The reedal - Monergism Books

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The Cultural Case against Creeds and Confessionsnack, to name but three, all offered variations (of differing degrees oforthodoxy) on this theme. Yet the frequency with which it occurs inthe history of the church indicates that at least some of the concernsit seeks to address must be legitimate.In addition to the obvious problems with the way language hasbeen used by people such as politicians, and how sophisticated literarytheorists have dismantled old linguistic certainties, there is also apopular strain of mysticism (for want of a better word) that pervadesmodern culture and that is profoundly suspicious of words. This takesvarious forms. One thinks, for example, of the notion that certainemotional sentiments or responses constitute truth, something thatis often epitomized by the kind of statements made with remarkableregularity on TV talk shows. “I just know in my heart that it is true” isbuilt on this kind of thinking. Many of us no doubt have encounteredethical argumentation that amounts to, or perhaps is even expressedas, “It feels so good. How can it possibly be wrong?” 2Again, we might turn to popular music to provide a summary ofthis kind of thinking. If the reader will forgive the obvious incoherenceof using words to undermine confidence in words, here are a few linesfrom Madonna’s song, “Bedtime Stories”:Words are useless, especially sentences.They don’t stand for anything.How could they explain how I feel?Madonna actually makes quite a profound point here: the modernemphasis on emotions as the locus of truth or, to use the trendierterm, authenticity, is fundamentally non- and even antiverbal. Whensomeone declares that they “just know in their heart” that the latestboy band is the greatest phenomenon of Western musical culture sinceBach left the organ loft for the last time, you may know that they aretalking arrant nonsense, but there is no way that you can refute thisperson’s claim because it is not a claim expressed using public criteria2For all of the plausibility of such emotive arguments in modern culture when it comesto, say, teenagers sleeping together, we still live in an age when thankfully this is not yetconsidered a plausible justification for serial killers.33
The Creedal Imperativecommonly known as words and logic. It is a purely personal, subjectivejudgment; and, in its claim to truth, it makes truth something mystical,something to be experienced, not something subject to normal criteriaof public evaluation.To have such an attitude so deeply embedded in popular culture,whether pop songs or talk shows or the visceral level of public discourseone often witnesses on the television in scenes outside courthouses,political rallies, and sporting events, would in itself create plenty ofdifficulties for the notion of creeds and confessions. Yet we see theimpact of suspicion of words even within the Christian church. At theReformation, preaching came to supplant the Mass as the central act ofcorporate Christian worship; underlying this shift was a move towardan understanding of the gospel as promise and of salvation as beingby faith in that promise. Thus, proclamation of that promise in wordsmoved to center stage. In recent decades, however, many churches haveshifted preaching from this central place. In some contexts, preachinghas not been abandoned; rather, it has been relativized and now standsalongside dramatic performances, candles, incense, and small groupdiscussion. In other contexts, preaching has been pushed completelyaside for conversational discourse, where the authoritative voice of thepreacher has been replaced by a more democratic dialogue. Underlyingall these shifts, in practice if not always in terms of self-consciousplanning, is a suspicion that proclaimed words are no longer a reliableauthority or, perhaps better, a plausible authority, given the widerantiverbal cultural dispositions.Populist suspicion of words is not the only point at which the antiverbalmystical emphasis bites the church. Such also has deep andhighly sophisticated roots within the history of modern theology. Forexample, this kind of mysticism is analogous to the kind of revision ofthe notion of Christian theology that took place at the hands of F. D. E.Schleiermacher, the so-called Father of Liberalism, at the start of thenineteenth century. In the wake of the Enlightenment, and particularlyin response to Immanuel Kant’s critique of traditional epistemologies,Schleiermacher sought to rebuild the Christian faith in a manner thatwould be plausible in his context. As the notions of objective truth andof the possibility of generalizing universal truths from the particulars34
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The reedal - Monergism Books

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