                           19981004.01

     Just as the relationship to an individual is ambivalent: he
may appear as friend or as enemy, so is the relationship to the
social organization: it may appear as a refuge or as a threat.
They may be accepted or rejected.

     With respect to the organization, the individual may seek
safety by merging himself with it, or by becoming its owner or
director or principal stockholder.

     It is a mistake to assume that the church exists disting and
separate and qualitatively different from other organizations,
just as it is a mistake to treat theology as qualitatively
different from other disciplines of knowledge.

     The fundamental assumption of the church is that knowledge
can be taught.  The knowledge which the church teaches it calls
its doctrine.  It requires that its doctrine be taken on faith.
The knowledge which the church requires to be taken on faith like
other knowledge, purports to give an image, a description, an
account and an explanation of reality.

     I am unable/unwilling to accept the church's dogma.  I do
not need to reach the issue of whether or not the dogma should be
considered "true" or "false."  The mere fact that it is
prescribed knowledge, makes it unacceptable to me.  Just as the
unexamined life is not worth living, so unexamined knowledge is
to me not worth knowing.

     I suspect that there is a wide spectrum of differences among
individuals in their need on the one hand for institutionalized
corroboration of their knowledge and on the other hand to judge
and decide for themselves; and I am well aware that I may be at
the extreme of that spectrum, and that I cannot reasonably expect
others to share my views.

     My experience suggests to me that some, if not most, of the
issues of Christian theology and ecclesiology may be construed as
reflections of the contradictory impulses to individuation on the
one hand, and to (as)sociation on the other. The contradiction,
one should hasten to add is perhaps not in human nature but in
our interpretation of it. The dialectic compensated for an
imperfect grasp of reality.

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