Suspicious Moderate by Davenport Anne Ashley;Peters Danielle M.;

Author:Davenport, Anne Ashley;Peters, Danielle M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

SANCTA CLARA AND JEREMY TAYLOR, AGAIN

How does Systema fidei compare to Jeremy Taylor’s treatise on religious diversity and toleration, Theologia eklektike, subtitled A discourse on the liberty of prophesying (1647)? Like Sancta Clara, Taylor denies that Christian unity requires unanimity of opinion in matters that are not necessary for salvation. So long as human beings, Taylor says, have “such a variety of principles, such severall constitutions, educations, tempers and distempers, hopes, interests and weaknesses, degrees of light and degrees of understanding,” it will be impossible to reduce them to conformity.152 Like Sancta Clara, Taylor argues that the solution is to recognize that there is no intrinsic harm in disagreeing over “legitimate matters.”153 And just as Sancta Clara consciously took the risk of being accused of inappropriate moderation, Taylor fully expected to be accused of promoting religious “indifferency” and sought to prove that freedom of conscience in “legitimate matters” does not imperil Christian fervor.

Like Systema fidei, Taylor’s Liberty of prophesying allows diversity of opinions in speculative matters but does not allow disagreement in fundamental “matters of Creed.” Like Sancta Clara, Taylor carefully distinguishes articles of faith, to which all Christians must fully and unconditionally adhere if they hope to be saved, from “doubtfull Disputations” and “indifferent” matters, where diversity of opinion is permissible.154 Unlike Sancta Clara, however, Taylor gives no credit to the Roman Church for championing the distinction or for invoking it to protect speculative freedom. Rather, Taylor blames the Roman Church for the rise of dogmatic intransigence. Rome, he says, departed from the “eclectic” benevolence of the early Church and initiated the policy of imposing human opinions as articles of faith on all Christians, thus producing schismatics and heretics who were then violently persecuted.155 Sancta Clara and Taylor, in other words, disagree on how to interpret the historical record. Sancta Clara interprets the Roman Church to have been legitimately engaged in clarifying doctrines of the Faith for the sake of preventing schism, while Taylor interprets the Roman Church to have been cynically engaged in corrupting Christ’s Faith for the sake of political hegemony.

What does Taylor take to be the rule of faith? Taylor argues that the Nicene Creed, as such, suffices to define the whole of Christian faith.156 In sharp contrast to Sancta Clara, Taylor explicitly denies that the logical consequences of the Nicene Creed are themselves articles of faith and denies that ecumenical councils have the authority to make them so.157 Since Sancta Clara, however, concedes that fundamentalia do not put Christians under exactly the same absolute obligation as fundamenta, and since Taylor’s advocacy of personal reason as the safest guide makes it difficult to see how the Nicene Creed can be rationally separated from its own logical implications, the difference between the two views may well be more apparent than real.158

According to Taylor, heresy never applies to “pious persons.”159 Would Sancta Clara disagree? Since Sancta Clara counts anyone in communion with God’s church as a “pious person,” and since the only requirement for being in communion with

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