First of all, go to Karl's blog and read his post there. I'm going to use it as a platform and background for my comments today. Refer also to John D. Zizioulas' Being as Communion, pp. 27-65 (the first chapter of the book).
Tripp has allowed an opening in his paradigm of personal experience as foundational to Faith and life. He has allowed the influence of external experience (others, the Church, etc.) to offer the sort of correction to personal experience that one might deem necessary. Karl rightly points out that we need to stop for a moment and take a look at what we mean by personal/individual and corporate. Just these very issues have come to the fore over at Jeff's blog with regard to Paul's language and theology and preeminently in Jeff's wrestling with new liturgies coming up in the seminary chapel.
It seems obvious to me there's a huge problem here with the personal/individual paradigm. Tripp and others who espouse it seem to me to barely get off the go-space into contradictory experiences before we're lifting up the banner of autonomy and non-coercion and backing away from the corporate. What we're left with is something like a chaos. Proponents of this view celebrate this and read this viewpoint back into the early histories of the Church. "See," the remarks sometimes go, "we're just like the early Church. Things were a mess then. They still are. Everybody believed contradictory things, but we all had koinonia, or participation in the Body and fellowship."
But is that really true? First of all, was there really all that diversity? And if so, of what did that diversity consist? A straightforward reading of the revelant texts would indicate that where diversity existed one would find in it, heresy. I know. I know. Already my pro-diversity friends have their backs up. "How dare you call me, so-and-so, whoever, a heretic?" Easy there. I'm just saying that the diversity was rife among heretics. The Church very early on developed a strong unity and conformity of belief and worship. Just read Clement of Rome, Ignatios of Antioch, and Justin Martyr from the very end of the first century (Justin was mid-second century). Then dive into Cyprian of Carthage and Hippolytus of Rome. Then take a ride with the Cappadocians. You will be amazed, as was I when I read them, at the thorough uniformity of belief of different persons in different eras, in different geographical areas. Even those whose teachings (or rather, portions of them) were later condemned shared an astounding uniformity of belief: Tertullian, Origen. That's why we still use significant aspects of their works. Some of what they wrote is clearly the belief of the Church.
And all, of this, folks, within the development (really clarification) of dogma through these wild and wooly early centuries.
I heartily doubt my account laid to rest the skepticisms of those who are opposed to this sort of reading anyway, but it needs to be said.
My main point however, is to piggy-back on Karl's blog. The concepts of personhood and individuality as we understand them today, were not what the early Church believed. As Zizioulas points out so clearly, the New Testament sees the "individual" Christian fundamentally in terms of the Body. No Christian is separate from the Body. No one, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 10-14 and Ephesians 1-4, etc., can even be a Christian apart from the Body of Christ. So if we are to disagree with the Body, we have a dangerous situation on our hands such that we are separating ourselves from the Body by our own decision, or at least potentially so. (I am leaving aside the question of who/what constitutes the Body in our day. Just take my use of Body in the most generic biblical sense--if that's not a contradiction--possible. In other words, I'm not arguing for/against Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, or Protestant.)
The paradigm of those who propose the personal experience as the foundation to the Christian life, then, first of all find themselves in a contretemps. On the one hand, they are in fundamental disagreement with Scripture and the the Fathers and Mothers of the Church. But more to the point, they have no real basis for establishing koinonia. According to Scripture, koinonia is founded on/found only in, the Body of Christ (Acts 2.42ff, 1 Corinthians 10, 11; Ephesians 4.1-11, etc.). If we found koinonia on personal experience, what does one do when there are so many contradictory experiences? Practically speaking? We split the Church. So we have Rite I services and Rite II services. We have traditional hymns services, and contemporary music services. We have youth services and adult services. In short, we have consumer Christianity, or "consumeranity."
Now, I know one objection will be: our personal experience is located in our relationship with God/Christ, and through God/Christ we have koinonia. The Church doesn't matter all that much, then, in this regard. To which I reply: Prove from Scriptures and/or the Fathers that koinonia is through our own personal experiences of God, apart from the Church, and I'll back off my comments and rethink my paradigm.
But if our koinonia is only through the Body of Christ and in that Body with one another, then personal experience cannot be the foundation of our koinonia nor of our belief.
Posted by Clifton at February 7, 2003 01:04 PM | TrackBack