Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lieuwen@mycella.cs.wisc.edu (Dan Lieuwen) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Bible and Us: a book review; comments on Mary and Protestantism Message-ID: Date: 14 Sep 90 04:50:39 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept Lines: 87 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [I commented in a book review: >>Because [Protestants] do not tend to see the world as >>sacramental, and we reject the Jewish approach of seeing religion in *************************************************** >>the way we do every daily activity (as Neusner says again and again, ******************************************************************** >>"God lives in the details"), Protestants must see the world as *************************** >>secular. That does not mean that God is irrelevant to what we do in >>daily life. Far from it. But neither do we see him through the world >>in the same way that the Catholic and Jewish traditions do. --clh] I don't think the distinction you make between Protestantism and Judaism is accurate. It describes some Protestants. However, in many Protestant traditions, there is a lot of emphasis on sanctification and the necesssity of holiness. If that is not having "God live in the details", I don't know what is. >>Protestants turn the world into something simply >>secular (though of course it is still an arena in which to show our >>obedience to God). We do so in order to free ourselves from >>inadequate symbols, and deal directly with God. I also don't think that Protestants are required by their belief to see the world as secular. Especially in Calvinism, there is the notion that every honorable task can be a Christian calling. No useful task is profane--it is part of ones religious vocation. Also, with quotes from orthodox Calvinist theologians like "There is not a square inch of the world that does not belong to God", it is hard to maintain that stereotype of Protestantism. Many Protestants believe that the world is profane, but that is often a result of the "folk religion" that every faith must deal with, rather than an essential belief. Dan [All three approaches I mention, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, agree that there is not a square inch of the world that does not belong to God, and that we are called to holiness. However I think there are differences in the approach to being holy. I think there's a difference between what Neusner means when he says "God lives in the details" and what a Protestant would mean. Neusner means that there is a specific Jewish way of carrying out the details, given in the "dual Torah" (written and oral). While there are surely specifically Christian (or Protestant) ways of doing some things, the area in which decisions are religiously indifferent ("adiaphora") is larger. Furthermore, when we look for God's will, it is often more to be an attempt to find God's will for us, rather than a general Christian answer. For example, most Protestants consider almost all of the details about worship services to be indifferent. That doesn't mean they are not of concern to God, but God does not command a specific mode of worship, and we are free to choose any practices that further the worship of God. I'm reluctant to say much about Judaism, but my reading of Neusner is that he would expect to find advice in the dual Torah on all details of worship. Faithfulness in carrying out God's specifications of these details would be an important part of obedience to God. On my comments about seeing things as secular, let me clarify what I mean. How we deal with secular matters is of concern to God. To the extent that people are involved, they provide an opportunity to show God's love. As you say, any honorable task can be a Christian calling. But we do not tend to push the concept of everything in the world being a sacrament for God as far as Greeley suggests. By secular, I mean that something does not have a builtin religious significance. It takes on religious significance for us when we use it for God's purposes. None of these approaches is (or should be) followed in a pure form. All of us acknowledge areas in which God has specific commands, areas in which he wants us to exercise responsible and prayerful choice, and the fact that we see God in the world and the people around us. But each of the three traditions pushes harder on one aspect. Judaism finds specific guidance in their tradition in far more areas than the other two tradition. Catholics tend to see God as presenting himself to us through other people (Mary, saints, priests) and through things around us more than Protestants find comfortable. What I'm trying to identify is the things that Protestants push harder on. I believe some of it involves a greater emphasis on a direct relationship with God, and a greater tendency to see things around us as not having intrinsic religious significance, but instead as providing opportunities for us to exercise prayerful responsbility. --clh]