To see as God sees

National Review, Oct 28, 1988 by Richard Neuhaus

IN CURRENT religious thought there is much discussion about "postliberalism." The term is subject to sundry interpretations and may turn out to be as rubbery and confused as the "liberalism" to which it is "post." Post-liberalism is given its most lucid definition by thinkers such as George Lindbeck and the late Hans Frei of Yale. Liberalism, says Lindbeck, is basically a "emotive/expressive" mode of religion in which it is assumed that different doctrines and stories are essentially expressing the same truths, only in different ways. Post-liberalism, then, is a recapturing of the importan"cultural/linguistic traditions," of specific stories, communal memories, and even dogmas. Post-liberalism is suspicious of facile universalizations and is attached to particularities.

The advancement of the post-liberal argument is a most promising project. It underscores the importance of ressourcement, of returning to the sources, in order to revitalize distinctive traditions of interpretation and distinctive ways of construing reality. Much of contemporary religious thought, however, is still following in the footsteps of a liberalism that has its intellectual origins in nineteenth-century Protestantism, notably in post-Schleiermacher German thought. This is dramatically the case with "progressive" Evangelical thinkers and, if this writer's The Catholic Moment is right, with the dominant voices in the Roman Catholic theological establishment. While the most reflective thinkers are analyzing the ways in which it failed, that old liberalism continues to be attractive to others who understand progress as a process of being liberated from tradition and particularity. This attraction is not limited to Christian thinkers.

"My Memory Fails Me" is the heading of a message from Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York, printed as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. The point of the message is that the distinctive memories, myths, and dogmas of a tradition are confining. We are, JTS says, carrying around "years of slanted, narrow memories" that distort our vision. "What we need to do is let some of them go." We should "crack the dogma, peel away the mythology, and trade memories." We should listen to one another. "Maybe [we] ought to try seeing as God sees, from all the angles."

It is hard to opposethe claim that we should listen to one another. It is equally hard, however, to suppose that we have much to say to one another unless we have each internalized the tradition that distinguishes our contribution to the conversation. The vaulting universalism of the JTS message seems both quaint and naive. JTS says "this message conveys the essence of our developing religious tradition." When the representatives of a tradition begin to talk about the "essence" of that tradition, they are almost surely on the way to abandoning it. So nineteenth-century liberalism spoke about "the essence of Christianity" on the way to liberating itself from the awkward particularities of the historical reality that is Christianity.

The late Abraham Joshua Heschel, once the chief luminary of JTS, was fond of telling the story of the woman who had problems participating in the synagogue service. "The service doesn't say what I mean," she complained to the rabbi. The wise rabbi responded, "Madam, I am afraid you have it backward. The important thing is not that the service says what you mean. The important thing is that you mean what the service says." The JTS message o"our developing religious tradition" also seems to have it backward. The suggestion that there is available to any of us a perspective that is universal, historically unconditioned, and all-comprehensive is touchingly ingenuous. Those who "try seeing as God sees" have indeed suffered a failure of memory. Contra the JTS message, it is not the memory that fails us but we who fail the memory. The communal memory is clear enough: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts," says the Lord (Isaiah 55:9).

THOSE WHO think they can see as God sees are in fact looking through the spectacles of the very particular, and now discredited, tradition of religious liberalism. To say that that tradition is discredited does not mean that it is dead. It has a powerful appeal for those who are embarrassed by their particularity. It also appeals to those who have honestly concluded that their own tradition is not rich or varied or strong enough to make sense of the truth they have encountered in other traditions. And it appeals to people who do not know how to cope with pluralism. Their response to pluralism is an attempt to transcend the particular in order to embrace the universal. But that response to pluralism is a denial of pluralism. It results in a monism of indifference, of pretending that our deepest differences make no difference. Genuine pluralism is the vibrant engagement of differences, in the confidence that we are ultimately bound together by the One Who alone sees as God sees. Namely God.