RITE AND REASON: Even when talking of God in this post-modern era, Christian doctrine does not become the equivalent of a blank piece of paper on which we doodle as we choose, argues Bishop Richard Clarke
It is of course far too early to know exactly what "post-modernity" actually is. It may in eventual retrospect prove to have been a catch-all phrase for anything which seemed to have been in opposition to the then known and familiar.
There are, however, certain traits within post-modernity which make dialogue with religious faith a problematical undertaking. And yet if the Church - and religious faith itself - cannot speak coherently in and to any contemporary culture, it has clearly lost its way.
One of the difficulties of dialogue between post-modernism and the specifically Christian faith may be found in conflicting views of history. Post-modernism views all history with deep suspicion; we are to take from history only that which appears to us to speak to our particular context.
In his most recent book, Doubts and Loves, Bishop Richard Holloway utilises a phrase, "the usable past" (coined, incidentally, from the composer Aaron Copland).
Holloway suggests that we may decide on what of the past is usable, by which I take him to mean that which is useful for our purposes. Yet this may easily become a somewhat narcissistic enterprise, in that anything in the past which does not meet with our particular approval may readily be jettisoned as unnecessary, unpleasant or simply unbelievable for us.
But Christianity is at its heart a faith which sees God as working within history, most particularly in the person of Jesus Christ.
Thus the judgment becomes crucial as to whether the revelation of God may be found objectively within the historical experience of people or, alternatively, whether "revelation" need merely be a matter of whatever an individual may find attractive, pleasant or usable in his or her individual life.
Pannenberg's famous phrase, "revelation as history", becomes the decisive plumb line.
It is true that the historical events of the life of Christ may not be as clear to us today as we might wish. This is scarcely to be wondered at. Not surprisingly, those who first recorded the events of Christ's life, death and resurrection display a bewilderment, as they are confronted by events which they cannot fully understand and express within the limits of language.
There is, however, a world of difference between believing that we are encountering mysterious reality clad in the inadequacies of human language and believing that nothing is objectively accessible from history.
Christian doctrine is not the equivalent of a blank piece of paper on which we doodle as we choose. An extension of this analogy from the world of art (albeit far from precise) may well be of some value.
An architect's diagram may show us a building in detail, everything to scale, exact and precise. Yet there is very little "soul" about a blueprint of this kind.
The famous impressionist paintings by Monet of the Rouen Cathedral are, on the other hand, far from precise in their outline, but yet they create a vibrant impression of that wonderful building, an impression which is vital and animated.
There is even a sense in which his paintings show us more of the real cathedral than would an architect's drawing, however precise.
For many of us who wish to explore the mysteries of the Christian vision of God, it seems that when we speak of religious faith, we are "closer" to a Monet painting than to an architect's drawing.
(If in this life we are, in St Paul's words, seeing "puzzling reflections in a mirror", is the architect's perfect blueprint even available to us?) For liberal Christians, there will always be questions, doubts and searching, but these will always connect to certain parameters, undergirding ontological reality. If they do not, then the language of faith ceases to have meaning.
Liberalism does not deny the importance of taxonomy and so there are times when, if one's faith journey takes one irrevocably to a certain destination, the logic of that destination should then be accepted in the interests of personal integrity.
Recently, I received a remarkable e-mail from a Jewish woman in America in which she told of how she had converted to Judaism from Christianity, albeit not without sadness, but having realised that Judaism was now the logic of her religious commitment.
Today we are challenged to show the world that Christianity is a reasonable faith, that one need be neither ill-read nor unintelligent in order to have faith in the essentials of specifically Christian belief, nor need one be unwilling to face unpalatable truths. Men and women "in the pew" (or indeed never in the pew) do not need to be patronised or treated as fools.
The greatest of challenges for the Christian Church is to speak intelligibly and convincingly in a post-modernist culture. Only when Christians can understand tradition not as a personal plaything, but as something into which we enter respectfully, within which we take our place without arrogance and to which we contribute with humility, will this be realisable.
Richard Clarke is Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare. In December last year, he suspended Dean Andrew Furlong from active ministry after the dean said on a parish website he did not believe in the divinity of Jesus