Source (in the public domain): http://radicalfaith.org/holloway/sixth%20paradigm.htm
From a talk Holloway gave in May 2003
Accessed: 2020-09-03
The Sixth Paradigm [Different Paradigm Shifts in Christianity] - continued
Richard Holloway (former Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh)
PARADIGM #4: The Protestant
Reformation Paradigm
Kung's fourth paradigm
(P#4) is one we're more
immediately familiar with - that of the 16th century
Protestant Reformation. It happened to coincide with the discovery of
the Bible by ordinary people. Once the new printing presses had swung into
action, many thousands of copies of the Bible became available to the person on
the street. It was very soon translated from Latin into the vernaculars.
Just as the Roman
institution had provided Christians with a feeling of absolute assurance, so
also some people found a similar assurance in the words of Scripture. The
absolute institution was replaced by texts which were perceived as the absolute
truth straight from the mouth of God. The fourth paradigm promoted the same
need for authority as did the third paradigm and pandered to the same fear of
freedom.
More profound than such
similarities is the way adherence to scriptural inerrancy prevents attempts to
do theology differently. In order to preserve its internal consistencies, this
paradigm must perforce retain an absolute commitment to a pre-scientific
paradigm of how this world works.
In this paradigm the sun
must be able to stand still, people must be able to walk on water, and the dead
must be able to rise again. In contrast, institutions like the Roman Church can
change and yet pretend they haven't. But how can anyone move off a doctrine of
scriptural inerrancy without admitting it?
From study of the Bible
as God's Word to humankind came the great theory that Luther evolved in
contradistinction to the fundamentalism if the institution. It's nearly
impossible for many Christians today to read Paul's letters to the early Church
except through Lutheran eyes, so compelling was Luther's interpretation of the
infallible authority of the Bible.
Luther taught that God
saves us not through any of our own works or good deeds, be they pilgrimages,
or masses or earnest prayer, but only through God's grace by the sacrifice of
the Father's son. That really was a paradigm revolution for those times. It
blew away the monolithic medieval Christianity of Roman Catholicism.
The Reformation church
is today perhaps the most dated in feeling of all the churches.
I don't know if you ever
go into a United Reformed Church building or a Presbyterian church. A few have
developed new liturgical forms and norms, but on the whole the classic churches
of the Reformation are, as we say in Scotland, very dour. They're heavy. You
get long sermons. They may be very thoughtful sermons but they're long.
It's all minister-dominated. There's no colour or brightness. It's very heavy,
it's serious, it's intense.
That is also it's
enduring value. It produces very serious people. Presbyterian Scotland was a
very serious country which, by dint of focused effort over many years, produced
a strongly democratic consciousness.
It also gave birth to
the Protestant work-ethic. This was fundamental to Scotland's experience and
self understanding. From this paradigm sprang also a well-educated public. John
Knox, the Scottish Protestant reformer, wanted a school in every parish and
largely succeeded in his ambition.
Despite this enduring
value, the Reformation remnant of the fourth paradigm remains depressing and
sexless. If you want to have a good time, don't go to one of these places on a
Sunday morning. For unless you're solidly masochistic you'll come out feeling
pretty rotten about yourself.
I often think that if
you want a great exemplar of the virtues and maybe of the downside of the
Reformation paradigm, look at Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's Chancellor of
the Exchequer (equivalent to the Minister of Finance in other systems). He is a
deeply serious man. There doesn't seem to be any frivolity in him. He's deeply
committed to his project - but he's not exactly a laugh a minute (although I'm
told that with some decent malt whiskey beside him he can be quite good
company). But there's no sense of frivolity of skittishness about him. In many
ways he's a brilliant exemplar of the best of the fourth paradigm.
***
PARADIGM #5: The Modern
Era Paradigm
The fifth paradigm (P#5) is the modern paradigm, that of the
17th - 19thcenturies. It is still powerfully
with us, busily influencing and interpreting how we perceive the world and our
lives. Nevertheless, we're increasingly able to regard it to some degree
dispassionately as we sail into new and unfamiliar seas.
This paradigm can
perhaps best be identified as a heroic attempt to steer the Christian vessel
between the hard rock of scriptural and institutional fundamentalism and the
deadly shoals of the cultured despiser's rejection of all religion as
irrational and infantile.
It's often called
"liberal Christianity" and generally refers to an amorphous group
within the Church which seeks to accommodate traditional formulations of
Christian teaching within the strictures of Newtonian science and the thought
and culture of modern times.
One is reminded of the
well-known crack about Adolf Harnack, the modern German Church historian and
theologian. His critics envisaged him looking down the well of time to discover
the real Jesus - and seeing only himself reflected there.
The great difficulties
of adapting tradition to the demands of analytical thought do not, I think,
invalidate the liberal Christian project. All versions of Christianity, without
exception, ultimately see themselves reflected at the bottom of that ancient
well. Discovering a civilised, liberally-minded 19th century
European thinker there is no worse and a good deal better than some of the
other characters seen down that well.
Despite its honourable
history, however, liberal Christianity is probably the most terminally ill of
all the five paradigms. Not only is it attacked from within the Church, but
those outside the traditional fold also like to have a go at it. Strangely, and
rather like a sewage worker inured to strong smells, the secular detractors of
religion often claim to respect and to admire the sincerity of those who still
adhere to an outdated way of interpreting the world - even though they don't
like it at all.
But the people they really
despise are not those who cling to the old paradigms in spite of the ways these
have been falsified by subsequent developments in human knowledge. They can
quite easily tolerate those they dismiss as cranks, albeit well-intentioned
ones. They truly despise those who try to adapt religion to contemporary
knowledge.
This, says the
cultured despiser of religion, is not possible. No translation of religion
into contemporary language can succeed. There is no Rosetta Stone to transform
pre-modern concepts into today's way of perceiving the world. Not even an
approximation is possible. The two world views are utterly incompatible.
As they see it, to be a
Christian today one must install in one's mind a set of first-century
assumptions, rather like an outdated computer program being put into a new
computer. They know and we know that these assumptions are false. The computer
will reject outdated software. It simply can't be read by an up-to-date
machine. Therefore, the only honest religion is dishonest religion. The only
valid religion today, they, they would proclaim, is obsolete religion. Religion
itself is a relic, sometimes charming, sometimes scary, of a long dead
world-view.
In addition, the
mild-mannered, gently rational and somewhat hesitant mode of the liberal
Christian (at his or her best) doesn't sit too well with the strident, macho
contemporary communications culture, with its straight talk and snappy,
sound-bite responses. Generally more mild and unassuming, the liberal Christian
voice tends to be drowned out in an all-pervading racket.
And yet the liberal
outlook on life and faith endures and no doubt will continue to endure despite
its conceptual difficulties and often low impact. Many tend to dismiss the
earthy, complex nature of humanity, regarding men and women more as minds on
stilts than anything else. They forget that our capacity to think, and all that
springs from it, is the most distinctive thing about being human. After all is
said and done, it is aspects of the way we think which set us aside from all
other living beings.
When it has finished
trying the fit a modern set of clothes onto the alien body of the past, liberal
Christianity will no doubt retain its nobility. It will do so through its
conviction that honest religion need not run counter to the best of the human
intellectual enterprise, which has its own glory and ethic.
***
PARADIGM #6: The Postmodern
Contemporary Paradigm
The sixth paradigm (P#6) is in the process of emerging. [Sometimes,
it is known as “the Postmodern Paradigm”.]
It hasn't yet fully formed. We are still, as I mentioned before, on the
borders of entirely new territory.
Like a child in the womb
this paradigm tends at times to take on rather strange and primitive-seeming
shapes. Insofar as I'm able to perceive it, there seem to be five aspects of
the embryonic sixth paradigm.
1.
First, it is a paradigm
about paradigms. Once we have discovered the idea of a paradigm, we cannot
help but recognise that no religious expression is ultimate.
The religious spirit is as wide and as untidy as humanity itself. Each historic
expression has and will have some enduring aspects and qualities. Parts of each
will endure beyond the death of the central myth. But every paradigm must by
definition be seen as ephemeral in relation to the vast reaches of time through
which humankind journeys.
2.
The sixth paradigm
is post-modern in the sense that humanity is increasingly, if
gradually, becoming uneasy with any words and concepts claiming to be set in
concrete (= “set in stone”).
We are no longer comfortable with sweeping, absolute claims to verity. In
contrast, religion is perhaps to be held up and talked about with modesty and
humility if it is to mean anything much to the vast crowds who swarm outside
the paper-thin bastions of Christian tradition.
This unassuming stance may be particularly important in the context of ongoing
scandals which presently disfigure and discount all the Abrahamic religions.
3.
It is post-hierarchical.
The ancient and not-so-ancient pattern of top-down power and authority is less
and less workable.
An increasingly important parameter of our times is a deep suspicion of power.
In reaction to its negative use is a growing need to build in checks and
balances wherever power is at issue.
In contrast, the dominant Christian paradigms still rest on the foundations of
previous, profoundly authoritarian cultures. They need to be radically revised.
4.
Religion is recognised
as a human construct. Those for whom Christianity is the result of
divine intervention in the world order frequently accuse others of throwing out
the baby with the bath water.
But the sixth paradigm does not necessarily reject the possibility of a
transcendent reality when it acknowledges that religion is created by us for
ourselves. To admit that no one religion is God-given and that all derive from
the fount of human need is not to proclaim the death of God.
If something no longer works, it's in our human remit to discard it. The
capacity to move on from what is failing to what works better is a cardinal
virtue upon which our very survival as individuals and as a species depends.
Old, worn out paradigms can be discarded just as decrepit human institutions
inevitably give way to the new.
There is a heavy touch of irony in this aspect of the sixth paradigm. If we
ditch claims to the absolute, we cease making absolute claims even for our lack
of absolutes. It's absolutely true that all claims to absolute truth are
false.
5.
The primacy of
the creation begins to stare Christianity in the face as the sixth
paradigm takes hold on our imagination. Perhaps, despite claims to high status
in God's dispensation, Christians aren't actually nearly as important as they
think they are.
We begin to see dimly that our religion is little more than an accessory in
life. Most people in the Western culture get on quite nicely, thank you very
much, without any religion at all. In the process they don't become any more
depraved than the average believer. Indeed, they seem to me often to be a good
deal kinder and more tolerant than religious people.
It seems we're reaching
towards a unitary understanding of the context in which we live, becoming aware
of that whole which includes us as a tiny part of it. What a lot of people
don't much care to admit is that in this whole we are intrinsically no more
important than any other part.
If every one of us were
to disappear today, the world would carry on regardless just as it did when the
dinosaurs went over the edge. Yet in our case it would be missing something
grand and beautiful. No single word yet suggests itself for this all-embracing
sense of context - but I would like the word "poet" to be in there
somewhere.
END OF SERIES 2/2
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