KEEPER: "God can do anything!"

Six years ago  I wrote a blog entry, prompted by the children's song: 
"My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do." 
The truth is, there ARE some things that God cannot do:   

1) he can't lie ( Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29 and Titus 1:2); 
2) he can't not exist (Exodus 3:13-14)
3) he can't not be holy (Lev. 11:4-45; Ps.99:3,5; Is. 45:11, etc; 1 Peter 1:15-16 etc. ).

Why would we want a God who could contradict himself? (cf. James 1:17; Malachi 3:6) Such a God would not be sovereign, but nonsensical.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, 

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it’, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can’. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

Of course, Lewis was no nominalist. Neither am I, and because I am not a nominalist, I cannot be a voluntarist or a Calvinist. 
-------------------------------------------------------

From Jesus Creed: December 13, 2011

“God can do anything he wants!” (by David Opderbeck)
Filed under: Law — scotmcknight @ 12:06 am

David Opderbeck is Professor of Law and Director of the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science  Technology at Seton Hall University Law School. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophical Theology at the University of Nottingham. David’s post today is academic and complex, but he’s right in saying it is this distinction that was at work in the Rob Bell and hell debate with with Francis Chan. Chan’s appeal to submission to God at times sounded like nominalism. Read on, read slowly.

Nominalism, Voluntarism, and God’s Being and Will

“God can do ANYTHING he wants.” So say Preston Sprinkle and Francis Chan in their book Erasing Hell. It’s fair to say that this proposition is the cornerstone of Sprinkle and Chan’s theodicy of Hell. “Won’t God get what he wants?” So asks Rob Bell in his book Love Wins. It’s also fair to say that this question, along with the belief that God wants everyone to be saved, is the cornerstone of Bell’s theodicy of Hell.

Both Sprinkle / Chan and Bell focus on God’s will. But is there something missing from their theodicies? Theologically, the question concerns the relation of God’s will to His nature. Philosophically, the question relates to whether “universal” substances exist apart from their particular instantiations (“universals”), or whether substances are merely names for particular instances of things (“nominalism”).

Consider an apple. What is an apple? Is this particular apple on my kitchen table one instantiation of the substance “apple” – a substance with some sort of universal metaphysical (“beyond-“ or “above-“ physical) properties that are shared by all apples? Or is “apple” simply a name I apply to this object before me as a result of some observable similarities with other objects (other things we also call “apple”) that have no metaphysical connection to the “apple” on my table?

What do you think? Do nominalism and voluntarism improperly taint our conversations about ethics, justice and theodicy? Or, does “realism” about universals compromise God’s sovereignty? How can we avoid speaking about God in ways that seem either to compromise His sovereign freedom or to reduce His actions to the arbitrary exercise of power?

For many who claim a modern scientific worldview, there are only particular objects called “apple,” which are more or less related to other particular objects in morphology and chemical composition, all of which are categorized as “apples” for the sake of convenience. What is “real,” in this view, is merely chemistry and physical laws, not any substance “apple.” In contrast, for those who believe in universal properties, “apple” implies properties that are real and transcendent of any one apple. This apple on my table has properties such as “red” in common with other apples because those common properties transcend any one particular apple. (For a good overview of the problem of “universals,” see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The modern nominalist view of “nature” derives from and is related to nominalist and “voluntarist” views of God in late medieval philosophy. The medieval scholastic philosophers wrestled with this question: Is God’s will a product of God’s rational nature, such that God only calls things “good” that are substantively “good”? Or is God’s will utterly unconstrained, such that God is free to call “good” whatever He desires to call “good,” without any limiting principle (referred to as “voluntarism”)?

One of the key figures in the development of these ideas was the monk and philosopher William of Ockham (c. 1288-1348). Ockham took a strong – some would argue extreme – view of Divine sovereignty in relation to morality and ethics. Here is an example of Ockham’s voluntarist approach:

I say that although hate, theft, adultery and the like have a bad circumstance annexed de communi lege [“by the common law”] so far as they are done by someone who is obliged by divine precept to the contrary, nevertheless, in respect of everything absolute in those acts they could be done by God without any bad circumstance annexed. And they could be done by the wayfarer even meritoriously if they were to fall under a divine precept, just as now in fact their opposites fall under divine precept . . . But if they were thus done meritoriously by the wayfarer, then they would not be called or named theft, adultery, hate, etc., because those names signify such acts not absolutely but by connoting or giving to understand that one doing such acts is obliged to their opposites by divine precept. (Ockham, Various Questions, Vol. 5 (emphasis added)).

For Ockham, then, there was no “absolute” notion of “the good.” “Good” is just a word we apply to whatever God commands. The parallels to both Sprinkle / Chan’s and Bell’s theodicies are obvious.

This sort of view sounds humble and pious. Who are we to question God? The problem, however, is that it begs the question of who “God” is.

Before the rise of nominalism, Christian theology generally held that God’s being and will are inseparable. God is “simple” and does not have separate “parts” such as “being” and “will.” This means that God wills and acts as He is. If God acts in ways that are “loving,” it is because in His Triune being “God is love” (1 John 4:8); and if God acts in ways that are “just” it is because in His Triune being God is just.

To be sure, Christian theology has always held that God’s essential nature is fundamentally unknowable by human beings, because God is radically other than His creation. However, many of the Church’s great thinkers believed we could know about God either through His “energies” in creation (e.g., many of the Eastern Fathers) or by “analogy” to the being of creation (e.g., Thomas Aquinas). At the very least, the apophatic theologians held that we can speak about what God is not like.

Nominalism and voluntarism, in contrast, divorced God’s will from His being, and thus drastically limited the role of theology for ethics. As theologian John Milbank notes,

In the thought of the nominalists . . . the Trinity loses its significance as a prime location for discussing will and understanding in God and the relationship of God to the world. No longer is the world participatorily enfolded within the divine expressive Logos, but instead a bare divine unity starkly confronts the other distinct unities which he has ordained. . . . This dominance of logic and of the potential absoluta is finally brought to a peak by Hobbes: ‘The right of Nature, whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those that break his Lawes, is to be derived, not from his creating them, as if he required obedience as of gratitude for his benefits; but from his Irresistible Power.’” (John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, at pp. 15-16 (quoting Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.))

Catholic philosopher Edward Feser recently summarized the fruits of Ockham’s reductionism as follows:

the Renaissance humanists’ revolution in culture, Luther’s revolution in theology, Descartes’ revolution in philosophy, and Hobbes’s revolution in politics also have their roots in Ockhamism. With the humanists this was manifested in their emphasis on man as an individual, willing being rather than as a rational animal. In Luther’s case, the prospect of judgment by the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle – was cause for despair. Since reason is incapable of fathoming this God and good works incapable of appeasing Him, faith alone could be Luther’s refuge. With Descartes, the God of nominalism and voluntarism opened the door to a radical doubt in which even the propositions of mathematics – the truth of which was in Descartes’ view subject to God’s will no less than the contingent truths of experience – were in principle uncertain. And we see the moral and political implications of nominalism in the amoral, self-interested individuals of Hobbes’s so-called “state of nature,” and in the fearsome absolutist monarch of his Leviathan, whose relationship to his subjects parallels that of the nominalist God to the universe.

I might not agree completely with Feser’s hasty appraisal of Luther. Note, however, Feser’s reference to judgment by “the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle….” If the governing principle of a theodicy is that “God can do ANYTHING he wants,” how does that theodicy avoid the capricious, irrational god of nominalism and voluntarism? How could even someone presently confident of his election to salvation have any reason to believe that his election will not be suddenly and arbitrarily revoked on the last day? Why should God keep His promises? At the same time, if the governing principle is that “God always gets what he wants,” how can human beings retain any moral freedom or responsibility?

Note also Feser’s linkage between nominalism, voluntarism, and ethics. If law and ethics derive from God’s commands, and God’s commands are the product of pure, ungoverned power and will, then what principle can check the tyranny of earthly rulers who claim absolute and unquestionable power on the basis of Divine right?

Finally, note Feser’s reference to epistemology. This relates to the broad question of universals versus nominalism, because a belief in metaphysical universals suggests that God first conceives of and then brings into existence by His commands a reality with stability and purpose. For Augustine and Aquinas, universals were Ideas in the mind of God, and so to investigate the order of things was to learn something of God. For Ockham, there was no reason for any similarity between things other than God’s choice. This lead Ockham to conceive of “science” as a strictly empirical and logical investigation into particular things, a move that led to the sort of empiricism in which God is no longer a necessary “hypothesis” (ala Pierre Simon-Laplace and Richard Dawkins).

1. This in many ways gets to the heart of Calvinist theology which is in the forefront of many theological discussions these days. Even my daughters, whom I homeschool, have picked up on the idea that God can do anything he wants. When I have expressed that God cannot act outside of his nature, they are incredulous.
   My problem with this thinking, as expressed by Ockham and even somewhat by Aquinas is that it ignores scripture and presents a God who resembles Allah more than Jesus. Lewis writes of God worthy of worship, not because of his power, but because of his goodness.
   We worship a God who lives in loving relation within the Trinity and with creation. While I can’t get to the point of all will be saved, as some don’t want to be, I also can’t accept that God is choosing who will go to Hell just because without him becoming a monster. If we are to trust God, then we must believe in his inherent goodness.
   Comment by Gina Wright Hawkins — December 13, 2011 @ 12:50 am

Calvinism as a Nominalist Project

Great discussion over on Jesus Creed about Calvinism, Arminianism, double predestination, and the character of God. 

I especially appreciated comment#2:

The closer I get to this debate the more I am convinced that underneath it is the ongoing issue of realism vs. nominalism. Luther was a nominalist, a strong and growing movement of his time. Nominalists believe that attributes like love, goodness, beauty, etc. are not real existences. They are only names we give those attributes, hence nominalism. When applied to God categories like the good, the true and the beautiful are not real in and of themselves, as if for God to be those things he has to meet a standard outside of himself. This would seem to make God less than God since he is subject to a measure and it would seem to make God less free since he is constrained by that measure. Luther’s response? He glories in the God who simply is apart from categories that do not arise from his own being. What this can lead to is an arbitrary God, who no matter what he does is always glorious. Therefore, God can be exalted for what on the face of it would normally be considered horrendous evil – i.e., damning people you could save. So we can end up with the strange configuration of being willing to go to hell for the glory of God as a sign of true salvation. To which I respond, huh? In fact, the more arbitrary God seems to be, the more glorious he is. And in some of the Reformed circles I have been exposed to, moral categories for God can seem unstable. And in such a case arguing as Olson does seems to diminish God’s glory. This is always the Reformed response. Olson is simply pleading for the existence of real moral categories. If these are thrown out, there is nothing left to discuss anymore and moral debate becomes senseless. So, to sum it up, I am not so sure that the debate is primarily about free will in man. It might be more about free will in God. I think pursuing the debate along these lines would be more fruitful. I am hoping that Olson presses this trajectory a bit more.

Comment by don bryant — November 9, 2011 @ 2:48 am

The Wages of Nominalism, II

Listen to or read the transcript of this NPR Story: 
Study: Narcissism On Rise In Pop Lyrics


April 26, 2011
A psychology professor at the University of Kentucky analyzed hit songs between 1980 and 2007 and found a correlation between egotistical song lyrics and increasing narcissism in society. Michele Norris talks with Dr. Nathan DeWall about his study.

The Wages of Nominalism...

"For as (a man) thinks within himself, so he is." --Proverbs 23:7 (NASB)


Heather Havrilesky's review of the film, Limitless, questions the culture's current obsession with individualism, overachievement, egocentricism. She asks, "Who's to blame for this state of affairs?" Christians give a fuller answer than she does.  Before there were helicopter parents and tiger moms, before Reaganomics, Oprah and Sedona sweatlodges, there was the Fall: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." (Rom. 1:21).

Paul goes on to discuss how God gave humans over to the sinful desires of their hearts. I wonder if Paul would agree that He gave us over to sinful ideas? The history of philosophy is scattered with all kinds of futile thinking. In my opinion, one of  the most deadly is a way of looking at the world called "Nominalism."   If one's ethic is a result of one's metaphysic, then perhaps the egoism that Havrilesky decries can be traced back to this intellectual error.

John 15:
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

In the end, we are faced with a simple choice: through Jesus Christ, to be friends with God and all His creatures; or to be alone. Sartre was wrong: Hell is not other people, hell is Sola Self.





'Limitless,' Oprah, and Charlie Sheen: The Scary Side of Super-Sized Ambition
By Heather Havrilesky
Mar 18 2011, 10:35 AM
 The new Bradley Cooper film, about a power-obsessed writer-turned-Wall-Street-trader, raises the question: Has individualism gone too far?

Do we want too much? Now that blind ambition no longer carries the slightest taint and the term "sell-out" holds no meaning, now that earnest young men sing not of love but of "want(ing) to be a billionaire so frickin' bad," now that narcissistic outbursts and trips to rehab are tantamount to self-promotion, now that, on blogs and Facebook and Twitter, millions of self-branding voices cry out and are never silenced, now that reaching for the stars is encountered less, by young people, as euphemism than high-priority action item, it may be time to question, at long last, the reigning ethos of super-sized individualism.

This perspective manifests itself dramatically in the movie Limitless, where all-consuming ambition is depicted as a supreme blessing from on high, even as it seems to erase every trace of soul and human connection in those who are thusly blessed. A blocked writer named Eddie (Bradley Cooper) discovers a miracle drug that has him decluttering his apartment, then his life, and finally, using his drug-induced high-speed analysis to game the stock market. You'd imagine that such a twist would be a bit harder to cheer on in the wake of the financial meltdown than it was back in 2001 when Alan Glynn's entertaining novel, The Dark Fields, (on which the movie was based) was first published. Not so. As massive wealth transforms Eddie's life into a predictably dizzying merry-go-round of cheering on gigantic stock gains, clinking champagne glasses, jetting around the world, and impressing key members of the plutocracy, members of the audience are enlisted as cheering spectators to his meteoric rise.

What's notable about Limitless is not the manner in which Eddie uses and abuses his wealth (a tale as old as Midas), but the fact that Eddie treats the aggressive pursuit of excess as the only logical object of his new-found productivity. After finishing his novel in four days, aided by a drug-induced lightning-fast mind, he abruptly drops his interest in literature (borrring!) for the much more alluring and romantic life of... the day trader? Yes, instead of longing for creative self-expression or thirsting for spiritual freedom, what Eddie wants, most of all, is don a pin-striped suit and haunt somnambulant lunch joints in the financial district. In other words, even though we may roll out the piety in discussions of Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs, or Kenneth Lay, we still suspect that they're the smartest—and the luckiest—guys in the room. Joining the ranks of tech executives, professional athletes, oil moguls, and Wall Street high rollers at the depraved craps table of our culture and our economy is presumed to be a wet dream shared by the global populace.

Strange, that this fantastical film, which basks in excess and corruption without any major repercussions for our hero, plays less like a cinematic fable than a realistic snapshot of the times. With hand-wringing over the Great Recession finally subsiding a bit—even if the sickness that incited the economic collapse is far from cured—it's clear that the greatest American hero is not the honor-bound civic leader or the inspired artist or the thoughtful spiritual guide, but the self-serving entrepreneurial conquistador.

Tales of extreme overachievement dominated the Best Picture category at this year's Oscars, featuring strivers aggressively pursuing victory at the expense of friends, family, life, and limb, from The Social Network to The Fighter to 127 Hours to The King's Speech. "I was perfect," says Natalie Portman's ballerina character in Black Swan, secure that all of her suffering and sacrifice was worth it. Even the isolated and the doomed—Zuckerberg in his lonely perch at the top, Wahlberg's boxer hiding out with his girlfriend across town, the future king battling his own words in a drafty London apartment—are presented as odd sorts of modern victors.

Even when ambition is explored through the lens of exaggeration, parody, farce, or noir, it's still digested as inspiring, from the vainglorious proclamations of Lady Gaga to the semi-delusional chattering of Bravo's tireless self-branding reality stars. Television is filthy with high-capitalist morality plays, from Mad Men to Breaking Bad to Boardwalk Empire, but the tragic characters therein are more often than not encountered as heroes. Raw drive is touted as the special sauce that makes the world go 'round on every reality show in existence, from Survivor, to Top Chef to even non-competitive experiments in self-branding like Bethenny Ever After and The Rachel Zoe Project. Warrior-speak is so much the common lexicon of reality TV that each on-camera confession could stand in for any other: She wants to win at all costs. He's not going to give up, no matter what. She doesn't care who has to eat dirt along the way. The parlance of high school football coaches and insurance salesman has become the native tongue of cable TV.

Not surprisingly, the Oprah Winfrey Network, which launched this year on New Year's Day, represents the most colorful and dramatic reflection of this nationwide will to power. An uneasy mix of individualism and enlightenment is offered on every show, from the motivational platitudes spouted by the aspiring talk show hosts of Your OWN Show to the exacting standards and relentless drive of Oprah herself in Oprah: Behind The Scenes. But nothing typifies Oprah's embrace of the creation myths of celebrities more than Oprah Presents Master Class, which presents first-person narratives of success by everyone from Diane Sawyer to Jay-Z. The show relishes a peculiar "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps" and "I had to believe in myself—and so should you!" mélange, blending self-actualization and capitalism into a queasy cocktail that goes down smoothly, thanks to the simple syrup of Oprah's "You go girl!" ideology.

And while egocentric implosions were commodified long before Charlie Sheen cranked his delusions of grandeur up to 11, it's notable how swiftly the star's sociopathic flameout has been translated into a multi-tiered product launch—including a t-shirt line and a not-so-magical, death-of-mystery tour called the "Violent Torpedo of Truth." (We get the "violent" part, anyway.) Sure, it's a familiar story: Man loses job. Man lets loose grandiose, nonsensical tirade. Man is besieged by army of marketing yes men who set big, stupid wheels in motion overnight. How else to keep the Cristal and the high-priced hookers flowing? But has there ever been a time when merely grabbing the public's attention, largely for negative reasons, translated so rapidly into a merchandising blitzkrieg?

But it doesn't take star status to broadcast your aspirations to the world. The average Joe's focus on international success has never been quite so well documented as it is today. On Facebook and Twitter, on blogs and author websites and work profiles, individuals lay out their agonizingly detailed goals for the future with reckless abandon, taking pains to document every ego reward along the way. One author recalls the "transcendent moment" when she learned that Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote to tell her that her book was "destined to be deeply loved." "I still feel intoxicated by her words," the author gushed. Another author recently tweeted, "Yay! Just found out my paperback hit the bestseller lists in Boston, Denver, & SF. That's a happy Monday!" It's enough to make you nostalgic for the days when patting oneself on the back and other forms of self-stroking were reserved for sticky private rooms, far from the public gaze. Even the self-proclaimed enlightened elite don't seem to recognize the value of shame. One social media guru recently tweeted, "I have never, in my life, lived more honestly than I am living today." Please, consider living a little less honestly.

Who's to blame for this state of affairs? Some point to the toxic overindulgence of helicopter parents, who pumped up their children's egos without exposing them to the hardships of an unscheduled afternoon with nothing but to do but make mud pies in the backyard. Others conjure the overachievement culture incited by Tiger Moms (and dads), who create children whose Suzuki scales are as impressive as their panic attacks and acid reflux. But the concept that a rising GNP lifts all heavily-mortgaged boats founds its roots in Reaganomics, and extreme ambition hasn't loosened its death-grip on our culture since. Considering the economic rollercoaster ride of the last few decades, the obvious lack of long-term job security in this country, and the fact that, according the Economic Policy Institute, during the past 20 years, 56 percent of all income growth went to the top 1 percent of households, it's impossible for most Americans, whether working or middle class or even upper middle class, not to fixate somewhat unhealthily on finding true, lasting financial peace of mind. Instead of giving in to learned helplessness (the most logical choice, really), we cling more tightly to the myth of upwardly mobile miracles, telling ourselves pretty success stories in order to keep hope alive.

Ultimately, Limitless takes the precise shape that you'd expect from a powerless person's fantasy of power. The moral of the story seems to be that, with a few shortcuts and some help from important people, money, status, and happiness can be yours, with no emotional cost to pay on the back end. But as our world spirals closer to the moronic self-involvement of Mike Judge's Idiocracy mixed with the commercialized nightmare of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, what's lost, beyond simple good taste, is our connection to our own desires. After soaking in so many real-life tales of success and parables of excess like Limitless, it's easy to lose sight of the joys of working steadily toward a goal without undue fixation on the monetary rewards or prestige it might bequeath. Savoring the means over the ends, relishing the challenges, the wrinkles, the obstacles involved in your craft: the rewards of a dedication to something beyond the ego may be a difficult message to impart, but it's a message that needs to find its way back into our fables, our creation myths, our journalism, and into the stories we tell ourselves.

Why Christians should not be Libertarians

This will outrage many good folks in Arizona, and a lot of Tea Partiers, but if you are a Christian, you should not vote for Rand Paul. You should not be a libertarian. Here's why:

Scratch a libertarian, and you'll see that s/he holds the Modern Liberal Myth of Individualism: "In the beginning was the Individual; who CONTRACTED with other individuals to form society." Libertarians hold that the ultimate good is AUTONOMY (auto, or "self" + nomos, or "law") That is why you see such an emphasis on the INDIVIDUAL in their explanation of their beliefs, at their website.

Government, by its very nature, always involves the limitation of individual autonomy. Thus, government can never be really good; it can only be bad or less bad. “Government's only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud,” Libertarians say. But that inevitably requires that someone’s freedom and personal responsibility will get stepped on. Their autonomy will be violated by the majority, and the majority is simply the collection of individuals who are able to force the minority to do what they want it to do. Thus, the same group that is supposed  to defend the minority from force is the group that is forcing the minority to do its will.

In fancy philosophical talk, Libertarians are metaphysical NOMINALISTS. Insofar as they talk about being “people-centered,” they mean they support SELF-interest, as their prime value-- so it would be more honest for them to say they are INDIVIDUALLY centered, rather than people-centered. (But that doesn't sound as "nice!") As nominalists, they think the only real things are discrete individuals. This is the philosophy of Ayn Rand is so congenial to libertarianism.

Christians affirm a different narrative: “In the beginning God, (Who is THREE persons in ONE substance—a community, not a collection) created the heavens and the earth, and finally human beings, in HIS IMAGE.” So from the very get go, RELATIONSHIP has been part of what it means to be a Person, and by extension, a human person. Christians don't believe that society/community was “contracted;” rather, they hold that it has been part of the fabric of reality from eternity because the Trinity is a community. Note, though, that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity does not do away with the idea of individuality. Instead, it properly defines it in terms of “personhood,” locating and balancing it IN RELATIONSHIP to community. That community is not an intellectual construct, but a real, existing, living reality.

In fancy philosophical talk, that means Christians are NOT metaphysical nominalists. Insofar as they claim to be, they are inconsistent in their beliefs. The Bible takes a very dim view of autonomy. It is the source of the fall—an individuals thinking they can do what they want, not what God has ordered. As Isaiah 53:6 says, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Christians are exhorted to be altruistic and other-centered, rather than self-interested. Judges 21:25 gives an acidic estimation of autonomy, and in 1 Cor. 6:19-20, Paul explodes the notion, saying “You are NOT your own; you were bought at a price.” This is why orthodox Christians cannot consistently embrace Ayn Rand’s teachings.

SO: if one is a Christian, libertarianism isn’t an option. Of course, many people are not Christians, so the tenets of libertarianism do not cause them any conflict. ISTM that Christians who embrace libertarianism need to think more deeply about their commitments because they are inconsistent spiritually and politically. Libertarianism espouses centrifugal forces; communism  and facscim espouse centripetal forces; but Christianity preserves and balances both, in a universal Te Deum that circles the One God who is

Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Languages Christians Speak, and how it affects Christ's mission

Ala. Governor Apologizes to Muslims, Hindus, Jews 
Posted on 01/20/2011 by Juan

Gov. Robert Bentley, the new governor of Alabama, created a firestorm of controversy on Monday when he said that if you are not a Christian he does not consider you his brother or his sister.

He added, “… so anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their saviour, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister…” Ironically, he was speaking for Martin Luther King Day at an African-American church, and was probably attempting to stress religious commonalities as a way of stressing that he opposes racial prejudice. Unfortunately for him, not all Alabamans are Christians.

Jews, Muslims and Hindus in Alabama were upset and contacted Bentley with their concerns.

Rabbi Jonathan Miller of Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama, among other members of religious minorities in that state, let Gov. Bentley know that he felt that the remarks were ‘disenfranchising.’

Bentley apologized on Wednesday. His spokesperson issued a statement saying, “The Governor had intended no offense by his remarks. He is the governor of all the people, Christians, non-Christians alike…”

The controversy arose because Bentley did not understand American civil religion, which requires that in the public sphere, sectarian differences be put aside.

Sociologist Robert Bellah defined it this way:

‘ “an institutionalized collection of sacred beliefs about the American nation,” which he sees symbolically expressed in America’s founding documents and presidential inaugural addresses. It includes a belief in the existence of a transcendent being called “God,” an idea that the American nation is subject to God’s laws, and an assurance that God will guide and protect the United States.’

Civil religion discourse is the way that various kinds of Protestants, and eventually Catholics and Jews, participated in the American public sphere. It is a way of sidestepping sectarian commitments for the purpose of doing the business of the Republic. (Obviously, it somewhat disadvantages non-believers, now 14% of the population, but most of those are not atheists but agnostics and so far have not mounted a concerted challenge to this tradition of discourse).

Bentley, and new governor, tried to go on speaking his own evangelical language of difference, which is all right in the private sphere. But as a public person, he has new responsibilities, of speaking in a way that unifies.

Since 1965 in particular, large numbers of immigrants have come in from Africa and Asia who practice religions beyond the classic ‘Protestant-Catholic-Jew’ trinity. Thus, the Hindu American Foundation and the Muslims were among those who protested, along with Jews. There are about one million Hindus in the US, 2 million Buddhists, and about 5-6 million Muslims if you count children. They are clearly as committed to a public civil religion discourse as are Catholics and Jews.

It seems to me that the groups that protested Bentley’s statement have some international responsibilities. Would the governor chief minister of Gujarat in India be willing to say that Muslims are his ‘brothers and sisters’? Would Avigdor Lieberman in Israel accept Palestinian-Israelis as his ‘brothers and sisters?’ How many Pakistani Muslim politicians would speak of brotherhood and sisterhood with the country’s 3 million Hindu citizens? Maybe some letter-writing to those figures is in order, too.

It isn’t just in Alabama that there is a problem.

Bentley is simply a good Protestant nominalist. "Bentley, and new governor, tried to go on speaking his own evangelical language of DIFFERENCE, which is all right in the private sphere. But as a public person, he has new responsibilities, of speaking in a way that unifies."

The question is, should the language Christians speak be one exclusively of "difference?" (That is, the language of "either/or.") Can Christians engage in the unity language of "civil religion," (the language of "neither/nor") or do we have a responsiblity to speak the language of BOTH unity AND difference? If the latter, under what circumstances do we we use which vocabulary? ISTM Bentley's semantics and pragmatics "missed the mark." Mercifully, he was open to correction and apologized. Unfortunately, to people like professor Juan Cole, the belief that evangelicals only speak "either/or" is still intact.





  .

Why I am critical of "the right" (and "the left")

Recently I had a Facebook exchange with a former student who wondered why I was critical of "the right" and "never" criticized the moral and political failures of "the left." Here is my response:

Dear Student,

You have been in my classes and know that I am PRO LIFE: which means I am against abortion, euthanasia, and (in order to be consistently  prolife) war and the death penalty. (Though I admit I still struggle with those last two.) You know that I am a passionate supporter of virtue ethics. Therefore, I think you mistake my criticisms of "the right" as support for "the left." I haven't written anything about human trafficking, or stem cells or gluttony or divorce or genital mutilation or the EMX route on West 11th. By your logic, because I haven't written about them I must not be concerned about those issues, but that is a mistake!

The reason you might seem to see concern about the "evils of the right" is because that group, which I have long identified with, has so dissapointed me. We are most hurt by those we love. The group which I had thought was more closely aligned with Kingdom values now seems to be no better than any other. IMO we have moved backwards, rather than forward, since 1994. Not only are abortion and euthanasia still legal, thousands have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, the unemployment rate is 9.3%, the U.S. National debt is over $14 trillion, the U.S. Gini index is almost 50, health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, and medical causes were cited by about half of bankruptcy filers in the United States.

The thread that runs through all my posts is a preoccupation with truth and justice, (justice understood as the right ordering of human beings in themselves, with each other, and with God-- "shalom"--which inevitably involves consideration of the Good, and the common good.) This is why I have been writing about health care, the economy and war, because they have been the places where the biggest disputes about justice have been recently occurring. If there had been a Facebook back in 1994, I'd have been posting about Oregon's "Death with Dignity" act. In fact, if you read my blog (which I started in 2005) you can find plenty disagreement with "the left;" but don't expect to see me support nominalist platforms.

In particular, the only way I think America can be prolife is if it has a strong understanding of persons-in-community (aka, a realist metaphysic) as opposed to individuals-on-their-own. It grieves me to see how "the right" has, over the past few years, moved increasingly toward a nominalist metaphysic, because I fear the resulting emphasis on individuals and their absolute freedom will in effect cause the prolife cause to backfire. IMO what ground we still have is in jeopardy, and we need to hold on to it. Libertarianism is the threat, because it ultimately denies there is such a thing as the common good. Remember C. S. Lewis' analogy of the ships? (See The Three Parts of MOrality, in Mere Christianity, here. If there isn't a port that we are sailing toward, what's the point of worrying about the seaworthiness of each ship? Or what formation they are travelling in?

So, in presenting the quote above, my intention was to focus on things that affect our national character. Those who take it as "dissing the right" are probably those who are uncomfortable with the notion of a common good: those who, having fallen under the spell of modernist individualism, resent any discussion of virtues which might limit individual autonomy.

QUOTES: "To generalize means to think"

In our current intellectual climate, where
nominalist thinking has triumphed and is
proudly celebrated by "deconstruction," the business of seeing similarities and relationships is regarded with suspicion. I remember one interchange with a librarian (!) who was perfectly happy to have his living depend on classifying books and other materials, but who resisted attempts to generalize about theological or historical matters. Why was that? Perhaps he thought that the only way to generalize was to impose arbitrary,  socially-constructed categories upon things, much the same way that he saw the Dewey Decimal mode of classification, or the Library of Congress mode of classification imposed upon the works around him.  

      But are all generalizations "useful fictions?"  Are some generalizations actually products of a process of abstraction from forms which are not imposed by us, but which exist independently of our minds, in things themselves? Is there no way to compare our generalizations, and judge which of them captures more of what is real, making that generalization closer to the truth?



"...when we apply categories and classifications to the progression of history, we are challenged to remember that classification and categorisation always relies, to some extent, on generalisation; and generalisation is a dangerous game. When William Blake wrote that 'to generalise is to be an idiot', he was perhaps too harsh. George Bernard Shaw shared his pessimism, though in less alacritous terms: 'Crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of organised life'. But life mandates, at times, precisely this curse. So Georg Hegel: 'An idea is always a generalisation, and generalisation is a property of thinking. To generalise means to think'. " --M.C. Steenberg,

To put it in premodern language, a generalization can refer either to a universal, or to propositions we make involving universals. We are created in such a way that our minds soak up universals, or "forms" from the world around us. These universals become the concepts which fill our minds, as we grasp what kind of thing we are in relationship with. For example, we  might entertain the concepts "Chair," "Table," "legs" and "four."

We then combine those concepts to form propositions, uniting or dividing them. Thus, we might  combine concepts and make the following statements, or propositions:

        “The chair has four legs.”  or “The table has four legs.”

Or we might "divide" the concepts, and make the following propositions: 
 
          "The table does not have four legs.”   or  “A chair is not a table.”

Finally, we can use propositions  to make arguments, linking them together according to the rules of logic. Depending upon how we do it, and how well we do it, our arguments will be sound or not; or cogent or not. For example,

                    The chair has four legs.
                    The table has four legs.
                    Therefore the chair is a table.
or
                    If this is a chair,  I can use it to sit on.
                    This is a chair.
                    Therefore I can use it to sit on.

God has given us a great gift: "ratio," our ability to abstract concepts, to relate them in propositions, and to create arguments. I don't often find myself in agreement with Hegel, but on this he is correct:  'An idea is always a generalisation, and generalisation is a property of thinking. To generalise means to think.' Of course, the  activities of discursive reason do not exhaust all the intellectual gifts that he has given us. Intuition (or "intellectus,") --that immediate, personal, non-discursive apprehension of what is real and therefore true, good, and beautiful--is another incredible gift.  Let us not fear or neglect either way of thinking.

My response to Bob Roberts

Here is an encouraging article, "Long Live the Organic Church" by Mark Galli.

Here is a response to that article by Bob Roberts, Jr. , founding pastor of NorthWood Church in Dallas/Fort Worth and numerous other church plants.

Here is my response to to Bob's response. (Since I can't post it to Glocalnet, I'll just make do here!) ; )
________________________________________________

I agree, Bob: whether there's an organic, emerging, ancient-future, Greatly Awakened or whatever church doesn't much matter to me. But it DOES matter that the church is Christ's body. So please help me out here. I'm confused by your response to Mark Galli.

Can you please clarify:

1) Exactly what do you mean when you use the word "institution?" What do you mean when you use the word "church?"
2) Do you think that Galli is saying church=institution? Do you think he has the same definition as you do?
3) Are you saying that church should not be an institution?

I wonder if you and Galli aren't speaking two different languages. IMO Galli speaks premodern Realism; you seem to be speaking (post)modern Nominalism. These are two different metaphysical positions, two different hermeneutics. As a result, I suspect that what he means by institution is different from what you mean by it.

I wager that for him, Church = Body of Christ, a la Ephesians; while for you, church is what you call the collection of individuals who each love Jesus. For example, you write, "those are merely LABELS and expressions outwardly." ISTM that for you, church is just a name, a "nomen", not referring to anything real; while for Galli, church is NOT just a name; it DOES refer to something real, some whole which is greater than its parts, (what Plato, Aristotle and St. Thomas called a "Form" or a "Universal.") This might explain why you wrote that the church as institution merely means "to be organized, maintained, well-funded, institutionalized." For nominalists, that's all an institution CAN be, because they have no other way of understanding "institution."

But Realists have the metaphysical vocabulary and ontology--"individuals PARTICIPATE in universals; individuals image universals." They are able to speak about deep, real, organic RELATIONSHIPS. These relationships occur only because they are formed and nourished in the womb of universals/institutions.

Nominalists do not have such a vocabulary. Because they do not countenance universals, there is nothing greater than the individuals themselves, nothing in which they might PARTICIPATE. They can only CONNECT.(Again, I suspect you are a nominalist because you use that very language: "Real-time CONNECTIONS - LINKING your job..." Note the difference between "connect" and "participate in") For nominalists, only individuals eare real. Individuals either choose to connect with other autonomous individuals, or they connect randomly. Institutions do not assist in connecting because they are "fictions." If anything, they impede connections, because they falsely present themselves as something real to connect to. ("What's real is Jesus, not the church!)

I'm mystified as to how a nominalist can have anything "deep down inside," simply because individuals are more like atoms, sticking together in masses or bouncing apart. That is not the stuff of intimacy, either with other people or with God. "Deep down inside" implies a more sophisticated, nuanced metaphysic, one which demands participation rather than simply connection. Isn't that why marriage is taken as a major metaphor for our relation with the Lord in scripture, rather than say, oxen being yoked as a team, or a fasces (rods tied together to form a cylinder)?

I'll tip my hand and admit that I am not a nominalist, because IMO nominalism is liable to lead to greater problems than realism, as my blog references indicate below. To put it another way, I'd rather deal with the problem of the church as an institution than the problems of NOT having the church as an institution. (Institution in Galli's sense). I'd rather deal with the problem of marriage as an institution, than the problem of NOT having the institution of marriage.

Blessings IN Christ ; )

Beth
-----------------------------------------------
from my blog,Sat. Nov. 3, 2007:

This recent article appeared...from the Christian Post:

"A Gallup Poll in June found that Americans have less confidence in organized religion. Only 46 percent said they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in church/organized religion which was one percentage short of being the lowest in Gallup's history since 1973.

"I would say that [the drop is] because organized religion is organized and it’s religious,” Batterson said.

Among teens, many are not as interested in learning the traditions of their faith or listening to religious teachings as much as they are in making a connection with God and seeking a better understanding of what they believe, a recent Barna study showed. Most teens prefer a church that teaches how their faith should influence everyday decisions and lifestyle rather than one that teaches the traditions and background of their faith.

And as churches begin to break institutional walls and increasingly reflect the body of Jesus Christ, Schuller sees the Church becoming a 24-hour experience.

"[Church] is going to be experiential and lived out in daily lives,” he stated. “If people ask me ‘Where’s your church?’ I’ll often say ‘What time of the day is it?’ This is a good illustration of my point. So, okay it’s 9:00 Wednesday. Elder John is over at his store selling suits. So part of the church is over there. Sister Mary’s just getting back from dropping her kids off at school, so that part of the church is over there.

"I can go with every member of the church and say that’s where the church is," Schuller said.

"I’m talking about where the church of Jesus Christ is recognized not as an institution, not as a building, but is recognized as the individuals that make up the body of Jesus Christ, living by faith and caring for one another and loving one another," he stressed.

This is the apotheosis of nominalism, the idea that universals are not real, that the only things that are real are individuals. (The Wikipedia article isn't a bad place to start if you need clarification.) Institutions are universals, so automatically they are taken to be unreal and unecessary.

If we follow this metaphysic to its logical conclusion, there is no such thing as the Body, only the collection of individuals that make up the body. There is no Whole, only the sum of the parts. There is no United States, only the census of its individual citizens. There is no Church, only the individuals.

If we follow this line of thinking, we will be forced to conclude that there is no God, only three Persons. Are we prepared to go there? Furthermore, we will have to rewrite John 15, to eliminate all that talk about a "True Vine" and "remaining in me," and just celebrate the collection of the many various branches. Are we ready to do that?

Certainly, a Christianity without universals and their corresponding institutional incarnations will be increasingly appealing for postmoderns, who prize their individual freedom above all else. But we need to do some serious reflection: Is this a place for the Church to be truly countercultural, and display the mind of Christ, rather than the mind of Modernism and Postmodernism? Is there something greater than individual autonomy? Participation is a limiting concept, for it requires accomodating ourselves to something greater than ourselves, something universal. Can there be church and body without participation in Church and Body?


from my blog, June 14, 2007:

Scot McKnight recently posted this riddle:

“Hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus Christ.” These words describe large numbers of people, especially young people, today. They are opposed to anything which savors of institutionalism. They detest the establishment and its entrenched privileges. And they reject the church — not without some justification — because they regard it as impossibly corrupted by such evils. Who do you think said this? [No googling answers.]

It was from John Stott, written in 1958.

IMO it is an oxymoron, but then again I'm not I'm not a good nominalist. A protestant hermeneutic, insofar as it is nominalist, will not be able to countenance universals. An institution is a universal; thus institutions must be opposed. It seems essential to classic Protestant identity to protest, focus on the tension between Christ and church, to always be struggling, to live in the "not yet." Institutions make for broad and handy targets of criticism. Thus for Protestants it makes perfect sense to emphasize the distinction between the two, and assume that somehow one can relate to Christ independently of Church.

[1/8/10: I'm inserting an observation here. One reason I think you may be operating out of a nominalist metaphysic is your frequent use of 1st person singular, as opposed to 1st person plural.

Postmoderns, riding the tsunami of modernism to its inevitable shore, exult in deconstruction and the slaughtering of sacred cows. Institutions invite dismantling-- marriage, church, family, whatever. But some postmoderns (inexplicably) draw a line at deconstructing persons, and so Jesus is able to escape the knife. Thus emergents can relate to Jesus independently of the Church.

But is this faithful to scripture? How does this connect with what Paul writes in Ephesians? Does Paul consider "institution" somehow different from Body? (And even if He does, is Body a particular, or a universal?) Again, a protestant hermeneutic, insofar as it is nominalist, will not be able to countenance universals; an institution is a universal; thus institutions must be opposed.

But what if there is a different hermeneutic, one that is not based on the modernist nominalist metaphysic? What if there are universals, in which particulars participate? (Augustine and Aquinas seemed to think so, calling them "ideas in the mind of God.") Then it will not be so easy to dismiss institutions, or read "Body" as anything except a universal in which particular congregations and persons participate.

As for "me and my house," we take the Church to be the Body of Christ, and that Body is incarnated through the institutional church. So it is a contradiction to accept Christ but reject His Body. Perhaps it is even heresy? ( from Gk. hairesis "a taking or choosing," from haireisthai "take, seize," middle voice of hairein "to choose," of unknown origin.)

Let's stop "loving on" people and start loving them

There it is, once again. Someone has used the expression, "we need to love on him." Sorry to be a curmudgeon, but the premodernist hackles in me rise whenever I hear "love on." I get a mental picture of a splatted paintball helmet, or worse. (See above.) That's because I don't take persons to be Leibnizian monads-- metaphysical atoms, or, if you prefer, billiard balls or bb's. (See my entry, "Metaphysics Made Visual")

Of course, for modernists, taking persons to be discrete units is the only way to go. Some Christian modernists fudge, however, when they assume that one discrete unit is capable of relating to another discrete unit in any meaningful way, such as "loving" one another. To do so means that the individual/atom (ατομος/átomos, α-τεμνω, which means uncuttable) must somehow open to bestow something from within itself upon another individual/atom. But if we overlook that little inconsistency, the rest follows nicely: the individual cannot love another individual; only "love on" him.

No wonder the substitutionary model of atonement has been the premiere (and often the only permissible) way to understand Christ's work on the cross, since the Reformation. Penal substitutionists are nothing if not consistent! Because He is fully God, only Christ can "open" Himself and "cover" the individual with His righteousness.

Note that that His righteousness never penetrates to the core, to actually change the individual. If it did, the model would no longer be one of imputing  but of infusion. Infusion requires a different metaphysical understanding of the person, one in which she is not taken to be a discrete, impenetrable individual. On the modernist understanding, His righteousness merely "covers" the person. It is the best picture of "loving on" that we could imagine, but is "loving on" the best (or only) way to understand the power of Christ's blood?

I am not saying that the modernist picture isn't good news; but I am saying that it isn't good enough news. If I am more than a billiard ball dancing according to the laws of cause and effect, if I am instead capable of real relations, and not just accidental ones, then I need a Savior who can not only position me correctly in relation to God and others, but who can also penetrate and transform me.

And if that is what Christ is trying to do in me, shouldn't we imitate Him and not just "love on" others, but try to love them?

Then no longer will we be paintballers, splattered back and front with shots of sentiment, and discharging our affections at others through drive-by encounters. "Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work."

Lord, this Lent, please teach me to treat others as persons and not as things. May your love pierce me, and not just whitewash me. Transform me, so that I might truly love not only my neighbor as myself, but You.

Obama's Metaphysics Lesson, 2

A visual representation of the most used words in Barack Obama's inauguration speech Photo: Wordle.net

Today's inaugural speech builds upon and completes Obama's victory speech at Grant Park. Once more I am struck by the way Obama understands the need for metaphysical balance, and the way he is able to call for our participation in something larger, while still maintaining the integrity of each person. It's as if he's read The Person and the Common Good and applied Maritain's thought to our current situation:

"[the]human person is engaged in its entirety as part of political society, but not by reason of everything that is in it and everything that belongs to it. By reason of other things which are in the person, it is also in its entirety above political society. For in the person there are some things- and they are the most important and sacred ones- which transcend political society and draw man in his entirety above political society- the very same whole man who, by reason of another category of things, is part of political society." (p. 72-73)

The LA Times had these observations about Obama's inaugural address:

Other writers praised the absence of the first person singular. "The word that stood out the most for me," said author Marisa Silver, "was the word 'we.' Taking the 'I' out of the equation makes us keenly aware of the power and responsibility that we, each of us, have to make differences."

USC professor Leo Braudy was moved to think about the difference between general forces in history and the force of the individual, particularly someone who, like Obama, embodies past polarities. "This is how history moves," he said. "It's all well and good to talk about the rise of liberalism or the fall of communism, but really it's the individual who carries these forces within him and is able to move history forward."

Has nominalism been weighed, and has it been found wanting? We can only hope so, for the future of this nation, and for each of our own sakes.

"Nothing comes easy or free."

My friend also wrote, "Nothing good comes easy or free."

Perhaps not initially, in this fallen world; but it is the faith of Christians that some things come for free, and that eventually it is possible that some good things come easier and easier. I turn to Josef Pieper here, who writes in Leisure, the Basis of Culture:

" ...according to Kant, the morl law by definition is opposed to natural inclination. It is simply part of the nature of things that the Good is difficult and that the voluntary effort put into forcing oneself to do something becomes the standard for moral goodness. The more difficult thing must be the higher good. Schiller's ironic verses point out the problem:

I help my friends, and it feels nice,

until I fear that it's a vice.

So, effort is good. This was the thought formulated long ago by the Cynic philosopher Antisthenes, one of Palto's friends and a fellow disciple of Socrates. Antisthenes, by the way, was a suprisingly 'modern' figure. He was responsible for the first paradigm of the 'worker'--or rather, he represented it himself. He not only came up with the equation of effort with goodness, he also extolled Hercules as the Accomplisher of Superhuman Actions. Now this is an image that still (or , once more?) has a certain compelling attraction: from the motto of Erasmus to the philosophy of Kant, who used the word 'Herculean' to praise the heroism of philosophers, and on to Thomas Carlyle, the prophet of the religion of Work: 'You must labor like Hercules...'As the ethicist of independence, this Antisthenes had no feeling for cultic celebration, which he preferred attacking with 'enlightened' wit; he was 'a-musical, ( a foe of the Muses: poetry only interested him for its moral content); he felt no responsiveness to Eros (he said he 'would like to kill Aphrodite'); as a flat Realist, he had no belief in immortality (what really matters, he said, was to live rightly 'on this earth'). This collection of character traits appear almost purposely designed to illustrate the very 'type' of the modern 'work-aholic.'

"Effort is good': objecting to this thesis in the Summa theologieae, Thomas Aquinas wrote as follows: 'The essence of virtue consists more in the Good than in the Difficult.' 'When something is more difficult, it is not for that reason necessarily more worthwhile, but it must be more difficult in such a way as to be at a higher level of goodness.' The Middle Ages had something to say about virtue that whill be hard for us fellow countrymen of Kant to understand. And what was this? That virtue makes it possible for us ...to master our natural inclinations? No. That is what Kant would have said, and we all might be ready to agree. What Thomas says, instead, is that virtue perfects us so that we can follow our natural inclination in the right way. Yes, the highest realizations of moral goodness are known to be such precisely in that they take place effortlessly because it is of their essence to arise from love. And yet the overemphasis on effort and struggle has made an inroad even on our understanding of love. Why, for instance, in the opinion of the average Christian, is the love of one's enemies the highest form of love? Because here, the natural inclination is supressed to a heroic degree. What makes this kind of love so great is precisely its unusual difficulty, its practical impossibility. But what does Thomas say? 'It is not the difficulty involved that makes this kind of love so worthy, even though the greatness of the love is shown by its power to overcome the difficulty. But if the love were so great as completely to remove all difficulty - that would be a still greater love...

...The innermost meaning of this over-emphasis on effort appears to be this: that man mistrusts everything that is without effort; that in good conscience he can own only what he himself has reached through painful effort; that he refuses to let himself be given anything. We should consider for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life is based on the reality of 'Grace', let us also recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called 'Gift';that the greatest Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on Love; that something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved-- is presumed in everything achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something received -- if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that separates this other attitude from the inheritence of Christian Europe."

Merry Christmas! May you receive God's greatest Gift on Christmas and always.

"No gift is free"

My friend wrote: "Nothing good comes easy or free. No gift is free. Does even agape carry obligations?"

I'd like to address this statement with two separate entries. This one will consider the idea, "No gift is free." Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "free?" If it means "no attachment," then it is impossible for any gift to be free, because gift-giving presumes some sort of relationship, no matter how tenuous. There must be a giver, a gift, and a receiver.

But if "free" describes an action performed by an agent who could have chosen to do otherwise, then a gift can be free, because the giver could have chosen not to give it, and the recipient could have chosen not to receive it.

If we were all discrete, independent atomic units, determined by laws of cause and effect, then gift-giving would be impossible, because there would not be any real relationships within which to give and receive; such transactions would be inevitable. If the fitting response for receiving a gift is gratitude, it seems strange to speak of thanksgiving being inevitable.

If we were all discrete independent atomic units, randomly banging into each other across time and space, gift-giving would be impossible, because there would not be any real relationships that lasted long enough for there to be a "giver" and a "receiver." We would not be able to identify the giver, or even the gift, and again, the experience of thanksgiving would be incoherent.

But if we are beings that can choose to enter into real relationships with one another, and choose to begin them or continue them or seal them with gifts, then we can speak of gifts as being free or not.

It is possible to speak of gifting in terms of obligation, if the relationship exists in order to promote/perpetuate the power or position of the giver over receiver. That is, by accepting the gift, the recipient is in some way bound by the giver so that the recipient cannot (or should not) act against the giver. But this is a tragic understanding of gifting. Some people think that all relationships must be construed in terms of oppressors and victims, and indeed, in this fallen world, almost all relationships exhibit this twisting at some point or other. But is it the only way ?

As Christians, we believe that that is not the way God acts, because God is love. We believe that He gave us the greatest gift of all--Himself, in Jesus Christ; not to promote His own power or position, but to lift us from sin into His own life. We believe that the more we catch His vision (that is, catch the Vision of Him) the less we will operate out of obligation or power and the more we will operate out of His truth, beauty and goodness.

We believe that some people (who could have done otherwise) choose to reject that gift. There are consequences either way, (cf. Luke 14) but consequences and obligations are two different things.

Obama's Metaphysics Lesson

"What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself…? Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state?" (--Plato, Republic 476c)

Photo: Getty Images






It's no secret that this blog has a low regard for nominalism, the metaphysical view that reality is reducible to discrete individuals, that there are no "universals." (Look here for a collection of entries that explain and criticize nominalism.) It has been the reigning presupposition of modernism, from Abelard to Ockham to Hobbes to Locke to contemporary libertarians, followers of Ayn Rand, and free market capitalists.

I wonder how many people realized that tonight, in his victory speech tonight at Grant Park, our president-elect himself challenged the prevailing winds of nominalism by constantly stressing what unites us, rather than what divides us. In the following excerpts notice how he rejects the nominalist idea that America is just the name denoting the collection of individuals that compose it. Obama clearly believes there is more to the whole than the sum of its parts.

This will not be an easy lesson for Americans to swallow. We have grow accustomed to our autonomy. We much prefer our role as parts and resist being accountable to a whole. But if one of the lessons of the recent economic collapse is that greed is not good, and then we will have to accept that there must be some limits to our individual selfishness. Community is one of those limits. Obama seems to be inviting us to rediscover the notion of participation in something greater than ourselves. He invites us together to discover and participate in the American Dream.

That is not the message of nominalism; rather, it is a return to reason, to a premodernist metaphysic. Perhaps we are finally waking from the nightmare of individualism and are ready to recall that we are persons, not collectives, but also not atoms. We are beings who engage in relationships with each other and who bear the responsibilities entailed by those relationships, not ball bearings that bounce off of one another in cosmic chaos.

Alone, as individuals, we cannot; but together, as a community, as a nation, we CAN. Christians have a special role to play here, because as Church we can demonstrate to the world what genuine community is, through participation in the Divine Community of the Trinity. Hopefully our fellow citizens will get the idea. Even better, they might want the Real Thing.

Alone, you cannot "do it." Alone, I cannot "do it." Alone, Barak Obama cannot "do it." But together, with him, with each other, and most critically, with God, we can. May we as Christians not squander this opportunity for witness, but instead use it to the glory of God.

------------------------------------------------------
excerpts from PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA'S VICTORY SPEECH

"It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America...

...Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America...

...So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

...And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand...

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Why Protestants are Musicians and Catholics are Architects

Donn Johnson has a fascinating post entitled "Shrine?" prompted by his reflections while on vacation in France. Here is my response:

Amen. The Orthodox understand this shift of time and space and foster it via liturgy and iconostasis. Catholics do it through liturgy, eucharist and (supremely!) their philosophy, art and architecture.

What is fascinating to me is that fact that these traditions are not nominalist in their theological presuppositions. This means that participation of particulars in universals is part and parcel of their life and worship. IMO they are better able to be authentically trinitarian as a result. You might say that the centrifugal ("particular," "different") and centripital ("universal," "unity") forces are balanced.

We Protestants, however, were born Nominalists and have been struggling ever since. We are not characterized by "participation," but by division. Centrifugal forces outweigh centripetal ones.

Incarnation therefore becomes difficult for us, and we are constantly tempted to fly off, either to a gnosticism which holds the spiritual as more "real" than the material, or to a social gospel which holds the material to be more real than the spiritual. Either way, "shrine" becomes unnecessary or even pernicious.

It is no accident that Protestantism tends to produce musicians more than artists or architects!

Understanding Nominalism, Part 3: A Primer in Metaphysics

What you do depends on your vision of what is real.

At some point, the emergent/missional church needs to reconsider its metaphysical foundations, if it is going to move forward.

Philosophical metaphysics wonders about being; about what is real. Some of the questions metaphysicians ask are,

"what kinds of things are there? Only material things, or are there immaterial things as well?" (aka, ontology)

"does everything reduce into one thing, or are there many things? And if the latter, what relations do they have with one another?" (aka, the problem of the One and the Many; or the problem of Universals and Particulars")

Sometimes people use different words besides metaphysics to refer to the effort to answer these questions. You'll hear words like "narrative," or "worldview" or "presuppositions" or "story" or "hermeneutic." There are some slight variations in meaning between these words, but ultimately they all attempt, at some point, to deal with metaphysical questions.

I. A Primer in Metaphysics, Digest version

A. Premodernism:

1. The "building blocks" of reality are relationships. Being doesn't "reduce" down any further.

Matter and form. Substance and accident. Essence and existence. Potential and actual. Universals and particulars. Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

2. Premodernism uses "both-and" lenses to see the world.

Things are both able to be understood in their unity and in their diversity. What is real can be said to be both one and many. We understand what there is by using both left brain and right brain, both ratio/discursive reason and intellectus/intuition.

Everything that exists exists in a community, in a deep and real (not socially created, or individually imposed) relationship with other things. Christian premodernists believe that human sin has damaged all our relationships, with God, with each other, and with creation. Presently, apart from the Godhead, there is no perfect community, but there is hope, because Jesus Christ has come and is in the process of restoring it.

B. Modernism

1. The building block of reality is the discrete individual.

Modernists who are scientists almost always wind up being materialists, reducing everything to bits of matter in motion. Other modernists are more politically inclined, and reduce society to a contract between independently existing individuals. But whatever way you go, for modernism there is something more fundamental, more independent than the relationship.

2. Modernism uses "either/or" lenses to see the world. What is real are "many."

Modernism rejects the right brain in favor of the left. Thus, one must choose: either feeling or logic; either religion or science, either Kant's "practical reason " or his "pure reason."

Modernism tries to overcome the either/or dichotomy by desperately trying to find some unity for independently existing things. Hence, the 19th century emphasis on "the brotherhood of man," and the 20th century search for a "unified field theory."

C. Postmodernism (aka hypermodernism)

1. The building blocks of reality are...wait a minute: What reality? Yours? Mine? His? Theirs?

2. Postmodernism uses the "either/or" lens ground its ultimate power.

It sees the dead end of modernism, and struggles to avoid it by rejecting the oppression of the left brain and favoring the marginalized right brain. But in so doing, it is still a captive of either-or thinking. Either be a subject or an object; either be an "I" or an "it"; either freedom or opression, either master or slave.

What is real are the "many," but Postmodernism is skeptical of ever finding any unity for them. It rejects Modernism's attempts to overcome the either/or dichotomy, and so tries going the opposite direction, emphasizing the diversity of all independently existing things. Hence, "multiculturalism" and "diversity training."

Nietzsche, the Prophet of Postmodernism, understood that the chaos of diversity could only be overcome by the dominating will of the "Ubermensch." When God-- who is Himself a perfect community, and who has created a world to be in perfect community with Him--is dead, so is all hope of authentic relationship. The Ubermensch is the epitome of the either/or: either his will, or none.

II. Why this is important for Emergents/missionals:

The very notion of mission is relational. Mission means showing and telling others about how Christ is able to truly unify us with the Lord, with each other, and with creation.

We can't fulfill that mission if within our own understanding of self, world and God we are operating with a metaphysic/hermeneutic/narrative that contradicts and subverts that mission. Integrity of mind and heart and soul and strength are critical.

Mission without a coherent metaphysic is like trying to read and write with only part of the alphabet. The modernist understanding of mission only used the consonants; the posmodernist understanding is only using the vowels. To tell a story completely and coherently, you have to use all 26 letters. It's not an either or. It's a both-and.

So why hamstring ourselves by limiting ourselves to either vowels or consonants? We will not be able to carry out the mission of showing and telling Jesus very well, for what we do depends on our vision of what is real, and the reality of mission is that we need to be able to use both.

By extension, then, a missional church needs to experience both the journey and the destination. We need to be able to recognize both that which is universal and that which is particular; we need to know both truth as intelligible and truth as mystery; we need to both Jesus as human, and Jesus as divine.

Modern and postmodern narratives cannot support both-and thought and action, but a premodern narrative can.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. (Rev. 21:3)

There's nothing more both-and than that!

(Gary, Brian, Donald, and Leonard...are you listening?) (grin!)