Presumed Absolute Truisms
I'm digging right in here. Well, as is obvious from the large gap between my introductory post and this post (my first of substance), I didn't dig immediately in. However, the idea that prompted me to return to this medium is a big one - in that sense I'm digging deep into the proposed topics of this blog.
The idea is that the questions of God - ostensibly the practice of religion - could be in a way unleashed by a new method of looking at the texts and traditions we follow. Most always the believer presumes their moral beliefs are true. Moreover, those beliefs are considered absolutely true. Ironically, those beliefs that are put forward forward in defense of that absolutism are those beliefs that are obviously absolutely true. What gets unnecessarily added are all the accessory beliefs that can't appeal to some common humanist code. What gets lost is God, and what the religion says about God.
What occurred to me is that a way to unearth or at least identify the more profound teachings of a religion is to reverse this tendency. Firstly, admit that some beliefs are of greater authority than others. Secondly admit that the multivalence of beliefs is reasonable, but those beliefs that are overlapping and not ever contradicted are of greater authority. Lastly admit that what matters most is what statements of authority offer some new or unique knowledge of God.
This process applied to Christian ecumenism would look something like this.
1. Review and set apart all contradictory statements in the Gospel accounts.
2. Give priority to those statements made by multiple writers
3. Identify which statements do not rephrase a truism found in other religions traditions.
4. The statements from step 2 and 3 must form the basis for a common creed, with the statements from 3 serving as the "profound" offering of the religion to the world.
For instance, I would argue that the beatitude, "Love your neighbor as yourself", while an essential part of the Christian walk is not the thrust teaching of the Christian faith. It is perhaps the greatest of the presumed absolute truisms, found in many other religions, but not much of a statement about God. On the other hand, the Christian belief that God "so loved the world" is a profoundly Christian statement about the nature of God, as is Jesus "is God's Son".
If those who call themselves Christians (like me) could identify and agree on this small subset of beliefs, then we are free to take the advice of the apostle Paul with regard to all the things we disagree on, "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good." (1 Thes 5:19-21). We may admit a living, deliberating, conscientious conversation about what the profound beliefs mean to us individually and as a group.
