From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 10:17:45 EDT
A few very preliminary thoughts and comments.
--- "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net>
wrote:
(SNIP)
> Correct. Limiting the source material considered to
> be religiously
> authoritative can lead to corresponding limitations
> in the spectrum of
> religious worldviews derived from it. Narrowing the
> scope of a "religious
> data base" can lead to greater certainty in the
> theology (religious theory)
> derived from it. If certainty is the goal, then
> limiting the sources to be
> consulted sounds like a good strategy.
Yes and no. It seems to me that there is something to
be said for trying to make a distinction between
"primary" data and "secondary" data. Part of the
reason for selecting certain items for the canon was
their apostolic credentials, meaning that the data
were more primary than other data. This does not
necessarily promote certainty as the Christian
tradition well demonstrates with its schisms, many of
them to do with the extent to which extra-canonical
data should be incorporated into communal worship and
understandings of God.
What it does, however, is focus on criteria designed
to try to assure reliability which is something
altogether different than assuring certainty. I can
have reliable data that are subject to a variety of
interpretations, but without additional data I may
still be uncertain as to which interpretations may be
better, if you will.
> But look what happens if we were to follow the same
> strategy in science.
> Selecting one set of data and discarding other
> available data sets might
> lead to a scientific theory that seems very highly
> supported -- one in which
> we might have (whether warranted or not) a high
> degree of certainty, but
> what is the price of that sense of certainty? As a
> scientist, you know the
> answer. Certainty has been purchased at the cost of
> accuracy or truth, or at
> least an opportunity to get closer to the truth. As
> scientists, we value
> truth above certainty.
This seems a bit of a false dichotomy. Maybe my
experience in social sciences where we are often
quasi-experimental at best leads me to think this
distinction is not necessarily what goes on with the
establishment of a canon. As to the community's
experience with the Christ as the living human being
Jesus of Nazareth, we have a very limited data set.
It is conceivable that additional data may be
discovered, but the data we have is the data we have.
If we want that data to be as reliable as possible, we
establish criteria for determining which sources are
closer to the actual recorded experience of Jesus.
Thus, the apocryphal Gospel of Peter is obviously not
as close as the Gospel of Mark, aside from the fact
that there is theological disagreement over the
gnosticism of the Gospel of Peter, it is clearly less
likely to be a reliable witness to Jesus of Nazareth
-- being more distant in time, than the Gospel of
Mark.
While we can add to our understanding of God in
various ways that various of the Christian traditions
recognize, those insights are necessarily subject to
review in light of the "primary" data and ecumenical
understanding. Thus, for a revelation to be reliable,
it has to be consistent with that "primary data".
In arts and humanities, this distinction makes
abundant sense. For example, if we want to interpret
Milton's Paradise Lost, we actually read it, rather
than reading what C.S. Lewis or Stanley Fish had to
say about it (although we read them too to put our
thoughts into context).
Likewise, if I read commenters on Marx and determine
from those secondary data that Marx really meant X,
and I never read a word of what Marx actually wrote, I
think the reliability of my understanding of Marx is
likely to be suspect, unless I actually read what he
wrote.
In social science, the same sort of concern for
historical data inheres. If I am going to come up
with a theory of why people vote the way they do, it
has to comport with existing data on past voting
behavior (or I have to posit a reason that it holds
for some period of time, but not for others). There
are lots of other examples from social sciences that
are perhaps more appropriate, in trying to get at ways
of measuring variables that are not directly
observable, that I think are analagous to trying to
develop an understanding of God.
So, it seems to me that canonical literature is
designated as a self-checking, reliability mechanism
rather than a certainty mechanism (although it can
also be treated as such, but that gets into
interpretation which has demonstrably been far from
certain even within an accepted canon).
> It has long been my suspicion that the principal
> reason that religious
> communities designate some particular text as the
> authoritative canon is to
> achieve (at a cost) a sense of certainty that
> functions to stabilize the
> community. It's a very pragmatic function; and to
> the extent that community
> stability is good, the designation of a canon
> accomplishes something of
> practical value.
Again, I would replace the word certainty with
reliability, which casts it in a very different
different light. Obviously, other reasons play a part
too, but it seems this is one of the primary reasons
(and is also why there are differences in the RC,
Protestant and Orthodox canons given different
emphases regarding the concern of reliability).
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