Still reeling from reading Kant

I am still somewhat agape at the sheer scope of what Kant attempts in his Groundwork and the impressive rationality of it all. One thought that came to me was this: in debating against atheists, I have noticed Christian apologists still resort to the argument from morality. It is something like this (actually it isn't an argument so much as a challenge or observation): atheists have no grounds for a particular morality; yet human beings have a strong moral instinct. So: if you are an atheist, you can say something is morally wrong, but not consistently.

But Kant was attempting to find exactly these grounds. In other words, he claimed to have found a way in which moral truth was discoverable by reason alone, with or without divine help. By means if the categorical imperative, Kant was (he thought) able to put morality on a consistent footing that enables a moral discussion to ensue on the basis of rationality. The immoral would also be the irrational, on this basis.

Now, there are problems here of course, but I am just painfully aware that Christian apologists don't seem to address this claim to have found a universal basis for morality aside from divine revelation. Mind you, their opponents don't seem to be very good at putting the argument back to Christians either...

The other thing from Kant was this. Kant tries to sheer all manner of self-interest away from moral consideration. Intentions must be as pure as possible to bring about a truly moral act. As he says:

From love of humankind I am willing to admit that even most of our actuons are in confimrity with duty; but if we look more closely at the intentions and aspiratons in them we everywhere come upon the dear self, which is always turning up; and it is on this their purpose is based, not on the strict command of duty, which would often require self-denial.

My problem with his instance on the lack of self-interest in creation is that this actually dehumanises the moral agent. Why should self-interest always be corrupting in this way, so long as it is not the wrong kind of self-interest? This is what Augustine might say: one ought to love oneself IN GOD, just as one ought to love one's neighbour in God. The right kind of benefits accruing need not entirely sour a moral act. It is impossible to love, in a way, without some form of self-interest. Without self-interest of a kind, love itself disappears... it becomes merely formal, or dutiful, and not loving.

Habits

It seems to me that much of our ethical discussion focusses on moments of crisis and decision, when the bulk of our lives are lived in that curious half-light of the will - habit. We have habits because we have bodies: habits are patterns of behaviour which we repeat regularly without having to think about them consciously. Our bodies like them, and we just do them. I don't consciously choose to have toast and jam with strong coffee for breakfast each morning: and yet, there we go, I do it. Am I responsible for my choice? Yes of course. And yet, I am not conscious of choosing or deciding anything much. So, yes, I do will it; but, only out of a kind of dream-state of the will.

This is not a blog-as-confessional: but I do have one bad habit I will share. I chew paper. I have done it for a while now. White A4 is best. As I am sitting working and trying to concentrate I feel the urge to chew, and not having gum around, paper stands in its place. Actually, I prefer the texture and taste of paper. It is weird how this has become habitual, to the point that I am not even really aware of deciding to do it. And yet, breaking out of a habit even as stupid as this requires a huge amount of will power.

It is because habits involve a kind of shutting down of the will that they feature so little in ethical discussion I think. Somehow, an act perfomed habitually is not as morally upright as the one which involves a more conscious decsion to do the right thing....

A new YOU post

http://youbook.blogspot.com/2007/09/temptation.html


please visit!

Introduction to the Bible: some notes.

Last night at Introduction to the Bible at St Ebbe's we were speaking about the ten Northern Tribes of Israel. Usually they are described as 'lost' tribes: after the invasion by the Assyrians they seem to disappear from history. Certainly, there is almost no mention of them made in the Bible subsequent to their captivity and exile.

However, David raised an interesting anomoly for this theory: in Luke 2:36 the prophetess Anna is described as being of the tribe of Asher - one of the allegedly lost tribes. What gives?

Well, a litte help from NT Scholar Richard Bauckham's book 'Gospel Women' reveals that the traditional 'lost tribes' theory is not exactly true. It is thought now that certainly there were some remnants of the conquered Northern tribes remaining in the land after their conquest. Such fragmentary evidence as we have reveals that some small presence of these tribal identities continued in some way. It would have been unusual to read of a woman of the tribe of Asher being at the temple in Jerusalem, because in that region the Jews were primarily from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. But it would have been historically credible to find someone from the tribe of Asher in the story, because there were a small number of such people maintaining this identity, as far as we can tell.

Williams and hermeneutics

From his lecture on the Bible given in Toronto this year:

"It is not that we are given only a method of interpretation by the form of Scripture – a method that, by pointing us to the conflict and tension between texts simply leaves us with theologically unresolvable debate as a universal norm for Christian discourse (I make the point partly in order to correct what some have – pardonably – understood as the implication of what I have written elsewhere on this matter). There is a substantive and discernible form. The canon is presented to us as a whole, whose unity is real and coherent, even if not superficially smooth. To quote from Kevin Vanhoozer’s recent and magisterial work on The Drama of Doctrine. A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology, p.137, ‘The canon both recounts the history of God’s covenantal dealings with humanity and regulates God’s ongoing covenantal relationship with his people…[I]t is the text that “documents” our covenantal privileges and responsibilities.’ We must acknowledge the tensions and internal debates in Scripture; we must also acknowledge the clear sense that the text is presented as a narrative of ‘fulfilment’ – as one that contains a vision claiming comprehensiveness of meaning. We are to locate ourselves within this set of connections and engagements, the history of Israel, called, exiled, restored, and of Jesus crucified and risen and alive in the Spirit within the community, not to regard Scripture as one element in a merely modern landscape of conflicts. "

Williams defends himself from the charge that he sees 'unresolveable debate' as the key to Christian hermeneutics. He admits that it is understandable that people have misheard him on this. I would have to say the emphasis of his theological writing falls very much on observing the dissonance. There seems to be very little on the fulfilment aspect.

Catholic Social teaching: a failure?

Gerard Henderson makes this claim in the Sydney Morning Herald:

'The unfashionable fact is that nations which have paid heed to Catholic social teaching have had poor economic outcomes. Ireland and Italy come to mind. Ireland recovered from high unemployment only after it embraced economic reform. '

Justifiable? The rest of the article is very interesting too, on the right of Church leaders to make public comment and the inconsistency of politicians and journalists in supporting them when they do so.

Kant's 'Groundwork'

I have put off reading Kant directly for too long, though of course I am familiar with his ideas.

But, I have been set to read his 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'. Of course, one discovery was that by 'metaphysics' he means something like 'rational concepts not empirically derived at all'.

Anyhow, this from him:

Nor could one give worse advice to morality than by wanting to derive it from examples. For, exvery example of it represented to me must itself first be appraised in accordance with principles of morality, as to whether it is alos worthy to serve as an original example, that is, as a model; it can by no means authoritavitively provide the concept of morality. Even the Holy One of the Gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before he is cognized as such; even he say of himself: why do you call me (whome you see) good?...But whence have we the concept of God as the highest good? Solely from the idea of moral perection that reason frames a priori and connects inseparabloy with the concept of a free will. Imitation has no place at all in matters of morality, and examples serve only for exnouragement, that is, they put beyond doubt the practicability of what the law commands and make intuitive what the pratcice rule expresses more generally, but they can never justify setting aside thier true original, which lies in reason, and guiding oneself by examples.

Wow, one thing you have to give him is his determination to be consistently rational at all times. But to assert that imitation has no place in morality? My goodness! Also, here we see the old Euthyphro debate about whether God is good or good is God. Is good subject to some concept or law of the good? Or, is he somehow more arbirtrarily sovereign over it, such that what is 'good' may be subject to change or alteration in some way?

New Radiohead album

You might have seen that Radiohead - the world's greatest band from Oxford - have released their new album by offering it for free in mp3 format. Or, at least, for whatever the purchaser wants to pay for it. They are saying: you choose what it is worth and pay us accordingly.

Probably a lot of people will take it for free - but do so with a clear conscience. Me - I paid them five pounds. I love their work and knowing that that money is going to them and not to a record company makes me happy. This signals possibly a complete reconfiguration of the musical world order. It is exciting to see companies which are basically parasitic on musical talent get undercut in this way.

The new album? Well so far it sounds pretty indistinguishable from Thom Yorke's solo album 'The Eraser'. Which means pretty much less rocky and more atmospheric than previous albums. And I am yet to decide which is the stand-out single or the anthemic heart of the album, or if there is one. It might take a few more listens.

Williams on Wiles IV

Re-reading Williams on Wiles after dipping into Bultmann is interesting of course: you get to see what is running in the background of both. Williams asks of Wiles:

...is the historically primary sense, the foundational experience, demonstrably one with the central insight afforded, in a modern theologian's eyes, by the life and death of Christ, the fundamental, distinctive contribution of the Christian vision? The New Testament falls some way short of saying that the life and death of Jesus provide a manifestation of the character of God's love in the sense of giving us a supremely full human analogue, in death as well as life, of that love: if they manifest God's love, it is because they are the action of God, moving towards the restoration and the universalising of God's people, or the adoption of human beings as children of the Father.

Yes, I think this is a helpful corrective. YOu can't just say, Jesus is merely illustrative of how God works with human beings. You have to say that in him something has already been begun between God and man - there is in fact in him a real act of God. The NT writers did not make deductions from Jesus and say 'hmm, this is what God is like'. They said rather 'in Jesus we have met God and God has acted!'.

The Elizabeth Settlement and after

MacCullough's new lecture series on the Elizabethan settlement and beyond has begun: and what a privilege!

The first lecture in the series underscored how Protestant the settlement of 1560 was: that Elizabeth was no crypto-Catholic minimalist. What was achieved was a genuinely Protestant Reformation - if not quite as radical as some wished.

But the interesting insight that DM offered towards the end was that the English experience of church under the new regime was enlivened by the vigorous singing of the Genevan metrical Psalms! He said this:

'the metrical Psalm WAS English Protestantism'.

A comment on Murder in the Cathedral

Interestingly, Murder in the Cathedral provoked quite a debate in post-War Germany. This was one response:

'Eliot’s starkly medieval, anti-psychological rendition of Becket’s passion treats his martyrdom as an event in human time, when God’s divine order makes itself known to human beings. A Christian martyrdom reveals the structure of the divine order, calling those who witness it to assume their designated place in that order, which is marked by humble recognition of one’s sinfulness and dependence on God’s grace.'

Martyrdom: a genre

mmm. Ice cream is cheap in the Czech Republic. You can eat it every day.

It seems to me that martyrdom is a genre, just as tragedy or comedy is.



That is, it is a description a sequence of events after a certain pattern.

Just a thought.

Bultmann on demythologisation

Our reading group has begun reading a collection of Bultmann's essays edited by Schubert Ogden: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings. It seems to me Bultmann is a figure almost completely overlooked these days by NT scholars, but becoming more popular amongst theologians. When you read his John commentary for example you can see why this might be so: Bultmann was formidibly - even incredibly - learned as a philologist and historian, but his rearrangements of the NT text are often arbirtrary, even whimsical. However, his adaptation of the existentialism of Heidegger for interpretation of the NT is quite revelatory of the human and dramatic situations under scrutiny.

At the suggestion of the editor, we began with the last essay in the book, from 1961: 'On the Problem of Demythologizing'. Of course, as good postmoderns, our first observation was just how 'modernist' he is: the world-view of the natural sciences is the given as far as he is concerned, and means that we cannot except the 'myths' of the NT as anything but naive. The job of exegesis and theology is to decode the myths and express them in the idiom of contemporary thought: 'demythologization seeks to bring out myth's real intention to talk about out own authentic reality as human beings'. Of course, there is no hint from Bultmann that this might be a 'remythologization' in its turn! Bultmann's determination is to wrestle with the vary Kantian dilemma: since God is not a fact withing the world that can be objectively established but rather must be confessed, we can only talk about him if we at the same time talk about our own existence as affected by God's act. As he says:
The statement that God is Creator and Lord has its legitimate basis only in our existential self-understanding...
This on the face of it seems a curious claim: but the statement is a statement that is believed and confessed, after all, and preached, rather than one open to the inquiries of natural scientific methods.
The peculiar thing about Christain faith, however, is that it sees an utterly special act of God in a certain historiacl event, which as such can be objectively established. This is the appearance of Jesus Christ, who is seen to be the revelation of God that calls everyone to faith.
Not too much to complain about here.

Bonhoeffer watching

I discovered later and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw oursleves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings but those of God in the world - watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian....[Letters and Papers, p. 370]

Quietism of a kind? Well yes, except quietism without the elitism of the Catholic strain of it - the expectation of the 'higher' spiritual life (we've had plenty of that nonsense in Protestantism too).

The collapse of the evangelical consensus?

One real sign that a movement is in trouble is when it starts to dissolve in self-analysis. Certainly, you would have to say that applies to evangelicalism, a movement which is in danger of disappearing into its own navel at an alarming rate. The sheer volume of books on the subject tells its own story; not to mention the twee 'river, canal, rapids' descriptions (I mean, who wants to be a 'canal' evangelical?) .

So, by way of contributing to the problem perhaps, I penned this thought about contemporary evangelicalism, which seems to me a house divided - at least in the UK.

The common diagnosis of the problem is that, in the 60s, there were three or four leaders of the evangelical movement around whom we all (or our spiritual parents) gathered - Stott, Lloyd-Jones, perhaps Packer. Since then diversity and infighting has been the rule - disputes over charismatic gifts, women in ministry, the new perspective, social action and so on have meant that the movement has no clear common ground anymore. There seems to me to be a significant erosion of what evangelicals used to hold as points of unity: the atonement, the bible, the priority of evangelism/conversion, justification by faith, the work of the Spirit in sanctification of the believer, and so on. Reasserting these, and shouting them more loudly has been the strategy of some, but it isn't working to unify

The various doctrinal bases no longer provide the rallying point that they used to, because it is the question of emphasis and additions to these that is at issue. If evangelicals are going to find a common ground again, it seems to me that they will have to be exclusive as well as inclusive at some point. Which is to say, saying what you are means at some point saying what you are not, too.

Now, I ran this by a UK evangelical leader, and he said I had it completely wrong, and that the movement was in good shape, relatively. Shows what I know...

Can you want to be a saint?

In a letter to Eberhard Bethge written in July 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remembered a conversation with ‘a young French pastor’ (identified by the editor as Jean Lasserre):

He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast.[1]

Bonhoeffer’s intuition is that intending ‘to become a saint’ is not the way to become one.[2] Even though desiring the honour of heaven appears to be a way to surmount the lust for earthly glory, is it not merely a displacement of the same desire? Eliot’s Thomas is not swayed by the promise of earthly honour, appealing though it is. Far dearer to his heart is the promise of heavenly glory. This temptation introduces a complex problem for Eliot and indeed for the whole theological tradition: what place does the heavenly prize have in the motivation of the holy to serve God? Does the offer of a heavenly reward or a martyr’s crown corrupt the pursuit of true sanctity? The question is most troublesome: the very idea of martyrdom threatens to collapse under its weight. Is the heavenly city merely the earthly city on a larger scale? Is the desire for a higher place in heaven, which Origen among others certainly believed would be bestowed on the martyrs,[3] any better than a desire for earthly glory? Thomas discovers himself in the untenable situation of wanting that for which the desiring makes the having apparently impossible.[4]

Is some form of what has been known as ‘Quietism’ the only way forward? The controversy over Quietism in late seventeenth century France brought just this dilemma to the fore. The impulse of the movement was certainly not new: Meister Eckhardt had been promulgating its main features over four hundred years earlier. Essentially, Quietism taught that any action motivated by self-interest to any degree was offensive to God. To achieve the purity of love characteristic of a saint, one must utterly divest oneself of self-interest – even to the extent of renouncing interest in salvation itself (and thus, like Bonhoeffer, renounce the desire to become a saint). As Madame Guyon wrote: ‘[W]e must suppress all desire…even the desire for the joys of Paradise’.[5] Her ecclesiastical advocate, François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, defended this ideal in more academic terms in his Explication des Maximes des Saints, arguing that , for a few especially gifted saints, there was the possibility to achieve a pure or disinterested love of God. Pressed by his adversary and fellow-bishop Jean-Bénigne Bossuet, Fénelon conceded that the saint might continue to hope, but argued that this was simply because this is commanded by God. Rightly, Bossuet could see that his opponent was stretching: this was no hope worthy of the name, just as Fénelon’s ‘pure love’ was mechanistic and inert, and barely recognisable as a species of love at all.[6] Quite apart from the problem of the overwhelming Scriptural testimony to heavenly rewards which it is apparently right to desire, the Quietist alternative foundered on the rocks of its own logic, not least because, in making a nothing of the self, it made the value of self-sacrifice questionable.


[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (London: SCM, 1999), p. 369.
[2] His bracketed comment is perhaps to be read as not wishing to appear malignant about Lasserre.
[3] Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom L
[4] In his study on martyrdom, von Balthasar makes a comment that in one sense encapsulates Thomas’ predicament: ‘Man is capable of misusing and abusing everything for his own selfish ends, even the invitation to sacrifice his life for the sake of that love from which faith springs’ Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, p. 36.. Could even the pursuit of martyrdom turn out to be perverse? Certainly, this is what the modern world (Salman Rushdie being our example) has suspected.
[5] Quoted in Kenneth E. Kirk, The Vision of God : The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum, Bampton Lectures (London ; New York: Longmans, Green & Co, 1931), p. 454.
[6] Oliver O'Donovan, The Ways of Judgment : The Bampton Lectures, 2003, The Bampton Lectures (Grand Rapids, Mich. ; Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2005), p. 300-1.

Asleep at the wheel? More reflections on staying awake

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

The echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in this passage are fascinating: Jesus prays “Abba, Father”, and that his will be done; and now, they are to pray not come to the time of testing. Of course, the time of testing is just round the corner. But here is a lesson in discipleship: stay awake, and pray. Be alert to the possibility of NOT doing what God wills, but what you will instead; of choosing the weakness of your flesh over the intentions of your spirit, so to speak. Jesus knows that the only way to meet this terrible trial is to keep awake and call on God.

“Could you not keep watch for one hour?” No he could not; and neither could the others. Again and again he was to find them sleeping: “because their eyes were heavy”; and from embarrassment and shame, caught like rabbits in the headlights of their own disobedience, they did not know what to say to him. Entering the garden with all the devotion to service of their Lord, they fall asleep at the very moment they ought to be most alert and calling on God to deliver them.

And so it is no surprise, with disciples such as these, that we find Jesus deserted, betrayed and denied. Remarkably, Peter denies him three times, pretending dishonestly that he has no first-hand knowledge of Jesus, for fear perhaps of sharing the same fate as Jesus. So much for taking up your cross and following Jesus.

And the disciples as group dishonoured themselves in the crucial moment by fleeing from the armed mob that had come to capture him. This included even the mysterious streaker of 14:51, who fled naked: perhaps, people have suggested, this is the author, too ashamed to add his own name to his disgrace. The disciples lose their nerve: they fall into an unruly mob. In contrast, Jesus faces his trial and death with calm composure, having expressed his fears to God in prayer. This desertion means that in this moment Jesus is utterly alone. It is not self-evident that he should be alone at this point. He had called his disciples to be his apostles, the foundation of his community in the world. He had made his cause theirs. He himself would be there in their midst, as he says in Matthew. It was perfectly possible that the disciples might have been crucified along with him. But, though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. The flight of disciples and the denial of Peter show just how weak it is. Though he asked them to watch and pray with him, they could not do it; and just at the crucial moment they dozed.

While the saviour wept, the Church slept!

Shh! It's the Quietists!

Is pure self-lessness really possible? Is anyone really 'pure in heart'? In commanding pure unselfishness, doesn't Christianity become the rankest of paradoxes, the absurdest of faiths?

Well, the Quietists of 17th Century Europe weren't happy to admit that complete disinterestedness was impossible. Rather, they claimed that disinterest was the essential condition which alone gives any action eternal worth. If heaven and hell are put forward as motives of right conduct, then selfishness has gained a toehold. Meister Eckhardt once said: 'He alone hath true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing'. Madame Guyon in the 17th Century wrote: 'We must suppress all desire, even the desire for the joys of Paradise'. So, the Quietists even spoke of wishing for one's own damnation, because this would be the truly self-less path. This is to make, of course, Judas the hero of the gospels...after all, it was he who really sacrificed everything and received nothing in return, not even ultimately his thirty pieces of silver...

The debate, in the end, was between two bishops, Fenelon and Bosseut. Fenelon explained that the Quietists set out to acquire disinterestedness by the methods of formalism, 'training themselves not to think of themselves, trying even to desire the pains of hell that they might stifle all longings for the joys of heaven.' (KE Kirk). Fenelon didn't want to go this far - a self-conscious ACT of self-abnegation is surely not very far from extreme egoism. For Fenelon, disinterestedness can only happen as a gift of God: the human subject's responsibility is only to contemplate as best he can, and leave the rest to God. Worship alone will disinfect our service from egotism, but not worship as self-examination. As Kirk says 'only by discharging the immediate duties honestly and without presumption shall we become disinterested, not by close scrutiny of our spiritual attainments'.

Williams on parables II

Part of the power of the parables is, for Williams, in their ‘secularity’. As he says in one of his sermons: ‘Jesus, in his acts and parables, is a strikingly secular figure, unconcerned to ask question about the status or purity of those who come to him’.[1] Taking his lead from Bonhoeffer’s famous appeals for a non-religious language with which to proclaim the gospel, Williams describes Jesus’ own langauge as ‘non-religious’, and so a model of speaking the word of God to be followed. By ‘non-religious’ Williams means: ‘it is not primarily concerned with securing a space within the world for a particular specialist discourse…whether or not it uses the word ‘God’, it effects faith, conversion, hope.’[2] There is the characteristic Williams emphasis here on what the words do, as opposed to what they say. Their right function is not imperial, as certainly is the case with some religious talk. What seems to matter most is the right outcome - whether or not this speech results in the transformation of those who encounter it. 'Religious' language (at least in the terms that Williams uses) does not transform in this way, but rather dominates and makes subservient.

I sense here the tendency to some universalised conception of what ‘religious’ means. Jesus did not encounter in the religious rulers of his day merely ‘religious’ rulers but Jewish ones. His specific critique is not of them as religious qua religious, but as those who were entrusted with the covenant and its laws and ceremonies. It is not religiousity that is critiqued in and of itself. To posit Jesus as a critic of religion itself risks making him into a Marcionite – or, perhaps less alarmingly, makes him too much of a Lutheran, preaching faith to the exclusion of law. Yet Jesus seems very Jewish: he is radical in the very sense that he calls Israel back to its roots, as well as preparing her for an entirely new act of God. The parables themselves, we ought to remember, make use of profoundly Jewish symbolism: they do not appear as secular in the sense that vineyards, sowers, sheep and seeds were symbols already deeply embedded in the religious self-identity of Israel. They turn the religious life of Israel back to its central meaning and purpose.

[1] Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement : Sermons and Addresses (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994), p. 54.
[2] Williams, "The Judgement of the World," p. 41.

Williams on Eliot

I have been reading 'The Four Quartets': breathtaking.

Rowan Williams says:

This is the pivot of the Quartets: God has borne all we bear and so has made the fabric of history his own garment. The world has no discernible meaning or pattern; but into it there has entered the compassion of God.

He continues:

Eliot was a great preacher of the gospel because he had the integrity not to close his eyes to any of the real horror of the world; preaching is cheap if it fails to meet human beings at their darkest points. The reconciliation he writes of is utterly costly, mortally hard: our sole nourishment in the task is the blood of God's costly love, the assurance that death, loss, disorder are none of them stronger than the compassion of God.

Open to Judgement, p. 218-9