Newbigin on the one world faith

"We face here, surely, an ultimate decision, which is, in the last resort, a decision of faith:  whether we regard the multiplicity and change which characterize human life as a mere veil which has to be torn away in order that we may have access to ultimate reality, or whether we regard them as the place where we are to meet with and know and serve the divine purpose; whether salvation is by absorption into the Supreme Being, conceived as undifferentiated and unchanging spirit abstracted from all contact with phenomena, or whether it is by reconciliation to the Supreme Being, conceived as personal will active in and through phenomena.  Here is the dividing line between all religions; and the main tradition of Hinduism stands fair and square on one side of it.  The claim that Vedanta is the truth transcending all religions is necessarily a flat denial of the central truth of biblical religion. . . .
"[Hinduism's] claim to be the truth transcending all religions is necessarily at the same time a negation of the truth of those religions as their adherents understand them.  So far from providing the basis for a permanent truce between the religions, it is--when properly understood--a declaration of war upon all religion which claims to be based upon a historic revelation."

J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, A faith for this one world? (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 39, 41. I've read only this one lecture ("Where shall we look for a world faith?"), which begins as follows:  "in a unified world, such as ours has become, only a world faith has any future. . . . No faith can command a man's final and absolute allegiance, that is to say no faith can be a man's real religion, if he knows that it is only true for certain places and certain people.  In a world which knows that there is only one physics and one mathematics, religion cannot do less than claim for its affirmations a like universal validity" (30).

Newbigin on the data

"How far, for instance, can the principle of democracy be carried in the sphere of religion?  A friend of mine was a member of a Sarvodaya community of the kind which I have described, in which, as elsewhere, the Lord's prayer was used for common worship.  One member of the group expressed his difficulties with the phrase 'forgive us our trespasses' which did not, he felt, correspond with any reality in his own experience.  The problem was brought up for discussion in the whole group, as the result of which my friend as the only Christian was very courteously requested to bring back a revised draft of the prayer.  He had difficulty in explaining his inability to do so.  The idea of something absolutely given, a datum in religion, threatened to disrupt a fellowship based on the principle of agreement by discussion and sharing."

J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, A faith for this one world? (New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1961), 33-34.  I've read only this one lecture ("Where shall we look for a world faith?").

Tushnet and Zaleski on the institutional church

"All institutions are 'structures of sin'; but without [them] there is no virtue."

Eve Tushnet, http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#779962140238887582.


"One still hears complaints about the 'institutional church'--the very expression betrays a parti pris.  But how would we know Christ without the institutional church?  Who else would preserve the great secret of the gospel for us through the centuries, keeping it safe in the wilderness of opinions?  We live in a world of institutions or in no world at all, and the institutional church is surely the greatest institution the world has ever known. . . .
"Do we have more reason to trust experimental, free-floating forms of religious life?  Give me an institution any day, a big sprawling, international one, where authority resides in structures and traditions and is not invested in particular personalities; where my own personality is of little account, and yet I get to keep it.  The ship of faith has its anchorage in the world, and I thank Constantine for it."

Carol Zaleski, "How my mind has changed:  Slow-motion conversion," Christian century 127, no. 1 (January 12, 2010): 30-31 (26-31).

Zaleski on the beauty of dogma

"The dogmatism I now wish to recant is the dogmatism that blinds us to the beauty of dogma."

Carol Zaleski, "How my mind has changed:  Slow-motion conversion," Christian century 127, no. 1 (January 12, 2010):  28 (26-31).

Gibbon on toleration

"The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful."

Edward Gibbon, The decline and fall of the Roman empire (1776-88), chap. 2, as reproduced in the 5th edition of the Oxford dictionary of quotations (1999).

Don't beat the Picards

"'Jehan, Jehan, cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum disciplina.  Jehan be good, Jehan be studious, Jehan don't stay out of college all night without legitimate excuse and your master's permission.  Don't beat the Picards, noli, Joannes, verberare Picardos.  Don't rot on the straw of the classroom like an illiterate donkey, quasi asinus illiteratus.  Jehan, let yourself be punished at your master's discretion.  Jehan, go to chapel every evening and sing an anthem with a verse and a prayer to Our Glorious Lady the Virgin Mary.'"

Jehan du Moulin, mocking his brother Dom Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Josas, in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris x.2, trans. John Sturrock ((New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1978), 394).  cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum disciplina:  "The doctrine of the doctors, the discipline of the disciples have grown slack" (Sturrock again).

Bardy on Tertullian on the argument from prescription

"One is naturally tempted to compare Tertullian with Saint Irenaeus. . . .  The bishop of Lyon and the priest of Carthage study often the same problems; combat the same heretics; utilize, order to refute error, the same argument from the apostolic origin of doctrines.  But an abyss separates the two men.  Saint Irenaeus is, above all, in everything he writes, the disciple of tradition.  He takes care not to innovate in any way.  He repeats--in an original manner, of course [(d'ailleurs)], and by placing on it the mark of his own mind--whatever he has learned from his masters; and, when he wishes to show where the truth is found, he is content to refer to the churches that preserve the apostolic teaching, [and] to the church of Rome above all.  Tertullian gives a new form to the argument from Saint Irenaeus; he imprints upon it the mark of his juridical mind and proposes a whole theory of prescription.  [The argument from] prescription is a good one [(valable)] to be sure, but the apostolic authority that founds it has, of necessity, faded into the background.  What catches one's eye is the new form that the reasoning and the juridicism that inspires [this argument] has imposed [(prise, taken)].  Is it any surprise, then, if, having become a Montanist, Tertullian abandons the argument from prescription?  It is not he who penned the formula Non est de præscriptione arguendum sed de ratione vincendum.  But this formula of Cyprian does give expression to the thought of Tertullian as it appears in his later writings, [and] in De pudicitia above all.  Of what value is prescription, if reason calls it into question [(lui donne tort)]?  Or, again, if the Holy Spirit adds new teachings to those of the apostles?  Such is in fact the final step in an evolution that one might wish [had been] less rigid.  Carried away by the exaggeration of a merciless logic, Tertullian becomes the doctor of private inspiration after having been that of fidelity to the traditional teachings."

G. Bardy, "Tertullien," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 15.1 (1946), col. 167.  The argument from prescription is the argument from "Uninterrupted use or possession from time immemorial" (Oxford English dictionary), and Bardy elaborates on this, following Tertullian, in col. 146, pars. 2-3:  "in the matter of dogma, possession is equivalent to title."  And "The agreement of [widely scattered] communities among themselves confirms the proof", such that "the argument is solid.  The merit of Tertullian is to have found the definitive formulation of [it]:  Quod apud multos unum invenitur, non est erratum, sed traditum" (De præscr. 27; Bardy cites also 37).  I haven't read the whole article, but went looking for it in response to J. Bellamy, "Assomption de la Sainte Vierge," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 1 (1903), col. 2135:  "In the matter of tradition and of beliefs, it is in the Church above all that prescription is equivalent to title. . . ."