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Docta Ignorantia XXXIII A Little of This, a Little of That The sacrament is merely a reminder for believers. It has no soteriological efficacy on its own, as part of its own nature. If it did, this world would have been perfect 'er now. Claims respecting a soteriological efficacy in the sacrament are related to the clergy's upkeep, not to the sacrament's nature. Everything we do in this world is a reminder of the real one. No thing isn't a sacrament. All is equally Holy. Nothing exists independently of the Divine noumenon. Everything was, is and always will be sub specie aeternalis. Besides te on (Being Itself), what on (Being) is there? Have theologians and the church not declared this fact clearly enough? In any other institution than the church, a decline in number and frequency of users such as the church has experienced for 30 years would have incited a housecleaning of leadership by outside directors. But, obviously, a housecleaning of the church has not occurred. On the contrary, the decisions which caused the decline are being celebrated by the leadership which made them as evidence of their, the leadership's, puissance and intelligence.1 It could be argued cogently that the chief reason this leadership has been steward to a decline of the church and a correlative deterioration of culture is that it refused to face the exegetical/hermeneutical questions raised at the start of this century by Albert Schweitzer.2 The questions Schweitzer put, be it noted, were only the most public issue of the same. German, including English, and Celtic scholarship had uncovered the problems as early as the 14th Century (Wycliffe) and was well into them by the 15th (Huss) and especially the 16th (Luther). But once the Vedas began being translated at German Universities in the 17th and 18th Centuries, the stream of questions heaved up into a torrent that Schweitzer, finally, distilled into a palatable albeit urgent and compelling compote. What did the church leadership do with Schweitzer's questions? They stonewalled them. They took the questions as a threat to the maintenance of their large congregations, or in other words, to their livelihoods. Finally, after some hand-ringing in the 30s and 40s of this century, especially in England,3 they declared them all moot. Today, officially among the church leadership, this is the status of the exegetical/hermeneutical questions distilled by Schweitzer from 600 years of Celto-Germanic scholarship. Many publicly minimize Schweitzer and declare him an incompetent or an eccentric, anything to deflect attention from the fact that they haven't answers for his questions and intend never to try to get any. It can be argued that the church's decline is due to this stonewalling by the leadership. Stonewalling a legitimate matter causes the stonewaller to lead a double life, one private, where they know the facts, and one public, where they present a pose. And a double life is hypocrisy and hypocrisy is destructive. This is the logic and the truth. For 50 years the church leadership has known that only infrequently is the Jesus of the Gospels a figure of history. Most of the time, the Jesus of the Gospels, especially the Synoptics, is a construction of very conditioned Marcionite and Alexandrine tendentions. The truth is that the religion Jesus inspired inspires adherents largely despite the Canon which purports to purvey it. The Canon helps,4 but were it not for the ability of God, through the Name of Jesus, to say directly in the heart of those He calls, there would be no Christian religion at all.5 The leadership, knowing about this incongruence of the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the Gospels, has not told the laity and indeed says directly or implies a silentio that the one is the other. This dissembling is why the laity has left. They can't put their finger on it, but they know they're being led around by the nose and not leveled with. And they sense, rightly, that the leadership has no intention of ever coming clean. Of course, the leadership has no intention of coming clean because by now they don't know what clean is. They can't answer the questions because they don't even remember what they are. The leadership is still afraid that facing the questions at all will invite doubt about the Canon which will, in turn, empty their pews. So the charade continues, the leadership hoping against hope that they won't be found out and called to accounts for their perfidy and the laity sauntering around to this and that device to quench such spiritual thirst as remains after their years of imbibing poisoned waters. It was the leadership's own refusal to face the implications of biblical scholarship which precipitated the demise of their support. They got the thing they feared by not facing the thing they feared to face. Had the church leadership faced the exegetical/hermeneutical questions and answered them, would the church have undergone decline during the leadership's stewardship? Is truth self-evident and is humanity included in the realm covered by Augustine's dictum (and the truth), esse qua esse bonum est? There is not now anything wrong with the church other than that the leadership is fundamentally dishonest because it won't face facts and is doing no more in the spiritual realm than gritting teeth and waiting for pensions. The only thing that afflicts the church today is the leadership -- a dishonest, hypocritical, ignorant and malingering brood. If this be not the Prophetic Imperative, then find out what is and make the most of it. You may find it smug, but I'm laughing. Everything we do in this world is a reminder of the real one. The Sanctuary of God is the heart of man.
1 Yes, the king is naked ....
Adwaitha Hermitage
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