Social Formation of Nascent Belief

The Postmodern notion of identity formation—that we are constantly shifting identity layers and not cleanly defined subjects—has been simmering in my brain for a while. Lately I’ve been trying on the shoes of Postmodernity, seeing if they are really too small for me. For a long time I’d thought that absolute relativity was a necessary component of Postmodernism but now I am wondering if we can have Postmodernity (or something very much like it) while maintaining a dogmatic allegiance to absolute truth. Can we concede that “meaning” is a social construct and cling to absolute truth without speaking from both sides of our mouths?

I sincerely hope so. Linguistic relativity is a given. Cultural relativity is nearly a given. I think a group can perform actions which are objectively evil despite said act’s location within a culturally subjective milieu. Put another way, my culture can tell me that something is perfectly acceptable and I can never challenge that assumption… but it can STILL be considered wrong objectively. The ultimate standard of morality is the perfect morality within God Himself and it is His decision whether or not to judge us by that morality. The fact of the matter is, however, that the absolute standard exists. I cannot get around it (nor do I wish to).

Does this exclude me from Postmodernity? I agree wholeheartedly with the picture of subject formation described above. I agree that holism is preferable to restrictive categories. I posit connectivity. I feel a kinship with Postmodern social theorists.

We are constantly changing and have multiple layers. We use code-switching and role play all the time. Our adaptability is a result of our protean identity. A static notion of self does not fit neuroscience, sociology, or neuropsychology.

I’d like to think that a similar operation is present within the Roman Catholic Church. The analogy—and remember that analogies always break down under increasingly magnified scrutiny—of the Church as a body might allow for some interesting applications of subject formation theory.

One of the biggest Protestant complaints about the RC Church is that we have “added on” trivial and encumbering (and some would add “heretical”) baggage to the core of Christian belief. I have been told (and so I believe) that the Catholic Church doesn’t believe that revelation is ongoing. New teaching, rather, arises from the deposit of faith (i.e., Scripture and Apostolic Teaching/Tradition). Thus no teaching of the church—at least no dogmatic assertions from the Magisterium at the Councils—ever violates the Catholic understanding of Scripture and Tradition. And here there is a disconnect between the Catholic and his Protestant cousin. For the Catholic, the reading of Scripture is informed by Tradition… a Tradition which has the same source as the bible—namely the expression of God’s commands through his Apostles.

The Protestant understanding of Scripture relies on the individual as the primary arbiter of meaning. A conscientious Protestant will, of course, become learned in the history and (if he has time and desire) the biblical languages themselves. He will seek to become an “informed” reader. The Catholic, on the other hand, feels that he has an entire library of informed readers to compare notes with (in the rare event that he bothers himself with such a comparison). His trust in the Church Fathers is of a different order than the (average) Protestant. Those children of Luther who begin to put more and more faith in Reception Theory (and thus turn to the ancient understanding of the gospel) often find themselves convinced of Apostolic Succession and, as a result, join one of the so-called Apostolic churches—the Catholic, the Orthodox, the Anglican, or one of the many splinter groups (Coptics, Chaldeans, etc.).

I think that the notion of the Roman Catholic Church as a layered identity might be a helpful model. We Catholics do not believe that we’ve changed the core identity of the Body of Christ. We believe that the particulars of our faith were explicit or implicit within the original teaching of the disciples and are either derived from or (at the very least) are not in opposition to the Holy Scriptures. We are not inventing new revelations, we are developing nascent aspects of our identity that had always been there but are now articulated because of the surrounding culture. The Natural Law ethic, for instance, is not explicitly in the bible (or at least not all aspects of it are explicit) but it eventually found expression because of the historic moment. Also, Humanae Vitae was not a revelation from God but was, rather, the layer which surfaced during the sexually licentious cultural politics of our recent past.

I am sure that this model breaks down at places and that many Catholics would not favor it, but it at least (hopefully) illuminates our perception that Catholicism has not become “bloated” over time but has, rather, born the fruit of the seeds that Christ and the Apostles planted. I had planned on writing about why I became Catholic, but have decided to leave that to better minds. My case is similar to that of Cardinal Newman or to that of any number of the Huguenots that St. Francis de Sales converted near Geneva (or, even, to many intellectual converts today). The historic weight of the Apostolic Succession argument was not one that I could, in good conscience, ignore and (despite my attempts) refute. I will say that I explored many Apostolic churches before choosing Rome but it does not matter, ultimately, why I personally chose Rome. What is more important to me is that the misconceptions about Catholic identity be put to bed. We may have some new buds, but we are the same vine.

Post Script: Apostolic Succession implies that there can be no other church than the ONE church and this has kept the spirit of schism out (at least compared to the constant fracturing within the Protestant household). More than just the fear of losing connection to that Apostolic lifeline, however, is the cultural force of our so-called extraneous traditions. One reason we've remained relatively impervious to cultural change (the strict line we draw on contraception as a prime example, here) is precisely because our social markers (e.g., rituals) have given us our own culture. Protestants have a culture as well, but they seem less obstinate when it comes to "getting with the times" (e.g., the lack of significant outcry over Open Theism or this Emergent Church nonsense). One secondary (but nonetheless compelling) reason for my conversion was my approval of the Catholic Church's insistence on an Apostolic culture rather than a "relevant" one.