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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." * Dialects of Truth6/01/2005 17:40:00The other night in a conversation I was forced to go a little farther than I thought I would in a conversation about the religious: that theology must necessarily treat only what non-theological cannot. Such, perhaps, is what makes the religious actually religious, the inpenetrability of the mundane to its truths. Harvey Cox's The Secular City, which I am now reading, seems to make this question a constructive one, even from a Western theological perspective. Previously, I have tried to work my way around the notion that religion is in some sort of "retreat" against the growing understanding of scientific and otherwise nonreligious discourse. But this conversation made me realize that if indeed "truth does not contradict truth," the religious retreat must be embraced in the simple hope of care and responsibility. The great theological responsibility that I see at work in this discussion is to not take God's name in vain, to separate theology as fully as possible from ideology, which is precisely the general result when theology extends beyond the unknown. Can "religion" so stand, if indeed it is in retreat? Still I am forced to believe yes. Probably there are fewer discourses fully encompassed by pure reason than we think. Ethical relativism is an example in which secularism has actually made matters less certain rather than more. In a relativist environment, I suspect that religious teachings are invauable navigational aids. Actually, I suspect that such a religion is actually more pure, more livable, and brings us closer to an unadulterated notion of our God. Discourse of God must be a discourse of unknowing. If it is so, it makes the terms of conversation clearer than they were before, distinguishing clearly between what is and what we hope for and what we have been taught to wait for. The dynamics throughout the conversation were tricky-- as hard as we could, we were trying to step away from the tacit respect that it has become convention to approach religion with, a respect that ultimately precludes substantive discussion. Such direct honesty and rejection of tacit respect is necessary if religion is to mean anything to anybody, if a modern person is to believe in it fully enough to not horribly manipulate it for his own purposes. After listening to hours of such talk, a listener said it all sounds so funny. Why would we bother worrying about God nowadays to begin with? Sacramentally experienced, I believe this question is absolutely important and awakening. On the one hand, it forces the recognition of the limits of our understanding and discourse. On the other, religious language for the modern may simply be a way of coping and resolving a wild batch of bygone terms that, if never put to rest, have dangerous rhetorical power on the tongues of ideologues. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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