Purgatory: Is there a label for this belief and is it valid?
North East Quine
Purgatory Host
Religious pluralism refers to the idea that all religions are equal, that all paths lead to God.
Is there a way of describing a similar belief, where the vector is not geographical but historical?
I worship in a parish church which was built in the very early C19th on the site of a pre- Reformation church whose roof had become unsafe. That pre-Reformation church was itself built on the site of an earlier place of worship. There has probably been Christian worship on this site since the C7th or C8th.
Over that time, the Christians who have worshipped there have held large spectrum of belief - successively Celtic, Roman Catholic, Protestant. During the Reformation, the faces were carefully chipped off the Sacrament House (aumbry). In the C16th, the clergy gave evidence at the secular trial of a witch, who was executed. In the C17th the minister was "apprehended and imprisoned" during the civil war on some point of theology, which is not clear to me. In the C18th the church started to benefit from money sent home by slave owners in the Caribbean. There have been spats over pews for as long as there have been written church records. We used to own a branks (scold's bridle), now catalogued by the Museum of Scotland as an "instrument of torture." But at the same time, the church fed the poor, cared for the widow and orphan, and loved God.
Despite knowing that I would probably neither recognise nor understand many of the beliefs and practices of my predecessor Christians here, I believe that all, or almost all, of the previous iterations of Christian faith here led to God. I believe that the Holy Spirit has been present throughout.
It's not religious pluralism per se - but is there a label for it?
And are there any problems with this belief, which feeds into my generally liberal approach to faith?
Is there a way of describing a similar belief, where the vector is not geographical but historical?
I worship in a parish church which was built in the very early C19th on the site of a pre- Reformation church whose roof had become unsafe. That pre-Reformation church was itself built on the site of an earlier place of worship. There has probably been Christian worship on this site since the C7th or C8th.
Over that time, the Christians who have worshipped there have held large spectrum of belief - successively Celtic, Roman Catholic, Protestant. During the Reformation, the faces were carefully chipped off the Sacrament House (aumbry). In the C16th, the clergy gave evidence at the secular trial of a witch, who was executed. In the C17th the minister was "apprehended and imprisoned" during the civil war on some point of theology, which is not clear to me. In the C18th the church started to benefit from money sent home by slave owners in the Caribbean. There have been spats over pews for as long as there have been written church records. We used to own a branks (scold's bridle), now catalogued by the Museum of Scotland as an "instrument of torture." But at the same time, the church fed the poor, cared for the widow and orphan, and loved God.
Despite knowing that I would probably neither recognise nor understand many of the beliefs and practices of my predecessor Christians here, I believe that all, or almost all, of the previous iterations of Christian faith here led to God. I believe that the Holy Spirit has been present throughout.
It's not religious pluralism per se - but is there a label for it?
And are there any problems with this belief, which feeds into my generally liberal approach to faith?
Comments
I am trying to articulate something which I have come to realise is central to my faith. For years now, it has been my practice to pray briefly before reading Kirk Session records, and I am starting to recognise that I am treating church records as sequels to Acts of the Apostles. A sort-of "we received the Great Commission and this is what we did with it here, in this parish, in this church, by this river."
I have no idea if there's a name for this belief, but it reminded me of T S Eliot's words:
You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid.
That can probably be applied to just about any church, of whatever time, place, or shade of churchmanship...
As a Quaker, I can look back at what the early Quakers believed and preached, and realise that they would feel very out of place in a modern meeting. But because of what they did and said, we are where we are now. There is a clear line of growth and development, that leads to a place now that reflects those original core beliefs, but in a way that reflects society today.
It seems that your situation reflects this similarly, that your current faith is built on the faith of those before, even if you reject their conclusions.
Also, this will continue into the future. Todays ideas will be seen to be wrong by the future.
I'd call that 'incarnational' in its true sense, except that word has already been grabbed by others who don't really understand all the remarkable implications of Jesus's incarnation.
It's usually used to describe an approach to church life and evangelism that involves getting involved in the community rather than proclaiming a message, often connected with phrases like 'the nitty-gritty' (whatever that means) and 'getting our hands dirty' as though 'we the church', and more specifically, 'us rather than those hyper-spiritual ones over there', are conferring some great blessing on our neighbours by deigning to get alongside them.
God choosing to become incarnate in Jesus isn't a blessing we bring to others. It's a blessing he gives to us, that he's prepared to dwell among us and love us despite all our faults, all our grubbiness, all our failures to love or to get the point. We aren't the wise men. We aren't even the shepherds. We're the stable.
Jesus chose twelve disciples who consistently fell short, yet he did not sack the lot and replace them with new ones. Nor did he call down a team of angels to do the job in stead.
Nor, after Pentecost, did they suddenly become perfect. They understood more, but they didn't understand everything and they hadn't become faultless.
Just as I @Enoch, you @North East Quine and every other Christian you or I will ever meet have major limitations, so did everyone in ever previous generation, and so will everyone in every future one until the Lord returns. That's how it is. Others, especially the more dogmatic and less perceptive among them, will look at you and me with the assumption we can't have been the 'real Christians' as they see themselves.
When I was a child, most Protestants and most Catholics were taught and took it for granted that the others weren't really Christians at all. One of the tragedies in Northern Ireland is that that is how both sides seem to see each other still. Then the charismatics came along sometime around 1970, and they thought Christianity had somehow gone into abeyance from about AD 100 until they had come along.
To quote Rom 14:4, and as a tribute to past generations, I've chosen the Authorised Version but the others say the same,
That's my take on this anyway.
Well said @Enoch !
Yes, I think I hold some of today's ideas lightly because I'm aware of this.
I have been called a heretic (and apostate by someone who didn't know what the term meant).
Heretic finding and heretic-calling have been, IMHO, a particularly unhealthy sport throughout most of Christian history, probably going back to before Marcion. This is the nature of exclusivist theologies. For my part, I find an inclusive approach to be better.
One definition of *heretic* is:
A person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.
(My italics)
IOW, *heresy* is just a different point-of-view (mind you, tell that to the Cathars and many others...).
I'd always seen religious pluralism as a social policy rather than a theological position; the idea that religious belief and practice is a private (meaning non-government) matter rather than something that needs to be regulated by law. The question of whether all, or any, paths "lead to God" is not one that's addressed by a religiously plural society. That question is left to individuals to decide for themselves.
For example:
A religiously plural society will tolerate the existence and religious practices of those outside the Church as well as those "within the Church", however defined.
“Tuesdayism”? I’m familiar with “Last Thursdayism” (or “Last Wednesdayism” or “Last Tuesdayism”), and what you describe sounds like C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield’s “chronological snobbery.”
I really don't think it's "chronological snobbery" to say that burning witches, torturing heretics and hanging, drawing and quartering political opponents were wrong and we know better today.
Obviously - or I hope obviously - burning witches, torturing heretics and hanging, drawing and quartering political opponents were and are wrong. Thinking one is more enlightened than they were because one doesn't do those particular outrages, though, does not make one wiser or more virtuous than they were. There are things that people take for granted or regard as acceptable now, or in recent times, which might well have horrified those in the past. It's wiser at least to allow for the possibility that on some of these at least, past generations may have been wiser or more virtuous than the present one.
In England. In Scotland they were burned. Not really the point thought.
Not necessarily. The woman executed as a witch from my village was strangled, then burned, but the woman identified as the ringleader of the group was burned without being strangled first.
And when I say strangled, they were garrotted at the stake, not hung.
Why the Old Testament in particular? It's not like Jewish communities of the time had witch trials. Following the Old Testament does not seem to have led to violent practices within Judaism. Why have Christians done differently?
It should be pointed out that witch trials were *secular* trials and had little if anything to do with the Church, and also most people who were accused were acquitted anyway.
Witchcraft as a moral panic wasn't a thing until the 1600s. It seems to be a reaction to the Little Ice Age more than any particular interpretation of the Bible.
King James VI of Scotland (later King James I of England, the man responsible for the King James Bible) believed that witches had made an attempt on his life. He was aware of the Copenhagen witch trials of 1590, and imported the concept into Scotland. Witch trials swept through Scotland from 1590 to 1597. In Aberdeen, the prison was not big enough to hold all the witches and so some of them were imprisoned in the main church. One of the metal rings to which witches were tied can still be seen in the church.
I also don't see what moral panics as a phenomenon have to do with religious pluralism. They don't rely on religious ideas necessarily. The Satanic Panic in the 80s was largely triggered by societal anxieties about divorce rates and more children entering daycare - yes, religion played a role but not more than any other social identity.
Ah, fair enough.
NEQ and I both do Scottish history. In Scotland the key evidence gathering phase which led to application for a commission to the secular authorities to try an accused witch was normally handled by the church through the lower church courts of Presbytery and Kirk session. The Scottish Church played a vital role in Scottish witch-hunting.
NEQ is close but can I tweak a little? The first big witch hunt in Scotland (about as big as the hunt of 1590 but not as richly documented) was driven by the Protestant churchman John Erskine of Dun in 1568-9 before James VI's personal rule. James didn't introduce witch-hunting itself from Denmark (though he did know about those Danish trials). It was the idea of witches' meetings that seems to have been new in that hunt (some historians say demonic pact was new but there are earlier mentions). There was very small scale pre-Reformation witch hunting in Scotland carried out by the Catholic church and the concept of demonic pact was known earlier than thought (I've seen it described in Scots by a monastic chronicler as early as ca 1537)
I don't think the Little ice age theory stands up here as most witch accusations were not of weather magic like storms/crop failure but of maleficia (of the type where you curse someone because you're angry with them and it happens: 'quarrel followed by misfortune'). There are of course exceptions like the famous ship sinkings and other types of witch case but maleficia is the main model here.
Can't find any witch trials in the OT but plenty of barbaric practices:
Poison for a woman alleged to be 'unfaithful' : Numbers 5
Stoning for a woman not a virgin at marriage: Deuteronomy 22
and Proverbs is full of references to a 'rod' for children and 'fools'.,
Witchcraft is mentioned as a 'detestable' practice of other nations in Deut 18.
And, of course, the 'witch of Endor' in 1 Sam 28.
Of course I'm not suggesting Judaism, post OT, did or does any of these things.
Although it’s hard to see, in the description given, anything actively poisonous. It looks more like a kind of trial by ordeal.
And to a jealous husband the woman would clearly be able to say that God had acquitted her.
It seem anachronistic to claim there was a clear dividing line between "secular powers" and "the Church" in an era when the divine right of kings was a live political doctrine and the Inquisition was in full swing. The existence of a clear dividing line between church and state seems like a precept of religious pluralism and doesn't really fit 16th/17th century Europe.
The clergyman was one of the main witnesses at the (secular) trial in 1596. And therefore, there can be no doubt that this particular clergyman believed in witches, and believed that this particular witch had had the power to cause his daughter's death.
Isobel was tried, found guilty and strangled and burned.
Or, indeed, what future generations will think of us now.
On the optimistic assumption that there will be future generations, probably something to do with leaving them an over-heated, unlivable planet as their inheritance.
At the risk of being overwhelmed by a chorus of ITTWACWS, dare I ask what the activity of the Holy Spirit was in this, to me, appalling event.
But maybe what Paul's letter meant is belief in superstition -which is of course what those prosecuting 'witches' were doing. And I still think they must have been using barbaric examples in the OT to justify such punishments.
I was born and raised in Canada. It was not until I did a walking trip along the Thames a few years ago and encountered churches that were genuinely old (as in waaaaaay before 1800) that I was able to forgive the stupidity of the institutional Christianity I know here and now. Somehow, seeing evidence of the long, complicated, and "strange" Christianities of history, allowed me to accept that the current church is simply one iteration in this long, weird participation in God's action.
The church in the past was messed up; we're messed up. God's still up to something.
That's in the KJV, the NRSV translates it differently. I wonder if KJ had it translated that way because of his knowledge that NEQ referred to.
In the course of history our perception of what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' can change and we cannot always blame our forefathers (and mothers and non-fathers and non-mothers) for not having the same outlook on life as we do now.
Just a few weeks ago I heard someone on the radio say that the film 'Gone with the Wind' should never be shown,because it shows what life was like for Black people in the American South,not just their inferior position in the life of the American South,but also the treatment of Black actors at the time the film was made.
At the same time TV series like Downton Abbey are very popular and those who enjoy watching don't usually say that we shouldn't watch this because it shows huge differences in the way of life of the rich and those whose life was spent serving them.
We learn much from reading of the points of view of our ancestors many centuries ago as well as those of fairly recent times. We learn and decide for ourselves what is good for us and what we wish to share with others who may come to different conclusions from the ones which we ourselves have reached.
But where is God in all of this is the question posed by NEQ - in particular if we believe that we are trying to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit,how is it possible that the Holy Spirit may be encouraging others to do something different from what we consider to be correct ?
We have to accept that our ancestors had access to different information from what we have now.As far as Christianity is concerned people would have known that all is summed up in Love God and love your neighbour as yourself. How one actually does this will be understood in different ways by different societies. We should value what knowledge we have of the outlooks of earlier generations though we have to adapt these to our own outlooks today,remebering that the Holy Spirit will not only be helping ourselves but many others with differing outlooks and understandings.
One well-known example: Hattie McDaniel (“Mammy”) was the first African American to win an Oscar, but David O. Selznick had to lobby hard just to get permission for her to be admitted to the awards ceremony, despite her being a nominee. He finally arranged for her to be allowed in, but she had to sit at a table off to the side, where she wouldn’t be seen. She was unable to attend the world premiere of GWTW in Atlanta, because it was whites-only. She died in 1952 of breast cancer, but her desire to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was denied because it was whites-only.
I doubt if the Worms bother about the distinction...
I saw GWTW once, and thought it tedious, and far too long.
I guess the question is where you draw that line between "past generations" and ourselves. For example, the high school students who assaulted the sit-in protesters at the Jackson, MS Woolworth's would be in their mid- to late-seventies today. Because they "lived in a different time" do they still get a pass for using violence to uphold racial segregation if they try it today?
I suppose you can consider what exposure people had to alternative views and how they responded to them. I recently discovered, for example, that when my Grandfather was a Methodist missionary in the Bahamas, the white settler congregation preferred no minister at all to having the minister from the black township congregation lead worship. This was considered perfectly reasonable in the context of British colonialism in the early 50s but he was disgusted by it.
Yes, and I've noted elsewhere that there seems to be a greater willingness to engage in moral relativism looking backwards in time than there does looking outward in space. They say the past is a foreign country, but we seem to be a lot more willing to tolerate what we see as moral lapses by those in the past than by those in foreign countries.