Confessions and the Tao

While Sam is busy enculturating himself to the locals' ways, I am trying to disenculturate myself from the academicism which has become such an active part of my own mental process. I just got Lewis' The Abolition of Man for my birthday, and read through it in about a day's time. Men without chests... a creepy thought, even for one as pectorally challenged as myself. Yet I am one of these men, at least to some degree. My affections are few and lacking intensity (my wife has encouraged me to develop some preferences; she thinks they will do me good), and my actions are typically dominated by a need for carefully developed definitions and logically valid and completely stated premises. This has been the form of my education for many years now, and I have become exceedingly good at it. Unfortunately, an exceptionally developed and dominant Reason is not costless.

Aside from reading that great bringer of perspective (as distinguished from doctrine), C.S. Lewis, I'm also reading about Confucian and Taoist education in ancient China. I find that reading about the far east is a beneficial way to make the Hellenistic and Roman influences on my own thought more apparent, and thus easier to accept what is good (which is much) and reject what is not (which is also much).

This is probably related to the fact that I have recently been thinking about the shortcomings of logically precise language, specifically in relation to church creeds. We like to think that our precision protects us from error and allows us to communicate more. But if we look at the history of the Church, the early church father's didn't use precise language. Their teaching was heavily pastoral, and shepherding the flock means writing in a way meaningful for the layman. Much of what we consider to be precise wording was used only to explain why the teachings of the heretics should be rejected: the language was reactionary, not definitional.

Calvin used language this way when he asserted the "real presence" of Christ in the Lord's Supper to the Anabaptists, but rejected the "real presence" of the Lutherans and Catholics. Even as we look at the new testament, St. Paul does not use "justification" and "sanctification" in the technical senses reformed people use them today. The ideas we use them for are certainly present in his work, but his writings are letters, not religious dictionary entries or philosophical-doctrinal treatises.

Looking further back, it is clear that God generally speaks to his people, he uses stories and poetry, not formal argument. In Bible study this semester, we have been reading through Ecclesiastes. We have been seeing the Preacher develop a "confession of faith" of sorts, but rather different from what we usually associate with the phrase. As an example, the Preacher says

"I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man.
"I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away." (Ecclesiastes 3:12-15)

If we must express our faith only in sets of 5 points, "golden" chains of salvation, and careful parsings of ancient words like homostasis, we risk depriving ourselves of a vital part of how God seems to want his people to think, feel, and act. Divine truth should not be a cold thing, disconnected the hearts beating beneath from the brains above; and after all, do we really think that our care of language has eradicated Modalism from the Church? If we are just clear enough, can we dispose of faulty thinking?