Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

When I was a wee-young seminarian, one of our professors said in class that we had to be careful how we talked about what we learned in seminary when we got out there in to the pulpit (you can change the "we" to "they" . . .). I found that totally wrong, and argued it my entire time.

As a fellow seminarian said to me, there wasn't a single thing talked about in seminary that should not be discussed in churches, up to and including the very question of God's existence. I have practiced that my entire adult life, and it is pretty amazing when people realize that folk who go to seminary talk about the same questions and issues they do.

All seminary does is provide a special vocabulary called "theology" (as a general catch-all) in which to couch very mundane, ordinary discussions.
 

Same thing for medical school. I say get rid of them both.
 

Well, I think there is nothing in the seminaries that couldn't be talked about in the churches. BUT, just as I don't want to see worship in a classroom (although my Intro to Hebrew Bible prof leads us in prayer at the beginning of every class), I don't think a worship service is necessarily the right environment to deconstruct sacred things, whether tradition or Scripture.

Everything has a time and place.
 

Feodor, you are either being facetious, or something, so I'll ignore you.

Obviously, time and place are appropriate. The issue is not when and/or how, it's whether or not. And, honestly, during a sermon, if it is important to illuminate a text by attacking it, by all means do so!

Unless, of course, you think that our pews are filled with wimps.
 

Same thing for law school, too.

And don't get me started on the self-serving hermeticism of dentists.

Why do we need all these withholding intermediaries?

My body is my own, so are my teeth... AND my rights.

Who needs 'em.
 

Feodor, you are either being seriously facetious, or misreading what I am saying.

And, yes, I do believe there is nothing inherently special about theological vocabulary. It is what it is, and should be available to anyone.

We should not horde what is the property of the whole church.
 

Whatever seems necessary from the pulpit, yes. But the pews are mostly filled with people barely holding on, in my opinion. Maybe cutting them loose from falseness is the thing to do. But whatever, it should be done kindly, and academe is neither kind nor unkind. It cuts cleanly, but even a clean cut can do harm. First: Do no harm.
 

Eh. Why is it people think that "other people" are either stupid, ignorant, scared, or some combination thereof whereby whatever information "we" have is dangerous in some way or other.

Part of being a church is being cut, is risking those deep wounds. Together.

We aren't futzing around with some fun ideas here. This is life and death shit, and we had better start acting that way. Part of that includes opening up the dusty, old theological libraries, pulling down the drapes, letting in some light, and getting people to talk about this stuff. ANd you know what, if they don't know the difference between that hypostatic union and homoouisos, so freakiin' what?
 

That's why I'm doin' what I'm doin'.

I guess the difference is between saying to the patient: "Hey! Guess what? YOU've got CANCER!" and saying, "This isn't easy to say, but the test came back positive. It's cancer. I'll do everything I can for you, and if I can't do something, I'll try to help you find someone who will. In the meantime, I suggest you ... (fill in the blank)." The first is clinical. the second is human.

BTW, I'm not talking about theology; I'm talking about the nature of Scripture, what it is and what it is not in fact, and what it can and should be, and not be, in faith. The extremes of the Joshua thread are illustrative. Anonymous and Mom2 are voicing the majority of the pews. Notice how they react just by watching me speak plainly. They would be even less receptive to an in-your-face pastor or teacher.
 

My problem is that, by analogy, you, GKS, would rid the world of those researching cures for cancer.

Where you may have found unused, dusty rooms with books that did not bring you life, are, for many others, and the future no less, places of life, places where life is examined in its theological depth, forensic at moments, sure, but research is a life blood of the future.
 

I do not understand a single one of Feodor's comments directed to GKS in this thread.

Dude, what are you talking about? Where do see GKS claiming anything close to negative about his seminary experience or theology? Where?

Hell's bells. He's saying break it out all out onto the church whether the church is ready or niot, and I'm saying "whoa, let's work on getting it ready some more first." Why the heck would he want the knowledge of seminaries loosed onto the church in general if it was full of "unused, dusty rooms filled with books that did not bring "him) life"? He said nothing of the sort. Are you reading some other thread and then commenting here? Weird.
 

I think the communication break down might be this:

Everyday people who are inclined to think about God-church-eternal things ask the same questions asked, pondered and answered, however tentatively, in seminary -- but over beers, or pizza, or bowling, or working next to each other on an assembly line, and minus the specialized jargon and fancy-ass heuristics of the holy ivory tower.

I've been doing it my whole life. The only difference is now I'm doing it in a seminary. I dare say, most other Christians do it, too -- only the wee hours of the morning, or the quietness of the soul they doubt exists. And NEVER at church! Lest they be NEILED.
 

"All seminary does is provide a special vocabulary called "theology" (as a general catch-all) in which to couch very mundane, ordinary discussions."

I find this to be more than peevish; I find it to be a resentful and destructive understanding of the vital role of theology: faith seeking understanding where the discussions usually spend a lot of time mining through difficulty of expression and definition in order to try to get to the bedrock of human experience and moral progress. At its best, specialized language is a temporary stand-in while understanding matures, ripens, and waits for the church at large arrive en masse.

GKS consistently disregards the value of this narrow calling, and, like seaborn protestants of old, wants to ship off to someplace where elites don't exist, just wild turkey, squash, and the illusory, mythic "common man."

Not everyone should be operating on knees, though we all have them. Not everyone will be best at reflecting on praxis in order to guide right praxis, though everyone is called to love.
 

ER, you're just starting out.

Don't let GKS tell you that it's a short and easy road.

Theology, should you be called to it, is as difficult and yet truly "mundane" as physics.

It does not serve to disdain the physicist and cut class, saying, I got the gist.
 

Actually I believe GKS is arguing, to continue the analogy, that patients should have the very best information possible about their condition from the finest medical professionals. Instead, what they often get is "Trust me, I'm a doctor, I wear a white coat, therefore Im smart, don't worry your pretty little head about a thing, kitten."
 

Pablum from the pulpit satisfies no one. 99.9% of any given congregation can't even tell you Christ's true given name, much less why it was changed by the church. Why not?

ER has already bought into the wisdom that facts and truth should only be taught in the right time and place. Be sure it is wisdom if you want to keep your job in the vast majority of current churches. Is that, however what this is all about? Employment?

Maybe that is why Paul opted for tent making.

Tradition in Christian teaching is often the perpetuation of convenient lies. Like the Gospel of John was written by somebody named John who was an apostle, like Jesus was the name of the Christ, or Mary the M. was a prostitute and wasn't a disciple or an apostle equal in stature to the male dudes. So, when is it time to inform the masses in our churches, "you know we haven't been quite straight with you."

I mean, Jesus guys, some churches have split just over whether or not to just use one cup during the lord's supper. Feodor can explain that one. The lack of a 's' makes that much difference.
 

Alan, that's what I think, too.


DrLoboJo,

Paul was smart to be a tent maker. But, no it's not about job security: It's about the psychic breaks and despair, or anger and violence, that would ensue in most congregations after a careless and ill-timed "revelation" of scholarship.

It would take a special congregation, in several ways, to put up with me as a pastor or minister. And I don't think I'd try to impose myself on one that didn't seem ready to ... let God and let God. :-)

Heck fire, as a teen once I got relieved of VBS classroom duties (fourth-fifth-graders) and dispatched to work in the office -- because my God-is-Love-y'all approach disturbed the Gr'ups.

BUT: Love means being careful with peeps' hearts, even as you help them stretch and open their minds.
 

Name a theologian who says, analogously, "Trust me, I'm a doctor, I wear a white coat, therefore Im smart, don't worry your pretty little head about a thing, kitten."

Show me a 400 page, 800 page, 4,321 page treatment whose summary is "trust me, don't worry your pretty little head."

Isn't there some indication of the worry over persuasion and precision that it takes 400 pages, 800 pages, 4,321 pages?

Even the best selling theologians, Borg, Spong - are these the haughty, glib theologians we are talking about? Von Balthasar? Rahner? Tillich? Barth?

Bultmann and Wright may be closer and its interesting that it would biblical theologians who may be in jeapordy of too much cocksureness.

I'm sure we can find a couple we'd agree are not worthwhile, but let's have some evidence of these malpracticing theologians.

It sounds to me, so far, simply like the anti-intellectual roots of American religion writ liberal.
 

The only path I see toward a new reformation (which is, to greater of lesser degree the implications of what we are talking about: change existing structure and trend toward certain kinds of new theology), the only path worth taking, to me, would something like what the anti-psychiatry movement advocates.

Which, as far as I understand it, would be to wipe the slate clean of current systems, including eradicating all social custom and institutional practice, all conception of the issues, and starting anew in a changed environment of social expectation and a brand new evaluation of the phenomenal experience at hand.

When we incorporate Buddhism, gnosticism, etc. into our appreciation of an explicitly non-Christian God, we are transforming ourselves into syncretists. And syncretism is simply a return to a condition where a new movement or few movements arise with new, systematized, dominant forms.
 

No one was talking about theologians, Feodor.

ER wrote, "...because so many clergy are afraid to tell their congregations what they learned in seminary. Intellectual dishonesty in the pulpit is a disgraceful epidemic in our time...."

GKS wrote, "...one of our professors said in class that we had to be careful how we talked about what we learned in seminary when we got out there in to the pulpit..."

We're talking about pastors smoothing over and/or ignoring what they've learned in order to make sure they don't offend people in the pews or raise any uncomfortable questions.

As for evidence, I only have my own experience to go by, but I would point to all the ministers we hired in my church growing up who dispensed a theology so full of bubble gum and cotton candy that it would rot your teeth. Hard questions? Never. Don't want people to get so fed up that they don't show up .... and fill the offering plate.

That's what we're talking about here.

Thus, as ER wrote, "There is a national movement to bring biblical scholarship directly to laypersons..."
 

"All seminary does is provide a special vocabulary called "theology" (as a general catch-all) in which to couch very mundane, ordinary discussions."

"And, yes, I do believe there is nothing inherently special about theological vocabulary. It is what it is, and should be available to anyone."

"We aren't futzing around with some fun ideas here. This is life and death shit, and we had better start acting that way. Part of that includes opening up the dusty, old theological libraries, pulling down the drapes, letting in some light, and getting people to talk about this stuff. ANd you know what, if they don't know the difference between that hypostatic union and homoouisos, so freakiin' what?"

Alan, it seems to me that "theology", "theologians" (ostensibly present in seminaries - or at least the better ones), and "theological" language is in play.

__________


And it seems to me that St. Paul would not concur, exactly. ER seems to best represent St. Paul's argument that Christians need to take it slow and steady from milk to meat; otherwise they get "puffed up with knowledge."

Now, this is not an argument against knowledge of God and heavenly things, as St. Paul reaches for elsewhere.

What it is is an argument for the mature handling of such pursuits. GKS, it seems to me, is inferentially saying that we should speak the whole truth, bare, vertiginous, and if only allow the mature remain, so be it.

Where is the pastoral in this?

__________


Speaking of pastors, Alan, then show me clergy who say "Trust me and don't worry your pretty little head," and I'll show a clergy person who is not a theologian and should not have been licensed to serve.

Every pastor needs to be a theologian. The work simply cannot be carried out in care and love without this key component.
 

Note: I was quoting my pastor in this post.

Feodro, the only way I see forward is similar to the roads that got us here: reformation for some, counter-reformation for others, continuation.

And it's not anti-intellectualism I'm talking about. It's fear. And it's cruel to needlessly and carelessly create fear in people -- for any reason. There are ways to get the scholarship into the pew via the pulpit carefully and kindly, and I think it's a way very familiar to me as a former Southern Baptist: by invitation.

Come, let us reason together. Not: Here! Take this!

That's all I'm saying.
 

How many people have blessed for how many years by one young Linus van Pelt and his recitation of Luke's story of Jesus's birth?

I'm not going to be the one to tell Linus ... well, you know. It would do more harm than good.
 

"I'll show a clergy person who is not a theologian and should not have been licensed to serve."

Yes, that would be the point.
 

Again, who is saying this, "Here! Take this!"

Where is the rash of sadist pastor/theologians?

Tell me, I'm missing it all.
 

Why do I feel like I'm at the central market in 17th century Leipzig?
 

I think GKS is saying something like: The church needs to know what its own scholars are saying whether the church is ready or not, that is, "Here! Take this!"

I think you are saying that GKS is denigrating seminary by calling it mundane.

I think GKS is saying that there's nothing talked about in seminary that should not be talked about in the churches.

I'm agreeing with GKS, and I say most people in the churches are already having thoughts and questions being discussed in seminaries, but I'm advising caution while working to close the gap between the classroom and the pew, via the pulpit and church classroom lectern.

I really don't know what yer goin' on about, Brother Feodor. Maybe you and GKS just clash on things seminary, and things personality, because each of you is unfamiliar with the other's personal experiences therein?
 

So, GKS is saying, "Here, Take this!"? And you don't agree with that but do agree with him?

Now, I'm lost.

_____________

"The church needs to know what its own scholars are saying whether the church is ready or not."

What do you mean by "the church"? And what do you mean by "its own scholars"?

Did you buy published books written by Christian scholars? Is this purchasing limited to only a select set of people? An illuminati?

No parish I know is ready for or should spend the time getting ready for and then reading their way through von Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord. Not because the parish wouldn't benefit (I suspect GKS would comfortably oppose this) but because there is not the leisure of life for almost all parishioners to accomplish the readiness and the reading.

So, what or whom is von Balthasar for? 1) Because the gift from God that theologians are called to express is to push the reasoning of the church always forward, always consecrating new and expanding ideas about our relationship of love with the imminent and escapable Trinity. Parishes do not serve the Christian community if they, too, are living at the brink, much less living always with an eye to right doctrine as it shapes and is shaped by right practice. The parish is pastoral. 2) But for Alan's clergyman and clergywomen, theological work and nourishment is vital, in order nourish and strengthen and fortify them to be the appointed guide/counselor/pastor of the parish so that the community together is spiritually sound enough to care for itself and its world, and to spend time in critical reflection of its own practice.

So, three orders as it were of the church's life where reason is brought to bear on the system of faith: Theologian - Pastor/Theologian - Lay/Theologian.

Each order of person generally lives a different kind of life in relation to the foundational and exploratory task of theology.

None should be disparaged for the limits which the reality of time and leisure puts on their understanding. Each should be valued for the gifts they express under God.

When I say "orders" DrLBJ thinks power hierarchy. When I say "the limits of reality" GKS wants to privilege one end over another. When I say "theology," all protestants scratch a little and resurrect pleasant dreams of the past and claim outlines of founding principles but have, themselves, kept those principles in hermetic and dusty rooms.
 

Uno. When *I* refer to "the church" without qualification, I mean the various and sundry churches of all stripes with which I am familiar, which limits it to the West.

Two-o. There is no two-o. You lost me.
 

Lost, lost, we all get lost again and again. Who shall save us from this wretched trap? And how?

__________


ER, I get lost when I consider the tortured logic of your pastor's last paragraph:

"People are just no longer satisfied with ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments that obscure the way of life to which Jesus called us. The church of the future will be shaped by Christian practice, and the gospel will be about praxis, not doctrine - about faith, not about beliefs."

In wishing for biblical literacy, he proceeds to destroy many aspects of biblical purpose:

The Bible itself, as a Christian canon, IS an ancient creed and, very often in the NT, doctrinal argument. Some passages of which, sacre bleu!, we may disagree with as we find them, in point of fact, to obscure the "life to which Jesus called us."

True biblical literacy would be honest that the Bible itself is a selected product, having been screened by creed and doctrine. And as a product, it, preeminently, obscures in a way that he wants to blame, inferentially, catholicity for.

And if, as he says, "the church of the future will be shaped by Christian practice" -- rather than what he opposes: belief in a set of articulations -- and that "the Gospel" of that age will be about what we do ("praxis") and how we choose to believe for our time ("faith" vs "beliefs"), then what in the world is Holy Scripture for? How could biblical literacy operate so as not to deliver news, but to deliver us from its ancient news and set us free to be about what we think we should be about, disregarding the witness of the church down through the ages, beginning with the Christian Bible itself, a veritable product of Christian history?

What, I think, he is arguing for, is biblical literacy of the kind that throws away the Bible, and instead wants to pluck an ahistorical revolutionary out of its doctrinal arguments (made via epistle, chronicle [Acts] AND made via heavily shaped Gospel narrative.

He wants to use scholarship to strip the body and take out the soul. Biblical literacy is biblical surgery.

And so idealistic for and violent to the patient as to be both disastrously naive and thoroughly Machiavellian at the same time.

This is damaging obscurity, in my view.
 

My diagnosis of what is hindering the liberal mainstream Christian community is not theology or responsible biblical literacy. Maybe in the fifties and sixties, one could take the whole of liberal theology and find fault lines that damaged the Christian movement in racist American and colonial Europe.

But not the last thirty years. Theology and biblical scholarship, as a matter of fact, has led the liberal mainstream Christian community into bright new realms of socially and cosmically holistic conceptions and, by and large, slow as you go, practice.

My blame goes, uno, to what socio-economic change has wrought on all families. The life of the mind is quickly killed off after college by the demands on time that have escalated immensely. Not to mention that a distinct minority of Americans go to college.

My blame goes, duo, to a national problem with ethics over the last thirty years. Primed by Nixon, raised with loving care by Reagan, energized by a general, but deeply situated racial resistance, we have a profound problem with communal ethics. And by we, I mostly mean the white hegemony. Operating over generations, operating with almost total political power, white Christians have sought to defend an inner desire to keep racial change and its attendant implications for power and status at bay.

All the while, good theology was telling us that God is God's self a diversity, a communion of otherness, a welcome of a miscegenating and intensely interconnected cosmos. It was too much to take from the pew, and white Christians, liberals as well as conservatives, having less time to deal with the cognitive dissonance, having motivation not to deal with the changing landscape and the moral, theological demand for actively changing the landscape, successfully retarded the wave of theological-grounded discovery of "the other" and redemption of American history.

The Stonewall Inn was when? And where are we now? And what socio-economic regions are furtherest along?
 

Feodor, I think you have forgotten, or never knew, what it's like to live in a place where virtually every Christian is a biblical literalist a la Neil.

You have to keep that in mind when assessing what I'm about, what the church I attend is about, and what the pastor says. We defend biblical scholarship in self defense, and because the fact is what passes for Christianity in this state is mean, selfish and destructive. And so ignorant it's scary. AND IT GETS ELECTED TO PUBLIC OFFICE AND DIRECTLY AFFECTS PUBLIC POLICY.
 

I do live in a place of biblical literalism. At least in a nation where biblical literalists, and the politicians who curry their favor are killing health care for the needy, blaming their credit consumption on everyone else, raising apocalyptic fears about socialism, marxism, a mixed race president born who knows where, the womb of a jackal maybe.

Glenn Beck, after all, walks down Fifth Avenue with his wife, shopping before or after his broadcasts.

But doing biblical interpretation and theology in anxious, defensive reaction to bad faith leads to bad theology. Or, at least, the kind of internal contradictions found within Dr. Meyers' last paragraph.
 

Well, I think your conflating biblical interpretation and theology. And first, what Meyers is talking about is biblical analysis -- what IS the Bible and what it is not. Then, interpretation. But theology, I don't think, is what he's talking about quite yet, which might be your objection, and the gray area that makes me wonder what you're talking about. But I don't know.

I don't see any internal contradictins here:

"People are just no longer satisfied with ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments that obscure the way of life to which Jesus called us. The church of the future will be shaped by Christian practice, and the gospel will be about praxis, not doctrine --about faith, not about beliefs."

What I do see is a hasty generalization here, based on his experience in his congregation, which I can attest is a fair assessment: "People are just no longer satisfied with ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments ..."

You do find satisfaction, of a sort, in the ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments. I do, but as a historian -- and, because I fancy myself a historian of ideas, I do find a certain satisfaction in the creed's and doctrines' roles as the origins of what we profess and argue today. Not as foundations, necesarrily; but as forerunners.


Re, "that obscure the way of life to which Jesus called us."

I think you see those creeds and doctrines as informing, rather than obscuring the way of life to which Jesus calls us. Not all do. Not many do, not around here.


Re, "The church of the future will be shaped by Christian practice, and the gospel will be about praxis, not doctrine --about faith, not about beliefs."

I think you see a divorce of doctrine and practice, and a divorce of faith and beliefs, where, I think, he, and I, see an attempt to return to the thinking of the earliest followers of Jesus (as much as can be determined.)

The Epistle of James does come to mind, as well as the historical reality that the earliest followers of Jesus disagreed greatly on what it meant to follow Jesus.

Somewhere in there is the different concepts of "the church" that you and I -- and Meyers and others -- have of what "the church" is.
 

Mon frère (for some reason, I’m speaking French today – been reading T.S. Eliot), a few strong words for a strong brother:

Biblical interpretation is theology. Partly because there is something formally called biblical theology that springs from the larger vision when one does biblical interpretation, and partly because when one does biblical interpretation one inescapably reads with certain theologically oriented eyes. Now the best of thinkers try to be as conscious and corrective about this as they can; but it is a given in the field.

Again, regarding “ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments”, the New Testament is, par excellence, an ancient creed and doctrinal argument. Here, DrLBJ has central points in hand. The New Testament documents covers the development of Christian doctrine from the earliest letters of Paul, say the 40s CE, the Gospels (80s to early 100s) and whatever came last, say 120, maybe; who knows? The New Testament as a canon, which inherently constructs a loose theology that is nonetheless ideologically identifiable and in contradistinction with the rejected, gives us an indication of the debates within the church and how certain creeds and doctrines shaped the shaping of the New Testament.

To repeat, the New Testament, at least, and the Christian Old Testament to a lesser extent, is an indirect summing up of dominant Christian creeds and a set of loosely comfortable, sometimes uncomfortable, doctrines with certain remainders that keep the whole from being static.

So, what Protestantism has done is to obscure this fact about the Bible, all while leeching the blood of “ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments” from the experience of those who happened to live in lands where a protestant prince won out. Granted, Rome had previously obscured and withheld the power in the blood of the doctrine of grace. So, far from placing blame at the feet of creeds and doctrinal arguments, and, remarkably, still today, it is politics and power that kill the power of Christian faith.

And since we are close by, let me be clearer and point out the role of creeds, doctrines, and actively reflecting upon living Christian tradition (not dead traditionalism) and the corrective role such activity plays in regard to praxis: Christian faith best loves the world when its worship sustains the community in it ever winding life from praxis to critical reflection to improved praxis and round again.
 

Here’s a set of ancient doctrinal arguments without which I cannot love the word: a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. So, the Eucharist brings the presence of Christ to the community in a way that can be directly experienced. The sacrament provides for the body of Christ the food that is Christ, thereby opening up, by faith, a direct relationship and communion with heaven. With Christ within us, corporally and corporately, we are divinized. And so we go out into the world. But we do not go out into the world as if we carry divinity and the world does not.

Equally affirmed in the set of ancient doctrinal arguments is that Christ’s incarnation tells us that whole of creation, and any particular instance of it, cannot be alien to divine nature. If God can be born of a woman, then human kind, biological life, cosmic existence of any kind can be in common union with God, and is even now in imperfect but perfecting common union with God, and will be perfectly in communion with God. If this is true by faith, then there can be no ultimate Other anywhere or anytime in our experience. The experience of otherness is a mirage, a conceit, and ultimately destructive if trusted rather than worked through. Thus, ancient creeds and two simple two points from doctrinal argumentation, instill my faith that when I go out into the world in the presence of Christ, I am also going out into the presence of Christ.

The whole world itself is a sacrament. The whole world itself is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The world and I are one. The world, my community, and myself are one. The world, my community, the Trinity, and myself are one in total communion.

Now, if I heard that preached every day, every week, it would quickly become as trite as I am even now. Thanks be to God for the ancient praxis of the sacraments which keep me alive and safe from rhetorical death. Protestantism, in its abhorrence of the world and the sensuality of human nature, threw out the means of grace that is found via our own incarnation and that of the world. And the internal tensions of this history can be consistently seen, and consistently hinder, the discipline of ordinary, every day revival. With only rhetoric, revival has to be dramatized to Revival, and usually comes only once a year, if that. And when the faithful cease responding dramatically, they become old lights, and the new lights – meaning the young and the hyped – determine some new, bright, shining “doctrine” which ages in a generation.

Thus, the danger for every new epoch of protestant “praxis” is bogging down in temporality and the mundane. (Now, for sure, there is a deep critique of catholic habits of cultic “renewal” as opposed to spiritual renewal as well. But I’m not on that just now.)
____________

“return to the thinking of the earliest followers of Jesus (as much as can be determined.)”

Good luck with that onion.

For me, it’s the same vanity and naïveté as Neil.
 

I have quoted him before here and he is pertinent again. Jaroslav Pelikan spent his entire academic career pouring over ancient creeds and doctrinal arguments. and what he gave the church and the world is among the best "living" body of thought nourishing the church and informing the world.

At the beginning of his magisterial survey of the history of christian doctrine, he wrote:

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Finally, to resolve Pelikan's own resolve, he was a long-time Lutheran pastor who, in the last decade of his life, was received into Eastern Orthodoxy as he found orthodoxy to best represent his own deepest, life-long beliefs.
 

I have to go again, but I'd like to return and provide my sense of where liberal protestantism - especially the various congregational strains - is at its strongest in its Christian witness. This would include the UCC - a combo of restoration polity groups and confessional groups - as well as other liberal developments from the Restoration Movement.
 

Note: I have been to Texas and back, been swamped with studies, and have written a seminary paper in the past, oh, 36 hours, and have not read the last half-dozen or comments here. I will anon.
 

Re, "Biblical interpretation is theology."

I agree. And the Bible itslf is just one interpretation after another all the way through.
 

Re, "Christian faith best loves the world when its worship sustains the community in it ever winding life from praxis to critical reflection to improved praxis and round again."

Agreed. I note, too, though, what seems to be a willingness on your part as regards how one should regard the creeds. Maybe? As frameworks for the given collective thought-interpretation of a certain time and place? Maybe that's too loose for you.

But I like the way the UCC puts it: Creeds are testimonies of the faith of our fathers, not rigid checklists, the specific assertions of which we all must accept now.
 

Re, "Good luck with that onion."

Thanks.

Re, "For me, it’s the same vanity and naïveté as Neil."

Naivete, I will accept. But I sure don't think of Neil as naive! Wrong about a lot. Narrow-minded. Conceited. A host of other things. But not naive!
 

Re, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”

Excellent summation of my own recent epiphany-decision regarding that Damned Red Flag of th Rebellion, which came at a point certain of a long conversation I have been having with myself, my Southern friends, my ancestors and historians.
 

An aside: You know more about Protestantism than I do. Whatever you think you see in my words here, and what you know of my actions, you can attribute, I suppose, to ignorance of non-Protestantism imposed by the fact of the separation from Rome, but not to deliberate action, or thought, on my part. I was an adult before I even thought of Baptists as Protestants, thanks largely to J.M. Carroll and "The Trail of Blood."