Dissent
For the most part, I think Avery Dulles is right to say that “dissent should neither be glorified or vilified.” Dissent in the 21st century is not only permitted, it is often even required as a sign of truthfulness. Of course, that’s not entirely incorrect. To dissent, in part, is to signify that there is road left to travel, that we have not finally arrived in understanding or practice. Those who compel us towards growth in understanding, towards a more faithful discipleship, always bear something of a critical edge—they take notice of those places where we have fallen short, they push us beyond our insufficiencies. But dissent in the 21st century is also celebrated, totalized, in a way that negates its opposite: trust. Or maybe it’s the reverse: dissent in the 21st century is impossible, because there is a refusal to recognize that anything could rightly claim authority—there is nothing from which to dissent. The result of glorifying dissent, on this end of things, is an indomitable arrogance, where nothing is worth preserving and my critical edge is automatically the critical edge of truth.
Yet I wonder if Dulles has forgotten the central place of the prophets as faithful dissenters in the Old Testament canon. At least it disturbs me somewhat to hear Dulles reduce Jesus’ prophetic role to “authoritative instruction.” Instruction is certainly there, but for Jesus and the prophets before him, prophetic instruction is always instruction over against. That is, prophecy always involves judgment, and not just of individuals but (even primarily) of establishments and habits. And what is dissent if not this critical judgment of establishments and habits? Need we not maintain what Dulles forgets, a positive account of the indispensability of dissent, if we are to walk with the prophets even today?
Update: Following up, I’ve written a bit more on dissent.
6 January 2007 |
tags: Ecclesiology, Theological Ethics
![[RSS for this post]](/images/feed-icon-14x14.png){kind=icon}
I have to admit that I am probably one who glorifies dissent more than I ought. To place Jesus in line with the prophets and then to assign him the role of “authoritative instruction” seems to look at the prophets from our perspective (as saints and great men/women who spoke THE word of God) rather than from a contemporaneous perspective where the prophets were understood to be troublemakers and critics but who had little to no real authority. By understanding Jesus as being in the lineage of the OT prophets, he is automatically on the fringes and the margins of establishments (both in the past and today) stirring the waters.
That’s right, I think. There’s something that happens in the ‘canonization’ of prophets (if I can be forgiven for using that word pejoratively) that makes us forget the distrust or even disgust their contemporaries likely felt. Keeping in mind that the biblical prophets always made trouble for the people in power leaves us more open to being disturbed by the Spirit. At the same time, I’d say, progressives often assume the title of prophet much too quickly and unreflectively anytime they disagree with someone they think has power. If it’s bad to equate prophecy with teaching, it’s just as bad to equate prophecy with every dissent.
[…] began an earlier post mostly in agreement with Avery Dulles’s statement that “dissent should be neither […]
[…] the movement as one most basically of ‘separation,’ or even most basically of dissent, misrepresents the evangelical aims of the early Anabaptists and casts a pall of decay over the […]