Moving away from religion toward Christianity
Moving away from religion toward Christianity
To think of Christianity in such terms is to drift toward the relativism that Pope Benedict has so famously decried. Hence Benedict XVI has insisted that personal spiritual experiences can only become meaningful within the shared context of a lived theology. And the collective life of the Church is far more than a form of social or political association. Christianity is not an ideology. These modern representations of religion can constitute a reduction of Christianity to psychological, sociological and political categories and can result in a denial of its claims to transcendent truth. Benedict XVI has a masterful grasp of all these reductionist tendencies and he has pushed back hard in order to restore recognition of the richness and depth of Christianity. So one might say that we have a Pope who is opposed to religion — and in favor of Christianity. Thank God for that.
To begin to read the byzantine ramblings that compose theology is to take an unwelcome road trip into the bizarre, the absurd, the insane. It’s no wonder Dawkins is accused of being ignorant in this area. To fully understand the rantings of theologians, one has to enter a world far stranger than Alice ever dreamed.
Nevertheless, in this world, you get oxymorons like “moving away from religion toward Christianity.” I guess we are talking about shades of orthodoxy here that only the ‘initiated’ can grasp. Theology, however strange, finds a lot in common with literary criticism or interpretation, and if theologians would act accordingly, then they and their literature could take a respected place alongside traditional scholars. Since Shakespeare and religious texts both contributed a substantial portion to modern metaphor, theologians could no doubt provide some useful insights into language and history.
But no. It appears Benedict is leading the charge against any and all dilution of his precious “transcendent truth.” Any attempt to describe religion in meaningful human terms has become anathema. He and his fanboys continue to insist on staying in the haughty realms of “onto-theology,” acting as if papal authority could somehow cause their interpretations of their god character to have relevance to larger humanity. It is a fitting and very postmodern irony that they cling to the laughable notion that their rarefied and circular fantasy scholarship has any inherent meaning at all outside of their delusional community.