Reconciliation
By Ralph Lynn, Former Baylor History Professor
Perhaps the most serious problem Christians now face is the necessity of reconciling our traditional religious views which have come from a geographically small, pre-urban, pre-scientific world, with our globalized, chiefly urban, science-directed, computer-driven, information-dominated present.
Aware of my limitations, I cannot offer even the framework of that needed reconciliation. But perhaps a survey of three crisis periods in Judeo-Christian history may give some guidance for the project.
In the Babylonian captivity, the prophet Ezekiel (As I understand the story) and his fellow Hebrews faced a challenge; they could assimilate and lose their identity or they could be true to themselves and find reason to hope for a long-term survival as a distinct people.
Sustained by the dawning consciousness that his God was as real in Babylon as he had ever been in Jerusalem, Ezekiel met the crisis with a three-point program. He assured the people that their heritage was superior to all others and he convinced them that the strict practice of circumcision and adherence to dietary restrictions would mark them off from their captors and help secure survival. Finally, he was careful to instruct the people that they must be good citizens of Babylon.
Jesus, in quite different circumstances, adopted a different tactic. By then, dietary and a thousand other restrictions had fixed the minds of the Hebrews less upon eternal spiritual values than upon daily, inconsequential concerns. To combat this situation, Jesus reminded them with an effective symbolism: the "Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
More importantly, Jesus did not abandon the Hebrew heritage:
he planned to change "not a jot or a tittle." Instead, quoting from what we call the Old Testament, he taught that the greatest laws were these: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self."
The third figure to appear as a reconciler is the 13th century Dominican monk, Thomas Aquinas who set the pattern which we have followed.
The context in which he worked was different from that of both Ezekiel and Jesus. By the 12th and 13th centuries, the western Europeans were beginning to learn more of the intellectual achievements of the Greco-Roman antique world from the Arabic Moslems who had invaded Spain and southwestern France.
This new pagan literature based on rational, logical, scientific approaches, was so fascinating and frightening that the dominant Roman Catholic church condemned it.
Almost alone among the Christians, St. Thomas mastered the hitherto almost unknown logic of Aristotle and a good deal of his science. This courageous monk then wrote volume after volume to reconcile traditional Christianity with the convincing new knowledge.
Unfortunately but understandably, he trimmed Aristotle`s science to fit his era`s rigid Roman Catholic theological framework- which successive theologians have continued to do. Even so, it took several generations of Dominican lobbying to overcome Franciscan opposition and have Thomas forgiven and sainted.
Change then, as now, was king-and not just in religious circles. The increasing knowledge of Greek and Roman pagan antiquity persuaded secular minded people to launch out on their own intellectual adventures.
The result was the renewal of confidence of men and women in their ability to use reason and courage in analyzing, understanding, and trying to solve vexing earthly problems. This, we call the Renaissance.
Probably it is accurate to say that our current crisis began with this western European acquisition of our Greco-Roman heritage. This renewal of confidence in our ability to understand physical and social problems soon brought us Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Watt, and Darwin as well as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,, and others of our Founding Fathers.
These illustrious names are landmarks leading to the current overwhelming avalanche of change which we simultaneously love, hate, and fear.
Unable to essay the role of the reconciling prophet, perhaps I can at least point to the nettlesome problem with which, so far as my reading informs me, we must deal.
Instead of tailoring the incontrovertible facts of new knowledge to fit theological propositions, about which nobody can actually know anything, we need to face the harsh realities of the present and the future instead of appealing to a past not all of which has served us well.
Sadly, the present and the near future seem to hold little promise of the emergence of effective reconciliation. This is partly because knowledge is now so varied and so vast that no one person can hold in his mind all of the pieces of the puzzle.
St. Thomas operated in a simpler world. The literature then available was not beyond the mastery of one person. More importantly, St. Thomas needed to convince only a handful of fellow scholars whereas the modern reconcilers will inevitably have to contend with innumerable reactionary foundations, cynical and ignorant talk show hosts, and political and pulpit demagogues who will arouse our now democratic populace against any change.
Any reconcilers must try to avoid alienating the masses of believers. Like Ezekiel and Jesus, and even Thomas Aquinas, the reconcilers must persuade the people that they, too, must be realists.
The reconcilers must recall Ezekiel`s admonition to the Hebrew captives that they must be good citizens of the hated Babylon and Jesus` instruction to his followers that they must
"render unto Caesar that which is Caesar`s." They must also remember Jesus` command that his followers must be "as wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
