Subjectivity in the Church

I just finished reading Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christian". I really enjoyed it.

One of my degrees is basically a Medieval (Church and Social) History degree, and one of the main things that I got out of that degree is that the church goes through cycles (quite Hegelian as a matter of fact). There have been times (too many, unfortunately) when the church has pursued affluence and political power. Then once that gets out of hand, it goes back to its roots in the New Testament, namely the "Vita Apostolica", the apostolic life: the lifestyle of the apostles.

I was telling Marc that I really appreciated McLaren's suggestions because he seems to be aware of his perspective/limitations, and is trying to draw from the best of all Christian traditions. I said I liked the idea of something "brand new" happening in the church because I'm getting tired of the self-interest and self-concern of the church today. Marc reminded me that Andrew (his brother) generally tends towards the Catholic and Orthodox churches because they have a long history and tradition. Now this is not the point of this post, and I know I'm oversimplifying McLaren and my dear brother-in-law.

But it got me to thinking... I wrote a paper for one of my philosophy classes in university about the "subjectivity of history". In it I basically looked at whether or not we can "know" an historical event better by being an eye-witness or by being removed from the event -- either in hearing an account from an eye-witness we know or even further, by studying it in history.

I'm not exactly sure what my final thesis was in that paper, but a major part of it was our natural inclination to say that the eye-witness would have the best account. And I disagreed that an eye-witness necessarily has the best account. There are a number of factors that influence his or her account -- proximity to the event (ie. in a large stadium, you may not hear what someone was doing or saying), distractions around the person (ie. a crying baby or having to go to the bathroom), and they do not know the long-term outcome of the event they witnessed.

I went on to say that as historians we may not have seen the event, but we can look at it through the eyes of many different people who did (if there are multiple eye-witness accounts). There are obvious setbacks (we may not have certainty about the cultural values, etc of the people) that a historian must, but we have advantages which an eyewitness does not. We can see the outcome of an even on individuals, society and the world in general, how it lead to other events, and on and on.

So last night, I thought, just because the Catholic and Orthodox churches' beginnings were in close proximity to the beginning of Christianity (at least relatively speaking), it does not necessarily mean that they have a better grasp of what Christianity in its "ideal" or even "first" form is to be like.

Just some things to think about. I'm not saying that the Catholic and the Orthodox churches don't have a grasp on these things, just that we need to recognize that other traditions may have an equal grasp as well, through reflection on those groups, even though they've come into existence later in history. And, of course, this is not to say that the Catholic and Orthodox churches are not reflective, either.

I guess what my real point is that we constantly need to be reflective and aware of our own perspectives and looking at ourselves in the context of others, society, and history.