The Answers

Zen Gouda

July 18, 2014

The Answers

I found this in my folder on Romans, the only thing in my folder on Romans. How it got there, I don’t know. It’s a printed copy of an email correspondence with Gaspar Stephens from June, 2011. I write:

Just finished reading a review of Robert Jenson’s new book on Canon and Creed (John Knox Press). The claim (Jenson’s claim not the reviewer’s, though he was nodding his head like a bobble-head doll) – the claim seems to be that we need to be reading Scripture through the Creeds, undistracted by the futile fiddle-farting of anyone since. The proposal looks to me very much like the argument for originalist readings of the Constitution. In this case, the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople got it right. Add: and I know what they meant.
       It’s hard to imagine that there were people less in a position to get Jesus right than the Greek-speaking bishops that gathered in fourth-century Asia Minor, except perhaps. . . just about any other group (or school) of theologians or biblical scholars you can name. It’s one thing to think, “We’ve got to get this right” – that’s what Jenson is thinking as well (“Bless his heart,” as our mothers used to say of one poor misguided dear or another, always repeating, “Bless his heart.”). He’s thinking: “We’ve got to get this right; it’s important – it’s the important – stuff.” It’s one thing to think that; it’s quite another to think we ever did or can.
       There’s Paul, who tried his damnedest and maybe thought in Romans he had. And then there’s Jesus, who told parables – maybe because he knew in advance, or even from the examples around (Pharisees, chief priests, and scribes) that creeds weren’t going to work.

Gaspar writes back asking whose daddy’s ox is being gored. And I reply:

Good question. Let’s divide by two.

            In this case, as in all others, there seem to be two kinds of people, those who don’t know the answers and those who can’t believe there are those that don’t know the answers because they have them and are more than willing to share. More simply, there are searchers and there are those that have already found. (I’ll add that I’m not convinced that all those that have found are as confident in their answers as they pretend (even to themselves). Otherwise, wouldn’t they, like our old friend from when you were in Berkeley, Zen Gouda (I’d be pretty sure he didn’t spell it like the cheese, but then did he spell it at all?) – wouldn’t they just sit down somewhere to enjoy them (the answers), picking the lint out of their navels and holding it up to the slanting rays of the sun, “Beautiful, man!”? Wouldn’t they soak in the truth as in a warm bath, steep in it, and leave everybody else the hell alone?

            But they can’t, because they are joiners, because they can’t sit alone with the answers; the answers need to be shared. They need to convince others; not to mention they need to keep talking about them to remain convinced themselves. So, institutions.

       Joiners (1) create institutions and institutions become dogmatic as the answers get either clearer or more likely – this is not the same – more refined. Oddly, they are more “refined”—this is the opposite of the way ore is refined – by having more accreted to them. (If answer A is so, B, C, and D΄ must follow. Write that down, Miss Chalcedon.)

       Other joiners (2) then join the institution, because it’s tough to be alone, especially if you’re both alone and you truly (truly) don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re convinced that someone must. As joiners (of both types: joiners (1), the convinced; and joiners (2), the confused) – as joiners of both types continue to join, the institution acquires not only accretions to its dogma, but over time it acquires a history, which must also be respected. Dogma requires dogmaticians; and history requires historians; and pretty soon you’ve got not only circumcision but theological and historical reasons for it. I mean: How the hell did that begin, snipping the end off an eight-day-old’s pickle?

       But I digress. 

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