Paul,

Just from reading your excepts, I'm not sure that we want to go back to fundamental Christian worldviews of the 8th or 9th cents.. I'm sure we can't really look at Man and society as those people did; nor look at the Trinity and Jesus in the same way.

I don't think Christianity can restore ts core doctrines and dogmas as they were understood and loved then.

The whole idea of Original Sin, for example, and Adam and Eve, when looked at with our knowledge of animal and human development simply doesn't work.

Their understanding of why there is Death, and ours is totally at odds. We don't die because Adam fell, but because it is only through mortality that life can develop from single cells to flowers and people. Death is built in to the system before Man appeared. The same with consciousness.

And so, our Christian faith and morals don't need to be revised necessarily, but some of their underpinnings may have to be revamped, and we can't look to the past to carry that load which it was able to do a millenium ago.
mark b | Homepage | 03.08.06 - 5:45 pm | #

Thank you for introducing me to Daniel Larison's essay. From it I learned a little more about conservatism, a critical point. Larison writes that conservatism is the persuasion and mentality that seeks order.

I am reading Leonard Steinhorn's book "the Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy". In it he makes quite clear why conservatives don't like boomers, because they disrupted the order of the day, by challenging authority and holding it accountable.

Because boomer challenged the status quo I say thank God that conservatism is not the only game in town because we wouldn't have legal equality, because that aspiration has often required the agitating of the order conservatives hold so dear.
David Airth | 03.11.06 - 12:37 pm | #