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Thick Confessionalism

Unfortunately I haven't read the book I am about to quote from, but fortunately I'm friends with J. Mark Bertrand and read his blog and find that he reads books so I don't have to.  The following is a quote from James K. A. Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism, pp. 116-117

A more persistent postmodernism -- one that really follows through on the implications of claims made by Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucalt (or better, the meshing of their central claims with insights from the Christian theological tradition) -- will issue not in a thinned-out, sanctified version of religious skepticism (a "religion without religion") offered in the name of humility and compassion but rather should be the ground for the proclamation and adoption of "thick" confessional identities . . . In this respect much of the dominant discussion in postmodern philosophy of religion actually shrinks back from the more radical implications of postmodern critique.

As I said I haven't read the book so don't know the larger context in which Smith is making this statement and I know it's always dangerous to interact with snippets minus context.  Furthermore I haven't read Derrida, Lyotard or Foucalt so I don't want to claim to be able to argue the finer points of their philosophies.  But I will say that, from what little I know of postmodernism and from what I have seen from the popular postmodernizers in the church, Smith's quote surprises me.  I'd be curious to see how he demonstrates that the postmodern critique can lead to the adoption and proclamation of "thick" confessional identities.

Having said that I applaud his applause for "thick confessional identities."  One needn't look to postmodernism as the cause of the thinning of confessional identities, good ol' run of the mill evangelicalism has been thinning out confessional identity long before postmodernism became cool.  Smith's instruction here could go a long way toward saving evangelicalism from evangelicals.

Calvin's Hidden Philosophy

Here's a good quote from John Calvin to start your week.  Thanks to Cynthia Nielsen for finding and posting this:

The Lord willingly and freely reveals himself in his Christ.  For in Christ, he offers all happiness in place of our misery, all wealth in place of our neediness; in him he opens to us the heavenly treasures that our whole faith may contemplate his beloved Son, our whole expectation depend upon him, and our whole hope cleave to and rest in him.  This, indeed, is that secret and hidden philosophy which cannot be wrested from syllogisms.  But they whose eyes God has opened surely learnt it by heart, that in his light they may see light (Institutes, 3.20.1, trans. Ford Lewis Battles).

The Law of Unintended Consequences

There's a great discussion of the law of unintended consequences going on in several places and it's a discussion that has resonance with the church and the Christian faith.  Before commenting let me give you the players in the discussion.  I may not have all the relationships in proper order here as far as who is responding to who, but if you check these posts out you'll get the gist (the posts aren't too long so you can read them and it will be worthwhile).

The Freakonomics guys did a column for the New York Times Magazines on Unintended Consequences where they looked at three examples of unintended consequences - how the Americans with Disabilities Act has harmed Americans with Disabilities by leading to a sharp drop in employment for them, how Jewish seventh year sabbatical laws got corrupted and came to harm the poor they were created to protect and how the Endangered Species Act has led to the destruction of habitats of endangered species.

This causes Andrew at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science to wonder exactly what kind of "law" the "law of unintended consequences" is?  He points to another post where he argues that often the "unintended" consequences were in fact "intended."  I suppose that would be like the woman who never intended to blow the week's budget on new clothes, but somehow found herself in a department store or some pastors who intend to quit buying books they don't read but somehow often find themselves in bookstores and don't know how they got there.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution comes through with a definition of the law of unintended consequences that the Freakonomics guys like:

The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system.   The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives.  Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system.  When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.

I like that, but speaking only for myself, I was hoping for more definition on the difference between a simple and a complex system.  The comments on Alex Tabarrok's post are almost too many to read, but there is one comment by Stephen Downes that I think helps on my question:

A 'simple system' is a system where linear cause-and-effect relations hold. A 'complex system' is one in which the same cause may have multiple effects.

This clarification is important because the 'contrast' in the quote cited above in fact includes a number of simple systems. 'high-feedback' and 'incentive-driven' systems are types of simple systems - they suppose that a certain cause - feedback, or incentives - will produce the desired result.

I am also wondering if Mr. Downes might say that in a complex system a single effect may have multiple causes?  It seems to me that this is the case.

Which leads me to speculate on how this applies to the religious realm.

Not so fast Polonius - to whom be true?

In Hamlet, Polonius tells his son Laertes:

"This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou cans't not be false to any man "

What do you think, is this good advice or not? 

I've recently come across the blog of Alexander Pruss, a philosopher out of Baylor and enjoyed it enough to add to my rss reader.  He has a post on this very issue, where he exegetes and interrogates Polonius's words and he questions the wisdom of such a statement, while giving at least one instance of where the statement can be correct.  Along the way he has some good thoughts on vocation and calling and what it means to be human.  The only thing I would add to his discussion is that a few words on the noetic effects of sin would also bear on the discussion.

He begins as follows:

We sometimes hear people justifying not doing an action by saying: "I am just not that sort of person." Taking this literally, and perhaps we shouldn't, the idea is that the speaker is a certain sort of person, and she should be true to that.

But why? Why be true to ourselves? How is the fact that I have a character that inclines me to act in a certain a good reason for acting in that way? There is, indeed, a danger of an is-ought slide here. I am a certain way, but ought I be that way? Yes, it may be easier to act in accordance with character, so there may be a reason of convenience there. But when people say "I am just not that sort of person", they do not mean that the action is inconvenient.

Read the whole thing.

Technorati tags: humanity, self-knowledge, Shakespeare, vocation, calling, religion, theology, philosophy

Gossip Trumps Truth, at Least in Practice

Here's an interesting article by John Tierney of the New York Times on how Facts are No Match for Gossip.  Some interesting experiments and studies have been conducted to document this and Tierney references them in the article.

I'm no scientist so I can't speak with the authority Tierney and those he cites, do.  But I wouldn't be surprised if I am not the only one who has experienced the triumph of gossip over facts/truth, in practice.

It seems that no matter how well-reasoned or documented an argument may be, gossip, if available will be more persuasive.  I have seen this in many situations.  It usually goes like this - you present your case but the other remembers hearing someone who said thus and so, and you lose.

I don't want to over play my hand on this.  Sometimes that is a good thing.  Many times I have read a book or done some other research, become convinced and then engaged a discussion.  My interlocutor may ask questions that I can't answer because I can't recall the research at the time.  In such a case it is not unreasonable for me to hold the line, though I may not be able to argue my case well.

Where I would go wrong though would be to dismiss my interlocutor's arguments without further investigation.

Also, there is the importance of reliance on credible authority, it is reasonable to do so.  What I mean is that sometimes someone will argue a position I cannot refute, but I will maintain my position because a credible authority I rely on holds that position.

Again, this is reasonable to do so.  But in the examples I just gave, reliance on past research or credible authority, there is a foundation for a position. 

What I am arguing against, and what I think Tierney shows, is that often we take positions that don't have a good foundation, we just know heard someone say something their cousin told them after talking to a friend of an uncle who saw something on Oprah.  Watch how easily "I heard so and so, or such and such" becomes a conversation stopper and you will see what I mean.

C. S. Lewis - God is unscrupulous

In the book Surprised by Joy C. S. Lewis chronicles his road to Christianity, a road which included an extended stop in atheism.  As he became more and more acquainted with G. K. Chesterton and George MacDonald, his atheism began to wear thin and he describes this time this way:

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for.  A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.  There are traps everywhere - "Bible laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and strategems."  God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

C. S. Lewis on Joy vs. Pleasure

From Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis (p. 170).

Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are substitutes for Joy.

Anybody out there wanna esplainify or illustrate that one for me?

Here's a summary statement on Lewis's understanding of and search for joy if that will help:

Along with his intellectual struggle to faith, he was also being drawn into an emotional relationship with the Person who is the Truth. Lewis understanding of Joy, of the imagination in its highest, purest state is described in his spiritual autobiography

Surprised by Joy

. In it he recounts how he (and all humans) are alienated from this personal relationship yet we retain a longing with lifelong nostalgia to be united with the Holy Other. In the preface to

The Pilgrim s Regress

Lewis writes, "The soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given - nay, cannot even be imagined as given - in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience." He saw Joy as pictures or blissful glimpses God sends to an estranged race to awaken sweet desire of pagans and thereby calling them to Himself. Lewis used the word Joy to connote the highest definition of imagination, that is the sense of awe at the presence of the Objective Realty, the Absolute Truth, which lies outside of ourselves. On a psychological level, it is the word Sehnsucht, to mean longing or desire for beauty, the transcendent or the sense of separation to that which is desired such as those imaginative experiences he describes in

Surprised by Joy

- the green Castlereagh Hills outside his nursery window, the tiny toy garden on the lid of a biscuit tin, Beatrix Potter s Squirrel Nutkin and Longfellow's Saga of King Olaf. Later he distinguished these kinds of experiences of Joy from happiness and pleasure by observing their common quality as that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction...anyone who has experienced it will want it again.

Free will is not just a problem for theologians

Here's a fun video discussion the problem of free will (HT - 5Min Life Videopedia).  It's from a film called "Waking Life" which I confess I had not heard of till today,  Sorry if there are any Waking Life fans out there who are flummoxed that I don't know about this, but please don't take offense - I'm quite out of the loop on a number of matters.

I don't know about this guy's religious leaning's or philosophical foundation but I enjoyed listening because he shows that the concept of free will poses a number of problems even for those who come at the issue without a conscious religious background. 

Being a Christian of the Calvinist/Reformed variety, I am used to hearing people say that my view of God's sovereignty and man's free will turns God into the divine Stalin.  In Christian circles, to deny the common view of free will is tantamount to advocating that God is a religious totalitarian dictator.  The common view is "God is all wise and all powerful but He is a gentleman and would never violate anyone's free will . . . yada, yada, yada." 

In my mind, that view is based mostly on sentiment, which doesn't render it an invalid argumen t.  If I claim my view is based on an objective study of Scripture I may betray a rationalistic mindset which corrupts my understanding as much as the sentimentality of someone else corrupts their's. 

At the same time, I don't think the common - God is a gentleman - view does justice to some of the classic passages like Ephesians 1 and Romans 9-11.  That view also raises as many dilemmas as it proposes to answer.  For instance, why do people who hold the "God is a gentleman" view pray.  It seems to me that unless they are praying for rain or for God to move an inanimate object they are asking God to violate His very nature, as they conceive it.  In other words, if it is in God's nature to never violate the free will of His creatures, then we are asking God to violate that nature if we ask Him to influence someone's choices.

Still, I know this has been beaten to death in other places and I won't claim to resolve the issue here to anyone's satisfaction but my own. I do want to point out though, that the reformed tradition has a very robust and nuanced view on free will which is often missed even by it's proponents.  But I think the "Waking Life" guys do us all a service here in simply calling us to respect the fact that the question of free will is more complex than we might think.

Informational Cascades

I may be late to the party on this one but I came across a concept I hadn't really given any thought to recently - its the idea of informational cascades.  John Tierney of the New York Times explains it this way:

We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.

If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.

Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.

I came across that doing a bit of research on Gary Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories and Tierney uses informational cascades as an explanation for the conventional wisdom that a high-carb low-fat diet is good for you, when a massive body of research says otherwise.

Esther Meek - God Loves Stuff

Over at Common Grounds Online my buddy Glenn has posted an article by Esther Meek (author of Longing to Know) called "God Loves Stuff." She defines "stuff" and shows that "stuff" is not antithetical to "spirit" or being "spiritual."

Take, for example, the way a lot of people view stuff. “Stuff” (a most respectable philosophical term!) is what you feel, smell, hear, and your eyes light on. Now think for a minute of most people’s mental associations about the word, “spiritual.” Most people think it means, “immaterial.” That shows that people have a “default” that sets stuff and spirituality in opposition. People sometimes disbelieve that it could be spiritual to delight in stuff, or that God loves stuff. Such people feel that delighting in stuff can only be idolatry, or sub-par discipleship.

Esther disagrees with that last statement:

On the contrary, I think it is evident from Scripture that God loves stuff. Being godlike involves loving it and enjoying it with him.

Read the rest here.

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Tags: Religion, theology, Christian, Christianity, philosophy, material, materialism