Geoff's Miscellany

The Ignored Anselm
When I was seminary I read a few books whose authors seemed to take great joy in hating on St. Anselm. I don't remember what they were at this point, but it still struck me as weird. He would be dismissed as somebody who was overly philosophical, he would be lampooned as having come up with a silly proof for God's existence, or he would be criticized for foisting his medieval economics upon the gospel in Cur Deus Homo. I'm not sure that any of this criticism was warranted. I've been rereading Anselm and found his work to be quite edifying.

Nick posted about the Body of Christ. His chief insight, which is true, is that Jesus himself, though head of the church, is a member of the church. This is because the head is a member of the body. It reminded me of how a man I work with prays. He prays, "In the name of our older brother, Jesus." Sometimes people mention to me that that find this unusual. So I point them to these passages (ESV today, didn't feel like translating this morning):

When you read the Bible you really do find a great deal of really, really weird stuff. Interestingly, I find weird stuff in almost everything I read whether fiction or non-fiction. For instance, the Pythagorean Theorem is super weird. It is a proven and easily provable theorem, I came up with a proof for it in high school (that's not impressive, it had been used before) and came up with several others as a math teacher (again, upon searching all had been previously discovered). Nevertheless, it is weird. You wouldn't intuit it by looking at a right triangle, yet it works. When I'm reading about other cultures, I regularly learn incredibly weird things. Reading about ancient history is a good way to find weird stuff. Reading in the sciences, several weird things appear. In many ways, nature is precisely counter intuitive. So, if there is a God and this God created nature and left us revelation of the path to true felicity, one might expect to find, in that revelation, a bit of weirdness. This is especially to be expected if this revelation was made to ancient peoples who possessed a mythological worldview and entertained several superstitions about the way(s) of divinity. Not only so, but the culture of the Biblical world is just different from ours, as are their idioms, expressions, and social habits. That being said, a great deal of Christians hear things like, "the Bible is a perfect revelation from God" and thus read the Bible expecting to find something that confirms their own bizarre notions of perfection. I would submit that the Bible is precisely inspired to have certain difficulties, to make a perfect system of theology impossible, and to require tremendous humility to understand because its purpose is ultimately to guide communities of people who dedicate their lives to God's kingdom revealed in Jesus Christ. Indeed, prior to the time of Christ, the purpose of the Old Testament was, once again, meant to provide light to communities of people who dedicated themselves to YHWH, not to be immediately understandable and easily resolvable in its difficulties (Proverbs 1:1-7).

One of the key issues for understanding the New Testament is understanding how ancient family/lineage functioned in storytelling, rhetoric, and perception of individual worth. There are several great books about this topic and a great deal can be gleaned from simply reading the New Testament and documents from the era carefully. David deSilva's introduction to the New Testament covers this issue in the most succinct fashion I have found. This paragraph, for instance, summarizes several of the issues quite well:

I’ve been reading the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Malina and Pilch. On page 360, in an entry on fasting, they note concerning Jesus, “…he was not what modern authors call an apocalyptic preacher.” Essentially, the authors base this claim on the following evidence:

1. Gospel traditions indicate that Jesus did not fast during his ministry.
2. Said traditions are clearly accurate because later members of the Jesus movement did fast. Thus they recorded Jesus' abstinence from fasting despite their own practice.
3. Apocalyptic preachers had a tendency to fast in protest of the evil in the world.
4. Jesus, having not been much of a faster, did not protest the evil in the world.
   Therefore, Jesus was not an apocalyptic preacher.

Anyhow, I just thought that was a weird notion. Earlier in the book the authors essentially argued that Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom was not “eschatology” but rather “nextology.” They claim this on this basis: Israelite peasants did not think about the far future, but only about what was just about to happen. Aside from being a neologism that is so stupid that I cringed when I read it, the application of the term is also stupid. Here’s why, the authors claim that thinking that Jesus had a world-changing judgment from God in mind is a 19^th century idea, rather than an ancient Jewish one. But Luke’s gospel, which is connected to Acts, pretty clearly connects a future judgment of the living and the dead with the teachings of Jesus or at least with the teachings of his disciples.

In the first few paragraphs of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (and in his other works of logic and rhetoric), he makes the point that the work of rhetoric is to persuade and that the work of dialectic is to find the real or apparent syllogism. Both are to be used in the service of truth, but one lends itself more specifically to sophistry. Rhetoric can be very dangerous because it can have the air of careful research and argument but actually be a way to make ugly, evil, and false things appealing. Similarly, rhetoric can be embarrassing. If you think you have the truth but you’ve only used rhetoric to defend it precisely because that is how you were convinced and then somebody comes along with the dialectic prepared (knowledge and valid syllogisms), then you can truly look like a fool. Similarly, if you are socially or rhetorically inept and you bring the dialectic (and even the truth) to a rhetoric fight, a crowd of people can easily be persuaded to ignore or be bored by careful argument. The point being that anybody needs both. Scientists need both just as much as engineers, salesmen, and evangelists. That being said, I want to use something Edward Feser said that made me think about this distinction. Namely that there are times when the rhetoric trumps the dialectic purely for social purposes. When I was younger and somebody made fun of me in the slightest way, I would try to explain as carefully as I could why that person was wrong. Needless to say, I had a very difficult time making friends until high school when I learned to banter. Similarly, Christians who care about evangelism ought to avail themselves of the rhetoric/dialectic distinction. There are times when somebody is just trying to make you look stupid and utilizing dialectic to explain their error will simply lead to being ignored. At those moments, use rhetoric in return..not vitriol, but winsome repartee. But other times when somebody with honest questions or dishonest attempts to stump you comes with rhetoric and you actually know their argument because you listen well then you can appropriately tear things down and rebuild with the dialectic (or if they’re a jerk and you really have the skill, bury them in the dialectic). I’m not advocating being malicious, I’m saying that speech seasoned with salt is always gracious even when it’s sharp.

The argument between Arminians (this is how it is spelled btw) and Calvinists will perhaps continue until the return of Christ. Nevertheless, despite the debate never being resolved, I do think that some clarifications can be made. For instance, Reknew ministry (an open theist ministry, one of whose core beliefs is that the future does not exist and is only potentially known by God), recently contributed to the argument by posting quotes from Roger Olson, Greg Boyd (the pastor who helms the ministry), and Benjamin Corely. The quote by Olsen is below:

Being able to think is a disadvantage with which most people are not burdened. Being able to think merely makes you aware of the outrages around you. - Arthur Jones

You should not be over much righteous nor should you seek overmuch to be clever. Why destroy yourself? Ecclesiastes 7:16 (author’s translation)

This article has some personal information. Not just in the sense of observations I've made, but in the sense of information about myself. For instance, when I wrote about quitting Calvinism, it was about me, but it was mostly about evidence that made a particular view untenable for me. Anyhow:

1.  I used to believe that people can change or be influenced positively.
   I almost gave up on this idea. A particular piece of counter evidence came to me in thought experiment in a book by Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan: The Impact of Highly Improbably Fragility. On pages 105-106 he gives an interesting scenario. I'll summarize it. Imagine a group of rats which I expose to increasingly higher dosages of dangerous radiation. Over time rats die. By the end, I have the strongest rats left. I then advertise that I found a method for producing the strongest rats. It hit me that as an educator, any school system that carries students to graduation, also had a series of fail safes (radiation dosages) that kept struggling students from making it along. Anything, it seems, that we should advertise as our own doing can be explained away as the result of poor students failing out, making grades too low to get into college, etc. Do students succeed because of good teacher or do good teachers look good because certain students who would have succeeded went through their class rooms? IQ scores are not static, but unless a student can be motivated to take ownership of active learning, IQ often does stay the same throughout traditional education. Thus, as math classes get harder and reasoning gets more abstract, larger class sizes do less and less for those of average or below intelligence. This led me to think of churches. Do some churches seem to "help people change" because they only attract people who have their act together already?  If a church is legalistic enough or full of enough people who are 'with it' then only people who like legalism or who are already 'with it' will stick with the program and thus it appears that discipleship has happened. This is sad because people may just be there for similarity of affinity. So on the level of thought experiment (which is what Galileo did, by the way), there is good reason to be skeptical of the efficacy of institutions meant to help people change. Plus, there are good reasons (on the surface of things) to be determinists based upon Scripture itself (Romans 9:6-33)
   But:
   
   • Arthur Whimbey demonstrated that in certain cases young people under appropriate guidance could improve their abstract reasoning and thus their IQ.
   • Roy Baumeister has demonstrated that people who believe in free will are more likely to overcome addictions, less likely to give up in challenging circumstances, and more likely to try harder at work.
   • Eric Jensen has shown how neuroplasticity is directly relevant to teaching in all subjects.
   • Rodney Stark has demonstrated that Christianity lead to numerous ethical, economic, and scientific reforms in Western Civilization upon which we still rely today. The development, in particular, of the scientific method relies upon the rigorous application of Aristotelian logic that was developed during the Scholastic era, whereas Plato thought that math and geometry were so wonderful precisely because they took logic beyond matter to the pure realm of though, Christians applied Aristotle's logic to, what they presupposed, was an orderly world.
   • Jeremiah teaches this:
     "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words." So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 'Thus says the LORD, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.' "But they say, 'That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.'
     (Jer 18:2-12)
     Even for God (if you take Scripture to have anything useful to say about God), whatever this means for theories of divine predestination, takes it as given that his judgments upon sinners (apparently even whole nations) can change should those people change their behaviour. The very idea that Jeremiah is trying to combat is in verse 12: the idea that evil people cannot repent and seek God's mercy. The Lord wants Jeremiah to tell them that they can indeed repent. Thus, nobody is, of necessity, beyond hope. This is the same Jeremiah who elsewhere is asked to stop praying for people because they no longer will be heard, yet the Lord wants Jeremiah to give them opportunity to repent anyway.

   So, I guess I do still think that people can change, but I guess I think it in a different way. In God's kingdom nothing comes without a cross and self-denial. In taking loving dominion over the earth, nothing comes without effort. Similarly, in personal change there must be self-denial. In helping other people change, there must be effort. There must, one could say, be open revolt against evil and against a false determinism that says, "It has to be this way, I shall just resign myself to my fate and others to their own." Whatever else Scripture says about God's ordination of certain events in the cosmos, it also says that Satan is the 'god of this present age (2 Corinthians 4:4),' if some evil seems determined or woven into creation it might be because of the previously mentioned reality, not because it is 'supposed to be this way...therefore there is no use trying to change it.' So, people can change, things can get better, but only in the context of open revolt against evil. Besides, people make things worse all the time and lots of things are better than they used to be (though admittedly many things are more brutal and terrible than we once thought possible).

When I was in seminary, I abandoned the doctrine of divine impassibility. For readers who do not know, it is the idea that God is not affected by creation. It sounds weird at first because in the Bible God answers prayer, get involved with Israel, and shows wrath against sin. But, the idea is that if God changes from one state to another, then God is no longer the source of all being(s), but God is becoming something else and therefore not the source of all being. If God is not the source of existence, then whatever is the source of existence is God.