Dreaming the Future Closer

I’ve been trying to read around the pagan blogosphere a little (as much as I can manage, so I make no claims to having a thorough appreciation) in the wake of the discussion around the closing of Deo’s Shadow at the Wild Hunt.  I see this one trend embodied in Deo’s post here and in Yewtree’s post here that attempt to set an analytical agenda for pagan theology and I’m left a little cold by it.

I wanted to think through my lukewarm responses to those proposals, figure out why they don’t inspire me and think about what does get me inspired.

For clarity’s sake: I’m not saying these are bad ideas, I’m just trying to work out why they aren’t the sort of thing that get me, academic and analytical person that I can be, excited.

Deo would like to see

Some broad categories may be “theistic vs non-theistic”, “monotheistic vs. polytheistic”, “Realists vs. archetypalists”, etc.. Some of these categories fall neatly beneath one another (like mono/polytheism falling underneath “theism”), and other distinctions cut across categories (any kind of theist could be a realist or archetypalist), etc.. It may even be helpful to create a database that can later be used to generate a visual web of the interrelations of Pagan perspectives. Names could be given to distinguish common perspectives with stable groups of characteristics.

Similarly, Yewtree endorses a scientific theology with explanations that are

internally consistent and logical (even if the logic is different from conventional forms of logic), as well as consistent with the fact that there are millions of people with a different explanation….Theologians should also practice triangulation, comparing their explanations with those of other religions and philosophies, and with science, to see if they still make sense.

My first reaction to these sorts of proposals amounts to “well, that sure seems like an academic way to go about it,” with a dry sardonic emphasis on the word “academic.”  What don’t I like about the academic?  This blog is so academic, after all.

Well, for one, taxonomies and internal coherence put their emphasis on ideas and argument, paring down the complexity of a thinker or movement into a shorthand of propositions.  However, except in the most banal of thinkers and movements, that shorthand is deceptively simple.

The ‘unities’ of a thinker or movement tend to be situational, contextual, providing occasions around which they organize their ideas and through which they debate each other.

Taxonomies, except in the rarest of cases, strip away that context, turning thinkers and movements into empty vehicles for propositions, and suggest that the ‘truth’ of those propositions don’t depend on those situations.  Every time I have moved from an overview of a dynamic intellectual to reading their actual work, I have been surprised by how poorly the overview prepared me for their work.

I do like to read commentary and secondary literature, but I much prefer material that engages the text, debating and elaborating it, rather than summarizing and explaining it.  In debate and elaboration, thought continues to live and address life as it happens.

I’m not opposed to summary and clarification, but to me it remains a secondary and derivative dimension of thought, of developing wisdom over mere factual knowledge.  Making theology serve summary and clarification shifts its focus from religious life to mere cataloging.

Again, cataloging is great and essential, it makes it possible for us to navigate more easily into forms of discourse with which we can think and grow.  To be Aristotlean, the final cause of theology ought to be better life, and taxonomy is a means toward that end.

Putting taxonomy first in theology also tends to put people’s ideas of religion before their actual experience of religion.  I know that many people with whom I do and have done rituals differ with me over how they conceive of their practice.  However, that intellectual difference has not changed that the rituals we share have been meaningful for all of us.

A community is not defined by its shared intellectual precepts, but by its shared practices.  The greater the unity of practice, the greater the unity of the community.  The verbal practices that make up most philosophic accounts of a group are often the least important dimension of that unity.

I tend to think that most of the problems in the pagan community, most of the divisiveness, come from a failure of practical conformity, not from a failure of intellectual conformity.  Moreover, a good deal of that reflects a mistaken presupposition that intellectual, theological concepts determine practice.

Concepts ought to influence practice, but they ought not determine it unilaterally.  I much prefer a theology developed after Simone Weil (like I discussed way back here) than one modeled after Quine.

[Just an observation--wow, this is post #101 for the blog.  Well, a good reflective post seems a great way to start the next 100 entries.]