"Politics and the designation 'political' do not in the first instance refer to the machinations and deceits of state and party officials, but to social arrangements of bodies, the organization of human communities. . . To assert that every theology is always already political is to recognize that every theology embodies, either implicitly or explicitly, a mythos, a vision of how human communities ought to be organized."--Daniel M. Bell, Jr.
"In proportion as the spiritual element recovers its natural position at the centre of our culture, it will necessarily become the mainspring of our whole social activity. This does not, however, mean that the material and spiritual aspects of life must become fused in a single political order which would have all the power and rigidity of a theocratic state. Since a culture is essentially a spiritual community, it transcends the economic and political orders. It finds its appropraite organ not in a state, but in a Church, that is to say a society which is the embodiment of a purely spiritual tradition and which rests, not on material power, but on the free adhesion of the individual mind."--Christopher Dawson
"The existence of any Christian communal life essentially depends on whether or not it suceeds at the right time in promoting the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God's reality, between spiritual and emotional community. The life and death of a Christian community is decided by its ability to reach sober clairty on these points as soon as possible. In other words, a life together under the Word wil stay healthy only when it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but instead understands itself as being part of the one holy, universal, Christian church, sharing through its deeds and suffering in the hardships and struggles and promise of the whole church."--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Notes Toward a Model of Church & State
This topic calls for a much more extensive discussion, but I thought it might help us to begin with some basic observations on how Christians over the centuries have sought to deal with the question of church and state relations, keeping in mind that the definition of church and of state have both changed to some degree with varying periods and denominations. John Witte Jr. has described them as:
- Two ways: the earliest Christian treatment of the relationship of the two tends to view them as two separate communities: the Christian one on the pure and righteous road; the political one corrupt and hostile.
- Two cities: The influential 5th century view of Augustine that the Christian has two citizenships--in the temporal political order of this world (i.e. the City of Man) and in the eternal community of the Church (i.e. the City of God).
- Two powers: The patristic and early medieval view that church and state are two different authorities with differing concerns and jurisdictions.
- Two swords: While this metaphor is employed quite early in Christian history, it becomes more predominant in the 12th and 13th centuries. The power of the king and the power of the pope are different political powers, and depending on the source arguing, one sword can be treated as superior to the other. The systems of canon and civil law develop out of this distinction.
- With the rise of the Protestant Reformation, these four models take on differing forms in Reformational thought. The Anabaptist tradition returns to a form of the two ways, stressing that the state is part of the fallen world and must be avoided as much as possible. Anabaptist Christians are enjoined to obey the state, pay taxes, refuse to go to war or swear oaths, and to avoid any litigation.
- The Luthern position adopts the two cities model in what H. Richard Niebuhr has called "Christ and Culture in Paradox." The Luthern Christian is a citizen of both the political, legal power, which is guided by law and can bear the sword of violence, while he or she is also a citizen of the Church, which is guided by the gospel and by grace.
- Calvinism, Whitte believes, returned to a two powers model where church and state are treated as two differing jurisdictions, while the Church plays a deeply influential role in how the Christian commonwealth chooses to act politically.
- The Anglican position is more like that of the two swords, though now the English monarch replaces the pope and unites (or almost unites) the two swords into one commonwealth.
- Early Enlightenment views, such as those of Locke, return to a modified form of the two powers, but now by treating a church as a voluantary organization, the church is increasingly privatized by not having a role in public matters of note. Of course, Locke himself assumed that both powers would remain vaguely Christian; however, this was not to be the case as matters treated as private became mattters of indifference.
Two links from a student - Income Inequality
After a class on Income Inequality, Eric from my Microeconomics class sends me these two links:
- The video above is a three minute clip highlighting the vast inequality in incomes and living standards around the world. (UPDATE: another student brings up the passage "...Much will be required from everyone to whom much has been given... in Luke 12:48)
- In this link: Enter your income, and see where that places you compared to the rest of the world's population.
Eye-opening, isn't it? Thanks Eric!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Extra Visual of the Day - Large numbers
As Rob pointed out to us earlier, we should all know something about the currently unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security; they number in trillions of dollars. But what does a trillion dollars look like, in tightly stacked $100 bill packets? Pagetutor gives us a clue!
Towards a Theory of Twitter
Very odd and interesting discussion of the philosophy, rhetoric, and sociology (socio-pathology?) of Twitter:
http://www.good.is/post/that-reminds-me/?gt1=48001
http://www.good.is/post/that-reminds-me/?gt1=48001
Nobel prize winning economists discuss current events
This comes by the way of Economist's View blog.
Visual of the day - $100 mil savings in context!
Those of us worried about the size of the US Federal Government spending and the current and future Federal Debt listened carefully as President Obama explained how money will be saved. The above is a brief video that helps put Obama's proposed savings in the larger context of the actual size of the Federal Government spending.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Toleration Dissolves Community Rights
"Toleration in its modern form is the solvent that dissolves the bonds of interdependency. It therefore makes society fit for the "new" ordering and regulating powers of the state."--A.J. Conyers, The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit.
I've mentioned Conyers' book to several members of this blog as a good analysis of how Enlightenment political theory, especially Locke's, worked to undermine the rights of intermediate communities between the nation-state and the individual. I just ran across a blog review that offers a very thorough discussion of the book, though I would nuance things a bit differently:
http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1243/Long%20Truce.htm
Here's two passages from Conyers' book that this review discusses in some detail:
[T]he very character of modernity has accorded tolerance the status of a secular virtue. It is a virtue inasmuch as it strengthens a certain predisposition toward life together. It is secular in that the predisposition it strengthens is one of postponing or diverting the quest for meaning that is an essential component of social cohesion and the forming of groups or associations. Religion, of course, is what we call that quest, along with the practices and habits of the heart it engenders, The religious impulse is strong enough to bind people together, and also strong enough to set them at deadly odds with one another.
Toleration, as we modern people have defined it, is the decision to replace that quest with another one both practical and material in nature. Thus, it actually lessens the binding authority of community life, an authority that makes subtle appeal to manners, traditions, group sanctions, and respect for elders. At the same time, the ersatz virtue increases the need for organization, authority exerted from outside the group, formal laws, as well as emphasizing the protection of abstract "rights" that are divorced from what the living community calls the "good". . . .
What I am distinguishing as the practice of toleration, over against the doctrine that emerges from development of democratic liberalism, is the logical result of a recognition that our imperfections oblige us to listen to the insights of others. We are utterly dependent upon the gifts of society and tradition--even traditions other than our own. It is toleration that recognizes not the implied self-sufficiency of the individual or of various idiosyncratic groups in a supposed pluralistic world but the insufficiency of these limits and the ultimate need for a catholic vision. Even as the doctrine of toleration promotes isolation, the practice of toleration gently nudges us into community. Therefore, authentic toleration serves, and does not hinder, the forming and functional life of groups within society. It does not hinder in that it does not discourage the quest for ultimate meaning that is the inner light and life of any social group of any lasting importance.
Any thoughts?
I've mentioned Conyers' book to several members of this blog as a good analysis of how Enlightenment political theory, especially Locke's, worked to undermine the rights of intermediate communities between the nation-state and the individual. I just ran across a blog review that offers a very thorough discussion of the book, though I would nuance things a bit differently:
http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1243/Long%20Truce.htm
Here's two passages from Conyers' book that this review discusses in some detail:
[T]he very character of modernity has accorded tolerance the status of a secular virtue. It is a virtue inasmuch as it strengthens a certain predisposition toward life together. It is secular in that the predisposition it strengthens is one of postponing or diverting the quest for meaning that is an essential component of social cohesion and the forming of groups or associations. Religion, of course, is what we call that quest, along with the practices and habits of the heart it engenders, The religious impulse is strong enough to bind people together, and also strong enough to set them at deadly odds with one another.
Toleration, as we modern people have defined it, is the decision to replace that quest with another one both practical and material in nature. Thus, it actually lessens the binding authority of community life, an authority that makes subtle appeal to manners, traditions, group sanctions, and respect for elders. At the same time, the ersatz virtue increases the need for organization, authority exerted from outside the group, formal laws, as well as emphasizing the protection of abstract "rights" that are divorced from what the living community calls the "good". . . .
What I am distinguishing as the practice of toleration, over against the doctrine that emerges from development of democratic liberalism, is the logical result of a recognition that our imperfections oblige us to listen to the insights of others. We are utterly dependent upon the gifts of society and tradition--even traditions other than our own. It is toleration that recognizes not the implied self-sufficiency of the individual or of various idiosyncratic groups in a supposed pluralistic world but the insufficiency of these limits and the ultimate need for a catholic vision. Even as the doctrine of toleration promotes isolation, the practice of toleration gently nudges us into community. Therefore, authentic toleration serves, and does not hinder, the forming and functional life of groups within society. It does not hinder in that it does not discourage the quest for ultimate meaning that is the inner light and life of any social group of any lasting importance.
Any thoughts?
Graph of the day - Population of local counties
Click on the above chart and then mouse over to see population estimates for the various local counties in 2000 and in 2007. This is from Dallas Morning News.
Socialism Saves the Commerical Real Estate Market!!!
A provocative title always attracts attention!!!
As the posted article mentions, our country seems to be in the eye of the economic hurricane. Of course, the eye of a hurricane is temporary and means you will soon feel the full fury of the storm. At least this is what my friends and family (none of whom possess meteorological training) tell me. Plus, that helps illuminate my point so I am sticking with it!!
I spent some time in my pre-DBU life in the commercial real estate world. I also have many friends in the industry. It is not for the faint of heart. Additionally, the M.O. for real estate investors typically follows the Smalera's explanation to the letter. Investors acquire or develop property with maximized leverage on short term (5 year) note. Eventually, they will re-finance and take cash out of the deal which means they will be 100% levered with a bank account full of tax-free cash.
As Smalera points out, this is a great plan as long as properties continue to appreciate in value and cash flow exists to service the debt. However, what happens when tenants leave and values plunge? Who do you trust, the Flowrider or the federal government?? The author chooses the latter.
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/04/24/next-financial-explosion?page=0,0
As the posted article mentions, our country seems to be in the eye of the economic hurricane. Of course, the eye of a hurricane is temporary and means you will soon feel the full fury of the storm. At least this is what my friends and family (none of whom possess meteorological training) tell me. Plus, that helps illuminate my point so I am sticking with it!!
I spent some time in my pre-DBU life in the commercial real estate world. I also have many friends in the industry. It is not for the faint of heart. Additionally, the M.O. for real estate investors typically follows the Smalera's explanation to the letter. Investors acquire or develop property with maximized leverage on short term (5 year) note. Eventually, they will re-finance and take cash out of the deal which means they will be 100% levered with a bank account full of tax-free cash.
As Smalera points out, this is a great plan as long as properties continue to appreciate in value and cash flow exists to service the debt. However, what happens when tenants leave and values plunge? Who do you trust, the Flowrider or the federal government?? The author chooses the latter.
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/04/24/next-financial-explosion?page=0,0
Monday, April 27, 2009
Three Christ-like Roles for Educators (The Prince)
We need to keep in mind in teaching and research that the authority accorded us by God as professors of a field of knowledge is provisional authority, not absolute in any way. The royal nature of our calling is also part of the missio dei. The cultural mandate of Genesis to “fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion” (1:28) is not an excuse for exploitation but the natural extension of being kings and queens under the high kingship of God.
Humans “rule” the world in many ways, and that rule can either be priestly in its care and cultivation, or it can be a destructive rape of our fellow creature the earth. If the prophetic portion of our calling is a sign of the change in direction humanity needs to take to return to God and his purposes, and if the priestly vocation is the holiness of that intended structural growth and development, the princely aspect is a reminder that our authority is that of steward and regent. We have not absolute right to choose as we would.
Pedagogically, we should wear our authority with a certain lightness. We cannot forget as teachers that the prophethood and priesthood and princedom of the Church are possessed by all believers. Our students can be prophets and priests to us, as well as we to them. Academic freedom, I suspect, could be summed up in this: “As slaves of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil” (I Peter 2:16).
To be prophets, priests, and wards of God's world, and as Christian to be these things often in opposition to an academy that resists these roles, means we must take the time to truly engage the particular frameworks in which their disciplinary make up is assembled. Looking at the broad picture, unpacking the assumptions of a field, and digging deeper into the field's conversation and controversies require that we appreciate the models, applications, and pedagogy that our various academic fields demand. Professorship requires of us a certain examination of the foundations of our subjects, a certain mastery of the content, and a strong sense of how the field is divided into differing schools and approaches. Even this point should not overlook that differing fields and courses and teachers also take differing shapes.
There is no one complete metapedagogy.
Humans “rule” the world in many ways, and that rule can either be priestly in its care and cultivation, or it can be a destructive rape of our fellow creature the earth. If the prophetic portion of our calling is a sign of the change in direction humanity needs to take to return to God and his purposes, and if the priestly vocation is the holiness of that intended structural growth and development, the princely aspect is a reminder that our authority is that of steward and regent. We have not absolute right to choose as we would.
Pedagogically, we should wear our authority with a certain lightness. We cannot forget as teachers that the prophethood and priesthood and princedom of the Church are possessed by all believers. Our students can be prophets and priests to us, as well as we to them. Academic freedom, I suspect, could be summed up in this: “As slaves of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil” (I Peter 2:16).
To be prophets, priests, and wards of God's world, and as Christian to be these things often in opposition to an academy that resists these roles, means we must take the time to truly engage the particular frameworks in which their disciplinary make up is assembled. Looking at the broad picture, unpacking the assumptions of a field, and digging deeper into the field's conversation and controversies require that we appreciate the models, applications, and pedagogy that our various academic fields demand. Professorship requires of us a certain examination of the foundations of our subjects, a certain mastery of the content, and a strong sense of how the field is divided into differing schools and approaches. Even this point should not overlook that differing fields and courses and teachers also take differing shapes.
There is no one complete metapedagogy.
Three Christ-like Roles for Educators (The Priest)
In similar fashion, the priestly community of the Church is expressed in ways “both ecclesial (in the gathered life of the church) and diasporic (in the dispersed life of the church)” (Stevens 175).
Both the Magisterial and Radical Reformations were very concerned with protecting each believer’s direct access to the means of grace. In the twentieth century, the Roman Catholic communion has also recovered this insight through its stress on the people of God, though obvious differences still exist between denominations and communions. What is especially important about this doctrine is the role it places on Christian responsibility and service as extending from the high priestly nature of Christ himself. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (I Peter 2:9). Being a priest means to stand before God in adoration, confession, and intercession; it also means serving as representatives to our world.
The priestly role, too, reminds us that we handle the physical world as signs of God’s creation. We are priests of creation, as well as priests of God to a world in rebellion, as Alexander Schemann points out. In terms of higher education, the priestly role of believers imparts a special sense of sacredness to our task, whatever field and emphasis it may entail. We are to offer our work to God as a sacrifice pleasing to him. As priests we must handle the particulars of the sacrifice with care and reverence. We cannot as educators treat our field's subjects as neutral tools to manipulate to value-free ends. They have a preciousness about them that comes from being the creatures of God--be they rock, tree, sea, animal, fish, mitochondria, family, village, book, painting, spice, hammer, microscope, and on and on.
This priestly role requires that we seek out a true understanding of the things we handle in our teaching. To be a priest of creation means to recover the complex metaphysical value of creatures. Nothing is simple brute, deterministic matter. The Spirit is ever continually brooding on creation, upholding it in his wings. The world is charged with God’s grandeur as Gerard Manley Hopkins knew so well. Or as Thomas Traherne understood, the holiness of things is meant for our perception and reception:
Can you be Holy without accomplishing the end for which you are created? Can you be Divine unless you be Holy? Can you accomplish the end for which you were created, unless you be Righteous, unless you be just in rendering to Things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours, and you were made to prize them according to their value: which is your office and duty, the end for which you were created, and the means whereby you enjoy. The end for which you were created, is that by prizing all that God hath done, you may enjoy yourself and Him in Blessedness. (7-8)
Our metanoia, the change in our direction, extends far beyond a simple list of do’s and don’ts to a holistic change in our understanding and practice in every aspect of living. Regenerate hearts and repentant directions, which need Spirit empowerment, extend into the way we conceive of the foundations of mathematics, the applications of bio-technology, the design and implementation of sewage systems, the protesting of economic oppression of nations in the new global economy, the delicate balance in a sestina, the flavors of a chocolate soufflé, the harmony in family structures, the stunning wealth in undersea biology, and so on. Our blessedness as priests of God comes in “giving things their due esteem.” Teaching this implies a need for repentant examination from time-to-time, lest the thou of our students becomes it, lest we take the creation, which is only ours by imparted authority, and treat it as something easily isolated and destroyed.
Both the Magisterial and Radical Reformations were very concerned with protecting each believer’s direct access to the means of grace. In the twentieth century, the Roman Catholic communion has also recovered this insight through its stress on the people of God, though obvious differences still exist between denominations and communions. What is especially important about this doctrine is the role it places on Christian responsibility and service as extending from the high priestly nature of Christ himself. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (I Peter 2:9). Being a priest means to stand before God in adoration, confession, and intercession; it also means serving as representatives to our world.
The priestly role, too, reminds us that we handle the physical world as signs of God’s creation. We are priests of creation, as well as priests of God to a world in rebellion, as Alexander Schemann points out. In terms of higher education, the priestly role of believers imparts a special sense of sacredness to our task, whatever field and emphasis it may entail. We are to offer our work to God as a sacrifice pleasing to him. As priests we must handle the particulars of the sacrifice with care and reverence. We cannot as educators treat our field's subjects as neutral tools to manipulate to value-free ends. They have a preciousness about them that comes from being the creatures of God--be they rock, tree, sea, animal, fish, mitochondria, family, village, book, painting, spice, hammer, microscope, and on and on.
This priestly role requires that we seek out a true understanding of the things we handle in our teaching. To be a priest of creation means to recover the complex metaphysical value of creatures. Nothing is simple brute, deterministic matter. The Spirit is ever continually brooding on creation, upholding it in his wings. The world is charged with God’s grandeur as Gerard Manley Hopkins knew so well. Or as Thomas Traherne understood, the holiness of things is meant for our perception and reception:
Can you be Holy without accomplishing the end for which you are created? Can you be Divine unless you be Holy? Can you accomplish the end for which you were created, unless you be Righteous, unless you be just in rendering to Things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours, and you were made to prize them according to their value: which is your office and duty, the end for which you were created, and the means whereby you enjoy. The end for which you were created, is that by prizing all that God hath done, you may enjoy yourself and Him in Blessedness. (7-8)
Our metanoia, the change in our direction, extends far beyond a simple list of do’s and don’ts to a holistic change in our understanding and practice in every aspect of living. Regenerate hearts and repentant directions, which need Spirit empowerment, extend into the way we conceive of the foundations of mathematics, the applications of bio-technology, the design and implementation of sewage systems, the protesting of economic oppression of nations in the new global economy, the delicate balance in a sestina, the flavors of a chocolate soufflé, the harmony in family structures, the stunning wealth in undersea biology, and so on. Our blessedness as priests of God comes in “giving things their due esteem.” Teaching this implies a need for repentant examination from time-to-time, lest the thou of our students becomes it, lest we take the creation, which is only ours by imparted authority, and treat it as something easily isolated and destroyed.
Three Christ-like Roles for Education (The Prophet)
R. Paul Stevens has drawn attention to the ways in which the munera of Christ as King, as Prophet, and as Priest are given further, if mediated and limited, expression in the Church. Each role of Christ's works itself out in the Church as Chrst's Body. What might these three roles teach us about Christian education?
The “prophethood of all believers” begins in the Spirit’s outpouring in Acts chapter 2; the prophecy of Joel that “your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (2:17) is fulfilled and a new pneumalogical order is inaugurated. The Church as herald, or as prophet, is reflected in the authoritative teaching and preaching of scripture, but also extends out to its witness in the cosmos. All Christians are to function prophetically at some level as signs of God’s intended salvation for the creation.
Certainly, this role for Christian educators does not necessitate always being at odds with the larger scholarly community, eschewing every opportunity for consensus, bridge-building, or even political networking. But it may demand all of these at times. It certainly should shape the rationale for these choices. The advancement of personal careers for a Christian educator is subsumed to a larger service to the just and true, and this Augustinian ordering of our loves ought to be something we also impart to our students.
Being heralds of the gospel does not always take the same form in every career. If our research and teaching is not disinterested, neither is it simple polemics. Prophetic witness in academics may include the courage to speak to the emperor’s new clothes, be that in the academy or in the Christian classroom. Yet that witness should take all the balance and thoughtfulness that mark good college-level teaching and writing. Indeed, these skills are virtues endemic to being a herald.
Prophetic teaching, however, is not the only end of Christian proclamation. The missio dei extends beyond this into the way we live as reformed and renewed people within God's full-orbed creation. The danger of looking at the mission of Christian education as only prophetic is that we can fall back into the instrumentalism of reason and the tribalism of belief. We begin to treat teaching and research as if their sole purpose were really a platform for something else, much as Christians are sometimes tempted to treat their jobs as venues for personal evangelism.
This later practice in the workplace can be a very shorted-sighted definition of the Great Commission, reducing the gospel to personal conversion or perhaps to certain concerns of social justice. The same is true if we treat our fidelity in Christian education as always an explicit expression of theological matters within the discipline. We cannot lose sight of how mathematics, political science, biology, visual art, etcetera are grounded in God’s purposes for creation. Love of the subject in itself still has an overarching telos that grounds its validity, namely, that of love of God and love of neighbor, loves which includes God’s creation.
Now, I don’t mean by this point to reduce evangelism to a second-class discipline; rather, I mean to place it as the natural outcome of discipleship rather than as an end in itself. The call to baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a call to a new way of living, an entrance into the new humanity, to become the "third species" the patristic fathers and mothers sometimes spoke of.
A prophetic role, then, can be accorded to both Christian university teaching and research. Moreover, they can speak back and forth to each other sharing this role. We do well to conceive of our research needing the course correction and passion of good teaching, for it grounds our scholarship in the world of the classroom. Even the most arcane of disciplines has something to say as a public, as a normative set of claims to what constitutes the worthwhile and the virtuous.
We are, perhaps, more accustomed to thinking of the way that new research can shape the direction of our teaching, but to see research as potentially prophetic is to recognize its need to submit itself to Truth. Cut off from prophetic truth, our research can grow vapid, even trapped in its own theory, but conceived as the servant of teaching, our research then is shaped by the telos of God's mission.
The “prophethood of all believers” begins in the Spirit’s outpouring in Acts chapter 2; the prophecy of Joel that “your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (2:17) is fulfilled and a new pneumalogical order is inaugurated. The Church as herald, or as prophet, is reflected in the authoritative teaching and preaching of scripture, but also extends out to its witness in the cosmos. All Christians are to function prophetically at some level as signs of God’s intended salvation for the creation.
Certainly, this role for Christian educators does not necessitate always being at odds with the larger scholarly community, eschewing every opportunity for consensus, bridge-building, or even political networking. But it may demand all of these at times. It certainly should shape the rationale for these choices. The advancement of personal careers for a Christian educator is subsumed to a larger service to the just and true, and this Augustinian ordering of our loves ought to be something we also impart to our students.
Being heralds of the gospel does not always take the same form in every career. If our research and teaching is not disinterested, neither is it simple polemics. Prophetic witness in academics may include the courage to speak to the emperor’s new clothes, be that in the academy or in the Christian classroom. Yet that witness should take all the balance and thoughtfulness that mark good college-level teaching and writing. Indeed, these skills are virtues endemic to being a herald.
Prophetic teaching, however, is not the only end of Christian proclamation. The missio dei extends beyond this into the way we live as reformed and renewed people within God's full-orbed creation. The danger of looking at the mission of Christian education as only prophetic is that we can fall back into the instrumentalism of reason and the tribalism of belief. We begin to treat teaching and research as if their sole purpose were really a platform for something else, much as Christians are sometimes tempted to treat their jobs as venues for personal evangelism.
This later practice in the workplace can be a very shorted-sighted definition of the Great Commission, reducing the gospel to personal conversion or perhaps to certain concerns of social justice. The same is true if we treat our fidelity in Christian education as always an explicit expression of theological matters within the discipline. We cannot lose sight of how mathematics, political science, biology, visual art, etcetera are grounded in God’s purposes for creation. Love of the subject in itself still has an overarching telos that grounds its validity, namely, that of love of God and love of neighbor, loves which includes God’s creation.
Now, I don’t mean by this point to reduce evangelism to a second-class discipline; rather, I mean to place it as the natural outcome of discipleship rather than as an end in itself. The call to baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a call to a new way of living, an entrance into the new humanity, to become the "third species" the patristic fathers and mothers sometimes spoke of.
A prophetic role, then, can be accorded to both Christian university teaching and research. Moreover, they can speak back and forth to each other sharing this role. We do well to conceive of our research needing the course correction and passion of good teaching, for it grounds our scholarship in the world of the classroom. Even the most arcane of disciplines has something to say as a public, as a normative set of claims to what constitutes the worthwhile and the virtuous.
We are, perhaps, more accustomed to thinking of the way that new research can shape the direction of our teaching, but to see research as potentially prophetic is to recognize its need to submit itself to Truth. Cut off from prophetic truth, our research can grow vapid, even trapped in its own theory, but conceived as the servant of teaching, our research then is shaped by the telos of God's mission.
The End of Debate
Debate is an essential part of the academic experience at a Christian university. But, I would contend, that we should not debate for debate's sake. A Christian academic practice that employs disputation must do so within a certain moral practice and with a particular intent to develop key habits of reasoning. We debate with certain short and long-term goals in mind. The Aristotelian concept of phronesis, or practical reasoning, has formed the nucleus of some significant twentieth-century reflection on the nature of moral reasoning and virtue, and it provides a good model of what we should be trying to achieve.
Phronesis is concrete; it is not theoretical generalization; instead, it works itself out anew in each new practical set of circumstances. Phronesis operates on a case-by-case basis not in the pure realm of theory but with a sense of this is what the situation calls for. However, it is not just an internalized set of thinking skills. It is more like a habit of interpretation based on a long formed practice. It is a virtue, which as Augustine pointed out, "is a good habit consonant with our nature."
We form phronesis through practice, and this requires a concrete pattern within which to do so. Thomas Aquinas further defines a virtue as,
An operative habit essentially good, as distinguished from vice, an operative habit essentially evil. Now a habit is a quality in itself difficult of change, disposing well or ill the subject in which it resides, either directly in itself or in relation to its operation. An operative habit is a quality residing in a power or faculty in itself indifferent to this or that line of action, but determined by the habit to this rather than to that kind of acts. Virtue then has this in common with vice, that it disposes a potency to a certain determined activity; but it differs specifically from it in that it disposes it to good acts, i.e. acts in consonance with right reason (Summa 2.55.2).
In other words, virtues are a) good habits that predispose us to good actions and b) represent a certain mature good quality made resident in a person. For Aquinas the cardinal virtue of prudentia is the habitual judgment of how best to respond in ever new circumstances. Education is about cultural, intellectual, and moral prudentia. An education that fails to translate into life's new circumstances is a failure of ultimate phronesis. So we debate in order to learn how to size up situations and circumstances in our pursuit of truth, not to simply win debates.
What, then, is the structure of reasoning and faith? Do we reason our way into faith per se? John Henry Newman argued in The Grammar of Ascent that we begin not by reasoning but by apprehending the object, which then gains our assent. We only later begin to unpack the implied details of what we have given our assent to. We often believe what we cannot understand and what we cannot exhaustively comprehend or prove. Conviction is something we all grow into over time.
This says much about Christian education. We do not reason our way to faith; we begin with its assumptions (ala' Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum--faith seeking understanding). Concrete reasonings are not ultimate tests, but they are sufficient tests in practical reasoning. In other words, we often begin with certain convictions that we have received through revelation, church tradition, ecclesiastical authority, and so on. These are worked out through disputation. They are sized up within classic and new scenarios alike.
Newman divides forms of assent into two types: notional assent, which includes profession, credence, opinion, presumption, and speculation; and real assent, which is imaginative certainty given to what we experience in the real world. Beliefs in what the Church teaches are forms of assent both notional and real. Thus, we gain certitude--a state of mind--all the time by directing ourselves and giving ourselves towards particular truths, and this lived involvement with the object of our assent gives our certitude a quality of irreversibility.
Christian education operates as a way of reinforcing the Christian faith, not by an unquestioning repetition of only certain denominational dogmas, but by a debated, thick ecumenism practiced in true covenant community. We all have an illative sense, a faculty of theoretical reasoning that judges the validity of inferences in much that same way that our prudence (prudentia, phronesis) judges life practically. This theoretical faculty includes a sense of judging what authorities we can give our trust to.
All good reason, if you will, is based on some measure of faith, and all true faith has some measure of rationality in it. Christian education understands this truth. Our warranted presuppositions frame and proceed from our faith; they are also applied and strengthened in the course of debate.
Phronesis is concrete; it is not theoretical generalization; instead, it works itself out anew in each new practical set of circumstances. Phronesis operates on a case-by-case basis not in the pure realm of theory but with a sense of this is what the situation calls for. However, it is not just an internalized set of thinking skills. It is more like a habit of interpretation based on a long formed practice. It is a virtue, which as Augustine pointed out, "is a good habit consonant with our nature."
We form phronesis through practice, and this requires a concrete pattern within which to do so. Thomas Aquinas further defines a virtue as,
An operative habit essentially good, as distinguished from vice, an operative habit essentially evil. Now a habit is a quality in itself difficult of change, disposing well or ill the subject in which it resides, either directly in itself or in relation to its operation. An operative habit is a quality residing in a power or faculty in itself indifferent to this or that line of action, but determined by the habit to this rather than to that kind of acts. Virtue then has this in common with vice, that it disposes a potency to a certain determined activity; but it differs specifically from it in that it disposes it to good acts, i.e. acts in consonance with right reason (Summa 2.55.2).
In other words, virtues are a) good habits that predispose us to good actions and b) represent a certain mature good quality made resident in a person. For Aquinas the cardinal virtue of prudentia is the habitual judgment of how best to respond in ever new circumstances. Education is about cultural, intellectual, and moral prudentia. An education that fails to translate into life's new circumstances is a failure of ultimate phronesis. So we debate in order to learn how to size up situations and circumstances in our pursuit of truth, not to simply win debates.
What, then, is the structure of reasoning and faith? Do we reason our way into faith per se? John Henry Newman argued in The Grammar of Ascent that we begin not by reasoning but by apprehending the object, which then gains our assent. We only later begin to unpack the implied details of what we have given our assent to. We often believe what we cannot understand and what we cannot exhaustively comprehend or prove. Conviction is something we all grow into over time.
This says much about Christian education. We do not reason our way to faith; we begin with its assumptions (ala' Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum--faith seeking understanding). Concrete reasonings are not ultimate tests, but they are sufficient tests in practical reasoning. In other words, we often begin with certain convictions that we have received through revelation, church tradition, ecclesiastical authority, and so on. These are worked out through disputation. They are sized up within classic and new scenarios alike.
Newman divides forms of assent into two types: notional assent, which includes profession, credence, opinion, presumption, and speculation; and real assent, which is imaginative certainty given to what we experience in the real world. Beliefs in what the Church teaches are forms of assent both notional and real. Thus, we gain certitude--a state of mind--all the time by directing ourselves and giving ourselves towards particular truths, and this lived involvement with the object of our assent gives our certitude a quality of irreversibility.
Christian education operates as a way of reinforcing the Christian faith, not by an unquestioning repetition of only certain denominational dogmas, but by a debated, thick ecumenism practiced in true covenant community. We all have an illative sense, a faculty of theoretical reasoning that judges the validity of inferences in much that same way that our prudence (prudentia, phronesis) judges life practically. This theoretical faculty includes a sense of judging what authorities we can give our trust to.
All good reason, if you will, is based on some measure of faith, and all true faith has some measure of rationality in it. Christian education understands this truth. Our warranted presuppositions frame and proceed from our faith; they are also applied and strengthened in the course of debate.
Visual of the day - Budget deficits
This is just a good way to present some numerical time series information about our federal budget deficit. The real kicker is what happens after year 2008, which is the last year in this clip. The 2009 budget deficit quadruples, and from then on, Medicare and Social Security bloat the deficit beyond measure, as Rob had pointed out in an earlier post. If you have time, I suggest spending the 30 minutes watching the movie from which this clip is taken, the movie (free online) is called I.O.U.S.A.
UPDATE: Here is the visual of the huge deficit increases projected in the decades ahead.
Is a Christian College a Community?
Can one speak of the college, the collegium or the universitas, as a covenant community?
Yes and no. A covenant is unconditional, while a contract is full of preplanned exceptions. A contract is about protecting yourself. In a covenant, you are utterly vulnerable. In a covenant, a relationship is established first, a personal connection that defines who we are and carries with it certain costs if we to succeed and certain consequences if we fail to live in this new relationship. The Christian college, I would contend, has elements of both a covenant and a contract.
Colleges, by their intellectual history, are gatherings that take on a life beyond any one individual; they are incorporations. Once they are brought into being, they can outlive their originators. The Roman collegium or universitas (a legal association of many types) could, in theory, be reduced to a single individual. The medieval creation of collegia of learning arose from canon law’s appropriation of this Roman tradition, and it carried with it certain assumptions of due process and due assembly. From their beginnings, colleges of learning intertwined forms of self-governance with pedagogical communities. Gathering for study and debating how to go about it are old, old assumptions about university education.
The University of Paris, for example, organized itself around "nations" (nationes), guilds headed by teachers, each with their own internal governance, while the University of Bologna was organized around student-run nations. Medieval universities fought for and were eventually granted the right of cessation, to be able to relocate if a town was overcharging for rent, food, and student lodging, as well as the right of suspendium clericorum, to be able to boycott as a corporation to force similar changes. To enter a center of study, a stadium, was ideally to make a commitment to a shared goal, the ends of truth, salvation, and public service. Such a commitment, admittedly often noted more in the breaking, carries with it elements of covenant--the academic relationship is entered with a measure of vulnerability and consequence, yet the tight, rule-bound nature of political relations of the association also carry with it overtones of contractual protection.
The rise of humanist academies and houses of legal study in the Renaissance observed similar patterns, and if I had room, one could trace the give-and-take of this through the classical education of the Enlightenment, its Lockean and dissenter counterpoints, the rise of the German research model, and the debate between the liberal progressivism of John Dewey and the Great Books approach of Mortimer Adler.
While it is important to recognize the Christian college and the local congregation as differing entities, they do share the mission of God as their reason for being. Christian education is more than a tool of the Church; it is an expression of her communal personhood. So while the college or university is not the same exact polity as that of the Church, it does help to fulfill elements of its polis, or as Reinhard Hütter suggests, its "public." A public, following Hannah Arendt, has "a particular telos, circumscribed by constitutive practice, and underwritten by normative convictions" (Human Condition 31). The modern world defines itself on the distinction between the public and private spheres. The problem has been that Christian faith reduced to religion as a free association in the private sphere effectively has removed it from having a public claim to our allegiance in any ultimate way.
I will contend that the project of the Christian college should refuse by its very construction to being reduced to a privatized model that isolates its confessional understanding and practices to a few religion courses at best. One aspect, in particular, we should keep in mind is that of the academic culture of research and disputation. Again, speaking in ideal terms, a practice of disputation--be it professional disagreement in journals, researched evaluation, journalistic response, or oral, public debate--to name but a few of the ways--need not lose sight of the Christian telos of love, benevolence, and charity. Failure at peace-making does not remove the command to seek it.
Educators, such as Parker Palmer, have offered that neither a "therapeutic community" of absolutely unprotected intimacy, nor a "civic community" of tolerant strangers is the best kind of community for learning. Instead, Parker argues for a pedagogical community based on troth, on loving mutual commitment to an encounter with truth that draws out of us spiritual formation (30-32). The role of formal antagonism, whether it be in the practice of addressing counterarguments or in the awareness that some measure of proof must be offered for our intuitions and claims, is pedagogical beneficial. But to be so, from a Christian understanding, a covenant of learning must provide for a shared commitment both to the authority of God's truth and to the debate as to its content.
Yes and no. A covenant is unconditional, while a contract is full of preplanned exceptions. A contract is about protecting yourself. In a covenant, you are utterly vulnerable. In a covenant, a relationship is established first, a personal connection that defines who we are and carries with it certain costs if we to succeed and certain consequences if we fail to live in this new relationship. The Christian college, I would contend, has elements of both a covenant and a contract.
Colleges, by their intellectual history, are gatherings that take on a life beyond any one individual; they are incorporations. Once they are brought into being, they can outlive their originators. The Roman collegium or universitas (a legal association of many types) could, in theory, be reduced to a single individual. The medieval creation of collegia of learning arose from canon law’s appropriation of this Roman tradition, and it carried with it certain assumptions of due process and due assembly. From their beginnings, colleges of learning intertwined forms of self-governance with pedagogical communities. Gathering for study and debating how to go about it are old, old assumptions about university education.
The University of Paris, for example, organized itself around "nations" (nationes), guilds headed by teachers, each with their own internal governance, while the University of Bologna was organized around student-run nations. Medieval universities fought for and were eventually granted the right of cessation, to be able to relocate if a town was overcharging for rent, food, and student lodging, as well as the right of suspendium clericorum, to be able to boycott as a corporation to force similar changes. To enter a center of study, a stadium, was ideally to make a commitment to a shared goal, the ends of truth, salvation, and public service. Such a commitment, admittedly often noted more in the breaking, carries with it elements of covenant--the academic relationship is entered with a measure of vulnerability and consequence, yet the tight, rule-bound nature of political relations of the association also carry with it overtones of contractual protection.
The rise of humanist academies and houses of legal study in the Renaissance observed similar patterns, and if I had room, one could trace the give-and-take of this through the classical education of the Enlightenment, its Lockean and dissenter counterpoints, the rise of the German research model, and the debate between the liberal progressivism of John Dewey and the Great Books approach of Mortimer Adler.
While it is important to recognize the Christian college and the local congregation as differing entities, they do share the mission of God as their reason for being. Christian education is more than a tool of the Church; it is an expression of her communal personhood. So while the college or university is not the same exact polity as that of the Church, it does help to fulfill elements of its polis, or as Reinhard Hütter suggests, its "public." A public, following Hannah Arendt, has "a particular telos, circumscribed by constitutive practice, and underwritten by normative convictions" (Human Condition 31). The modern world defines itself on the distinction between the public and private spheres. The problem has been that Christian faith reduced to religion as a free association in the private sphere effectively has removed it from having a public claim to our allegiance in any ultimate way.
I will contend that the project of the Christian college should refuse by its very construction to being reduced to a privatized model that isolates its confessional understanding and practices to a few religion courses at best. One aspect, in particular, we should keep in mind is that of the academic culture of research and disputation. Again, speaking in ideal terms, a practice of disputation--be it professional disagreement in journals, researched evaluation, journalistic response, or oral, public debate--to name but a few of the ways--need not lose sight of the Christian telos of love, benevolence, and charity. Failure at peace-making does not remove the command to seek it.
Educators, such as Parker Palmer, have offered that neither a "therapeutic community" of absolutely unprotected intimacy, nor a "civic community" of tolerant strangers is the best kind of community for learning. Instead, Parker argues for a pedagogical community based on troth, on loving mutual commitment to an encounter with truth that draws out of us spiritual formation (30-32). The role of formal antagonism, whether it be in the practice of addressing counterarguments or in the awareness that some measure of proof must be offered for our intuitions and claims, is pedagogical beneficial. But to be so, from a Christian understanding, a covenant of learning must provide for a shared commitment both to the authority of God's truth and to the debate as to its content.
Contrarian view - Capitalism Day?
Just a crazy idea...
On this day, we could remember the accomplishments of men and women of industry that have been able to utilize their God-given talents in a system of capitalism. Kids could learn about them in schools, congregations could thank God for gifting these men and women with their respective talents.
This could include celebrating the automobile, the computer, life-saving drugs, banking system that provides us with credit needed to buy homes or attend college, the power companies that provide us with the ability to be warm in winter and cool in summer, etc.
We could take a pause to thank those who take risks, putting their reputations or livelihoods on the line, in trying to come up with the newest product to improve people's lives. We could pray for those who have been unsuccessful in their pursuits, and we could pray for the system that makes such magnificent improvements possible. We could even write thank-you letters to the major investors or CEOs of the most important companies that make many of the modern conveniences possible!
What do you think? A good idea? A provocative idea? An impossibly flawed idea?
Freedom--Two Baptist Views (Part 3)
What do the two positions have to teach us? Soul competency, I will contend, is always congregational as in communal accountability, not as in liberal society. It takes on the role of shared discipleship that the Baptist Manifesto writers celebrate. Soul competency needs as a concept an eschatological aspiration and a hope within the community of saints in trinue participation (theosis); It needs koinoia as more than the fellowship of eccentric self-developing individuals, but as the mystical unity of the Body of Christ realized in the gradual sanctification of all the Church. Paul's reflection on the nature of congregational leadership and Christian maturation is worth returning to here:
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Competency of the embodied Christian is not a state one is born with, but one that must be matured into, just as personhood should be understood in a manner that accounts for the particular identity of each individual Christian, as well as the intertwined nature of the Church. Competency and priesthood are always interpenetrating in Christ. Perhaps the idea is better understood as "saintly competency"? Saintly competency takes direction from the masters of the faith, but it does not lay aside the creational free will we are given. It cannot be forced, yet it must be submitted to willingly.
Nothing about a community of discipleship or a shared reading of scripture nor a stress on the classical creeds need of necessity be an instrument of oppression or a suppression of truth, though historical cases of all of these can be cited. Certainly, the dangers of triumphalism and group-think are real, and Baptists historically had to resist them to gain a foothold free from even Christian persecution. Certainly, the creeds and confessions of faith have been used not only as summaries of what has been believed by all, but also as instruments of oppression. And certainly, the experience of Baptist Christians under oppressive state regimes is an ever-present reminder of what can happen when any government takes to itself the "right" to regulate its people's beliefs.
Nonetheless, an assumption of competency without a practice in which to find it, nor mentors and teachers to help cultivate those capacities, can fall prey to a tribalism of its own and to an unthinking acceptance of social contract theory's unchristian epistemology. Even if we stress that the Christian’s positive freedom is always bounded by community and scripture, we must be careful that that language does not too easily co-opt the spirit of the age. None of this is meant to deny a solid place for the individual in community practice. As Charles Taylor points out, in the modern world there is still a difference between self-referential manner and matter. The former is the way of life we are all forced to live by up to a point if we wish to participate in any aspect of our modernist cultures. The later, however, is the radical individualism and instrumentalism that we need to reject in our Christian education.
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Competency of the embodied Christian is not a state one is born with, but one that must be matured into, just as personhood should be understood in a manner that accounts for the particular identity of each individual Christian, as well as the intertwined nature of the Church. Competency and priesthood are always interpenetrating in Christ. Perhaps the idea is better understood as "saintly competency"? Saintly competency takes direction from the masters of the faith, but it does not lay aside the creational free will we are given. It cannot be forced, yet it must be submitted to willingly.
Nothing about a community of discipleship or a shared reading of scripture nor a stress on the classical creeds need of necessity be an instrument of oppression or a suppression of truth, though historical cases of all of these can be cited. Certainly, the dangers of triumphalism and group-think are real, and Baptists historically had to resist them to gain a foothold free from even Christian persecution. Certainly, the creeds and confessions of faith have been used not only as summaries of what has been believed by all, but also as instruments of oppression. And certainly, the experience of Baptist Christians under oppressive state regimes is an ever-present reminder of what can happen when any government takes to itself the "right" to regulate its people's beliefs.
Nonetheless, an assumption of competency without a practice in which to find it, nor mentors and teachers to help cultivate those capacities, can fall prey to a tribalism of its own and to an unthinking acceptance of social contract theory's unchristian epistemology. Even if we stress that the Christian’s positive freedom is always bounded by community and scripture, we must be careful that that language does not too easily co-opt the spirit of the age. None of this is meant to deny a solid place for the individual in community practice. As Charles Taylor points out, in the modern world there is still a difference between self-referential manner and matter. The former is the way of life we are all forced to live by up to a point if we wish to participate in any aspect of our modernist cultures. The later, however, is the radical individualism and instrumentalism that we need to reject in our Christian education.
Freedom-Two Baptist Views (Part 2)
Walter B. Shurden, a cautious critic of the Manifesto, in his The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms gives voice to what is arguable a wide-spread perspective among Baptists. He bases his findings on Baptist World Alliance sermons from 1905 to 1980. These four freedoms he labels "Bible freedom," "soul freedom," "church freedom," and "religious freedom."
Bible freedom he defines as the centrality of scripture in the life of Christians, which they "are both free and obligated to study and obey." Soul freedom is "the inalienable right and responsibility of every person to deal with God without the imposition of creed, the interference of clergy, or the intervention of civil government." Church freedom is the recognition of local congregational polity free "to participate within the larger Body of Christ," while religious freedom is the political stance that "Caesar is not Christ and Christ not Caesar" (4-5).
Shurden is careful to stress that these freedoms have their corresponding responsibilities--Bible freedom must involve submission to the control of scripture; soul freedom or competency demands individual responsibility and conscience; church freedom calls for an end to tribalism and for an open ecumenism, and religious freedom includes calling the state to account for its injustices (56-57). Likewise, Shurden stresses that Baptists are not a "creedal people," even while praising the "classical creedal statements" and "faith of the ecumenical church" (14-15), soul competency has at its heart a personal response of each believer to Christ (26-28), and the congregational government should lead to creative worship and responsible ministry (39-43).
Yet, despite this admirable balance, Shurden does make statements that cause the more community-minded Baptist to shutter: "[S]alvation is not church by church, community by community, or nation by nation. It is lonely soul by lonely soul;" (26). Giving his rhetoric the benefit of the doubt, Shurden nonetheless limits the soteriology of scripture to something far more individualistic than a close reading of the corporate aspects of salvation will support. "Each individual, therefore, is competent under God to make moral, spiritual, and religious decisions" (24). "Freedom, experimental and individualistic by nature, is threatening to both sacramental and rationalistic understandings of the Christian concept of salvation" (57). It is this experimental and assumed competency that gives pause. Yet I wonder if he entirely means it. He is careful to stress that the individual is always in community, always accountable to community.
Bible freedom he defines as the centrality of scripture in the life of Christians, which they "are both free and obligated to study and obey." Soul freedom is "the inalienable right and responsibility of every person to deal with God without the imposition of creed, the interference of clergy, or the intervention of civil government." Church freedom is the recognition of local congregational polity free "to participate within the larger Body of Christ," while religious freedom is the political stance that "Caesar is not Christ and Christ not Caesar" (4-5).
Shurden is careful to stress that these freedoms have their corresponding responsibilities--Bible freedom must involve submission to the control of scripture; soul freedom or competency demands individual responsibility and conscience; church freedom calls for an end to tribalism and for an open ecumenism, and religious freedom includes calling the state to account for its injustices (56-57). Likewise, Shurden stresses that Baptists are not a "creedal people," even while praising the "classical creedal statements" and "faith of the ecumenical church" (14-15), soul competency has at its heart a personal response of each believer to Christ (26-28), and the congregational government should lead to creative worship and responsible ministry (39-43).
Yet, despite this admirable balance, Shurden does make statements that cause the more community-minded Baptist to shutter: "[S]alvation is not church by church, community by community, or nation by nation. It is lonely soul by lonely soul;" (26). Giving his rhetoric the benefit of the doubt, Shurden nonetheless limits the soteriology of scripture to something far more individualistic than a close reading of the corporate aspects of salvation will support. "Each individual, therefore, is competent under God to make moral, spiritual, and religious decisions" (24). "Freedom, experimental and individualistic by nature, is threatening to both sacramental and rationalistic understandings of the Christian concept of salvation" (57). It is this experimental and assumed competency that gives pause. Yet I wonder if he entirely means it. He is careful to stress that the individual is always in community, always accountable to community.
Freedom-Two Baptist Views (Part 1)
"Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity: A Manifesto for Baptist Communities in North America" (1997) represents an example of one particular political, epistemic, and sacramental position of Baptists. Written by a group of six Baptist theologians, and acknowledged by several more sympathetic academics, "Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity" was much talked about in Southern Baptist circles for a few years only to fade from interest, though it is still sometimes cited as a position worth rejecting or accepting. It, nonetheless, strikes me as still a worthy statement of a growing sensibility. A "manifesto" makes something manifest; thus, it is both polemic and revolution, both prophesy and self-argument, and as such, it tends to take positions that are strident in tone:
- "We affirm Bible Study in reading communities rather than relying on private interpretation or supposed 'scientific' objectivity."
- "We affirm following Jesus as a call to shared discipleship rather than invoking a theory of soul competency."
- "We affirm a free common life in Christ in gathered, reforming communities rather than withdrawn, self-chosen, or authoritarian ones."
- "We affirm baptism, preaching, and the Lord's table as powerful signs that seal God's faithfulness in Christ and express our response of awed gratitude rather than as mechanical rituals or mere symbols."
- "We affirm freedom and renounce coercion as a distinct people under God rather than relying on political theories, powers, or authorities."
The writers of "Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity" clearly position themselves against some things, in particular non-communitarian hermeneutics, soul competency (as understood as radical individualism), authoritarian polities, non-sacramentalist views of Baptist worship, and a too cozy mixture of faith and nationalism.
Notice the authors' definition of freedom:
Human freedom is granted as a gift out of God's own triune, loving freedom. Faith is not to be coerced by narrow interpretations that allow no room for ecumenical dialogue nor by authoritarian structures and mandates but neither is a libertarian notion of personal autonomy or social self-determination a true vision of freedom and faith.
Such a definition is not that of Western modernism. The authors propose a way of being free that is bound by a certain kind of pursuit in community, one that begins in the very nature of the ontological Trinity. Freedom is not the individualized pursuit of personal truth, but it is an environment that makes exploratory study and debate possible. This certainly has profound implications for the methods and purposes of collegiate study. Freedom here is to be set free by operating according to the habituation of the art, the exercise of the sport, the order of worship. Freedom is not here understood as that of infinite alterity, the pursuit of endless change for personal happiness and fulfillment, but instead freedom is the joy of living up to one's cherished responsibilities, of finding true happiness in investing in others, which is only possible because of God's enabling gift of grace. The same could be said of a stress on reading communities, on shared discipleship, on sacramental worship, and on a distancing from the nation-state.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Swine Flu info
Let us pray for containment of the swine flu.
Here are some of the sites I am following to get more information about the flu outbreak:
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Graphic of the day - States and Countries
This map, which comes from Strangemaps, shows how the total economic output of each state corresponds with a total output of various countries. Notice, for example, that Texas produces as much as Canada, Tenessee as much as Saudi Arabia, New, Jersey as much as Russia, and Alabama as much as Iran. Interesting, isn't it?
A Relational Universe
According to Jonathan Edwards, God is Trinity (three in one, one in three), and the Trinity is relational in his love. Because the Trinity derives from the divine community’s self-understanding in God, God communicates this love to the whole creation, offering it a chance to be a part of this divine life of love.
Nature is created by God out of his divine fullness, and Nature acts as a sign of the divine reality. Nature's message has been distorted by the corruption of creation, and it needs revelation to clarify its message.
Likewise, the ethical life is founded on agreement with God. Virtue is derived from selfless love: first from God, then for others. Sin is the refusal to consent to God's Being and purposes; it insists on a private vision of its own. As we consent more to God’s desires, we develop habits of character, discovering more of whom we really are and are intended to be. To understand how this happens, one needs to understand the relationship of the mind, will, and affections, which for Edwards are three ways of looking at an integrated whole.
Because God is relational, the mind and creation are also relational; they are designed to work together. Our delight comes in discerning this pattern of relationship. The will is not a free faculty. It always acts on the mind’s understanding. When the mind perceives something as its greatest good, the will chooses that good. God gives to the understanding redeemed affections.
The affections are necessary to grasp anything. If you understand something only mentally, you have not really understood. As one loves relationally, one truly only understands God, truth, goodness, and beauty.
At the center, then, of Edwards’ thought is a profound cosmic aesthetic of relationship and selfless community. God’s beauty is an objective reality which we always experience subjectively. True beauty is achieved by consenting to God, who offers us perfect delight, experienced both as an excellent image in Christ (offered in the natural world and human beings) and as an indwelling principle in the Holy Spirit. God’s beauty governs and redeems the world.
As we consent to God’s love, we experience relationship with him and his community of followers, who ultimately act upon that love in both this world and in the infinite, progressive capacity of heaven.
(This is taken from a webpage of mine. If you're interested in a more thorough breakdown of Edwards' system, go to: http://www.dbu.edu/mitchell/edwardsi.htm .)
Nature is created by God out of his divine fullness, and Nature acts as a sign of the divine reality. Nature's message has been distorted by the corruption of creation, and it needs revelation to clarify its message.
Likewise, the ethical life is founded on agreement with God. Virtue is derived from selfless love: first from God, then for others. Sin is the refusal to consent to God's Being and purposes; it insists on a private vision of its own. As we consent more to God’s desires, we develop habits of character, discovering more of whom we really are and are intended to be. To understand how this happens, one needs to understand the relationship of the mind, will, and affections, which for Edwards are three ways of looking at an integrated whole.
Because God is relational, the mind and creation are also relational; they are designed to work together. Our delight comes in discerning this pattern of relationship. The will is not a free faculty. It always acts on the mind’s understanding. When the mind perceives something as its greatest good, the will chooses that good. God gives to the understanding redeemed affections.
The affections are necessary to grasp anything. If you understand something only mentally, you have not really understood. As one loves relationally, one truly only understands God, truth, goodness, and beauty.
At the center, then, of Edwards’ thought is a profound cosmic aesthetic of relationship and selfless community. God’s beauty is an objective reality which we always experience subjectively. True beauty is achieved by consenting to God, who offers us perfect delight, experienced both as an excellent image in Christ (offered in the natural world and human beings) and as an indwelling principle in the Holy Spirit. God’s beauty governs and redeems the world.
As we consent to God’s love, we experience relationship with him and his community of followers, who ultimately act upon that love in both this world and in the infinite, progressive capacity of heaven.
(This is taken from a webpage of mine. If you're interested in a more thorough breakdown of Edwards' system, go to: http://www.dbu.edu/mitchell/edwardsi.htm .)
Friday, April 24, 2009
Visual of the day - Crisis of Credit
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
This is a great animated explanation of the Crisis of Credit, which is largely the cause for our current recession. Many of you have undoubtedly seen this, but if you have not - this will be 9 minutes well spent.
In other news - here are two stories from the desk of The Economist:
- Good News - Health Care is getting cheaper, more innovative, and more available! Bad news - it's happening in India.
- Do you want to know the future? See what people are Googling today (this according to a recent academic study).
- USA economy is expected to grow -2.7% and +1.4% in 2009 and 2010 respectively, while China is expected to grow +6% and +7% for 2009 and 2010. (Of course, China's output is still about the same as Texas' and California's output put together.)
- Regarding the gold standard - I was not able to find any information that would verify that any major country is currently using the Gold Standard; they are all printing 'fiat' money backed by the good faith and credit of the issuing state.
Is there a way to embrace a non-proprietary community that protects individual rights?
Interesting summary by Joan Lockwoord O'Donovan of John Wyclife's view of evangelical poverty:
As we are possessed by Christ and receive ourselves from him, the central act of our willing is one of conforming to his will, of surrendering and going out of ourselves. The self-transcending of our wills in obedience to Christ is preeminently our encounter with the Supreme Good as absolute claim on us, but also, in many cases, our encounter with lesser, created goods as existing prior to and independently of our willing. In encountering created goods we first 'possess' them in their essential being, through knowledge illumined by the love of Christ, before answering the demand or claim that they present. Of all creatures, but especially of human individuals, this ethic affirms that they are claims, not that they possess rights: as objects of God's self-communication in Christ persons are claims upon the wills of one another. Each, in conforming his/her will to Christ's, recognizes and responds to the claim that the other is. Each, in obedience to Christ's law of love, fulfills the demands of justice, but not the demands of one another.
I still need to truly unpack this idea, but if I understand her right, she claims that Wyclife places between us and all goods obedience to Christ. That obedience is how we are to encounter the claims of others upon us, not as demands based on rights, but as ones that arise out of justice as Christ's law of love.
Any thoughts on this? Might it account for a Christian recognition of the "pull" of other individuals upon ourselves?
As we are possessed by Christ and receive ourselves from him, the central act of our willing is one of conforming to his will, of surrendering and going out of ourselves. The self-transcending of our wills in obedience to Christ is preeminently our encounter with the Supreme Good as absolute claim on us, but also, in many cases, our encounter with lesser, created goods as existing prior to and independently of our willing. In encountering created goods we first 'possess' them in their essential being, through knowledge illumined by the love of Christ, before answering the demand or claim that they present. Of all creatures, but especially of human individuals, this ethic affirms that they are claims, not that they possess rights: as objects of God's self-communication in Christ persons are claims upon the wills of one another. Each, in conforming his/her will to Christ's, recognizes and responds to the claim that the other is. Each, in obedience to Christ's law of love, fulfills the demands of justice, but not the demands of one another.
I still need to truly unpack this idea, but if I understand her right, she claims that Wyclife places between us and all goods obedience to Christ. That obedience is how we are to encounter the claims of others upon us, not as demands based on rights, but as ones that arise out of justice as Christ's law of love.
Any thoughts on this? Might it account for a Christian recognition of the "pull" of other individuals upon ourselves?
I was perusing a report from a Federal Reserve Conference that Jekabs and I both attended last November. The topic was the state of the economy and how the fed planned on intervening in the future. In reality, this conference played more like a horror movie convention rife with gloom and doom.
Here is a little nugget filled to the brim with a dash of gloom and a heaping tablespoon of doom:
•75-year unfunded liabilities from entitlement programs sum to $40.3T.
–Social Security $4.3T
–Medicare Part A $12.4T
–Medicare Part B $15.7T
–Medicare Part D $7.9T
–Medicare represents almost 90% of the problem. Privatizing SSN will not work-reduce deficit.
To summarize, projected revenues for Social Security and Medicare falls short of expected budget needs by $40.3 trillion over the next 75 years. Again, that figure does not represent the total amount required to fund the programs through 2084. The programs will be in the red by that amount.
So, how do we as a country close the gap? Here are two viable options. I use the term "viable" very loosely:
•Total per-capita entitlement debt of $330K –to close gap.
•Could raise indiv. Income tax rates by 85%.– (Relative to current 8.9% of GDP)
–This is a static estimate•
could cut discretionary spending by 97%.– (Relative to current 7.8% of GDP)
•could make no tax or spending changes.
Your eyes do not deceive. We would need to either raise individual income tax rates by 85% or reduce discretionary government spending by 97%.
Have a good weekend!!
Here is a little nugget filled to the brim with a dash of gloom and a heaping tablespoon of doom:
•75-year unfunded liabilities from entitlement programs sum to $40.3T.
–Social Security $4.3T
–Medicare Part A $12.4T
–Medicare Part B $15.7T
–Medicare Part D $7.9T
–Medicare represents almost 90% of the problem. Privatizing SSN will not work-reduce deficit.
To summarize, projected revenues for Social Security and Medicare falls short of expected budget needs by $40.3 trillion over the next 75 years. Again, that figure does not represent the total amount required to fund the programs through 2084. The programs will be in the red by that amount.
So, how do we as a country close the gap? Here are two viable options. I use the term "viable" very loosely:
•Total per-capita entitlement debt of $330K –to close gap.
•Could raise indiv. Income tax rates by 85%.– (Relative to current 8.9% of GDP)
–This is a static estimate•
could cut discretionary spending by 97%.– (Relative to current 7.8% of GDP)
•could make no tax or spending changes.
Your eyes do not deceive. We would need to either raise individual income tax rates by 85% or reduce discretionary government spending by 97%.
Have a good weekend!!
Survey: Americans Reclassifying Luxury, Necessity in Recession
"A Pew Research Center survey released Thursday finds that the recession has changed Americans' minds about many items that used to seen as necessities. In a 2006 Pew survey of luxuries and necessities, 68% said a microwave was a necessity; now that's 47%. And 52% say a TV is a necessity today, down from 64% in 2006."
Perhaps the recession is helping reduce some of the materialism in American culture.
Perhaps the recession is helping reduce some of the materialism in American culture.
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Part 4)
My reason for including this series of posts is to offer philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's model as a way of thinking about the ethics that I suspect are implicitly guiding our discussions about individualism, community, freedom, rights, and so on. MacIntyre in an earlier book defines a practice as:
Any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and the human conceptions of the ends and good involved, are systematically extended. (After Virtue 187)
In other words, ethical understanding arises out of a particular practice pursued by a group, which further defines the understanding as the practices grows and shapes itself over time. Looking at ethics from a practice-based understanding calls for paying attention to the context of actions, as well as the worldview that gives meaning to the actions.
I would argue that we can't really discuss negative or positive versions of freedom without asking what freedom is for. If human free will is, as Colin Gunton defines it, "in large measure what we make of our particularity . . . what you and I do, or would do, as distinctly ourselves, and not as someone else" (The One, The Three, and the Many 62), that particularity can neither be submerged in a collectivist vision, such as that of communism, nor in a purely libertarian vision of unfettered selves, whihc are free from others' influence, and still remain authenticly Christian.
As Gunton puts it, "There is no true freedom which does not also allow for the fact that we are passive as well as active in relation to others and the world: we are what we are in perichoretic reciprocity" (170). That last lovely phrase means that our very personhood, while individual, is also intertwined in a logic of love that is ever giving and receiving everything from language to culture to wealth to beauty. To insist on being an autonomous self is to return to the fall of Adam and Eve with its terrible introductions of division between God and humans, between humans and each other, between people and nature, and even to the self-deception that divides us from true self-knowledge.
Any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and the human conceptions of the ends and good involved, are systematically extended. (After Virtue 187)
In other words, ethical understanding arises out of a particular practice pursued by a group, which further defines the understanding as the practices grows and shapes itself over time. Looking at ethics from a practice-based understanding calls for paying attention to the context of actions, as well as the worldview that gives meaning to the actions.
I would argue that we can't really discuss negative or positive versions of freedom without asking what freedom is for. If human free will is, as Colin Gunton defines it, "in large measure what we make of our particularity . . . what you and I do, or would do, as distinctly ourselves, and not as someone else" (The One, The Three, and the Many 62), that particularity can neither be submerged in a collectivist vision, such as that of communism, nor in a purely libertarian vision of unfettered selves, whihc are free from others' influence, and still remain authenticly Christian.
As Gunton puts it, "There is no true freedom which does not also allow for the fact that we are passive as well as active in relation to others and the world: we are what we are in perichoretic reciprocity" (170). That last lovely phrase means that our very personhood, while individual, is also intertwined in a logic of love that is ever giving and receiving everything from language to culture to wealth to beauty. To insist on being an autonomous self is to return to the fall of Adam and Eve with its terrible introductions of division between God and humans, between humans and each other, between people and nature, and even to the self-deception that divides us from true self-knowledge.
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Part 3)
Preceding the two modern positions of encyclopedia and genelogy, and continuing to exist alongside them, is an earlier understanding and framework for ethical living, one that explains the failure of the other two. This understanding of the moral life, MacIntyre calls "tradition." By this he means something other than a calcified resistance to change. Tradition is a living, growing pursuit of the good.
Like a journeyman in a guild or a novice in a monastic order (though one could equally think about learning to play a sport or a musical instrument), the seeker after truth joins an established tradition of inquiry. The seeker first learns the language, rules, and debates of the community. This often takes the form of sacred texts or authorities. Every moral/aesthetic community has a specific goal or end (telos) that it seeks to achieve, e.g., the good life, the virtuous mean, the beautiful piece of art, the salvation of the soul. Within that tradition, its members tell each other the stories of their lives by relating them to the language and expectations of the community.
Members hold each other accountable for their stories. As members grow in the tradition, they earn the right (so to speak) to help further define and relate the telos of the community. For example, each musician helps further nuance what beauty is, discovering ever new applications, but this right to be "original" is only earned by a training and a basis in the origins of the craft:
In a community which shares this conception of accountability in enquiry, education is first of all an initiation into the practices . . . a reappropriation by each individual of the history of formation and transformations of belief through those practices, so that the history of thought and practice is reenacted and the novice learns from that reenactment not only what the best theses, arguments, and doctrines to emerge so far have been, but also how to rescrutinize them so that they become genuinely his or hers and how to extend them further in ways . . . through which accountability is realized. (201)
A better definition of education I can hardly offer.
Like a journeyman in a guild or a novice in a monastic order (though one could equally think about learning to play a sport or a musical instrument), the seeker after truth joins an established tradition of inquiry. The seeker first learns the language, rules, and debates of the community. This often takes the form of sacred texts or authorities. Every moral/aesthetic community has a specific goal or end (telos) that it seeks to achieve, e.g., the good life, the virtuous mean, the beautiful piece of art, the salvation of the soul. Within that tradition, its members tell each other the stories of their lives by relating them to the language and expectations of the community.
Members hold each other accountable for their stories. As members grow in the tradition, they earn the right (so to speak) to help further define and relate the telos of the community. For example, each musician helps further nuance what beauty is, discovering ever new applications, but this right to be "original" is only earned by a training and a basis in the origins of the craft:
In a community which shares this conception of accountability in enquiry, education is first of all an initiation into the practices . . . a reappropriation by each individual of the history of formation and transformations of belief through those practices, so that the history of thought and practice is reenacted and the novice learns from that reenactment not only what the best theses, arguments, and doctrines to emerge so far have been, but also how to rescrutinize them so that they become genuinely his or hers and how to extend them further in ways . . . through which accountability is realized. (201)
A better definition of education I can hardly offer.
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Part 2)
The other strand of our modern condition, MacIntyre calls "genealogy." For the genealogists with their hermeneutic of suspicion the claims of the encyclopedia project to base ethics in reason, in emotion, or in committed choice appear (justifiable so) as hollow and suffering from bad faith. The genealogists (perhaps beginning with Frederick Nietzsche) conclude that the very claim of objective truth is an arbitrary will-to-power. There is no final truth, only the positioning of social groups, each seeking their own piece of the pie. "Truth" is power, discovered by uncovering opponents’ hidden "genealogies," their suspect claims or secret motives. One gains power by deconstructing the other side’s claims to truth. For some, people are products of psycho-social and cultural economic forces; hence, there is not even a real self and no life narrative to which one is accountable.
However, as MacIntyre points out "the genealogist's narrative presupposes enough unity, continuity, and identity to make such disowning possible" (214). In other words, the claim that we are finally nothing but predetermined social and biological fictions itself requires an observational stance beyond "the myth of consciousness."
As Charles Taylor notes, "[A] person without a framework altogether would be outside our space of interlocution; he wouldn't have a stand in the space where the rest of us are. We would see this as pathological."
However, as MacIntyre points out "the genealogist's narrative presupposes enough unity, continuity, and identity to make such disowning possible" (214). In other words, the claim that we are finally nothing but predetermined social and biological fictions itself requires an observational stance beyond "the myth of consciousness."
As Charles Taylor notes, "[A] person without a framework altogether would be outside our space of interlocution; he wouldn't have a stand in the space where the rest of us are. We would see this as pathological."
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Part 1)
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his important book Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry traces the devolution of the Western ethical tradition and its loss of a common vision that would ground ethical life. He argues that at its heart, the West has passed through three stages--tradition, encyclopedia, and genealogy--though each continues to exist alongside the other two.
The second position, born out of the Enlightenment, MacIntyre calls "encyclopedia" after the project of the French philosophes. For this position, truth is something that can be obtained by an objective study of the facts, either by correlating all the available data or by an appeal to common rational principles. Seekers must eliminate their preconceived notions (a' la their traditions) and pay attention to the natural and social world. Truth and morality are not obtained by appealing to a divine or eternal standard of authority but by appealing to rational criteria that can be accessed by all equally. Individuals’ reasoned judgments are the only test of reliability, so "faith, while at its best in the gospels upholding true morality, adds nothing to morality" (175).
The historic result of such an ethical position, however, was that the search for an objective order in the natural, empirical world achieved nothing like a stable worldview; its promising claims never followed through. No consensus could be attained without a final ordering end (e.g., a revelation of truth); thus, the search became essentially arbitrary.
The second position, born out of the Enlightenment, MacIntyre calls "encyclopedia" after the project of the French philosophes. For this position, truth is something that can be obtained by an objective study of the facts, either by correlating all the available data or by an appeal to common rational principles. Seekers must eliminate their preconceived notions (a' la their traditions) and pay attention to the natural and social world. Truth and morality are not obtained by appealing to a divine or eternal standard of authority but by appealing to rational criteria that can be accessed by all equally. Individuals’ reasoned judgments are the only test of reliability, so "faith, while at its best in the gospels upholding true morality, adds nothing to morality" (175).
The historic result of such an ethical position, however, was that the search for an objective order in the natural, empirical world achieved nothing like a stable worldview; its promising claims never followed through. No consensus could be attained without a final ordering end (e.g., a revelation of truth); thus, the search became essentially arbitrary.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Huckabee Loves the Arts!!
One of the required projects in my American government course calls for students to create a piece of legislation based on an issue near and dear to their hearts. A student from one of my summer courses authored a bill that would increase federal funding for teaching students art and music in public schools.
You see, No Child Left Behind as well as the focus on standardized testing of academic "fundamentals" by the state of Texas frustrated this student. She had always dreamed of teaching art and music but was convinced that creativity was a luxury doomed to the low-priorities file.
However, my former student has a new champion in former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. The former Republican presidential candidate calls for a renewed emphasis in the arts:
"I call it a weapon of mass instruction. It's a critical part of education," Huckabee said during a visit to Northern Virginia last weekend. "A lot of education today has become left-brain only. All we're doing is . . . nothing more than data download: taking data from the teacher and downloading it to kids. And we wonder why 6,000 kids drop out of school every day and why so many millions more kids sleep through the day with their heads down on the desk, taking the most expensive nap in America. The reason they're doing it is not that they're dumb but that they're bored."
He added: "If you don't stimulate both sides of a human's brain, you're simply generating half the capacity. This whole idea that music and art are great programs if you can afford them and have room for them -- that's utter nonsense. It's the stupidest thing we've done to education in the last two generations."
Huckabee, a former minister, speaks from personal interest: His parents bought him a $99 guitar when he was 11 years old, and he's played ever since, eventually becoming the bassist for a Little Rock band, Capitol Offense, that has played with Grand Funk Railroad, Willie Nelson and REO Speedwagon, among others. As governor, he pushed through a 2005 law requiring elementary schools to offer 40 minutes per week of music and art and requiring high school students to take at least a half-year of art, music or dance to graduate.
Good stuff!! I heartily concur that education exists to mold the entire person as opposed to creating a generation of technocrats. This is at the heart of higher education grounded in the liberal arts.
Here is a link to the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801711.html
You see, No Child Left Behind as well as the focus on standardized testing of academic "fundamentals" by the state of Texas frustrated this student. She had always dreamed of teaching art and music but was convinced that creativity was a luxury doomed to the low-priorities file.
However, my former student has a new champion in former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. The former Republican presidential candidate calls for a renewed emphasis in the arts:
"I call it a weapon of mass instruction. It's a critical part of education," Huckabee said during a visit to Northern Virginia last weekend. "A lot of education today has become left-brain only. All we're doing is . . . nothing more than data download: taking data from the teacher and downloading it to kids. And we wonder why 6,000 kids drop out of school every day and why so many millions more kids sleep through the day with their heads down on the desk, taking the most expensive nap in America. The reason they're doing it is not that they're dumb but that they're bored."
He added: "If you don't stimulate both sides of a human's brain, you're simply generating half the capacity. This whole idea that music and art are great programs if you can afford them and have room for them -- that's utter nonsense. It's the stupidest thing we've done to education in the last two generations."
Huckabee, a former minister, speaks from personal interest: His parents bought him a $99 guitar when he was 11 years old, and he's played ever since, eventually becoming the bassist for a Little Rock band, Capitol Offense, that has played with Grand Funk Railroad, Willie Nelson and REO Speedwagon, among others. As governor, he pushed through a 2005 law requiring elementary schools to offer 40 minutes per week of music and art and requiring high school students to take at least a half-year of art, music or dance to graduate.
Good stuff!! I heartily concur that education exists to mold the entire person as opposed to creating a generation of technocrats. This is at the heart of higher education grounded in the liberal arts.
Here is a link to the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801711.html
I need a theology!
Can anyone recommend a good theology of the individual?
Good thoughts of writers, thinkers, and theologians have been offered on this blog as arguing for a theology of community, or theology of an individual-only-in-relation-to-community. If I understand the Christian doctrine correctly, then there is also a very strong emphasis there that the individual is also important to God qua individual, without the prerequisite social context. Now, clearly, the individual is the whole picture, and may not be the most important part of the picture. But our theological sources are rich - surely if people like John Paul II, G. K. Chesterton or even Wendell Berry offer a theology of community (at least in part) then there have to be some good theologians or thinkers who have put forth a strong biblical defense of the individual, perhaps even the individual as the most important social unit for God.
Do you have any recommendations?
Good thoughts of writers, thinkers, and theologians have been offered on this blog as arguing for a theology of community, or theology of an individual-only-in-relation-to-community. If I understand the Christian doctrine correctly, then there is also a very strong emphasis there that the individual is also important to God qua individual, without the prerequisite social context. Now, clearly, the individual is the whole picture, and may not be the most important part of the picture. But our theological sources are rich - surely if people like John Paul II, G. K. Chesterton or even Wendell Berry offer a theology of community (at least in part) then there have to be some good theologians or thinkers who have put forth a strong biblical defense of the individual, perhaps even the individual as the most important social unit for God.
Do you have any recommendations?
Respect for Private Property and Income in the Nation
Two economists from the London School Economics have put together this useful little chart that shows that higher risk of having one's property expropriated (vertical axis) corresponds with higher income per capita in the nation (horizontal axis). The rest of the write-up is pretty interesting as well.Should Christians be supporting policies that increase incomes and lift people out of poverty? I say YES!
Distributism--The Basics
Neither a capitalism nor a socialism, distributism was inspired by the teachings of Leo XIII in encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum and in the 1930's by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno. While not all distributists were Roman Catholics, the position was most often associated with Catholic thinkers and activists, such as G.K. Chesterton, Hiliare Belloc, Eric Gill, Vincent McNabb, and Dorothy Day. Its key teachings included:
- The distribution of property across the widest possible number of people. This was thought to be maximized by small farms, independent shopkeepers, craft guilds, and so on.
- The principle of subsidiarity, which holds that all power and action should be carried out at the lowest level of organization necessary. Big government should be strictly limited to matters of national concern. Not all distributists were anti-monarchical.
- Centralization is the least efficient way to take care of things--"Small is beautiful." Act locally.
- The Napoleonic division of property among all heirs is best.
- Workers should all have disposable shares in a business.
- House and homeland are more important values than race and empire. Family is at the center of production and social life.
- Economic and political arrangements should maximize human freedom and its responsibilities.
- All human beings are equal and made in the image of God. All the above follows from this truth.
- Distributists were divided over the role of machinery in work and common life.
- Likewise, not all distributists were agrarian in their ideals. Some were more comfortable in town life.
Three-fold Freedom
Oliver O’Donovan in his book The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology has recently analyzed freedom as a three-fold pattern: freedom begins as an individualistic notion because “it is simply the power to act, “ yet for that assertion to be meaningful, secondly, it must occur in a social setting; freedom is “the realization of individual powers with social forms” (67-68).
O’Donvovan contends that traditions are what make lasting social communication possible, and to sustain themselves, they must hand over traditions from one generation to the next. Personal freedom is conceivable only in relation to the tradition that conceives it—even if that freedom is that of the critic, rebel, or martyr. Social identity is a personal one, and in turn, personal identity is social. Since a tradition’s history is both social and individualistic at once, the successful society is one that maximizes positive freedom for its individuals.
Yet O’Donovan as a Christian also observes that the “liberty of baptism” teaches that freedom is, in the third place, “the individual’s discovery and pursuit of his or her vocation from God” (72). Loss of freedom follows from the society's inability to accommodate and cultivate its members’ vocations—gifts that arise in the last analysis from beyond the society itself.
The three-fold nexus that O’Donovan sets out—individual assertion, social tradition, and God-given vocation--has something to teach us about why we as Christians pursue freedom of all kinds. What might those lessons be? I wonder.
O’Donvovan contends that traditions are what make lasting social communication possible, and to sustain themselves, they must hand over traditions from one generation to the next. Personal freedom is conceivable only in relation to the tradition that conceives it—even if that freedom is that of the critic, rebel, or martyr. Social identity is a personal one, and in turn, personal identity is social. Since a tradition’s history is both social and individualistic at once, the successful society is one that maximizes positive freedom for its individuals.
Yet O’Donovan as a Christian also observes that the “liberty of baptism” teaches that freedom is, in the third place, “the individual’s discovery and pursuit of his or her vocation from God” (72). Loss of freedom follows from the society's inability to accommodate and cultivate its members’ vocations—gifts that arise in the last analysis from beyond the society itself.
The three-fold nexus that O’Donovan sets out—individual assertion, social tradition, and God-given vocation--has something to teach us about why we as Christians pursue freedom of all kinds. What might those lessons be? I wonder.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
On relationship between economics and Biblical authority
In an earlier post Philip asked me my view of the relationship between the Biblical authority and modern economic theory based on Ian Smith's categories for this relationship:
According to Ian Smith, the three main views regarding the relationship between the Bible and descriptive economics include:
Positive economics is concerned largely with data gathering about the way things are in the economic realm. The methods of data gathering are not directly specifically impacted by Biblical authority, beyond being subject to the ethical and moral standards that apply to life in general (don't falsify data, don't treat subjects poorly etc). A Christian in positive economics would not necessarily do his job any differently than a non-Christian. A Christian may excel at his task if he works at it diligently 'as for the Lord and not for men'. Possibly a Christian would select the areas for data gathering or research somewhat differently than a non-Christian, a Christian would hopefully be conscious of the ends for which his positive economic analysis is used, but, again, the methods themselves would not be directly specifically impacted by Biblical authority. Thus I would place the relationship between positive economics and Biblical authority in (1) disciplinary autonomy, and moderate (1) minimalism.
Normative economics, prescribing policy solutions to economic ills, does necessarily rely on value judgments that allow the economist to prioritize potential outcomes and compare impacts of various policies. Analysis and policy prescriptions in normative economics thus necessarily depend on the values held by the economist, so in this field the Biblical authority would play a central role for the Christian economist. I would place the relationship between Biblical authority and normative economics in (3) Distinctively Christian Economic analysis and (2) Principles.
Can those of you in political science and history join in the comments and offer your views on the relationship between the Biblical authority and your discipline?
According to Ian Smith, the three main views regarding the relationship between the Bible and descriptive economics include:
1) Disciplinary Autonomy: “[The Bible has] nothing to contribute directly to the understanding of modern economies. There is a gulf between specialized theory and the biblical witness.[. . .] The implication for the Christian economist in his or her professional capacity is that Christian witness does not manifest itself in the economic analysis but rather in the excellence of personal conduct and moral character.”Here's my response. The Biblical authority would overarchingly extend over the entirety of life of the Christian economist, but the application of that authority to the field of economic analysis would be varied. The relationship between Biblical authority and economic theories has to be evaluated differently based on whether we are examining positive economics (descriptive economics) or normative economics (prescriptive).
2) Disciplinary Interdependence: “[I]f it can be demonstrated that ethical considerations pervade economic analysis, then there is clearly scope for biblical values to shape economic descriptions.”
3) Distinctively Christian Economic Analysis: “Biblically derived institutional norms not only show us how we are meant to live--how institutions such as the state, the family, the corporation, and the financial system should be shaped--but also provide a way of understanding pathological economic outcomes.”
This suggests, then, three broadly differing approaches:
(1) Minimalism: “The extreme version argues that the biblical revelation is of little (even indirect) relevance for economic life, beyond personal responsibility not to steal from the taxman and to respect private property.[. . .] The more moderate and less privatized position would accept the importance of biblical injunctions in their application to economic life but construe them in rather general terms.”
(2) Principles: “For those who desire to pay closer attention to the guidelines of the biblical material, an approach based on a systematic formulation of derivative social principles (or middle axioms) commends itself.”
(3) Law: “The critique of the thematic method forms a starting point for the theonomic approach that turns to the Old Testament law, at least those aspects that deal with social institutions, as a normative socio-political model for contemporary society.”
Positive economics is concerned largely with data gathering about the way things are in the economic realm. The methods of data gathering are not directly specifically impacted by Biblical authority, beyond being subject to the ethical and moral standards that apply to life in general (don't falsify data, don't treat subjects poorly etc). A Christian in positive economics would not necessarily do his job any differently than a non-Christian. A Christian may excel at his task if he works at it diligently 'as for the Lord and not for men'. Possibly a Christian would select the areas for data gathering or research somewhat differently than a non-Christian, a Christian would hopefully be conscious of the ends for which his positive economic analysis is used, but, again, the methods themselves would not be directly specifically impacted by Biblical authority. Thus I would place the relationship between positive economics and Biblical authority in (1) disciplinary autonomy, and moderate (1) minimalism.
Normative economics, prescribing policy solutions to economic ills, does necessarily rely on value judgments that allow the economist to prioritize potential outcomes and compare impacts of various policies. Analysis and policy prescriptions in normative economics thus necessarily depend on the values held by the economist, so in this field the Biblical authority would play a central role for the Christian economist. I would place the relationship between Biblical authority and normative economics in (3) Distinctively Christian Economic analysis and (2) Principles.
Can those of you in political science and history join in the comments and offer your views on the relationship between the Biblical authority and your discipline?
Graph of the day - recessions since 1857
The top line indicates that the current recession, which started in December 2007, is 487 days old, which means that we have almost matched the longest pot-WWII recession. The purple bars indicate the length of the recession in days; the recessions are organized with the most recent at the top.This comes via The Big Picture blog.
NOTE: The end of each recession, as declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is typically recognized and announced months after the actual end of the recession.
In related news: Oxford Round Table has announced their July 2009 roundtable theme "Money, Politics, and Law: Effects of the Meltdown on the Human Condition" (with subtopics Keynes Revisited and Roosevelt Redux). Who will vote with me that our discussion group should be sent (by our employer, of course) to Oxford this coming July? :) (cost is $2940 per guest plus the travel fees).
That it is only permitted to flatter him whom it is permitted to slay
"It is not permitted to flatter a friend, but it is permitted to delight the ears of a tyrant. For in fact him whom it is permitted to flatter, it is permitted to slay. Furthermore, it is not only permitted, but it is also equitable and just to slay tyrants. For he who receives the sword deserves to perish by the sword. . . . He who receives power from God serves the laws and is the slave of justice and right. He who usurps power suppresses justice and places the laws beneath his will. . . . Tyranny is, therefore, not only a public crime, but, if this can happen, it is more than public. . . . Surely no one will avenge a public enemy, and whoever does not prosecute him transgresses against himself and against the whole body of the earthly republic."
--John of Salisbury, Policratus 3.15 (ca.1154)
--John of Salisbury, Policratus 3.15 (ca.1154)
Is this a Christian attitude?
Can a government redistribute wealth and property?
Jekabs Bikis and I have been discussing for the last week the question as to whether a government can rightly tax its citizens in order to redistribute wealth and property, especially with regards to the issue of charity towards the poor. Jekabs has challenged me to offer a biblical reading that would support such actions. Let me say to start out that I am not addressing or defending the modern welfare system at the national or even state level. Jekabs and I actually agree somewhat that the modern system has a number of problems that seem to perpetuate poverty rather than help address the need for creative and meaningful work. I, for one, hold that the more local, voluntary, and privatized social charity is the better. Nonetheless, Jekabs and I have disagreed as to whether any government involvement in redistribution can be considered legitimate as oppossed to being simply state-level robbery of people.
So what would a biblical model of government involvement look like? I don't think we can dictate from scripture alone the specifics; rather, we must look at some general guidelines and models:
So what would a biblical model of government involvement look like? I don't think we can dictate from scripture alone the specifics; rather, we must look at some general guidelines and models:
- Ancient Israel was commanded to provide a system of meaningful work and welfare for the poor through allowing them to harvest the corners of property owners' fields (Lev 19:9-10; Deut 24:19-21). The story of Ruth, for example, models this behavior in action (Ruth chapter 2). I think one can also add here the opposite of this which is laziness and deserving of its consequences (Prov 6:6; cf. II Thess 3:10).
- Every 50 years, Israel was commanded to redistribute ancestral property to its original families, as well as release all Hebrew slaves that had had to sell themselves due to economic hardship (Lev 25:25-28, 35-43).
- Every three years all tithes were taken and stored as means to provide additional support for both the Levites who served in the tabernacle and the poor who were in need (Deut 26:12-13).
- There were additional laws designed to protect the poor from economic exploitation, as well as from absolute poverty (Deut 24:12-18).
- The kingship, once it developed, was charged with the particular protection of the poor (Ps 72:1-4, 12-14), and this concern had national consequences since God would judge the nation for oppressing the poor (Ps 10:1-4; Is 58:7-11; Amos 2:6-8, 4:1-2).
- There are some indications that large-scale public provision was deemed acceptable in times of famine and crisis and that God expects concern from nations outside Israel (cf. Dan 4:27, Prov 17:5). The story of Joseph in particular gives me pause, for the text for Genesis praises him for a radical social welfare program in Egypt that also had the effect of bringing most lands into royal ownership (Gen 41:34-57, 47:13-26).
- Of course, all of the above is in part based on God's own love of the poor (Ps 102:17, 113:7-8, 140:1-2).
- The injunction to care for the poor is carried over into the New Testament (Gal 6:10; Jam 1:27, 2:1-7, Matt 19:21, Lk 11:41, 12:33); Jesus even marks this as a defining characteristic of his people (Matt 25:31-46).
- And there are also warnings about becoming too tied to wealth and commerce when it acts to oppress others (Jam 5:1-6; Rev 18:9-19).
- Paul commends the payment of taxes--both tribute and revenue taxes--as an outcome of the sword born by the government against wrongdoing (Rom 13:1-8).
Taken together, the Old Testament clearly assumes a system of some measure of both private and public charity, as well as redistribution, tied to meaningful work. It also assumes some measure of government involvement when the poor are neglected. The New Testament, being addressed to churches primarily, is more focused on the charity demanded of believers, but in James and the Revelation of John there are indicators of the social class divisions in which the authors side with the poor. Likewise, while Paul in Romans does not spell out whether taxes for public charity are right or wrong, one might assume that the apostle has something like the Hebrew picture of the king in mind.
I am assuming throughout a biblical hermeneutic that sees the Old Testament injunctions as being helpful principles and models for other nations, not as absolute commmands for anyone except ancient Israel. This understanding also assumes that since the nation was meant to be a light to the nations and since the Church is meant at some level to model for the world what God wants for it, that the injunctions to both should suggest broad public and local concerns for human life.
Now, I think all this adds up to a strong biblical case that the government may be involved in the public care of the poor if that burden is not fully assumed by communities, businesses, families, and churches, not that it must. In fact, I think there are good reasons to be advanced that the government better fulfills its role as a promoter of virtue when it encourages its citizens to grow in the virtues of charity by means other than taxation and redistribution, but that's another discussion.
Additionally, none of this per se addresses what Christians should do in a country where large-scale public welfare for the foreseeable future will play a significant role in charity. I think that question is as important as the one I've sought to answer.
Wisdom from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
"Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant. Therefore the rule - always do what's most profitable to your party. Any professional group no sooner sees a convenient opportunity to BREAK OFF A PIECE, even if it be unearned, even if it be superfluous, than it breaks it off there and then and no matter if the whole of society comes tumbling down. As seen from the outside, the amplitude of the tossings of western society is approaching that point beyond which the system becomes metastable and must fall. Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing."
--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970
--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Extra Readings - 4/21
- Incredibly beautiful images of Saturn from spacecraft Cassini
- Peter Orzag: Obama's Director of the Office of Management and Budget: "Our goal, plain and simple, is to get health care reform done this year. It’s a goal that all Americans should embrace including our universities. " (See the last paragraph) Am I the only one scared by that quote? Here is also the chart-laden powerptoint summary of Orzag's address to Association of American Universities.
- Just strange: A mysterious visitors pays for an "American Stonehenge to be built in Georgia" - the full story.
Autonomy vs. Theonomy
Notice how John Paul II and Abraham Kuper challenge the joint opinion of the Supreme Court in 1992:
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under the compulsion of the State."--Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)
"Others speak, and rightly so, of 'thenomy,' or 'participated theonomy," since man's free obedience to God's law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in God's wisdom and providence. By forbidding man to 'eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,' God makes clear that man does not originally possess such 'knowledge' as something properly his own, but only participates in it by the light of natural reason and of Divine Revelation, which manifest to him requirements and the promptings of eternal wisdom. Law must therefore be considered an expression of divine wisdom: by submitting to the law, freedom submits to the truth of creation."--John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor
"In a Calvinistic sense we understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art, and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the state, and which do not derive the law of their life from the superiority of the state, but obey a higher authority within their bosom; and authority which rules, by the grace of God, just as the sovereignity of the State does."--Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under the compulsion of the State."--Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)
"Others speak, and rightly so, of 'thenomy,' or 'participated theonomy," since man's free obedience to God's law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in God's wisdom and providence. By forbidding man to 'eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,' God makes clear that man does not originally possess such 'knowledge' as something properly his own, but only participates in it by the light of natural reason and of Divine Revelation, which manifest to him requirements and the promptings of eternal wisdom. Law must therefore be considered an expression of divine wisdom: by submitting to the law, freedom submits to the truth of creation."--John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor
"In a Calvinistic sense we understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art, and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the state, and which do not derive the law of their life from the superiority of the state, but obey a higher authority within their bosom; and authority which rules, by the grace of God, just as the sovereignity of the State does."--Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism
Graph of the day - Texas is different
An interesting little look at a home price index (Case Shiller Index) for Dallas, Phoenix, and the US in general for the last nine years. This comes via the Market Movers blog. The traditional explanation for Texas' non-participation in the recent housing bubble has been related to the availability to expand supply of homes when demand increases.
If demand for homes rises with supply staying put, then the prices will rise correspondingly. The supply has been argued to be limited (or inelastic) in coastal areas or areas with difficult zoning regulations.
Since Phoenix does not traditionally have that problem, and could, in theory, expand supply of homes as rapidly as Dallas did, why did Phoenix inflate as much as it did?
Interestingly, Ryan Avent of Market movers points to new research that shows that home prices rose abnormally in Southern California because of the reason explained above, and Phoenix simply 'cought the contagion' of that bubble because of the relative proximety of the Phoenix market to San Diego and LA. In other words, when home prices rose in nearby Souther California, buyers in Phoenix became willing to view the two markets as very similar and pay somewhat similarly rising prices for their real estate.
I think I will include "...and Thank You that You allowed me to purchase a home in Dallas, not Phoenix, in 2005..." in my nightly prayer tonight.
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