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John
Guest
8/13/2002
17:55:19
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 Subject: Christianity and Particularism
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The relationship between particularism and Christianity has come up often on this board and on the blog.
What evidence in the Christian tradition (outside of St. Paul's lettters) supports a cultural particularist viewpoint?
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
8/14/2002
08:13:04
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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Good question and I hope several people can contribute. Here are some things that seem relevant:
1. The Tower of Babel. Try to abolish the distinction between Heaven and earth through political unity and technology and the whole thing falls apart.
2. The distinction between Christ and Caesar. Christianity proposes no single universal law. While there is a Muslim nation and a Jewish nation there is no Christian nation in the same sense. It follows that existing historically developed laws and cultures retain their validity. Further, it is better that none be universal to avoid a false impression of absolute validity.
3. The tendency of Christian evangelists during the 1st millenium to accept pagan customs and observances (Yule, Easter) and transform their significance. That tendency was prefigured in Acts--gentile converts were only required to change their customs in a few specified ways (e.g., abstaining from fornication and things strangled).
4. If you count current Catholic slogans as part of tradition "inculturation" must mean particularism is OK.
5. There's an essay by Jean-Marc Berthoud, The Bible and the Nations, that reviews the Biblical evidence.
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John
Guest
8/14/2002
12:31:03
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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To expand on number 2 and number 3, the fact that the Judaizers (who tried to make the Gentiles accept Judaic customs from Leviticus) were considered a heresy by the Church Fathers strenthens the argument.
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John
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8/29/2002
01:12:12
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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Time to liven this up a bit:
One sentiment is that Christianity is wholy universal with little or no particularist aspects and that the exortations to follow the authorities were corruptions by Paul and others based on the Roman political environment and later to justify the status quo. The calls to follow Caesar were most likely added in later, according to this point of view.
I don't know of any concrete references for this understanding but it seems similar to what little I've heard about the 'Jesus Seminar' and in the articles of Liberal and/or Protestant writers.
Jesus' own actions of rejecting His own 'family' and His telling of a potential apostle that it is necessary to let the dead bury the dead to follow Him could be seen as the need to reject one's own unbringing if it gets in the way of following Christ. A rather radical idea that justifies rebellion against corrupted authorities or simply against the authority of those that are 'stumbling blocks'; honoring one's parents for example.
A way to look at today's contemporary politics then would be thus: the Sadducees would the Religious Right and "neo-cons" and the Pharisees would be traditionalist conservatives (especially Anglo-Catholics). The New Sadducees favor accomidation with the Neo-Roman Imperial authorities while the Pharisees are hypocritical pietist-has beens and both groups reject the truth. Which is, supposedly the social teaching of Christianity, focusing on Jesus, would seem to suggest that the Welfare State is actually a good development. And the forces of multiculturalism and restitutive social engineering are actually providing charity and promoting brotherhood amongst all of humanity.
One could also ask what good is a conversion of a society to Christianity if the conversion isn't a revolutionary re-organization of the preceeding 'sinful'society. Replacing druids and bards with priests and real human sacrifice with a virtual one doesn't seem to be a 'real' conversion. Conversion itself is a break with the past; if the Old Ways were given--in a round-about way--by God, why change their hearts and renew their minds in the Christian direction?
This is the old saw that both the Right and the Left make between the relationship of "conservatism" and Christianity.
I'm looking for concrete and coherent viewpoints of others that challenge the sentiments outlined above. ;)
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
8/29/2002
08:02:38
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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In order to extract "Jesus the political revolutionary" from the Gospels you'd have to get rid of:
(1) "My kingdom is not of this world": the distinction between the things of God and the things of Caesar, the payment of the tribute money.
(2) The temptation of Christ, which makes it clear that Christianity is not about political rule, solving economic problems, or the conquest of natural necessity.
(3) The individualistic aspects of Christianity: the taking of one and the leaving of another, the mingling of the wheat and the tares in this world and their separation in the next, the generally antipolitical ethics of nonresistance, etc.
Writing a new gospel that leaves those things out would be quite arbitrary.
It's true Jesus sometimes downplays social authorities quite dramatically. God comes first. That doesn't mean the modern managerial state comes first. Its claim to take precedence over all other social authorities is not the same as Jesus' claim that God takes precedence over all social authorities. The fact the modern managerial state claims to abolish hierarchy and compulsion and thus politics doesn't make it true.
The contemporary liberal state tries to unify all men on the ground of securing for them equal respect, prosperity and security through a rational system of compulsion. That's not the same as unifying all men on the ground of love of God and neighbor. Also, treating social respect, prosperity, security and the ability to achieve your desires as the highest goods is not at all what Jesus had in mind. Demanding that those things be equal doesn't change what they are as goals.
The Pharisees were experts who put their own spin on religious and social tradition which meant that everyone else was wrong and had to do what they said. The current equivalent is the politically correct. The Sadducees seem to have been well-placed and rather unadventurous, so they were like moderate Republicans.
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Carl
Guest
9/02/2002
18:23:27
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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One thing I would like to point out in this very interesting discussion is the practice of the Orthodox Church - there appears to be a different church for every ethnicity. The Orthodox practice appears to allow for particularism in a way that western churches do not. As I understand it, ethnicity is regarded as having been created by God and therefore it would be considered sinful to work for the destruction of any ethnic group - including one's own. Has Catholicism and the rest of Western Christianity gones down a bad path here in their interpretation of the universalist aspects of sciptural teachings??
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
9/02/2002
19:34:31
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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In an email discussion list I once tried unsuccessfully to convince an intelligent convert to Orthodoxy that the tie to ethnicity was necessary for their ecclesial setup. The thought was that they don't have a pope, so they have to stick closely to concrete tradition integrated with a comprehensive concrete way of life. But in Christianity a "comprehensive concrete way of life" is simply an ethnic tradition, since Christianity unlike Judaism or Islam doesn't propose a comprehensive code of behavior. For the same reason there are no Orthodox universities. Their outlook just doesn't take to being rationalized.
To my mind both the Orthodox and the RC approach have their appeal. I don't know how to split the difference though. Maybe the current pope is trying to do so by limiting himself to teaching orthodox doctrine in general terms and leaving the discipline and "inculturation" mostly up to the bishops etc. on the spot. Unfortunately they're mostly botching it. It's very difficult to reverse centralization.
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Jason Eubanks
Guest
9/03/2002
03:29:53
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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Mr. Kalb,
You're right, Eastern Orthodoxy is much more mystically inclined than Roman Catholicism. Mysticism is of course not easily rationalised. Read the works of Sts. Seraphim of Sarov and Gregory Palamas for further discussion. Also, look at the highly stylized art of iconographers like Andrei Rublev.
The bishops rule the church along national lines (e.g. no Russian bishops in Greece) and not necessarily ethnic ones (Cyprus has seperate bishops than Greece). You're correct to assert this is neccessary for Eastern ecclesiology because Orthodoxy places a strong emphasis on close relationships with the state that may seem very peculiar to western outsiders. Latin claims of cesearopapism, however, are completely lacking in merit.
Ethnicity is very important for the Orthodox. The Patriarch of Moscow uses historical ethnic primacy when debating Western missionaries and their secularist partners. I personally haven't heard priests emphasize it much here in America. But I can tell you that almost immediately after my conversion I began to strongly identify with traditionally Orthodox ethnic groups and nations. Some of our critics dismiss it as an historical artifact from the confict with Islam and Catholicism that arose in the post-Byzantine era. But I'm not at all convinced because the Byzantines strongly identified Orthodoxy as essential to their ethnic character to the point of excluding the heterodox from political institutions from Emperor to the oblast. However, I'm willing to admit that religious conflict tends to highten Orthodox ethnocentricism.
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Otari
Guest
9/03/2002
08:34:10
| RE: Christianity and Particularism
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The discussiom is very interesting, and as a traditional Orthodox Christian I would like to add few comments.
When talking about Orthodox Ecclesiology, one should always bear in mind that the Church is at the same time Universal (Katholikon) and local.
Now, the universality of the Church is expressed in its Faith, its Teaching, which transcends time and space ie the Church is the Body of Christ and this body is one. So faithful in Russia or in Uganda are members of this same body as long as they confess the same, unchanged and blameless faith in Christ - the Orthodox Faith.
The Church is local in its govenment and spiritual tradistions (although these latter too are part of One Orthodox Spiritiality) - the local bishop is the head of the local church and his "rule" cannot be hindered by any other bishop. Now the bishops of individual national or historic territory do assemble in a local Synod headed by a Patriarch or Archbishop, but the latter is just a chairman of the synod and honorary head of that Church and in no way does he rule over other bishops. These local churches are particular in sense that they liturgize in their native language and have their many local traditions integrated in the services of the Church. Moreover, the local, national Churches have many times become banners of national identity - a Russian is he who is Orthodox (not the way round).
So the ultumate expression of the Universal Church is the Church Council where all the bishops of local Churches assemble.
Therefore Orthodoxy is Universal in terms of the Faith and is particular in its local spiritual inheritance. Although the latter should in no way contradict the former.
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