Author: David Opderbeck

Categories
Epistemology Spirituality

Contending for the Truth

This little gem is one of the readings in my Isaac of Syria reader. I’m not sure I can take Isaac completely literally here. It’s interesting that Isaac is contending that we shouldn’t “contend” for truth. He therefore certainly can’t mean that persuasive, reasoned argument is never appropriate. However, what he is saying is wonderfully countercultural, I think, in the context of our present “culture wars.”

Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth.

Someone who is considered among men to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like; once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf.

The gift of God and of knowledge of him is not a cause for turmoil and clamour; rather this gift is entirely filled with a peace in which the Spirit, love and humility reside.

The following is a sign of the coming of the Spirit: the person whom the Spirit has overshadowed is made perfect in these very virtues.

God is reality. The person whose mind has become aware of God does not even possess a toungue with which to speak, but God resides in his heart in great serenity. He experiences no stirring of zeal or argumentatitiveness, nor is he stirred by anger. He cannot even be aroused concerning the faith.

I’m sure that many Christians reading the headline of this post would respond positively to it. The culture wars have conditioned us to become excited by battle cries about truth. In our zeal, however, I think we often lose a deeper perspective about what Truth really is, and about what our relationship to Truth must be.

The foundation of Truth is the triune God, and the triune God’s ultimate revelation of Truth to us is the divine logos, God incarnate in Jesus. Our relationship with Jesus is based on his sacrificial death on the cross, made effective to us only by God’s grace. Our aspect concerning Truth must therefore be one of humble gratitude, never one of angry zeal. I think this is what Isaac means when he says “Someone who has actually tasted truth is never contentious for truth.” Like the Apostle Peter cutting off Malchus’ ear (John 18:10), we think we have to defend Jesus with violent words. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

Categories
Academic Books and Film Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Incarnational Humanism and "The Passionate Intellect" — Book Review

The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education

By Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmerman
Baker Academic (2006)
ISBN 0-8010-2734-9

This book is explores the themes of whether, and how, Christians can develop a rich and passionate life of the mind. Although it is written for Christian students bound for university, it is useful for any Christian who is serious about the intellectual life.

One of the authors’ goals is to defuse the “warfare” mentality concerning faith and “secular” learning that some Christians, particularly those who are not very mature in the faith, often seem to develop. They propose to do this through the model of “Incarnational Humanism.”

“Incarnational Humanism” takes the incarnation of Christ as a starting point for a Christian approach to learning. “In Christ,” the authors state, “all fragmentation ends and a new humanity begins, a new creation in which all knowledge is united (or taken captive, as Paul puts it) under the lordship of Christ because in him the divine and the human are firmly joined forever.” The pattern of the incarnation suggests that we should expect to find that truth is not “an abstract, timeless concept,” but rather is mediated through human language, culture, and tradition. Therefore, Christians should not be afraid of truth located outside the hermetically sealed world of our particular religious subcultures.

In short, the authors place a Kuyperian notion of “common grace,” as mediated for generations of Christian college students by Arthur Holmes’ famous dictum that “All Truth is God’s Truth,” into the postmodern context. While the authors thus acknowledge the postmodern turn, they firmly deny the destructive Nietzschean postmodernism, evident in figures such as Michael Foucault, that rejects any notion of classical humanism in favor of a heuristic of power relationships.

The answer the authors suggest to Nietzsche and Foucault, however, is not a resurgent Christian rationalism dusted off from the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Rather, they hearken back to the sort of humanism that is evident in many of the Church’s great minds, such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, prior to the Enlightenment. In this classical Christian humanism, truth is more than power – indeed, truth in many ways is the antithesis of power – because the divine Truth became man and gave himself for us.

There are many riches in this book. The phrase “Incarnational Humanism” is a beautiful one that deserves broad attention, and it is high time that “All Truth is God’s Truth” be given a postmodern reading. There is also, however, a glaring weakness in the authors’ arguments: they do not deal adequately with the effects of sin. A model of truth that hearkens back to Augustine, but that glides over any reading of Augustine’s thoughts on sin, will not present a thoroughly Christian humanism.

I wish the authors had acknowledged the tension between the incarnation and human sinfulness, and had contextualized it, as scripture and the Christian humanist tradition do, within the “already / not yet” of the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, this is a valuable addition to the literature on the intellectual life as a Christian vocation. Let us hope that a holistic, incarnational understanding of faith and learning once again infuses the Church, rather than the rationalist, atomistic, confrontational approaches that so often seem to dominate our thinking.

Categories
Uncategorized

"If Only" and the Iraq War

An excellent article in this month’s Economist surveys the many problems with the Iraq war. The concluding paragraph is true and poignant:

It is not enough to say with the neocons that this was a good idea executed badly. Their own ideas are partly to blame. Too many people in Washington were fixated on proving an ideological point: that America’s values were universal and would be digested effortlessly by people a world away. But plonking an American army in the heart of the Arab world was always a gamble. It demanded the highest seriousness and careful planning. Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld chose instead to send less than half the needed soldiers and gave no proper thought to the aftermath.

What a waste. Most Iraqis rejoiced in the toppling of Saddam. They trooped in their millions to vote. What would Iraq be like now if America had approached its perilous, monumentally controversial undertaking with humility, honesty and courage? Thanks to the almost criminal negligence of Mr Bush’s administration nobody, now, will ever know.

Categories
Science & Technology

The Neurology of Morality and the Politics of Science

There is an interesting article in this month’s Economist that illustrates, I think, some of the problems with social Darwinism, particularly when it is linked to a particular political outlook, as seemingly inevitably is the case. The article reports on a study of six people who have suffered damage to a part of the brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC)) that is involved with social emotion. The study showed that these people were more likely than a control group to provide a “utilitarian” answer to the “runaway train paradox.”

The “runaway train paradox” involves two dilemmas — in one, you must decide whether to push a person in front of an oncoming train in order to slow the train before it hits five other people further down the line; in the other, you must decide whether to switch the track so that that train will hit only one person further down the line rather than hitting five people. Most people will hesistate to push a person in front of the train to save five lives, but will not hesistate to switch the track so that the train hits one person further down the line instead of five. The six subjects with damaged VMPC’s felt the same about both possibilities — they would not hesitate in either case to sacrifice one person in order to save five.

The article explains that “In these cases it seems that the decision on how to act is not a single, rational calculation of the sort that moral philosophers have generally assumed is going on, but a conflict between two processes, with one (the emotional) sometimes able to override the other (the utilitarian, the location of which this study does not address).” This yin-and-yang of emotional and rational responses, the article says, “fits with one of the tenets of evolutionary psychology…. This is that minds are composed of modules evolved for given purposes…. The VMPC may be the site of a ‘moral-decision’ module, linked to the social emotions, that either regulates or is regulated by an as-yet-unlocated utilitarian module. “

So far, perhaps, so good. All of this seems very speculative, and a sample size of six people with brain damage hardly seems adequate, but nevertheless, it wouldn’t be surprising that the emotional and rational aspects of moral reasoning relate to different parts of the brain, and it doesn’t problematic per se if those parts of the brain developed over time through evolutionary processes. The kicker is in the article’s concluding paragraph: “This does not answer the question of what this module (what philosophers woudl call ‘moral sense’) is actually for. But it does suggest the question should be addressed functionally, rather than in the abstract. Time, perhaps, for philosophers to put away their copies of Kant and pull a dusty tome of Darwin off the bookshelf.”

It seems to me that in this paragraph the article crosses from descriptive to prescriptive; from science to metaphysics. This is particularly so in that, as a devoted reader of the Economist, I’m well aware of that magazine’s pragmatist / libertarian political philosophy and its slant towards materialist metaphysics. In a very subtle way, this is an example of the materialist / pragmatist saying: “See there … all that ‘moral sense’ and whot is in your head. We shall move beyond this and learn to develop our utilitarian modules.”

Categories
Uncategorized

Isaac the Syrian on Weakness: "Humility Concentrates the Heart"

In a prior post about Dostoevsky, I mentioned Isaac the Syrian, a Christian mystic and ascetic who lived in Seventh Century. I picked up a lovely little book called Daily Readings With St. Isaac of Syria. It’s part of a “Daily Readings” series published by Templegate Publishers, a small independent publisher of classics in Christian spirituality. I definitely plan to pick up more of the volumes in this series.

As evangelicals, we’re tempted to shy away from ascetics like Isaac. Weren’t they trying to earn God’s favor? Wasn’t their abuse of the body more Gnostic than Christian? I think it’s helpful, though, to think of them on their own terms as people of their times. We think the world is chaotic, difficult and uncertain today — imagine what it was like to live in the 600’s! Surely there are aspects of the theology and practices of the ascetics that we would consider out of balance, but surely Christians living 1400 years from now will say the same about us (if the Lord doesn’t return before then). At the same time, there are beautiful themes in many of their writings that can inform and deepen our faith. In their writings, we often see that, within their own contexts, they were trying to understand faith, grace, repentance and the Christian life, just as we are today.

So, here is a selection from Isaac, on weakness:

Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and beginning of all that is good and beautiful.

For whenever someone realizes and perceives that he is truly and indeed weak, then he draws in his soul from the diffuseness which dissipates knowledge, and he becomes all the more watchful of his soul.

But no one can perceive his own weakness unless he has been remiss a little, has neglected some small thing, has been surrounded by trials, either in the matter of things which cause the body suffering, or in that of ways in which the soul is subject to the passions. only then, by comparing his own weakness, will he realize how great is the assistance which comes from God.

When someone is aware that he is in need of divine help, he makes many prayers. And once he has made much supplication, his heart is humbled, for there is no one who is in need and asks who is not humbled. ‘A broken and humbled heart, God will not despise.’

As long as the heart is not humbled it cannot cease from wandering; for humility concentrates the heart.

Categories
Justice Law and Policy Theology

The Ontology of Peace

In the past, I’ve referenced my interest in Radical Orthodoxy, which developed after I attended an RO-heavy conference at Baylor last fall. I’m working up a proposal for a presentation at next year’s Baylor conference, with the vague thought of how the “ontology of peace” can apply to information law and policy. I stumbled across this nice summary of the Augustine-Aquinas-Milbank trajectory through the “ontology of peace” in a delightful little essay by Joel Garver about “Kenny” from “South Park” as a Christ figure:

An Ontology of Primordial and Final Peace

Let’s begin sketching an alternative by examining some of the suggestions and presuppositions of two Christian philosophers and saints–Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Then we will consider some considerations of a contemporary Christian philosopher–John Milbank.

Augustine

The fundamental presupposition of Augustine is that the material world is a result of free creation by God–as opposed to violence. Since, for Augustine, God is a Trinity of persons in a relation of love, freely shared, God is free to create a reality that may enter into that love. Futhermore, human beings who are in the image of God possess free will by which they do wrong–as opposed to find evil’s source in mere ignorance. Moreover, evil has no ontological purchase on Augustine’s view. It is defined negatively as the choosing of lesser goods over greater goods and so evil is seen as a privation–as opposed to an ontological reality.

In his Confessions Augustine presents the history of his person, lived before the face of God and offered up to God, redeeming his painful memories of the past. Thus, Augustine can be credited with the first deep theorization of psychology and personality as we know it–as opposed to the ultimate impersonalism of the Greeks.

Finally, in his City of God Augustine proposed an alternative city, a re-telling of the pagan myths which unmasks their inherent violence. Moreover, it is the proposal of a new narrative that is plausible by out-narrating the alternatives.

Let us turn then to Thomas.

Thomas Aquinas

For Thomas the fundamental nature of the world is to be understood by means of the analogy of being (analogia entis) in which the relations and reality of creation find an analogy in the very life of God. Thus being and difference must be seen in the final context of relation and love within the Trinity. God is who he is–both in the unity of the Godhead and in the differences between the Persons–only in virtue of his internal relations of love.

By the analogy of being we can then also see that the ultimate nature of things is love. Difference within the creation is established in love. Moreover, being unveils itself to me and so knowledge is a gift of love, but since love is fundamental to knowledge reason and faith are not extrinsically and externally related to one another and to knowledge, but are mutually and intrinsically related. This ontology and epistemology provides an alternative to empirical-positivist model of science by invoking formal and final causality, intrinsic relationality, and gift–as opposed to a privileging of control, atomism, and force.

John Milbank

Augustine and Thomas show us, then, that it is possible to narrate reality in a way that does not presuppose and perpetuate violence either as a primordial condition of ontology or as a sustaining event within the world and human practices and discourse. There is an alternative within the Christian message.

For Milbank, the Christian message is not to out-argue the ontology of violence by an appeal to some supposedly neutral and universal discourse of rationality. Rather, Christian belief claims to out-narrate and out-practice any alternatives. Part of that narrative is the example of Jesus who embodies the ultimate rejection of violence by refusing to play the game and answering conflict with transforming love. In him, the church is to be the space in which the alternative world is manifest with its alternative narrative and counter-history. Thus the ontology of violence is to overcome with a lived narrative and ontology of peace.

Categories
Spirituality

Kyrie Eleison, Resolution, and Reward

The reason the Kyrie in Rutter’s Requiem is so appealing is the sense of resolution it brings to the tension built up in other sections of the piece. It is a metaphor for the release of tension at the end of a Christian life well-lived. The Christian story is all about this sense of tension waiting to be resolved. In Romans 8, Paul says “[w]e know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” This universal sense of frustration and brokenness, of waiting and straining for resolution, captures us all, as Paul continues in the next verses:

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

Why doesn’t God resolve every problem and question now? Why is it that even Christians — especially Christians — feel a painful sense of longing? Because resolution now is not what our present faith and hope are about. Our faith and hope concern a resolution that only begins to break into the world now. The beginnings of that resolution make us long for its fulfillment.

What is its fulfillment? We often speak of some sort of an individual “heavenly reward.” That is part of it, I suppose, but only a small part. It is really about the resolution of the longings of all of creation. It is about the setting to rights of injustice, the healing of brokenness, and the restoration of loving relationships, through the consummation of the peaceable reign of Christ. It is about coming to “Aslan’s Country,” and finding it filled with richer songs, deeper stories, more fruitful industries, all more “real” and beautiful than any present shadow.

Categories
Uncategorized

Kyrie Eleison

As I’m working on some research this morning, I’m listening to Rutter’s Requiem. Rutter mixes aspects of the Catholic Requiem Mass with some texts from the Book of Common Prayer. A Requiem is a Christian funeral liturgy. There are aspects of Rutter’s setting that are somewhat dark and intense, though never so broken as something by, say, Arvo Part. The truly moving of Rutter’s setting, though, is the Kyrie. It resolves beautifully into a melodic, major tonality. The sense is not of desperately pleading “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord have mercy”), but rather of experiencing a mercy already known. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been feeling a little wiggy this week and wrestling with my faith a bit, but when I heard Rutter’s Kyrie this morning I could close my eyes, take a deep breath, and feel it massaging those deep knots in my soul.

Categories
Augustine Humor

But You Can't Take it With You…

From the obituary of Janet Brown, famous proprietor of a New York fashion botique that catered to the very wealthy, in today’s New York Times: “At an early age Ms. Brown showed an aptitude for shopping.”

Well. There’s hope for all us dads of preteen girls yet.

Categories
Photography and Music

A Little Jazzy Riffage

I laid down this little sketch of an idea a couple of days ago. I love how the Variax guitar’s “jazzbox” sounds. Enjoy!