Morality, Hermeneutics, Community and Group Error

Reflecting on my last post and on your comments I'd like to add some additional analysis and clarifications.

When community is deployed generally three things are being discussed and, in my opinion, this conflation of meanings is a part of the problem involving the overly loose deployment of "community" as a theological response. Specifically, the category community is used to address the following areas:

1. Relationality: "Community" means to live in relationality with others.

2. Hermeneutics and doctrine: "Community" means to read scripture and speak about God in a way that is accountable to the church, the community of God (however you understand that).

3. Moral discernment: "Community" means to discern moral issues in a way that is accountable to the church, the community of God (however you understand that).

These areas are often conflated and I think we need more care in separating them. Broadly, the category "community" is being used in the same way across the domains. That is, community is the claim for a degree of interdependence and accountability. To reduce human pride and increase human compassion I am to live in relationship with others. To prevent deviant readings of scripture I am to lean on the Voices of the church, both living and dead. And, finally, to prevent deviant moral practices I must summit my moral choices to verdict of an adjudicating community.

To this point I have no quibbles with "community." I think all reasonable people see the deep wisdom here. Mutual accountability is vital. But my concerns in the last post were voiced to suggest that beyond this facile deployment of community there needs to be some deeper reflection.

First, note that my concerns in the last post have to do with domains #2 and #3. In my comments about friendship I hope I was clear that I have no issues with relationality. I do, however, prefer the words friendship, solidarity, and fraternity over community as they keep the issue focused on domain #1 preventing confusion with the other two domains I have issues with: Doctrine and morality.

Regarding domain #2, hermeneutics and doctrine, the issue I raised is how the deployment of "community" can be used to shut down prophets. I used the case of Martin Luther, but I could just have well used Jesus. Both were accused of stepping outside of tradition, the communal voice of Scripture. I, personally, have seen this time and time again: Community is used as a theological club to beat novel readings of Scripture back into the grooves of orthodoxy. I am not suggesting we get rid of the notion of tradition and communal readings of Scripture. I'm only suggesting that the deployment of "community" in doctrinal disputes can be a power play, a theological accusation where the prophetic voice is bullied, theologically, into silence.

Similar concerns are raised for domain #3, moral adjudication. It is true that our moral decision occur in a network of human relations. Morality is intimately involved with communal justifications for one's behavior.

But groups, we know, can go astray. A group's moral code (think if Hitler's Germany) can become deviant. Were a prophet to rise up in critique of the group the prophet's moral sensibilities would be radically "off" from the group. Again, in this case the group could deploy the theological category of "community", noting the "off-ness" of the prophet's moral code, to shut down or eject the prophet. In this case the deployment of community is an evil and not a good.

In conclusion, my concerns about community are primarily about doctrine and morality and the very real possibility of group error. The facile deployment of community is at risk of boiling down to Richard Rorty's infamous statement that truth is simply whatever your community lets you get away with. As I've stated, this notion of communal consensus has three related problems:

1. No way to handle group error.
2. The exclusion of prophets.
3. A power play used against dissenting voices.

To deal with these issues I would suggest that community is never deployed without the dialectic of prophecy. That is, we stop speaking solely of community and speak of community and prophecy. For example, we replace a sentence such as "We read Scripture communally" with this: "We read the Scripture communally and prophetically."

That is, we do theology both within community and against the community.