stand. Fr Smith begins his journey away from tradition when he writes that the Bible is nothing more than a
His conclusion has been underwritten by a large majority of scholars over more than a century, though it is seldom brought out of the dusty corridors of academia for inspection and consideration by ordinary men and women in the pews. Perhaps if it were, the resulting queries might seriously disturb the carefully tended tranquility of the average congregation. The author continues that there are two ways of learning about God - our senses and
So far, so good. Up to this point the critical reader may merely be noting a careful selection of words designed to avoid impeachment by the Roman inquisition. But in the event, Fr Smith is brave enough to put his cards face up on the table:
This is what's technically called "panentheism", defined by The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church as
In other words, Fr Brown is not a theist. He nevertheless states that "Divine Truth" is absolute and unchanging - that is, he attributes to the universe a certain stability and transparency which, I suspect, may not be easy to demonstrate. If such a consistency is in fact obvious to those who seek, we may wonder why humanity has not yet pinned down these divine truths beyond reasonable dispute. There are at least two important further implications of Fr Smith's chosen starting point. First, it could be cogently argued that if divine truth is located in the natural order then it is also essentially secular. That is, truth is not in this case the secure province of ecclesiastical pronouncements. It can be equally well discovered and transmitted by anyone. It might be doubted that Pope Benedict would approve of this position. The second implication involves the common understanding of traditional morality - the rules which are supposed to govern the lives of all. The insistence of the Catholic Church that abortion can be equated to murder is one such. Abortion defined as any deliberate human interruption of natural processes after conception is a rigid standard which are are all supposed to adhere to. But if Fr Smith is correct that this and other divine truths are not derived direct from God, how can this aspect of morality be definitive? Bring a moral absolute into the scope of the created order and it automatically becomes subject to search and discovery. And if it is to be examined and assessed, it must be reasoned about. The question a reader will inevitably ask is whether or not Fr Smith carries this and other implications of his position through all thirty short chapters of this book. Alas, he does not completely succeed in doing this, though he gets pretty close. Ranging from "The Bible and Revelation" to "Unity and Diversity" his views are largely fresh and well put. He also concedes the modern point that "universally held Christian truths" are cultural formulations. They are composed by human beings for particular needs and situations, a point made definitively by Dennis Nineham and others [1]. If there is a major fault in this work, it is its brevity and the way the author treats Jesus. To take the former point first: Each chapter is no more than two or three pages long. Nothing is argued, except in passing. The author therefore can only declaim his opinions and quote authorities. The book can be likened to a pocket catechism for ordinary people who are fed up with the obscurities and archaisms of traditional theology. Brevity may excuse lack of even abbreviated argument, but it does not excuse the way in which the historical Jesus of two centuries of scholarship has been bypassed. So, for example, the author often quotes the words of Jesus from the gospels as though they are "what Jesus really said". Few informed readers of the gospels are today comfortable with doing this. Whether or not we like it, we have to discriminate between history and myth. The resulting history of Jesus is more than a step or two away from the Christian tradition about Jesus. Similarly, a standard distinction today is between a Jesus of faith and a Jesus of history. The former Jesus does not require searching investigation because he bypasses reason. The latter Jesus is the result of a deep and intensive reflection. Though the details are still fiercely debated, a considerable consensus has emerged about the history of Jesus, even in relatively conservative Christian circles [2]. Not only do ordinary Christians now have to come to terms with the history of Jesus, but they also have to switch their gaze from the Church to the wider world. Nineteenth century missionaries failed dismally to bring Jesus to the entire globe. Eastern cultures have retained their unique vision of the world, while secular culture appears to winning hands down in the race for the soul of the Western consumer. In other words, Jesus has yet to go global. To effect that, Christians will have to engage non-Christians on a basis of equality. For example, within twenty years or so language will be less of a barrier to debate and common understanding than ever before. There is little doubt that cheap computers will be able to translate text and audio files from one language to another with considerable accuracy and speed. In such a world, to stay within a national enclosure will spell doom. Even now, no nation or business can operate without taking into account the swift-moving tides of choppy international waters. To take one instance of the sea change of globalisation, Christian ecumenism is already largely pointless. In the global future it will matter not a hoot that there are 423 Christian denominations or that Christians are divided amongst themselves in so many ways. What will matter is Fr Smith's assertion that
If he's right - and it is hard not to admit the point - then a "correct" Christian perception of God and the world cannot be sustained. For God and the world belong to everyone. Christians don't have a monopoly. It may take another thousand years to achieve a degree of mutual acceptance between the world's religions, but it is inevitable. In this scenario, what distinguishes Christians from other faiths (which also have a future)? Only the person of Jesus. That's why it's so important that Fr Smith presents a person who is widely credible and shorn of at least the worst of the many accretions of the centuries. The reader must judge if he succeeds. The third section of the book is entitled "Jesus the Christ". Although the author is definite that the title "Son of God" is not one that Jesus ever espoused, he is unwilling to state categorically that Jesus was human and nothing more. The resurrection of Jesus is "the cornerstone of the Christian faith" - but what sort of resurrection? Most certainly not, in his view, the essentially physical one of orthodoxy. The traditional metaphors of redemption, sacrifice and the like are, as he says, the product of cultures foreign to us. But the metaphor of "atonement" isn't, for some reason - even though it is widely thought of today as grossly misleading. The section on Jesus falls flat. It can't possibly serve as even a simple introduction to the person who will always give Christians their unique position in the world of the future. The rest of the book,
however, might be justly termed an excellent review of the borderline faith of the present.
But it is probably not tomorrow's faith. That will be as far from what
he presents as Rome is now from the Orient. |