In interesting confluence, the discussions Tripp and Jeff are having separately--Tripp about community, and, in the comments, Jeff about priesthood--are coming together around the terms of language and community.
There's no doubt that communities are formed, in part, by language. Whether language precedes custom, ethos, or custom gives birth to language, I'll not address here. But that language and custom together shape and are shaped by community, I don't think is all that debatable.
I have been contending, in the comments to Jeff's blog on the infallibility of the Church, that the Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox Church do not all mean the same thing when they say the word "priest." For ECUSA, priests may be both men and women. But for Rome and Orthodoxy, priest excludes women. And therefore the single term priest does not point to the same reality within the different churches. Jeff replied that when one looks on the function and role of the priest and how similar are those functions and roles within these communities when one does not look at gender, that it's clear that the term means the same thing, it's just that each has a different set of requirements. And I replied, it is just those different criteria that gives different meanings to the word. An Orthodox would never accept that priest means woman (among it's other meanings), and because that is so, priest would always mean something different to one in ECUSA. The priesthood of women in ECUSA was largely predicated on an understanding of political rights, though not without theological explanation and justification. For Roman Catholic and Orthodox, the priesthood is nothing but grace; political rights do not enter into the discussion.
In Tripp's blog on community, the wrestling is over whether or not community even exists, or if so, whether it ought to have shaping influence. I argue that we cannot but be shaped and formed by community. Even a stance that rejects community for autonomy itself comes out of a community that understands autonomy to be the primary human social reality. I don't think there is much debate about that, though the debate about whether one can be shaped by more than one community, and what that means about communal boundaries, would be a fruitful one. The debate however seems to center around whether communities can speak meaningfully across their boundaries and whether one community or another may discern communities (even their own) to be either good or bad, and whether such judgment can be made in an "extracommunal" way.
I replied that communities can communicate across boundaries, for example that a fundamentalist Christian community can communicate meaningfully with a fundamentalist Muslim community. The points of contact would be resemblances between symbols and words, which contact points can be exploited for deeper understanding. Muslims and Christians mean different things when they say the word "G-O-D," and therefore each worship a different god, the Muslim God is strictly monotheistic and transcendent, the Christian God is Trinitarian and both transcendent and immanent. The point of contact would, perhaps, be in the common acceptance of the unity of the Godhead, though unpacking each different theology for a fuller understanding of the other would be, admittedly, challenging. But it would, at least, not be dismissed immediately as impossible. Some communal boundaries are less permeable than others, but none are impermeable. Furthermore, that critical judgments may be made about communities outside one's own, while necessitating humility, nonetheless can be done. As I've already mentioned, few of us would argue that the plight of women under the Taliban is simply just another alternative communal life for women as compared to the fortunes of women in North Atlantic governments. Such extracommunal judgments may always be slippery, and fraught with self-serving deceit, but this does not make them impossible or unnecessary.
All this, then, is the bugaboo of what the present-day ecumenical movement faces. The different Christian communities do not always mean the same thing when they say the same word. For Roman Catholics, grace is something created. For Orthodox, it is uncreated. For Roman Catholics the content of the faith is guarded by and proceeds from the charism of the Roman bishop. For Orthodox the content of the faith is guarded by and proceeds from the charism of the Church. For Protestants, salvation is largely juridical, a declaration of righteousness, and, at least for evangelical Chirstians, is a point in time. For Orthodox, salvation is primarily a participation in God's uncreated energies, and is a process whose outcome, in terms of human life, is only certain upon one's death in faithfulness. And the list could go on. Just because we use the same word, doesn't mean we believe the same thing. The ecumenical movement must be more serious about this than it has been up to this point. (And by that I don't mean the proliferation of doctoral theses on these various theologies.)
Now I have drawn these distinctions in rather stark terms. Clearly there are points of contact at which all of these communities may understand one another. And precisely because there are points of contact of understanding, critical differences will not only become more clear, but indeed, those differences must become clear. That is to say, there must come a point for critical evaluation. Each community must be able to articulate that another community is right about this and wrong about this. These critical evaluations will reveal the underlying causes of disunity of which the aporia of language first gave hint. And it is at the point of uncovering the schisms which separate us, that the battle for unity can be fought with some hope of effectiveness. Because it is at the point that some clarity about what it means to be the one Body of Christ may be gained. And it will be then that the various communities may decide whether they wish to be that one Body or continue in schism. (Please note: I am not here advocating all become Orthodox. But I do take it to be the case that there is one Body, and that not all schisms nor all "Christians" are part of that one Body.)
But at least it will be an honest confrontaion with reality, and not a papering over of differnce because, after all, "we really mean the same thing."
Posted by Clifton at March 8, 2003 08:15 PM | TrackBack