2. Doctrinal Beliefs and Christian Existence (2)

The selection emphasis of doctrines

     Conscious beliefs are important because their conformation to our prereflective knowledge affects psychic health. They important also because those beliefs which conform to the universal depths of experience introduce selection and emphasis. Selectivity and emphasis are essential to any ordered experience, and hence to any experience whatsoever.

     Once, this aspect of experience was pointed out in language, it was readily and consciously recognized. The same point holds with respect to morality. → the existence in which moral factors are central is a different existence from that in which they are peripheral.

     Out of the infinitely complex welter of elements making up human experience, metaphysical and moral teachings lift some into consciousness and thereby into increased effectiveness.  The total existence of human beings is thus profoundly affected by what they believe. Those Christian doctrines which are explications of universal aspects of experience have importance in the same way.  For example, they lift into consciousness certain aspects of the universal experience of deity, such as divine grace. The reality of a primordial prethematic apprehension that includes divine grace does not reduce the importance of thematization, for by itself this apprehension of grace is merely an abstraction within the total stream of experience.

     Christian doctrine, by selecting certain features of experience for conscious emphasis, shapes attitudes, purposes, and commitments, and even the structure of human existence itself.

Prerefletive experience and the grounds for belief.

     That much of Christian doctrine is selective description of features of universal prereflective experience has implications for the justification of theological affirmations.

     When one no longer finds it possible to accept religious doctrines that claim to be universal truths simply because some supposedly authoritative person, book, or institution proclaims them, one is inclined to ask for proof. But no historical events can in itself prove any general truth. Every argument(rational) finally presupposes some beliefs that must be simply taken as self-evidently true.

     Religion doctrines claiming universal validity are to be accepted, if at all, because of their self -evidence.

     The verbal expression of a universally experienced fact elicits a believing response in us because we had already apprehended the fact. → theology should not primarily be argumentation. But the argumentation should remain secondary tot eh attempt so to formulate beliefs that they can be immediately perceived as true.

     One of major possibilities for achieving progress in truth, which consists in “evolving notions which strike more deeply into the root of reality.

     we believe that it is possible for faith to broaden and enrich itself in this way without losing its Christian character, and that this is desirable. //다른 종교를 받아들이는 것은 기독교의 진리를 부정하는 것이 아니라. 진리에 대한 우리의 인식의 한계를 넓혀주고 깊게 해주는 것이다.

Doctrine and history

     Much of Christian doctrine is a description of prethematized universal experience, providing emphasis upon selected features.

     It has been through a particular history that the selection and emphasis have fallen as they have, so that both Christian doctrine and the Christian existence it forms are inseparable form their history. The same is true for the other great Ways of humanity.  

     The importance of history for doctrine is especially clear in language.  All language introduces the note of interpretation. This interpretation is shaped by the history of the language, including the speculative thought, that belong to the history. → accordingly, the language of a tradition and the central doctrines that reflect and support that language are the prime determinants of the particular mode of existence characterizing that tradition.

     As human existence is shaped in specialized ways during the course of history, experiences occur that are not possible to persons shaped by other traditions. → A long participation in yoga or meditation

     Abstract possibility vs real possibility ?

     The actual history of each Way has introduced doctrines that refer directly to its own practices. For example, there are Buddhist doctrines about the Sangha and about the respective roles of monks and laity, and there are Christian doctrines about the church and the sacraments. These do not appeal to universal self-evidence but to the experiences peculiar to the particular historical movement.

     There are also teachings about the great figures of the movement and especially about the founder that depend for their warrants on the facts of history as well as on cosmology or metaphysics.

     There is a final way in which Christian doctrine has a necessary reference to historical events. Those very few persons who, within a particular province of experience, express completely novel primary intuitions that remain unsurpassed. → Christ gave his life. it is for Christians to discern the doctrine.

     This continuing reference is based upon faith that there is more in the preformularized accounts of these events than is captured by any set of doctrines about them. Nevertheless, our immediate experience is the final court of appeal. We have faith in the continued fruitfulness of returning to the first accounts of and reactions to Jesus’ life for new insights because of the repeated fruitfulness of this return in the past. But this fruitfulness must finally prove itself in our own experience, or faith in the continuing relevance of Jesus will decline in company with other belief that do not ring true for us. 

     Our experience가 절대적인 기준이 될 수 있나? Reality는 우리가 알고 느끼것보다 훨씬 다양하고 깊을 수 있다.

     Doctrine이 our experience에 기준할 수 있는 것보다, 더 절대적인 것들도 고려할 상황일 있다.