Ecclesiastes-Based Real Estate Advice
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| The Private Intellectual Ecclesiastes-Based Real Estate Advice |
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Monday, May 18, 2009 Doubting Thomas Once More As a Lutheran sufficiently troubled by the direction of our tradition to experience tempations to Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism (as, I think, good Lutherans ought from time to time, as we are not and never really should have been a "church"), I appreciate Daniel Larison's reminding me why I'm a Lutheran nonetheless: Everyone is stricken with doubt at times, but it has to be understood that doubt, like an illness, is something from which one may suffer but which is something that needs to be remedied rather than perpetuated or celebrated. Physical illness can have a humbling effect, but a proper understanding of theological anthropology tells us that illness, like death, is part of our fallen state. Doubt is a function of a mind clouded by the passions–it is the result of confusion. It does not teach us anything, but rather prevents us from learning. From a sufficiently objective point of view--God in and for God's self, so to say--this is perhaps right. God's own purposes and actions are entirely free of doubt. But with respect to the experience of the believer this is wrong, and it is not a trivial error. Consider how many Scriptural saints fall under this condemnation--Abraham and Sarah, Moses himself, the David (and other authors) of the Psalms, all the up to Christ on the cross. A God who hides himself (Is. 45:15) is either a sadist or a God who wishes his people to experience doubt and grow through it. Centering our whole religion on an execution restored by a miraculous resurrection is nothing if not an invitation to continual doubt and struggle, by which the saints are continually built up. Larison goes on to completely misread the famous Thomas pericope in John 20: The One Whom we have been proclaiming to be truly risen ever since the week before has to appear to Thomas so that he may believe in the most fundamental truth of the faith, without which, the Apostle Paul has told us, our faith is in vain. In other words, St. Thomas’ doubt at that moment was a failure to believe in things not seen, and in that failure he was failing to believe the one thing that all disciples of Christ had to believe if their faith was to mean anything. If we look at it this way, we understand that doubt is not necessary, nor is it profitable, nor it is good, but it is rather a betrayal of the power and truth of faith. Doubt is a kind of denial of the Master. Having just written extensively on this very subject, I won't rehearse everything here. In short, as a misreading of the story this approaches completeness. There's no surprise in that, as Thomas has been turned (like Abraham and nigh every other character) into a placard representing a particular virtue and/or its lack, to the utter neglect of the story itself. Thomas alone among the apostles was denied the sight of the Lord, and John constructed the story in that way for a reason that had nothing to do with condemning Thomas. Read the story again and pretend you don't know the moral and you'll see what I mean. Of course Thomas doubted--the story makes it impossible for him not to doubt. This whole mindset is characteristic of a certain approach to Christianity that stigmatizes and marginalizes the lived experience of faith in favor of an almost obsessive return to ideal forms. How many souls have been burdened with unrelievable doubt because they've been told it's an illness we'll never know. This is not to say that Obama's invocation of doubt, at Notre Dame and elsewhere, isn't shallow and self-serving. Doubt for thee but not for me, you might call it. It's an approach to doubt that is used to defend the status quo, in this case on abortion but just as easily in another area as well. But the misuses of doubt do not define its properties. Labels: Christianity, larison, Lutheranism, Obama posted by Benjamin Dueholm | 1:27 PM
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