The "Truth" is Back There

Wow. My last posting got two, count them, two comments! And neither from my mom. This is big time. I am thinking of quiting my job, abandoning my family so I can spend more time on my blog and keep the masses happy. (Imagine my reaction if I received three comments)

Currently I'm working through Recycling the Past or Researching History? Studies in Baptist Historiography and Myths edited by Philip E. Thompson and Anthony R. Cross. It is more of the same trope that I have been spouting and reacting to for a while. Baptists have f--ked up our history, we are a bunch of Enlightenment whores, individualistic bastards who have kicked God out of the the "sacraments", worship, and ecclesical life in general. No doubt you know that song and dance. This book is arguing for a history of primary sources, a ressourcement of Baptist history. I agree with the idea. It is possible that a lot of what Baptists take for granted is due to poor history, sloppy scholarship, and we may be off track. Steve Harmon has a good line in his work Towards Baptist Catholicity, "As in the nouvelle theologie, the task of ressourcement, 'retrieval', is prerequisite for aggiornamento, updating." (pg. 15) I never knew I could find so many Catholic terms written by a Baptist. Maybe we need and inquisition.
Steve's point, and the point of many of the authors in Recycling the Past is that the Baptist movement needs to reform and always be reforming (didn't someone else say that...) and we need to have a good, clear, and I would say a "thick" understanding of our past to truly "update" our present. It is an historical and a ecclesialogical task.

Yesterday I read "Churches and the Church" by Stanley K. Fowler from the aforementioned book. Fowler is arguing for an emphasis upon the association over the emphasis on the individual church. He is claiming that the early Baptists had a sense of the church "Catholic" i.e. universal, thus would have an understanding of Baptists churches connecting with other Baptist churches as a part of something bigger. He does the historical work, showing the language of the early confessions and then traces the emergence of the individual church (and the individual Christian) culminating in the Landmark movement. Fowler ends with looking towards the tension. Clearly he does not want a hierarchy, but does see the need for associations which have some bounds. We've done it before, why can't we do it again?
What I think Fowler is lacking is a deeper theological reason for connectionalism among Baptist churches. Currently we are pragmatic about our association (which Fowler points out). What would be the theological necessity for association? I believe there is one - look at Volf's After Our Likeness, consider the Trinity, and there is something there.

Here is my last question/comment (I need to stop writing this and be productive). As we are trying to uncover the historical "truth," how much are we changing and biasing history for our own ends? Did the early Baptists speak of association because they truly did have an understanding of connectionalism with the larger body of Christ, or was it pragmatic? The "truth" is not back there, there are instead different facets of the story which we can pull out and point out, but we never find the truth. Just a different part of the story that we want to tell.