zen_tom

Despite all drawing from the same source, Christianity contains numerous denominations.
Some of these are (in no particular order) Catholics, Methodists, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Quakers, Mormons, Amish, Progressives, Seventh-Day Adventists, Unitarians, Universalists, Baptists, Scientists, Unificationists, Protestants, Pentecostals, Fundamentalists, Branch Davidians, Calvinists, Charismatics etc.

In my ignorance, I must admit to not knowing what the differences are between all of these, except perhaps general differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, but understand these to have been borne out of political differences (i.e. the rise of power in Northern Europe and the clash between their political ambitions and those of the Papacy) rather than ideological ones.

So what are the major differences between denominations, and how did they come about? Are they ideological, or histo-political?

Further, having drawn my own interpretations, what is stopping me from teaching these to anyone who might want to listen?

I realise that this is a Christo-centric question, but I am assuming (it would be interesting if I was wrong) that there are similar denominational splits in the other world religions, and that there are similar reasons for these splits (i.e. interpretation, canonisation of texts, political leanings etc)

keyshawn

in a very short response [btw, i am a roman catholic]

lazy right now, so i'll just post a link to http://www.godulike.co.uk/

[i've found it to be pretty informative, though from my perspective, it appears that the site mainly focuses on the highlights [and not criticisms] of the religions.

martinguerre

really the answer to that is far too long to put here.

fundamentally, denominational differences are a result of certain questions becoming breaking points in polities. so...of course, there's historical and political influence...i think of the council of Nicea being called at the Emperor's command.

To be fair, there are also splits that are pretty much doctrinal. The divisions with in reform theology are all pretty much straight doctrine, role of baptism, the nature and number of God's elect, etc...

"having drawn my own interpretations, what is stopping me from teaching these to anyone who might want to listen?"

Nothing really. But the strength of Christianity does not lie in it's novelty. Reform comes in the context of re-imaging tradition, and not simply discarding it. One of the key reasons i identify as Christian is that when i have a problem...i can argue, wrestle with, and discuss that issue with a vast number of learned theologians past and present. Richness of tradition matters...

And orthodoxy matters too. I once choked on certain words, didn't sing certain songs. And that's still true. But i'm amazed at the ways in which spending time with tradition has led me to new ways of seeing it. I don't deny that tradition can be problematic. But i also resist the idea that we can create something better whole cloth. We depend experience, the collective stories of faith that are presented in scripture and teachings.

And yeah...from my study of other religions, there are "denominational" style splits occuring...Christians didn't invent the schism, but we've sure gotten good at it.

ravenradiodj

There's nothing stopping you teaching anyone your interpretation, if that is what you desire to do. Someone once calculated that there were at least 300 denominations of Christianity, and 5 million names for God in the world. I'm as devoted to my particular beliefs as anyone, and the first lesson I'm teaching my children is tolerance. Wouldn't it be nice if we were all spiritually awake, and noone would care what path anyone else was on, because it wouldn't matter, we'd all be going in the same direction? Yeah, I know, 38 years old and still a dreamer....
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Gimme That Old Time Religion - PAGAN FOR LIFE!

asaris

There are a number of different reasons for the different denominations, and most splits are a combination of political, cultural, and doctrinal differences. I think there are two very general ways to make quick sense of the differences, though both oversimplify things.

First, different denominations often tend to emphasize different persons of the Trinity. My own denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, has a tendency to emphasize the Father, which means that we emphasize God's sovereignity, power, and justice. The typical "American Evangelical" will emphasize the Son, that is, God's mercy and love. The Penecostals emphasize the Spirit, and so lay heavy weight on the gifts of the Spirit.

Second, different denominations tend towards a different style of service. Catholic, and especially Orthodox, services are very high church. Very liturgical, incense, music, these sorts of things. Reformed and Baptist services tend to be much more low church, where the emphasis is on teaching, especially the sermon.

There's a third way to understand the differences, but it's a bit more complicated. I'll post more later.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

JJRousseau

I think you have answered your own question as to why there are so many denominations. Somebody always has it figured out better than somebody else.

Ravenradiodj. Maybe you're not such a dreamer. While the extremists seem to be coming more extreme, there are a lot of us who are (finally) discovering that spirituality is bigger than religion.

ravenradiodj

I agree, JJ. I think as a species we're at a spiritual crossroads. Oddly enough, several different systems of belief are saying the same thing.

"Everyday more and more people are leaving the church and going back to God."

-Lenny Bruce

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

-John Lennon

________________________________________________________________________

Gimme That Old Time Religion - PAGAN FOR LIFE!

asaris

Okay, you can also understand the denominations historically, according to a few broad groups. In the beginning was the church, and it was good (I said I was painting with a broad brush, right?) Around the end of the first millenium, the orthodox churches split from the RCC (or the other way around), mostly because the orthodox thought that the bishop of Rome was too powerful. Then there was the reformation. There are three main groups that come out of the reformation: Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists. I suppose one could count the Anglicans too, but they aren't really as seperate from the RCC as the others -- sort of half-protestant. To some extent, these divisions were (and are) geographical. Lutherans and Anabaptists in Germany and Scandinavia, Calvinists in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Scotland. But the Lutherans are much more high church than the Calvinists, and the Anabaptists tend to be far more low church. Other than the Pentecostals, just about all protestant denominations fit into one of these groups. To further narrow it down, we can talk about how one group divided. I'll use the example of the Calvinists, since my denomination is a Calvinist denomination, and so I know them the best. To some extent, the reason the Dutch and Scotch formed seperate denominations is just due to geography, but differences arose over time. Most generally, the Scottish Calvinists (Presbyterians) tend to be more puritanical than the Dutch Calvinists (the Reformed churches). I've never been to a Presbyterian church, so I don't know how the services differ. My own denomination is the Christian Reformed Church. We split off from the Reformed Church of America in the 1850s, and the RCA split from the GKR much earlier. (I'm not sure about the spelling, but GKR is close. It's the Dutch state church, and I'm pretty sure the RCA split mostly for geographical reasons). We split from the RCA over the issue of whether or not freemasons could be members in the church. There are numerous differences, most of which you wouldn't notice unless you looked closely. The most noticeable difference between the CRC and the RCA is Christian education. The CRC emphasizes Christian schools much, much more strongly than the RCA does; you're much more likely to find an RCA kid in public school than a CRC kid. There are theological reasons for this I won't go into.

While we're talking about the differences between denominations, I might as well say that, despite significant differences in belief, my beliefs as a conservative "Calvinist" [1] are much closer to the beliefs of a conservative Pentecostal than they are to a very liberal "Calvinist".

[1]I put Calvinist in quotes because, first of all, I don't subscribe to the narrow set of beliefs most commonly associated with Calvinism, and secondly, neither would the liberal Presbyterian. For that matter, many members of the various "Calvinist" denominations either don't know what these beliefs are and probably wouldn't accept them if they did.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

JJRousseau

That and the small fact that Martin Luther wrote that the Pope was the antichrist.

prosequence

I'm not totally (or partially) up on all hte differences in religion. I think that a lot of the basics are the same, but the ceremony and actual "religion" part is broken down by culture and geography.
As for what is stopping you from teaching, dunno, God maybe?

__________________
And now here I stand because of you, Mister Anderson, because of you I'm no longer an agent of the system, because of you I've changed...

martinguerre

asaris is talking about the earlier eastern orthodox/western roman catholic split...which also occurs for theological reasons fwiw. mostly to do with the role and orgin of the holy spirit.

JJRousseau

Not in the paragraph I was referring to...

martinguerre

You quoted:

The east/west split often is traced to a dispute over Bishop Ignatius in 869 AD, and fully schisming in 1472 with the East repudiating the Council of Florence.

Luther did not make the quote you refer to until 1522. Asaris might want to revise the date at which he places the east/west schism...but he wasn't referring to the Reformation.

asaris

But wasn't the council of Florence itself in the early 15th century, and weren't the eastern/western churches at least in a de facto schism before then? I'm not really sure, since I get most of my history from video games...

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

zen_tom

One of the things that got me thinking along these lines was learning about the discovery at Nag Hammadi of an ancient library (links to the texts) thought to be the a collection of religious writings that was in circulation perhaps a century or so after Jesus' death.

Since the New Testament was (and here I am happy to be proved wrong, since I am in no way an authority on the matter) put together and distributed with the backing of Rome (Empr. Constantine? 325AD?) of course, their versions of the bible(which of course make great pains to explain the importance and authority of the [Roman] Church - see the Gospel of John, which is the most authoritarian gospel of the chosen) became more widely accepted since a) they were more readily available, and b) followers of other non-accepted materials were branded as heretics and driven from their homes, their books burnt and their families put to death.

The documents found in the library paint a very different picture of Jesus and his teachings, and one that is much less likely to have been distorted by politics and power (since it's been buried for the last 1700 years) Of course, it is unknown as to the authenticity of the find, though pieces found here appear to correspond to fragments and full works found elsewhere. This find apparently is just the most complete. (Side note of interest: One of the books found in the library is a translation of Plato's Republic)

How should (or even how does, since again I'm asking these questions without having done a great deal of research) a church respond to findings such as these? Does it make any difference? Should anyone be interested? Does it have anything to teach us? Can we use it to improve ourselves somehow?

martinguerre

asaris...yes...there are east west splits prior to Florence. But, you might date "The East/West" split to that date. basically...Florence is when Rome stops trying to recover the east...so it's a western centric date anyhow.

zen tom...the Gospels circulate far sooner than the 4th century. Cannonization of texts continues until that time period, but all the material had been circulating, along with other texts in variously authoritative collections.

I also have no idea where you understand John as the most authoritative or Rome friendly...

I also dispute that the Gnostics paint a better picture. The texts offer an independant witness, and help us understand Jesus better. But they have the own spin, their own agenda. Just because they lost doesn't mean their right, just like winning didn't make the "orthodox" church right either.

biblical criticism has an important role...it helps us weigh passages that are in tension with each other, it helps us understand the meanings and forms of communication that we're trying to interpret....but it won't be a subsitute for exegetical work.

neutone

I welcome the discovery of new angles on Christ. To me, the fact that there are so many different denominations of the same religion, illustrates the gaping holes in Christianity as a whole. Of course this is not limited to Christianity. The original document has spun off so many interpretations that there are no core truths, they are schismed and split with the church and the credibility along with it. We have to patch together a picture of our history, and we can embrace the pictures we have, but they can never be considered true. Truth creates rightiousness, which creates a position to defend, attack, destroy, consume, villify, Bush, war, enemy.

That said, the historical picture of Christ is one to embrace and love.

__________________
Protect the rights of tribes

zen_tom

martinguerre, I'm not saying that so-called Gnostic texts paint a better picture, but am pointing out their worth as unadulterated documents that put into better focus the more traditional writings. Yes they of course have their own agendas, but they are worth noting despite those agendas.

John appears to stand-out from the other Gospels, it contains material that the others don't, it also omits things that the other three share. By authoritarian, I think I mean that John is the one that requires you to believe that Jesus was God. In John's Gospel, belief is more important than good deeds, and belief is something that a church requires. A philosophy might encourage good works (Jesus was undoubtedly a gifted philosopher. "Love Thy Neighbour", is a beautifully simple, three-word distillate answer to one of the worlds most difficult questions) but agreement with philosophical wisdom does not a church make.

In fact, there are many who believe that John was written as an argument against opposing beliefs, those beliefs being that Jesus was God, rather than the Son of God, or a man infused with the Spirit of God, or just a man. If heaven is only accessible through a single gate, Jesus, and if the church holds the keys to that gate. But I have made that point already.

As for Roman-friendly, it is noticed that the crucifixion of Jesus is never the fault of the Romans (who performed it), but of the Jews. Pilate is shown to be bound by the will of the crowd who force his hand against his wish.

I hope nobody considers my using any of these points to deride or shoot anything down, that is not my intention.

martinguerre

zen tom, what i meant with my comments on Gnostic texts...i don't think you can call them unadulterated. When they tell the Jesus story, they're just as likely to put words in his mouth as *anyone* else.

john is a standout, that's for sure. i don't think it "requires" belief that Jesus requires you to beleive in a way the others don't. Mark comes first, and the very opening, the author puts you in to a little secret...Jesus is the Son of God. And you get to read the story knowing that, and are drawn in to the developing drama by that. John has argueably the highest Christology...but its still too early to call it Trinitarian. Son of God/God himself is a tricky line...i think John toes it, but i don't actually think he crosses. "I know not the hour" comes from Jesus in this Gospel, admitting a limitation that High Trinitarians are hard pressed to explain.

all the gospels whitewash the roman influence to varying degrees. Mark probably the least, but the other three all do so in different ways so it's hard to say that John does it more than they do. Luke brings in a trial in front of Herod Antipas, and sets up the friendship between him and Pilate as part of the issue, Matthew places large blame on the assembled crowd, and the temple elite. John does too.

Here's one major issue...when the Gospels say "Jews" they are saying in the Greek "Iudoi" or Judean. That's a southerner, a Jerusalem identification, to distinguish from the rebel north of Galilee. What may be seen as anti-semitism to our eyes, is more likely IMO, to be the product of a generations old feud between north and south for political and religious dominance that dates all the way back to the Restoration under Cyrus.

What does this mean for John? I think it gets seen as much more Roman friendly than it might have been recieved as. Galileans are known rebels and bandits, and to support one over the Judeans...isn't really what Rome wants to hear. The memory of the sack of Jerusalem is still fresh...which cost many lives on both sides. John still points to an authority that doesn't respond to that kind of power, one that can both destroy the Temple and raise it up, that supercedes roman claims to authority. That the tradition was later domesticated by empire doesn't mean it started out empire friendly...

Zeraph

The difference is the people, if youre debating which to join, simply follow the people (you like.)

JJRousseau

martinguerrre, you're right. I should have read that more carefully.

Zeraph. if you are talking about mainstream Christian churches, I would agree. I've never had an allegiance to one denomination or another. However, it is very hard to step outside that small group. You won't often see a Baptist worshipping with a Mormon or a Catholic with a Muslim.

ravenradiodj

I recommend an excellent book called God Against The Gods....cannot recall the author's name, but he argues, persuasively, that monotheistic belief systems seem to have this isolationist tendency, a "we're right, you're wrong" mentality, among a significant number of their believers. As a Pagan minister, I've prayed with people of every faith who are open minded enough to know we're all essentially working in the same direction, just along different paths. We could all stand to be a little more tolerant of others. I know I catch myself slipping once in a while into labelling certain groups, usually the ones whose members feel a need to point out to me that I'm doing Satan's work, despite the fact that I don't believe in Satan. I often remind myself to cut them some slack - after all, we're all family.
________________________________________________________________________

Gimme That Old Time Religion - PAGAN FOR LIFE!

roachboy

it is interesting to read through this thread because the problem that runs through it is how to limit the effects of historicizing a belief system--a move that would easily lead to relativism--which poses a real problem for people who believe because, as kierkegaard worried about and theorized long ago, historicizing a belief system wipes out the space of belief.

if you historicize the christian tradition you can see it as little more than a series of attempts to define the limits on interpretation. the move behind it is almost always heresy, as weber defined it, and as bourdieu later formalized it....move to the origin texts to at once legitimate your position and to undercut the legitimacy of the opposition--now you are the most faithful representative of the oringal impetus behind the founding texts, for whatever reason....an argument that you could not make if you viewed heresy as a possibility that fits into a history of such possibilities.

the process that follows is the one weber thought much about--the transition from charismatic prophet (the heretic) to institutionalized formation via the routinization of charisma. but it is hard to imagine how you would maintain belief if you came to understand your belief as being shaped by this kind of process--unless it only obtains or others, other denominations, etc.

the setting of limits on interpretation in the present is a way of defending the naturalization of power relations that follows from the fact of belief. which is a way of defending the space of belief itself.

not sure if this is too much in shorthand--i have no time at the moment---i just found it interesting.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

martinguerre

Say more...this is interesting. What is in the space for belief? Is orthodoxy a better answer than historicization?

And is it the routinization of charisma? The continued struggle with new forms of belief seems to imply that charisma hasn't been contained...

zen_tom

Yeah roachboy, I can't keep up either, who are Kierkegaard, Weber and Bourdieu? (btw and fyi, I always need to read your posts through twice before they begin to make sense!)

roachboy

only have a few minutes (again---this three-dimensional life thing is getting on my nerves) so this will be as much a bump as a response....

martin: i dont prefer "orthodoxy" or belief to historicizing at all--quite the contrary. what i was pointing to is that if you believe, you view certain relations as absolute, and the boundaries that shape the space within which you believe as natural--you could look at the same features in historical terms and see them as the result of power relations/conflicts--from which it follows that it would be difficult if not impossible to naturalize them (treat them as features of the world ordained by god, say.)

this is the main reason why kierkegaard was freaked out by hegel...kierkegaard's way of framing the question had to do with historicization introducing an element of distance that tends to undermine belief, which for him was about immediacy, a direct relation between the believer and god.

zen tom:
kierkegaard was a danish philosopher active in the 1830s-1840s--one of the more interesting and influential philosophers to take on from the inside problems of christianity.

max weber was a sociologist--his work on the sociology of religion was and is among the more interesting projects undertaken on the matter. pierre bourdieu is a french sociologist (he died a couple years ago) whose work on cultural power draws on weber in some basic ways.


ach....
i gotta go

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

I so need to read Weber...

Interesting post, roachboy. As it turns out, I enjoy a certain sort of historicizing. Viewing the history of the Church as the interaction of various nexuses of power, the attempts to legitimize/de-legitimize opposing viewpoints, etc., can be very interesting, and even profitable, and even profitable from a Christian viewpoint. But, of course, there are two caveats. One is that I believe that God is with his church, and so the outcome is, shall we say, 'influenced' by him. He ensures that his church does not go too far astray for very long. The other is that I object to two sorts of historicizing; two moves made by an examination of the history of the church.

One is the one you mention -- the attempt to legitmize one's own standpoint by claiming to have 'rediscovered' the true apostolic church over and against all the history that has come between then and now. True, the apostolic church and its practices as described in scripture are of supreme importance, and it's an ideal we should always strive for. But the Christian faith is a tradition, and it's at the very least dangerous to ignore 1800 years of that tradition.

The second is the Hegelian historicizing, a type of 'whiggish' history. The idea of these thinkers is that the church has always been in development, and we (in Hegels case, German Protestantism) have achieved the highest level of development. The most odious of these sorts of thinkers think that we have surpassed 'faith' and moved on into a realm of reason, where the historical truths of Christianity are removed for a more 'rational' faith. I'm with Kierkegaard here (and generally, for that matter). You can't move beyond faith; faith is the achievement of a lifetime, and few people even become "Knights of Faith". It's a task every generation, every person has to begin anew.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

zen_tom

asaris, there are questions that I have to ask that will either appear socratic or downright facetious(apologies in advance):

1) If one can't look to the source, how does one legitimise one's standpoint? Or is it legitimisation itself that you object to?

2) What's the difference between Hegelian historicising, and your attachment to tradition? Aren't you both saying the same thing? i.e. paraphrasing you :tradition has been infuenced by God who is with his church. vs paraphrasing the whiggs: the church is always in development and has achieved the highest level of development.

In both timelines, there has been development and change. Is the difference that the Hegelians believe that development has been a human achievement, while you ascribe that development to God? Is this how God makes sure that his church keeps up with modern times?

What if a 'rediscovery' was an act of God trying to steer his flock back into the fold? Is there, apart from what you know in your heart, a way to tell the difference?

asaris

1. Of course one legitimates one's standpoint by looking at the source. But when this becomes legitimation too much at the expense of other denominations, it becomes bad. Let me try to make it more concrete. I'm a member of the Reformed denomination, so I believe that the teachings of the Reformed church are the closest to what the Bible teaches. This works the other way as well; because I believe the teachings of the Reformed church are the closest to what the Bible teaches, I'm a member. So to a certain extent, I would criticize RCCs and Pentecostals for departing from the teachings of scripture. But what I don't think is that the Church went horribly terribly wrong for 1500 years until John Calvin came around to straighten things out. Churches and denominations have been wrong, sometimes terribly wrong, before, and undoubtedly will be wrong again, but that sort of whole-scale, long-term wrongness just doesn't jive with what the Bible teaches about the relation b/w God and the Church.

What I also object to, along these same lines, is the sort of thinking that "My denomination is right, and all other denominations are going to hell." I think my denomination is right, and so, where other denominations disagree, they are wrong, but I think that all Christian denominations have got enough right that we all pretty much have the same proportions of saved folk.

2. The Hegelian in fact disdains tradition; the only reason to study history is to see how we got here, but since we're here, and we're the best, we can't really learn anything from the tradition. My viewpoint is that we all have our own personal blind spots, some as individuals, some as members of a certain tradition, and some as members of a certain age. So we can learn things from studying sources that are not a part of our own tradition. We both believe that there has been change; what the Hegelian thinks is that all change is progress, while I believe that, outside of limited spheres, there is no such thing as progress.

Certainly the difference is not one of where the change comes from; there are (or at least were) plenty of Hegelians who gave Hegel's philosophy a decidedly spiritualistic spin. (In constrast to Hegelians like Marx, who gave it a decidedly materialist spin).

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

since each movment--heretical at the outset, a denomination later if it manages to crete an institutional space for itself---defines the nature of the text and the criteria for defining closeness to it, it follows that each can be seen in entirely historical terms as manoevering in what amounts of a field of cultural production. since the texts--in this case the bible---are not themselves open to question, position is defined by controlling the variables outlined above.

this is the point at which historicizing and belief can run into conflict---what is at stake in the definitions of the status of the texts and the meaning of the term closeness is position--these are defined relationally with reference to other positions as they obtained at the points of origin (the emergence of the heretical impetus and that of the institutionalization of that impetus--the routinzation of charisma if you like) and not with direct reference to god--which, if you push this logic far enough, becomes little more than a textual function defined by the parameters put into place by the development of the instituional/denominational position.

this would be the problem created by introducing an historical sense into questions of interpretation, which in this space seem inevitably to run into questions of denomination/social position--and this is what people who operate within any of these spaces as believers have to limit.

asaris is quite up front about this, which i applaud (that is the sound you hear...)

i suspect that it is easy from this point to derive how i would, as someone who operates outside of this problem, would turn this logic onto his position.
and this is what i was trying to point to in the initial post.


i work as a historian in the three-dimensional world (sometimes in here as well, but i try to not let that part come in so much)--i am interested in the notion that history can corrode certainty, can undermine the sense of stability of the present, that it can push you into a space of thinking---this for political as well as methodological reasons.

so i do not subscribe to the translation of edmund burke that asaris worked into the above responses--nor to montaigne's more political ambiguous version, which arrived at a similar relation to tradition as a function of skepticism.

to get back to the question of interpretation, then, i would not route myself through consideration of tradition as if that in and of itself legitimated the argument i was making--simply because it does not operate as a singular term (this follows from the above) nor does it operate as binding.

how then would you address questions of validity?

it comes down to the usage of sources and the persuasive power of the argument--formal criteria--across which the rhetorical matters of defining the nature of the text and the meaning of closeness of faithfulness to it are all in play. from my viewpoint, these are basically political matters.

all this as an index of how quickly positions can diverge and how far they can diverge given the presence or absence of the structuring assumption of belief.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite