I noticed this intriguing string of headlines in the “Religion” section of my local town paper this week:
“Presbyterians Plan Many Events.”
“Unitarians Set April Schedule.”
“Temple Israel Sets Upcoming Events.”
“Prince of Peace Sets New Schedule.”
Hmmm… and here the Town Council and Board of Education thought they were running things!
This continues the discussion on the ontology of information. Someone suggested that “information” has been shown by Rolf Landauer to be physical, and therefore not a thing-in-itself. I happened to have been reading some of Landauer’s work before this theological discussion for a law paper I’m working on right now relating to the legal regulation of information through intellectual property law (thrilling, I know).
The problem I see with using Landauer’s view of information is that it seems inseparable from a materialist metaphysics. Here is Landauer’s opening salvo in “The Physical Nature of Information,” Physics Letters, July 15, 1996:
“Information is not a disembodied abstract entity; it is always tied to a physical representation.”
He continues:
“our assertion that information is pysical amounts to an asertion that mathematics and computer science are a part of physics.”
Later, explicitly contrasting his view to (what he perceives to be) Christian theology and earlier scientific views derived from theology, he says:
“Our scientific culture normally views the law of physics as predating the actual physical universe. The law are considered to be like a control program in a modern chemical plant; the plant is turned on after the program is installed. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John I, 1), attests to this belief. Word is a translation from the Greek Logos “thought of as constituting the controlling principle of the universe.”
He concludes:
“The view I have expounded here makes the laws of physics dependent upon the apparatus and kinetics available in our universe, and that kinetics in turn depends on the laws of physics. Thus, this is a want ad for a self-consistent theory.”
Given the argument here in “The Physical Nature of Information,” which follows up on his “Information is Physical” (Physics Today May 1991), it seems to me that Landauer clearly is proposing a materialist metaphsics. I can’t reconcile that entirely physical view of “information” with the belief that, as we in the ASA have put it, “in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific investigation.”
I’ve been discussing with various people the nature of “information” and how the ontology of information relates to natural theology and intelligent design. Someone suggested that “information” should be understood as a thing-in-itself apart from matter and energy. He used money as an analogy: money is separable from the commodities it can purchase.
I thought that was an interesting analogy, but for the opposite point: that “information” is not a thing-in-itself, a given aspect of creation, but rather is socially constructed. Here are the preliminary thoughts I had about that, and about how it realtes to natural theology:
Wealth as an analogy for information is very interesting. It gets right to the heart of how I’m trying to think about this. Wealth, or better, a medium of market exchange, isn’t a thing-in-itself in the same sense as matter and energy. God created matter and energy such that they are fundamental properties of the created universe. He didn’t create “wealth” or any medium of market exchange in the same way.
Rather, wealth and currency are socially constructed by people. The only reason a dollar has any value is that society agrees that it has such a value. Absent the social contract, a dollar is a worthless piece of paper. God didn’t create money in the sense that he created matter and energy; He created people who in virtue of bearing His image are social beings; and in virtue of being social beings, people construct social realities that can include things like money. But those social realities aren’t a given in the way that matter and energy are givens. People couldn’t “agree” that matter and energy no longer exist and thereby make it so; but people could (and often do) agree to construct markets without currency, and thereby make it so.
I am beginning to think of “information” the same way: as a social construction, not a given fundamental property of the universe such as matter and energy. We can only properly speak of “information” in the universe in the context of its construction in social relationships.
I think this social view of information has implications for natural theology, but I haven’t really worked this out. In short, if information is a social construction, we should not expect to be able to separate a message from its social context. God may be communicating something about Himself to us through nature, but we will only truly recognize that message in the context of relationship with Him. We can’t speak of “information,” then, as an independent property of the universe that could be detected and measured by just anyone, like matter and energy. “Information” can only be constructed in a social context; genuine information about God can ultimately only be constructed in a social context appropriate to that sort of exchange — the Church. Any effort to construct a natural theology apart from the presuppositions of faith expressed in the community of the Church will therefore fail.
Does anyone have a more “objective,” non-social view of what “information” is as a thing-in-the-universe? If so, can you think of a better, non-social analogy (other than something like money)?
I love the late Stan Grenz’s work. Recently I started reading his systematic theology, “Theology for the Community of God.” His introductory chapter, “The Nature and Task of Theology,” is a gem. Here is what he says about theology that centers on propositional revelation, what he calls the “concordance” view of theology:
Despite its positive contributions, the concordance understanding of theology has one decisive flaw. It does not give adequate attention to the contextual nature of theology. Theological reflection always occurs within and for a specific historical context. Consequently, all theological assertions are historically conditioned. In contrast to the assumption of propositionalists, by its very nature theology is a contextual discipline.”
Yes! He continues, on the relation between Theology and Truth:
Theological systems do not provide a replica, a ‘scale model’ of reality. Their propositions are not univocal. Hence, no one system can claim to be an exact verbal reproduction of the nature of God or of the human person and the world in relation to God. Rather, the theologian seeks to invoke an understanding of reality by setting forth through an analogous model realities which may be mysterious, even ineffable. In this process of understanding, a systematic theology can be helpful, insofar as it is an appropriate analogue model able to assist us in grasping the profound mystery of reality. In this sense, a theological system is always a human construct.
Again, yes! He then concludes this about the “ongoing nature of the theological task”:
“Theology is a contextual discipline. Theologians do not merely amplify, refine, defend, and deliver to the next generation a timeless, fixed orthodoxy. Rather, by speaking from within the community of faith, they seek to describe the act of faith, the God toward whom faith is directed, and the implications of our faith commitment in, for, and to a specific historical and cultural context.”
Once more, yes!
I read this very brief but lovely essay by C.S. Lewis this evening: “On Obstinacy in Belief.” (I found it in a collection of Lewis’ essays which includes “The World’s Last Night”). In about fifteen pages, Lewis answers the same questions Dawkins keeps asking today about Christian belief. What people like Dawkins miss is that faith is relational, not merely rational, and that it is a particular relationship with this God, not with “god” as a concept. A snippet from the conclusion:
Our opponents, then, have a perfect right to dispute with us about the grounds of our original assent [to the Christian faith]. But they must not accuse us of sheer insanity if, after the assent has been given, our adherence to it is no longer proportioned to every fluctuation of the apparent evidence. They cannot of course be expected to know on what our assurance feeds, and how it revives and is always rising from its ashes. They cannot be expected to see how the quality of the object which we think we are beginning to know by acquaintance drives us to the view that if this were a delusion then we should have to say that the universe had produced no real thing of comparable value and that all explanations of the delusion seemed somehow less important than the thing explained. That is knowledge we cannot comunicate. But they can see how the assent, of necessity, moves us from the logic of speculative thought into what might perhaps be called the logic of personal relations. What would, up till then, have been variations simple of opinion become variations of conduct by a person to a Person. Credere Deum esse turns into Credre in Deum. And Deum here is this God, the increasingly knowable Lord.
This month’s First Things includes a short essay by Gilber Meilander on immigration policy. There is no direct link yet on the FT site. I guess I went on a little FT binge this morning. Here is another bit I sent in to the correspondence section, this one on Meilander’s piece:
Peter C. Meilaender’s thoughts on immigration policy (“Immigration: Citizens & Strangers,” May 2007) are careful, balanced — and devoid of any Biblical, prophetic passion for the poor strangers among us. Meilaender concludes that we must “weigh carefully our obligations toward both curent members [of our society] and outsiders, duties particular and universal.” Our “particular” duties, Meilaender reminds us, are to our own families and local communities (as he puts it with more rhetorical panache, to “the aged father in need of regular attention, the cousin whose husband is way fighting in Iraq, the fellow parishioner who has lost his job”).
Well, yes. And yet in the “careful weighing” we are supposed to be doing before welcoming the stranger, Meilaender never explains why the proper metaphor is a set of scales that represent a zero-sum game. How does a broad and welcoming immigration policy detract from the resources available for us to employ in our local communities? The reality is that immigration is a dynamic social and economic force that creates economic growth and enriches communal life. Not the least benefit of this dynamism is that many immigrants from the global South bring with them a fresh and fervent religious vitality that we in the more prosperous North often leave behind in our zeal to preserve our social privileges.
In the February First Things, Jordan Hylden, a self-identified young evangelical, responds to Tony Campolo’s recent book, “Letters to a Young Evangelical”. In the correspondence section of the current First Things, Campolo responds and Hylden adds a sur-reply.
Hylden is right about one thing: Campolo’s book is frustrating because it suggests that the moral substance of some social issues, such as abortion, is fuzzy, when it is not. What Campolo should say is that there is not necessarily one “evangelical” political approach to such moral questions (and even then, Campolo should better represent why there is perhaps justifiably a relatively broad consensus within evanglicalism on the general politics of some of these big moral questions).
But overall, Hylden’s criticism is unfair. This is even more evident in his correspondence with Campolo in the current issue of FT, in which Hylden lamely bashes not only Campolo, but also all things emergent — even to the tiresome point of dropping Brian McLaren’s name as a scare token.
I sent this in to FT’s correspondence section — let’s see if it gets published:
Jordan Hylden’s zeal to bash the emerging church movement, Tony Campolo, and all else that fails his sniff test, is a shame. When Hylden suggests Campolo and the emerging church movement “have had the courage to emerge from worn-out things like Christian doctrine,” he apparently is oblivious to the work of theologians such as the Stan Grenz, John Franke, Scott McKnight, Leslie Newbiggin, James K.A. Smith, and others, who identify with or whose work informs much “emergent” thinking.
I wonder whether Hylden has any idea, for example, about the potential connections that James K.A. Smith has identified between the robust theological movement of Radical Orthodoxy and emergent sensibilities? And does Hylden have any notion of how John Franke, an Origen scholar, is reaching back into the Patristic tradition to find fresh ways of revitalizing evangelical hermeneutics and theology? Can Hylden trace Newbiggin’s missiology to the emerging church’s missional posture towards contemporary postmodern culture? Apparently not. Hylden is instead content merely to whisper the scary words “Brian McLaren” into the inquisitor’s ear.
Hylden seems equally oblivious to the devastating impact a generation of political and theological crankery has had on American evangelicalism. Hylden self-identifies as a young evangelical, but he seems not to care that the angry, spitting rhetoric of some of evangelicalism’s so-called leaders has made many young believers — as well as, sadly, most young unbelievers — wonder what all of this has to do with the Jesus who sacrificed himself for the world in love on the cross.
Tony Campolo and the emerging church can indeed be frustratingly obtuse sometimes. It would be wonderful if Campolo, McLaren and other emergent leaders would “speak the truth in love” about clear “traditional” social-moral issues such as homosexual practice and abortion. But I, for one, am thankful that someone is willing to expose how far contemporary Western evangelicalism, for all of its goods and blessings, seems to stray sometimes from the central “good news” of the gospel. And I’m not even so young anymore.
Any ROFT’ers (“Readers of First Things”) here might like to know that Ted Davis’ excellent review of Owen Gingerich’s book “God’s Universe” appears in the current issue of First Things (though there is always a delay before print version goes to web). Good to see an ASA leader’s voice in this important journal! I’ve not read all of Gingerich’s book, but from what I’ve read, as Davis notes in his review, Gingerich’s book is a delight. Gingerich affirms the compatibility of faith and science and supports the classical Christian notion of design, while carefully distinguishing some aspects of the “strong” ID program and avoiding polemics.
There is also, BTW, an interesting discussion going on at the FT website concerning physicist Stephen Barr’s (and others’) observations about quantum indeterminacy and free will. Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith is likewise a delight.
And, if you’re not a ROFT’er, you should be!
Thank God for Eugene Peterson. In the middle of our overprogrammed, sometimes canned Western Christianity comes an honest, gentle breeze. Peterson’s latest, The Jesus Way, is vintage, refreshing Eugene. Herewith just a few quotes:
the Christian way cannot be programmed, cannot be guaranteed: faith means that we put our trust in God — and we don’t know how he will work out our salvation, only that it is our salvation that he is working out. Which frees us of anything.
The fatal thing is to reduce faith to an explanation. It is not an explanation, it is a passion. To tell the story of Abraham is to enter a narrative that throws self-help, self-certification, self-discipline — all our paltry self-hyphenations — into a junkyard of rusted-out definitions.
Faith has to do with marrying Invisible and Visible. When we engage in an act of faith we give up control, we give up sensory (sight, hearing, etc.) confirmation of reality; we give up insisting on head-knowledge as our primary means of orientation in life…. we choose no longer to operate strictly on the basis of hard-earned knowledge, glorious as it is, but over a lifetime to embrace the mystery that ‘must dazzle gradually / Or every man go blind'”.
The way of Jesus is not a sequence of exceptions to the ordinary, but a way of living deeply and fully with the people here and now, in the place we find ourselves.
But the temptation is to reduce people, ourselves and others, to self-defined needs or culture-defined needs, which always, in the long run, end up being sin-defined needs — and use Jesus to do it. . . . The devil wants us to use Jesus . . . to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments as efficiently and properly as we can, but with no love or forgiveness. Every man and woman reduced to a function.
My youngest son has epilepsy. His seizures are mostly controlled with medication. Every now and then, however, the seizure reflex wins out over the medications.
It’s impossible to describe how it feels, as a parent, to watch your child have a seizure. The body goes rigid; the eyes roll up; breathing is constricted; and the torso and limbs rhythmically contract, rapidly at first, then slowing to a stop. When the seizure is finished, the body is almost completely limp. At this point, you pick up your little boy, like a rag doll, and all you can do is hold and reassure him until he’s fully awake.
You know in your head that this will happen now and then, that as an occasional thing it doesn’t present any immediate danger, that in a little while your boy will be running around like he always does. Yet in your heart the world is turning in slow motion around the feeble, helpless minutes during which a little boy’s mysteriously unruly brain waves assert themselves over everything else. Surely there are lessons in those minutes about the brevity of life, the flowering and withering of the grass, God answering Job with non-answers — but surely there are easier ways to learn them. Or maybe not. Meanwhile, there’s a little boy whom you just want desperately to be ok.