Christian Theology and Wikipedia

Theology is a topic that I have avoided for the longest time, since I was not really interested in the subject. It was far more interesting to study how the various religions addressed the issue of conduct and morals, rather than how the dealt with the internal resolution of their ideas, principles and mythology.

A friend of mine remarked one day, in disgust, that Theology was more an art form than a branch of logical reasoning. I had taken this to be an expression of general distaste for the subject rather than a serious observation, until this morning, when I looked up Immaculate Conception, just to be sure that my suggestion about the virgin birth of Jesus was on the mark. Man, was I ever wrong!

It turns out that Immaculate Conception is a dogma of what is called Mariology, the study of the mother of Jesus. The dogma is that Mary, herself, was free of any taint of sin from birth. The main churches of Christianity teach that Man is sinful by his very nature, and that even a newborn infant is sinful by its very existence. This is the doctrine of original sin, and one of the biggest philosophical stumbling blocks to belief in Christianity. So, we are told by the Catholics, especially Pope Pius the Ninth, that Mary was free of sin at birth, and remained sin-free for the rest of her life, so that Jesus, when he was borne by her, was untainted by sin in any way.

Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article brings ridicule upon itself by detailing various other principles and dogmas, each more ludicrous than the one before, each one a horrible band-aid to make an earlier, flawed declaration marginally more plausible (and failing utterly), until the entire thing is pathetic.

The earlier part of the article is evidently written by a Catholic, or at least someone at least moderately sympathetic to Catholic theology. Then comes a section in which the Protestant views of the Immaculate Conception are presented, understandably non-sympathetically. Even the most minute assertion is challenged with subsequently interposed, parenthetical editorial annotations, such as [why?] and [need references], and so on. Obviously, Wikipedia is not the place to present a fair and balanced description of a religious dogma that is not universally accepted. An article on immaculate conception in an encyclopedia, it seems to me, has to be laid out by a neutral authority, who objectively explains the various stands on the issue, after which authorities that espouse one view or another can present their particular take on the matter in such a way that it is clear that there are sides to the story.

The Wikipedia concept is focused on information, rather than opinion, and will obviously be more useful for objectively verifiable facts, e.g. history, natural science, biography, etc. In the areas such as theology, accuracy has to be about dates and sources, and not about logical consistency and the nature of religious reality, such as it is. The world is increasingly less interested in whether Mary was born without sin, than in the question of how many angels can occupy the point of a needle. So, though it is deeply annoying that the first author of the Wikipedia article, who could actually be any idiot who got it into his or her head to write it, seems to have doubts about the quality of the portion of the article on Protestant objections to immaculate conception, the article has probably not been read by more than a handful of readers. And that's probably how it should remain. [Added later:] Lest my fans misunderstand my position on this whole immaculate thing, I want to make it perfectly clear that I totally and absolutely believe that Mary was sinless at birth. Actually, I believe that everybody is sinless at birth, including myself. (And most of you, if you're normal.) All the sins that besmirch my record at the present date were earned with blood sweat and tears by yours truly, and under no circumstances will any deity take credit for them, under penalty of law. Oops, I forgot that deities are above the law. For those who are not hep to the Original Sin business: be ye informed that Original Sin was invented by the Catholic Church, and subsequently subscribed to by the protestants, long after Jesus was dead (or left the earth as a human being, anyway), so in a sense it was invented behind his back. He would certainly have had some harsh words to say about it, if he had been asked. Added yet later: in contrast to their highly embarrassing theology, various progressive members of Vatican moral think tanks, and Catholic intellectuals outside Rome, have been leaders in interpreting what it means to be a Catholic in modern society, especially in the Third World. The fight against poverty and ignorance by Catholic individuals has sometimes outshone those of the Protestant churches, especially in the poorer countries of South America.

Archimedes