Natural Law 4

For Aquinas it is a basic axiom that we should do what is good - which he locates in terms of the natural and essential inclinations of human beings. The application of his general conclusions, such as individul survival or social harmony, are then outlined in increasing complexity, so that in the end by a coherent logic he can build an impressive moral edifice.

...In questions of theory, truth is the same for everybody, both as to principles and to conclusions, but only in those principles which are called [by Boethius] ‘common conceptions. In questions of action, however, practical truth and goodwill are not not the same for everybody with respect to particular decisions, but only with respect to common principles; and even those who are equally in the right on some particular course of action are not equally aware of how right they are.

Further, Aquinas distinguishes between the determinations and conclusions of Natural Law. Restitution of a victim, for example, is a conclusion of Natural Law; whereas the content of the restitution is merely its determination. Lastly, it is worth noting that while Aquinas is certainly no utilitarian, neither is his ethics purely deontological, as has been often assumed. The precepts of the Natural Law aim at the goodness of the end over (even) the goodness of the act performed. Where Aquinas differs from utilitarian thought is that he does ascribe intrinsic value to human actions, in a manner subordinate to the ends. In addition, the good which is the end is not merely defined in terms of human pleasure. In this way, Aquinas can argue teleologically that adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness, gluttony, suicide, murder, lying and promise-breaking are unnatural and therefore contrary to Natural Law.

Natural Law 3

The locus classicus of Thomas’ doctrine of Natural Law is the six articles of 1a2ae, 94. The Natural Law he describes as a habitus, because it is present in the human conscience or synderesis; it “stays always in man” (semper in homine manet). The question of how Natural Law is known by the human subject is a vexed one worthy of further discussion; suffice to say that the Natural Law is the underlying assumption behind human moral discourse. It may be termed a habit not because it is a quality whereby one acts, but because it is steadily held. There is but one precept of Natural Law which Aquinas reveals by analogy with the basis of human apprehension in the real. Like the first principles of natural science, the first principles of practical reason are per se notum - “self-evident”. Practical reason first apprehends the good; thus the first precept of Natural Law, upon which all others are based is:

that good is to be done, evil to be avoided.

All drives of human nature, then, insofar as they can be “governed by reason” (regulantur ratione) are covered by Natural Law. The secondary precepts of Natural Law, which cover a vast range of human activity, derive from this primary command. Thomas tackles next the vexing problem of the universality of Natural Law. In theory, Natural Law must be universally applicable; but even cursory observation can identify the sheer diversity of human desires and behaviour. Aquinas’ solution is to point to the proper priority of the human intellect: humans may be blocked from knowledge of the good by “passion or bad custom or even by racial proclivity”; but all human inclinations should be governed by the intellect. Natural Law in the primary precept is immutable; but may be added to in the secondary precepts in special circumstances - by divine command, for example. It is the first, common precepts that, according to Aquinas, even the effects of sin cannot cancel in the human heart. Sin has effect on the secondary precepts up to a point. Human nature remains essentially sound despite sin: the human desire for virtue is blocked rather than corrupted at the source.

Natural Law 2

The Roman Stoic jurist Cicero gave Natural Law its classic pagan formulation. The Natural Law must needs be the law of right or sane reason. He wrote:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.

Cicero held that Natural Law was really only discerned by the intelligent man. This is because he understood “nature” as related to reason in the human instance. Natural Law is not inscribed on nature per se, but is available to the human intellect.

This notion was baptised by Justin Martyr in the second century:

In the beginning He made the human race with the power of thought and of choosing the truth and doing right, so that all men are without excuse before God; for they have been born rational and contemplative.

However, the first systematic articulation of Christianised Natural Law theory was in the Summa Theologiae, that “great Gothic cathedral of human thought” (O'Connor) (and other works) of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Aquinas’ doctrine of Natural Law is not held in isolation from the rest of his thought; nor even the rest of his ethics. Rather, as Jean Porter insists, his thinking is continually informed by his Christian convictions and concerns. As Leo Strauss has explained, Thomas’ doctrine of Natural Law differs from the classical theory in that whereas the classical ethicists begin with everyday notions of justice and ascend to the sublime truth by a dialectical process, Thomas begins with God and His Eternal Law. He distinguishes the lex aeterna from the lex naturalis. These are but two of five types of law that Aquinas recognises. The Eternal Law is defined as the providence of God which regulates the universe proceeding from the intellect and will of God. Natural Law is the aspect of Eternal Law which applies to human beings alone and is in accordance with human nature, thus:

...Natural Law is nothing other than the participation of eternal law in rational creatures.

As O’Connor explains:
...Natural Law may be regarded as eternal law in so far as it is intuitively and innately knowable.

Aquinas here provides a corrective to Ulpian’s version of the doctrine , which allowed Natural Law as belonging to all creatures. Thomistic Natural Law applies only to rational human beings.

Natural Law I

What follows is a thirteen part series on the subject of Natural Law!

The doctrine of Natural Law argues that there is a law or rule of action inherent in the nature of things. For human beings, behaviour must be consonant with human nature, which is always held to be rational. In the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Natural Law is the result of divine providence being embossed on natural human reason. For him,

Natural Law is nothing other than the participation of eternal law in rational creatures.

It is possible to hold a minimal version of the doctrine of Natural Law within the context of a well-rounded theological ethic. However, the Thomist version of the doctrine, which is its most refined elucidation, leaves no room for confidence that adequate account has been given of either theological or empirical data. Natural Law strikes several problems of an epistemological nature. Further, lex naturae gives a poor explanation of human diversity unless its scope is so reduced as to make it a truism. Perhaps most significantly, Natural Law theory underplays the corruption of human reason by sin.

The doctrine of Natural Law has its origin in antiquity. The writings of Heraclitus and Plato reveal an understanding of the notion, but its clarification was left to Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics he wrote:

The natural [law] is that which has the same validity everywhere and does not depend upon acceptance...Natural Laws are immutable and have the same validity everywhere (as fire burns both here and in Persia)

Aristotle drew the distinction between Natural Law, which is unchangeable and universal, and the variance of humanly-enacted laws. His primary concern was with biological phenomena, which led him to adopt a model where the Natural Law was analogous to fusiV - nature, or reality. Human beings are by nature rational; and the inner principle governing human life is reason.

Canons X

Is the Western Canon still tenable? The very concept of Canon - which imbues groups of writings with status and authority - looks extremely tenuous in the fractured and diverse post-modern world. Given the close association between Christianity and Christian ideas and the Western cultural heritage, will the demise of the Western Canon presage the demise of the Canon of Holy Scripture? Evangelical Christians are often predisposed as a result of this connexion to culturally conservative positions. Is this a healthy alliance given the incisive ethically-based contemporary attack on Western culture?

No, it most certainly isn’t. Christianity needs to renew its status as counter-cultural and seek, by proclaiming its Gospel, repentence, atonement and reconciliation between and within cultures as far as possible. Sensitive reading of the Canon will assist the process of humble cultural and personal reflection. Often by placing literature in a Canon however, it has been hermetically sealed from the careful and exacting reading that is necessary. Great literature, almost by definition, stimulates both individual and collective self-examination which is sometimes painful. However, history has illustrated what the Bible already teaches: that the reading of literature cannot keep us from the terrible effects of human evil and self-destruction. The failed moral optimism 0f the nineteenth century must not be re-endorsed.

The great books that comprise the Canon continue to be great. It is worthwhile for many reasons to “rub your nose in the stuff”. These works rise above the squabblings of academics. Let them be read, but not “canonically” - if that means granting them an authority they do not have or using them in the subjection of others. Let them be read, but not if that means importing into reading our own ideological proclivities at every turn. Let them be read, but not without due consideration of historical contexts. Let them be read, but not without appreciation of creative genius, imagination and artistry.

Canons IX

It is important to recognise that Canons are also a way of reading. A Canon exists within a reader’s reading brain, offering a highly specific component of the multi-functional process of reading. This has several ramifications. Firstly, to read a work canonically is to read it in reference to its place in a larger body of writing, and thus to be aware of its relations - by allusion, influence and repudiation - of other works within that body. These works are part of a tradition, as F.R. Leavis termed it, “The Great Tradition”; indeed Bloom sees the tradition, in Freudian terms, as an attempt of one generation to overcome the mastery of the previous. The Canon operates both directions in time: just as it is impossible to read Joyce without noting the influence of Homer, the Canon has the effect of making all reading of Homer post-Joycean. Allusion operates as a powerful coding mechanism, using images, quotes, characters, plot structures and devices, names, places, genres, tropes, types and phrases. By providing helpful footnotes to modern editions, scholarship has made modern readers better readers, but perhaps lazier as well.

Secondly, in including a work in the Canon the intentions of the author may of course be disregarded or superceded. The fantastic history of the interpretation of the Song of Songs is a case in point. Both the Rabbis and the Fathers ignored the appearance of the Song as an erotic poem and interpreted it canonically (as they saw it) - that is, non-erotically. The intentions of the (human) author were not important. Gibbons The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written as a serious historical work. Today, when it is included as a canonical work it is on the basis of its great literary style and imagination rather than historical insight.
Further, the notion of Canon does imply authority. In the realm of scripture this is a familiar concept, but what of the literary world? As we shall see, canonical writings have been accorded a certain kind of authority over and against other works. The Canon is further given the task of being the repository of cultural value and memory - not in the narrowly historical sense, but as source of the mythology that all cultures need. For example, nineteenth century Australian poets like Patterson and Lawson successfully mythologised the Australian landscape and sense of national self. The task of cultures is to reflect on their heritage rather than accept or reject it out of hand. The Canon may hinder this process of mature cultural reflection by creating out of the past a package which extremists, radical or conservative, can deny or affirm holus bolus.

Lastly, many of these approaches are reductionistic - the literary value that distinguishes the Canon is either a purely aesthetic function, or it is merely ideological. The most prominent left-wing critics reduce all aesthetic value to a matter of politics only; but, on the other hand, it is equally a fallacy to remove all political or moral considerations from the discussion of literature. Beauty is not Truth, but it is part of the Truth. How can the aesthetic be separated from the good? Modern critics want either to relativise the beautiful, or to relativise the good.

Canons VIII

For Christians, the similarity to theological ideas of many of the terms and concepts used in this discussion may result in a knee-jerk conservatism. We may feel that attacks on the Western Canon in which not a few Christian themes are intertwined do damage to Christianity itself. Exegesis, hermeneutics, typology, allegory and homiletics are all terms and concepts that literary studies has adapted from biblical studies. The idea of a “Canon” - a grouping of significant texts - also found a secular application. This is no accident - the study of literature has attempted to replace religion as a moral force since the nineteenth century, as we have seen.

Do Christians, then, think differently about Scripture and literature? In theological study there has indeed been a debate on similar lines regarding the Canon of Scripture. Brevard Childs has for many years defended the intrinsic authority and unity of the biblical Canon as the founding bond of an interpretative community, namely the church. However, James Barr is convinced of an extrinsic ground to the Canon - in starting with the completed Canon, the church was taking its stand on something external to the Bible itself. This liberal Protestant position is, strangely enough, almost identical to the Roman Catholic understanding of ecclesiastical authorisation of the Canon.
However, there is the intrinsic power of the Word of God in the Scriptural Canon which sets it apart from “ordinary” literature. By claiming this much for the Bible, we needn’t accept that the Western Canon has a similar power or authority. The analogies that have been drawn between imaginative writing and Holy Scripture since the Romantic period - such as the idea of “inspiration” - are only analogies. That they collapse, if they do, need not compromise our view of Scripture.

What can we then say about the Canon in response to these various approaches? Readings account is many ways the most convincing. Like the dragon, the Canon (in literary terms) is a large, mythological beast. Purported to be the list of books sanctioned for study in educational institutions, “Canons” by and large do not actually exist per se. The use of the term”Canon” which is meant to imply the say-so of a church-like institution here breaks down. While there are indeed powerful imprimaturs given from within the literary world, there is no fixed list of what constitutes Literature and there never has been. There is no literary equivalent to the standard metric weights kept in a safe somewhere in Paris. Canons are in fact centrifugal. That is, they have a solid core of largely undisputed material with an indistinct fringe. Very few would dispute that the Western Canon has at its heart the work of a writer like Shakepeare, but the status of sixteenth century poet Mary Wroth is far less certain. The notion of “Canon” in the literary world invites debate and contention as to its contents. The setting up of a fixed list of texts would be productive only of tedium!

Canons VII

5 - Extrinsic Arguments
Many authors attempt to account for the Canon on sociological or historical grounds only. The very notion of a Canon is elitist, archaic, oppresive - superstitious even - and thoroughly arbitrary. It is a tool of imperialism and/or patriarchy. Consequently, many non-western writers hold this view. Abdul R. JanMohamend writes of “attempts by ethno-centric Canonizers in English and other (Western) language and literature departments to ignore Third World culture and art...” . Feminist writers may also claim to subvert the very “idea (and ideal) of the Canon”.

6- Canon as “Figure”
Bill Readings, a proponent of deconstruction, holds that the Canon is a self-imploding literary construct. “Canonicity”, he writes, is “inherently deviant from any fixed form that a Canon might assume...[it] is a process, like writing, divided againts itself”. Canons are attempts to preserve texts in written form, to achieve stability and closure against the instability of speech. However, Readings argues, following Jacques Derrida, that writing is itself inherently instable and self-contradictory. Canon operates in culture as a substitute for memory. It is a way of reading a text.

Canons VI

2 - Conservative Culturalism
This view, of which T.S. Eliot is the most famous exponent , holds that the Canon defines a collective identity - in his words, the English “native element.” The culture is formed by an elite kind of writing - of which, naturally, Eliot’s notoriously “difficult” poetry was a model. The Canon is a great “Yes” to the culture it defines.

3 - Liberal Culturalism
There are many critics who argue for the inclusion of new works in the Canon, or perhaps the construction of new Canons - of works by women, for example. The notion of Canon developed on intrinsic grounds is implicitly approved: merely the content of the existing Canon is contested. The Canon remains “an organic totality that defines the culture it affirms”.

4 - Liberal Idealism
This view holds that the Canon operates as a negative ideal - a challenge that must be met by diversity. There is then a kind of dialectical relationship between the Canon and the culture. The Canon is a repository of humane ideals which function to make us struggle rather than confirm our smugness. It has a regulating impetus, saying to the modern world “Go thou and do a little differently”. Canonical literature is more diverse than at first appears.

Canons V

III
The differing approaches to the Canon issue may be summarised under six headings. (which I pinched from Bill Readings)
1 - Conservative Idealism
The aim of this position as far as possible is preservation of the “existing” Canon. In such literature may be found transcendental and uplifting values. They represent an ideal of literary merit. The Canon is “closed”. There is a growing band of more conservative authors, such as Robert Alter, Allan Bloom and Alvin Kernan who want to defend the Canon, or to bemoan its loss as an armageddon for Western culture. David Lehmann in his book Signs of the Times - Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man, writes of a “programmatic assault now in progress against the venerable idea of the Canon....The determination of a Canon, a syllabus, a reading list of any kind, is stripped of all but political considerations, with results that are nothing if not arrogant” .

Harold Bloom, as we have seen, argues vehemently that Canonical writings possess a purely aesthetic superiority, which in part explains how they have attained their Canonical status.

Canons IV

3 The problem of Western aesthetics
The problem of articulating the nature of aesthetic merit continues to vex Western culture. The notion of beauty is in many ways intuitive, and the reader or observer decides what is beautiful on an inarticulate level. Aesthetic theories have never been entirely convincing. This has led to a deep mistrust of the idea of the aesthetic. For political critics like Eagleton, the idea of the “aesthetic” is mythical, an instrument for denying the ideological forces at work in art and literature.

The intuitive sympathetic response of people to the aesthetic quality of great literature was the reason that the study of a Canon of great literary works was developed on such a large scale in the nineteenth century. In response to the crushing Utilitarianism of Benthamite England and the sheer drear of industrial work, the Canon of literature promised a realm for the imagination. However, the perceived failure of religion is the most significant reason for the development of English studies in the nineteenth century. George Gordon, one of the first professors of English at Oxford delivered this message at his inaugural lecture:
England is sick, and...English literature must save it. The Churches (as I understand) having failed, and social remedies being slow, English literature has a triple function: still, I suppose, to delight and instruct us but also, and above all, to save our souls and heal the State.

English was a liberal, humanising pursuit, dulling the razor’s edge of extremism. The aesthetic response of the reader supposedly taught him or her universal human values. Even the Bible was recast in the role of a literary rather than a religious document - Matthew Arnold, for one, advocated ignoring the gauche doctrinal aspects of the Bible in favour of its literary qualities. The Canon, then, has been part of a specifically pedagogical programme aimed at enlightening the morally backward masses in culture and ethics. It was however, some time, before “English” was accepted as a subject worthy of study in the major Universities, rather than a matter of developing “taste”, as if reading the right books was akin to choosing the right drawing room curtains, or the selection of imaginary cricket teams. It was rather the domain of the Schools of Arts, Mechanic’s Institutes and women’s colleges. English literature was the new opiate for the masses who did not study Classics.

The moral/aesthetic ideal was renewed in the twentieth century by a group of Cambridge academics - F.R.Leavis, editor of Scrutiny; Q.D.Leavis, I.A.Richards, L.C.Knights and William Empson. The argument was similar to the nineteenth century one, but the tone was more aggressive, heated, urgent. Rigorous critical attention was demand to the “words on the page”. Mass commercial society was reducing life to banality; literature would lift it to a level of vitality. To study English was to encounter the core of intellctual life - far more important than mere science, law, history or philosophy. The critic had a prophetic role to play, because literature was now a matter of high moral seriousness involving social and political questions. Leavis followed a modus operandi familiar to Christian exegetes: his insistence on ‘close reading” was a form of exegesis. He coupled this rigour with the tone of a preacher.

Where Leavis preached his criticism with a quasi-religious fervour, his Cambridge colleague I.A. Richards founded his approach on a science - psychology. In the scientific age, we must look to poetry to supply a soothing balm to the troubled human psyche. Literature was the hope of the side as far as social order went. “Poetry”, he wrote, “is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos.” In his book Practical Criticism, Richards wrote up the results of quasi-scientific “experiments” on the reactions of readers to poetry.

Would the reading of literature make you a better person? Could it save society? Would it halt the march of barbarity and vulgarity in the modern world? If this was still believed in 1939, it was difficult to believe in 1945. The volume of Goethe on the shelf of the camp commandant does not seem to have restrained his savagery. Indeed the totalising nationalism of which our world has been so lately cursed has a relationship to the use of such literature in the formation of a national literary heritage. However, an optimism about the achievements and possiblities remained, especially among the New Critics of North America in the post-war period. Perhaps in reaction to the terrible events of the immediate past, they sought to study texts in isolation from the historical circumstances of their production. The literary text (preferably a poem for the New Critics) was like a “well-wrought urn”, to quote the title of Cleanth Brooks’ book. The author’s intentions were unknowable and in any case, irrelevant. Great literature could stand on its own (iambic?!) feet. In a different way, the New Critics believed in the social possibilities of literary study: the balancing of the tensions of complex language forms mirrored the process of liberal democracy. John Crowe Ransom wrote that the poem was “Like a democratic state, so to speak, which realises the ends of a state without sacrificing the personal charcter of its citizens”.
In more recent times, Harold Bloom has argued for the aesthetic value of Canonical literature in The Western Canon. For him, however, aesthetic value is not to be entangled with morality. In this work, the scholar holding two of America’s most prestigious professorships (Yale and NYU) vigorously defends the Canon with all the rhetorical strength he can muster. “Without the Canon”, he writes, “we cease to think”. Bloom argues that considerations that are either moral or ideological have no place in the question of the literary Canon. He does not equate the Western Canon with western cultural imperialism. “The greatest enemies of aesthetic and cognitive standards are purported defenders who blather to us about moral and political values in literature.” What counts, Bloom insists, are aesthetic qualities, not agendas of one kind or another. The relativisation of beauty is his great enemy. Aesthetic value must pass the test of history: a work must survive the struggle between texts within culture. “The Western Canon is a kind of survivor’s list”. Canonical works “live”: they have a vitality which sustains their presence in the cultural memory. However:
If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation...All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality.

Canons III

2 The problem of Western discourse
Tension over the Canon has also pointed to the problem of discourse in contemporary discussion, highlighted by Jacques Derrida and others. Western thinking has historically given prominence to the author-ity of the Author of the text. French structuralist critic Roland Barthes proclaimed “The Death of the Author” in his essay-cum-obituary of 1964. By “Author” he meant the author as used by critics to author-ise a particular interpretation of a text over another, the author as the object of discovery. He wrote:
We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture...Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on the text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing...We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

The presence of the Author in the text is a powerful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. The study of “Classics” - works by “great” “authors” - is thus dramatically undermined, so it seems. Barthes saw that texts had to be “disentangled” rather than “deciphered” - the notion of an “ultimate” meaning is untenable. Barthes was of course sensitive to the theological consequences of his manifesto: the Death of the Author was also the Death of God, the ultimate Author.
As a consequence, notions of literary value break down, a savage blow to the Western Canon which was conceived as a repository of values. Reading now needs to be suspicious of the construction of reality in texts, not sympathetic to it, less still guided by it. The perceived order in the rhetoric of the West is susceptible to deconstruction.

Canons II

II
The contemporary debate about the Canon highlights three major problems that Western culture has yet to resolve - the problem of Western history and politics, the problem of Western thinking, and the problem of Western aesthetics.

1 The problem of Western history and politics
Discussion of the Canon of Western Literature uncovers the problem for Western culture of its dubious history. Leading contemporary (well, he is dead now) cultural critics such as Palestinian-American Edward Said rightly point to rather equivocal past of Western culture. In his magisterial book Culture and Imperialism, Said aims
...to focus as much as possible on individual works, to read them first as great products of the creative or interpretive imagination, and then to show them as part of the relationship between culture and empire...Since narrative plays such a remarkable part in the imperial quest, it is therefore not surprising that France and (especially) England have an unbroken tradition of novel-writing, unparalleled elsewhere.

Literature, then has played a role in the dubious process of Empire. Much undoubted good has come from the hegemony of the West in the modern world. Yet the construction of a monolithic cultural identity, to which poetry and narrative literature are fundamental, has been to the specific exclusion of other cultural identities - classes, races, even genders. We may cite for example even the English language itself - today, truly a world language, opening exciting possibilities for communication between peoples; but at the same time privileging some and disadvantaging others, working against diversity, by its power sucking the life out of other languages. Said admires the great literary works of the Western tradition as an unparralleled corpus of imaginative literature; but he deplores the use of this corpus in the exercise of power and privilege.

If the Canon is an instrument of oppression, exclusion and elitism, how can it maintain any credibility? Wouldn’t it be better to dismantle the very idea of a Canon as outmoded and imperial? Terry Eagleton, the marxist-learning formerly professor of English at Oxford, argues for the dismantling of the idea of “Literature” on ideological grounds. He proposes rather the study of “discourse”, by which he means everything from Shakespeare and Tolstoy to advertising copy and government memoranda. A document surveying “The Humanities in the Princeton Undergraduate Experience 1989” summarises the debate:
Is there a Canon of great books? What is a masterpiece? Who decides what the ‘great books’ are?...Are the currently revered books chosen ‘by Western white men for Western white men’ as some critics claim? Do colleges and universities have an obligation to expose undergraduate students to some of the great works of Western civilisation by requiring some course or set of sourses designed specifically for that purpose? Do we also have an obligation to expose students to the work of other cultures and of the historically dispossed within our own society?

Canons

I
It is now considered a truism that the study of the humanities within the university is in a state of foment. The English faculty at the University of Sydney, where I studied form 1989-92, provides a not unusual case study. For years the department had insisted on a core of study made up of traditional literary classics, from Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton and Pope to Keats, Austen and Dickens. The Twentieth Century was represented by Woolf, Joyce, Yeats and Eliot; and we even studied the writings of such latter-day stars as Helen Garner and Thomas Pynchon. The core was supplemented by a smorgasbord of optional courses which tended to reflect the predilections of the faculty. The reading was at times a chore - I would not have chosen to read several of the authors. Often I was pleasantly suprised, or challenged - but not always. Yet, as one of my favourite teachers said: “If you are going to study literature, you’ve got to rub your nose in this stuff.”

The year after I left, however, the faculty controversially voted to revamp its syllabus in a way which reflected a philosophical change in the way literature was to be understood. A core syllabus was no longer required: students could choose their entire course of study. An undergraduate student, then, could avoid studying Shakespeare or Austen if she wanted to. It was no longer deemed necessary to a literary education to receive instruction in classic or “Canonical” works. The focus of what had been “literary” study was now more broadly “cultural”. Works by minority groups or by women were given a space under the new umbrella.
That the stakes were high was revealed by the arresting acrimony under which the whole syllabus review was undertaken. For example, Andrew Riemer, now chief literary reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald, and one of Australia’s foremost writers and critics, resigned in protest after more than two decades at the University. He made no secret of his disgust at what he saw as the erosion of important standards. What occurred at the University of Sydney happened not in isolation, but as one of the results of a debate about culture that has affected the teaching of literature everywhere, a debate that has focussed on the issue of the Canon.

The Greek word kanon originally signified a measuring rod. However, its subsequent uses have been with reference to collections of books: first, to the list of books that comprised the Old and New Testaments; and second, in a literary context to refer to the set of works (of which the Bible is one), which, by a cumulative consensus in the past, have come to be considered “major” and to serve as the persistent subjects of literary history, criticism, and scholarship.” It is common to speak of the Canon as being that of the Western cultural tradition. The Canon is meant to include those works that are called “Literature”; indeed, the two terms are coterminus. In current practice, “Canon” is also used to signify the key authors in a literary subgrouping. For example, a recent (well, 10 years ago now!) edition of Southerly was devoted to the “Australian Canon”.

The notion of the Canon has been one of the most keenly contested areas of literary study in the last two decades. It would be difficult to find a University whose faculty of English has not been rent asunder over the issue of the Canon, because it directly affects what is taught. In fact, the Canon is what is taught, pretty much. Yet the Western Canon as commonly conceived has come under intense pressure from the ideological interests that now permeate English faculties; and even the idea of Canonicity itself has been called into question.

What we might call “Western” culture - the heritage of those societies having origin in the west of Europe - is a culture which Christianity has shaped profoundly. Indeed, the Judaeo-Christian tradition must be counted as one of the two pillars on which the entire Western tradition of intellectual and cultural endeavour, from biology to poetry, is founded (the Graeco-Roman being the other). Western culture and Christianity are yoked together, historically speaking. The spread of Western power and influence roughly coincides with the spread of Christianity. Western political, economic and military thinking has theological roots. In many painful passages of history the “Western” and the “Christian” have been indistinguishable. Until comparitively recently the term “Christendom” was used to indicate what is now meant by “the Western world”.

However, we live in a time of a thorough reconsideration of the Western cultural heritage. In the post-holocaust, post-Hiroshima, post-colonial age the Western past is no longer something of which simply to be proud. The unprecedented power of this culture has come at the cost of tremendous human suffering. The utopia of Western technological progess is for everyone else an apocalypse. Political post-millenialism of the kind seen even now in the USA has been manifestly dishonest. The success of the West has, it seems, less to do with the blessing of God and more to do with simple theft and murder.

In recent years the literary academy has been the site of a new self-loathing towards the cultural heritage of the West; and it is the “great” books of Western literature - the Western Canon - that are the focus of the discussion. Is the Western notion of what is aesthetically pleasing tainted with the bloodguilt of that culture? Do the works that comprise the Canon represent the tools of centuries of oppression? Can we ever extricate Christianity from Western culture, or are the two joined at the hip? In the discussion that follows I hope to shed some light on these difficult questions.....

Nietzche and Christian eschatology.

Nietzsche famously called Paul ‘the greatest of all apostles of revenge’. In his vehement treatise The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche described this Pauline Christianity as driven by ressentiment – which names the feeling of the weak/slave to the strong/noble. It was this ressentiment that had driven Paul to cast his Christianity as a life-denying eschatology and drained whatever dignity Jesus Christ had brought to it. Christian eschatology, as Nietzsche reads it, is a form of systematic cruelty against the natural shape of human life – a wicked instrument of priestcraft.

This Christian denial of life consists in that it renders weak and passive the man who would otherwise ennoble himself through action in the world. In this we can see a convergence with Arendt’s thought. Thus:
Whom then does Christianity deny? what does it call 'world'? Being a soldier, being a judge, being a patriot; defending oneself; preserving one's honour; desiring to seek one's advantage; being proud.... The practice of every hour, every instinct, every valuation which leads to action is today anti-Christian...
The hypocrisy of the nineteenth-century prince who can call himself a Christian and yet acquit himself impressively as a man of action produces in Nietzsche a visceral reaction. Nietzsche quite rightly recognizes the critique of human pride in the Christian gospel and claims that this cuts against the grain of that which is most natural to human life: to act and to be proud in action.
For Nietzsche, Paul’s apocalyptic gospel renders any ethical teaching he might give not only meaningless but abominable. As so many (including Arendt) have done before and since, he attempts to drive a wedge between the Jesus of benign practical good works and the Paul of dangerously abstract apocalypticism. We see this in Section 42 of The Anti-Christ. Nietzsche says of Paul:
What did this dysangelist not sacrifice to his hatred! The redeemer above all: He nailed him to his Cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death, the meaning and the right of the entire Gospel -- nothing was left once this hate-obsessed false-coiner had grasped what alone he could make use of. Not the reality, not the historical truth!
Nietzsche portrays Paul as the real sacrificer of Christ. He is the one who reduces the living, flesh-and-blood Christ of the gospels to a trick of the metaphysical light. By not making even the slightest use of the life of the Redeemer, Paul perpetrated an unparalleled fraud on mankind. He was unable to make use of anything real, and instead inculcated the grand deception of Christian apocalypticism. For Nietzsche, ‘Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that entire existence beyond this existence – in the lie of the ‘resurrected’ Jesus.’

For our purposes in this paper it is important to note that Nietzsche refers explicitly to 1 Corinthians in Section 45. The talk of judgement (1 Cor 3.16-17; 4.2, etc) and of the overthrow of the strong/mighty/wise by the apocalyptic action of God (1 Cor 1.20ff) outrages him. Interestingly, these same texts are all linked very closely to what Rosner and Ciampa describe as the 'backbone' of 1 Cor 1-4 -- the quotations from Isaiah and Jeremiah about the expectation-shattering action of God (which Paul urges has happened in the crucifixion of the Messiah).

The devil he is

If the devil exists, he pesters you with doubts. One of his tricks, if he exists, is to get to you to doubt even his existence. In which case, if he doesn’t exist, then attack was merely a projection of something in you. He has no power; it is a toothless attack. Ha!

But wait. Weren’t you just a minute ago convinced that he, or something like him, was real? Didn’t you hear him speaking to you, as sure as eggs? Now you say he doesn’t exist! Can you trust yourself, then, to know reality from fantasy? Isn’t it you, in fact, who is unravelling?

You’re on a roll now. Did that dark thought you had never conceived before emerge from the sweaty locker rooms of your own soul? That plausible devil: he’s your own creation, then?

These are the wiles of the devil or some of ‘em.

*

Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:11-12)

If only the experience of wrestling with doubt was as dramatic as it sounds in Ephesians 6. Paul makes us imagine the Christian striding out like Luke Skywalker to clash light sabres with the devil. He is easy to spot because he wears black and rides a Harley, and has some serious tattooing on his right arm about how he'll dismember the mothers of those who stand in his way.

But that's not how it goes. The devil – if it is him - always comes in disguise. Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Or, as something less than an angel of light. He speaks reasonably to reasonable people. He makes a good deal of quiet sense, in a completely perverse way. His talk has, (as Rowan Williams puts it) an 'Escher-like quality, landscapes turning inwards on themselves in visual but plausible absurdity.' It's the kind of remorseless, undefeatable logic that drives you to insanity.

Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov is the most rationalistic and agnostic of the three Karamazov brothers in Dostoyevsky's great novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Yet it is he who has a nightmarish encounter with the devil. The devil comes to him in the guise of a rather ingratiating and certainly not very frightening middle-aged man, looking a little down on his luck. He's a ‘banal devil’, a 'sponger'. Is he a vision, or is he real? Does he have an independent existence, or is he a parasite (a ‘sponger’) on Ivan's fevered imagination? Does he come from within Ivan, or from some source without? Ivan says to him:

I sometimes don't see you, and don't even hear your voice, as last time, but I always guess what you're driveling because it is I, I myself who am talking and not you!'

So, the challenge is for the devil to produce a thought in Ivan that he has never thought before. He says:

Though I am your hallucination, even so, as in a nightmare, I say original things, such as have never entered your head before, so that I’m not repeating your thoughts at all, and yet I am merely your nightmare and nothing more.

He is prepared to concede to not existing, for then he would have triumphed.

Paul dramatises the battle in Ephesians 6 exactly because this clash doesn't look obvious. He calls it a war because it looks like a friendly chat. It is hard to see it for what it is. The nature of this confrontation is that it always makes you wonder whether there actually is a confrontation. It talks to you of your own hysteria.

Devoted Conference

This new conference looks really exciting. Devoted conference is planned to be an annual event celebrating the Puritans.

This year they are looking at Owen and Baxter. These guys will be hard acts to follow!

Marilynne Robinson: 'Absence of Mind'

Apologies to regular readers of this blog for my loss of blogging mojo lately. I guess what with weekly posts at Anglican Media and a monthly article in Eternity magazine I have been reaching my output limit. In other news, a book that Tom Frame and I have co-authored on the 39 Articles is hitting the presses soon - and should be out in a couple of months.

I am a huge fan of author Marilynne Robinson, whose novels Home and Gilead were for me the discoveries of 2008/9. But Robinson is an extraordinary essayist, too.

Her latest offering Absence of Mind is a brilliant and profound reflection on the 'problem of mind' which seems to feature strongly in what she calls 'parascientific' literature - by which she means the writings of Dawkins, Pinkers, Dennett and co. Robinson calls them on their reductionistic accounts of human thought - do not the history of art, literature and music tell against them at every point?

It is an immensely subtle book, and I see I am going to have to re-read it. Nuts. But her basic thesis is something like this:

Those who claim to dismiss the mind/body dichotomy actually perpetuate it when they exclude the mind's self-awareness from among the data of human nature. p. 118

Ponder that.

Seven Sins of Sydney

I had this thought for a series entitled: the Seven Sins of Sydney.

The idea would be to really ask: what are the deep moral faultlines that run through the city we love? Let's not be trite about this. You could say 'Greed', but the trick would be to nail down excatly how greed is expressed in Sydney, and not elsewhere.

It sounds, in a way, a pompous project. But is no different than Tim Friedman's songs which skewer Sydney's pride, and its shallowness, and its greed.

Question is: what are the Seven Sins?

Here's a sketch:

1 - The Pursuit of Space - It's built on a wholesale theft of Real Estate. We clamber over one another to get a slice of the view...
2 - Loyalty to Mates - it trumps every other value...
3 - Excessive Punishment - from the flogging parson on...
4 - Brawling
5 - Confusing the Penultimate for the Ultimate
6 - Work till you drop
7 - Smutty little secrets - Sydney and sex...

Any others?

Talking about Progressive Christianity

I participated in an ABC show about 'Progressive Christianity' and you can listen to it here:


http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/2924630.htm


The fascinating thing to me about Progressive Christianity is the apparent contradiction between the radical sceptism to the point of paranoia about orthdox Christianity on the one hand and the gullible blind faith about the claims of the Jesus Seminar on the other. Or: the contradiction between the extreme rationalism on which it is founded (disbelief in miracles, for example) and the extreme fideism about other beliefs that are held.

5 reasons why I don't like lists of Bible verses

Often writers of theological essays will pull out a statement and then offer a list of bible verses to back it up, in brackets. People seem to think this is indicative of how scripturally based a piece of theology is. I don't like this. Why?

1. Instead of drawing my attention to the text of Scripture, it actually makes me skip over it and move on. It makes me think I know the Bible when I don't.

2. SO OFTEN, when I look up the verses in a list, they don't say what the author claims they self-evidently say. Or, they say it in a very, very different way. Or, a subtle point is lost.

3. It looks messy. (OK, that's not so important!)

4. It treats the Bible like a bank of data to be mined, and not a narrative of salvation-history.

5. It means a tendency to prefer 'direct-statement' evidence in theological argument over the testimony of say, the character of God revealed in his might acts, or the nature of the literary context.

A great example of this is Is 45:7.

I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.



Which apparently looks like it charges God with direct agency in evil. I've seen it cited in lists of bible references as a proof text to this end. But this short-cuts an enormously complex and very serious exegetical AND theological discussion which needs to be had... don't it?



What I do instead is that I try to quote the actual words of a particular text, and refer to those. Not without its own difficulties, but I think it is preferable.

my piece on SRE

My piece on SRE is here.

The usual enlightened comments follow.

Katay clears the air

Great idea.

You wouldn't believe some of the baloney I've heard said about this guy over the years.

Article in National Times... on Artifical Life

Playing God?


The fun thing about this was that it was a facebook collaboration! I asked for help and got great insights and interesting links. Thanks to Chris Wark, Chris Stafferton and Mike Higton.

Unspeakable Comfort

Here's some Weekend Away talks I am planning. Happy for feedback- why else does one have a blog?


‘UNSPEAKABLE COMFORT’: The Sovereignty of God and the Christian Life
There is unspeakable comfort – the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates – in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. – JI Packer

While our neighbours talk about luck or destiny, the usual response of Christians to a significant crisis in life is to appeal to God’s sovereignty. We respond to crisis or accident or disease with ‘God is in control’, as if that by itself were a comforting truth.

It is important to know that life is not “just a bunch of stuff that happens”, to use the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson. But if God is remorseless, or uncaring, or - worse – malevolent, then his being in control becomes anything but a comfort to us in affliction. After all, if God is in control, then how do we not blame him for my friend’s depression, or the fatal car accident, or whatever it is?

This series of talks will address one of the Bible’s greatest themes: the sovereignty of God. It will show what it means for us to say ‘God is in control’. We will think about how and where he has shown us this control; and we will see how it changes everything about the way we live.


1. The Comfort of Sovereign Love

2. The Grace of Sovereign Choice

3. The Peace of Sovereign Power

4. The Joy of Sovereign Hope

Article on John Foxe in Eternity Mag

Article on John Foxe in Eternity Mag

Crisis? What Crisis?

It would not do, if one were writing an apostolic letter today, to speak so imprecisely about ‘this present crisis’, as Paul does in 1 Cor 7: 26, and expect to be understood. The twenty-first century began with an act of violence that its perpetrators wished to invest with apocalyptic symbolism that was hard to misread. The decade since has been one of ‘wars and rumours of wars’. So-called ‘rogue states’ have started nuclear weapons programmes. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008, deemed worthy of and recognised everywhere by its own three-letter acronym (GFC), continues to unravel the world’s prosperity. Perhaps most ominous of all, human-induced climate change haunts contemporary politics and economics. There is no shortage of crises; and each doomsday scenario has its prophets who are willing to recount humanity’s collective sins and to point to the way in which our punishment is coming, and speedily. The question the contemporary world has to grapple with is not so much deciding whether or not there is a crisis but which crisis to confront as a matter of first priority.

While the language and tropes of religious apocalyptic have been commandeered
by contemporary prophetic movements, there is simultaneously a hostility to the use of apocalyptic and eschatological rhetoric in its original setting. In fact, the eschatological impulse from within religion is itself held in part responsible for a number of the impending crises. The secularist apocalyptic nightmare involves those inspired by religious visions of the future wreaking disaster on the present. Forty years ago, Jürgen Moltmann wrote that
Always the protest against the Christian hope and against the transcendent consciousness resulting from it has stubbornly insisted on the rights of the present, on the good that surely lies always to hand, and on the eternal truth in every moment.
It is now not merely that Christian hope ‘cheats man of the happiness of the present’ ; it is that Christian hope is accused, along with other religious accounts of hope, of making his present tenuous and fearful. An account of the good (and so, the good life) that places the human life in the context of the eschatological, and most especially in the realm of the apocalyptic, is unlikely to be recognised generally as such. This is the seriousness of the difficulty confronting the Christian ethicist today.

The Catechist launched!

An exciting new web magazine has just been launched by students from Moore College:

The Catechist.

The first issue is on "Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Real World".

Union with Christ in Karl Barth

In Barth, the theme of unio Christi is not explicitly addressed until late in the fourth volume of the Church Dogmatics. He places it under the heading of ‘Vocation’. As is well known, Barth’s soteriology is profoundly christocentric. Reconciliation with God can only be found in Christ, who is the locus for all the themes of reconciliation: election, justification, sanctification and so on. For Barth, the role of union with Christ is circumscribed by his insistence on the actual moments of event, decision and personal encounter, on the one hand; and, on the other, his emphasis on the objective work and experience of Christ as opposed to the human response of faith and obedience.

Barth is no mystic, and so is determined to distinguish himself from the charge. He deploys the term ‘fellowship’. He emphasises that the Christian’s relationship to Jesus Christ is one of ‘encounter’ or ‘confrontation’ . ‘We have’, he writes, ‘and encounter in time between two personal partners who do not lose but keep their identity and particularity in this encounter’ (IV.3.2.547). Union with Christ does not involved an extension of the incarnation, but rather a response to the prophetic call of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. ‘The Christian’s union with Christ consists in this dynamic relationship of call and response, in which the Christian is voluntarily united with Christ in will and action, knows the self to be justified and sanctified in Christ, and awakens to his or her genuine humanity’ (Evans, p. 244). Barth’s objectivism – a response to the subjective experientialism of his forebears – means that he can only distinguish the Christian from the non-Christian by dint of knowledge of the work of Christ. Evans concludes:
...for Barth’s view of the unio Christi, act has replaced state and condition, reconciliation accomplished has to a considerable degree overshadowed redemption applied, and the extra nos has eclipsed the intra nos. In short, “union with Christ”... has been largely replaced by “reconciliation already in Christ”.

Charles Hodge and Unio Christi

In the midst of a battle for the very soul of American Christianity, Charles Hodge of Princeton was a defender of Reformed Orthodoxy over and against even Calvin, where necessary. In response to a subjectivism which emphasised the inner life, he pushed the elements of federalism to the extreme, especially by emphasising the extrinsic elements of the system. In speaking of original sin, for example, Hodge sought to make the federal union – that representative relationship – independent of hereditary considerations. Adam’s posterity is sinful by dint of his federal headship in which they are united, rather than the natural union of physical descent. The key notion is ‘imputation’, which for Hodge does not indicate either personal identity with nor mutual participation in. It is an extrinsic and legal issue.

In soteriology, Hodge is keen to affirm the central place that union with Christ has. Through union with Christ by faith the benefits of Christ are received by the Christian enture. This union is firstly a ‘federal union’ which has its basis in the pretemporal covenant of redemption between the first and second persons of the Godhead. This union is must be realised in the lives of the covenant people. For Hodge, then, ‘there is a federal union rooted in the eternal covenant of redemption, and the legal benefits promised by this covenant and merited by the work of Christ are imputed through faith to the believer in an extrinsic relationship. Any source or locus of legal of legal merit, such as the humanity of Christ, remains utterly outside the Christian. There is a vital or spiritual union, in which the believer receives the Holy Spirit as a representative of Christ, a Christ who is most certainly absent with respect to his humanity’ (Evans, p. 208).

As far as the ordo salutis goes, Hodge posits a temporal as well as a logical order in redemption. Regeneration gives rise to faith, which is then the legal instrument of a legal union with Christ (hence justification). Following this, the Holy Spirit is imparted which makes for the spiritual union with Christ experienced in sanctification. Justification is a single moment in time – whereas sanctification is a progressive work. Here is Hodge:

As soon, however, as it exercises faith, it receives the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, God’s justice is thereby satisfied, and the Spirit comes and takes up his dwelling in the believer as the source of all holy living. There can therefore be no holiness until there is reconciliation with God, and no reconciliation with God except through the righteousness imputed to us and received by faith alone. Then follow the indwelling of the Spirit, progressive sanctification, and all the fruits of holy living. (Systematic Theology, III:172)

Union with Christ in Federal Calvinism

(reference: William B. Evans, Imputation and Impartation)

In the era of Reformed Orthodoxy, however, the ordo salutis becomes an increasingly prominent feature of theological schemas. Whereas Calvin held the extrinsic and forensic union with Christ together with the experience of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, these now become separate moments in the ‘golden chain’ of salvation. The notion of the ‘substantial’ union of the believer with Christ drops out, and is replaced by theories of ‘virtual communion’ – which is to say, union with Christ is elided with the benefits formerly ascribed to union with Christ – receiving the forensic benefits of salvation and experiencing the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. This can be seen in the work of John Owen, for example.

The rise of the ordo salutis in the early seventeenth century was in the first instance a device designed to counter problems of personal assurance. In order to preserve the sheer graciousness of justification, it was separated from sanctification and placed in a different dogmatic locus. Salvation is not now the organic unity that is observable in Calvin’s work; it becomes a series of acts.

What this means is it the unio Christi becomes bifurcated in federal theology. The union with Christ that results in justification is a forensic relationship by which Christ as the federal head passes on his righteousness by imputation to the believer. The union that passes on the transforming benefits of the Holy Spirit is another By the time of Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), writing in the mid-seventeenth century, different unions with Christ are beings distinguished – ‘Legal’, on the one hand, and ‘Mystical’, on the other. Further, the adoption of the federal terminology stressed the extrinsic, especially with regards to imputation.

In a parallel movement, the piety of the Puritans also utilized ‘union with Christ’ as an idea, and exerted its own influence on Reformed theology. Calvin’s notion of the union with the humanity of Christ as the means by which redemption is applied to us disappears; and in its place the humanity of Christ becomes an object of devotion. The sacraments feature less and less as a means by which Christ’s presence is mediated to the believers, and instead Puritan piety turns inward to find the activity and reality of Christ.

Union with Christ

The unio mystica sive praesentia gratiae tantum, the ‘mystical union’ or ‘union by the presence of grace alone’ refers to the special union ‘founded on the indwelling grace of God in Christ, that occurs between God and the believer in and through regeneration’ (Muller). It is a consistent feature of orthodox Reformed and Lutheran theological dogmatics. Remarkably given its prominence in the New Testament, it hadn't been the stimulus for much theological reflection prior to this - perhaps because sacramental theology was doing the 'work' that it now does in Protestant thinking.

The term ‘mystical’ is used because it rests on the mystery of grace and the mercy of God. It is also referred to as the unio spiritualis because this union is of the Spirit. The believer’s ingrafting into Christ constitutes the foundation of the Christian life. A number of New Testament metaphors are picked up in this teaching (vine,/branches, body/head) and also the en Christo terminology which appears so often. The believer’s individuality is not dissolved or thwarted in this union. Rather, it is the work of the Holy Spirit which produces faith and enables the believers to share in the blessings of the work of Christ.

John Murray observed that "Union with Christ is a very inclusive subject. It embraces the wide span of salvation from the ultimate source in the eternal election of God to its final fruition in the glorification of the elect." If we may observe one thing about how the doctrine has been treated in the Reformed tradition it might be that this very inclusivity and breadth makes it difficult to locate in the dogmatic system. It operates rather as the connective tissue between various doctrinal topics - as a motif rather than as a doctrine itself. Furthermore, the language of ‘union’ with Christ has led inevitably to some misconstruals.

IN CALVIN
Calvin scholars like Alister McGrath and Charles Partee have latterly recognised how pervasive and comprehensive Calvin’s doctrine of the unio mystica is. According to McGrath, Calvin utilises the concept of the distinctio sed non separatio drawn from Chalcedonian Christology. That is: the separateness yet distinction of the two natures in the hypostatic union is, for Calvin, the pattern for divine-human relationship found also in the unio mystica. Though the doctrine relates to the doctrines of justification and sanctification and how the believer receives these benefits of Christ’s death, the doctrine is also profoundly Trinitarian.

The basis for our union with Christ is the electing will of God the Father who chooses us ‘in Christ’ before the foundation of the world. Our union with Christ is an expression of the love and mercy of God himself (Inst II xvi.4); and in union with Christ we are brought into relationship with God through the Spirit of adoption, thereby experiencing the paternal love of God the Father. Calvin will refer to Christ himself as ‘the bond of our union with God’.

Calvin writes:
By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s Spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life. (Inst III.11.1)

Union with Christ thus has a twin focus for Calvin. From union with Christ flow both justification – which occurs externally to the believer – and sanctification – which occurs internally. Not only is the forensic imputation of righteousness accomplished through union with Christ, but the life of Christ is also imparted to the believer as the basis for his or her sanctification. Both justification and sanctification are, as Evans writes, ‘subsumed under a more comprehensive reality – union with Christ.’ It is possible even to go so far as to conclude that the notion of unio Christi has for Calvin a causal priority in his soteriological thought. Justification is not dependent on sanctification, nor is it a response to justification.

In what does the union with Christ consist? Calvin holds that believers are united with the incarnate humanity of Christ. Christ’s mediatorial work and the benefits that flow from it – including, for Calvin, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness - are received by union with the substantia of the humanity of Christ. This notion pervades his teaching on the sacraments as a (in some way) real appropriation of Christ by the believer. ‘Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ, as expounded in Book III and IV of the Institution and clarified in the context of Eucharistic debates, affirms nothing less than the reception by the believer of the substance, the very being, of the incarnate Christ. This union is the impartation of the life of the risen Christ to the believer, albeit in a manner which does not diminish the personal individuality of both Christ and the individual believer’ (William B. Evans, Imputation and Impartation – Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology, Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008 p.28). Justification involves not simply a forensic, past act of God through Christ in the past – it also involves communion with the person of the living Christ. It is likely that Calvin intended this notion of substantial union to indicate an ontological reality. Evans complains that this notion is underexplained by Calvin, which leaves open the possibilities of revision or rejection in subsequent generations.

Intriguingly, Calvin places sanctification before justification in the Institutes. This may have been to head off Roman Catholic charges that Protestant teaching on justification made good works redundant. But it reveals also just how closely the two were tied together in Calvin’s thought. The mediatorial person of Christ, together with the Holy Spirit binds the two together. ‘...the forensic and transforming benefits of salvation are inseparable because both are communicated to the believer in the same way through union with the mediatorial person of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit’ (Evans). Calvin does not posit a particular ordo salutis with a single moment at which a divine declaration is announced.

Next: Union with Christ in Federal Calvinism

Broughton Knox on Limited Atonement

Bavinck complained at the beginning of the twentieth century that there were very few who held to the teaching of particular satisfaction in his day. Charles Hodge and WGT Shedd had propounded it in the nineteenth century, but Bavinck writes rather wistfully ‘it has been almost universally abandoned.’ Certainly, the evangelical movement, though Calvinist in many of its parts, had not majored on this particular distinctive. Charles Simeon and Bishop JC Ryle, for example, opposed it. Unity with other evangelicals in mission was more important.

While there has been a latter-day resurgence in Reformed theology, it has not ended the controversy among the Reformed themselves over particular redemption/limited atonement. Sydney diocese has been famous (notorious?) as a place which, while claiming the heritage of Calvinism, on the whole has been reluctant to stand with the majority Reformed position on the matter of limited or definite atonement.

Broughton Knox’s piece ‘Some Aspects of the Atonement’ reveals the particular theological commitments that led him and others to deny limited atonement while at the same time happily wearing the ‘Calvinist’ badge. In his usual rather disjointed and compressed style, Knox argues both from theological concepts (the incarnation and so on) down and from exegesis (2 Peter 2) up. Interestingly, though he uses few footnotes (did he ever?), he picks up some of McCleod Campbell’s points about Christ’s perfect obedience being the obedience demanded of every human person and not just the elect.

He clarifies: ‘The extent of Christ’s work is not limited in itself, but only in the intentions and purposes of God, and consequently in the application of its benefits to those whom God had foreknown and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son’ (p. 261). Knox contends that the atonement makes all people savable, if they will repent and believe. But only the elect do so, for only they receive the necessary grace. Limited atonement, he claims, denies the propriety of preaching to the consciences of the unconverted their duty to repent and believe the gospel.

Furthermore, Knox points out that limited atonement is a ‘textless doctrine’ – which criticism must be a killer blow to any putative Reformed teaching. Certainly, the Bible affirms that Christ dies for the elect: but it does not say that he died for them only. If the notion of substitution is pressed into service in defence of limited atonement, as it is done by Warfield among others, Knox complains that in fact this misunderstands the need for regeneration; and falls into the trap of conceiving the atonement in a pecuniary way. Particularism, characteristic of Calvinism, is not be applied to the moment of the making of the decree, nor is prior to the decree of atonement. The atonement is general, the application particular. Knox concludes: ‘Limited atonement as commonly propounded, introduces unscriptural concepts into the doctrine of God’s relation to the world, and may prove an Achilles’ heel for the revival of Reformed theology’.

I am not sure that he is a successful prophet in this regard. What I would say is that, to be perfectly fair, though he makes some telling points, Knox's critique is aimed at a version of Limited Atonement which lies at the extremes of the discussion. The scriptural testimony as to the definiteness and particularity of the atonement seems undeniable; but that definiteness cannot be thought of in terms of an amount or value. That's a mistake with the metaphor which the term 'limited' exacerbates, it seems to me. The testimony to the definiteness of the work of Christ for the elect does not place a visible parameter around that work in some way. But it does uphold the purposefulness and intentionality of God in salvation, and the priority of his action in salvation. The definiteness of the atonement should not be asserted out of the context of the cosmic scope of the atonement (Col 1:15ff). Charles Hodge - who advocates particular redemption - I think strikes a nice balance. There is little I could contend against in his account.

Limited Atonement is asserted in order to protect the doctrine of election. My hunch, without yet having the exegetical leg-work to back it up, is that the passages that have to do with election are more complex and variegated than are allowed in Systematic Theology. Divine election seems to have a this-worldly sphere of meaning in some passages, and an eternal sphere in others. That is, God 'elects' some people or peoples within history for certain purposes (Abraham; Israel) and also elects some for the age to come. The two elections do not necessarily exactly coincide. I think Romans 9-11 (again a hunch) has more than one view of election in mind. He also elects individually and corporately.

The question would then be: how many passages bring together election and salvation and in what way do they do so? A more complex and nuanced picture might then emerge, which will allay the concerns of the proponent of Definite Atonement - that salvation is now a matter not of Christ's work but of human choice; and the concerns of the Amyraldian - that Scriptural testimony to the universal sufficiency of the atonement is being undermined if not outright denied.

Vanhoozer at the Wheaton Conference

I very much enjoyed listening to Kevin Vanhoozer's talk on Tom Wright at the recent Wheaton Conference - not the least because of the way he talks about the 'dialogical virtues' at the end. He certainly levels some strong criticisms at Wright, as well as his opponents. But it is done in exactly the right way - without caricature.

Ten observations on re-reading the New Testament as a whole

1. How often Christians are enjoined to forgive, or to bear with one another, or to practice gentleness or patience.

2. How incredibly subtle Acts is as a narrative.

3. How much the issue of the inclusion of the Gentiles drives everything from mission to ecclesiology to ethics - and how reflection on this issue drives us back to theology and soteriology and even to creation. Wow.

4. How much and how often Paul has to defend his legitimacy as an apostle.

5. How personal and particular the documents are - they abound with the names of real people about whom we know so tantalizingly little (See Romans 16).

6. How huge the scope is - given that the church was small, scattered, persecuted and divided, how incredible that the NT writers are able to make cosmological statements about their gospel. (see Col 1:15ff for example).

7. What a majestic piece of writing Ephesians is. After reading the Corinthian correspondence, you could be forgiven for despairing somewhat.

8. How complicated the issue of the ongoing relevance of the law for the Christian life is.

9. How rich the NT is when you add to the Pauline vocabulary and outlook the Johannine, Petrine and Jamesian takes.

10. How sublime and yet how pastoral Hebrews is, charting a narrow course between a supremely grounded confidence in the sacrificial blood of Christ and the severe warnings against apostacy.

Don Carson on Perfectionism

This piece really resonated. See what you think.

Joshua Whitfield - Pilgrim Holiness

Joshua Whitfield's book on martyrdom, Pilgrim Holiness - Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness, has arrived in my pigeon hole and I am fascinated to begin reading it. I had the privilege of seeing some of the work in its unpublished form. Here's a taste:

Christian martyrdom should be renewed in the church's memory and in the imagination of individual Christians. Martyrs should not be relegated to an embarassing and unenlightened past, nor should they be made to fit sociologically and politically acceptable models. Rather, martyrs should be remembered for their witness to Jesus. Martyrs should be embraced as those who disclose and also compel the unity of all Christians, of all those who inhabit the same narrative horizon. Only when the Church receives this gift, when Christians are willing to inhabit the narrtive of the Church in the face of every other divisive narrative of nation, race, class, denomination, or gender, will they be able to give witness to what is believed to be a more lasting peace, which passes all understanding. (p. 126)

I am interested that he concludes on this note, emphasising the unity of the Church. I am not sure I would have gone the same route. Of course, many of the greatest martyrs of the Church's history have been killed by professing Christians...

Ethics and Eschatology in 1 Corinthians

Apologies for the slow rate of production on this blog of late. I think this has been my least productive period blog-wise in five years or so! Partly it is because I am writing furiously in other places (Anglican Media Sydney for example) and partly because ... well every blogger tends to have doubts about the value of the medium from time to time, right? Anyhow, here's a draft intro to my paper for this year's Moore College School of Theology on 1 Corinthians. My brief is to write about Ethics in 1 Corinthians. Here's what I have so far:

...for the present form of the world is passing away.

(1 Cor 7:31)

It would be not unreasonable to suspect that the Paul’s ethical teaching in 1 Corinthians is more ad hoc than integrated. After all, isn’t it the case that the pressure of living in the latter days means that Paul’s ethical teaching orients the person away from the present world which is fading - to the point of denigrating it? Although Paul claims that ‘your labour in the Lord is not vain’ (1 Cor 15:58), he has been suspected of preaching a gospel which debases life in the present because ‘the time is short’ – and so the ethical material of the letter is merely a series of improvisations, a matter of staving off the trouble and chaos of to schema. This particular epistle appears to offer support for a long-standing critique of Christian (and specifically Pauline) ethical thought by which it has been charged with having an other-worldly eschatological vision to the end that this-worldly activity is greatly diminished and even deprecated. The claim is that, at its worst, Christian ethical teaching instructs believers in a kind of destructive apocalyptic hatred of the world in favour of the longed-for glorious future. For Paul, Christian ethical action is merely a staving off of the problems of this life, not a taking of it seriously on its own terms. ‘Better by far’, he says to the Philippians, ‘to die and be with Christ’.

This essay will examine the claims of two very different modern thinkers who have attacked Pauline Christianity on this front. Hannah Arendt claims that the triumph of Christian eschatology over the world of the Greeks and the Romans inevitably meant that the vita contemplativa was preferred to the vita activa. For his part, Friedrich Nietzsche argues vehemently that Paul’s eschatology laid the foundation of a life-denial that had kept a (European) civilisation in servility for centuries and had crushed the human spirit. What I shall argue in response is that Paul’s apocalyptic vision in 1 Corinthians describes not the worthlessness of the present order of things compared to the priceless world to come but rather (following J. L. Martyn) the invasion of the present world by that world such that the two coalesce. The ethics that derives from this eschatological vision is not then an avoidance or a disparagement of the sphere of present human living but in fact involves its affirmation and transformation. How this is so I will demonstrate in particular from a reading of the passage which seems most counter to my case – Paul’s discussion of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7.

New-ish review of You...

Stephen Murray from South Africa reviews YOU: An Introduction.

Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial

My book is coming out in May, but you can pre-order your copies now! :-)

(It may be cheaper from Amazon than from the publishers).

The cross alone...

This week's DADA article is on the cross.

Imitation article in The Churchman

The Churchman has published my article entitled Imitating Paul, Imitating Christ: How does imitation work as a moral concept?

Lecture on Foxe

Tonight I am giving a lecture on Foxe's Book of Martyrs at the Presbyterian Theological Centre, Sydney as part of their 'Get to Know the Classics' series.

Here's a bit of what I am going to say:

In telling these terrible narratives, Foxe calculated to inspire an outrage in his readers that godly ministers could be so vilely treated. However, Foxe told the vast story of the martyrs of the church like this not merely because he was after an emotive impact (though of course he was), but because he wanted to give the evangelical cause legitimacy. It was legitimacy that it appeared to lack without the authority of the Pope.

But if Foxe could show that the killing of the evangelical martyrs was of the same type as the martyrdoms of the early church, then he could give an immense boost to the English Reformation. The true church of Jesus Christ, if it is like Jesus himself, is a persecuted church. Under Queen Mary, there was no doubt as to which church the more Christ-like (as Foxe saw it).

Foxe drew his inspiration from the book of Revelation. In that book he saw an account of the history of the world that had martyrs at the centre: ‘these are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ (Rev 7:14). And it was a book which spoke of a true and false church. Foxe interpreted what he saw as part God’s great providential plan.

The Age of Television - a Eulogy

The great age of television lasted in Australia from 1960 to 1997. These were the years after the age of the radio and before the internet. It was a generation long, perhaps two. My parents worried that I watched too much TV, but I watched far more than my children do. I have to encourage them: 'do you wanna watch TV?' TV producers recognise this and retread 70s programmes like Doctor Who. Increasingly, TV combs back over its own archives and creates 'classics'.

It is still the case that our lounge rooms are arranged with the seats facing the TV screen, as they would have once been arranged around the fire. The TV is that warm glow against which we warm ourselves - that little box of radiance and enlightenment.

In that period, television had the power to make events as well as record them. We sometimes scoff at the expression ‘television history’; but I don’t think it is an underestimation. The presence of TV cameras made Vietnam an unwinnable war in the public imagination. The Moon landings would not have happened without TV. It is said that the Berlin Wall fell because a TV news reporter mistakenly declared that it had fallen – and so the huge crowds surged to the gates and tore it down.

Television united human beings in single moments more than was ever thought possible. We can be part of a bigger crowd than can actually gather together in one spot- it gives us the ability to be present when we are distant. The thought of 100 million people watching the same event beggars the imagination. But TV made it possible. I remember growing up in Britain in the 70s when there were only three stations for 60 million people. 20 million people would watch the same drivel on Saturday night!

Now that power has largely dissipated; the audience has fragmented. bloggers and tweeters do it better. TV’s great weakness was that it didn’t allow its audience to answer back. It preached at us. Only latterly has it woken up to the possibilities of breaking through the glass and inviting us to take control – through reality TV and through associated technologies like the mobile phone.

In case there is any doubt....

http://himanintroduction.blogspot.com/2008/12/hell-of-problem_15.html

let the reader understand.

Compiling a freedom of speech reading list

I am contemplating some research on freedom of speech and its relation to Christianity (naturally), and its (partial) roots in a Christian understanding of persuasion.

Reading suggestions anyone?

Current Reading List for Theological Anthropology MA

(gold star to anyone who can add up how many pages this is).

Barth, Karl. "The Humanity of God." In The Humanity of God. London: Collins, 1967, pp. 33-64 (32pp)

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge. London: SCM, 1999, pp.3-17, 294-300, 369-70 (15pp)

________. Ethics. Translated by R. Krauss, C. West and D. Stott. Vol. 6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005, pp. 76-102 (27pp)

Calvin, Jean, A Harmony of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. 3 vols. Calvin's Commentaries (Oliver & Boyd). Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1972, pp. 133-143 (11pp)

Cameron, Andrew J.B., G.J. Clarke, and Michael P. Jensen. "Towards a Christian Understanding of the Concept of Human 'Community', with Special Reference to the Praxis of a Non-Government Human Services Delivery Organisation." Evangelical Review of Society and Politics 3, no. 2 (2009): 22-41. (19pp)

Carroll, John. The Wreck of Western Culture : Humanism Revisited. Rev. ed. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Pubications, 2004, pp.1-9, 51-59 (20pp)

Cavanaugh, William T. Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ Challenges in Contemporary Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, pp. 34-58 (25pp)

Coakley, Sarah. "The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation and God." In Powers and Submissions : Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 153-167 (14pp)

Darwin, Charles, and J. W. Burrow. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection : Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 1985, pp. 65-69 (5pp)

De Botton, Alain. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009, pp. 106-128 (23pp)

Erasmus, Desiderius, Martin Luther, E. Gordon Rupp, A. N. Marlow, Philip S. Watson, and Benjamin Drewery. Luther and Erasmus : Free Will and Salvation. London: S.C.M. Press, 1969. pp. 41-42, 89-91, 139-143 (10pp)

Gaita, Raimond. The Philosopher's Dog. London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 39-64 (26pp)

Gregersen, Niels Henrik. "Trial and Temptation: An Essay in the Multiple Logics of Faith." Theology Today 57, no. 3 (2000): 325-343. (18pp)

Gregory, of Nyssa. "On the Making of Man." In Select Writings and Letters, Tr., with Prolegomena, Notes and Indices, by W. Moore and H.A. Wilson ed. William Moore and H.A. Wilson,. Oxford, 1893, pp. 387-406 (19pp)

Irigaray, Luce. "Equal to Whom?" In The Postmodern God : A Theological Reader, ed. Graham Ward, 198-213. Cambridge, Mass. ; Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 198-213 (15pp)

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience : A Study in Human Nature Penguin Classics. New York ; London: Penguin Books, 1985, pp. 485-519 (35pp)

Jensen, Michael P. "In Spirit and in Truth - Can Charles Taylor Help the Woman at the Well Find Her Authentic Self?" Studies in Christian Ethics 21, no. 3, (2008), 325-341 (16pp)

Jensen, Michael P. "White Teeth and the New Humanity." Sydney: CASE, 2004. (8pp)

Kafka, Franz, and Nahum Norbert Glatzer. The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka. London: Vintage, 2005, pp. 150-177 (27pp)

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Coming of God : Christian Eschatology. London: SCM Press, 1996, pp.323-339 (17pp)

Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 25-29 (5pp)

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. "Human Being: Individual and Social." In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. C.E.Gunton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 158-188 (30pp)

Volf, Miroslav. Work in the Spirit : Toward a Theology of Work. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 89-122 (34pp)

Williams, Rowan. ‘Being Alone’ in Open to Judgement : Sermons and Addresses. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994, pp. 143-149 (7pp)

Bizarrely, more Turretin

Turretin argues strongly that the doctrines of faith and practices can be legitmately proved by 'consequences' drawn from Scripture. Which is to say: the lack of an express word of Scripture about a certain doctrine is not a sufficient argument to countersay the claim it makes. Turretin points to the famous heretics of the church who have used exactly this strategy - the Arians and the Macedonians in particular. The Arians denied the homoousion just because it was not contained in so many words in Scripture (says FT). Gregory of Naziansus called the Macedonian (who denied the divinity of the Spirit) 'an ABC Sophist and a pettifogger of words'. In Turretin's time, he observed this strategy being used by his Catholic opponents.

A thing may be in Scripture kata lexin or kata dianoian: expressly, or implicitly. To say that all things necessary for Christian doctrine are contained in Scripture and that Scripture is sufficient means the latter rather than the former. So the sufficiency and perfection of the Scriptures does not consist in their condemning all errors and heresies by name, but only in their announcing all positive doctrines clearly (1.12.7).

Turretin could point to a number of evidences for the use of consequences to establish authoritative teaching and practice - and even the practice of Jesus and the apostles as they read the OT. Proving that Jesus was the Messiah was not a matter of explicit statement in the OT, but rather inference.

It is appropriate for the theologian to use reason in the development of consequences from Scripture because, though fallible reason is an inappropriate foundation for knowledge, it is a suitable instrument for it. In adducing theological conclusions, there is need for faith and the operation of the Holy Spirit; but reason may be the means for the operation of these. So:

Although reason concurs in educing consequences, it does not follow that faith is established by reason; as, although faith cometh by hearing, yet the senses are not the foundation of faith; faith uses readon, is not built upon it. It uses it as an instrument of application and mode of knowledge, but is not built upon it as a foundation and rule of things to be believed.

All wonderful and interesting stuff.

William Perkins: the Golden Chaine

Here is the great Elizabethan 'Puritan' (it is a somewhat anachronistic term) William Perkins on Scripture and Theology:

The body of Scripture is a doctrine sufficient to live well. It comprehendeth many holy sciences, whereof one is principal, others are handmainds or retainers. The principal science is theology. Theology is the science of living blessedly for ever. Blessed life ariseth from the knowledge of God and therefore it ariseth likewise from the knowledge of ourselves, because we know God by looking into ourselves. Theology has two parts: the first of God, the second of his works.

You can see Calvin's great opening to the Institutes coming back here. The emphasis on theology as a practical science and not just a theoretical one is a theme that comes from Calvin and returns in Turretin, too.

Introducing... Francis Turretin

I have been researching the doyen of Reformed Scholastic theologians, Francis Turretin, for a course called Reformed Greats. Of course, Richard A Muller's writings have been my constant companion on the journey.

Descended from Italian stock, Francis Turretin was the son of a leading Swiss theologian, Benedict Turretin, who had himself been a proponent of the kind of Calvinism formulated at the Synod of Dordt. Though he was educated in a variety of European faculties – Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Saumer, Montaubon and Nimes – Turretin was a man of Geneva through and through. He was born and died in the city, and spent the greater part of his career there.

Appointed the pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva in 1647, he became a professor of theology in 1653. He was a co-sponsor of the Helvetic Formula Consensus (1675), in which the views of Moses Amyraut were rejected – and which all candidates for the ministry were required to sign. His major work, the four volume Institutes of Elenctic Theology were published in 1688.

Turretin provides a great example of a rigorous attempt to think through the prolegomena to theology - a topic the Reformers had somewhat neglected. What kind of thinking is theology? It can be considered either systematically as a discipline or, more subjectively, as 'a habit residing in the intellect'. Systematically, theology can be classified as doctrine. But Turretin insists that the types of mental disposition or habitus need an analysis. The question is: what habit of mind leads to the due reception of the doctrine of the church for our salvation?

Turretin outlines a trio of mental dispositions - knowing, believing and supposing. For each habit or disposition there is an appropriate act of assent. If assent depends on reasoning, then the habit in question is scientia; if it depends on testimony, then the habit is fides; if it is a question of opinion or probability, the opinio. (I am cribbing from Muller here).

Theology appears to depend for assent on testimony, and so its habit is that of fides. Theology is only roughly similar to scientia-type disciplines - it has a supernatural basis stemming from divine revelation, and it mixes both pratical and theoretical knowledge in a way unlike the intellectual disciplines.

It's the truth

Ok, so it's been a long, long time between blogging drinks. I have to say, I lost my blogging mojo for a while there. Went on holidays...



While there, I read Raimond Gaita's A Common Humanity, and was struck there by an intriguing essay on truth and knowledge. Gaita asks: are we entitled to dismiss the claims of the flat earth society without even investigating them? Ought the teaching of David Irvine, holocaust-denier extraordinaire, be suppressed? Or ought we allow him full airplay and answer his claims one-by-one? Can I just dismiss climate change sceptic Ian Plimer - or does his mantra 'you aren't a scientist!' actually mean I can say nothing? Trouble is of course, I am called upon to have an opinion on these matters in which I am clearly not even remotely expert. Neutrality isn't possible. Given that I am interested in believing what is true and not being fooled - what am entitled to believe?



See, the thing is: I bet Irvine would have me for breakfast in a debate. He knows far more about German history than I ever will. He is an experienced debater and speaker. He has spent years with the sources. Likewise, I am sure that a flat-earth society member can marshall geological arguments far better than I will be able to. Plimer would chew me up and spit me out.



So am I entitled to just dismiss their claims out of hand? Isn't this unscholarly, and even dishonest? And further: isn't it the case that great scientific advances in the past have frequently come from mavericks, eccentrics and oddballs? If I dismiss Irving and the flat-earthers, could it not be said of me that I would also have dismissed a Galileo or a Luther?



Well perhaps. But the fact that mavericks are sometimes right does not mean that mavericks are always or even usually right. In fact, the opposite is the case. Human knowledge is a shared exercise, necessarily. It depends on many small acts of trust. We ought to recognise this and be appropriately modest about what we claim. Scholarly consensus CAN be skewed, or plain wrong. Truth is not an exercise in democracy. But that does not entitle us to dismiss what the clear majority of experts are saying in our time. And we are completely entitled to treat Irving, and flat earthers as eccentrics and oddballs.



Further, the nature of the human grasp of the truth is that there will always be space for Irvings and Plimers. Scientific knowledge proceeds far more precariously and contentiously than we sometimes imagine - let alone the business of history. The very nature of the way we know things - indirectly, by report, by building on premises we haven't got time to test, by following the best opinions to which we have access - means that it will always be possible to through mud in the air.



Which leads me to creation science. Am I entitled to dismiss the claims of the creation science movement? Creation scientists (so-called) have an enormous amount of apparently scientific and apparently theological detail at their disposal. Some very intelligent people with degrees in the appropriate areas hold to young earth creationist views. It is sometimes the case that the wider scientific community has got important data wrong. Consensus hasn't always worked as a lodestone for the truth.

But that doesn't make young earth creation science right, or even remotely plausible. In fact quite the opposite is the case. It trades on the uncertainty we have with all knowledge, and uses some highly charged theological rhetoric to bully Christians into believing it. I think it actually that it is high time that evangelical Christians stopped tolerating it in our midst. We have to stop saying 'some very godly people hold to this view' as if this some excuse for it. The godliness of the people concerned is not the point. We don't have to embrace unchecked credulity when it comes to what scientists claim as an alterative.