SMITH VERSUS REEVES

I am currently talking to an ‘anonymous’ contributor to Network Norwich (here) who, for various reasons, I refer to as Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is a Christian dualist: that is, he sees the cosmic drama very much in terms of a superior spiritual world set over against the inferior world of matter. Mr. Smith attempts to resolve those notorious ghost/machine incompatibilities via the introduction of a third component that he identifies as the soul which acts as the medium between incommensurables.

It is precisely this kind of dualist dichotomy, real or imagined, that I have been putting under the spotlight for a long while now. And for good reason too: so much human angst, so much existential heartache, so much religious alienation from the cosmic context, are bound up with man’s perception or misperception of his nature and place in the greater scheme things. Atheism is inclined to the view that we are no more or less than a configuration of a small subset of the matter we find in abundance around us. There is a consequent anxiety, even paranoia, that because we therefore apparently occupy no special or sacred place in the cosmos then perhaps one day the material cosmos, either in the form of machines or natural calamity, will visit us with disaster. Moreover, unconscious matter, rather than sentience seems the dominant and even primary cosmic phenomenon. Deep space views delivered by the Hubble telescope show more of the same: just more and more starry whirlpools of insentient matter indifferent to human affairs. The huge star fields over our heads are surely more than a mere façade painted onto a canopy. Billions of galaxies and eons of prehistory, we instinctively sense, must have a noumenal existence, thus making our place in the greater scheme of things seem insignificant. We experience great pains and passions, but extreme materialism not only sees humanity as ultimately fading without trace but even denies the reality of those ephemeral pains and passions.

As a reaction against all this Dualism is a seductive philosophy. It seeks support in the intuition that the activity of matter is mechanical, absent of sentience and has an independent ontology very distinct from our self aware selves. Although this intuition is not shared by animistic societies it is a common perception of industrial societies who have exorcised the haunted environment and now view it purely instrumentally and mechanically. And so industrial societies are acutely aware of the dichotomies of mind and matter, will verses mechanism. Ironically religious dualism doesn’t question the materialist’s assumption that an independent gritty matter is a real ontology. Instead it sees matter as a potential upstart and rival to the sublime spiritual world. Religious dualism is humanities way of reaffirming the specialness and sacredness of humanity by attributing an extra spiritual ingredient, an extra zing that sets humanity apart from and above mere matter.

And yet dualism as a philosophy is by no means obvious: Idealism challenges it by suggesting that matter cannot exist without mind, and moreover that matter is a phenomenon of mind. Berkley’s idealism sees God’s Mind as the substrate ontology and matter as an ephemeral concept that floats for while inside that Great Mind.

THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT.

In this article posted on the Christian Web site ‘Network Norwich’, the minister of Surrey Chapel, Tom Chapman (seen above with his wife), describes his struggle with a serious brain tumor. After quoting Isaiah 43:2 (“when you pass through the waters I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers they will not sweep over you.”) he goes on to say:

This is not, I think, a guarantee that we will always be aware of him holding our hand. That was not my experience, and don’t think it is the Bible’s promise. The point is not that we will never feel alone, but that we will never be alone. Cue “Footsteps in the sand.” Of course, if this promise never touched our emotions in any detectable way, we might reasonably start to doubt its reality – experience matters. But we must never reduce what is true to what feels true. And so I got wet, but didn’t drown.

We see here an age old theme, namely the interplay between feeling and knowing, between sensing and believing, between perceiving something and thinking something. Specifically we find, in this case, feeling, sensing, and perceiving the presence of God being contrasted with knowing, believing, and thinking God to be present.

As I have written elsewhere: “Ideas Versus Experience!” is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas.

So much of our thought turns on this dichotomy. So much of thinking life is taken up with the attempt to make sense of a world for which our immediate perceptions only ever provide a small sample. The struggle to join the dots of our experience into the wider understanding of a theoretical framework is a ubiquitous activity. The struggle is particularly poignant if a theoretical framework tells us that in spite of the immediacy of troubling experiences, things will turn out to the good in the end.

But although the dialectic between experience and theory is part and parcel of the human predicament there is often a great yearning to short cut this sometimes-tedious process. In particular, the devout have a tendency to be seduced by the promise of a direct connection with the Divine through sublime mystical experience. They are therefore more likely to be susceptible to the instinctual and inscrutable prepackaged conclusions of the intuitive 'right side of the brain' than to the analytical ‘left side of the brain'*. In this context there is a spiritual premium on sublime emotional contact with the divine; anything less is considered to be spiritually inferior.

Large swathes of evangelical Christianity are in denial about the fact that all of us see the cosmos through theoretical frameworks. They hate the taint of the theoretical; They despise so-called doctrine and ‘head knowledge’; They affect to have a direct communion with God via gnostic connections and frequently express fideist sentiments; Viz:

If you always process salvation through your mind you will never enter the fuller things in your walk. You must move from a place of cognitive reasoning ability to a place where faith and belief flows through your spirit and not your head … God is beyond your logic.

.... they don’t want a faith contaminated by the analytical mind; they affect to have a rustic faith where ‘just knowing’ is all there is to it; a plain and simple faith uncomplicated by whys and wherefores. But the view I have quoted above is inconsistent as it is itself an expression of a theoretical position, albeit an incoherent one.

The struggle that Tom Chapman relates is very candid, very true to life, and above all, very moving. Sometimes it seems that Christians who find themselves in the valley of the shadow of death have to be almost apologetic about not being on the mount of transfiguration. It is a perverse gnostic logic that estimates high spirituality to be measured by transfiguration experiences; accordingly those who are not exactly on the mount of transfiguration confound a popular spiritual paradigm and thus are to be applauded for having the courage to own up to the actual reality of their spiritual life. True spiritual values are, in fact, the very opposite of gnostic values. Those who traverse those dark valleys where hills hem them in, where they cannot see the horizon, where immediate experiences seem at odds with their grasp of the big picture, are facing a spiritual test that few of us wish to face. In that test, knowledge, theory, and analysis, objects so despised by today's touchy-feeley spiritual paradigm, provide the vistas onto a wider perspective that feeds hope and faith.

My prayers and hopes are with Tom Chapman and his family. I applaud his intellectual integrity as he drinks from the cup chosen for him. We all dread this cup and feel relieved that it hasn’t (yet) been served us; but there is no good reason why one day it might not come our way and who knows we may fail at the test; one works out one’s faith in fear and trembling. Tom Chapman’s integrity is to be cherished in the face of an evangelicalism that is so often inclined to compromise its authenticity by affecting to glory in the act of sacrificing intellectual integrity to the murky waters of fideism.

Footnote

* The intuitive right side vs the analytical left side is an over simplification of brain operation, but it serves as an approximation and metaphor in this context.

DIFFERENT PLANETS

The NCBC web forum has recently been removed – hopefully archived and then removed. The active life of the forum ran from late summer 2006 to about the end of 2007. During its 18 month life the forum accumulated many postings and even hosted discussions with gravitas and significance. But apart from myself there have been few postings since the beginning of 2008 and perhaps it has become an embarrassment that too many of the discussion threads were terminated with latest comments by yours truly.

After first notification of its impending doom, I suggested that the old forum at least remain available as an archive, perhaps with the possibility of adding further content should the need arise. This request, as expected, wasn’t granted and so I took the precaution of archiving some of the material that interested me. I may reproduce some of this material on this blog in order to reestablish its much-deserved WWW exposure.

In theory NCBC web activity has moved on to its facebook pages. But looking at these pages, and especially the related facebook group, there has only been a trickle of light and innocuous activity during 2007, and very activity little since the beginning of 2008. Compared to the first year of the forum NCBC facebook looks as though it has been struggling from day one. Other than some light chat and occasional news items NCBC facebook, in spite of its 70+ members, may be suffering in part from novelty and subject exhaustion as a consequence of sustaining the forum for over a year.

And yet there is evidence on NCBC face book of a casting about for something and a sense of where to next? The discussion board kicks off in April 07 with someone pointedly asking, “Why do people join groups but not contribute anything?” and in March 07 someone else asks “What do you think I should talk about to appear interesting?” There is also a hint of that sense of brooding and of marking time before a much hoped for revival of religious fortunes or ‘shake up’ as someone puts it - often associated nowadays with Gnostic revival and ‘swoon for Jesus’ worship; a common reaction in these days of depressed spiritual malaise.

I won’t disturb the NCBC facebookers discussing what they are going to discuss or any prerevival blues. In any case my work is cut out engaging some of the issues raised on this and other blogs: e.g. the Wensum valley churches, the feminisation of church, the questions raised by recent revivalists, the Open Gospel, the ID/evolution debate, the polarisation of analytical knowledge and gnostic knowledge etc etc. These subjects appear not to register on NCBC radar at all and that is probably down to different priorities, different perspectives, different problems, different personalities, different planets!

Stop press: The old forum is still available on this URL (but for how long?)

http://www.norwichcentral.org/discuss/Blah.pl

However, there seems to be no link from the NCBC web site.

YOU CAN COUNT ON IT

Tonight in the evening service, still with are eye on the male:female ratio and the feminisation of church, I did a quick count. This returned 30 males against 36 females, which reduces to a five to six mix. This, I suppose, is not far from the four to six mix I was averaging a few months back.

THE RIGHT PITCH

The Sunday evening service was billed as a “Special Football Service”. I’m not the least interested in football and I went expecting to be bored to death by it all, although I would certainly want to concede that churches need to connect with a wide range of personalities, temperaments and interests and so I was prepared to stick it out. However, the whole service not only proved to be very well put together, but even interesting to someone like myself. It included a wide range of fascinating material; from the history of the Norwich Churches league, through the origins that some premier league clubs have in church teams, to the testimonies of Christian footballers. I was reminded somewhat of the old boys brigade where young lives were introduced to discipline, team spirit, and service, against a military looking backdrop. The ethos of today is unlikely to bear something like that, and so football may usefully have supplanted it.

Excellent, well done, I thought. However, that the service was clearly constructed with imagination and lots of hard work puts the contemporary dualist spiritual paradigm on the spot. That paradigm contrasts God’s work – which it tends to only perceive in acts of special dispensation – against ‘natural’ or profane agencies like man. The kind of shipwreck analyses that the dualist paradigm is inclined toward can be seen when it insists that creation was an act of special dispensation about 6000 years ago. In its most extreme form the perspective of the dualist mindset is inclined to perceive something like the NCBC Football Service, which ostensively taps into general dispensational resources, as purely a product of human effort and therefore lacking in spiritual power. The extreme dualist has difficulty registering the presence of God’s work unless it is in the form of ‘supernatural interventions’ and these are so often identified with bizarre religious practices that dehumanize and eclipse personality in favour of ‘blessing fodder’ events.

In the dualist mind activities involving creativity, skill, and interest are likely to be perceived as profane, even Godless activities. Utterly lacking in self-awareness the extreme dualist exempts his own mindset from self analysis, and is therefore unable to identify his perspective as a very facetiously human feature. He cannot see his mindset, but instead sees through it. Therefore that mindset never comes up for review and criticism. Unaware of his all too human perspective he sees himself as through and through a sublime spiritual being, a cut above the skills based Christian.

SPIRITUAL BULLYING
The sermon started well: It was about that nasty third generation Herod, Herod Agrippa I who beheaded James (brother of John). Realizing that moves against the early church curried favour with the Jewish leaders Agrippa went onto imprison Saint Peter. In the New Testament Agrippa is portrayed as the archetypical sinner, the sort of person who puts the ‘I’ in the middle of the word sin. He aggrandized himself with rich clothing and won his position with the Romans and Jews with flattering words and sycophancy. Sometimes it was very difficult to tell if he genuinely cared or whether it was just a ploy to further his own interests and position. Agrippa, it seems, was the kind of person who is so self centered that when they shut their eyes they believe everyone goes away; in effect a solipsism of the worse type. He was utterly superficial, a mere façade motivated by the golden sin: egotism. Agrippa had acquiescenced completely to his egotistical temptations and lived the kind of self seeking life that is the antithesis of true Christianity. Excellent, I thought: this is what our spiritual battles are all about.

However, the Preacher went onto tell us that Peter had been imprisoned and shackled by his culture …. wait a minute surely not Peter’s culture, because presumably Peter had rejected the profound shallowness of the Agrippas of this world? But OK then, fair enough, we can accept that Peter was effectively a victim of a hedonistic culture. So, the preacher deduced, “We must repent of our culture”. Hhmm…, this is getting ambiguous, I thought: humans can’t operate in a cultural vacuum: we are all destined to express ourselves via the medium of some culture or other, hopefully a culture with moral fibre. Just what sort of culture was the preacher thinking we should repent of? To illustrate he went on to relate an anecdote about a Christian friend who far from home one Sunday happened to stumble into a church and who knows it could have been anything from a strict brethren assembly to a church of the snake handlers. However, ‘stumble’, it seems, was the name of the game because at one point in the service, at the cue of the speaker, the entire congregation fell to the floor except our preacher’s Christian friend who decided that he must repent of his culture in order to receive the sublime states of heart and soul associated with the ‘carpet blessing’. So, the take home lesson for us that day was that we should repent of our culture and, who knows, we might then be able receive the carpet blessing. And if we had any doubt about just how bad our culture is, a culture that may be resisting this sort of blessing, there was the illustration of Agrippa’s hedonistic world for comparison!

This sermon was typical of its class and I have seen it time and again amongst evangelicals: in an attempt to foist the idiosyncrasies of one expression of Christainity upon other Christains, a strong hint is dropped as to how sinful they must be if they don’t embrace these bizarre foibles. And what authority is offered to back up these quite extreme demands? None accept opinion, cronyism and vague references to an intuitive sensing of what 'God wants' or what 'God is doing'. It was classic spiritual intimidation.

CHURCH IS A DRAG

The May edition of 'Christianity' Magazine has two articles on the issue that I have repeatedly raised in this blog: That of a church culture skewed toward the feminine. A point that neither article seems to grasp is that the masculine-feminine ‘spectrum’ is an abstraction defined by the clusters of traits that have varying probabilities of being associated with the more clear cut phenomenon of genetic typing. For example, physical strength is more likely (but NOT necessarily) to be found amongst males than females. Once this abstract male-female space is set up, actual genetic males and females may find themselves at different points in that space.

Given this concept of the male-female space, the fact is that churches are a niche subculture that is biased toward the feminine cluster of traits in that space. Males who demonstrate a more feminine mindset are in turn more likely to find themselves in line with church values than those with obviously extreme masculine traits. But there is one exception; the Male ‘Leadership’ patriarch is often welcomed with open arms, and finds a place in an subculture that frequently favours submissive behaviour and a dumbing down of an analytic mindset, whether that mindset belongs to a genetic male or a genetic female. See the restorationists for fine examples of patriarchy.

Both articles in 'Christianity' were written by females. One of the articles ends ironically with what to me is actually a call for the church to become even more feminine in its slant! That is, according to the article writer we should get out of the comfort zone of our safe and highly focused stereo typical roles, connect to the holy mystery of God and the mysteries of the gender gap, generally be more outgoing, relate to one another and learn from one another! Next time I go to church I think I’ll dress up in drag and act in a less focused and more scatter brained way; I might fit in better.

DROPPING ANCHOR AT NCBC?
Last Sunday evening, during the NCBC service, we were presented with a logo of an anchor captioned with “You are my anchor, my light and my salvation”. This brought back memories of a piece I wrote 1995 that reflected on the styles of past and present Christianity. Of the past I wrote:

In those days they knew Christianity was good for you because they knew it to be true, and a good Christian was like the pews; strong, silent, resilient, steadfast and anchored - steadfast and anchored? Where have I heard that before?

“Steadfast and anchored” was in fact the caption under the anchor logo of the outgoing boys brigade. I say ‘out going’ because the boys brigade was soon to be defunct and the youth worker of the day was concentrating his efforts on a young persons group he had set up called “Power pack”. The logo of this newer group was a battery being struck from above by a bolt of lightning. With this in mind, in the same article I wrote:

These are the days when they know that Christianity is true because it is good for you and a good Christian is rather noisy and a bit of a power pack - power pack? Where have I heard that before? .... the newer tradition (often associated with charismatic churches) has a tendency to stress a kind of "intravenous injection” of God's blessing in the form of feelings, sensings, touchings, movings, reveries, ecstasies, and occasional bolts out of the blue.

The demise of the well and truly anchored boys brigade in favor of a group called “power pack” was symbolic of the day. In 95, and the three decades proceeding it, God was about “moving on”, God was about doing a “new thing”, God was about being zapped with power from above, God was about experiencing “more God, more…”, God was about the moving goals posts of God’s latest intimate “touch”. All this somehow seemed to find consummation in the Toronto blessing of 94 and the failed “Diana prophecy” of 1997. Today, however, that’s all forgotten water under the bridge. So perhaps we are getting anchored again.

Sometimes Christains seem so unconscious of the meta-narrative.

THE FOUR TO SIX MIX: AGAIN

‘Christianity’ magazine has run two articles (see February and March) on the disparity in the ratio of males to females in churches. Here are my comments, as promised. As I have been aware of this issue for some years (and have written about it) I’m rather disturbed that only now have I found an article airing the matter. Anyway that’s an important start – my own church remains utterly unaware of it.

The two articles cover an interview with Carl Beech Chief executive of Christian Vision for men. I’ve got to hand it to him, Beech does seem to know how to connect to men, although his take on masculinising the church is to give occasion to the issue driven laddish sporting bravado that many men enjoy and engage in. If Beech’s succeeds here then he would have done the church a service.

In my case the way of being a male is slightly different. I have never been one for the laddish culture, as I approximate closer to that male preserve of the quasi-autistic loner who focuses relentlessly on single goals - stereotypically represented in the media by the likes of ‘The hit man’, ‘the terminator’, the lone hobbyist or geek etc.

But in common with the lads it isn’t just a case of me feeling that church just isn’t getting through; in actual fact it’s more a case of that church being proactively against the masculine model and its various manifestations. In modern evangelicalism conversion is all about a personality change that seeks denial of one’s masculine traits in favor of an intuitive reverie so aptly summed up by the phrase ‘The Heart Knowledge Christian’. What church wants, as Beech puts it so well, is chatty friendly ‘small talkers’, effeminacy, wimpishness, a passive submissive imbibing of homiletic monologues on Sunday, indifference to technical gadgetary, and drivers of cutsie feminine cars instead of real manly cars. As far as masculine pursuits are concerned, Beech says that the signal from the church is ‘Stop it because it’s all really sinful’.

As for the state of worship in church with its male alienating ‘Swoon for Jesus love ins’ Beech seems to understand this as well: “Our terminology is that Jesus is our lover – press yourselves into his arms and let him embrace you”. Beech goes onto to say: “I’m very grateful for the charismatic movement, but I think we need to recast the terminology. Some of the songs which emerged in the 90s were very cathartic.” It was a lot worse than that Carl: the mid nineties was the heyday of the Toronto Blessing when, if you didn't want to be accused of resisting the Spirit, you emulated those 'in the Spirit' and got down on all fours and barked!

Not news really, but having identified the problem what do we do next? In some ways the loner like myself is much better placed than the lads; I can simply ignore all these soppy goings on and pursue my own projects. But what does jack the lad do when he can find no social outlet for his laddishness? He says: "Fuhgeddaaboutit!"

BOOTIFUL
Views News and Pews scoops another NCBC story!

Whilst photographing this idyllic scene at the church weekend at Sizewell Hall I happened to catch a UFO in the frame – an Unidentified Floating Object - and here it is:

A gumboot floating on its own raft? What’s more it’s not an ordinary gumboot; it is elaborately encrusted with colourful hearts. What’s the story behind this high status gumboot afloat on Sizewell hall’s lake?

Well, this boot was floated by none other than the good Rev Mark Tall. The Lord clearly guided the Views News and Pews reporter to be in the right place at the right time to witness the launching so that VNP could bring it to you first - although Mark may have a different view on that. When I caught the Reverend gentleman in the act of preparing this unusual spectacle and snapping it with his camera phone I thought, Ahh haa! Another snappy sermon illustration coming up! After all, Mark is a dab hand at starting his sermons with punchy and relevant homiletic illustrations, and this exhibit was clearly going to be used by him to illustrate what a miracle it is to walk on water; If it takes all of man’s ingenuity – no, make that all of Mark’s ingenuity - to come up with this ruse of a single boot standing on water without anyone actually wearing and walking (or hopping) with it at the same time - think how great was The Master’s feat in comparison!

But no, this wasn’t the idea at all – This was the follow up to Mark’s blog entitled 'Polishing thy neighbour’s shoes'. Mark now goes one better – he treats his neighour’s footwear not just to a clean, but also to a scenic pleasure cruise on Sizewell Hall’s picturesque lake, proving that he is as good as his word. But in creating an illustrative message that effectively alludes to walking on water as well, in one fell swoop of homiletic genius Mark has come up with a three-in-one illustration that combines the lessons of his alliterative blog on Words, Works and Wonders.

About the poor saintly lady who owns the boot you needn’t worry one little bit, because she was recently voted on as one of the church elders. She’s going places spiritually and doesn’t need gumboots anymore – as you can see from the picture below she’s so holy, ethereal and angelic looking, that she really does walk on water.

A spiritually up and coming Holy Jo holds council as eager listeners gather round at Sizewell Hall’s high table - Notice discarded, clapped out (and a whole lot less better looking) saints in the background.

VNP at NCBC: Telling it like it is. Remember, you first heard it in VNP!

CHARIOTS OF FIRE

One of those ironic juxtapositions pregnant with subliminal meaning occurred in church tonight. A song written by Jeremy Camp called ‘Beautiful one’ was projected on the screen from ‘SongPro’. The second verse reads:

Powerful so powerful Your glory fills the skies.

Your mighty works displayed for all to see

The beauty of your majesty

Awakes my heart to see

How marvelous how wonderful you are

.

SongPro often projects its songs with a scenic backdrop. In this case the backdrop was a cloudy skyscape – rather appropriate one might think given the above verse, except for one glaring feature; the clouds were those linear formations generated by jet aircraft! Man’s most advanced application of the discovery of fire, the jet aircraft, Promethean in its vision, scores the sky from horizon to horizon, and the yet song declares: ‘Your glory fills the skies’! This breath taking paradox turned out to be a picture and anticipator signalling the need to proceed with caution with what followed; a sermon embodying the great 'genesis paradox' one so often finds in modern evangelicalism. For some Christians Exodus 20:11 (and the like) have a meaning that is as clear as a blue sky, and yet the Promethean project of science blazes its trail across those meanings. For some the paradox has become a chronic contradiction: How could a creator have created such a proactive world, a world so proactive that if it were not for self referencing problems it would seem to be logically self contained? One easy solution, of course, is to simply ignore those vapor trails and their meaning.

An aircraft emerges from the 'Big Bang'!

THE FEMINISED CHURCH

The February edition of 'Christianity' magazine carries the first part of a feature article billed on the front as "No man's land: How gender imbalance has feminised the church". Have they only just noticed this? Moreover, hasn't it occurred to them that it may be a coupled effect: that is, gender imbalance has caused feminisation AND feminisation has caused gender imbalance. I'll do a longer blog on the subject after the second part of the article is published in March.

GODHEAD AND BLOCKHEADS
In yesterday evening’s sermon an allusion was made to Augustine of Hippo’s “heresy”. Yes, it was heresy as Augustine fell into that well-worn trap which, starting with attempts to resolve the problem suffering and evil, leads to an attempt to disconnect from this world by an escape into the confused religious complex of dualism and gnosticism (specifically Manicheaism in this case). This often has ramifications for the views held on the nature of the Godhead. However, I write ‘heresy’ as “heresy” as I much prefer to be lenient about the foibles and blind allies that Christains often traverse – although, needless to say, leniency is seldom reciprocated by these highly religionised Christains who earnestly indentify satanic infiltration with contradiction of their opinions. They are all too ready to accuse fellow Christians of ‘letting in Satan’! (Yes we’ve had it at NCBC too!)

I was reminded of an article in Reachout’s 85th newsletter entitled “Heresies, Ancient and Modern”. The newsletter listed and described the following “heresies”: Aphthartodocetism Monophysitism, Apollinarainism, Alogi, Arianism, Docetism, Ebionite, Encratite, Eutychianism, Gnosticism (Proper), Marcionism, Monarchianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism, Monotanism, Nestorianism, Origen’s ‘heresy’, Pelagianism, and Sabellianism. Nearly all of these ‘heresies’ fall over on one or more issues connected with legalism, gnosticism, and most often, the nature of the Godhead. Reachout are good at collecting, compiling and tabulating the facts (at least I hope they are), but are not so adept at evaluating the real meaning of what is in their hands; they make no mention of the common themes running through these 'heresies'

Attempts to define the nature of the Godhead are notoriously difficult and I personally have no issue with those who theorize, even wrongly about the Godhead on the proviso that these attempts are tempered by tentativeness, perspective humility and a studied detachment. After all, theorizing attempts to join the dots, and like all theorizing, theologies may not succeed in joining all the dots and the true nature of the Godhead may be a misrepresented. However, that’s no problem if humility of perspective, tentativeness and a studied detachment are the frame of mind in which the theorizing proceeds.

Perspective humility? Tentativeness? Studied detachment? One may as well run after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as expect such values to be held in fundamentalist circles. These are the very things that redneck religionists eschew and interpret as the antithesis of faith, revelation and commitment. But the irony is that this is where the real heresy starts, for those who arrive at, say, a Gnostic view of God, are likely to do so as a side effect of the search for an exclusive club of the spiritual elite and will claim other Christains to be all but beyond the pale of grace. They will then proceed with threats of Divine displeasure or even damnation toward those who don’t follow their line or fail to join them.