Dear Darren Slider,

     I did receive your letter of July 10. I made no reply
because I thought your statement spoke for itself, adequately
and eloquently; and I did not wish to quibble.

     You write:

> Speaking "objectively", if there exists an infinite God,
> it is necessary for any individual self to realize that
> his/her perception of/relation to God must in some respect
> be incomplete.

I agree. You continue:

> It follows that one purpose for "public" worship is the
> exchange of individual perceptions of/relations to God.

I agree again. The sermon of the Protestant service
fulfills this function. The service, however, is also
a genuinely communal devotional exercise. It is not
only, and perhaps not even primarily, individuals that
worship, but the congregation as a unity, as the body
of Christ. The community of worship is reflected in the
first person plural of the sentences of the Gloria:
laudamus te, adoramus te, benedicimus te.
It is interesting to me, that the Creed is individual.
We do not say "Credimus", but I say "Credo in unum Deum..."
In my experience, the most compelling unity of worship
is in the music, especially in the singing of hymns,
where the voice of the individual literally and figuratively 
fuses with that of the congregation.

I wrote:

>> If we define, tentatively and crudely: subjective as
>> inward and private; objective as outward and public,
>> then the Judaic-Christian continuity may be interpreted
>> as a dialectic between the subjectivity of faith and the
>> objectivity of the law; the subjectivity of the cross
>> and the objectivity of the church.  A dialectic to which,
>> it seems to me, there is no resolution, and in which
>> may be sought an explanation for the historical success
>> of Christendom,....

and you commented:

> I'm not clear on what you mean when you say that
> "there is no resolution" to such dialectic.

The invisibility of the God of Mount Sinai, the prohibition
against the use of his name, and the prohibition of images,
define Judaism as a religion of inwardness. This inwardness
is threatened by society and by the objective standards, the
laws, by which society (in the name of an outward, objective
God) seeks to control the spirit of the individual.
The God who lays down laws is no longer an inward deity;
because laws, by their very nature, are outward and objective.
Arguably, already in the Ten Commandments there inheres the
contradiction: that the injunctions or the first two commandments,
which in my estimate establish the religion of inwardness,
are like all publications, objective and outward, subject
to objective enforcement, and the precursors of an untold
number of lesser commandments which have little or nothing
to do with the individual's relationship to his invisible,
inward God.  Sooner rather than later, the outward, objective
"thou shalt" of society, displaces the inward, subjective
voice of deity. This conflict between societal standards of
the law and the inward command of God, I refer to as the
dialectic between the objectivity of law and the subjectivity
of faith. It is this dialectic which is expressed in the 53rd
Chapter of Isaiah, where the messenger of God, the Messiah,
appears as the lawbreaker who is despised and condemned by
society (the church).

Jesus' sojourn on earth is the acting out of the conflict
inherent in Old Testament theology. Jesus' appearance as
the "Son of God", whatever other theological significance
may be attributed to it, is the expression of his subjective
relationship to an inward deity. The immediacy of this
relationship, symbolized in his claim to be the "Son of God",
undermined the established ecclesiastical authority and
threatened it to such an extent that it arranged to have
him put to death. That is what I mean by the dialectic of the
subjectivity of the Cross and the objectivity of the Church.

Just as there is in the foundation of the Jewish religion
the paradox between inward, subjective deity and outward,
objective law, so there is in the establishment of Christianity
the contradiction that Jesus, who was crucified by the church
for the inwardness of his relationship to God, himself instructed
us to manifest our subjective relationshiop to him by establishing
a church, an outward, objective community of saints. So we have,
among other objective manifestations of Christianity, the Papacy,
the national Protestant churches of Europe, the eastern orthodox
churches, and closest to home, the American religious right.
There appears to me a contradiction, a dialectic between the
subjectivity of the cross, of Jesus' suffering and death, and
the numerous ecclesiastical institutions which, pursuant to his
command, purport to bear witness to his Passion, but if he lived
among them today, would excommunicate him or put him to death.
That is the dialectic to which I see no resolution.

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com