Experience Revisited
In the new science of the right and left brain, the former hemisphere is preoccupied with the big picture, surveying the vista from an altitude. I want to offer, from such a vantage point, a common observation about modern and post-modern thought. It is one that is prominent in the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, namely that the intellectual movement called ‘romanticism’ is a key factor in understand how the modern viewpoint. In counter-poise to rising rationalism, born of science, came a renewed emphasis on feeling, and in reaction of individualism a reclaiming of the corporate. Romanticism in art, philosophy, and politics was reminder that the irrational, the affective, and the social are important, though overlooked. Now the ways this worked itself out have been different. On the more conservative side, people came to admire the Middle Ages as the age of faith and chivalry- think Sir Walter Scott. But others rediscovered feeling in bohemianism or in what they saw as the exotic- think Lord Byron or Paul Gauguin. It is not hard to see how, in the 19th century this led, for example in Anglo-Catholic liturgy on the one hand, or in a kind of liberal theology which translated doctrines into states of feeling. These influences remain with us, though we should be quick to respond that truth still matters, and thinking about and defending the faith are abidingly important.
Let’s be clear- philosophy and culture are not the same thing as theology; the latter has to do with the particular claims of the Gospel. But trends of thought touch all of these; they become the air everyone is certain period breaks. We are always, in any era, struggling to express the Gospel in its uniqueness in terms people can understand, and not to allow the ‘winds of doctrine’ (Ephesians 4) to distort and redefine the Christian hope. When it comes to the modern turn to feeling, there have been two contrasting dangers. Some have equated it with the primordial urges of ‘blood and soil’, of irrational allegiance to nation and even race. This led in terrible directions in the last century, and we must guard against in our own as well. On the other hand experience may become endlessly diverse, each defining one’s own, so that religion becomes solipsistic. At the end of the day the Word of God in its givenness is the antidote to each.
Let us take one last step. In reaction to this tendency for truth to devolve into ‘different strokes for different folks,’ without much of an external criterion, into the void has rushed- power. Words are instrumental, and what matters is power. In the political realm there are versions of this on the left and right, which are mirror images of one another. (This devolution into the ‘will to power’ is often associated with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and the descent toward him with a Catholic philosopher named Alisdair MacIntyre).
As Christians we need to practice and advocate the balanced Christian life, the ‘reason for the hope in us’ (I Peter 3) yoked to affective prayer, corporate liturgy, service in the world, and a practice of contrition and reconciliation. These represent the whole of the person, though the evangelical may feel it more in a sermon on grace and the cross, the Anglo-Catholic more in the awe of corporate Eucharistic worship.
This imperative has come to my mind as we look forward to the next RADVO Conference, for which we thank the Church of the Incarnation. One of its speakers, Simeon Zahl of Cambridge University (whose theologian father Paul is a friend), has breathed new life into the debate about experience in theology. He seeks a way to use the term distinctively consistent with the ‘grammar’ of the Christian life. For example, he begins his treatment with the New Testament questions of distinguishing true and false spirits, and of assessing charismatic phenomena- you can see how these questions abide with us. It is a question worth asking and I am looking forward to hearing how he goes at this question (and any other he has for us).
