Inhabitants of Eternity
an excerpt

I sat on the bed flipping through channels, but I couldn't have told you what was on. My mind was distracted by my discussion with Art this evening, or rather with the implications, since the discussion itself was rather enjoyable. I settled on an unrecognizable movie and put my feet up to watch and think. The real problem, it seemed, was my intent on preserving certain aspects of religious faith--in particular, mine--while also accepting the implications of scientific thought--namely, the evolution of the human species. Personal and family beliefs, I cannot give them up so easily.

The Christian faith of my heritage is particularly difficult to reconcile, as even the universal soul shared by all living things that Art and I discussed would be a theological stretch. The death and physical resurrection of Christ stood as an act of God's grace upon humanity. People who choose to accept and believe in this act are saved, while those who reject or deny it are damned. This theology assumes an afterlife of course, in which case it also implicitly implies a personal identity that can be damned or saved. This one central event is the cornerstone of Christian faith, and belief in its theological implications is tantamount to belief in the immortal soul.

Not all Christians take such a hard and fast stance, of course. Many of them, I think, hold views about the world that are really not self-consistent and remain either oblivious or in denial. Other Christians, often deemed more liberal, may take a more poetic approach that reads Biblical events and interpretation as metaphor; the soul may not be an entity that can be saved or damned, but the idea of the soul could illustrate important moral or spiritual principles, for example. Without a soul, though, what was saved by Christ's death? I scratched my head and leaned back on the bed, oblivious to the sounds of rifle fire from the television.

In my mind, there seemed to be a difference between Christian tradition and Christian religion. The wealth of spiritual knowledge generated over the past two thousand years is available to anyone who seeks it; this tradition can speak its wisdom to anyone, regardless of their background or beliefs. Christian religion, on the other hand, requires an element of belief. The tradition can stand on its own as a collection of writings and rituals, but belief in the tradition gives birth to religion. How does interpretation play into the generation of religion, then? I sat up and shut off the movie. This was an interesting thought experiment.

Suppose there is a human-inhabited island--let's call it Solatia--that has never had contact with the rest of the world. One day, a copy of the Bible floats to shore. The island residents--the Solatians--have their own written language, so they recognize that this book contains some sort of knowledge from a far-off land. After many months of study, the Solatian linguists are able to decipher the strange language and translate the book into their own. At this point, the Solatians will possess a source of knowledge for the Christian tradition found in the Bible. At first the Solatians have difficulty understanding some of the basic concepts and examples, since many of them are from a culture they have never seen or heard of. After awhile, though, their highly skilled linguists succeed in fully grasping the language of the texts, and their study of the Bible gives them a glimpse into a part of the world they never thought to consider. Armed with this source of spiritual knowledge, but nothing else, would Solatian Christianity necessarily have any resemblance to our own?

I crossed the room to make some coffee, decaf, and pace around a bit. Ten zero two. I was getting a little tired, but I didn't feel like sleeping quite yet. I let my mind wander and relax until the coffee was ready. Non-dairy creamer--well, I can't expect much more at a hotel. I sighed and resumed my position on the bed, taking a notepad and pen with me. At the top of a sheet of paper, I wrote What tradition do we have that the Solatians do not? In a list along the left-hand side of the page, I collected my thoughts: 1) history; 2) archeology; 3) continuity. I scribbled a few other categories, but in the end they seemed to be subsets of the first three I wrote. History and archeology is certainly advantageous for us in that we can connect events and place names in the Bible to world history and geography, as our investigation of the past builds the perspective from which we read. These things can generally be written in books, though, so we can further suppose that months later a huge crate arrives on the beaches of Solatia containing a wealth of information on near-Eastern archeology, global history, and other materials necessary for proper contextual understanding of Biblical themes. It takes the Solatians many years of study, but eventually they manage to decipher all the books and piece together a picture of this foreign world.

The Solatians will still be missing one vital component of our Christianity today: continuity of practice. After the birth of Christianity, the religion spread first by evangelism and eventually became the official faith of the Roman Empire. Yet early Christianity was not united under common theology; heretics abounded, and church organization started to grow and solidify core beliefs. Many of the most important issues were agreed upon in a series of Eccumenical Councils, yet these did not occur until several hundred years after Christ. And even after this, the Christian church did not remain unified, dividing into Catholic and Orthodox and later into a plethora of Protestant branches. In spite of all this, though, a Christian today--say, a Methodist--can look backward through history to learn about John Wesley, which leads further back to the Protestant Reformation and ultimately the original church of the apostles. In performing this exercise, we will have assured that our tradition is authentic, because it can be traced to the original source, and we will realize that the beliefs and practices of today are part of a long line of information that has been passed down in both written and oral forms. The Solatians will be able to do no more than trace back to the discovery of a book on a beach. Even if we suppose that another crate of books containing written transcriptions of every Christian belief and ritual from any and all sects and denominations, what would the Solatians make of it? They would learn of a confusing association of similar yet distinct churches in some far off land, but without a tradition to trace back to they would have no basis for preferring any of the particular Christian branches. Even a missionary sent to a remote island represents a particular church or branch, but a washed up book provides none of this continuity.

What, then, would Solatian Christianity look like? They would certainly include their own cultural interpretations, as is seen in the expression of Christianity in many parts of the world today. Yet I wonder how much of what we consider to be core theology really would be present. After all, the Christian church fathers needed to convene the Eccumenical Councils in order to combat heresy. In just a few hundred years there was already radical theological interpretations that needed to be officially silenced. Modern Christian churches generally agree with these designations of heresy, namely because the churches of today can trace these decisions as part of their religious heritage. The Solatians, lacking any Christian heritage, would have no authority for ultimate interpretation, and so there is no preference for one interpretation or another. They may all choose to read it one way, or they may divide amongst themselves in debate over the proper way to read things, but in all probability their interpretations will differ from our forms of Christianity. This is likely, because the lack of a Christian heritage leaves room for Solatian tradition; the Solations would certainly have already thought through matters of life and death on their own, whatever form this spirituality would have taken, and so they will already have some way of viewing humans in the world. If the Solations did not already have a conception of the soul for example, or if their notion of a soul was drastically different than Christianity assumes, then they will likely fit their interpretations of the Bible to accommodate their preexisting world view. This is not to say that they would pour over the scriptures, searching for some obscure verse that validates their opinion; rather, this difference in interpretation would be rather automatic. Without a missionary to culturally translate a particular notion of the soul, the Solatians will assume the Bible addresses the soul in the way they understand it. Interpretation will be guided, even if it is unintentional, by existing spiritual assumptions.

I downed my coffee as I reflected on the Solatians. If they are able to develop Christianity without an immortal soul, we should be too. The problem, however, was that our assumptions include the notion of the human immortal soul. Solatian Christianity would look as foreign to today's Catholics and Presbyterians as Buddhism or Islam. Yet it would still be Christianity, would it not? Or would the lack of continuity in tradition doom the Solarians to cult status? Probably the latter. I sighed; I'm sure that there is no shortage of missionaries that would travel to Solatia and set the faith right. But suppose a Solatian missionary came to convert one of us! I sat up and stared at the window.

A Solatian missionary--call her Sara--would surely notice the same difference in faith after a few days of exploring churches and cathedrals. Concerned for our spiritual safety and our well-being, Sara would share the Good News with all of us; much of it would sound familiar, but the way she said things would sound disconcerting at best and blasphemous at worst. Finally she finishes explaining the basic tenets of Solatian Christianity, and her audience is left wondering, "but what happens to our souls when we die?" Sara meets this with a blank stare. Her insistence that the question has already been answered is a result of the vastly different connotation of soul between her people and ours, and both groups would walk away thinking the other blasphemous. Blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder. I chuckled and stood up to prepare for bed.

Rigidity is at the root of the problem. Perhaps if religion were a bit more malleable, like science, then it would not be in these quandaries. Twelve thirty three--I'm constantly amazed at the passage of time. In any case, tomorrow was an early day, and sleep is a priceless commodity.