Story And Argument: Jerusalem and Athens?

On Tuesday I floated the following quote from Robert Webber’s book Divine Embrace:

But in the postmodern world, the way of knowing has changed. We now live in a world in which people have lost interest in argument and have taken to story, imagination, mystery, ambiguity, and vision....

I wanted to know what you thought. Four of you weighed in on this. I also mentioned the recent row in the UK over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks concerning sharia law. Here too I wanted to know what you think. One weighed in. Let me share with you my thoughts on Webber’s quote and then tie those in with my assessment of what has transpired in the UK following Rowan Williams’ remarks. If you want, you chime in.


To begin, let me say that I don't believe that very much has changed over time with respect to how we human beings know. The world—pre-modern and modern—was never such that most people came to know very many things through argument. Read Plato’s Republic (4th century before Christ), for example, or any of his dialogues. They are not treasure troves of careful argumentation. They are instead rife with stories.

That story—not argument—is what captures the human imagination, moves us and serves as a significant mode of knowledge is not unique to postmodernity. And whereas mystery and ambiguity seem more like ways of unknowing than ways of knowing, story surely seems to be one sort of invitation to knowledge. In fact, I would have to say that the most important thing I've ever come to know I came to know through story, not argument. What is the most important thing I ever came to know? The most important thing I ever came to know is this: "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me; the bible tells me so." And it tells me not in syllogism and argument, but in story, complex stories involving all the ambiguity, pathos, mixed motives and twisted intentions that characterize human life in human skin.

Now, I agree that mystery and ambiguity seem today to be valorized and readily embraced more so than in days gone by. But, again, they ought not, I think, to be thought of as ways of knowing. Rather, they seem to me to function more at the level of a psychological milieu, a milieu that is more hospitable to story, liturgy and sacrament than to argument. Story, liturgy and sacrament engage us much more holistically than does argument. They engage the affective, the passional and the sensual dimensions of human existence, whereas argument seems to engage us almost exclusively along the cognitive/cerebral dimension. So those whose experience of life and God have the feel and flavor of mystery and ambiguity will resonate more readily with story, liturgy, sacrament and the imaginative. No surprise, I think.


Now, here’s what Webber goes on to say in the next sentence, following the ellipses:

However, this does not mean or at least should not mean the complete loss of reason. Reason has a place in story. It is Christian rationalism that has failed, not intelligent discourse.

And this brings me to the sharia law kerfuffle involving the Archbishop. Intelligent discourse has in fact failed, and is failing, in the sound-bite culture postmodernity has helped to create. Mystery, ambiguity, story—all good and fine, but there are public spaces, occasions and contexts where argumentation is both necessary and helpful. And one such space is the public square of debate concerning how to negotiate an increasingly pluralistic and global society/world. But to a culture with the attention span of a squirrel, a consumer culture characterized by fragmentation, montage and sound-bite, the features of nuance, care and settling in with a lengthy text—features characteristic of argumentation in the best sense of that term—are found to be difficult, annoying and...well... downright “modern”.

Here’s how I see it. To the extent that postmodernism involves deconstruction, and deconstruction involves memory and omission, the sharia law kerfuffle precipated by the Archbishop’s remarks presents a deconstructive moment, a moment both for liberal democracies and religious faiths. Let me explain.

To my mind the most important point made by the Archbishop in his speech to the Royal Courts has gone systematically overlooked by the mass media and general public, both in the UK and the US. This point has been omitted from the story the media tells partly because it threatens claims of loyalty near to the heart of secularism and secularized liberal democracy and is, therefore, spectacularly unsettling to secularism. One of the Archbishop's major points--the idea that one’s loyalties and allegiances should be and should be allowed to be split or shared--is unthinkable to the secularizers of liberal democracy. Yet for a person of religious faith living in a pluralistic society governed by the rule of law, one’s loyalties are split or shared. “I am Christian. And I am an American.” “I am Muslim and I am a British citizen.” “I am Jewish and I am American.” The secularizers cannot tolerate the identity forming features of confessional religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam because, they think, confessional religion threatens social cohesion. Religion is fine, the secularizers would have us believe, so long as it is kept in its cage, domesticated at home, taken out for leisurely strolls within synagogue, mosque or church one day a week (or year); but, we mustn’t let it out of its cage to run amok in the public square.

The Archbishop had the audacity to suggest in the face of the monopolizing claims of the state—and so to remind those of us with religious identities—that with respect to who we are we are joint species, dual citizens. And what he urged upon the state was to make fair accommodation, accommodation in law, accommodation that simultaneously recognizes one’s identity as Christian, Jew or Muslim (say) without in effect introducing into society barbaric tribalisms of various sorts.

But. But one must actually read his remarks—complex and nuanced as they in fact are—in order to see that he was not advocating the adoption of sharia law or suggesting a parallel legal system. So reading, dwelling with nuance and complexity, i.e., the stuff of argument, is absolutely essential to our well being and flourishing. It has its place and must have its place, especially in a pluralistic and increasingly global market place of ideas and identities.

So, while I am glad that the bible is not chock full of argument with propositions, premises and conclusions I am also enormously grateful for the clarity of argument. And grateful too that when it came to public debate, the Archbishop employed reasons and argument--the economic currency of public discourse--not story, liturgy or mystery. My disappointment and sadness is in the fact that we--the religious and the (ir)religious-- seem to have become impatient and deaf to careful argument. To the extent that we have done so we have done so, I fear, to the very detriment of civil society.

The End.