Doctrine or Dogma?

I am currently reading a book by Patrick Keifert, entitled We are Here Now, in which he begins outlining the structural and cultural dynamics associated with the missional church.  It is really a good book, and Keifert has caused me to start thinking about the role of the missional church within the churches of Christ.  It is not as if I haven't pondered missional church before.  In fact, I have spent a lot of my time following the missional movement from within the C of C.  Anyways, Kiefert talks about progress and conversation as key markers of missional churches, assuming some level of commonality, and the truth is that I am continually taken back by our (again, I speak primarily from within the church of Christ) lack of common doctrine.  I mean, we are always asking the question why do we spend all of our time arguing about doctrinal matters?  It is as if we feel that only the high-church systems with their written dogma should be wasting their time with doctrinal disputes.  Indeed, our doctrine is contained in the Word of God - the Bible - so, shouldn't we agree on the issues?  What is the deal?

I was talking with a good friend of mine today and we got into this conversation.  He is a fellow CofC-er and I was taking him to the Episcopal church here in town so that he could experience a new kind of worship - particular for the liturgy.  Anyways, we started talking and ended up critiquing high- and low-church models.  High-church for their abuse of structure and low-church for their/our lack-there-of.  The point of the conversation which especially was interesting to me was the sentiments toward written doctrine in the autonomous church-form (ie- CofC).  These feelings were readily expressed in my friend's feeling in the matter.  My critique of the autonomous church model is that we do spend our time in doctrinal disputes, primarily, because of our minimal, or complete lack of, written doctrine.  Being (a) Bible-based church(es) we claim that our theology emanates from the inspired Word of God - the Bible.  Thus, we take a very hard and twisted view of sola scriptura - resulting in the claim that scripture is the exclusive word of God.  Here and there, I have argued that a broader understanding of the word of God would be beneficial for the church of Christ.  Unfortunately, our restricted understanding of the word of God has led to an unhealthy approach to church doctrine.  Claiming scripture as our doctrine, falsely assumes that all readings of scripture will yield a common interpretations.  Unfortunately, reading is interpretation and all interpretation is necessarily relative.  Therefore, although we assume that our reading of scripture can suffice as our doctrine, we must come to grips with the reality that church of Christ doctrine is the the unwritten conglomeration of a multiplicity of readings and interpretations of scripture.  Hence, we spend most, if not all, of our time in heated debates over proper CofC doctrine instead of in constructive conversation.  Rather than viewing common written doctrine as dogma, we might begin to see it as the starting point for conversation.

This is the major point of emphasis.  Written doctrine should not be considered to be our ontological treatise on God - such would be dogma.  Instead, a clearly articulated common doctrine provides the church with common ground to begin discussing, rather than circularly debating, the theological framework of our faith.  Written doctrine cannot be considered the ultimate declaration of our faith, or else we risk idolatry, but should be considered as a starting point in our journey toward discovering who God is (not).  I offer this as a suggestion from a young theologian who is frustrated by the lack of theological clarity in his heritage and wishes to build upon the rich tradition of the CofC without drowning in the ambiguity of unwritten doctrine.  To God be the Glory

When God is ...

A Reflection on Barbara Brown Taylor’s When God is Silent

“God rid me of God”[1]   - Meister Eckhart 

Meister Eckhart’s seemingly paradoxical utterance – to be rid of God, by God – is powerful beyond the simplicity of the words he uses.  In this cry, which could be uttered in a single breath, Eckhart speaks words that have the potential to change our perception of who God is (not).   Eckhart desires that we might begin to reconsider the language which we ascribe to God and be reminded that the God we speak of is not God in reality, but our language of God is the linguistic representation of our mere perception of God.  Indeed, the only thing which can be attributed to God, being the one who is both lovingly immanent and mysteriously transcendent, is that which God has chosen to reveal – namely, the word made flesh in the person of Jesus.  Yet, as Barbara Brown Taylor makes clear in When God is Silent, we have over-stepped our perceptive-boundaries and have fashioned an idol, in the place of God, with our language.  Therefore, according to Taylor, God has taken a vow of silence in order to combat the incessant pillaging of language that is being carried out in the name of God.  And yet, it is in the very moment when God’s silence echoes from every corner of the universe that the heart of God becomes known and the silence becomes deafening. Through God’s own silence, the word of God is spoken.

The silence of the spoken word is not exclusive to the Divine-human relationship, but is indicative of the human-human relationship.  Taylor describes our present human experience as being “live[d] after the Word”[2] and uses the metaphor of a famine to illustrate the malnourishment which words are presently able to supply because of the overuse and abuse of the spoken word.  Words are no longer the vessels of (trans)formative power that they once were. Rather, the ever-continual ambiance of noise and words which fills every waking moment of our lives, has served to not only suck the meaning and significance out of the word, but has numbed our senses to the potential life-altering power which might still exist in a well-cared for and timely-presented word.  And yet, we, as Christians, have the audacity to claim that the image of God we present to the world, constructed from the very words which no longer contain substance or nourishment,[3] is God.  It is no more idolatrous to worship the golden calf at the foot of Mt. Sinai than to believe and worship the image we have constructed with empty and meaningless words.  We have become an idolatrous people, mistaking our perception of God for the God who transcends all understanding – the One who is called Holy.

When we attempt to say something about God, usually through metaphor, we are not saying anything ontologically significant about God but are only articulating something about our perception of who God is and, transversely, who God is not.  Unfortunately, in the attempt to describe the perceived-God, we have mistaken the God who is for our metaphors of God, which can do no more than direct our gaze toward the Transcendent One.  Thus, we have semantically created a pseudo-God over whom we have control through the power of the descriptive word.  So much of our theology, then, has taken advantage of the liberty to make the positive move in constructing our image of God through language, but the positive move must be followed by the movement of via negativa, the deconstruction of our propositions concerning God, or else we are left worshipping the human-made image of God, rather than the God who is, and we are guilty of idolatry.  Hence, Meister Eckhart cries out to God, and to us, “God rid me of God.”

God’s answer to our incessant, and at times ignorant, idolatry is silence.[4]  Amidst the noise and business of our lives, the silence of God strikes a chord whose subtle reverberations are deafening to our ears.  It is an odd reality that noise, utterance and ambiance, are normative for our lives.  Taylor comments that “it is more and more difficult for us to choose silence when communication is possible … even now, some Christians have trouble listening to God.  Many of us prefer to speak.”[5]  And so, the silence which God imparts on us, an idolatrous people, is too loud for us to handle.  It is too awkward, too foreign, for us to exist in the utter silence to which God has retreated.  Our lives have been so calibrated to function amongst the noise and constant movement of our world that to hear anything through the silence is nearly impossible.  Our first inclination, when the silence is turned up to a deafening level, is to break the silence with speech, with words – empty, numbing words.  And yet, it is in this silence that God is waiting to impart words, life-giving words, into the people of God. 

We must rid ourselves of the graven image we have constructed with our words and come to the point where the only ontological truth we can assign to God is simply that God is.  It is at this moment of pure silence, where the descriptions and metaphors of God dissolve into eternity, that God begins to speak once again.  For, as Taylor articulates, “Silence [is] the backdrop against which the Word beg[ins] to be heard.”[6]  God will not speak until we have learned to hear in the silence.  In the silence, theology, our endeavor to know something about God, “is no longer thought of as a human discourse that speaks of God but rather as the place where God speaks into human discourse … we must seek, not to speak of God, but rather to be in that place where God speaks”[7] – to be people who can enter into the silence of God.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s admonition for homiletical restraint, then, becomes necessary instruction for the preacher of the word given by God.  It is necessary because of the paradox which all preachers of God’s word find themselves in – where their “speech exists in tension with God’s silence.”[8]  Who is anyone to speak when the most profound utterance of God can only be made in the midst of pure silence?  What can anyone say about the one whose own name cannot be said?  These are the questions that the messenger for the community of God’s people, the preacher, must wrestle with. 

Taylor’s advice, in response to such questions, is to be people who are marked by restraint.  To be messengers who do not think that God’s being is flushed by heaping a multiplicity of names and metaphors upon their listeners but, rather, know that God’s essence is most intimately felt when we fall short of words.  To preach the word clearly and concisely is to practice homiletical restraint.  To allow the word to work and permit the hearer to volunteer their attention rather than stuffing the message down their throats is, again, to practice homiletical restraint.  Finally, to treat the word with reverence, understanding that the absence of words is the closest we can come to hearing what cannot be said or heard, is to practice homiletical restraint.  For every positive affirmation that we ascribe to God, we must be sure to perform the necessary negation of that affirmation, or else disturb the silence which is necessary for the word of God to be heard. 

The practice of restraint is an adventure into the realm of mysticism, a journey in which our goal is to, somehow, come into mystical union with the transcendent God.  This is the telos for the preacher and is that which (s)he must invite the community of listeners into.  The journey of the mystic is foreign to our controlling nature as modern human beings.  It is where the comfortable clarity and predictability of our lives is no longer normative, but we are made subject to the infinitude of possibilities which exist in the silence of God’s immanent presence.  For, as Taylor says, “Our words are too fragile … God’s silence is too deep,”[9] and we are left, simply, with the God who is …

Notes

 [1] Meister Eckhart, (ed. and trans. Raymond B. Blakney; New York: HarperPerennial, 1941), 231.

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent (Chicago: Cowley, 1998), 18.

[3] Ibid., 23.

[4] Ibid., 38.

[5] Ibid., 44-50.

[6] Ibid., 74.

[7] Peter Rollins, How (not) to Speak of God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006), 21.

[8] Taylor, Silent, 89.

[9] Ibid., 121.