To those who have accepted "mere Christianity": accept "more and more and more Christianity"!

Further Up and Further In: From the Introduction to More Christianity: Finding the Fullness of the Faith | Fr. Dwight Longenecker | Ignatius Insight

C. S. Lewis may have claimed that his "mere Christianity" was "the highest common factor". In practice, however, the exercise to define "mere Christianity" is too often an exercise in finding the lowest common denominator. To seek the highest common factor is not to reduce the faith to a little kernel of agreed doctrine. Instead it is to embrace as much of the Christian faith as possible. The highest common factor is for the largest number of Christians to understand and accept the largest amount of truth that has been held by as many Christians in as many places as possible down through history.

F. D. Maurice wrote, "A man is most often right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies." This little maxim is deceptively powerful, for if we are to affirm as much as possible, then our whole critical mindset will be transformed. To seek the highest common factor in the Christian faith is to affirm as much as possible. Whenever confronted with something new, different, and strange, we will try to see how we can accept it rather than automatically reject it. This positive little saying also forces us to reexamine our own assumed positions. Are the truths we hold actually an affirmation of truth, or are they a denial of some kind?

Too many of our religious positions are assumed more by what we deny rather than what we affirm. So, for example, an ultratraditionalist Catholic's enthusiasm for the Latin liturgy may actually be driven more by his dislike of the new liturgy than a genuine love for the old. A Protestant may worship in a bare preaching hall not because he likes bare rooms but because he thinks ornamentation is vain and idolatrous. Time and again our stance is determined by what we are denying rather than what we are affirming.

When faced with the challenge of affirming, not denying, the lifelong conservative Evangelical may well draw back. After all, he's been trained to "be discerning". He's trained to sniff out liberalism and wrong doctrine and pin it to the ropes with a swift right hook. To go about "affirming all things" sounds a bit gooey and "liberal". It's admirable to defend the faith, but too often Protestantism has taught us to protest, and our whole identity is defined by our protest. Protestantism has bred in us the mentality that immediately squints in suspicion and says, "Prove it." No wonder so many religious people and practices come across as sour, negative, and suspicious. Of course our denials are well-meant. We wish to avoid abuses and false teaching of various kinds. Unfortunately the desire to avoid an abuse has too often denied a right use. To make matters worse, in our denials we are almost always denying some misunderstanding that we've inherited rather than the real doctrinal position.

When I was at college, I was invited to join the opera chorus. I had never been to an opera, and as far as I was concerned, opera consisted of fat ladies bellowing in a foreign language. But the director of the opera chorus, who was desperate for more men to join, said I shouldn't reject something I didn't understand, and if so many educated people loved opera who was I to reject it? I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, joined the opera chorus for Bellini's Norma, and turned up for rehearsals twice a week. Eventually I went out on stage dressed like a Druid with a fake beard and a wolfskin hat, bellowed out the big tunes, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. When there is something we do not understand, "more Christianity" either leaves it politely on one side or gives it the benefit of the doubt. If our mindset is determined by skepticism, suspicion, and doubt, we almost always deprive ourselves of some great growing point.

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Comments

[LJ]

One of the pitfalls a convert from some simplistic forms of Christianity in the Protestant world can fall into, is trying to absorb and live everything that is in the broad spectrum of Catholic faith.

It is perhaps easy, and I speak for myself, to blur the lines between essentials and the wide buffet of customs, practices, sacramentals, spiritualities and devotions, all of which are on the table before us, and have church approval at one level or another. That doesn't even mention the many idiosyncrasies of local parishes and communities that on first inspection seem to have very little to do with the faith.

Perhaps that is part of the reason many converts hover in the area of apologetics, because that represents the essentials, the theological hurdles that had to be leaped in order to become Catholic. And, quite naturally, they find themselves in a good position to help others with those hurdles.

But it was some time before I was able to allow myself to say that there are some cultural styles of Catholic life and practice and worship and particularly architecture that I do not like at the personal level. Their cultural identity is so far from my own that I have difficulty receiving spiritual benefit from them. It is not that they are wrong in any way, they simply leave me cold.

I can say without hesitation that much of the Italian style does little to aid me spiritually, particularly the decorative determination to cover every last square inch of a church's interior with something.

Simplisticity I actually find spiritually uplifting, not as an end in itself but as a directional aid toward Christ in the Holy Eucharist, not only in the design and appointments of the Church itself, but in the liturgy and the music. The great liturgies of the great composers lose me in their flights of intricacy for the most part, whereas Gregorian chant in Latin originals or English hymns, or some of the Russian Orthodox minor keyed liturgies, especially a Capella, without even the benefit of pipe organ, can move my soul in worship far more.

So I have found that along Longenecker's theme, I have had to relax some of my own reflex prejudice against where I began in life and recognize that within the Catholic Church there is, and has always been much room for simplicity, and it is not necessarily a Protestant "thing" per se. One can be uplifted through simplicity without being simplistic.