SDA2RC:
I remember in my late teens and early twenties, my friends, family and I struggling with the doctrine of the Trinity and how if it could be substantiated from scripture, etc…etc… and the process continued through most of the basic protestant issues.
I am having trouble conveying my point somehow. It might help if you were familiar with the use (or misuse) of the concept of ‘paradigm shift’, popularised by Thomas Kuhn in his book “
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Kuhn’s point–which he intended only as a way of explaining how SCIENCE ITSELF changes over time–is that people start out studying a subject with some prior assumptions about what they are going to find, how they are going to sift what is true from what is false, etcetera. The best example from Kuhn’s book is the idea of geocentricism, which dominated astronomy for centuries. This constituted the ‘paradigm’ of astronomical research, and based upon it’s ideas, a vast number of competing theories were developed to explain irregularities in how the heavenly bodies–the planets, moon, and stars–moved in the sky.
The assumption for many long years was that someone would eventually put together a geocentric model which resolved all of the irregularities which were being observed. Instead–a revolution occurred. Copernicus proposed the ‘heliocentric’ theory, which resolved al of the known irregularities much more efficiently. Altough Copernicus was persecuted for his views, they were so attractive that they were eventually embraced. Today we can scarcely imagine anyone proposing anything except a helocentric view of the solar system, and few if any would purpose to defend such a view.
Kuhn tried to show in his book that in virtually every field of science and technology, ‘paradigm shifts’ have been crucial to the progress of knowledge. That paradigms are created, are pursued for a time so long as they are ‘fruitful’ and create few anomalies; but, as anomalies multiply and the paradigm becomes less ‘fruitful’, a ‘paradigm shift’ must occur if the field is to continue to be interesting and produce useful results. Oddly, while a paradigm is useful and fruitful, anomalies tend to be ignored or even treated as non-existent; as the paradigm grows old, the anomalies become apparent, but the ‘old guard’ tend to hold out hope that they can be resolved WITHIN the framework of the prevailing framework. Only after the old paradigm is replaced by a new one can one clearly see just how flawed and troubled the old paradigm truly was.
What happens in relgious conversion seems to me to resemble the ‘paradigm shifts’ which occur in scientific fields. So long as one is comfortably within the grip of a particular theological ‘paradigm’ certain questions never even occur to most adherents. Only as one begins to question one’s theological position do ‘anomalies’ even seem apparent, and usually it is only with hindsight–AFTER one leaves one religious ‘paradigm’ for another–that one sees those anomalies clearly. Keep in mind that I am using the language of Thomas Kuhn in a way he never intended–he strongly disliked the apropriation of his ideas to describe changes in areas outside of the area he addressed. However, I’m not the first to make the sorts of observations I am spelling out here.
My problem with much of the ‘convert literature’ is that the authors seem to me to ‘read backwards’ into their former faith issues which I don’t think ever are a problem to faithful adherents of that faith. Hence, Scott and Kimberly Hahn raise as issues things meaningful to them NOW as Roman Catholics, but which I have a hard time crediting as being issues for them when they were convinced Evangelicals. Their autobiography of course was not a theological treatise and I am sure they were just hitting the ‘high points’ of the questions they pursued. But it still struck me as not authentic in how they represented their struggles AS PROTESTANTS with questions which really are relevant only to Roman Catholics.
The same is true with many of the stories collected by Peter Madrid in his ‘
Surprised By Truth’ books: there is a false note in those accounts in many casess, not that the people are ‘lying’ about what they felt or thought, but that they seem to be putting a ‘spin’ on the issues which their fellow-sectaries would not have experienced. Hope this is at least as transparent as a good glass of Mississippi mud.
. Thanks!
