World's Apart

In a recent article in UMInsight (https://um-insight.net/perspectives/love-and-the-christian-way-of-being-in-the-world/) Don Manning-Miller comments on the juxtaposition (by David Scott) of an article I wrote entitled "Moral Convictions - The Wrong Start in Human Relations" with one by Tom Lambrecht. (https://um-insight.net/perspectives/love-and-the-christian-way-of-being-in-the-world/.) 

Manning-Miller posits the priority of an "ethic of love" over ethics, and then the need to exercise judgment with regard to those with whom we can have fellowship. Two short quotes are essential to his approach. "A line in a progressive prayer said, “Grant me the grace to learn to love the enemies I’ve had the integrity to make.”  And "The reality of those being hurt or oppressed must be the context of discernment and takes priority over tolerance and acceptance for their own sake." 

Along with an ethic of love these two lines seem to encapsulate for Manning-Miller what distinguishes progressive Christianity. And yet, both an appeal to an ethic of love and these two separate affirmations could easily be made by Thomas Lambrecht and the WCA. They too claim to work out of an ethic of love. They too claim to love the enemies they've had the integrity to make. And they too can appeal to the reality of those being hurt or oppressed as the context for discernment. 

So the root problem isn't an ethic of love, or even an appeal to protecting people from harm and oppression. The root disagreement is different worldview, different understandings of reality as a whole and human reality within which words like "love" "harm" and "Reign of God" take on their meaning. 

The WCA and Good News operate out of a classical worldview and thus ethic based on attaining the teleos for which creation and each creature, including humans, was created. That which causes harm is that which prevents a person from reaching the end God designated for their personhood as a human and as an individual. The Reign of God is simply the description of that end, that teleos, toward which all things must bend. It isn't moral absolutism, or narrow legalism, to describe that end in terms provided by scripture itself. 

 

The progressive ethic, on the other hand, is not teleological in the classic sense. Its end is not fully inscribed in its genesis. It is, rather, a process ethic in which the name of the process is love. Manning-Miller states that the the Reign of God provides a utopian model and a goal for social ethics, yet in his essay the Reign of God doesn't function as a teleos in the classical sense. Its goals are certain social conditions such as justice, peace, compassion and etc that serve as guiding values that humans are to pursue and embody. There is no mention of the classical Christian teleos of human life, an eternity of the enjoyment of God's presence. The discussion of an end or purpose for humankind is couched in terms of ever changing forms of human, individual and collective fulfillment. In this framework causing hurt and oppression is the basis for discernment and has a priority over tolerance and acceptance for its own sake. 

 

In response to this Lambrecht and the WCA could say in perfect sincerity that the ethics of the Wesleyan Orthodoxy neither hurt nor oppress, even if they may cause emotional pain and limit freedom. Indeed I think they would argue that their ethic, expanded into ethics, prevents hurt and oppression by keeping individuals and the church moving toward their divinely appointed teleos, when all those who either refuse their divinely appointed end or hinder others from reaching it (to quote scripture) “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

 

It appears that for Manning-Miller the rules that keep people on track toward their end can certainly cause harm because harm is anything that interferes with the discernment and realization of human fulfillment in terms of. Put another way, the concept of harm is embedded in the concept of fulfillment, and a classical and a process understanding of fulfillment are fundamentally different, as are their understandings of the Reign of God.

 

This difference in the fundamental understanding of the nature of reality between Orthodox and Progressive Methodists demands the hard kind of dialogue if there is to be dialogue at all. It is effectively inter-religious dialogue, the dialogue between groups that do not begin at the same place in understanding the nature of reality. Schubert Ogden and Mark Heim recognized this back in the 80’s. 

 

The question remains whether either those holding the classical view of reality and those holding a process view of reality can find a way within their distinct worldviews to accommodate some kind of cooperation with the very much other. A fair amount of work has been done on this in the world of inter-religious dialogue, but I see no evidence that either the WCA or UM Centrists have thought of one another clearly in these terms. Thus neither has formulated a sensible and internally coherent approach to dialogue, and as a result both blather in polemic intended to shore up the support of the faithful while wondering why they keeping talking past rather than to each other.

Is there a Christian theology of dialogue that allows a fruitful conversation with a completely different worldview and understanding of the nature of reality? Watch for the next post.