Things We Sense Around Here

Several weeks ago, in response to Mere Comments’ write-in commentators who seize the opportunity to point out to our readers the superiority of their own communions—particularly to inform us why the problem under discussion is no longer problematic for them because of the enlightenment they have been provided with, I wrote “Things We Already Know Around Here.” As I noted in the blog, these were my own thoughts, and had not been circulated among our editors for approval. Since then they have gone around the Touchstone circle, the response has been positive, and I have a few more thoughts to add:

We find ourselves here much in the position of Christ's disciples, who often disagreed among themselves, and who we may suppose all understood their Lord imperfectly (some doubtless less imperfectly than others), but all of whom would agree that to the limit of their perception they perceived, and believed, and perceived the others perceived and believed, one and the same Lord.  That is the center.  Even when they were squabbling they knew they stood together, and apart from, many of their Jewish coreligionists, Jesus himself being at issue. 

Introducing the Church, and with it the questions of its character and of which communion is the repository of the fullness of the apostolic tradition and authority--the central point of disagreement among us--does not really alter the situation, since the common impression of the Lord remains (among us, and also within our communions), forming the intuition--and that is really what it is--upon which the fellowship rests, and which none of us is willing to take the responsibility before God for overthrowing, either by adopting a Lockean attachment to religious toleration on one hand, or simply declaring the other to be apostate and washing our hands of him on the other. 

The Lord we together perceive appears to have a monitory finger raised at us all--we intellectuals who bear heavy responsibility for the minds we influence, and for which we shall surely answer to him.  Our errors will be corrected, and we are to be working on this, starting with the logs in our own eyes, but in the meanwhile, primum non nocere--we are to be in constant fear of harming the work he is doing to reconcile us in truth, either by slighting the truth, or the reconciliation. 

The old Princeton theologian Charles Hodge is frequently cited as having said that no new idea ever originated at Princeton.  Perhaps we at Touchstone might say, in the same spirit, that no concept of religious toleration has ever raised its head among us.  None of us has ever been interested in it, and you'll never find a more ecumenical group of anti-ecumenists.  (That's one of the reasons so many of us are converts, and others decided not-converts.)  We're interested in Truth, but acutely aware that this involves care not to overthrow the work of God in reconciliation. Thus hedged about we go on our way.