Heresy

Interesting piece in The Guardian yesterday, arguing that Christianity is a religion of deception. I confess (God help me) that I found myself sympathetic with Mr Bradnack's arguments (and there is evidence that I am not the only blogger-ordinand in this position).

His arguments apply only to the specific expression of Christian doctrine that is the creed - but how influential an expression! Some people I know doubt the value of using the creed liturgically but, as we all know, liturgies are not immune to development and change. Thus, if the Liturgical Commission accepted arguments like Mr Bradnack's, it would surely have excised the creed from the (modern) liturgy. Many people take the view he describes in his final paragraph and interpret some of the claims as metaphor. But how could such people, as they persist in saying the creed as part of the liturgy, respond to his accusation that they "mouth the words to deceive the gullible that they must believe them"? One does not need to know exactly who 'the gullible' are, or how many of them there are in one's congregation, to be pretty sure that some people will in fact be taking the credal claims literally. I can't see any easy answer to Mr Bradnack's charge.

I can recommend that anyone plagued by these questions (and who doesn't mind them multiplying) read the novella San Manuel Bueno, Mártir (1930) by the Spanish philosopher and writer, Miguel de Unamuno. (There's an online version, alas only in Spanish, here.) Speaking of Unamuno, there's an interesting contrast between his views and those of Mr Bradnack. Whereas Bradnack takes the Church's opposition to Galileo and Darwin as instances of its committment to bad science, Unamuno (in his Tragic Sense of Life, p. 72) interprets it as a defence against the rationalism which, in his view, badly distorts our understanding of the nature of human being. He interprets it as the defence of 'life' in all its irrationality. I can't help thinking that Unamuno goes too far. Defending the non-rational dimension of human nature is one thing (so far, so good); being out and out anti-rational is quite another.

On a more mundane level, I spent too much money today in Heffers Sound and Heffers. I bought Bach's complete sonatas and partitas for violin and a history of psychiatry.