"I mean, all of us are, in one sense or another, pupils of Socrates. John Stuart Mill said humanity cannot be reminded often enough that there was once a man named Socrates, and that’s right. But there are no temples built to Socrates. Nobody ever wrote the “B Minor Mass” in honor of Socrates, because he calls upon people to learn and therefore to be honest with themselves, but he does not call upon them to take up their cross and follow. And both he and Jesus died for what they believed. But Jesus died in the conscious commitment to the salvation of the world. And so wherever the message is preached and brought in whatever language it comes from, the language it comes to and the culture into which it penetrates must, at some stage of its maturation, learn to answer yet again the question: “Who do you say that I am?” Because the “you say” in that question is the culture in which we live. He’s not asking, “Who does the fourth century say that I am?” when it was writing in Greek. That’s important, because without that we wouldn’t be where we are. But, at some point, you have to be who and what you are in the only culture in which you’re ever going to live, the only century in which you’re going to live and die, and, in that century, you have to answer with whatever linguistic and philosophical equipment you have, you have to answer the question: “Who do you say that I am?"
— This quote from Jaroslav Pelikan on
Speaking of Faith captures much of my discomfort with generalizable categories of “religion” or “the religious.” It seems to me that at least Christianity, and likely all religions, make
specific claims and demand
specific wrestlings with
particular questions that a broad sweeping category cannot cover with anthropological, theological, or phenomenological generalities. Listen to the whole thing
here. (HT:
JDK/mBird)