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On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion
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7 responses to “On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion”
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This covered a lot of ground re “Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion,” and landed back to the tension between Athens and Jerusalem — a favorite topic of yours. I think you’re right that the final step (towards belief) is taken by the will, but I don’t think it’s a “reasoned mysterianism.” This is a work of the Holy Spirit. In I Corinthians 2, Paul declares that only the Holy Spirit opens a mind to allow it to believe. I guess that is pretty mysterious.
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Bill,
Like Trudy, I agree with you that “the final step must be taken by the will, freely,” once sincere rational inquiry has reached the limits of knowing. This does not mean that the intellect remains quiescent in the “precincts of faith”; rather, it often butts up against the choice of the will, questioning what is believed. As I once stated here in an email, the intellectual believer in a religion “should…understand that he will repeatedly transverse an arc between belief and doubt and that the warm convictions of one moment will often dissipate in the cold misgivings of another.” Faith is not abandoned, but it is “more tenuous and unstable than many would like to admit.” * I think that this tension between the will’s choice of belief and the intellect’s hesitations before what appears contradictory or mysterious is the source of much fear in many believers, resulting, on the one hand, in inflated claims about the power of reason (for example, that the existence of God or the immortality of the soul can be “proved”) and, on the other hand, in unreflective fideism.
Vito
*https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2022/02/doubting-the-teachings-of-ones-religion.html -
Vito, that is wonderfully said. Your statement, “he will repeatedly transverse an arc between belief and doubt and that the warm convictions of one moment will often dissipate in the cold misgivings of another,” is something I have experienced.
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Thank you, Trudy.
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This is another significant post, Bill.
From time to time, I seek out a Christian church to attend, and I do so because of the reason you gave: “natural piety dictates that we be appropriately grateful.”
And yet, during church services, I often get the sense that something is distorted, that the church service itself (including its rituals and routines) is somehow overvalued, sometimes bordering on ecclesiolatry, and sometimes involving what Kant referred to as “fetishism” and “priestcraft.” (Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Part IV)
Most recently, I attended a local church for three services during the Christmas season. The church seemed to be trying too hard to engage in the engineering of aesthetic experience, and then making not-so-subtle suggestions that the aesthetic experiences being generated should be taken as experiences of the divine.
I could not take any more. I don’t intend to visit that church again. -
Elliot,
I agree that many Christian churches engaged in the “the engineering of aesthetic experience, and then making not-so-subtle suggestions that the aesthetic experiences being generated should be taken as experiences of the divine.” And to make matters worse the decadence of aesthetic taste in our time often makes these efforts particularly gauche, spiritually deadly for man and unworthy of God. As a Roman Catholic, I put up with decades of this sort of thing, attending Novus Ordo Masses, both in the US and in Europe, and found that attendance at most of them resulted in nothing more than a weakening of my faith. So, some twenty of so years ago, I began to search, first in France and then here, for churches that offered the traditional Latin Mass. Having found one seven years ago, this rite, that of my first twenty-five years (from 1945 to 1970, has become the center of my spiritual life each week. You might profit from attending a TLM, and if you are inclined to do so, I recommend that you choose a simple low Mass, rather than a Missa Cantata or High Mass, and print out the text for such a rite so that you can follow the movements and words of the priest as he moves through the various rubrics. There is an aesthetic here, but it a highly refined and decorous one, that, on the one hand, is totally God-centered and, on the other hand, is conducive to private prayer and meditation. The mystery and majesty of God is the center of the rite.
Vito -
Vito,
Thank you. I value your thoughtful response, and I’ll consider the TLM. There is a place for the aesthetic, but as you rightly note, it should be decorous.
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