When I first read the tag line to Paul Metzger’s Consuming Jesus, I was confused:
Beyond Race and Class Divisions In a Consumer Church
“What does consumerism have to do with race and class divisions?” After reading the book, the link is now indissoluable in my mind. It is a good read, especially if you want to hear about the prospect of James Dobson and Stanley Hauerwas sharing a meal.
I've just discovered Wendell Berry. I found him recommended in a book by Stanley Hauerwas, and I've been reading through his marvelous book of essays Standing By Words. He has a great deal in common with both Lewis and Chesterton, and crafts lovely, precise sentences that make my own seem somewhat silly and pedantic in comparison. For a book whose ostensible object is literary criticism, it has far more to do with my interests in technology than I would have thought.
A few examples:
Value and technology can meet only on the ground of restraint. (p. 57)
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows. One cannot love the future or anything in it, for nothing is known there. And one cannot unselfishly make a future for someone else. Love for the future is self-love – love for the present self, projected and magnified into the future, and it is an irremediable loneliness. (p. 61)
We know that people stay married for different reasons than those for which they get married, and that the later reasons will have to be discovered. (p. 67)
The standard of decorum calls all available art and learning and experience into its service; that of "originality," as often construed, calls only for self-importance, irreverence, and recklessness – the "daring" of the manifestoes and reviews. (p. 85)
The right function of abstraction is to give appropriate clarity and distinction to the particular. (p. 105)
A product that exists for its own sake is a debased and a debasing product. (p. 111)
Temperance, not gluttony, is the safeguard of abundance; sexual discipline, not promiscuity, safeguards fecundity. (p. 126)
The great economic discovery of modern times is that vast numbers of people can be made to believe that "we might be all/We dream of…," and that, though there may be no correspondence whatever between this belief and any history or hope, people so believing will buy things. (p. 167)
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 17, 2008 12:46 PM
The debt that Thomas Aquinas owes Aristotle is widely known. The extent of this debt is acknowledged perhaps most eloquently by Aquinas himself, who refers to Aristotle simply as "the Philosopher". Still, while Aristotle's philosophy provided much of his conceptual framework and vocabulary, Aquinas was not afraid to disagree with his master. An exegete far less subtle than Aquinas could realize that Aristotle and Paul did not always point in the same direction. When Aristotle's philosophy differed substantially from the Christian and Pauline tradition Aquinas was attempting to elaborate, Aquinas was forced either to reframe Aristotle's analysis, to extend it, or on rare occasions, to disagree with it outright. Aquinas indeed plundered Aristotle as the fleeing Israelites had spoiled the Egyptians , but Siger of Brabant was evidence enough that golden calves could be smelted from that same Aristotelian gold.
The degree to which Thomas was dependent on Aristotle, and the reasons for his occasional departure, can be seen clearly in their mutual accounts of the good life. With Aristotle, for instance, Aquinas agrees that the "good" is "that for the sake of which all else is done" (Comm. Nic. Eth., I, lect. 9), that happiness is the ultimate end of a human being (Compendium Theologiae, 106; Comm. Sent. lib. 3 d.27 q.2 a.2 co), and that happiness is an activity of the soul (Debated Questions, VIII, q.9 a.1; Sum. Theol. Iª-IIae q.3 a.2 s.c.). However, Aquinas differs from Aristotle on two important points, and in both of these instances, he departs from Aristotle for typically Pauline reasons.
First, for Aquinas, true happiness is not contemplation per se, but rather, contemplation of God in the beatific vision. As noted above, Aristotle's account of the good life is teleological, but not eschatological: he argues that we are happy when we are oriented towards the good, but he has no reason to believe that we will ever meet that good face to face. Following Paul, however, Aquinas believed that it was the destiny of creation not merely to travel hopefully, but actually to arrive. Aristotle perceived that there is something of divine origin in contemplation, but Aquinas goes further, saying that God is our true happiness, and that we may one day contemplate Him directly.
To be sure, God may not be known unless He directly enlightens the human intellect. Although we can only know the essence of an object through its species, we may know an object incompletely if we know a related genus: we might have never seen an ibex, but we can know something about it if we're told that it's like a deer. However, no creature has anything generically in common with God, so it is impossible for us to know His essence in this way. Aquinas' solution is elegant and incarnational, and turns Aristotle's epistemology on its head: "Therefore, so that God Himself can be known in His essence, it is necessary that God become the form of the knowing intellect, and join Himself to it" (Compendium Theologiae, 106). However, when God does so, this satisfies our natural desire for knowledge completely; this intellectual vision of God is thus the "end of our desire". "The act by which we are primarily united to Him is originally and essentially our happiness" (Quodlibetal Questions VIII, q.9 a.1 co). Or as Paul would have it, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what God has in store for those who love Him" (1 Cor. 2:9; see Is. 64:4).
Second, Aquinas places love on an equal footing with knowledge in his account of happiness. Unlike Paul, Aquinas is careful to never deprecate the importance of scientia: he acknowledges, for instance, that we are primarily united to God "per actum intellectus" (Quodlibetal Questions VIII, q.9 a.1 co), and in that sense he is not far from Aristotle. However, while Aristotle can provide a nearly complete account of the good life without mentioning love , this would be impossible for anyone who regarded Paul's epistles as Scripture. Choosing Ephesians 3:19 as his proof-text ("supereminentem scientiae caritatem Christi"), Aquinas fundamentally relativizes the importance of the life of the intellect: "With respect to things that are above the soul, love (amor) is higher and nobler than knowledge; whereas in respect to those things that are below the soul, knowledge (cognitio) is more important" (Comm. Sent., lib.3 d.27 q.1 a.4 co).
Justitia is also an important part of Aquinas' perspective on the good life. In the Summa, Aquinas closely follows Aristotle's understanding of justice: like Aristotle, he defines justice as a "state of character" (Gr. ἕξις; Lat. habitus; IIª-IIae q.58 a.1 co), and hence a virtue (IIª-IIae q. 58 a. 2), which is concerned with equality between two parties (IIª-IIae q.58 a.2). Similarly, Aquinas divides justice into "general" and "particular" (IIª-IIae q.58 a.7), the latter consisting of "a certain proportion of equality between the external thing and the external person" (IIª-IIae q.58 a.10 co), and similarly divides particular justice into the two species of "justitia distributiva" and "justitia commutativa" (IIª-IIae q.61 a.1; Super Sent. lib. 4 d.17 q.1 a.1 qc.1 co).
However, beyond "general" and "particular", Aquinas introduces a third meaning of justitia, "a certain rectitude of order in the interior disposition of a man" ("rectitudinem quandam ordinis in ipsa interiori dispositione hominis", Iª-IIae q.113 a.1 co). He finds this definition tucked into Aristotle (NE V.13.1138b4), but while Aristotle makes little use of it in his Ethics, it's critical to Aquinas, allowing him to reconcile Aristotle with Paul's account of a God who "justifies the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5). Building on this definition, Aquinas argues that justificatio impii consists of a movement from internal disorder to right order. This movement comes entirely from God, though human free will cooperates: "He so infuses the gift of justifying grace that at the same time He moves the free will to accept the gift of grace" (Iª-IIae q. 113 a. 3 co). "God gives grace to none but to the worthy, not that they were previously worthy, but that by His grace He makes them worthy" (Iª-IIae q. 114 a. 5 ad 2). In this way, at least in theory, Aquinas maintains the Pauline order of receiving and then giving.
However, in practice, Aquinas' writings provide rather less opportunity for women and slaves than Paul allowed for. With Aristotle, he presents an extensive account of the inferiority of women, arguing that they are "deficiens et occasionatus" (Iª q.92 a.1). He similarly offers a basis for the institution of slavery as beneficial for the slave ("utile est huic quod regatur a sapientiori", IIª-IIae q.57 a.3 ad 2). Aquinas says that anyone who talks a slave into escaping is guilty of theft, because a slave is property (IIª-IIae q.61 a.3 co), and for this same reason, a slave cannot lawfully receive the sacrament of Orders (Supp. q.39 a.3).
Nevertheless, these exclusive tendencies are somewhat modified by statements which point toward a more inclusive perspective. For instance, Aquinas acknowledges that women are not naturally deficient with regard to general human nature (as opposed to their individual human nature, Iª q.92 a.1 ad 1). Similarly, he contends (IIª-IIae q.57 a.3 ad 2) that slavery belongs to "positive law" (jus positivum, laws originated by human beings), and not to "natural law" (jus naturale, laws originating in human nature). Consequently, because marriage is a matter of nature and not of human convention, slaves can marry without their masters' consent (Supp. q.52 a.2). Moreover, while the condition of slavery may affect the legality of the sacrament of Orders, it does not affect its efficacy (Supp. q.39 a.3 ad.5): divine grace is as available to slaves as to free. Aquinas does not perhaps make the same room for excluded classes that Paul does, but he clearly modifies Aristotle's doctrine of the "natural slave" in a more humane and inclusive direction.
Aquinas follows Paul in asserting that divine love is our ultimate goal. In a rather startling passage, Aquinas argues for a nearly complete mutuality of love between God and human beings. Paul had exulted in the fact that we are "more than conquerors through Him who loved us" (Rom. 8:37), but Aquinas goes even further. Noting that Aristotle describes friendship as enjoyment of each other's company and a common pursuit of delightful activities (NE 1171b30-1172a5), Aquinas concludes that this may adequately describe not merely our love of God, but God's love for us: "It is therefore appropriate to acknowledge a certain friendship (amicitia) with God, by which we live together; and this is charity" (Comm. Sent., lib.3 d.27 q.2 a.2 co).
For Thomas, as for Paul, God is our end, and thus our happiness. In this beatific vision, both cognitio (as an act of the intellect) and amor (as an act of the will) are united. Because our wills desire God as their object, there is a sense in which the happiness of the beatific vision consists of our love for God. However, because this love is fulfilled only when our intellects actually perceive God, there is another sense in which the happiness of the beatific vision consists of our knowledge of God. Aristotle said that "pleasure perfects the activity" (NE 1174b20-1175a1), and Thomas uses this definition to merge these two conceptions: "Because this action [of perceiving God by the intellect] is most perfect and the object most worthy, the greatest joy follows, crowning this action and perfecting it, as beauty does youth" (Quodlibetal Questions VIII, q.9 a.1 co). The essence and source of happiness is thus in the intellect's vision, but the form and completion of happiness is in the will's joy and love.
Although Aristotle occasionally refers to God (or the gods), his moral philosophy is fundamentally secular in nature. The God who is the end of all things is nevertheless abstract and unknowable. If every reference to the divine were removed, Aristotle's ethics would for all practical purposes remain unchanged.
Paul would certainly have been sympathetic to some of Aristotle's positions, but the structure of Paul's gospel is fundamentally incompatible with Aristotle's secular perspective. For Paul, the good life has its beginning and its end in a God who loved His creation enough to become a part of it. As a result of the Incarnation and Resurrection, God's creation has changed absolutely and permanently. Paul's ethics are always and everywhere a response to God's action in human history and in our lives.
Aquinas plainly finds Aristotle's conceptual analysis helpful: he accepts much of Aristotle's ethical framework, borrows extensively from his vocabulary, and agrees with many of his conclusions, on occasion even when those conclusions stand in some tension with the New Testament. However, Aquinas is unable to accept any conception of happiness which does not have its origin and goal in God, and which is not finally expressed in love. As a result, he constructs a new framework around Aristotle's ethical theory by redefining happiness as a vision of God which completes itself in joyous love. With this one change, which has its origins in Paul's apocalyptic and inclusive theology of redemption, he is able to retain very nearly the rest of Aristotle's ethical theory.
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 17, 2008 12:29 PM
To be resident but alien is a formula for loneliness that few of us can sustain. Indeed, it is almost impossible to minister alone because our loneliness can too quickly turn into self-rightness or self-hate. Christians can survive only by supporting one another through the countless small acts through which we tell one another we are not alone, that God is with us. Friendship is not, therefore, accidental to the Christian life.
Resident Aliens pg. 12-13.
Posted in Stanley Hauerwas
Any attempt to place Paul's vision of the good life next to Aristotle must deal with several complicating factors. The first is the dramatically different vocabulary of the two authors: like England and America in Shaw's quip, Paul and Aristotle are two writers divided by a common language. The single most important word in Aristotle's ethical vocabulary, ἐυδαιμονία, does not occur in the New Testament, and Paul uses other critical terms like λόγος or ἀρετὴ either infrequently or with dissimilar meanings. Any comparison of the two must focus on the concepts they communicate, and not on the words they use to express them.
The second difficulty is that Paul was not a philosopher, nor even a theologian in anything like the modern sense. If the typical form of an Aristotelian argument was a syllogism, Paul's writings were closer to a diatribe (Stowers 1992). Paul saw himself as an apostle, an envoy with an assigned mission, and even his most systematic writings are occasional in both form and substance. To put it in Aristotelian terms, the τέλος of Paul's letters was not clear exposition of a system of categories, but rather the edification and expansion of the body of Christ. Comparisons between the Aristotelian and Pauline worldviews will thus remain somewhat inexact, and must depend to a great deal on inference and sympathetic extrapolation. Nevertheless, the two writers are not incommensurable, and a discussion of their similarities and differences is possible.
A third difficulty is that, apart from the letters which are undoubtedly Pauline (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Philemon), there is little agreement on the authorship of the remainder of the Pauline corpus. My current view is that the evidence, on balance, favors Pauline authorship even for the so-called deutero-Pauline letters, but addressing that question is somewhat beyond our current scope. For the purposes of this paper "Paul" means simply "the individual or individuals who stand behind the letters traditionally thought to be authored by Paul."
Not surprisingly, Paul would have found a great deal to affirm in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics . For Paul as for Aristotle, the good life is bound up tightly with community and fellowship (see Rom. 12:9-21; 1 Cor. 16:1-4; and many other places). Furthermore, Paul would agree with Aristotle's critiques of naked hedonism (NE III.11; X.2): while Paul has nothing against physical pleasures in the right context (1 Cor. 7:1-9), he would deny that they define the good life. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die", Paul quotes, with obvious disapproval (1 Cor. 15:32; see Is. 22:13). Virtue is the result of practice and self-discipline (1 Cor. 9:24-27; NE II.1). Both shared an appreciation for σωφροσύνη (Titus 2:12; NE III.10-12) and disapproved of homosexuality (Rom. 1:26-27; NE 1148b30). Nature is often the standard in Aristotle, as "nothing that is contrary to nature is noble" (Politics 1325b10), and Paul periodically employs φύσις in a similar fashion. Homosexuality is wrong because it abandons "τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν τῆς θηλείας" (Rom. 1:27), and "ἠ φύσις αὐτὴ" teaches us that long hair is dishonorable for men (1 Cor. 11:14). While Paul only sometimes shares Aristotle's teleological vocabulary, it's clear that his ethical standards are oriented towards normative goals. "Having been enslaved to God, your fruit is sanctification, and your goal [τέλος] is eternal life" (Rom. 6:22). "Through the Spirit, and by faith, we await [ἀπεκδεχόμεθα] the hope of righteousness" (Gal. 5:5).
Nevertheless, the "infrastructure" supporting Paul's vision of the good life differs dramatically from Aristotle's. How Aristotle arrives at his eudaimonism is quite typical for an Aristotelian treatise: he surveys the common views, discusses the difficulties to which they give rise, and then provides an overarching, a-historical account which preserves as much common sense as possible and yet solves the noted difficulties. In contrast, Paul's account is profoundly historical in character, and takes its cue directly from the narrative structure of the life of Christ. As a Jew, Paul's theological vision presumes the narrative of the Hebrew Bible: creation, fall, covenant, exodus, law, kingdom, exile, and restoration. But Paul rereads each of these narrative events through the lens of Jesus Christ. All things were made through Christ (Col. 1:16). The human race is now represented by Christ in redemption, as it was once represented by Adam in failure (Rom. 5:12-21). Christ's sacrifice initiates a "καινὴ διαθήκη" (1 Cor. 11:25) which supersedes the covenant at Sinai (Jer. 31:33ff). Jesus is the "τέλος νόμου" (Rom. 10:4), the anointed son of David (Rom. 1:3), and Israel's hope in exile (Rom. 10:16-21). In Jesus, the messianic age, the age of the Spirit, has been inaugurated (Rom. 8:1ff).
Crucially, Paul applies this narrative framework to the life of each Christian. Christians are, of course, "in Christ" , and as such, they participate in his life, death and resurrection. We have been baptized into Christ's death, Paul says, and will be united with him in his resurrection (Rom. 6:1-10). "Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι", Paul reiterates in Galatians 2:19, and seems to mean it. Thus the cosmic narrative which backgrounds Jesus' history corresponds to the personal narrative of each Christian. As the human race first sinned then found redemption in Christ, so each of us has a story which begins in sin but may be followed by repentance and membership in the body of Christ. Both the cosmic and personal narratives find their fulfillment, their τέλος and their ἔσχατον, in Christ: not only Christians, but all of creation, longs for this final redemption to be achieved (Rom. 8:23). Thus if Aristotle's account is primarily teleological, it may be said that Paul's is ultimately eschatological: the good life is to be united with Christ in his death, to experience proleptically in this life the power of the Spirit, and to live in the new creation with the full power of Christ's resurrection.
The specific content of this apocalyptic narrative of divine action accounts for many of the differences in detail between Paul and Aristotle. Because Jesus humbled himself and assumed the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7), not only craftsmen (1 Cor. 4:12; Eph. 4:28) but even slaves are full members of the body of Christ (Gal. 3:28; Philemon 15-16). Because participation in Christ's life, death and resurrection is sheer gift, the haughtiness Aristotle praised in the μεγαλοψυχός (NE 1124a19) is excluded entirely (Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 3:27). Because we share in the death of Christ, and will one day share in His resurrection, Christians rejoice even in their sufferings (2 Cor. 11:16-12:10), and count external goods as worthless in comparison to the glory that they will one day share (Phil. 3:2-11; Rom. 8:18). Because Christ loved us and gave himself for us, love is the ultimate virtue: it is more valuable even than σοφία or γνώσις (1 Cor. 1:18-2:16; 8:1-2), and is the closest we may approach to the divine (1 Cor. 13).
Paul's apocalyptic theology also leads him to understand justice, and the good life which arises from its application, in a dramatically different fashion from Aristotle. Unlike Aristotle, Paul never provides a precise definition of this critical term, nor does he use it in an entirely consistent fashion. Nevertheless, certain key aspects of what Paul intends when he uses δικαιοσύνη and its cognates may be discerned and elaborated.
In Paul's writings, God possesses δικαιοσύνη in an exemplary fashion, and because of His justice He will necessarily judge the sinful human race (Rom. 3:9-20), both now (Rom. 1:18) and in the age to come (1 Cor. 3:12-15). Nevertheless, because of the sacrificial death of Christ, God's justice has been made available to all who believe (Rom. 3:21-26), and in this sense, God's justice is revealed not simply in His judgment, but also in the mercy proclaimed by the Gospel: "δικαιοσύνη γὰρ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν" (Rom. 1:17). Indeed, Jesus Christ is our justice (1 Cor. 1:30). When Paul uses δικαιοσύνη in these contexts, it's clear that he doesn't mean "a fair distribution of goods" as in Aristotle, or even "righteousness" as many English translations have it, but rather something like "right standing before the righteous judge". When we possess this justice, we are "justified" (δικαιοῦσθαι, Rom. 3:28), or as Calvin phrases it, "clothed in righteousness" (Institutes, III.11.2). On the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed, those who have accepted this justice will be shown to be truly just.
For Paul as for Aristotle, justice is the basis for community. However, the ἐκκλησία is composed not of those who have contributed something of value, as in the πόλις Aristotle describes, but rather, consists of those to whom God has given δικαιοσύνη as an unmerited gift. Consequently, those who have received this gift are obligated to live a life characterized by self-giving love (Gal. 5:13-26; 1 Cor. 12-13; Eph. 2:19-21; 5:28-32), and the members of the Church are to use the gifts they have received from God for mutual edification (Eph. 4:1-16). Similarly, because slaves and masters alike, women and men, Jews and Greeks have all received this gift, participation in the community is extended to all impartially (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:9-11), and even slaves deserve "justice and equality" (τὸ δίκαιον καὶ τὴν ἰσότητα, Col. 4:1).
It should be acknowledged that Paul never makes an explicit effort to undermine the institution of slavery. On the contrary, he encourages slaves to be obedient to their masters (Eph. 6:5; Col. 3:22), and once even sent a runaway Christian slave back to his Christian master (Philemon 8-18). But his inclusion of slaves as full members of the Christian community undercuts any conceivable justification for one human being to own another. Paul addresses slaves as much as their masters as full moral agents, and there is nowhere any hint of Aristotle's φύσει δουλος, a human being who lacks a moral or deliberative capacity. "Any slave called by the Lord is the Lord's freed man, and any free man called by the Lord is Christ's slave" (1 Cor. 7:21-24). Paul believed that the time until the day of judgment was short, and from this eschatological perspective, even slavery was of secondary concern (1 Cor. 7:29-31).
Like Aristotle, Paul is concerned with ἰσότης, but the form of this concern becomes clear in his second letter to the church at Corinth. Paul had long encouraged Gentile Christians to donate to famine relief in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1-4; Rom. 15:25-28; cf. Acts 11:27-30), but after a promising start, contributions from the Corinthian Christians had been underwhelming. Their lackluster response was apparently due to a perception that they were being expected to contribute unfairly, and in 2 Cor. 8:13-14, Paul addresses this concern: "Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality [ἰσότης]. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality [ἰσότης]."
In this light, Paul's account of justice can perhaps be summarized with an equation similar to Aristotle's: , i.e., the value of the gifts [g()] given by God to A stands to the value of the gifts given to B as the response [r()] from A should stand to the response from B.
Two key claims are included in Aristotle's account of political justice: (1) The benefits of political participation should be restricted to classes which contribute appropriately to the community, and (2) fairness is maintained when members of that class receive the rewards of citizenship according to their individual contribution. Paul's theory, however, turns Aristotle on his head: (1) The benefits of participation in the community should be extended universally to anyone who has received the gift of justification from God, and (2) each member of the church should contribute according to how they have received. In other words, for Aristotle, the logical order of distributive justice is giving followed by receiving; for Paul, it is receiving and then giving.
One way to summarize these differences is to imagine Paul's response if he were presented with Aristotle's definition of the good life. As noted above, Aristotle defined happiness as "an action of the soul in accordance with virtue." Paul would likely be satisfied with this definition only if he could add substantial qualifications: "The good life," one can imagine Paul insisting, "is an action of the redeemed soul in accordance with virtue, as a response to God's free and loving gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, and oriented towards the Spirit's actualization of the New Creation in the Church."
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 16, 2008 03:54 PM
The critic of any Christian appropriation of anarchism tends to argue that anarchy is more violent than the current order, and, as such always inherently worse than our desires to oppose whatever hegemony happens to be in place. It seems incontrovertible that the recommendation of anarchism is, by its very nature more violent, dangerous, and irresponsible than the legitimation of the status quo, which is always propped up as the form of responsible Christian action.
What Slavoj Žižek says in his book, Violence may be helpful to addressing this argument. He notes that we often reduce violence to “subjective violence”, namely the sort of visible agential violence that can be seen in an act of physical assault or harm. Violence is seen as an intrusion into a previously peaceful state of tranquility, much as critics of anarchism would see it as introducing disorder and dysfunction into a state of order and functionality. Žižek goes on, however to argue that the tranquil state into which subjective violence seemingly intrudes is not peaceful, but is in fact deeply violence, being what he calls “objective violence”, that is the violence of structures of oppression, marginalization, etc. Thus, what seems to be an intrusion into a state of peacefulness is simply an event within an already-existing reality of violent, chaotic conflict that has simply been rendered invisible by its state of acceptance and legitimation by those in power (i.e. the “invisibility” of racism or sexism).
The critic of anarchism is making essentially the same argument that the aristocracy makes against the poor in situations of conflict, that of denying the inherent disorder, irrationality, and violence of present order. Moreover, Christian anarchism disrupts the current “arche” of the world, not with violence but with an interruptive peace — the peace of Christ. This denial of the “arches” of this world is neither violent, nor irresponsible, but rather is form of the kingdom of God breaking into the world in pneumatic, apocalyptic foretastes. Such an articulation of Christian anarchism seems supremely appropriate to the gospel, and its practice in the service of the mission of the church. What that looks like is, of course, the important question.
The next three posts will be from the paper that I turned in as my "writing sample" for my grad school applications. It's going to be significantly more, well, academic than my recent posts, but if I haven't written anything on my blog in a while, it's because I've been putting this paper together. This first post is on Aristotle's vision of the good life; post #2 will be on Paul's, and post #3 will be on Thomas Aquinas'. Feel free to ignore it if it's not your cup of tea.
Aristotle's eudaimonistic account of the good life is notable on many levels. It is subtle and sophisticated, but nevertheless makes a successful appeal to common sense. More than two millennia later, it remains plausible, interesting, and provocative.
Still, Aristotle's ethical perspective differs significantly from the view of the good life assumed and proclaimed by the New Testament, and by Paul in particular. Paul was of course influenced by Hellenism in various ways, but his Jewish heritage, transformed by his encounter with the life and death of Jesus Christ, was ultimately determinative in his outlook. For Paul, the only adequate account of the good life was one which placed God's gift of His son, Jesus Christ, firmly at the center.
Like us, Thomas Aquinas was heir to both the Hellenistic and the Judeo-Christian traditions, and struggled to reconcile their divergent perspectives. While Aristotle provided a philosophical vocabulary and a great deal of content for Thomas, the New Testament was divine in origin and thus ultimately authoritative. And of course, these two primary sources for his ethical theory at times differed significantly from each other in both form and substance. An overview and critique of Thomas' attempts to synthesize the Pauline and Aristotelian accounts of the good life may be informative and helpful as we struggle with similar challenges in our own modern context.
At the heart of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is his contention that the ultimate good for humans is "happiness", or in Greek, εὐδαιμονία. His reasoning is fairly simple: the good is that at which all things aim; and all human beings aim primarily at happiness.
Of course, neither culturally nor linguistically is "happiness" quite the right English translation. Our psychological age is obsessed with emotions, and while Aristotle is quite clear that εὐδαιμονία is connected with the παθήματα, it is not in itself a feeling, and may even at times involve painful emotions. Etymologically, εὐδαιμονία seems to refer to the spirit, or δαίμον, which every individual was believed to possess; and it ascribes either to this daemon or to its bearer a certain state of wellness (Liddell 564). Generally, therefore, εὐδαιμονία should be understood as a state of human well-being or flourishing.
However, Aristotle also has a somewhat more specific definition in mind: "an activity of soul in accordance with virtue" (ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια κατ᾽ ἀρετήν) (NE 1098a15). How he arrives at this definition is worth some exploration. In Aristotle's view, the good of an object resides in its ἔργον, or function: the ἔργον of a flute is to produce music, the ἔργον of a hammer is to pound nails, and similarly the function of a human being is a certain kind of action (NE 1097b27). Furthermore, the defining attribute of a human being, according to Aristotle, is rationality: our genus is animal, the differentia is rationality, and the resulting species is a "rational animal". Thus, the appropriate function of a human being is rationality (NE 1098a5): this is the "action of the soul" that partially constitutes happiness.
Τhe nature of this action is further elaborated in the second part of Aristotle's definition, that happiness is an action of the soul in accordance with virtue (ἄρετη, or excellence). The function of a flute is to play music, but its τέλος, its ultimate good, is to play music in an excellent manner (NE 1098a10). Because humans are rational animals, their ἀρετὴ is to be found when their rational soul acts in an excellent manner, and consequently, the τέλος of a human being (and thus human good, and thus happiness) is the action of our soul in accordance with virtue. Throughout books 2-9 of the Ethics, Aristotle continues to build on this basic understanding of virtue. In book 2, he argues that human moral virtue is κατὰ λόγον in the sense that it obeys the law of the mean. A virtuous action will always be less than an error in the maximal direction, and more than the opposite error in the minimal direction (NE 1106b). He works through the individual moral virtues in this way, showing (sometimes more successfully than others) that courage (ἀνδρεία) is the rational mean between cowardice and unwarranted confidence, that temperance (σωφροσύνη) is the mean between self-indulgence and insensibility, that liberality (ἐλευθεριότης) is the mean between prodigality and meanness, and so on, through proper pride (μεγαλοψυχία), gentleness (πραότης), friendliness (φιλία), truthfulness (ἀληθεία), ready wit (εὐτραπελία), and justice (δικαιοσύνη).
As an activity of the soul, happiness is ἐνέργεια, active and not passive: to be happy in an Aristotelian sense requires doing something. Whether in the military or in politics, a life well lived is a life of activity. Consequently, the context in which the good life may be pursued is critical. Aristotle is no Stoic: a truly virtuous man needs the economic resources that enable him to do virtuous acts. As he says repeatedly throughout both the Ethics and Politics, "[Happiness] needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment" (NE 1099a31). In addition, the good life is always politically situated, for "man is a political animal" (Politics 1253a5). Aristotle notoriously excludes slaves, farmers and craftsmen from happiness (NE 1177a8; Politics 1328b38; see below), but not even full citizens of a πόλις are necessarily candidates for the virtuous life. "The virtue of a citizen must be suited to his constitution" (Politics 1276b29), and though Aristotle does not state it explicitly, the implication is that a citizen residing in an imperfect πολιτέια must necessarily possess virtue imperfectly.
Because the life of virtue depends to a great degree on its social context, Aristotle's account of happiness is similarly dependent on his account of justice (δικαιοσύνη). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle introduces his discussion with a popular definition that he seems to largely accept: "Everybody means by justice that state of character [ἕξις] which makes people disposed to do what is just and makes them act justly and wish for what is just" (1125b3). He then proceeds to distinguish between the senses in which the word "justice" is used. The most basic distinction is between "universal justice" (δικαιοσύνη ὅλη), that aspect of virtue which has to do with the law and therefore relates to our neighbor (1129b15), and "particular justice" (δικαιοσύνη κατὰ μέρος), that aspect of universal justice which specifically has to do with fairness (1130b8-15). Within particular justice, Aristotle distinguishes two additional senses: distributive justice, which is concerned with the proper distribution of honors in a community, and corrective justice, which is concerned with fairness in transactions (συνάλλαγμα, 1130b30-1131a9). If I purchase stock in AT&T, it is according to distributive justice that I receive a dividend; if I select AT&T as my mobile carrier and pay my bills, it is according to corrective justice that I'm able to make calls.
Both distributive and corrective justice share a concern with fairness and equality (το ἴσον), but Aristotle uses different mathematical models to describe their key features. If A and B are the two parties concerned and were initially equal, and N is that which has been wrongfully taken from A, then corrective justice says that the situation may be returned to a state of justice if half of the amount by which B now exceeds A is returned to A; and the amount returned will be equal to N (1132a25-1132b12). The model for distributive justice, in contrast, can be expressed as , i.e., the quality or worth [q()] of A stands to the quality of B as the value [v()] of the thing distributed [t()] to A should stand to the value of that which is distributed to B (1131a24-1131b17; see also Keyt 57). Or to put it another way, if A and B are the two shareholders in a company, and A has invested $25 and B has invested $75, and the company sells for $1000, then A should receive $250 and B should receive $750.
This concept of distributive justice is at the heart of Aristotle's political philosophy, and he uses it as both an analytical and a prescriptive tool. In any constitution, the primary honor to be distributed is citizenship, and the primary difference between the various constitutions he describes (monarchy/tyranny, aristocracy/oligarchy, polity/democracy) is how they account for the content of q() in the formula above (Keyt 59). Democracies, for instance, define q() as freedom, and thus contend that all free men should receive citizenship and its associated honors equally. Oligarchies, in contrast, base q() on wealth, and distribute offices to their citizens in proportion to their net worth. Aristotle argues (Politics III.7) that correct constitutions should restrict citizenship to those who contribute virtue to the community, whether military virtue in a polity, ordinary virtue in an aristocracy, or superhuman virtue in a monarchy (Keyt 72); this is, in effect, an argument for several specific ideal values of q().
Slaves and non-Greeks, of course, are excluded entirely from the political life, because they have nothing of independent value to contribute. Slaves are natural slaves (φύσει δοῦλοι): they belong to someone else because they can belong to someone else. A slave "shares in reason [λόγος] to the extent of understanding it, but does not have it himself" (Politics 1254b16-1255a2). Consequently, although slaves can enjoy bodily pleasures, they have no real virtue, no share in human life, and hence no true happiness (NE 1177a8).
In the end, however, the ideal for Aristotle is not a life of physical or even political activity, but a life of contemplation (βίος θεορέτικος). Aristotle argues (NE 1177a10-1178a9) that the life of σοφία must be the best, because it exercises the highest parts of ourselves, is the most pleasant, self-sufficient and leisured, and is virtually divine in origin (θεῖόν τι ἐν ἀυτῳ ὑπάρχει). Indeed, the activity of God must consist solely in contemplation, and to the extent that we engage in it ourselves, we attain to something like the life of God (NE 1178b31). "If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more" (Meta. 1072b25). Xenophanes once joked that cows would draw gods that looked like themselves (Fairbanks 67), and it must be remarked that Aristotle's God looks suspiciously like a philosopher.
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 14, 2008 10:09 AM
I didn't think I'd ever quite get there, but I've managed to get Perseus running on my local machine.
For those of you who don't know or don't care, Perseus is the Tufts University project which has put pretty much all ancient Greek literature online, and quite a bit of other stuff besides. The problem is that it's a complicated, resource-intensive system, with a lot of users. And so during the day, it's pretty darned slow. Starting back in May, they began offering up an open-source version you could run locally, which I initially thought was very cool, right up until the point when I started trying to install it.
I got past the requirement for a Linux machine by loading up Sun's VirtualBox on my main desktop, and then proceeded to spend the next week downloading, compiling and loading up the required texts, indexes, source code and required support systems. I'm frankly pretty darned astonished that it works at all, but despite the fact that I'm pretty much a Linux newbie, by following the reasonably good directions included in the source code download, it's now up and running. And I feel reasonably good about that.
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 13, 2008 03:42 PM
Last February, Rowan Williams gave a speech, “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective“, in London to a number of lawyers. It caused quite a stir. Anyways, here is a little piece on it from a paper I’m writing. Hopefully this will give people a better way to understand it. And hopefully I got it right. Let me know what you think:
The speech begins with a problem that Williams calls “a growing challenge” and to which the speech is aimed: to address an ongoing change in the make-up of English society: “the presence of communities which, while no less ‘law-abiding’ than the rest of the population, relate to something other than the British legal system alone.” Such groups that likewise exist in America are similarly not violent, aggressive anarchists, nor are they groups that in and of themselves exist on the margins of society because of an aggressively illegal nature. In fact, the reality is that such communities can maintain a massive constituency and exist in the heart of a town or city. Indeed, people pass by houses of faith or worship without a second thought, and certainly without a thought that they may be violently accosted by members of the congregation. Nevertheless, while churches, ummas, and other communities of worship are called by their own faith to seek the common good (although not always the status quo), in the face of the law, there is no category for truly making sense of and interacting with faith groups as a social body. Williams states the problem thus:
So much of our thinking in the modern world, dominated by European assumptions about universal rights, rests, surely, on the basis that the law is the law; that everyone stands before the public tribunal on exactly equal terms, so that recognition of corporate identities or, more seriously, of supplementary jurisdictions is simply incoherent if we want to preserve the great political and social advances of Western legality.
Clearly some people of faith do understand this to be problem. Some have even noted that such an idea participates in the relational fragmentation of the church, particularly in America under a rugged individualism. However, why is this really a problem for others? With the growth of a visible pluralism in today’s society, so grows the awareness of other social communities that already form identity and mediate relationships. With such a truth in mind, Williams contends that there needs to be “a recognition that our social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging – even if one of those sets is regarded as relation to the most fundamental and non-negotiable level of reality, as established by a ‘covenant’ between the divine and human.” There are broad swaths of people who gather their identity on a fundamental level from other sources than citizenship. Such a movement (which arguably has always been the case, just unacknowledged, rejected, or “invisible” to the nation-state during the modern era) exerts tremendous strain on the system of law, courts, and jurisdiction as pluralism becomes more evident in the face of a “secular government [that] assumes a monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity.” The result is that not only are the courts stretched in directions for which they are ill prepared, as are citizens of the state, but the law itself also begins to warp like planks of wood left exposed to the elements – useless.
Useless? Perhaps a little polemical, but the state certainly fails to make true its claim of usefulness as it rejects or ignores religious jurisdiction. It is this deficiency that Williams has sought to address in his speech, by first noting Sharia in the likes of a case study, then raising the common good, next revealing when law communicates poorly, followed by the bulk of the speech mentioning and answering three objections to recognizing and protecting “corporate religious identity and secure their freedom to fulfil [sic] religious duties”, and near the end, putting forth Ayelet Shachar’s notion of “transformative accommodation.”
Posted in political theology, Rowan Williams
“This, then, is the revolutionary situation: to be revolutionary is to judge the world by its present state, by actual facts, in the name of a truth which does not yet exist (but which is coming) — and it is to do so because we believe this truth to be more genuine and more real than the reality which surrounds us. Consequently it means bringing the future into the present as an explosive force. It meas believing that future events are more important and more true than present events; it means understanding the present in light of the future, dominating it by the future, in the same way as the historian dominates the past. Henceforth the revolutionary act forms part of history: it is going to create history, by inflecting it towards this future…”
– Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 38-39.
Space here is a differential concept that is open-ended, for it is defined in accordance with the interaction between God and man, eternal and contingent happening. It is treated as a sort of coordinate system (to use a later expression) between two horizontal dimensions, space and time, and one vertical dimension, relation to god. In this kind of coordination, space and time are given a sort of trans-worldly aspect in which they are open to the transcendent ground of the order they bear within nature. This means that the concept of space which we use in the Nicene Creed is one that is relatively closed, so to speak on our side where it has to do with physical existence, but is one which is infinitely open on God’s side. This is why frequently when Byzantine art sought to express this ikonically it deliberately reversed the natural perspective of the dais upon which Christ was represented. The Son of God become man could not be presented as one who had become so confined in the limits of the body that the universe was left empty of His government. He could not be represented, therefore, as captured by lines which when produced upwards met at some point in finite space, but only between lines which even when produced to infinity could never meet, for they reached out on either side into the absolute opennesss and eternity of the transcendent God.
T. F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 18
Posted in incarnation, T. F. Torrance
Well, the results of my recent poll on what readers think I should blog on is nothing if not unambiguous. Theological Exegesis is clearly most the most desired blog topic in the opinions of my readership.
So, true to my word, theological exegesis and biblical theology will be graced with a minimum of 50 posts next year. So now is the time — what specific topics in biblical studies and theological interpretation would people want to see? No promises on this one, but if you are interested in seeing anything that particularly piques my interested, that post might just get bumped to the top of the list.
So that is where the reputation of monks in RPGs for hand-to-hand combat skills comes from.
Obama in Time back in 2006:
For one thing, I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change. Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation. It had to serve as the center of the community’s political, economic, and social as well as spiritual life; it understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world.
And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship, the grounding of faith in struggle, that the historically black church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts, or that you relinquish your hold on this world. … You needed to come to church precisely because you were of this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner, saved, you needed to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away–because you were human and needed an ally in your difficult journey, to make the peaks and valleys smooth and render all those crooked paths straight.
It was because of these newfound understandings–that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved–that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
He says so much more in the essay than what is above, especially focusing on faith, church, the public sphere, and the state. In fact, he seems at time to be talking directly to “liberals” and arguing for the legitimacy of faith, rather than merely waxing on what one might assume from the title, “My Spiritual Journey.” Its an interesting read and worth the time.
H/T: Per Caritatem
Posted in obama, political theology
Today the annual Diocesan Convention wrapped up. I was an alternate from St. Bartholomew’s. Due to a misunderstanding of the schedule, I had to miss Friday’s business. Still, I got to enjoy an excellent eucharist service accompanied by jazz music at St. Paul’s Salem before the first session. This morning the convention continued the “Appreciative Inquiry” process, part of our self-evaluation before selecting a new bishop at next year’s convention.
There are some up and coming issues which are sure to cause contention in Oregon, including a discussion on permitting the benefit of all sacraments to all congregants - in other words, gay marriage. Along with those there were some resolutions of policy which I thought odd to be on the docket for ecclesial convention, including a petition for the repatriation of some native American artifacts and a letter of support for a proposed Department of Peace and Nonviolence (the bill stalled in committee and a similar fate awaits it if re-introduced in the next congress). One of the rationales for the latter proposal was:
As for domestic conflicts, I am not sure what is being insinuated, but I have no idea why such a program would need to be implemented at the federal level. As for international conflicts, is not that exact role served by the US Stae Department? Oh, the curiosities of convention!
I had the pleasure of being introduced to several groups, including a prison ministry I am quite interested in, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. EMO is hosting Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Portland in May 2009. Other than that, I met some great people, and I hope to be able to be a delegate again in the future.
I’m back from AAR. I have a few important things I learned:
1. Monty Python was invoked at the beginning of two separate papers in two separate sessions that I went to. Apparently the Flying Circus now passes for a legitimate academic source.
2. The pope was called the last good protestant.
3. There was “hanging out” — imbibing drink and yelling theology — with Ry, David, Thomas, and others who will remain nameless because they don’t have blogs to link to. Good times had by all me thinks.
4. Milbank and Hart should at least treat other people seriously. I just about got up during a session and left. Freaking annoying. Although Milbank’s lecture to the Paul Reading Group wasn’t too bad. I suppose I’ll just skip over sessions with Milbank and Hart at AAR from now on.
5. I was told I looked like Milbank. Gah! I hope it was because of the low light and the beer that the observer had. That puts an entirely new spin on beer goggles eh?
6. Perhaps my favorite quote, although from whom I can’t remember: “The political is a vector on the incarnation.”
7. The best session was by the Bonhoeffer Group talking about Martin Luther King Jr. (even though Elshtain was on it) with Traci C. West and J. Kameron Carter as respondents.
8. Speaking of Carter, his book sold out early Saturday morning.
9. Speaking of books, they’ve got some great discounts at AAR. I’m once again struggling with shelf space. I need a bigger place and more shelves.
10. Do not think you’ll get any homework done when you’re actually at AAR. It just won’t happen.
Posted in AAR
In light of the housing market crash, Greenspan said that his model for the world was flawed in front of a congressional inquiry.
It seems that now there is room for theology to be heard (or at least there were, a very brief period) — always saying that humans have a tendency towards self-collapse.
But also importantly, America seems to be in the midst of rethinking, or more likely, reconstructing a broken system into another broken system. To who and what should theology say? But also, how on earth do we get heard? I’m pretty sure economists don’t give a damn about what theologians say.
Posted in market
“The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the swords are not as strong as they think - true as that is: we still sing, ’O where are Kings and Empires now of old that went and came?’ It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief by reducing social process to mechanical and statistical models, nor by winning some of one’s battles for the control of one’s own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb.”
– John Howard Yoder, “Armaments and Eschatology.” Studies in Christian Ethics 1:43 (1988): 58.
Thanks to all who responded to my poll on what they’d like to see me blog about. Given that there were five options on that poll, I thought I’d stage a runoff election between the top two contenders and see what the results are there. To whichever side wins, I will promise 50 posts on that topic in the new year.
View Poll
I think its fair to warn everyone to get out of the suburbs, the gentrified areas, and “real America”, because its only fair to expect the white people to riot this time.
Posted in race, satire
The right of national self-determination does not exist in the Bible. Before God nations have neither a right to exist nor a right to liberty. They have no assurance of perpetuity. On the contrary, the lesson of the Bible seems to be that nations are swept away like dead leaves and that occasionally, almost by accident, one might endure rather longer.
Today is a particularly tempting day for American Christians, whether you are electing to vote or not. The temptation is to think that this election will change the course of history, that what happens in the polling booths across America really matters in terms of the direction and meaning of history.
Whether one thinks that they should, as a Christian vote or not, let us not be seduced into believing that the institutional self-maintenance and extension of the apparatus of this particular nation-state is of any sort of ultimate or lasting importance. The truth of the matter is that is that nations have virtually no significance within the drama of God’s salvation of the world.
On this day of fixation, panic, and misplaced confidences, perhaps we would do best to remember the words of the Prophet Isaiah, which call us, not to excessive preoccupation with the state of the nation we sojourn in, but rather in our missional vocation as God’s people:
Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales; see, he takes up the isles like fine dust. Lebanon would not provide fuel enough, nor are its animals enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
~ Isaiah 40:10-17
Some political action committee has started airing ads which highlight the connection between Senator Obama and Reverend Wright. The hope is that Americans will decide Obama has bad judgment (or hates America, or somewhere in between) and choose to vote for the other guy. I don’t really care, though I find the silence on Senator McCain’s religious life deafening by comparison. Obama did indeed denounce Wright, just as Wright had predicted would happen some time ago. This instance of a politician severing ties with a church for political expediency has probably made me more cynical about politics than anything else.
Perhaps I have some latent bias towards Obama, but try as I may, I just cannot find anything particularly scandalous in the preaching of Jeremiah Wright. He espouses some opinions which I think are best regarded as “conspiracy theories,” such as the US government introducing drugs or AIDS to black populations, or the government causing levies to fail in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, given the nature of the Tuskegee experiments, I can hardly fault black people for expecting the worst from the government. Moreover, I myself have been quite enamored with conspiracy theories at times (something which I attribute to being brought up on the X-Files). Yes, I acknowledge that some of Wright’s ideas are wrong or questionable, but I do not think those errant views invalidate his overall message.
Yet these are not what the media typically focus on. What they focus on are the more inflammatory of Wright’s statements, including “God damn America,” and “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” (concerning the causes of 9/11). These out-of-context clips are characterized as “hate speech” or “anti-American” or “having nothing to do with the gospel.” The essence of Wright’s rhetoric can be summarized thus: “God is not pleased with America when it does bad things” and “America should obey the golden rule.” I don’t object to either of those messages. What most people are reacting against is the shock-value of Wright’s statements and tone. Once again, I do not object to these. Wright is loud and fiery, and he preaches provocatively. When presented in isolation, his sermons can be passed as “hate speech” by commentators. However, when taken in context, his sermons are a powerful prophetic witness. So I do not count Wright against Obama.
But Obama severed his ties nonetheless. A presidential candidate cannot affirm an association with someone who speaks against America. This elucidates the problem of Christian participation in electoral politics. If we as Christians have something critical to say against the United States, that sentiment cannot be shared by any mainstream candidate for the Presidency. Therefore I fear voting can at times be an affirmation of patriotism above faith.
My friend wrote:
Here's a being that knows all: past, present and future. He creates a universe so large that we can't even wrap our heads around the sheer size of it: billions of galaxies, with billions of solar systems, etc. But then he only populates one Planet in the whole thing! And then within a very short time, days maybe weeks, he puts Original Sin on the whole human race forever, because Eve was tricked by a talking snake (presumably the devil) into taking the forbidden fruit. But this is before they have the knowledge of Good / Evil? How are they supposed to understand these concepts at that point?! And yet God basically curses the entire human race from thence forward for the very first mistake made by his very recent creation?
With respect to the whole "Garden of Eden" thing, if I understand you correctly, I think there are two problems you're more-or-less trying to work around: (1) How could God make a creation that went bad so quickly? (2) What's up with the snake and all the other details of the story?
I'll tackle the second one first, because it's a lot easier. I'm fairly confident that if you'd had a video camera around some 6000 years ago, you wouldn't have anywhere seen the story that gets told in Genesis 2-3. These are clearly folk tales, a little like the Arthurian legends, and they're not trying to talk history. They're driving at something else. (That doesn't mean they can't be inspired: it just means they're a different [inspired] genre than history.)
Now, I'll confess, I don't know that I can summarize clearly exactly the truth that these chapters are driving at, anymore than I can tell you the exact point of a Flannery O'Connor story like "A Good Man is Hard to Find". But I know that the story rings true to me on a profound level. To understand exactly how it rings true to me, we'll have to step back a moment, and look at the dominant mythological account of morality in our culture, namely, evolutionary psychology. I think there's a truth in evolutionary psychology, and indeed, it may be a fairly accurate account off how we developed a moral sense. But I don't think it's a very good account of whether our moral sense is ever right, or even, whether there's anything for our moral sense to be right about. Evolutionary psychology thus leaves something out, something quite important -- and that something very important is addressed in a profound way by the story of the Fall. I don't know if there was ever a historical Fall, before which things had been going very good, and after which things went very bad -- though at least at the moment, it seems rather unlikely to me. And even if there was, the fossil record seems clear that there couldn't have been the sort of Fall after which there was death and pain and disease, and before which there wasn't. (Indeed, if you read Genesis carefully, you'll notice that it doesn't imply that Adam and Eve would have been immortal before they ate the apple, and in fact, it seems to imply exactly the opposite.) But whether or not there was a historical Fall of some sort, clearly human beings have ended up in a place where they know that they should do certain things, they realize they don't do them, and they feel like they've lost something amazing and profound as a result. I think this sense of loss refers to something very true, and I think the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 phrases that sense dramatically as well as anything could.
In other words, I agree that from a modern perspective, for those of us who imbibe pop psychology with our mothers' milk, there are parts of the story that don't quite make psychological sense. But this is true of any mythological story from the ancient world, whether The Epic of Gilgamesh, or any of the stories in The Golden Ass; and a story can be great mythology, and indeed, inspired mythology, without being a Henry James novel.
It's the first question that's more difficult, how a world from the hands of a good God could have gone so bad. And to be honest, I'm not entirely clear about the answer. This is something that's bugged me for a long time, and it's the one element of evolution and Christian theology that I can't reconcile in a satisfactory manner. If there was an historical fall, then I think the question becomes a bit less pressing, as we can answer it with a standard appeal to "free will". But if there wasn't an historical Fall, and I think that's at least a possibility, the question is more difficult and more problematic.
Here are a few things that I think about when this starts bugging me:
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 03, 2008 08:34 AM
My friend wrote:
More things that trouble me . . . if you take the Bible literally then you are stuck with the Young Earth idea and the Flood actually happening sometime around 2500 BC, which I think most intelligent people would find extremely unlikely. And so if you decide not to take the Bible literally well then it's basically just a book, not divinely inspired. But if it's not divinely inspired, then what's the point?
With respect to the dichotomy you describe between "taking the Bible literally" (and buying into a young-earth style creationism) or "then it's basically just a book, not divinely inspired," well, that's one that bothered me for a long time too. Now, though, I have a hard time remembering why, or at least, feeling why it bothered me so much. In brief, I think that the dichotomy you describe is something that fundamentalists invented in the late 19th century. It isn't a part of historic Christianity at all, and I don't think it's true. And I'll go a bit further: to the extent that you continue to buy into it, you'll always remain a fundamentalist: either a religious fundamentalist or an atheist fundamentalist. (On a side note, there are plenty of atheist fundamentalists around, not least on http://infidels.org/. Fundamentalism is a temptation for anyone with strong opinions on religious questions, and one doesn't stop being the sort of person who thinks, feels and responds like a fundamentalist by merely ceasing to believe in God.)
Here's an example of what I mean. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the Bible is, in some sense, the Word of God. If so, it's abundantly clear that God can use different genres of literature as the vehicle for inspiration: letters (e.g., Romans, Philemon), history (Acts, Kings), poetry (Psalms, Isaiah), weird-ass apocalyptic stuff (Daniel, Revelation), and so on: and, again, working off our assumption that God somehow inspired all this, presumably it communicates a certain sort of truth: not necessarily propositional truth, but something about the nature of God, of the world, and the sort of people He created.
Now, have you ever found a certain sort of truth, maybe even a profound and moving truth, in a story that clearly wasn't "true"? From your career as a fellow geek, I'll assume that you've probably read The Lord of the Rings, and that would be an example of the sort of story I mean. If you're so unlucky as to remain unmoved by LOTR, though, just think of any novel or short story or movie that struck you as revealing an astonishing truth about the world. Well, I don't think it's at all a priori unlikely that God could, on occasion, use stories like that to reveal truth, as the vehicles of divine inspiration. And indeed, when I sit down and look at the Bible, it seems pretty clear that certain books like Jonah, Esther, Job and even Genesis are writings of that sort. I think they express truth, and beyond that, I think they somehow communicate inspired truth, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that they express truth about history.
Now, I don't think that every book of the Bible is that way. Parts are clearly intended as history and, so far as I can tell, are reasonably accurate. The Gospels are probably this way: they tell you what the historical Jesus actually said and did. To be sure, I don't think they record what you would have seen if you'd had a video camera there. They're more like the movie Gandhi, which communicated fairly accurately who Gandhi was, even though it ignored certain aspects of his life, conflated some events, and even made up other incidents out of whole cloth. Or if you're a Shakespeare fan (or a Kenneth Branagh fan, which may amount to the same thing), watch Henry V, and then read up on the actual battle of Agincourt (and the events preceding and following it). If you want the "historical Jesus", you're probably going to have to do a bit of digging, but ultimately, the Jesus that meets us in the Gospels is the real thing, just like Shakespeare's Henry V is in some sense really Henry V.
But all of that to say – I think it's silly to read Genesis, and start adding numbers up. It's just not that sort of book. The truth that it tells touches on the truths of astrophysics, geology and paleontology in a quite tangential fashion.
I'll admit, it's not easy to start reading the Bible the way that I'm describing. If you're used to reading it in a particular fashion, or if you've heard it preached in a particular way your whole life, you can't pull your mind out of those channels easily. But it's possible, and once you've successfully done it for a while, you'll wonder what all the bother was. It's a little like discovering that you've been riding a bicycle backwards your whole life. It's complicated and difficult to figure out how to ride it facing forward, and you'll take a few falls. But once you figure it out, you'll wonder how you could have managed so long trying to turn your neck around to see where you were going.
by Ken Smith (noreply@blogger.com) at November 02, 2008 01:42 PM
In thinking towards what I want to set my blogging sites on for the next year, I thought I’d let my readers weigh in and see what they are most interested in seeming my write about. This of course does not mean I’m giving up the decision to you all! Just that I value your input about my writing and what I write about.
I don’t know how many things I’ve posted or seen elsewhere asking people who they think the “greatest” theologian is, was, or will be. There are all manner of ways of evaluating theologians, classifying them according to different measures of greatness, importance, or influence.
Perhaps some of this begs an important question though: What exactly is theological greatness? What is the proper theological definition of what being a true theologian of the Christian church means? I would suggest that we need a properly theological definition of what being a great theologian might mean if we are to make any helpful or accurate judgments about which of the theologians and doctors of our faith are most worth celebrating and engaging.
I have my own ideas, but first I want people to weigh in: What is theological greatness? What is the theological meaning of being a theologian?
I’m feeling a little polemical today. Reading John Courtney Murray does that to me. So what the hell, heres a few very short (mostly) polemical statements. Oh, and in an effort for some disclosure, I think I fall into some sort of Christian social-anarchism. Whatever that is. Mostly its about participating in the eschatological kingdom of God today.
My Polemic to Capitalism:
Screw all y’all, God favors the poor.
My Polemic to the Economists:
You do have a metaphysics and an anthropology. Hell, you even have a metanarrative. See Greenspan. And of course, it sucks. I don’t think its a stretch to say that the housing collapse is the failure of economic theory to be interdisciplinary and to take seriously theology. We’d let you know in a heart beat that humans are oriented in a way that is self-collapsing as it takes advantages of others, and creation in general.
My Polemic to Socialism:
Screw all y’all, you ain’t much better than Capitalism, even if you do fail better.
My Polemic to Anarchists:
Screw all y’all, the rule of God is good.
My Polemic to Washington DC:
Screw all y’all, the rule of God is sovereign and so you’re not.
My Polemic to the NSA and other arms of the government scrolling through theo-blogs looking to call us terrorists as well:
Screw all y’all, the church will still speak whether you deem it subversive or not and the church will still speak whether it is legal or not.
My skeptical interlocutor wrote:
I guess one of the biggest things for me is the philosophical concept of God as he is portrayed in the Bible. I don't want to seem like I'm a blasphemer here, but it strikes me as absurd that a being that is infinite in all ways and is outside the dimension of Time would have any reason to create us in the first place; and then to create us and screw it up so badly, when he's apparently omniscient, is really strange. Here's a being that knows all: past, present and future. He creates a universe, which is actually pretty hard to wrap your head around the sheer size of, well, billions of galaxies, with billions of solar systems, etc.; and then to only populate one Planet in the whole thing! And then within a very short time, days maybe weeks, put Original Sin on the whole human race forever, because Eve was tricked by a talking snake (presumably the devil) into taking the forbidden fruit. And this is before they have the knowledge of good and evil? How are they supposed to understand these concepts at that point?! And yet God basically proceeds to curse the entire human race from thence forward for the very first mistake made by his very recent creation? It seems very arrogant to me that you would create a race with free will and then require them to worship you or else suffer mass executions…. Or that you would care at all after having been around an eternity, outside the bounds of time.
I don't know that I've got great answers for all your questions, though I can tell you how I approach thinking about them. I don't have time or room to talk about everything you mention, but I'll try to talk about the ones that have bothered me as well, so I can at least be talking from experience.
With regard to how and/or why God created us . . . yeah, it's kind of mind-blowing, and sometimes it seems so incredible to me as to be unbelievable. It does rather beggar belief that an all-powerful being would in any way be interested in anything less than Himself. (And indeed, a certain trend of philosophy with a pedigree going back to Aristotle has assumed that God doesn't particularly care about the world, since He's too worthy to think about anything unworthy, i.e., anything less than Himself, i.e., us.)
There are two ways I tend to think about this when it starts bothering me:
