Once, on leaving a gathering, my wife commented: “Scientists are so much more alive when they talk with each other than are ministers.” Taken aback, but alerted, I began to pay attention and discovered that her observation was largely correct, and I began to wonder why that was the case. On further listening, I believe that a significant aspect of the difference is each one’s educational immersion in a different time zone.
With ministers, conversations are rooted in the present, illuminated by the past; with scientists conversations draw the present into the future. The former has the solid, but static, quality of the tried and true; the latter contains the intriguing anticipatory question, ‘what’s new?’ Numerous subsequent listening-observations confirm this time zone divide.
The education of the scientist does not require the reading of Isaac Newton’s 1687 publication of the Principia, even though that book lays the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. Nor are mathematicians required to read the thirteen books of Euclid’s Elements. Yet, for the theologian, being immersed in ancient texts and the writings of past authors is an absolute requirement—the study of the Bible and the christological controversies sixteen centuries ago being just two examples.
The standard for truth is also wrapped up in different time zones. For something new in religion to be verified, it must meet the criteria in the ancient holy book or in the ancient formulations of doctrine. For science, truth is what is verified by observation and experimentation, activities found in the future.
When I walk into the office of a scientist or physician, there are often teetering stacks of journals with paper markers noting articles on current research; whereas on the library shelves in ministers’ offices, I find the theological tomes left over from student days and current literature on the practical tasks of church administration, church growth and sermonizing.
The theology of all three major western religions was formulated in a pre-Copernican world. Important Christian figures—the Pope, Martin Luther and John Calvin—all condemned Copernicus’ replacement of the earth with the sun in his 1543 book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Although no one disputes the fact of our sun-centered planetary system, the heresy hunters will follow any person who advocates a theology forged in a post-Copernican sun-centered universe. I shudder to think of what the response of traditional believers would be if a theology, reflecting the quantum world, were articulated.
Religion offers many benefits—community, a belief system of ultimate meaning, comfort in life’s ills, and a path for compassionate caring—but the difficulty in maintaining credibility with a theology rooted in an outmoded understanding of the universe will continue to erode Christian legitimacy. Moving into the future with one’s eyes unwaveringly fixed in the rearview mirror invariably leads to collisions with the future.
I’m not so sure theology is looking in the rearview mirror, as the Church is.
Pastors are not, by and large, theologians. A theology “rooted in an outmoded understanding of the universe” is no longer a requisite for ministry, nor is it necessarily taught in the seminaries, but congregations are not very receptive to process theology or the deconstructive philosophy of religion of Jacques Derrida, or even the existential Lutheranism of Kierkegaard (despite the fact the latter is over 150 years old now). That’s not even to mention the dynamic work once being done on liberation theology (which produced all manner of challenging forms of Christology, none necessarily rooted in a pre-Copernican universe). Nobody in the pews disputes Copernicus or Galileo anymore, but Bultmann is still too controversial for the laity (and we can’t forget the German Biblical scholars who prompted American fundamentalism).
Shedding that history is not simply a matter of will, although shed it we must. I agree with your wife: pastors are generally a gloomy bunch. But I don’t think outdated theology is the root of their gloom.