When I say universe I'm speaking of a universe of meaning: familiar symbols, habits, and assumptions that fix the stars and horizons that make up the mental furniture of daily life. Human beings exist in a meaning universe more directly than the physical one. Ask the reductionist-materalist how difficult it is to truly cleave to the "nothing but" of things and then watch them realize that this, too--this arrival at the bare whatness of objects in the physical universe is just another shaping of the mental universe of meaning. That's the double-edge of Kant's great divide: even the scientist is a phenomenologist.
I didn't furiously start and break into the forest chasing after a new universe. You don't realize you've left a path until it is long behind you. It starts with tiny deviations. "Look at that over there!" Then a quick investigation to get a better view. Soon you've left the trail behind.
The first steps were quite simple: the resolution that matter is not of itself a sinful thing. The body too can hope. An eschatological lean toward the Postmillenial end of Amillenialsm. A strict habit of avoiding material notions about godself so that the triune being is not a thing among things. A denial of the present-day urge to use the doctrine of providence as a divining rod. A realization that it is modernity that values authenticity, this baptized in "God has a plan for my life" (the kingdom of God recruits worshipers for God's sake, not for the sake of a realization of one's inner you.) Leaving Anabaptist traditions behind and joining an Episcopal church. These all taken together slowly lead away from that universe that others have called the enchanted universe.
Just naming the darn thing took years. The enchanted universe--yes! I've blogged about this before. This is the universe in which the Christianity of my youth dwells. Naming the other universe has taken nearly as much time. I'm an alien and a stranger to it after all. Moving in large rooms by candlelight. Nothing is familiar. This is the sacramental universe.
I've not fully arrived in the latter. And so much of the habits of mind and the phrases that go with being a Christian go with the former, it has been an odd process of sorting it all out. The brits have pants but call them trousers. Both universes have the word "worship" but mean very different things. It is a repatriation.
Here are a few things I've discovered: One fundamental difference between the two is the way each understands the relationship between God and the world. The god of the enchanted universe is far away, though invoked and expected in the smallest parts of daily life with great fervency. Matter in the enchanted universe is hopeless, the world will burn up and the soul will one day put aside the body and go on to a better realm. The god of the sacramental universe is astonishingly close, though far less invoked and expected in daily life. One expects laterally, the way that plants grow or time flows in unnoticeable continuity that evades the most intense awareness. Matter has hope, the world will be redeemed and transformed, and human beings will go into the new creation as embodied persons, transformed, yes, but still human beings. The eschatologies are different, and so is the drama. Warfare characterizes the former; wonder the latter--at least in my experience.
The way religion and science relate to one another is also very different depending on which universe you inhabit. In the former, science is a helpful maker of comforts but is not allowed to say anything of real importance. In the latter, science is taken seriously. It is not embraced, but it becomes a partner in dialogue. If one is a Christian coming up in an enchanted universe, the only option available if you take the scientific route is to put things in tight boxes, otherwise there is no motivation to engage in the mental and physical rigor of scientific investigation. If one grows up in a sacramental universe, there is a great deal of motivation to pursue the sciences, perhaps more motivation than if one grows up an agnostic.
At any rate, the doctrine of revelation is far different in the two universes. In an enchanted universe, revelation is immanent and pregnant in all things, what is necessary are the keys to its discovery. It is personal, and so God is personal. In a sacramental universe, revelation is restricted to word and sacrament: and perhaps even to word through sacrament (word governed by sacrament). It is largely impersonal, though one's person is caught up in the story. God became a person, and so what is confessed is a God in three persons. The self is wholly at the center of the enchanted universe; God's redemptive purpose at the center of the sacramental one. Faith is also differently understood. In the former faith is a Kierkegaardian leap full of the will and human drama; in the latter it is a signpost planted by the Holy Spirit sticking stubbornly from one's own rocky heart, sometimes a beacon but most times a nuisance.
science and religion; enchanted universe; sacramental theology; Christianity
Hi Thom
ReplyDeleteGood post. You put into words an experience I am undergoing too. The distinction between "enhancted" and "sacramental" is an important one. I notice you didn't prefix the word 'dis' to 'enchanted' to describe your new outlook. Is that deliberate? What's the difference between that an sacramental?
Before I comment further, I think I first need to clarify something. It may be the use of the term "Sacramental" universe, but... Can the "Sacramental Universe" be found other places than the Episcopal Church? They definately are heavy on the "Sacrament" side of things. Can I, as a lowly Baptist be part of the sacramental universe? Or does my church affiliation cause me to drift about in the enchanted universe?
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing this up. More comments to follow your response :)
My apologies for the tardiness of a reply; I can only plead the daily moment-by-moment interruptions of a family man with no time to blog. Paul, fantastic to hear from you. I think of you often. Please correct me if I'm off, but my understanding is that the "disenchanted" universe of Weber and others represents more the view of a pure materialist that would deny any transcendence at all. Such a view is not embraced by either the enchanted or sacramental universe: both are supernaturalist and theistic. I would love to hear how things are going with you as you have been struggling in this no man's land for longer than I have been. That and you always say things so intelligently. And Marc, I'm so pleased to hear from you and honored that you'd be reading this, I'm embarrassed to say, much neglected blog. (Though, as you too are probably aware, the spirit is often willing, oh so willing, but the flesh is weak.) As you are a student of history, you know that often we are caught up and, in some ways, governed by that history even if we ourselves are unaware or would prefer it otherwise. That is how I understand the anabaptist traditions. Products largely of a rising middle class, an expanding frontier, and other issues (there are always other issues), anabaptism is individualistic and private, self-reliant and given naturally to experience as the ultimate test of authority. Ethics and social justice is stressed over purity of dogma and confession. Retreat toward purity favored over engagement and a perceived (or real) dilution of holiness. Both have their own kinds of mystics. Hmm . . . I don't mean to say that anabaptist have not produced good minds and good schools: there is no doubt that they have. I'm talking about the general tendency of such things. In this sense, I'm sorry to say that you cannot understand what I mean when I talk about the sacramental universe and that /yes/ your church affiliation does gently pull you, ever so gently, in the direction of the enchanted one. You may best feel this current most clearly in a desire expressed in the hymnody and in other forms of worship to forget one's surroundings and ascend interiorly into some higher plane. Different people will favor one universe over the other, and I can't see that either make any difference at the foot of the cross. And I hope I was plain that I was not aware of crossing any sort of line until it had already been crossed. And, no, you don't have to be Episcopal, but, I might venture to say, you'd need to trace your history back to the magisterial reformation, to Roman Catholicism, or to Eastern Orthodoxy: in other words, a branch of Christianity that has developed a dogmatic structure around the eucharist. As a baptist and, before that, worshiping in the Christian Church (denomination, not religion), I celebrated the Lord's Supper, but the dogmatic structure surrounding that was Christology, dealing directly with the propitiatory death of Jesus. Approaching the table was not an act governed by Ecclesiology or any worked out doctrine of the sacraments. It was only when I worshiped in a community that did have that structure in place that I began to be aware of an entire wing of the building, so to speak, that simply went unnoticed before. Not that it wasn't there. It was, but it wasn't important and went without any real notice. So, to sum up, I would never say you are a "lowly Baptist," as grace is the only foundation for anyone. I'm merely describing a religious experience I am undergoing--whether for good or ill really isn't my issue, though, because it is happening to me I think it good. And it is not an experience which that branch of Christianity which comes out of anabaptism is built to support or encourage.
ReplyDeleteThe faerie people from our woods are gone,
ReplyDeleteNo Dryads have I found in all our trees,
No Triton blows his horn about our seas
And Arthur sleeps far hence in Avalon. ~ C. S. Lewis
this is, perhaps, as short and succinct a description of the enchanted world as I can discover: an enchanted universe is a place where the spiritual world is alive, active, and intervening in the affairs of humanity.
ReplyDeleteHere is the fundamental difference between an enchanted universe and a sacramental one, namely, the presence or absence of mediation. More particularly, whether one has direct access to the divine--for I cannot discover a native trinitarianism in the former--or whether the divine Father is mediated to the individual/the church by the Son and through the Holy Spirit. (This is not to say that the Trinity is not operating in the former. Of course it is. What I am saying is that it does so apart from the native machinery of those traditions.) Discussing mediation, regard a note by D. A. Carson on spiritual disciplines:
ReplyDelete"The pursuit of unmediated, mystical knowledge of God is unsanctioned by Scripture, and is dangerous in more than one way. It does not matter whether this pursuit is undertaken within the confines of, say, Buddhism (though informed Buddhists are unlikely to speak of "unmediated mystical knowledge of God"—the last two words are likely to be dropped) or, in the Catholic tradition, by Julian of Norwich. Neither instance recognizes that our access to the knowledge of the living God is mediated exclusively through Christ, whose death and resurrection reconcile us to the living God. To pursue unmediated, mystical knowledge of God is to announce that the person of Christ and his sacrificial work on our behalf are not necessary for the knowledge of God. Sadly, it is easy to delight in mystical experiences, enjoyable and challenging in themselves, without knowing anything of the regenerating power of God, grounded in Christ's cross work."
In short, then, mediation is the fulcrum upon which the argument turns.
At any rate, the doctrine of revelation is far different in the two universes. In an enchanted universe, revelation is immanent and pregnant in all things, what is necessary are the keys to its discovery. It is personal, and so God is personal. In a sacramental universe, revelation is restricted to word and sacrament: and perhaps even to word through sacrament (word governed by sacrament). It is largely impersonal, though one's person is caught up in the story.
ReplyDeleteI would simply say that while a sacramental understanding of the universe wouldn't have us looking for hidden meanings/messages from God in events for instance, it does inspire an appreciation for natural revelation and a recognition in the immanence of God in creation, in the sense of continuous creation and sustaining. For some reason I'm thinking of Lewis' "deep magic" idea from Narnia. A sacramental universe is one that is recognized as being utterly dependent upon God in every detail, and yet, not all that transpires is somehow part and parcel of God's specific will, i.e. random things happen in the particular, while when taken as a whole, the narrative is still headed in the direction the author (God) intended (or intends). I find that I often fall back on Occam's understanding of God's absolute and ordained powers in thinking of these things. God, of course, has the power to do anything, but in order for creation to even exist, God has to sort of hollow out a space for it. Free will or chance exist because God has self-limited the ways in which he will interact with his creation in order for creation to exist at all.
There's a very interesting discussion of this in one of Alister McGrath's books, that traces the idea of the two powers of God and the idea of God's self-limitation right up through Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford and a leading Anglo-Catholic, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. You can read it on Google books here (http://goo.gl/VFctY)
Now off to do some pleasure reading. Great discussion
Couple of assorted thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThe enchanted universe is a pastoral song of innocence, a universe in which God is directly involved in everything to the smallest and largest degrees, and where you yourself are at the center.
The sacramental universe is a post-urban song of experience, a universe in which God is immanently involved through secondary causes to the smallest and largest degrees but where you yourself are not at the center.
This, by the way, is why I have such issues with spiritual gifts. I’ve seen quite a bit of them rampaging around like rogue elephants in the enchanted universe. I’ve not had much time to ask about them in the sacramental universe, and sort of wonder if that is really necessary.
Note difference between chronos and kairos. The enchanted wants to overcome chronos with kairos. The sacramental understands chronos within kairos.
More thinking about the difference between the two universes. Both occur on the grace side of the soteriological equation. However, the enchanted side is the most contemporary, resulting as it does from anabaptist Christianities born of the Enlightenment. It is comfortable with reason. Human reason is capable of understanding anything it puts its mind to. Instantly you see the imago Dei implicit in the view, as well as the hamartiology. It interests me that contemporary middle American anabaptist movements have come to distrust reason and embrace polemic, cutting themselves away from their own intellectual foundation and embracing a politic of resistance, subject to anxiety, suspicion, conspiracy theory. Reason in the sacramental universe is still suspect. The imago is not as healthy as all that. Mediation is necessary. Of course, these traditions to, of which my Episcopal denomination is not immune, have run after programs and methods of social justice rather than the diakosunae of the Kingdom. Being new to their tradition, the origins of this are still unclear.
ReplyDelete"It was here that Weber introduced the idea of ‘disenchantment’ – or, more in keeping with the German Entzauberung – ‘de-magicking’. Some prominent readers have mistaken Weber’s ‘disenchantment’ for a grand process of secularisation, the widespread loss of religious belief. Yet in ‘The Scholar’s Work’, Weber uses the term to refer to an incomplete process in which people experience meaning as something not given or existing readymade in the world. In an enchanted world, the bearers of meaning exist outside of our own minds. For those who live in a disenchanted world, however, meaning is something to be achieved. Weberian disenchantment of the world, properly understood, is a burden but also an opportunity for true freedom." ~ Chad Wellmonn
ReplyDeleteA bit from John Polkinghorne: "God's final intention is not that creation remains forever separate, but that ultimately it shall share in the life of God, its Creator. This freely embraced transition of creation from independence to union with the divine life is what we have called the eschatological redemption of the old creation into the new. In Christian understanding, this creaturely sharing in the divine life is brought about by the cosmic Christ, who through his incarnation is the unique link between the life of creation and the life of God. . . . God's purposes in creation are thus seen necessarily to be two-step, first the old and then the new. We live now in a world that contains sacraments; we shall life hereafter in a world that will be wholly sacramental, totally suffused by the expressed presence of the life of God. I do not believe in the panentheistic idea that the creation is within God as a present reality, but I do believe in panentheism as an eschatological destiny."
ReplyDelete" If the Triune God is the transcendent, immaterial spiritual source of all created existence, yet in the Son took on flesh for our redemption, then the orthodox Christian can neither escape to a purely spiritual world nor reduce God to a material idol. Instead, the Christian must learn how to see and know God in a sacramental way—in a way that does justice to both the material and spiritual existence of reality, at the center of which is the God-Man, Jesus Christ." ~ Alex Folgleman writing for CSR
ReplyDeleteThe term "sacramental universe" was first used in the modern era by William Temple in _Nature, Man and God_.
ReplyDelete