Sometimes we are told that a piece of committed and "Christian" scholarship is inevitably going to be partial and biased because, well, to paraphrase Ms Mandy Rice Davies, we would say that, wouldn't we. Some years ago, in her inaugural lecture as a Professor in this University, Sarah Foot, now Dean of Christ Church, attacked that assumption.
She was not keen on the idea that, in order to be 'academic', the 'profession' in a modern university of a subject like ecclesiastical history has to be left to those who have a negative or reductionist view, and who see the subject from a hostile and secularising standpoint in which Faith simply has to be considered a facade for more mundane and untheological historical processes. It is the duty of the ecclesiastical historian to restore 'their present' to earlier communities by taking them seriously. While the student does not have to be a believer, (s)he should have an empathetic (my word) understanding of the faithed humans (s)he describes.
I find it a remarkable example of diabolical skill, this idea that only those hostile to Christianity really count as impartial; as if Christians must be disqualified for having a biasing agenda but atheists are lofty and dispassionate students of their subject. I recall the passage in The Pilgrim's Regress in which C S Lewis portrays the minions of the Zeitgeist indoctrinating their prisoners:
"What is the proper answer to an argument proving the existence of [God]?
"You say that because you are a [priest].
"Good boy ... what is the answer to an argument that two and two make four?
"You say that because you are a mathematician ..."
The late Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith of the Daughter University spent some decades restoring a genuine theological conviction to the Crusaders. And I remember particularly the words of M Schneiders in 1996, discussing early Irish liturgy: "for a proper understanding of the past an affinity with the material is useful, at least if one wishes to go beyond the recovery of mere facts, if one tries to understand the people who used these texts, who celebrated Mass with these ancient prayers."
But 'useful' is too timorous a word; and Dom Gregory 'Patrimony' Dix put it so much more memorably ... well, he would, wouldn't he? ... when, writing about the Canon Romanus, he said: "This very morning I 'did this' with a set of texts which has not changed by more than a few syllables since Augustine used those very words at Canterbury on the Third Sunday of Easter in the summer after he landed. Yet 'this' can still take hold of a man's life and work with it."
PF would be an even better and even finer Pope if he read more Dix.
Is Dix available in Spanish or Italian? Maybe we buy a copy or two and sent them to Pope Francis and Archbishop Fernandez. Lives have been changed by books.
ReplyDeleteThe Christian reads events and texts in the light of the Holy Spirit. The modernist is not illuminated by this light and simply cannot see the things that the Christian sees. He therefore rejects them as subjective. Ultimately the two positions cannot be reconciled: it is like a man who from birth has only been able to see in black and white arguing with a man who can see in colour.
ReplyDeleteIt was a huge privilege to know the late lamented Professor Riley-Smith towards the end of his great life. What a man, what a mind, what a Christian.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Professors Foot and Riley-Smith are simply describing what it takes to be a good historian.
ReplyDeleteMany of us with higher degrees in history, by the way, are bemused at the pathological scepticism professed by Bultmanians and adherents of similar approaches in biblical studies. It far exceeds the demands of proper historical method.