What an encouraging article by Anthony Esolen (scholar of Dante and of Lucretius, and of much else besides). Thanks, Theresa Kenney!
First, in addition to much helpful background and commentary, there is this Boethian wisdom (for anyone struggling with “why bad things happen to good people”):
But virtuous men are tried by God, for their good. God protects some who are weak by giving them only good fortune. He gives to some virtuous men the most terrible trials, that they may emerge victorious and shine as exemplars for their fellow men. He gives an easy life to some vicious men, that penury may not prompt them to crimes even worse; or he may, as severe punishment, withhold from them the reversals that might prompt them to repent. We do not know and cannot know what God may intend in his special providence for any individual.
Then there is this:
Boethius was the one man most responsible for bequeathing classical learning to the West, to survive the Dark Ages to come, until the Medieval world should burst forth in its wonderful light. Yet I think that the Consolation may be meant for us now in a special way. The barbarians are back. Humane learning is forgotten or despised. The Church is buffeted, while the gargoyles of the age caper and make mouths and laugh. I imagine that the Gothic keepers of the jail cracked their jokes too.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius kept faith to the end. No one honors or even remembers his accusers; but the Catholics of Lombardy honored and remembered him straightaway: Saint Severinus. His bones rest in the cathedral of Pavia, where the bones of Saint Augustine also lie.
It is better for us to wait with that man in his cell, than to enjoy all of the vast earth among men gone mad, quite mad. God give us the courage to do so!
Perhaps what I love most about all this is that it allows a Christian (Esolen might argue “a Catholic”) to “keep calm” in the midst of the “culture wars,” even while admitting that western culture is crumbling. (I am likely more willing than Esolen, more in line with Radical Orthodoxy, to admit the “upside” to such crumbling, but it is still quite sad, possibly even tragic.)
As CS Lewis well understood (see his Discarded Image) we need Boethius today more than ever.
I suppose that working on a PhD at a (somewhat) traditionalist Roman Catholic university has made me more “conservative.” But the deeper reason beneath that development, it seems clear to me, is simply that I have learned so much more (than I had known as one reared in secular and evangelical institutions), particularly historically.
In this blog post (which has been simmering for about a half decade or more) I hope to highlight a basic difference (a difference, perhaps, in disposition or orientation) between the premodern mind and the modern, western mind. It has to do with the role that exceptions (or exceptions to the rule) play in our thinking.
First, consider a basic, very elemental, structure or “pattern” laid down by Aristotle. Aristotle, to put it very simply, would say that it is the nature of an acorn to develop into an oak tree. (He talks this way in the Metaphysics and the Physics.) The “purpose” or “end” (Greek telos), that is, of the acorn is the fully developed oak tree. The oak tree is the “fully active” version of the acorn. The acorn, in turn, is a “potential oak tree.” (This way of thinking relies on the Aristotelian metaphysical distinction between potency and act.)
Now, Aristotle perfectly realized that not all acorns successfully develop into fully formed oak trees. As did St. Thomas, who follows Aristotles’s reasoning here without exception. But it would never have occurred to either of them to conclude, on the basis of the failure of some acorns to develop into oak trees, that it is not the nature of an acorn to develop into an oak tree. Rather, they understood that this accomplishment occurs “for the most part,” that is, not 100% of the time. They understood that nature (or natural philosophy) is “messy” and does not comply with our rational, scientific systems in the same way that, say, mathematics does. (As an example of Aristotle’s thinking about things that are true “for the most part,” see Nicomachean Ethics I.3, together with his word of caution that accompanies them.)
The modern mind is quite different. To cite an example of the “default tendency” of the modern mind which I am trying to diagnose in this article, consider the (admittedly, ecclesiastically “intramural”) issue of infant baptism. I could not begin to count the number of times people have registered their opposition to the catholic practice of infant baptism in the church to me on the basis of the exception. “Richard Dawkins,” a good friend of mine likes to say, “was baptized as an infant in the Church of England, and just look at him,” implying that Dawkins disproves that the “nature” of baptism is to bring baptizands into a life of Christian faith. We know that infant baptism is not a valid or true doctrine, so this reasoning goes, because it does not always “work.” This way of thinking, I’d argue, is analogous to the point about the acorn not successfully growing into an oak tree: the exception does not undermine the “nature” of the thing in question.
Exhibit B: sex and the presence in nature of hermaphrodites, or biologically ambiguous genitalia in infants, children, and adults. Yes, the Scriptures speak of “male and female” (Gen. 1:27). (They also speak, in the same context, of a binary division between “land animals” and “sea creatures,” but one would be on shaky ground to hold on this basis that they intend to reject the existence of amphibians.) I am certain that the ancient Hebrews were aware of ambiguous genitalia. But, again, nature is messy and “for the most part.”
Does the exception here refute the rule or the “nature” of the thing, that “male” and “female” are valid ways of describing what we find in nature, or what actually is in nature? No more than the stunted acorn does.
(Does my position here make me an “essentialist?” No, because of this, and also because when a Christian speaks of “nature,” she will in the next breath speak of “creation.” But that is a topic for a later blog post.)
Today I experienced the Episcopal Church (in my diocese, the Diocese of Texas) at its best. Today a small army of saints was newly confirmed and received, the Gospel of the Risen Christ was clearly preached, and the Kingdom of God was extolled and celebrated.
All this leads me to reflect on my church, and my place in it.
I am a traditional Christian. I am in a real sense deeply catholic, committed to the teaching of the apostles. And yet, my church–the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Texas–seems (to my mind) to be drifting away from that foundation in some important ways.
Am I tempted to leave this church, to walk away and find greener pastures elsewhere, more doctrinally faithful to the apostles? Yes, I am.
And yet, what I am compelled to admit after today–a day of rich fellowship and joyful love with the saints–is that I can no more walk away from my church than I can walk away from myself.
Why would I say such a thing? I say it because this church is my very self.
In this lecture David Bentley Hart argues (at about the 19-minute mark) that the traditional doctrine of eternal damnation in hell presupposes something like Cartesian subjectivity. That is, to think that my loved ones can burn eternally in hell but that I can remain free and clear of those flames assumes that my soul is “buffered” (to invoke Charles Taylor’s) terminology, and this, in turn, is something like Descartes’ (or Kant’s) notion of the individual subject.
But this is not Christian. To view the soul or the human self in a way which resonates with Christian assumptions is to recognize that my soul is formed by, in, and with others. My soul is the product of a whole web of influences, personalities, convictions, perspectives which I did not invent, but rather which I inherited from others. That is, my soul is enmeshed with the souls of many others. My soul is not distinct, but “porous.” It overflows into the souls of others and vice-versa.
To embrace this is to embrace intersubjectivity.
My soul is intersubjectively enmeshed with the souls of countless others. But chiefly among these “countless others” are those with whom I share Christ’s body and blood week in and week out. Chiefly those with whom I am “one body”–the Body of Christ–in the most concrete ways possible. In the most basic, visible ways possible.
I am talking about my church. The visible Body of Christ with whom I am in communion. The Diocese of Texas. This is the community of souls with whom my soul is enmeshed.
I might not “agree” with the majority. Praise God! I get to demonstrate that the love of Christ is not conditioned by agreement, but is bigger and deeper!
I can no more leave these saints than I can leave myself. Literally.
I have been meditating lately on Psalm 48:8: “As we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of our God.”
You see, faith is a “hearing thing”: it comes to us, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 10:17, “by hearing.” His reminder that “we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7) confirms the same point. Yet even though all this is true, and even though the book of Hebrews reminds us that “faith … is the conviction of things unseen,” nevertheless Psalm 48:8 presents us with the opposite perspective.
Yes, faith is a “hearing thing,” and, yes, we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. Nevertheless Psalm 48:8 reminds us that, in addition to all that, God desires that the contents of our faith also become visible. “As we have heard, so have we seen” means that the oracles of God, the promises of God, have now become manifest in the “real world,” the world of our sense perception, laid bare for all to see, to the glory of God. There is a time and a place for this, too. The heart of a Christian longs to see the things of faith become visible. The follower of Christ longs for the Kingdom of God—the reign of God—to become palpably present in the daily lives of men, women, and boys and girls. When this happens, faith has “become sight;” the word of God has become visible, palpable, seen.
I want to point to two examples of “faith becoming sight.” The first is Promise Academy, located in the building of New Days Community Church in North Tyler, near the corner of Broadway and Gentry. At this brand new school, in its very first year, the promises of God and the longing of God’s people are becoming visible. Here, at Promise Academy, hope is being provided for a handful of little ones (right now, the school only consists of Kindergarten; God willing, first grade will be added next year). At this school, a small number of mainly black and Hispanic kindergartners are learning how they are fearfully and wonderfully made, how God’s ways are the best ways, how trust and obedience in the God who loves them will bear fruit in their lives. All this is becoming visible: in their facial expressions, in the life of their families, in the physical beauty and orderliness of their lives (both in the classroom and out).[*]
My second example is a very different one, but one no less breathtaking: Christ Church South. The groundbreaking ceremony we experienced last week … this, too, is an example of “faith becoming sight:” a new Temple for the worship of God is being erected right in front of us! A new House of Prayer for all people and for a burgeoning community of friends in faith is being raised up, for all the world to see. Not only is God’s creation being transfigured from glory to glory, but sacred, sacramental space is being consecrated and set apart. Fr. David’s “message” at the perimeter of the construction sight “nailed it:” just imagine how many generations of lives will be impacted for the cause of Christ and the sake of the Kingdom.
All this in a contemporary world wracked by division, addiction, and heartache. A sign of visible hope, a leading indicator of Gospel victory. By the grace of God alone.
“As we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of our God.”
[*] To learn more about Promise Academy, please visit http://promisetyler.org/
This last week the Anglican Primates Meeting occurred in Canterbury, and the meeting has attracted much attention.
For background, see here and here.
Two thoughts (since folks have been asking me):
- This is a welcome development, because for the Episcopal Church to think that we can “have our cake and eat it, too” is a travesty. What the primates did is to send a signal to the Episcopal Church that certain decisions we have made having to do with marriage and its redefinition will now bring about certain consequences. We will now no longer be able to tell our global partners in ministry to “bugger off” and that we are going to do our own thing, and still expect that we will be able to be “warm and fuzzy” with them. We can no longer do that. This is a good thing, because in any real relationship, actions have consequences. Show me a relationship in which actions do not have consequences, and I will show you a superficial relationship, which isn’t really real.
- It just became a lot easier to imagine a time in the near future when the Episcopal Church will not be part of the Anglican Communion.
As always, the thought of Ephraim Radner in this area is worth considering, and I agree with it wholeheartedly.
In one of his earlier works, the Lectures on the Romans, Martin Luther drew on highlights from Augustine to introduce theology to an extraordinary image for understanding the experience of being a sinner. ‘Scripture,’ Luther tells us, ‘describes man as so curved in upon himself that he uses not only physical but even spiritual goods for his own purposes and in all things seeks only himself.’ (Luther’s Works, vol. 25, p. 345, see also pp. 291-92). What Luther means is (i) that despite our best efforts to get beyond ourselves, to love and serve others to the best of our ability, human beings find it impossible to escape the gravity well of self-interest, and (ii) we are often unconscious of this fact, even as it in fact drives our behavior. Luther quotes Jeremiah 17:9: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt–who can understand it?’
— Quoted from The Mockingbird, vol. 6, p. 35.
What is the strangest birthday gift you have ever received?
What if someone gave you the gift of a tombstone for your birthday? How about a coffin?
As I said in a sermon on the 4th floor this past Sunday, if one is in their 20’s, with decades of life in front of them, they might interpret such a gift as a bizarre joke. But if you are in your 70’s or 80’s, with only a few more years of this life to look forward to, then such a present would surely provoke distress and offense.
As Fr. David hinted from the Christ Church pulpit this last Sunday, the gift of myrrh—gifted by the three Magi to the baby Jesus on that day long ago—is a strange gift indeed. A spice or ointment used for embalming the dead, it points directly to the death of this Baby. Here in the presence of the Mother of God, it foreshadows the cross of Christ, the arrow which will pierce her own heart (Luke 2:35).
There is so much going on in Matthew’s presentation of these exotic Magician-Kings from the East. In addition to the foreshadowing of the cross, this story also startles us into the realization that Christ came to form a new global community, a new international family, composed not just of Jews and Gentiles, but also of “civilized” and “barbarian.” For not only were these three strange pilgrims not religious authorities; not only where they not rank-and-file Jewish worshippers; they weren’t even Roman citizens. They were literally from the edges of the earth, from way outside “the grid.” And yet in Matthew’s story they are the first to bow down and worship the Jewish Messiah.
These are just a couple of reasons why, for me, the Epiphany is my favorite feast of the Church. A couple of reasons why, too, we named our new community within Christ Church “the Epiphany Community.”
As we observe the final Epiphany (January 6) before launching Christ Church South, I am full of awe and excitement. Awe that God has been faithful; excitement for the coming season of mission and ministry.
I am mindful that the mission of Gospel love in the world is unstoppable. As we continue to commend the love of Christ to all kinds of folks in Tyler and East Texas, God will bless our efforts, even though the results will not look like what we expect. It will be an astonishing surprise.
Here, too, we find a clue from Matthew’s story in chapter 2 of his Gospel. Imagine what was going on in Mary and Joseph’s hearts and minds that night. They have finally found a place to lay their weary bodies. A firm bed from which to enter into the travail of childbirth. At this point Mary and Joseph have literally had their world turned upside down, and their heads are spinning. They don’t “know which way is up.” Neither would I, had I experienced all of that: the visitations from the angels, the unexplainable pregnancy, the near divorce, the forced migration. Surely they were on the brink of a nervous breakdown or worse.
And then, after the crying newborn has been safely delivered, as Mary’s pain and discomfort finally recedes, they look up, and what do they see? An astonishing surprise. A multitude of shepherds surrounding three strange Kings from the East, bowing down to worship their child, bearing lavish gifts of grace and abundance.
At that moment, their struggling trust was vindicated, and they knew that God powerfully at work in their lives. It was wild. It was crazy. It was uncontrollable. But it was from the Lord.
As it was for them on that first Epiphany, so may it be for us in ours.
Happy New Year!
I have made a couple of changes to the “pages” section of my blog. I have deleted the obsolete page “Philosophico-theological notebook,” and replaced it with what seems to me to be a much more relevant page, “crucial vocab.” My first entry in this new page: my “definition” of “science.” I hope to use this page as a place to “point” people to so that we can “be on the same page” when using specific terms in discussion.
My blog, 8+ years after its inception, remains valuable to me. (And, based on anecdotal conversations with real people as well as the “widget” I use to monitor the traffic, people actually read it.) I turned off the comments functionality a few months ago, and this was a wise move, I think. (Folks can comment on Facebook.)
Upcoming posts this month (hopefully):
- How prudentia or practical wisdom is like shock absorbers.
- On “ruducing difference to the same.”
- Pixar vs. St. Thomas on emotions.
- Philosophy and Theology: the difference history makes (has made).
- “Authenticity” and “hypocrisy.”
In his article “How is Christianity thinkable today?” Michel de Certeau provides a lucid statement about what might be called “alterity,” that is, the question of how one deals with the Alter, the other. The other who is Muslim, the other who is racist, the other who is gay. It matters not here who the other is.
He shows, very simply, that there are two ways of making the other disappear: you can simply (try to) exclude them, or you can assimilate or reduce them into a version (or a subset) of the same.
Here is why, if I were a gay man, I would oppose “gay marriage” in the United States. Surely it assimilates gay people into the category of “married people.” This is a reduction of two different groups–groups that need each other precisely because they are different–to a single, univocal element.
It effaces and eclipses difference by reducing everything to the same. By arbitrarily redefining marriage, we have homogenized our political culture: now (more than before) we are all the same.
And the result, of course, is that we are far more manipulatable by the state.
In this story, CNN.com reports on an “open letter” (in the form of a Facebook post) by California college-student Muslim Marwa Balker.
Ms. Balker is responding to the recent, deplorable comments by Donald Trump on the Muslim community in the United States.
Obviously Trump is an idiot. It is, however, Ms. Balker’s comments which I think need to be examined, precisely because the ideology they display is much more insidious, as proven by the fact that CNN holds her comments up as an example of model political speech.
Addressing Mr. Trump, Balker states: “Being Muslim does not make me any less American than you are.” That this statement seems natural and noble is obvious to anyone living in Western society in the 21st century.
However, one of my leading theological / philosophical lights, Michel de Certeau (sort of the Christian version of Michel Foucault) would say that Balker is reducing the difference of another to the same, to a false identity.
She is attempting to constitute one thing (American identity, identity as a U.S. citizen) as the whole. Certainly Trump is performing a different version the same attempt; of course “radical Islam” tries to do the same; admittedly the Church historically has been guilty of the same project.
For de Certeau, however (as articulated in his article “How is Christianity Thinkable Today?”) this move, this strategy, is not authentically Christian. de Certeau would call this “a false universalism that functions as a mask.”
When I say that I am a Christian first, a Texan second, and an American third, this is the sort of issue I am trying to allude to.
Ms. Balker is plainly an American first and a Muslim second. My stance, on the contrary, is that the only possible universalism is that of the “concrete universal” (Heidegger), in which difference is not eclipsed but lived with and engaged. Authentic Christianity, that is, life within the Body of Christ, really does make such an approach possible. The Christian church is the only (possible) concrete universal I know of.
As de Certeau points out, the existence of the four Gospels demonstrates the founding importance of admitting intractable difference: the Gospel of Mark is not saying the same thing as the Gospel of John.
Theology, as Milbank says, is (or can be) the “discourse of nonmastery.”
Modern liberal political philosophy, of the kind that Ms. Balker has swallowed uncritically, cannot make this claim; nor does it want to.
A couple of nights ago I had a wonderful conversation with my 73 year old dad (who had a stroke a week ago). We talked about a devotional book that he (and my whole family) read called _Jesus Calling_.
What a blessing this book has been for us. The entry for Nov. 15 reads thus:
Approach problems with a light touch. When your mind moves toward a problem area, you tend to focus on that situation so intensely that you lose sight of Me. You pit yourself against the difficulty as if you had to conquer it immediately. Your mind gears up for battle, and your body becomes tense and anxious. Unless you achieve total victory, you feel defeated.
There is a better way. When a problem starts to overshadow your thoughts, bring this matter to Me. Talk with Me about it and look at it in the Light of My Presence. This puts some much-needed space between you and your concern, enabling you to see from My perspective. You will be surprised at the results. Sometimes you may even laugh at yourself for being so serious about something so insignificant.
You will always face trouble in this life. But more importantly, you will always have Me with you, helping you to handle whatever you encounter. Approach problems with a light touch by viewing them in My revealing Light.
Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O Lord.
—Psalm 89:15
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
—John 16:33
My godly father went on to speak about how he has _never_ approached life, or life’s problem’s this way. Instead he has always attacked any problem “directly and head on,” trying to fix things immediately and to exercise full control. But now, on the other side of a stroke, he was able to appreciate this wisdom at a deeper level.
What an opportunity, we went on to contemplate together, to let God show us new ways, new paths, new approaches to life, new ways of being. Whether you are 73 or (like me) 43.
Today on my 10-mile morning run, after a rainy morning during which I worked, studied, and wrote at a coffee shop for about four hours (waiting for the rain to end), I was thinking about this “light touch.” I was mindful that this is how it is with running, too. At various points along this morning’s ten mile run, with the sky now dazzling blue with the sunlight dissolving the last vestiges of cloud, I thought about and meditated on the fact that distance running requires a “light touch.” Neither bulldozing forward with brute force, nor procrastinating on your ass waiting for the perfect conditions to run.
Instead, “running with a light touch” is a lot like what the ancients meant by practical wisdom (phonesis; prudentia). As I plan to articulate in a future blog post, the ability or “know how” to live–or to run–with a “light touch” is analogous to driving with a good set of shock absorbers. Shock absorbers which can respond to the bumps and potholes of life. Phronesis is the wisdom to know that sometimes the truths of theory (episteme; scientia) don’t link up, don’t precisely “map onto” the rough-and-tumble of life completely smoothly and without remainder.
Hence, we must run and travel and live “with a light touch,” trusting in God and holding our theory / plans / knowledge very loosely as we travel down the road of life, as wayfarers in transit to our final destination which is God.
This morning is a typical morning for me. For three and a half years now I have been rising from my cozy bed (which I share with a snuggly friend) at around 5:00 AM, gathering up my strength and heading westward down I-20 for Dallas. As I sit in the Starbucks in Terrell at 6AM this morning, I wonder what Tylerites I might run into. About half the time—I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday, without fail—I will see a friend from the Rose City in this highly caffeinated place.
And when they see me they are sometimes taken back. “Father Matt,” they say, “I almost did not recognize you: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you without the collar.”
Ah, the collar; usually we clergy call it the “dog collar.” It is one of the true joys of serving as an ordained minister in this Church. As I Presbyterian minister (which I was for almost a decade) I rarely if ever wore one. A few people have asked me over the years “What does it mean?” to which I reply that it is an ancient symbol that reminds us of our slavery to Christ, that we wear the yoke of this slavery daily on our bodies.
And yet, I almost never wear my collar in Big D. (when I pose as a scholar every Tuesday and Thursday). Why not? Several reasons: first, I am not in my “parish:” there are tons of other Episcopal priests in Dallas, and I am content to let them bear that visible burden. Second, though, I use this time to “roll incognito,” to take a break of being a public, institutional servant of Christ, instead choosing to withdraw into a more anonymous mode. I cannot lie: these windows when I am “off duty” as a priest have been a real gift these past three and a half years. Day in and day out (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) I study and read and write for hours on end in solitude, knowing that the exigencies of pastoral ministry lie dozens of miles away to the east, just over the Smith County line. (It is an oft forgotten fact that even smart phones are equipped with “off” buttons.)
In terms of my doctoral coursework, however, I am beginning to see the light at the end of that tunnel, for, incredibly, my degree audit form indicates that my class requirements are almost complete, which is one reason I have begun to focus on that other requirement (though less formal) for the PhD student in the humanities: teaching college courses. Thanks be to God, I learned yesterday that I will be teaching 20 – 40 freshmen at the University of Texas at Tyler in an introduction to philosophy class this coming spring semester.
Should I wear my dog collar in the classroom? Even though I can make an argument in both directions, I do intend to do so. (I asked the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences if that would be OK, and he said he has no opinion, and there are no official policies concerning this.) Why? For the inverse reasons why I do not wear it in Dallas. At UT Tyler I will be in the parish. There are no other Episcopal churches or ministers who can lay claim to that mission field called UT Tyler any more than I can. And since I will be in Tyler, I will be “on duty.”
Last but not least, I will channel the power of that symbol as I stand before those wet-behind-the-ears freshmen, for I remember what it’s like to sit where they sit. I remember what it is like to be at the big university, away from mom & dad, wondering what in the world is true, what is worth believing in, what is worth living for. And how in the world could I know? Was it even possible to know anything? My philosophy professors at that other U.T. in that other fair Texas city were not pastorally helpful to me, to say the least. Their goal, it seemed, was to dismantle my faith by any means necessary.
I do not intend to proselytize these students as I give them their first gourmet sampling of the philosophical spread next semester; that would be irresponsible and inauthentic. Instead, I will let this ancient symbol of Christ speak for itself.
When was the last time you heard a pastor or a conservative politician in America invoke the notion of “traditional family values”? Examples of this kind of rhetoric abound, and one quick example is this.
Question: if 19th century atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche could hear someone (a pastor, a politician, a “think tank”) invoke this rhetorical phrase, what would he say? I’m pretty sure he’d say: “I won!”
In his editorial introduction to Nietzsche’s _Beyond Good and Evil_, Rolf Peter Hortsmann provides the following summary of three Nietzschean bedrock convictions as expressed in this book (pp xvi – xvii):
- “Life is best conceived of as a chaotic dynamic process w/o any stability or direction.”
- We have no reason whatsoever to believe in any such thing as the “sense” or “value” of life, insofar as these terms imply the idea of an “objective” or “natural” purpose of life.
- Human life is “value-oriented” in its very essence – that is, w/o adherence to some set of values or other, human life would be virtually impossible.
Commenting on this summary, Hortsmann continues: “Where the first conviction is supposed to state an ontological fact, the second is meant to be an application of the ontological point to the normative aspects of human life in particular. The third conviction, though somewhat at odds with the first two, is taken by Nietzsche to reveal a psychological necessity.”
Values, then, are for Nietzsche a way of coping with the senselessness of life.
Now, as Allan Bloom states in this lecture, no-one in the United States talked about “values” before Nietzsche; he introduced this language and rhetoric into our culture. Why, then, do conservative, evangelical Christians adopt a category which has as its foundation atheistic nihilism? Why do they speak of “values,” as in “traditional, family values”?
The answer to that question is complicated, but for me the most penetrating analysis would have to deal with the fact that evangelicalism, in addition to its frequent historical ignorance, long ago jettisoned the Church’s traditional language of the objective Good which is mediated by and embodied in the formation of virtue. It has become a thinly-veiled secularism.
If you lose the language and tradition of virtue (and by the way “virtue” was totally absent from my senior-year ethics class at a prominent Evangelical seminary in the year 2000; instead we focused entirely on “what the Bible teaches”), then you lose any objective basis for morality. And if you lose that, then right-and-wrong devolve into something like preference.
“My tribe’s ‘preference’ over yours:” this is not far from today’s culture wars. That the partisans in this struggle often resort to bullying and might-makes-right tactics (on both sides, including the “Christian Right”) is yet another symptom of the underlying source of the illness: that modern American evangelicalism has “given away the farm” to secularism.
If time travel were possible then a conversation like this, between my 40-year old self and my 30-year old self, would also be possible.
40-yr-old Matt: “I like Hegel. He rescued metaphysics from horrid Kant.”
30-yr-old Matt: “I don’t believe in metaphysics.”
40-yr-old Matt: “Then you don’t believe in God.”
30-yr-old Matt: “I don’t believe in ‘the god of the philosophers.'”
40-yr-old Matt: “Then you don’t believe in the “god” of, say, the Cappadocian Fathers, and so you don’t believe in the Trinity.”
30-year-old Matt: “Well … hmmm … let me think about that.”
What is theology, and what is faith? We in the 21st century West live in an emotivistic culture which is worse than clueless about these things.
For most people in our culture, faith has to do with feelings or private, emotional preferences. “I believe in a God that would never get angry;” “I feel like I don’t really need to go to church;” etc.
But for our premodern forbears in the West, faith is a means to knowledge which compliments and is complemented by reason. Faith is what accepts and grasps the content of revelation, and thus serves as the basis for theology, which applies the tools of rational thought and discourse to the content of revelation, for example, the idea that God is three distinct Persons in one unified substance (or the doctrine of the Trinity).
For a premodern thinker such as St. Bonaventure, there is no sharp dichotomy between faith and reason as there is for us moderns who have ripped and rent the two apart. A good “case study” in this arena is the way Bonaventure allows theology to undermine the neoplatonist theory of divine emanation.
Now a good premodern neoplatonist would follow Plotinus in his view that the world is a necessary emanation from God. Only problem is, this view flies in the face of Christian orthodoxy which asserts an ontological distinction between God and God’s creation. Orthodox Christians are not pantheists, and yet pantheism is where neoplatonic emanationism straightaway leads.
As Peter Spotswood Dillard shows in his helpful _A Way into Scholasticism_, however, Bonaventure does not simply dismiss the idea of divine emanation. He is a good neoplatonist, and he thinks that the idea that God, as Being Itself and the Superexcellent Good, necessarily emanates his being, that God’s being and goodness are superabundantly effusive, is a tenant of proper reason.
And yet Bonaventure holds not only that the world’s being lacks goodness in comparison to God (a non sequitur for standard neoplatonic emanationism), but also that the existence of the world is not necessary. In light of his neoplatonist commitments, what, for the Seraphic Doctor, gives?
Not his commitment to divine emanation, but rather his determination of that in which the emanations consist. For they consist not first and foremost in the creation / world / universe, but rather in the in extra emanations of the Son and the Spirit:
Therefore, unless there were eternally in the highest good a production which is actual and consubstantial, and a hypothesis as noble as the producer–and this is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit–unless these were present, [God] would by no means be the highest good because [God] would not diffuse [God’s self] to the highest degree.
Lots of neoplatonist assumptions packed into that dense statement, but the upshot is that, if God does not produce an emanation which contains the fullness of being just as God does, then God is not the highest good … then God is not God. Hence, for Bonaventure, God must produce an emanation which is maximally existent (if I can use that word).
The upshot for my argument, then, is that what we are witnessing here is theology / revelation / faith “messing with” or altering or qualifying or positioning philosophy / universally-valid-premises / reason. Not only does the orthodox repudiation of pantheism motivate Bonaventure to deny the world as a necessary emanation of God’s very being, but so does the revelation of the Holy Trinity. Since the Father “necessarily” emanates the Son (i.e., the Father’s nature is to do this), we don’t need to regard the world as a necessary, divine emanation in order to honor what Bonaventure regards as the rational truths of neoplatonism.
Faith and reason, theology and philosophy, are here working in tandem. Both are subjected to rational discourse and rational procedures. Both work together in us to produce in us the fullness of knowledge.
In Bonaventure’s _The Soul’s Journey into God_, the Seraphic Doctor offers a regimen for how the soul can come to mirror God, a suggested path for what this might look like.
In this context he says that such an achievement “is more a matter of affective experience [of the inner senses] than rational consideration.”
What might this affective experience of the inner senses mean? What is “inner sense,” anyway?
Without getting too bogged down in pre-modern faculty theory, recall that Aristotle and his medieval followers believed in a faculty of the soul called the “common sense.” This faculty or power is what allows a person to coordinate various sensory input. For example, consider an ice cube. If one holds the ice cube in her hand, she perceives by the sense of touch that it is cold, but she _also_ perceives by vision that it is grey in color, and cubical in shape. But how does she know that the cold thing and the cubical thing are one and the same thing? She knows this, thanks to the work of the inner sense power called the common sense.
Now, although for some early modern thinkers such as Descartes the common sense receives its input prior to the work of the memory and the imagination, for scholastic thinkers such as Thomas and Bonaventure, the common sense is situated _after_ the memory and the imagination. What this means is that the work of his faculty is not limited to the coordination of various sense stimuli, coming from diverse organs of the outer sense (e.g. eyes and skin). Rather, the common sense also imbues the object of thought with qualities supplied by memory and imagination. Surely it is here, in the memory and the imagination, where the “affections” which Bonaventure stresses, originate.
I thought of an example. Suppose you had a bit too much to drink last night. Suppose you drank a bit too much vodka, and you are a bit hung over. Suppose, further, that you just finished a 7 mile morning run, and you are very thirsty. You look up and you see two bottles, both containing clear liquid. For the purpose of this analogy assume that neither bottle has a label on it. You know that one bottle contains vodka, and the other one water.
Notice that the sensory input coming from you eyes as they gaze upon the different bottles is identical. That is, the eyes perceive no difference between the liquid contained in the two bottles: in both cases it is clear and colorless. Yet when you focus on the bottle of vodka you are repulsed, and when you focus on the bottle of water, you are so attracted to it that your mouth waters, impelling you finally to pick up the bottle, open the lid, and gulp down its contents.
What accounts for the difference between your different perceptions of the two bottles of clear, colorless liquid? It is not your vision or any other external sense power. The difference is “affective:” your perception is altered by the “inner sense power,” the “faculty” of “common sense,” which combines features of the two liquids, supplied by the memory and the imagination, with your visual perception of them.
As an Episcopal priest serving in Texas, I am well acquainted with something like political whiplash. Or perhaps it could be better described as ideological schizophrenia.
On the one hand, I minister in a national Church which tends to line up with the views expressed on salon.com or sometimes even gawker.com. On the other hand, I serve in a local context in which if one dare question the reigning assumptions of Fox News, his or her status as a good American is now deeply suspect.
This is the vantage point from which I observe the goings on at General Convention in Salt Lake City. I pray for my bishops, that they will somehow discern the mind of Christ, and for the clergy and lay delegates from our diocese, that they will have discernment and serve faithfully.
I read of the actions and results of General Convention: a march against gun violence, a canonical redefinition of Holy Matrimony, a likely move to divest allocations from certain ideologically offensive funds.
Whether I agree on these issues is totally irrelevant to this article, as is my admission that many in Texas need to hear aspects of the Episcopal Church’s views on these issues.
The question I’m asking is: “is anyone listening?” Yes, many of the major news outlets, traditional and online, will carry the stories. But does anyone in my local ministry context—the folks our community is reaching out to in evangelism—really care?
What is interesting is that, while most of these contacts—the people we believe God is calling to come and taste our Anglican way of being Christian—are quite happy to be living in a “red state,” many of them are not. A good percentage are for gay marriage, against the alleged “right” to bear arms. But both groups are attending our events at church and our evangelistic parties and venues out on the town and at people’s homes: crawfish boils, film nights, pub gatherings, bible studies, service projects.
These people—on the left and on the right—are nothing if not cynical about the church. Many of them walked away from the church, from “organized religion,” years ago. And yet, they are responding to our invitations. They are hanging out with a peculiar group of people (our church community) who love the Body of Christ. They are being drawn in, as if by a “good infection” (to quote CS Lewis).
And now for some more good news. You see, in my local ministry context, we have earned the trust of the community; we have been granted the “right” to minister in ways public (news interviews, interfaith efforts, initiatives for the poor, multi-church conferences) and private (counseling sessions, hospital visits, visits to incarcerated folks). People in our city trust us “on the ground.” They know that we love them, that we love Jesus, and that we are committed to serving our neighbors.
So the ones who would roll their eyes (at best) at the news coming out of Salt Lake City trust us and open themselves up to us anyway, and the ones who would give their Twitter feed a “high five” as the news rolls out of Utah, even if they were to pay attention … these people let us into to their lives, not because they agree with the developments of G.C. They do so, rather, because of something more local, more embodied, more important: a lived encounter with the love of Christ.
The state in which I live and from which I hail is not a “blue state.” And within this red state of which I am a bona fide native, my local community is a crimson dot.
Now, many of my fellow denizens in this concentration of crimson culture consider me a “liberal.” They are quite wrong, and as I tell them frequently, “when you are more conservative than St. Paul you have a serious problem.” There is a world of difference, I tell these friends to my right, between a conservative and one who cherishes and believes in tradition. To quote GK Chesterton, “I am a democrat because I believe that my dead ancestors deserve a vote.”
Now there has been talk at General Convention this year about “what to do with the conservatives” who remain in the Episcopal Church. Michael Curry, for example, points to his track record in North Carolina as a precedent for how he might interact with traditionalist Anglicans at home and around the Communion.
Will the new Presiding Bishop continue to purge conservatives from our ranks, or will he (alas no female candidates are under consideration this election cycle) enact policies, precedents, and attitudes which will allow and encourage them to stay?
Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey once quipped: “the opposite of Catholic is not Protestant; it is schismatic.” I would suggest one could also hold that the opposite of Catholic is ideological. Any church which claims to embody the catholic faith, then, must resist ideology in all its forms. She must resist the temptation to organize the life of the church around any issue or issues that are not agreed on by all Christians, and made explicit by the great creeds of the Church. She must resist the temptation to exclude those who agree with the majority of the tenets of the catholic faith, but at the same time maintain disagreements on sub-catholic issues, regardless of how emotionally provocative those issues are.
Theologian John Milbank says that the Church is “real social space.” Like an English pub or a coffee house or a neighborhood park, it is a community which transcends differences of ideology. In this community one belongs not because he is conservative or liberal, gay or straight, Boomer or Millennial, Republican or Democrat, but instead simply because she has been baptized into the faith of Jesus Christ.
This ecclesial posture is not optional; it is foundational to the identity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. What do we do with the conservatives, then? We affirm, enjoy, and implement our unity within the Body of Christ with them, overcoming every barrier and distinction which in the world only create divisiveness and fragmentation.
The window of time between Ascension and Pentecost (about a 10 day period) is interesting. I call it “Funky Eastertide.” Christ has ascended, but the Holy Spirit has not yet descended. What is the meaning of Easter during this time?
Many people are familiar with the saying “What goes up must come down.”
Fewer, however, have deeply meditated on the upward & downward motion which pervades the Christian narrative. For example, only after Christ is “lifted up” on the cross is he then is he lowered down into the depths of the earth, into Hades or Sheol, which many interpret as a kind of descent into Hell. And then, three days later, he is up again, risen victorious, for his disciples and (according to 1 Corinthians 15) a great multitude of 500 to see.
Now I am not one of those Episcopalians who thimks think that Eastern religions such as Buddhism are something we Christians should emulate. However, it does seem to me that this “down – up” pattern of the death and resurrection of Christ constitutes two halves of a larger whole, kind of like the pattern of the yin and yang. They are stitched together, metaphysically, so to speak. You can’t have one without the other. They infuse and saturate each other with meaning.
This down – up pattern has been given the name of “Paschal Mystery” by the Church: what goes down must come up. And what comes up must first have gone down. Without death there is no resurrection life. Without the dark night there can be no sunrise. Without pruning no beautiful rose blossoms.
But as we think about the feasts Ascension and Pentecost, it seems to me that there is something of a “yin-yang” pattern here, as well. Another “up – down” reality which is worthy of contemplation. In the Ascension Christ ascended up into the heavens and vanished from our view. Why did he do this? Why did he go up?
In John 16:7 Jesus tells his disciples, “Unless I go away the Paraclete will not come to you.” Unless he leaves, that is, the Holy Spirit will not be poured down upon all flesh. In a similar vein in John’s resurrection story when Mary Magdalene tries to hold on to her risen Lord, he rebukes her saying, “Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17). It is as if he is saying, “Mary, don’t try to tie me down; I must go up. It is good for you and for the world that I go up. Only if I go up, can something even better come down.”
We who benefit from the entirety of the Christian canon realize that this “something better” is the gift of the Holy Spirit, poured down onto the Church on the Day of Pentecost. This Spirit, St. Paul tells us, is “the Spirit of the Lord” himself (2 Cor 3:17) and the Book of Acts speaks of the Holy Spirit as “The Spirit of the Lord.” That is, when the Spirit descended onto the Church, it was also Christ himself descending onto the Church, coming down and entering our hearts in a fresh, new, powerful way.
Without the downward descent of Good Friday, there can be no victorious burst of Easter resurrection. Without the upward vanishing of Ascension, there can be no downward outpouring of the Spirit of Life.
So here’s a “homework assignment.” The next time you are at church, look for this “up down” imagery in the liturgy. How many times in the Liturgy are things of various kinds elevated and or brought down?
Everything from the Sursum Corda (“Lift up your hearts / we lift them up unto the Lord”) to the manual actions of the Presider at the Table (notice how many times things are elevated or raised) contributes to this pattern in our lives. Look for it. Study it. It is worthy of contemplation.
I am currently in a graduate “reading group” on Michel Foucault, and it is in that context that I have been thinking much about sexuality, desire, and bodies.
In addition I just watched a fascinating (and deeply convicting and encouraging) documentary put out by (an organization within) the Catholic Church on which makes the point that for the Christian tradition human desire is something which is disordered but able to be transformed. (To put this in the language of Reformed theology, human desire is good, fallen, and redeemed / redeemable in Christ.)
I heartily agree.
With these matters rumbling around in my head, a personal definition of “sexuality” occurred to me on my morning run today. What is sexuality? It is the human desire for human bodies.
We can speak (without falling into Cartesian dualism) in terms of the subject of this desire and the object of this desire.
The subject is the human being, which is necessarily embodied. It is necessarily embodied because the definition of “human” is “rational animal,” and following Boethius in his ordering of the sciences contained in his De Trinitate, an animal (falling under the rubric of natura or in Greek physis) is “inseparable from [its] material [body], either in thought or in reality. “In thought” means that the definition of something (in this case an animal) necessarily includes the notion of embodiedness or materiality. Here “animal” stands in opposition to other beings such as triangles (which as geometric objects are separable from material in thought) and “intelligences” or angels, or the soul, or God (which are separable in both thought and reality).
So, the subject of sexual desire and sexual activity is a human being, an animal, necessarily embodied.
What, then, is the object? While the subject of the desire is a human being, the object of the desire is the body of a human being.
Why the body and not something else, such as the soul or the mind or the attention of a human being? Because there are other names for each of these desires, for example, companionship, love, kononia, friendship, and the like.
How does this definition of sexuality relate to the traditional notion of eros? I do not know, but perhaps I will turn to that question in the near future.
It has been my great joy & privilege over the last few months to get to know Matt Magill of The Magills. My favorite Magills song by far is “Yes.”
Is there a love for me?
Can you deliver me?
Will you remember me?
Have you forgiven me?
The answer is always “yes.”
The answer is always “yes.”
If you’re askin’ … you’re already blessed.
What great news, especially for folks plagued by doubt & guilt.
Reminds me of Tim Keller: “A sense of God’s absence is a sign of his presence.”
And Thomas Merton: “Prayer is the desire to pray.”
And CS Lewis: “Do you doubt that you are one of the elect? Say your prayers, and rest assured that you are.”
And don’t forget Keller (again): we must learn to doubt our doubts.
In his (admittedly highly eccentric) would-be defense of Christian orthodoxy, Slavoj Zizek chides us moderns for the chronological snobbery which strangely betrays our naive ignorance:
Was there … at any time in the past, an era when people directly ‘really believed?’ As Robert Pfaller demonstrated in Illusionen der Anderen, the direct belief in a truth that is subjectively fully assumed (“Here I stand!”) is a modern phenomenon, in contrast to traditional beliefs-through-distance, like politeness or rituals. Premodern societies did not believe directly, but through distance, and this explains, for instance, why Enlightenment critics misread ‘primative’ myths–they first took the notion that a tribe originated from a fish or a bird as literal direct belief, then rejected it as stupid, “fetishist,” naive. They thereby imposed their own notion of belief on the “primitivized” Other.
Now consider (Jaroslav Pelikan on) Newman:
By contrast with … the eagerness to be explicit about everything possible (in Lewis Carroll’s phrase, ‘to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast’), the tradition of orthodoxy, in Newman’s reading, had always observed a reverent restraint.
Pelikan goes on to point out that for Newman (or Newman’s reading of Church Fathers such as Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzus), in its precreedal history “the content of the apostolic tradition had remained secret” in important ways.
Here Zizek resonates with Pelikan’s Newman in their common indictment of the (post)modern tendency–on the part both of believers who embrace it and their cultured despisers who reject it but project it onto ancient people of faith–to posit direct, literal, irreverent and unrestrained belief.
Nobody ever, Zizek is arguing, believed like that. Hence his claim that “we believe today more than ever.”
The following quotation, from James Miller’s 1993 biography The Passion of Michel Foucault, confirms my suspicion that, after all is said and done, Foucault is still a kind of essentialist with respect to human nature.
Foucault suggests that behind the ‘deceptive surfaces’ of modern society lurks a human ‘nature metamorphosized in depth by the powers of a counter-nature.’ Containing, as it does, ‘the passage from life to death,’ the ‘great interior labyrinth,’ like Sade’s Castle of Murders, organizes a space proper to ‘modern perversity.’ ‘A cage,’ the labyrinth ‘makes of man a beast of desire’; a tomb,’ it ‘weaves beneath states a counter-city’; a diabolically clever invention, it is designed to unleash ‘all the volcanos of madness,’—threatening to destroy ‘the oldest laws and pacts.’
– James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, 146-47 (The quotations within the quotation are mainly from Foucault’s [1962] article “Un si cruel savoir.)
Foucault is committed to the task, that is, of “peeling back” all cultural (humanly produced, whether intentional or not) influences, definitions, “historical aprioris,” etc. so as to arrive at the authentically human, at the authentic self. The procedure for such self transformation is connected to his talk of transgressing all limits and hence the necessity of cultivating for oneself various kinds of “limit experiences” (alcohol, fainting, exhaustion, heady literary effects of certain kinds of fiction, torture a la the Marquis de Sade, and–Foucault’s personal favorite–sado-massochism).
Once these limits are transgressed–and this is especially true for the absolute self-imposed limit experience of suicide–then one is finally free of all cultural constraints and is in touch with one’s “true self.”
Now, granted, this is not an example of traditional essentialism, where one identifies an object as a fixed instance of some genus or type of thing, hence having a fixed definition and classification. Nevertheless, there is a distinctively modern drive in Foucault to arrive at a final destination, a purely natural Ur reality, untrammeled by human culture, where one is free to be what one “truly is” (even if one is dead). (Note: it is clear to me in this context that the overall project of Derrida, who would never jump on Foucault’s metaphysical bandwagon here, is superior to Foucault’s.)
Contrast this zeal for pure nature with orthodox Christian theology, for which there is not brute nature and no brute human nature. For Scripture and tradition man is always-already conditioned and constrained by logos / language / culture / habit / politics, by relationship with a logos-uttering God who is himself a community of persons.
For Christian theology there is no need to “peel back” all linguistic shaping, for there is no possibility of doing so.
In
Notes from the Underground we see that for Dostoevsky desires (including sordid ones) cannot successfully be eradicated or stamped out. Instead they can be transformed through seduction. Thus the Underground Man quips: “So change them, seduce me with something else, give me a different ideal.”
In this spirit, Socrates in the latter books of Plato’s Republic tries to “seduce” Glaucon out of his tyrannical tendencies and aspirations by appeal to the superior pleasure of the philosophical life.
So also Aidan Kavanagh says, “Liturgy exists not to educate, but to seduce people into participating in common activity of the highest order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught.” (Having said this, I might want to quibble with Kavanagh’s use of “educate,” seeking to show how it is quite compatible with seduction. Education as ex-duco, a kind of “drawing out” from the deep reservoirs of anamnesis, a la St. Augustine, etc.)
I am 42 years old. I’m an old man. Worse, I’m a middle-aged man. Deal with it. (Yes, I’m talking to myself.)
I’m much too old, for example, to write a subversive shard of provocative bricolage, assembling an argument about why Millenials are leaving the Church in droves (while claiming to be one of them).
May God grant me the grace & peace to admit who I am, to be comfy in my own skin.
Then, and only then, will there be a modicum of hope that “young people” — who these days often call me “sir” — will look to me as a leader, will consider me a resource for navigating the turbulent cultural waves of our time. (Such leadership will then be a “bonus,” not a motive for striving to be at peace with myself.)
In an culture in which “agism” is the last acceptable “ism,” I’m over it. I think I’m legit (hopefully in a humble way) … whether you feel the need to call me “sir” or not.
