giddens and self-identity

I have been reading a terrific book called "Modernity and Self-identity" by Anthony Giddens.

He is very good at describing how we cast ourselves as selves in the contemporary world. Modernity's fundamental attitude towards knowledge is radical scepticism and doubt...which means that when it comes to 'making the self' we have to do it alone..'reflexively'. But we do it amidst a bewildering array of options and possibilities. That is a fact of post-traditional life. No wonder we are anxious...

Trust is basic to modernity, because we have given over knowledge in so many areas to experts. We need to trust them in order to operate: that the train driver knows what he is doing, that the vitamins we take won't give us cancer, that omega 3 oils are good for us, etc. Which is why when expert knowledge is proven mistaken or corrupt we are thrown into such anxiety... it is also true that some of this expert knowledge is getting us into trouble, because we can't integrate it into a whole. So, we may take a pill that solves one problem, only to find it gives us another.

Modernity, says Giddens, is a 'risk culture'. He means that the concept of risk is fundamental to the way we organise the social world. We assess the future by means of calculating risk (rather than entrusting ourselves to prayer, for example). But at the same time, modernity has introduced new, global risks... apocalyptic risks, you might say. Paradoxically, moderns still talk of fate and destiny...

So: 'self-identity becomes a reflexively organised endeavour. The reflexive project of the self...consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives '. We see oursleves as 'writing'/'performing' on life's stage. This is where 'lifestyle' comes in: it is our choice of life-story as far as we have a choice. It is also interesting that the intimate relationship - the 'pure relationship', not formed from anything other than choice - has become so crucial to the way we project our lives.

This affects the body as well... the body as an outward form of our self is subject to our construction and control, or at least our attempts to do so. He notes along with this that our culture has a powerful sense of shame attached to bodies especially, and has largely lost our sense of guilt.

Giddens also notes that the reflexive project of the self generates programmes of actualisation and mastery, though these lack moral meaning.... 'authenticity becomes both a pre-eminent value and a framework for self-actualisation, but represents a morally stunted process' (p. 9).

Wow: there is so much dense thought here and so much of relevance for my project and for Christian thinkers generally. I think martyrs are interesting here because of the way in which they incorporate death into a life-narrative: and also because they have a specific attitude to the future which supercedes calculation of risk...

(NB: I will be away in Cornwall for two weeks: blessed Passiontide and Easter to everyone).

The Psalms and the martyrs

Today I read Psalms 1-72 in one sitting (meant to do the whole lot, but ... tomorrow maybe!).

The Psalms, I suspected, give voice to a perspective that the martyr inhabits.
Impressions? Well I think that suspicion was right. In taking up the Psalms we are immediately thrown into a world characterised by conflict, confusion, doubt, enmity, violence. That's just the external world! On the inside, while there are some clean-handed Psalms in which the poet comes to God with a clear conscience, there is also a sense of self-doubt too. The Psalmist lives in a hostile world, where even his own self conspires against him...

And part of the whole point of the Psalms, coming as they do in the middle of history is a sense in which God's response remains to be seen. His character is known: especially his love for justice and his all-knowing perspective. So the Psalmist seeks refuge in God again and again and again. God is the rock, the shield, the fortress. But: what will this mean in reality? What will God do? How will it come to pass? Even the short cut to the christological answer here leaves more to be said. How will God bring his purposes to bear on the world of confusion? How will he shield us from the worst?

Initially I felt that there is an ugliness to his demands for a divine vengeance on his enemies. Here is anger, hatred, frustration, bewilderment, a wishing for the damnation of the enemy. However, there is a sense in which this part of a proper patience - entrusting action to God who judges rightly. Which also goes hand in hand with the strong theme of repentance and pleading for mercy - for if you call down God's justice on others, a moment's self-scrutiny will surely make you realise what a dangerous strategy this is.

A postmodern martyr?

Well I have to report that I dutifully attended the service at St Mary the Virgin to commorate the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer 450 years ago.

It was a 1662 Lord's Supper, and I think they even toned down the bowing and scrapping that usually goes on. Still, the influence of the Oxford movement was much in evidence...
Rowan Williams preached the sermon. It was astonishing really. I was glad that a particular friend of mine was not in earshot: he would have hurled a stool. I certainly came close. What we got was a 21st century Cranmer in postmodern agnostic dress: a man who had become aware that human words (like.... John's Gospel was the example pulled out for us) can never exhaust the divine word. "The word of God is not bound" was the text he preached from. This was the explanation for Cranmer's use of repetition in his liturgy - that is, the inability to ever perfectly capture the divine word in human expression.

So what did Cranmer find to die for? In the end this was the question i felt was not really resolved by His Grace. Where was the truth that one finally might decide to offer oneself up for burning for?
Then we marched up to the cross in Broad St and heard from Foxe's book of martyrs read by Roger Beckwith, while the tourists stared blankly and took photos because I am sure they thought something must have been happening.

hey did you see this?

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/mission/missionthinking/blogging_will_take_the_world_by_storm

liberal political philosopher Rawls....

John Rawls writes provocatively, ‘[F]or the purposes of public life, Saul of Tarsus and Paul the Apostle are the same person. Conversion is irrelevant to our public, or institutional, identity’.

This is a revealing comment: Rawls’ liberalism in effect asks citizens to exhibit a fissure in their identity. This is repeated mantra-like by media boffins everywhere - here in the UK and at home in OZ. (Mike Carlton I am thinking of you). Though Rawls recognises the anthropological/psychological problem here, he offers no satisfactory resolution from that perspective.


The public sphere is not the zone of neutrality he assumes. Quite clearly, Rawls allows a preferred position for certain kinds of truth and not for others in determining what goods society is to pursue. And yet the religious person might rightly protest that without consideration of God at this very point, the kinds of goods that belief in God might entail are deliberately excluded from consideration – and that these beliefs are not easily privatised.

What do you think?

Re-thinking the term “propositional revelation” or, What Broughton Knox Really Said.

The use of particular terminology in any given field is meant to clarify rather than obscure. Terms are only useful as far as they communicate accurately the concepts they signify. When, owing to shifts in culture or context, terminology becomes confusing, it should be abandoned or replaced. I don’t think any theologian would dispute that this is especially true in theological discourse.

I have noticed for some time now a confusion with the term “propositional revelation”, a term strongly associated with DB Knox (who defended it in a 1960 RTR article) and in common use amongst Sydney Anglicans. I wish to argue that this term badly distorts the doctrine of scripture that Sydney Anglicans actually uphold in practice – such that our critics and some of our students have entirely misunderstood what was meant by the original use of the term. It is time for us to revisit our use of this terminology, and I shall argue, abandon it. It is no longer communicating even what Dr Knox mean by it, as an examination of his 1960 article will show.

The word “propositional” has, of course, strong overtones of logical positivism. The logical positivists were a mid-twentieth century philosophical school associated with the early Wittgenstein, AJ Ayer and Karl Popper; and in very brief summary, they were interested to uncover from language the basic propositions and concepts, stripping away the formal and affective shell in which the nut of meaning was carried. Language, for all that it might be conveyed in poetic or narrative form, was reducible down to the simple propositions contained within it. What was needed was a systematic reduction of human knowledge to logical and scientific foundations: its basic propositions, in other words. With the passing of time, the logical positivists have faded from view and their approach discredited (rightly or wrongly), such that the application of the term “positivism” has the ring of the perjorative about it.

When applied to the idea of scriptural revelation, then, the term “propositional revelation” is understood by some to mean that the narrative or poetic or epistolary form of scripture is irrelevant to the actual meaning that it contains. These matters of genre or structure are merely the wrapping of the content of revelation which needs to be stripped away. In this understanding, “propositions” indicate something like “axioms”, or bare statements of literal fact.

We see this understanding of “propositional revelation” in Archbishop Peter Carnley’s recent book; and in Rev Humphrey Southern’s (appalling - over 20 plain errors of fact!) article in Theology 107/836. As he understands – from his interviews with Sydney Anglican leaders - Sydney theology
…starts with a small handful of propositions that are entirely axiomatic and shape with inevitable logic the whole of what follows. Fundamental to this theological method is the understanding that truth – theological truth as much as scientific – can only be expressed in terms of intellectual propositions. Neither narrative nor metaphor nor allegory can convey truth, though they can illustrate it or illuminate it. (p.120)
As Southern sees it, this leads to a distorted and unbalanced reading of scripture:
…The method also involves strict selectivity in how it allocates authority to Scripture. It is not merely that it affords greater authority to some passages over others, or some biblical writers over others, because of preference: it is the selectivity that says the parables of Jesus, because they are narrative and metaporical or allegorical, are inherently less capable of informing doctrine than propositions that may (however tendentiously) be drawn from some Pauline writings. (p.122)

This sadly reductionistic and emaciated understanding of scripture was nowhere taught to me in my studies at Moore College and is not now; nor do I see it (often) in practice in the pulpits of our churches. However, one increasing danger of the use of the term is that not only our critics but also our students – especially those of a scientific or pragmatic bent – will adopt it, thinking this is what the Sydney doctrine of revelation means for interpreting scripture. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is at least occasionally the case.

However, reading the 1960 article of DB Knox, it is obvious that this reductionistic meaning of the term is not what he meant. The article, written in Dr Knox’s clipped, almost terse, style, addresses then-fashionable idea that revelation is an event, and that the scripture merely witness verbally to the revealing event. The Scriptures, according the view Knox is contrasting with his own, are not the word of God but are reflections on the deeds of God in which he reveals himself. Not so, asserts Knox; revelation is propositional: that is, to say, to do with words and the concepts they express. He writes:
The denial of “propositional revelation” is the denial that God reveals himself to men through the medium of words, that is to say, through meaningful statements and concepts expressed in words, for such is the only sense that can be given to the word “propositional” in this phrase. (The Collected Works of DB Knox 1.308).
Words written meaningfully are, of course, propositions. (CW of DBK 1.309)

“Propositional” Knox defines broadly. In order to explain what he means by “propositional revelation”, Knox does not apply a kind of reductive exegesis, distilling unambiguous statements from all kinds of texts: rather he points to the texts themselves including the form in which they appear as propositional, because they are meaningfully verbal. For example:
One of the most important revelations through vision is Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man in Daniel 7. Both the vision itself, and the vital interpretation of it, cannot be described otherwise than as “propositional revelation.” (CW of DBK 1.311)

Knox did not want to tie the idea of inspiration too closely to the exact words on the page in the manner of the Qu’ran. Somehow, the concepts of scripture are translatable from one language into another, and yet still remain revelational. But Knox did not mean that the narrative or poetic form of the text was therefore merely a shell to be discarded in favour of the kernel of truth contain within it. My (I believe realised!) fear is that, though that is not what Knox or his followers mean by “propositional revelation”, it is what is being understood by it.
Knox’s article is admittedly modest, and it is more than forty years old. It addressed a particular controversy in theological discourse. A full-blown monograph on the Doctrine of Revelation now exists, written by PF Jensen. It continues the use of the term “propositional revelation”, but clearly does not mean by it what the critics (and some followers) assume it means. As he explains on p.87ff, “Christian revelation is basically verbal”, in that it conveys both relationship and information. In no way is this idea intended to surpass the affective or aesthetic dimension in the texts of scripture, as is borne out in the rest of the book.

So: do I have an alternative terminology to suggest? I am attracted to “verbal revelation”. However, the criticism of this suggestion is that it is not the words themselves but what they say that is the locus of the divine speech, so that the words of God may indeed be translated from one medium, form or language into another. I would respond that these translated forms – whether sermon, commentary or ESV – are only secondarily or derivatively the word of God. Something will always be lost in translation.

Perhaps there doesn’t need to be a replacement term: perhaps what this discussion reveals is that a simple word has obscured something that actually needs many words to explain accurately. In that instance, it is all the more urgent that we find out and then say what we mean by “the Bible is the word of God”.

Imitating Christ again

Imitation of others is inescapable; though it puts a question mark against our human ability to self-describe our own individuality. The tendency in public discourse to simultaneously construct and deconstruct exemplars ('I want to be like Mike') is evidence of the way in which imitation has become a problematic mode of the ethical discourse - I mean the cult of celebrity! (Do we like Paris Hilton or not?) The casting of social outsiders as human ideals seems likewise evidence of a deep confusion about human virtue.

As we have seen, the Pauline imitatio Christi (mediated via an imitatio Pauli) offers a very different account of how imitation might work. Of course, the object of imitation (Jesus Christ) is, for Paul, unsurpassable, even un-imitatable. But he becomes the empowering source for those who are ‘in him’ by means of his death. The cross becomes the symbolic and actual centre of Paul’s call to imitate Christ – it provides both the means and the form for such a human life. Imitation of Christ is not then about finding an identity, but rather about enacting it. However, as evidenced by what I have identified as the need for phronesis – which Paul himself displays in his mediation of Christ’s example - the imitation of Christ does not reduce all identities to the one same identity, but rather liberates the individual to be herself.

The content of this imitative practice consists, not in acts of self-assertion (as in the secular account), nor in a retreat into contemplation (as in the mystical tradition), but rather in a willingness to bear with a variety of negative possibilities for the sake of the other and the edification of the church community in an attitude of patient endurance. The imitation of Christ (as Paul reads it) turns the believer toward the other believer, for his or her sake, whatever the cost. It is, in the true sense, the passionate life.

Doctrine: a rationale?

Why do we need to do doctrine? What does it add, except for confusion?
In my personal experience Doctrine, or Theology, as a subject has had rather a bad rap in evangelical circles. Few people at college put it as their favourite subject (though I could be wrong); and the majority of time we spend in study is usually allocated to Biblical Studies; we rarely preach on doctrinal issues. There is an understandable reluctance to move what seems to be one step away from the clear text of the Bible itself.
Why is this the case? I have three suggestions:

§ The problem of systems
We may rightly be wary of letting a constructed theological system or tradition override the text. We have all seen Biblical texts squeezed out of shape in order to make them fit a theological presupposition. Roman Catholic dogmas about Mary’s perpetual virginity are one example we may cite, where the most likely meaning of the gospels is that Jesus had brothers; yet the Roman Catholic system, with a prior commitment to Mary’s perpetual virginity will not allow this reading. [I, for one, think that Limited Atonement is exactly this kind of teaching.]

§ the plain meaning of the text
Theology might be seen as a way of subduing or domesticating the text of Scripture - of putting it in its place under or alongside a more important source of doctrine, such as Reason, Tradition or Experience. Or it may be that one text, or theological idea is allowed to condition all the others. In current church debates about women’s ministry for example, the principle of gospel equality is held to override texts that ascribe different roles.

§ A commitment to an empirical method
Further, there is rightly enough a commitment to the epistemological empiricism of our Anglo-Saxon heritage. Simply put, we tend to see that the answer to any theological question can be found by listing the biblical data, perhaps leavened with some historical background. On the other hand, without explicit Biblical data, we become suspicious that we are engaging in speculation.
Personally, I think that Biblical scholars have been part of the problem here, with the greatest of respect. They drag their heels when it comes to theology - from both the conservative and the liberal end. [What are you doing, guys and girls?] We need to release the bible from its captivity to biblical scholars, actually...

so: why we should "do" doctrine:

i. because we all have a “theology” whether we like it or not - so better an informed and reflective one than not.
There is no reading of the Bible that does not already rest on theological assumptions. Doctrine enables us to test these assumptions honestly. It is frankly dishonest to claim that we can do without theological reflection. “Just reading the Bible” is a myth!

ii. because it is an evangelical necessity: the ancient gospel is being preached in new situations and so requires fresh and faithful re-articulation in every generation.
In particular, the demands of our time are enormous and require responsible and creative work.

iii. because it helps to inoculate the church against false teaching.
Doctrine is our “defence against the dark arts.” After all, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim the principle of “Scripture alone”. We need an understanding of doctrine in order to tell what is truly Christian.

iv. because it is a pastoral necessity
Doctrine enables us to address the teaching of scripture about the reality of God to the questions, the trials and the sins of our flock (and of course to our own lives).