mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (11/12/85)
>Deconstruction and A/Theology belong in the academy dealing as they do >with the purely theoretical and cognitive problems of theology. If you >cannot appropriate the philosophical tradition in the form of Hegel, >Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Derrida et >al.. then you simply cannot participate. >"We" have not excluded the clergy or laity. Should any of these decide >to do the work that would allow them to discuss these matters at a >contemporary level then there is no problem. Why tie feathered wings >to your arms in an attempt to fly when you can absorb the insights and >mistakes of past generations and build something like the space shuttle. >The theological/philosophical "technology" lies in plain sight of laity >and clergy (almost any University or Divinity School) but yet both >clergy and laity "fail" to appropriate and as such they are condemned to >forever repeat the mistakes of the past. >If we must speak in technological terms one can say that in the same >way that the surrounding technology supplies the appropriateness for >shuttle fights, so too, the surrounding intellectual disciplines (esp >Philosophy) supply the appropriateness for A/Theology. In that the >ancillary disciplines to aerospace technology made space flight >inevitable, so too the ancillary disciplines to theology (Literary theory, >Hermeneutics, Historiography, Philosophy) made A/Theology inevitable. Using the word technology has the aesthetic implication that one can regard Impressionism or Abstract Expressionism in art as technology, too. Yet it seems to me that they are not technologies, but merely frameworks and viewpoints. I therefore must ask if these philosophical advances are also merely changes in viewpoint. >In the analogy both disciplines reach their culmination in modern times >(or "postmodern times" for theology) by alot of hard work by alot of >people in alot of disciplines. It is in this way that people like >myself look upon the work being done in AAR with hopeful and visionary >anticipation in the same way that those in the aerospace industry look upon >the latest greatest toy that they have created at the zenith of all the >informing disciplines and technologies. >Lets be clear about who is doing what where. Clergy and Laity are the >sites of everything that is obsolete in theology. If they'd get an >education in an interdisciplinary context then they'd find this out. >They are the purveyors of everything that "doesn't work." They possess >the tradition of the mistakes of the past - exemplified. They comport >the "flying contraptions" of past eras making countless modifications >to something that "we" all know will never fly. They are the "museum >pieces" of the past by which "we" can vicariously revisit with >nostalgia previous eras. What better an insight into "Orthodoxy" than >this. Not only an intentioned craving of the past on their part but an >attempt to valorize it. Living anachronisms for public display and >enjoyment. Lots of rhetorical florish-- little substance. One might just as well argue that the laity are the repository of a truth which the academies will not condescend to approach. Hidden in Gary's statement is the assertion that the academies can safely ignore the religious experience of both clergy and laity (not to mention theologians) as irrelevant. Care to justify that? >There is no arrogance in this as there is no arrogance on the part of >those technicians, engineers and scientists at NASA as they observe the >spectator observing the launch of the space shuttle. But lets be clear >as to who is responsible for what. Lets be clear as to who is >spectator and who is the participant. Lets be clear as to who has done >the work and who has not. I completely disagree with the first statement. The analogy is utterly wrong, and my experience as a computer scientist leads me directly to the conclusion that experts and professionals in almost any field are rife with arrogance. First, the analogy. The products of theology are very little like those of engineering, and quite similar to those of psychology and sociology. The latter two both require of the masses that they practice as amateurs in the field, regardless of training or education. So in comes the expert to tell them what to do. What justification is there for paying any attention to them? Why on earth should a footwashing Baptist, full of the passion of the experience of Jesus, pay any attention to this erudite philosopher who, innocent of any such experience, drops in and declares it all a fraud? Frankly, the repudiation of one's own experience under such circumstances I would consider to be a great failure of personal integrity. >Laity and clergy are the observers and spectators of the theological >process. They "feed" on what theology in any contemporary period >"discards" as currently un-useable - laity and clergy are parasitic on >an enterprise that they have had no part, have no part, and will never >have a part. Utterly backwards. The laity and Clergy are in fact the PRODUCERS of the raw material of theology: religious experience. Theology's one advantage in this respect is that it can create systems without having to be bothered with relating them to reality-- something which can only be done through the clergy and the laity. >Would you expect anything less from any other profession ? If you can >say what differentiates a top notch systems programmer from a user then >you are well on your way to see the difference between theology and >clergy/laity. It becomes a matter of both insight and ability. >Theology is a professional discipline with its own rites of passage on >the level of any other professional discipline in modern world. Alot >of people forget this - I won't let you. Any person who thinks that a computer person's relationship to a programmer is related to the relationship between a layperson and a theologian clearly misunderstands one relationship or the other. THe true relationship is on a different plain: I suggest comparing instead a computer theoretician to a programmer. In the latter case it is the theoretician who must justify himself, not the programmer. Programming works regardless of theory, and so it is theory which must conform itself to programming. I suggest the same situation obtains with respect to theology. Charley Wingate (Should we continue this by mail, rather than shouting from the rooftops? I get the strong impression that nobody else except Jeff Gillette is listening.)