Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Geoff

The Middle Ages, Theology, and Science.

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Several months ago I wrote a review of the book Superstition. Thinking back to numerous of its claims one in particular came back to mind. Park stated often that when Christians believe in God in prevents them from doing science because they already know that God made it, therefore nobody has to ask any questions. I rarely make claims to know what people believe without asking them, I also rarely make attempts to clarify physics for physicists (though I’ve discovered that with a bit of reading I can do a lot of physics). But I am trained to study ancient texts and history, something Park couldn’t do. 
Christians today may really think that science is dangerous to Christianity. But in the medieval era (an era you’ll recall was not really the Dark Ages) science was considered a gold mine of important data about the world. Etienne Gilson note in The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy:

In every one of his actions man is a living witness to finality in the universe, and if it would be a very naive piece of anthropomorphism to regard all natural events as the work of a hidden supermen, it would be no less naive to hold itself to take no notice of it [finality] even where it exists. The discovery of the why does not absolve us from looking for the how, but, if anyone looks only for the how can he be surprised if he fails to find the why?…on this point Christian thought has never wavered [during the Medieval era]. pp 105

In other word, man makes decisions with goals in mind. The universe seems to have an aim too. It was this aim-ed-ness that led the Medievals to pursue questions of about “how things came to be in the first place.” They did this because, believing God made it for a purpose, the steps backward and forward, in fits and starts, could be discerned. The universe, ultimately, was a communication of God’s “beatitude along with His intelligibility.” 

Because humans were a part of nature and they had aims and experienced causality, the rest of nature could be perceived the same way. This Greco-Roman belief along with the belief in God’s intelligibility impelled people to pursue scientific questions. Modern Christians may not see it that way and that is sad, but it is wrong to say that Christianity, in general, makes people averse to science. In my experience university politics sometimes makes scientists averse to science but few scientists call for an exodus from the universities. 

Anyhow, in the medieval era theology and science were, at least conceptually, sort of like a joint endeavor not a battle. How this worked in practice varied as other medievalists will tell you, but the general stance of the day was that studying the physical world for answers to how questions was a good thing. 

Why not read Barth?

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Based on a link posted in the comments at Jim’s blog I found a supposed source for Barth-less pride. 

The apparent source of people not wanting to read Karl Barth a post by Janice Reese at this blog. People who used her post to excuse intentional ignorance misunderstood her point. She notes, with all the sincerity I can tell from the internet, that she suffers from hypocrisy. I do too. So we have something in common, so I hope that my counter-point can be taken humbly. 

She states her reasons for not reading Barth, which I summarize for you here with brief quotes:

  1. …It was clear time and time again that many around me felt a failure to consult Barth in numerous areas of doctrinal debate was a failure to engage in serious scholarship. I felt (and still feel) that it was not only legitimate to, but also that I had to, resist this…
  2. …Feminists have been silenced and ignored by these tactics for decades. Of course there are feminist Barthians, and there are minoritised scholars working with various forms of Barthian theology. However, nearly every time I have read Barthian scholarship and glanced over the footnotes I have seen been struck by how (obviously) this culture of systematic theology supports white men talking about what other white men have said…
  3. …When I attend conferences in America it is the Barthians who stand out, who have the large crowds, who have the ‘big names’. What stands out is in fact the white man’s club.  It is like watching the powerful movement of Patriarchy – striding confidently with long able legs while wearing leather patched tweed jackets…

I would understand if she were protesting Barth because he evidently cheated on his wife or something (but is it wrong to be baptized or educated by a sinner, St Augustine?), but the main reasons are apparently that “everybody reads Barth” and “patriarchy.” 

I think what she ends up doing by accident is playing a combination hipster card and what I call “the feminist opt out card.”

THE HIPSTER CARD

“Reading Barth is too common.” Really? That’s tantamount to saying, “I’m a Christian theologian…but I think the Bible is overdone, I want to read and preach on a less privileged text like Das Capital.” Why not read both (Barth and minority scholars)? Oh yeah, because Barth is privileged. He’s also dead, people aren’t reading him because he’s a rich white guy who is leading some charade designed to undervalue women. They might be reading him because he’s helpful, because they wanted the challenge, or because they like fitting in. 

THE FEMINIST OPT OUT CARD

Her reasoning about patriarchy is similar to when this lady (whose internet name may offend some of my readers) quoted a comment directed to this other lady, 

My feminist activism involves privileging women’s voices over men’s voices. I now only read books written by women. I try to get my main news from women’s news sites and women journalists like Soraya Chemaly, Samira Ahmed, Bidisha, Helen Lewis, Bim Adewunmi, and Sarah Smith. I follow only women journalists on Twitter and Facebook. I support organisations which are placing women’s experiences at the centre of public debate: Women Under Siege, The Everyday Sexism Project, and The Women’s Room UK.

In other words, “Barth is categorically not worth reading because he is a male.” I suppose utilizing Alternating Current in the electric grid is similar (thanks Tesla).
Tesla was a male-stream inventor…therefore it is supporting patriarchy to use his inventions. Q.E.D.

In case the analogy between Reese and the commenter quoted above is not apparent Reese opts out of reading Barth because people who read Barth don’t read other voices (which I can’t speak on out of my own experience which I’ll get to*). So, “Barth (who is dead) is used as an excuse to silence others, therefore I won’t read him regardless of what legitimate insights he offers into the gospel.” It is in effect silencing Barth’s voice (as it remains upon the page and is only heard by those who take up and read) in lament of those who allegedly silence others.** Simply saying, “I don’t care to read Barth” wouldn’t be silencing him but rather ignoring him. That seems more polite.

CONCLUSION

Thankfully we are not actually trapped in a world of bizarre logical dilemmas like the this: I can read Barth and be a sycophant to males who abuse power or I can resist in an admittedly measly fashion.

Here are other logical possibilities (not practical or true possibilities necessarily, I’m just stating other logical possibilities):

  1. Admit that you don’t want to read Barth because you want to read other things. Then it is pure honesty, not measly protest. I haven’t read Barth lately because I’m writing a paper on Matthew’s gospel, I’m teaching 8 classes at a private high school, I’m busy at my church, and my wife is more fun to spend time with than Karl Barth is. 
  2. Read Barth and critique Barth rather than rail against his followers. In other words, utilize dialectic (in the Aristotelian sense of careful argument). Understand Barth and the Barthians better than they understand their own arguments (which many of them never appear to make…they do just use a frightful amount of jargon). If you want to end the charade be the first to prove that the Emperor is Naked. 
  3. Protest in a bigger way than that. Hold a Barth-Free conference. I recommend against this though, it would be like refusing to be defined by sexuality by constantly referencing your sexual activities. Maybe hold a conference about post-colonial theology and only have one Barth session.
  4. Change majors at the last minute to New Testament. Barth was simply wrong about Romans and though he deserves to be read he can easily be marginalized at that point. 

* Here is note on my own experience with Barth and minority voices. I never finished the Dogmatics, though I’ve read three of the volumes and portions of the rest. I’ve also read most of Barth’s smaller books which are in English. But I’ve also read James Cone, Elizabeth Johnson, Elisabeth Fiorenza, Athanasius, Naomi Wolf, Gustavo Gutierrez, etc. Shoot, I’ve read stuff by atheists, Muslims, men, women, and mathematicians. One of my diversions is mathematics. The beauty of it is that your gender, socio-economic status, skin color, or religion hardly factor into things. If your a neo-nazi nobody can reject your conjecture if it is proven rigorously. You can even be a woman and do good math and people have to listen. I rarely meet people at theology or ministry conferences who are particularly good at mathematics or Greek syntax but that does not mean they do not appreciate the need for those things. Though I’m a theology major, I presented a piece on expertise, mathematics pedagogy, and Sherlock Holmes a year or so ago. My presence there did not mean that I do not care about the literacy, linguistics, and rhetoric meetings down the hall. I just didn’t present in those forums that day. I wasn’t asked to. Similarly, I imagine that people in the Barth session still read and have interest in the other topics or other authors on the same topics.

**I’m not sure how many published Western feminist theology professors qualify as silenced. I know people who are silenced. My friend Ryan and his wife Amanda are pastors of a church called the Station. The members who go there for the ministry of the Word and for food have been beaten, ignored, spit upon, arrested, mistreated by police, and judged by everybody else. Nobody cares about their opinion except for their pastors and our Lord. They’ve been silenced. Feminists with dissertations, published books, and tenure haven’t been silenced. Women are systematically silenced in places like Iran, Afghanistan, the Congo, and Peru (I’ve been there wife beating is ubiquitous). The rhetoric of women being silenced in Western Universities (Australia is in the east but you get the point) is tired and simply not comparable to the realities where that language has real social referents. I understand that sometimes it is hard to get a job with a theology degree, but that’s our fault for getting theology degrees (note how I mentioned I’m a math teacher), but that’s not necessarily because of gender. 

 

The Right Way to Disagree

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Doug Wilson wrote a post entitled “Believing One Half of the Wrong End of It.”

In it he notes: 

A careful opposition to Calvinism, say on the contentment question above, would say something like Calvinism ought to be Stoicism, given the critic’s understanding of the premises, and it is therefore a matter of great curiosity that it is nothing of the kind. That would allow interaction between the views that are actually held by actual people. It is a pity that this kind of thing is so rare — but it must be admitted that it has always been easier to debate with cartoons, especially with the ones you draw yourself.

In other words, ascribing beliefs to another person as a debate tactic is rude and it makes debate impossible. In the understanding of Aristotle, it would utilizing rhetoric (persuasion) but pretending to be using dialectic (using logic and evidence to come to an understanding of the truth). 

This has happened to be before. A girl I worked with once ascribed to me the belief that “women are less human than men” in the middle of a conversation about why the Christian method of peacemaking (love your enemies, etc) is the best method. I was taken aback and just said, “I don’t, Christians in general don’t.” It prevented her from having to think about whether the Jesus way is superior to hating your enemies (the right wing way) or superior to pretending that your enemies are not your enemies (the left wing way). 

If she had said something like, “Even if you don’t believe women are inferior, some Christians think women can’t preach in church services, therefore those Christians implicitly believe that” then we would have had some grounds for a debate. The skill of ascribing beliefs to opponents rather than determining and stating what you think their view should be based on premises is both effective and rude. 

Thankfully this young woman (she might be older than me now that I think about it) and I were friends and I was able to explain things to her afterward. It wasn’t meant, I think, to be an insult. It was a way out of an uncomfortable conversation. 

Back to the topic at hand.

Either Calvinism is broadly true or it isn’t. This or that proposition held by Calvinists is true or it isn’t. And this or that belief or practice ancillary to Calvinism is consistent with its other tenets or it isn’t. But ascribing beliefs, thoughts, or actions to Arminians or Calvinists that they do not explicitly believe, think, or do as though they do is akin to lying.

Christians should not engage in this sort of rhetorical rudeness. It creates a public misunderstanding. This misunderstanding is geared at making it more difficult to weigh the truth value or various claims about the Bible, about other Christians, and ultimately about God. The Bible is clear about this kind of practice: The Lord hates dishonest scales (Proverbs 11:1). Surely this is true in rhetoric as well as in economics. 

What does Acts 2:42 mean?

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A favorite verse of Scripture for many (and rightly so) is Acts 2:42. After a whole bunch of people get baptized Luke writes, “They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer (Act 2:42 NET).” But what did this look like? Was it disorganized hanging out? Or was there more to it?

Well, one of the earliest Christian writers, Justin Martyr, noted this in his defense of the Christian faith

“And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.”

“And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things.  And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given,3 and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”

Justin Martyr. (1885). The First Apology of Justin. (A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe, Eds.)The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (pp. 185–186). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company.

Note what occurs:

  1. They gather.
  2. They remind each other of what the Lord’s Supper means (as well as Baptism which is described in a previous passage).
  3. The rich help the poor present. 
  4. They bless God (presumably in song or recited benediction).
  5. They read from the memoirs of the apostles (which in the first paragraph means the four gospels) and the prophets (the Old Testament). 
  6. The president (one who presides) over the meeting exhorts those present to stay true to what was read. 
  7. They pray.
  8. They take the Lord’s Supper as spiritual and physical nourishment (and send it with deacons to those not present).
  9. Those who have extra money give to the president (really like a modern pastor) who gives to those who are needy. 

So, when the book of Acts mentions that they gathered for fellowship, food, and discussing the apostles’ teaching they earliest Christians probably understood the passage to seem somewhat similar to what is described above, but allowing for differences of culture and church polity (things were much more free in Corinth compared to Ephesus). 

Also, the apostle’s teaching was apparently seen as summarized most fully in the four gospels because the early church saw the apostles’ as simply carrying the teachings of Jesus to the world. So the apostle’s teaching at the time of Acts was probably in obedience to Matthew 28:16-20. Their teaching was simply teaching others how to obey Jesus.

George Romero, Showbread, and Being Married

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Warning: post uses Zombie imagery. If that grosses you out then too bad or don’t read it.
Note: I do not write this post to secretly reveal any personal problems, but only to reflect upon the nature of marriage, a favorite song, and the Biblical text.

One of my favorite bands since 2004 has been Showbread.
One of my favorite songs by them is titled George Romero Will Be At Our Wedding.
They have a tendency (or Josh Porter, their lead singer does) to use the macabre and the bizarre to tell stories with deeper meanings.

Here are the lyrics to the song mentioned above (the emboldened lyrics will commented on below):

I was looking for you when I first heard the sirens
The ambulances filled the streets
The masses screamed and called for help
You were no where next to me
The soldiers came to round up the living
And take them away to somewhere that’s safe
But if I cant find you there’s no place to save me
If you are gone then its too late

Night turns to dawn, and dawn into day
And the land overflows with the dead
Where did I last hold you in my arms?
What was the last thing that you said?
Some hide underground, others hide in a mall
I still drag myself through the streets
A life without love my love isn’t a life to me

I don’t believe that love can rot away
So first aim for the heart, then aim for the head

I wept bitterly and then I threw up 
Something silver washed up in my lap 
This metal thing, your wedding ring 
Brought all of the memories back 
I remember the bite, and breaking my teeth 
I remember choking it down 
Eating your fingers one at a time 
I left most of you there on the ground 

And it’s there that I find you, just as you were left
Writhing you rise to your feet
You come back to my side with very few insides
They’re still strewn about on the street

I have heard it said that love endures all things
And now I know that its true
Stronger than the grave, death cant put it out
Here I am, the walking dead, still next to you

I don’t believe that love can rot away
So first aim for the heart then aim for the head
If true love last forever, then love doesn’t die
It just becomes the living dead.

 

The thing about being married is that (if Christian doctrine is true) every time somebody gets married a sinner promises things to a sinner. Paul make a comment in Galatians about Christians who judge one another on the basis of misunderstanding the Old Testament and exclaims, “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.  (Gal 5:15)” This is a real possibility in any relationship, but especially in marriage. In no other typical friendship or institution are people required by proximity and promise to be so intimate. And when people who have secrets, sinful habits, weird habits, or contrary habits live together (that’s anybody who is married by the way), then they run the risk of devouring one another with judgmental behavior and selfishness.

Show bread noted:

I wept bitterly and then I threw up
Something silver washed up in my lap
This metal thing, your wedding ring
Brought all of the memories back
I remember the bite, and breaking my teeth
I remember choking it down
Eating your fingers one at a time
I left most of you there on the ground

I think, without being facetious, though certainly intending the humour implied in the analogy, that marriage can be this way. You have to work hard at putting certain things to death in yourself or those things will kill the very person you promised to love the most. Paul notes this later in Galatians about Christians, regardless of how they view the law they are people who “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24).” This verse can be translated as “those who belong to Christ crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.”* Either way, the point is that unless we kill off our own sinfulness we could easily turn a simple dispute over cooking, cleaning, or finances into a marriage killing and spiritually deadening force. But there is hope: the love of God never fails. In calling upon the love of God as our example in marriage, we can apologize, forgive, and ultimately hope for the resurrection of marriage and of our own selves in this life and in the age to come. The guys from Showbread symbolize this with a man realizing the horror of his actions after seeing his wife’s wedding ring. He goes back for her and they both (in the timeline of the Romero movies this makes sense because the song takes place during Land of the Dead wherein the Zombies begin to re-civilize) remember their vows, regain their humanity, and move on with their lives.

*One could take ἐσταύρωσαν as a Gnomic aorist. In the context of Paul describing the life of Christians as a battle against those very desires, this understanding seems to win on the rhetorical effectiveness it possesses. But I have never seen a translation take it that way and only one commentary (Ben Witherington’s) mentions it and even then he cites Burton who calls it an inceptive aorist, which carries roughly the same idea.

Redeeming Self-Love

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For the Christian, there is a right and wrong way to love yourself or your own life. One can disqualify you from being a disciple of Christ:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)

The other leads you to seek you own highest well-being: God, virtue, wisdom, and so on. 

Whoever obtains wisdom loves himself, and whoever treasures understanding will prosper. (Pro 19:8)

Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
(Psalms 34:11-19)

Elsewhere, Jesus puts the two ideas into a paradoxical statement:

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for life in the age to come. (John 12:25)

Now, why would you want to keep your life for the age to come unless you loved it? Chesteron once said, “One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.”1.G.K. Chesterton. Orthodoxoy ,174 Now, there are several ways to consider this apparent paradox of Jesus. I’ll offer three:

  1. The Radical View
    Jesus means for us to be martyrs for the cause or not be disciples at all. And if you’re not martyred, you’re not really to enjoy this present life, mired as the world is in sin. But rather you are to relentlessly spend yourself and trust only the Holy Spirit to give you joy. 
  2. The Two Natures View
    You must hate your life, insofar as it is defined by sin. To hate your life means something like, ‘hate the aspect of you which continues in its passions, loves to sin, is enslaved to the devil, and so-on.’
  3. The Wisdom View
    This is the idea that a knight, to survive must live as thought he has to concern for his life. In other words, because he loves his life dearly he must fight and risk as though his life meant nothing. Chesteron explains this well, “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaneers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.”2.Chesterton 171

The whole point though is that the motivation to ‘hate your life’ is the very love we have of our lives. In his less paradoxical moments, Jesus entices people to come to him to have life, and that to the full (John 10:10).  And so a love of your life that leads you toward truth, goodness, and beauty, toward disciplined acquisition of virtue, toward a deep and abiding love of God, and toward a willingness to risk lesser goods for greater is good for you. But to love your life as is or so much you will not risk for that very life is ultimately to hate you life and therefore to lose it. Perhaps Paul says it best when he refers to Christ as “he who is your life” (Colossians 3:1-4). If your love of life is the sort of love that loves what God has given you and God himself, then it is good. One might call it redeeming self-love. 

References

 

 

 

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ G.K. Chesterton. Orthodoxoy ,174
2. ↑ Chesterton 171
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