Pragmatism's "method" lends itself to all kinds of philosophical positions. Liberals and conservatives alike can be of the pragmatic cast of mind, so long as they always return to the basic "pragmatic question": What difference does it make? In putting this question before his audience of Harvard-educated philosophers, James reminds them and us that many of our philosophical questions, in the end, are of little practical consequence. During the days of the scholastics, it was a serious question as to how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. While much has been made of this now -- to us -- patently silly question, it's not a far cry from many other questions that have been raised by people enamored of finding out the nature of the Absolute. Theologians often go scurrying about in their Bibles and their Augustine and Plato to make an argument for the incontrovertible truths of the nature of God. This kind of thing can be disheartening. In Doctrine and Covenants, Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith bemoaned the plurality of doctrines he heard in his time given by ministers who "understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible." Another mystic and visionary, William Blake, wrote the witticism "Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read'st black where I read white." It is in just this sort of demoralizing, endless controversy where pragmatism can be of most use.
Pragmatism, writes James, is decidedly "anti-intellectual"; that is, it does not wish to spend its time intellectualizing matters of which we can have no certainty. In the end, pragmatism is about results, not upholding doctrinal systems. It begins with the question, as Richard Rorty said, of what we wish to do. Applied to the Christian religion, the comments of Smith and Blake (and odd combination, I know) may point us to a more philosophically and theologically unencumbered approach to faith. While I am neither Mormon nor mystic, I do appreciate from experience the dead ends one faces when it comes to arguing for theological doctrines by going to the Bible. One finds that when Christians of the liberal wing would argue for their positions biblically, they must spend a lot of time debunking the "inerrancy" of the Bible, followed by a history lesson, often from the 19th century on, concerning Darwin's work on the HMS Beagle, the German "higher critics," and the evils of fundamentalism on into the 20th century (e.g., Prohibition, the Scopes Monkey Trial). On the other hand, those apologizing for the inerrant position must spend a great deal of time with textual citation from the Bible in which the anthology comments on itself regarding its authoritative status. While I am partial to one side over the other, I am now far enough removed from the controversy to have begun tiring of it, seeing that both sides have rarely said anything new in the last twenty years. Where the "anti-intellectual" impatience of pragmatism comes in is when arguments have become tired, ineffective, and nothing more than drawing "Amens" from the choirs in each converted wing.
My former English professor Cleatus Rattan once said in my class that "Christians have far more to unite them than to divide them." I think he's right, but there are two issues that Christians will have to learn to get over before any broad reconciliation across denominational lines can begin: abortion and homosexuality. Both topics are hot buttons, and, interestingly enough, the Bible has very little to say about either. Biblical references to the former are nil, and those to the latter are so riddled with problems that they almost aren't worth looking at except for personal educational reasons. Liberal Chrisitans, in their efforts to simplify the issues, retreat to Jesus's summation of the Torah: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength; and your neighbor as yourself." Christians from the conservative wing readily respond with, "yes," but are quick to qualify their answer by saying that love involves many particulars: namely, clearly defined categories of righteousness and sin, and love for the world necessarily involves, for them, a proliferation of discourse itemizing certain sins -- homosexuality among them -- and remedies for them. Liberal Christians have, as is well known to any who follows Christian goings-on in this country, would rather not deal with that issue at all except to welcome homosexuals into their communities, and would instead prefer to focus their energies on relief for the poor. Anyone can agree that the poor are to be helped.
As I write this, I begin to sense anew the same kind of hopelessness that Joseph Smith and William Blake felt: these two issues, as much political as theological -- if not more so -- hardly show any sign of being left alone by Christian ministers. Paul himself knew there were such things as fruitless questions, and he decided, pragmatically enough, to dispense with them, and with the schismatics who insisted on bringing them up. Before you respond, as I'm inclined to do, with "Wait just a minute, Paul, we can't just throw out people because they disagree with us", keep in mind that there's nothing like theological controversy to split friends. More important for Paul than debate was koinonoia, what we call "fellowship" but which would more literally be translated "common-mindedness." I doubt, of course, that Paul was counseling doctrinal purity on every point. Surely he must have realized that to be impossible. Rather, I think the more pragmatic view would be to say that Christians should be of the "same mind" in maintaining fellowship in the body. We are present to encourage each other through life and life's problems, not to be divisive through unbending insistence that one doctrine carry the day in our respective fellowships. Primary is seeing to it that people are spiritually and socially integrated. If those two things involve allowing for lively debate, then so be it. If, however, debate becomes inimical to that primary goal, we had best do away with it -- for the time being at least -- and allow for it in some other sphere.
I am all for inciting new theological discourse; I believe that a free circulation of ideas is good for stimulating the intellect and for driving us to prayer. It's a tired saying, but the more we know, the more we know that we don't know; this has to be salutary in that it would encourage one to seek spiritual consolation in prayer. A prayerless community is all the more likely, it seems, to forget its primary purpose of creating a community "in Christ," a Christ, as Paul emphasized, was not "divided."
The weight of questions can be a great one, and a burdensome one. But many of us are simply driven to question, and for our own spiritual and intellectual health we need community in which questions are welcomed and encouraged. But beyond this weight of questions is the weight of glory; for me, a person who has found talking about the Bible to be both a joy and a burden, the practical lesson to be learned is that final answers are elusive. This does not mean I shall not seek them -- the eternity in the heart to find out what God has made is certainly there -- but I now look at this frustration as an instrument of the Parakletos, as God's own counsel that I should let peace guide my quest(ions), that it should be a companion. This way, I may still use my gift of eternity-in-the-heart not to frustrate me or others, but to point them toward the shalom of God.
This afternoon I had a discussion with my friend Hank; he and I both have the Platonist in us, that there must be, certainly, a Truth (with a capital "T"). We also believe that we cannot know it rationally; it's rather a trans-rational, intuited, quasi-emotive thing (I won't grasp for a better term to illustrate what I mean). I know now to welcome the frustration of the intellect only because it has been both joyous and frustrating all at once, and never delivering all the goods it aspires toward. When it promises to deliver, it lies; but when it admits it cannot, it does me good -- it makes me sue for deliverance from another Source. Prayer may not seem like a very pragmatic thing to do -- how utilitarian is that, really? But, for a Christian, prayer must be efficacious -- this is assumed as any self-evident truth is in Euclidean geometry. It must minister to the pray-er, as well as to the Pray-ee. If prayer really is about cultivating a relationship with God -- a term I do not like for its personal connotations, but I think I begin to sense its true meaning -- then this must be ultimately utilitarian. If I may trust that a ever-increasingly stronger sense of God's presence will make me both more at peace and more useful to those around me, then I neglect prayer at my own peril as well as that of others.
To conclude then:
- The proliferation of questions and promoting them can encourage the irreligious to open their minds once again to God;
- My personal frustration with discursive thought about God comes with its own powerfully pathetic appeal: "pray, for your own good";
- The intellectual and the spiritual may both be satisfied -- the former enjoys a satisfaction-dissatisfaction; the latter enjoys the integration of all things under the auspices of God. I.e., let us hope to God it all means something to him and to us.
