[tmbchr]™

They didn’t care about theology



This is a great passage from an interview with ex-nun Karen Armstrong, who has become a scholar in religious history and written several books on the subject. The part in italics is the interviewer’s question, followed by her response:

You’re saying these ancient sages really didn’t care about big metaphysical systems. They didn’t care about theology.

No, none of them did. And neither did Jesus. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. In the Quran, metaphysical speculation is regarded as self-indulgent guesswork. And it makes people, the Quran says, quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian. You can’t prove these things one way or the other, so why quarrel about it? The Taoists said this kind of speculation where people pompously hold forth about their opinions was egotism. And when you’re faced with the ineffable and the indescribable, they would say it’s belittling to cut it down to size. Sometimes, I think the way monotheists talk about God is unreligious.

I think that’s totally awesome, even though it sort of undercuts a lot of what we do here. I often actually do feel like I’m engaging in self-indugent guesswork. Heck, most of the time, actually. But I guess I also see the beauty and usefulness of that as well, even though I totally get and agree with what she’s saying here.

If I could hold forth pompously for a minute about this, I have been thining a lot about this subject lately. And whether or not it’s egotism, I wonder if the way that we’re raised today, the way our culture is - if it requires that we (or at least some of us) pass through this stage of pontificating even when we really don’t know what we’re talking about. A stage where we have to go through theory after theory and deconstruct everything before we can get to where she’s talking about, and to where people of another age possibly already were naturally.

But I’m also willing to entertain the notion that clinging to this way of being really is simple egotism…

[found via Ran Prieur, who doesn’t want us to link to him anymore - take that!]

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4 Reader Responses

  1. Edd Says:
    June 4th, 2006 at 3:41 pm

    I certainly agree with Karen Armstrong when she says it creates splits in the church, but does is that the thinking itself, or just the lack of ability to reconcile differences?
    Even if the discussion is ultimately just self-indulgent guesswork, I could see it as “crosswords for the imagination”, so to speak. I find it interesting to look at theories and ideas as an activity in itself, much the same as someone may like sport, or movies. I like to think things also go a bit deeper than that, and maybe when I get to that stage it becomes egotism. I dont think that ever has to effect if you do good and are compassionate (from a religious point of view), the problems only arise when you cement your beliefs in these things, and try to enforce them on others.

  2. Bruce Says:
    June 4th, 2006 at 5:44 pm

    Hmmm, I wonder who those “ancient sages” are. They were surely not the ancients of Egypt, Greece, Persia or Chaldea, for instance.
    There was plenty of talk about metaphysics and theology well before Jesus walked this Earth. And who was that young man of twelve, found discussing with the Rabbis in the Temple? There is “meat and milk” in the Gospels, and not all of the “meat” was given to the common people.

    A wise man once said that the study of the Gospels can challege the greatest of minds, but also the simplest of folk can still glean from them.

    This question of knowledge and knowledge gathering is a big one. Maybe Karen hasn’t considered the relationship of knowledge to love. How can we love what we truly don’t know?
    “HAPPY is he to whom truth manifests itself, not in signs and words that fade, but as it actually is.”
    The Imitation of Christ
    -Thomas à Kempis: a great guide on humility and vanity.

  3. Tim Boucher Says:
    June 4th, 2006 at 7:32 pm

    And who was that young man of twelve, found discussing with the Rabbis in the Temple?

    Yeah, I thought of that discrepancy as well.

  4. suki Says:
    June 4th, 2006 at 7:51 pm

    If you think about Peter and Paul, etc. as shepherds and fishermen historically, and all that they had to do and deal with to get by, it makes sense that they would not be theologizing all day long. Also, Jesus seemed more of an action-man than a philosopher–remember the bank scene? He also demonstrated god’s forgiveness by dying for our sins, instead of, say, just pontificating about them, or philosophizing them away. I’m not saying they didn’t do it at all, but I am saying that they did not think of it the way people later did. I often think that people find their own meaning in books. Perhaps what makes the bible such a powerful, magickal book is not what it actually says, but that masses and masses of people decided to believe it true or powerful or magickal.



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