Rampant Relativism

This morning I received this from one of my Interdisciplinary Studies students who is taking the class online. It is even more painful considering that just last night I watched Hilary and Jackie, the story of the two musical du Pré sisters.

"We are learning about philosophy and religion. Those two subjects are like art, in my opinion. You can look at a picture a thousand different ways and every way you look at it is right, even if that's not the what the artist intended on the picture symbolizing, because that's what you got out of the picture; that's what is important to you. I'm sorry, I just don't understand why I've been graded so harshly on something that I truly believed in....and I really sat down for 2-3 hours and tried to figure out these readings. Then, in just two minutes, I read over what you wrote and find out that what I thought was right the whole time was apparently "wrong"...in something I didn't think had a set 'truth'."

Some people are missionaries to those who have never heard the gospel. Some people are missionaries to those who need to hear it more fully. And some people are missionaries to those who have heard it and can't make the distinction between truth and significance. Count me as one of the latter.

I guess sometimes you don't have to leave your desk to be "missional."

The Pulse Smartpen

Nunc dimittis...
the Pulse Smartpen has arrived.

I had no idea such a thing even existed until this morning, when a student came up in class to ask if it was okay for him to record lectures. Sure, I said. It was then that he told me about his new pen. It has an infrared camera, a microphone, and a computer, all stuffed into a pen casing. You take notes as usual, but later, you can tap anywhere in the body of your notes and listen to the lecture at that very point. Pretty cool.

But then Joanna brought up an ethical problem. "What about the students who can't afford all these technological gizmos? There are kids who don't have laptops; there are kids who can't even afford the smartpens. What happens to them? Doesn't it give the rich kids an unfair advantage academically?"

That's a good question. What do you think?

Who owns my syllabus?

Apparantly, not me. But maybe that will change?

from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"The American Association of University Professors has an informational outline on intellectual-property issues that says the 'prevailing academic practice' is for faculty members to own the copyrights of scholarly works and teaching materials that are 'created independently and at the faculty member's own initiative.' However, some faculty work is considered 'work for hire' — documents made by faculty members for the university to fulfill their contractual obligations, and owned by the university.

"It is much easier for institutions to claim to own the copyright for syllabi and other teaching materials than for published research. 'Some argue that faculty are hired to teach,' the AAUP outline says, 'that teaching and the byproducts thereof are thus within the scope of employment, and this additional control by the employer institution transform syllabi into work-for-hire.'

But maybe not. As Gary Rhoades writes in 'Whose Property Is It? Negotiating with the University,'

'increasingly, faculty members' intellectual products, including those generated from their basic research and teaching activities, are being considered as commodities.' Much of that push comes from courses delivered online, where the syllabus and other course materials are purchased and both faculty members and universities have the potential to make money.

As was the case with the printing press, it is the commodification of teaching materials that might eventually render the syllabus irrefutable intellectual property. While recent lawsuits seen to favor faculty members in broadening their claims to intellectual property, I couldn't find any mentioned online that relied on the syllabus as a test case for plagiarism" ...continued here

I have just finished teaching my first online class. It is demoralizing to think that all the materials I uploaded are now no longer my own, and that someone can be hired after me who can take those materials and "teach" the class. If we're going to play the education game as capitalists, then why shouldn't those of us who create new courses and go to the effort of setting them up on Moodle or Blackboard or whatever be remunerated

But to be forced to entertain the very idea of "owning" a syllabus or intellectual materials is disturbing to me. I resent having to stoop to this level. Like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, once you admit it, your situation as a teacher is changed. Teaching shouldn't be a game, with winners or losers. Nor should it be a business, with capitalists and proletariats. It is a relationship between student and teacher, nd some things just shouldn't be commodified: friendships, parenting, teaching. Alas, we live in a culture where, if anything is to be valued, it must have a price.

What my incoming freshmen will be like this year

via Scot McKnight

what my incoming freshmen will be like this year:
the Beloit Mindset List for the class of 2012:

(I add my own observations afterward.)


This month, almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace. However, the mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.

Each August for the past 11 years, Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college. It is the creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief. The List is shared with faculty and with thousands who request it each year as the school year begins, as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation.

The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are “wired” and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.

It is a multicultural, politically correct and “green” generation that has hardly noticed the threats to their privacy and has never feared the Russians and the Warsaw Pact.

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• Students entering college for the first time this fall were generally born in 1990.


• For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.


• Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.


• Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties.


• They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.


• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.


• Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.


• Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.


• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.


• Their parents may have dropped them in shock when they heard George Bush announce “tax revenue increases.”


• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.


• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene


• All have had a relative--or known about a friend's relative--who died comfortably at home with Hospice.


• As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.”


• Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando.


• Grandma has always had wheels on her walker.


• Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style.


• Haagen-Dazs ice cream has always come in quarts.


• Club Med resorts have always been places to take the whole family.


• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.


• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.


• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.


• Students have always been "Rocking the Vote.”


• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.


• Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.


• We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”


• There have always been gay rabbis.


• Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.


• College grads have always been able to Teach for America.


• IBM has never made typewriters.


• Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the National Anthem again.
  
• McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.


• They have never been able to color a tree using a raw umber Crayola.
  
  
• There has always been Pearl Jam.


• The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.


• Pee-Wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.
  
• They never tasted Benefit Cereal with psyllium.


• They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.


• Authorities have always been building a wall across the Mexican border.


• Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.


• Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.


• Balsamic vinegar has always been available in the U.S.


• Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone.
  
• Their parents may have watched The American Gladiators on TV the day they were born.


• Personal privacy has always been threatened.


• Caller ID has always been available on phones


• Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.
  
• The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.


• They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
  
• Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
  
• Soft drink refills have always been free.


• They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”


• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.


• Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.


• The Royal New Zealand Navy has never been permitted a daily ration of rum.


• The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.


• 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.


• Michael Milken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate cancer research.


• Off-shore oil drilling in the United States has always been prohibited
• Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.


• There have always been charter schools.


• Students always had Goosebumps.

Beloit College - 700 College St. - Beloit, WI 53511 - 608.363.2000 - webmaster - Copyright © 2008

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I also think they will be

• fewer, as the economy makes going into debt a greater risk and as monies for loans shrink


• fearful, as their world becomes more and more threatening, politically, economically, socially, spiritually


• frantic, as they try to connect with others through technology, with few incarnational models of genuine, long-term commitments and relationships


• faithful, as they realize their situation and seek to change it

On the Value of a Theological Education

"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

--T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

via Brad: this post by Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary. Are we beginning a new "dark ages" where theological and philosophical knowledge--yea, the liberal arts-- will be preserved in small enclaves, much like the Celtic monasteries? Wouldn't it be ironic if Fuller is someday remembered the way Iona is today?

Makes me want to reread Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, and write a parallel work, wherein the threat to humanity is not nuclear warfare, but utility. And yet--dare I hope?--even utility, when followed to its end, may bring us back to the place we were meant to be.
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August 14, 2008

The Attributes of God

There is some evangelical buzz right now about a new biography of the late Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade (Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America by John G. Turner). There is a helpful review of the book at the Christianity Today website.

I plan to read the biography. In my younger days I was somewhat critical of Bill Brights views on various subjects, but in his last years we got to know each other and formed a friendship. There was a time when Bill seemed to pride himself on having dropped out of Fuller Seminary, but in our conversations he expressed much admiration for Fuller, and for the cause of theological education as such. He was proud of his son Zach, now a PCUSA minister, who during his days as a Fuller student had been a leader of the student Peace and Justice Committee.

Bill and I talked by phone several times during his last months, and there was one comment he made to me that I wish I had asked him to expand upon. If I had to do it all over again,he said, I would downplay the Four Spiritual Laws and place a strong emphasis on the attributes of God.

That remark signaled a growing awareness on his part of the need for theological depth. And his specific example of the importance of good theology rings especially true for me. Several years ago I had a conversation with a pastor who had become somewhat sceptical of the relevance of seminary study. He had come to feel strongly about the kind of practical training for ministry that takes place exclusively in the local congregation. His case in point was the youth minister of his staff. This guy is terrific, he exulted. He has only two years of junior college, but he really doesnt need any more formal education. The kids love him and he is done a great job of ministry.

I ended that conversation of friendly terms, assuring him that we were there for him if he ever felt the need for using our school as a resource. A year later he followed up with a phone call. He wondered if I could recommend a good book for him on the attributes of God. It turns out that the youth minister had come to him with some theological questions. Some of the young people in the church had been talking about spiritual matters with their Mormon friends, and the kids were a bit confused about how their own churchs views stacked up against LDS teachings.

I recommended the relevant chapter in Louis Berkhofs Systematic Theology, and the pastor expressed appreciation for the counsel. Thinking back now on Bill Brights comment about the divine attributes, I wish I could also have directed him to the founder of Campus Crusade for some solid theological guidance!

Update: (or why I've been incommunicado)

Susan left for SPU on January 2.

Every year, Steve takes vacation time off between Christmas and New Year's. This year we didn't go anywhere, but stayed home watching episodes of Lost, (much better to follow a show on DVD without commercials), talking, baking, and reading. Perfect! Susan spent hours at my computer preparing grad school applications and dunning professors for recommendations. It will be exciting to see where the Lord plants her.

We sold the sofa so I can get the car back in the garage

Of course that meant cleaning the garage, getting rid of all the boxes and junk that had accumulated on and around the sofa, so the wonderful people coming from Craig's List could actually see it. That entailed some trips to St. Vinnie's. It also meant putting away all the Christmas decorations that had been piled beside the sofa, waiting for there to be space so the ladder could get to the storage space above the garage doors. Amazing how one thing leads to another...

I've been providing/arranging care for A.

So there's this interim between E's departure on Jan. 1 and A's mother's arrival from Teheran on Jan. 16. I've been trying to work with A's husband H to see that A. is not alone with their two year old son M. They wake up between 10 and 11 and A. is usually rested and somewhat energized, but quickly fades after an hour or two. I put out an appeal and it looks like between a CNA friend at Church of the Servant King and a few of us at VCC, we will be able to assist A. Now if H. would only let us know if A. is going to have more chemo, and when we should come.

Epiphany Open House: January 6

Enlivened by Steve's Famous Home-made Egg Nog (eggs, whipping cream, half and half, powdered sugar and lots of vanilla) and wonderful friends, I am now back to my blog. Every year we throw an open house. We've done it during Advent, between Christmas and New year's, on New Year's Day, and even for Valentine's Day; but this year we had it on the Twelfth Day, Epiphany Proper. Lots of candles, gold and white, and star motifs for decorations. Susan made two pans of golden baklava before she had to leave, and I made Judy's extraordinary lemon bars. Now though the Swedish meatballs are but a memory, the fellowship will fortify us for another year!

EBC Winter quarter begins

As if to make up for being laid off from NCC, the Lord has given me an absolute dream class for Intro to Philosophy. Twelve of the brightest, best, most dedicated Christian students I know gathered around the table in Bryan 102 this morning, after being double booked for Bryan 101 with Bonnie Lee's class. I am SO excited to have such a concentration of faith and intellect. This is going to be fun.

Tomorrow at 8:00 am we'll have Fundamentals of Reasoning. What a cruel hour; and that's a class that involves a ton of focus and hard work. Oh well, the good thing is that is will be done with early on, leaving the rest of the day for less demanding fare.

Crossing the Technological Rubicon

Our daughter, Joanna, is a high school sophomore here in Eugene, OR. This year, after issuing textbooks, her teachers told her she didn't need to bring them back and forth to class. Almost all her assignments are online now, so she can just look online for what is due the next day. But she came home angry and troubled at this state of affairs.

Now you must understand that Joanna is my personal tech support, guiding me through every glitch and new update that descends from Redmond on High. She has a confidence with computers that is unusual for most young women, perhaps because she has grown up in a family where each person has his/her own PC and/or laptop.

But Joanna is also sensitive to the fact that the balance has swung against those who are not as privileged, kids who are her classmates. "It isn't fair," she fumed. "Some kids don't have computers, or they only have one in their household, and they have to share it with others in their family. You can't just come home and do your homework anymore. Those kids who don't have their own computers have to sign up for a slot, either at school or at the public library, and pray they can get it done during that time. That can mean you have to choose between participating in sports or other after school activities, or doing your homework. It isn't fair!"

Brad recently mentioned the One Laptop per Child program. What a wonderful idea! We'll need to get them for some of Joanna's friends as well as for kids in developing nations.

Waiting for Another Annunciation

It looks like my teaching career will soon be ending. I have always received highest marks on my evaluations (from both students and administrators) but the pool of students wanting to take non-required philosophy classes has been shrinking over the past two decades, and colleges are responding to market pressures. Teaching the liberal arts has become a luxury our family cannot afford, and not enough Christians are seeing it as a genuine ministry option worthy of support.

I am depressed but not surprised. As our culture increasingly has grown more and more experiential, pragmatic, and less interested in the reality of truth, beauty and goodness, philosophy has become more and more marginalized. Now only first-tier institutions can afford to offer it as a major. Besides technology and the sciences, education, business and psychology are the breadwinners for higher education. There are still a few English and History majors around--they have always outnumbered the philosophers--but (with great sadness) I predict even their days are numbered.

John W. Garder was president of the Carnegie Foundation, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under LBJ, and helped create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In his book, Excellence (Norton, 1984, p.102), Gardner points out that the society that scorns excellence in plumbing and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy will find that “neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man may be king; but if the blind think they can get along just fine thank you without sight, then the one-eyed man will be seen as a freak and left to starve.

Every once in a while there are articles in newsmagazines that challenge my cynicism and tempt me to hope that I am mistaken. But as long as 65% of med school applicants major in biology or another physical science it seems like it will be a while before I can take their reassurances seriously.

So I will begin searching for a job. At my age (53) and without accounting or medical skills, there will be fewer options. I may have to bite the bullet, admit that "if you can't fight 'em you gotta join 'em," and go get an M.B.A. After all, I brought this on myself. No one forced me to teach, muchless teach philosophy. It was my own choice, in response to what I understood the Lord to be calling me to do. So it will be interesting to see what God has in store for me, personally. Again, I want my prayer to be the same as Mary's:

"I am the Lord's servant; May it be to me as You have said."

(Credit: The illustration above is by John Collier)

Mouw, McMullen, Bourke and Augustine

Today Brad refers to Richard Mouw's blog entry, "The Lesson of 'Ancient Seas.'" Mouw writes about evolution, and along the way makes me reflect on the way my own thought has been formed.

How do you get believers to get excited spiritually about the fact that the earth is millions of years old, and that human beings have evolved from lower forms of life?

On this challenge, I was immensely pleased to come across a wonderful paragraph in a scholarly essay, published in the early 1990s in Christian Scholars Review, by Ernan McMullen, who taught in the Notre Dame philosophy department for several decades. Father McMullen affirms that over a period of millions of years, there have been “uncountable species that flourished and vanished [and] have left a trace of themselves in us.” The Bible, he says, sees God as preparing the world for “the coming of Christ back through Abraham to Adam”; but is it too much of a stretch, he asks, “to suggest that natural science now allows us to extend the story indefinitely further back?” And then this wonderful passage: “When Christ took on human nature, the DNA that made him the son of Mary may have linked him to a more ancient heritage stretching far beyond Adam to the shallows of unimaginably ancient seas. And so, in the Incarnation, it would not have been just human nature that was joined to the Divine, but in a less direct but no less real sense all those myriad organisms that had unknowingly over the eons shaped the way for the coming of the human.”

I find that to be an inspiring theme to add to our understanding of the Incarnation. That long process, beginning in “the shallows of unimaginably ancient seas,” was not wasted time. It was preparation for the One who would come with healing in his wings, a healing that will only be complete when the Savior returns and announces, “Behold, I make all things new.” And what he will renew in that act of cosmic transformation is all the stuff that he had carried–in his own DNA!– to the Cross of Calvary.

Wonderful! I love how tightly this binds the story of creation, incarnation, atonement and re-creation. And now I am drawn to consider how the story can move forward; how various teachers leave traces of themselves in us. In particular, I think of my own situation, and I remember Ernan McMullen and Vernon Bourke.

Vernon Bourke looked somewhat like Santa Claus in a glen-plaid suit. Back in the 70's professors dressed up; but Bourke always matched sturdy toffee-colored, hightop work boots with his ensembles. He taught the Medieval Philosophy course, and he was the first person I ever met who could read and write Arabic. It was in his class that I first caught on to the magic of the ontological argument. Gentle, but tough. He lived to be 91.

Father Ernan McMullen is a complex fellow. I remember when we were at Notre Dame, he took aside all the new entering graduate students and told them in in his rich Irish brogue that if they valued their marriages, they would leave immediately. He had seen several divorces in the philosophy department and didn't want to see any more.

Both McMullen and Bourke pointed to St. Augustine as probably the earliest Christian evolutionist, as a result of his theory of rationes seminales. Victor P. Warkulwiz explains why

...St. Augustine’s theory of rationes seminales... develops the idea of trans-species development of organic beings in a way quite different from Darwin or the Neo-Darwinians. Augustine may have believed in far-reaching cross-species development and so proposed an "evolutionist" theory for the origin of species. But he developed a profound metaphysical theory of the causes of such an evolution that is wholly opposed to the atheistic spirit of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism. Seifert says that the Church too has to separate the "evolutionary" idea of the transformation of species from the idea that Darwinian principles are sufficient to explain the origin of species.

Augustine employs many different terms when speaking of the so-called rationes seminales. He mentions it in at least seven places in three different works, chiefly in his Genesis ad litteram. It is not easy to discern what he means by rationes seminales, but one meaning seems to imply a sophisticated and profound theory of the origin of new species from existing ones. It is clear that Augustine rejects the first two forms of the theory of evolution described above. But he seems to say that God inserted into matter at creation rationes seminales (seminating/germinating ideas or plans) for different forms to be possibly developed in matter. This seems to leave room for the transformation of one species into another. But Augustine replaces the Darwinian principles of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" with a principle similar to Aristotle’s entelechy. That is an inner active principle that contains in potency an elaborate form and potentially dynamically unfolding teleological plan that could originate only in a supreme intellect. Thus not mindless "natural selection" but an ingenious creative plan of God "inserted into matter" is the cause of evolutionary development. Augustine did not believe that all living things could spring from any matter. Rather, he held a more restricted view that allowed for the transformation of species subject to limitation by some nature. Augustine also held that living beings are distinct from non-living beings. In living beings the rationes seminales involve a soul that is not reducible to properties of matter. Finally, Augustine sounds as if he meant that the rationes seminales are not principles immanent in matter, but that they are divine creative ideas that exist in God long before the things exist that correspond to them. This is a sign of the influence of Platonic philosophy on the thinking of Augustine.

Three Thoughts:

1) Could it be that the reason evangelicals have had such a troubled time with evolution is that we lack the metaphysical language with which to discuss it, and so make the distinctions necessary that would help us preserve both the faith and the science it involves? Did some babies get thrown out with the Greek bathwater somewhere about 500 years ago?

2) Darwinian evolution assumes that progress is inevitable in evolution, as simpler, lower forms evolve into higher, more complex ones. This principle may be true for the physical world, but does it necessarily apply to the intellectual/spiritual world?

3) Rather than "progress," I believe entelechy/design operates not only in the physical world but also in the intellectual and spiritual world. (cf.Psalm 139). In my own case, God has been preparing for Christ to come to me through the lives of men like Richard Mouw, Ernan McMullan, Vernon Bourke, Augustine and the Apostles. This leads to the unavoidable question: Who He will be coming to through me?
It is an exciting, sobering, humbling thought.