Anti-Climacus

On the one hand, I agree with Alan Jacobs that it doesn't make much sense to hold there to be value in old religious forms if one doesn't subscribe to the beliefs that underpin them. On the other, it seems like this might be a useful exercise even so:

In a late essay, Arnold argued that the prayer book “has created sentiments deeper than we can see or measure. Our feeling does not connect itself with any language about righteousness and religion, but with that language.” But this does not mean that we believe the prayer book’s teachings in any traditional way: “Of course, those who can take them literally will still continue to use them. But for us also, who can no longer put the literal meaning on them which others do, and which we ourselves once did, they retain a power, and something in us vibrates to them.” Arnold thinks this appropriate, since “these old forms of expression were men’s sincere attempt to set forth with due honour what we honour also”; therefore “we can feel” the doctrines of the prayer book, “even when we no longer take them literally.”

...because the unanswered question here is why something in a person still "vibrates to them." Serious reflection on that question (which is to say, reflection that does not simply credit the language, or the fact that these things are 'old,' or marvels at how comprehensive the Christian approach to life is or can be and laments this as irretrievably lost a priori, no need to worry about it*) will lead to a more positive or negative appreciation of that vibration.

(This reminds me, in a way, of the long conversations I've been having with my classes on knowledge and opinion in Plato. The tendency is usually to make any statement, when possible, subjective, and to hide it behind one's opinion, where for Socrates it's a half-step above ignorance and cannot, in any circumstances, be truth. If it touches on something truthful, it needs to be phrased in a stronger and more certain way to be of any use at all: opinion is never of any use. So much time is devoted to establishing that justice is not a matter of opinion and, if we think about it in the right terms and using the right examples, this is already something that they think (no one gets their opinion about genocide, for example). But it's hard to think through, and very little incentivizes that kind of thinking; and, as Kierkegaard could tell you, so much of life is devoted to preventing yourself from doing that.)


*For which Charles Taylor, e.g., has done as much damage as anyone, with his grand historical narrative of decline, which many people are happy to adopt and ignore his conclusion.