Greetings Wim and others,
Thanks for this substantial post; much in it that I may or may not return to
(as is always the case in this fecund forum).
However, you write:
>
> First about your reaction of 26/9 10:23 +0100 on my tease that
> you are a "hireling minister", someone getting paid for
> interpreting God's will for others.
I was aware that it was a tease - perhaps I should have put in a few smilies
;-) as well as the exclamation marks; I suppose the latter are ambiguous,
they could have represented genuine shock or horror. Trust me, I've had to
cope with much more offensive descriptions than that!
> For me the dividing line is
> not primarily between Protestants ("Reformed/individualist based
> understanding") and Catholics ("Catholic/tradition based
> understanding"), but between Quakers and other Christians. For
> Quakers religious authority is based in individual religious
> EXPERIENCE moderated to an extent by collective religious
> experience of worshipping communities. (I wrote more about this
> to John B. 24/6 23:07 +0200.) for other Christians religious
> authority is based only indirectly in religious experience,
> because either tradition (Catholics) or the bible (Protestants)
> are put in between. The appeal of a MoQ to me is partly its
> similarity with Quakerism in the central role it gives
> experience.
To bring this discussion back into the MOQ framework, I think what we are
discussing is actually different patterns of static value. I wouldn't
recognise a distinction in terms of 'seeking God's will' between the
different varieties of faith, I would recognise distinctions in the methods
and traditions used to get there. There are, of course, arguments and claims
to be made about which method has most Quality overall (that is, most likely
to provide access to God's will), but I suspect no one person this side of
the grave will be able to give a conclusive answer on that point.
However, I would question your comment that religious authority in the
Quaker community is based (solely/primarily) in experience. In the post to
which you refer, you write:
> Worship is at the heart of Quaker experience. For God is met in the
gathered meeting and through the Spirit leads us into ways of life and
understandings of truth which we recognise as Quaker.
In other words, there is still a community determining whether something is
acceptable or not - 'recognised as Quaker'. That particular tradition had
certain roots and certain forms, of course, responding to a DQ breakthrough
made by Fox, and supported by the relevant static latching mechanisms that
you describe. That tradition has various advantages and disadvantages
compared to other traditions, but I don't see the radical division between
Quakers and other Christians that you see. In particular, it still seems to
me that there is an individualist emphasis within what you describe which
seems wholly Protestant (and part of the mindset which gave birth to
Modernity in all its aspects). But I have to confess to not knowing a huge
amount about the Quaker, other than what you have articulated in this forum.
I have a suspicion that if we managed to argue this down to fundamentals
there wouldn't be a huge amount on which we would disagree (the individual
conscience is sovereign in the 'catholic' strand of Christianity as well,
after all).
> Although I agree that Protestantism "provided the theological and
> moral framework for industrial capitalism", in the sense that
> they rose simultaneously, I do not agree with Max Weber that this
> framework (or any set of SOM-values) "produced"
> (read: "caused") industrial capitalism. (In my reading of history
> mercantile capitalism, as in 16th century Holland, was the
> beginning of capitalism. Industrial capitalism, starting in 18th
> century England, was a logical continuation and ripening of that
> pattern. Hence "simultaneously".)
>
Would you be happy to describe it as a widespread movement of the spirit,
that had synchronous aspects in all fields of human endeavour - religion,
philosophy, business, social relations etc etc? If so, I don't think I'd
argue.
> I am just as unfamiliar with the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and
> Narindar Singh as I am with the books of Jared Diamond and David
> Landes you mentioned. I did most of my reading on economics when
> I studied it between 1978 and 1986 and -like Pirsig on philosophy
> (Lila ch. 26)- I preferred to put the horse before the cart
> instead of vice versa: I tried to do most of my own thinking
> before reading a lot of books.
Ha! Touche! (And I'd better put some smilies in just to be unambiguous
) )
I think this reflects our very different cultural background, and probably
temperaments as well. I tend to agree with the comment (I can't recall off
hand if it was by Keynes or about Keynes) which described opponents as the
slave of a long dead economist or philosopher - in other words, that we
don't begin life or thinking from scratch, we operate within languages and
philosophical systems that are frequently unconsciously held (Wittgenstein -
'there is a whole mythology embedded in our language'). Personally, I find
reading other thinkers stimulating in terms of questioning my own
assumptions, and I enjoy testing my own views and thinking against them (as
an Anglican I recognise three sources of authority, in constant dialogue -
scripture, tradition and experience). Of course, it might be possible to
develop an accurate and sophisticated worldview based solely upon our own
individual experience, but I'm not that much of a genius - to see into the
distance, I find it helpful to stand on the shoulders of giants... ;-)
And in pursuit of that, I shall chase up the books that you recommended.
Sam
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