I am now blogging over at the St Matthew's Unichurch Website. The Unichurch blog will be my more regular, week-by-week blog, whereas In Between Days will be a much more irregular affair, concerned mainly with a) stuff related to my thesis and b) for saying stuff you can't say as a church pastor.
The blog at the Unichurch Website will be an extension of the teaching/learning ministry of our church. This semester, for example, we are grappling with the book of Genesis on Sunday evenings and so most posts will be related to that. Of course, it will also be a venue for addressing other pastoral and contemporary concerns as they arise in the life of our church. The blog itself can be found on the Unichurch website here.
29 July 2008
18 July 2008
Swearing Christians
When I was growing up Christians didn't used to swear. Now many do. Does that matter? And why has there been this change? I feel like I missed the meeting at which our new policy was discussed and decided on. Anyone got the minutes?
16 July 2008
Frankly, Mr Shankly re-launches as In Between Days
I am re-launched my humble blog under a new title and with a new purpose. Now called In Between Days, this blog will be (mostly) a place to try out ideas and review books related to my thesis.
I am comparing the place of history in Karl Barth and N. T. Wright. I think it's a question worth asking(?). The intuition is that both Barth and Wright are self-consciously writing theology post-enlightenment, both see that the enlightenment's assault on biblical history and historicity raises a challenge for theology, and both respond with prolegomena that include extensive discussion of the role history plays in theology after the enlightenment.
I'll begin this new blog by finishing off some unfinished business from the old blog--namely, reviewing Hart's book The Doors of the Sea. Then on to Busch's biography of Barth and whatever comes next.
I'm thinking-out-loud in the hope that better and smarter people will provide helpful feedback as I proceed. So, if you're better and smarter than me, you're comments will be gratefully received.
I am comparing the place of history in Karl Barth and N. T. Wright. I think it's a question worth asking(?). The intuition is that both Barth and Wright are self-consciously writing theology post-enlightenment, both see that the enlightenment's assault on biblical history and historicity raises a challenge for theology, and both respond with prolegomena that include extensive discussion of the role history plays in theology after the enlightenment.
I'll begin this new blog by finishing off some unfinished business from the old blog--namely, reviewing Hart's book The Doors of the Sea. Then on to Busch's biography of Barth and whatever comes next.
I'm thinking-out-loud in the hope that better and smarter people will provide helpful feedback as I proceed. So, if you're better and smarter than me, you're comments will be gratefully received.
10 May 2008
I know it's over: Frankly, Mr Shankly calls it a day
"I know it's over." So said Morrissey about yet another failed relationship, and so says Rory about his blog Frankly, Mr Shankly. It's over.
It's been fun to write this blog over the past few years, and I think I will be establishing a pastor's blog for St Matthew's Unichurch in the next few months. (I'll post a link here when that happens).
"A million voices cried out at once and then were silent." Princess Leia (or was it Obi Wan?)
It's been fun. Thanks.
Rory
It's been fun to write this blog over the past few years, and I think I will be establishing a pastor's blog for St Matthew's Unichurch in the next few months. (I'll post a link here when that happens).
"A million voices cried out at once and then were silent." Princess Leia (or was it Obi Wan?)
It's been fun. Thanks.
Rory
08 May 2008
Western Australian Words
I have to run some errands. If you wait at the Deli near the extensive flavoured milk section, I'll get my bathers on and then come by and give you a dink to my place, but. Then we can pick up the gidgey.
We had some friends over from Sydney recently and we enjoyed comparing notes on words and phrases used in WA that are not in use over east (like, for example, the phrase over east). The above is my crack at a sentence that I think would be unintelligible outside of WA. Anyone (not from WA) want to have a go at translating? Western Australians: feel free to contribute more words to a growing pool of Western Australianisms.
This is also a post to say that I have been out of action on the posting front for a few weeks. Sickness, holidays and work-stuff. Back on game next week, God willing.
We had some friends over from Sydney recently and we enjoyed comparing notes on words and phrases used in WA that are not in use over east (like, for example, the phrase over east). The above is my crack at a sentence that I think would be unintelligible outside of WA. Anyone (not from WA) want to have a go at translating? Western Australians: feel free to contribute more words to a growing pool of Western Australianisms.
This is also a post to say that I have been out of action on the posting front for a few weeks. Sickness, holidays and work-stuff. Back on game next week, God willing.
20 April 2008
Holidays
Off for a weeks leave with some friends to Moore River, north of Perth in Western Australia. Back posting by 27 April.
16 April 2008
Stuff White People Like
Evidently like a lot of other people, I am finding this site pretty addictive. If you haven't yet discovered it, it's here. Enjoy.
14 April 2008
Doors of the Sea # 4
Universal Harmony Section V
For Hart Voltaire's poem doesn't get us deep enough into the heart of the problem of evil. As a child of the Enlightenment, there was for Voltaire a 'depth of reflection upon the darker mysteries of existence, and on the power of the irrational, that was forever closed to him.' (36)
So, says Hart, if you want to get the question right; if you want a subtle, tortured, haunting and unrelenting case for outrage against God in the face of suffering, you don't go to the great Enlightenment man-of-letters Voltaire, you go to the great Christian novelist Dostoyevsky. It is here, says Hart, that we find a 'treatment of innocent suffering [which possesses] a profundity of which the deist Voltaire was never even remotely capable.' (37)
Through the character of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov the case is made. Ivan, in Hart's words, is a 'rebel' and not merely an 'unbeliever.' He accepts Christianity's hope that 'at the last all wounds will be healed, all scars will disappear' etc—in short, that 'universal harmony' will be established by God (38). It is not that Ivan disbelieve this, it is that he rebels against it.
Through Ivan Dostoyevsky invites us to consider the suffering of children. Ivan recites a litany of real-life (found by Dostoyevsky in newspapers) events: of babies torn from their mother's wombs by the bayonets of soldiers, of a peasant boy stripped naked, hunted and killed by the hounds of his master, of a little girl whose punishment for fouling her bed was to have her mouth filled with excrement and to be locked into a freezing outhouse for the evening. Ivan asks his brother Alyosha whether anything (any eschatological hope) could be worth the absurdity of that little girl's torments? He rejects anything 'that would make the suffering of children meaningful or necessary.' (41)
Ivan's argument gets Hart to where he wants to be. For Hart it is, unlike the deism of Voltaire, 'a Christian argument...because in disabusing believers of facile certitude in the justness of all things, it forces them back toward the more complicated, "subversive," and magnificent theology of the gospel...[whose] inner mystery is an empty tomb, which has shattered the heart of nature and history alike (as we understand them) and fashioned them anew.' (44) Hart concludes:
Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the history of all suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoyevsky sees—and this bespeaks both his moral genius and his irreducibly Christian view of reality—that it would be far more terrible if it were.
Super-summary: Section V in two sentences
The Enlightenment's struggle with God and suffering isn't nearly as scary as Christianity's own struggle with the issue. Voltaire shows us how the traditional theistic answer doesn't work; Christianity shows us how horrifying this world would be if it did.
Questions and Comments
- This section, which serves to frame the question Hart goes on to address, is of course crucial. Any help in grasping it will be gratefully received.
- I am only just at the beginning of reading The Brother's Karamazov so I'm obviously at a disadvantage there.
- According to Hart Ivan rejects Christianity's eschatological answer to the problem of suffering (which is to say, he rejects salvation). Hart's own response is, from memory, eschatological in character, so I assume the trick with the second half of the book is to discern where Hart and Ivan's eschatology differs. Right?
For Hart Voltaire's poem doesn't get us deep enough into the heart of the problem of evil. As a child of the Enlightenment, there was for Voltaire a 'depth of reflection upon the darker mysteries of existence, and on the power of the irrational, that was forever closed to him.' (36)
So, says Hart, if you want to get the question right; if you want a subtle, tortured, haunting and unrelenting case for outrage against God in the face of suffering, you don't go to the great Enlightenment man-of-letters Voltaire, you go to the great Christian novelist Dostoyevsky. It is here, says Hart, that we find a 'treatment of innocent suffering [which possesses] a profundity of which the deist Voltaire was never even remotely capable.' (37)
Through the character of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov the case is made. Ivan, in Hart's words, is a 'rebel' and not merely an 'unbeliever.' He accepts Christianity's hope that 'at the last all wounds will be healed, all scars will disappear' etc—in short, that 'universal harmony' will be established by God (38). It is not that Ivan disbelieve this, it is that he rebels against it.
Through Ivan Dostoyevsky invites us to consider the suffering of children. Ivan recites a litany of real-life (found by Dostoyevsky in newspapers) events: of babies torn from their mother's wombs by the bayonets of soldiers, of a peasant boy stripped naked, hunted and killed by the hounds of his master, of a little girl whose punishment for fouling her bed was to have her mouth filled with excrement and to be locked into a freezing outhouse for the evening. Ivan asks his brother Alyosha whether anything (any eschatological hope) could be worth the absurdity of that little girl's torments? He rejects anything 'that would make the suffering of children meaningful or necessary.' (41)
Ivan's argument gets Hart to where he wants to be. For Hart it is, unlike the deism of Voltaire, 'a Christian argument...because in disabusing believers of facile certitude in the justness of all things, it forces them back toward the more complicated, "subversive," and magnificent theology of the gospel...[whose] inner mystery is an empty tomb, which has shattered the heart of nature and history alike (as we understand them) and fashioned them anew.' (44) Hart concludes:
Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the history of all suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoyevsky sees—and this bespeaks both his moral genius and his irreducibly Christian view of reality—that it would be far more terrible if it were.
Super-summary: Section V in two sentences
The Enlightenment's struggle with God and suffering isn't nearly as scary as Christianity's own struggle with the issue. Voltaire shows us how the traditional theistic answer doesn't work; Christianity shows us how horrifying this world would be if it did.
Questions and Comments
- This section, which serves to frame the question Hart goes on to address, is of course crucial. Any help in grasping it will be gratefully received.
- I am only just at the beginning of reading The Brother's Karamazov so I'm obviously at a disadvantage there.
- According to Hart Ivan rejects Christianity's eschatological answer to the problem of suffering (which is to say, he rejects salvation). Hart's own response is, from memory, eschatological in character, so I assume the trick with the second half of the book is to discern where Hart and Ivan's eschatology differs. Right?
Posting
Obviously, I have been struggling to get to posting in recent days. Still keen to put up the last post in the Lessons Learned in the UK series, and to keep blogging my way through Hart's brilliant book. So, just a note to regular readers (aka my Mum) to say that I should be posting again some time this week.
02 April 2008
The Doors of the Sea # 3
Universal Harmony, Section IV
In this section, Hart turns his sights away from the "village atheists" to Christian apologies he finds unsatisfying (and in some cases, repugnant).
After briefly dismissing the log-cabin crazies, Hart finds fault with two mainstream apologetic traditions: the Reformed and the Catholic. Though different from each other in content (in the examples he uses, the Calvinist explains suffering as revealing aspects of God’s glory, while the Catholic argues for the meaningfulness of suffering as a sharing with Christ in his suffering) Hart argues that they have something in common: they proceed wishing to believe that 'there is a divine plan in all the seeming randomness of nature's violence that account for every instance of suffering, privation, and loss in a sort of sum total.' (29)
Hart acknowledges that 'there is a transcendent providence that will bring God's good ends out of the darkness of history' but argues that providence is 'not simply a "total sum" or "infinite equation" that leaves nothing behind.'
For Hart, these theodicies become so comprehensive that they cease to explain anything at all. Without room for created freedom, you end up asserting nothing more than 'the world is what it is.' (29)
Hart also rejects the notion that original sin means that any suffering experienced by humanity is, strictly speaking, deserved. Despite some differences between the Eastern and Western theological traditions on the doctrine of original sin, Hart concludes that in neither tradition 'is it possible intelligibly to assert that the death of a small child is in some unambiguous sense an expression of divine justice.' (34) To argue that all suffering is deserved is, in the end, to argue for, in some sense, the non-existence of evil.
So, Hart rejects any apologetic impulse that attempts to resolve the problem of suffering 'that precludes the possibility of any absurd or pointless remainder in the order of creation...' (34-5). Then Hart preempts his own answer (if "answer" be the right word) by alluding to the New Testament language of cosmic warfare, the Chritus Victor motif and the general New Testament refusal to find any final reconciliation with death (e.g. 1 Cor 15). Hart acknowledges the New Testament teaching that even suffering and death can, in God's good providence, be turned to God's good ends. But he concludes:
...the New Testament also teaches us that, in another and ultimate sense, suffering and death—considered in themselves—have no true meaning or purpose at all; and that this is in a very real sense the most liberating and joyous wisdom that the gospel imparts.
Super Summary: Section IV in two sentences
Many Christian theodicies try to show that every instance of suffering and death is (theoretically) explicable and meaningful. But, says Hart, who wants meaningful and explicable evil? Surely we don’t want an explanation of evil, we want it to be got rid of.
Questions
- As a reformed Christian, I found this section quite challenging. Nevertheless, even in the reformed tradition, we don't understand God to have a symmetrical relationship to good and evil, right? And reformed writers like Henri Blocher (Evil and the Cross) sound similar warning bells about apologies that leave no remainder and therefore no room for a cosmic victory. So, Hart's just talking about the bad reformed guys, right? Not us nice ones.
- Is Hart's appeal to created free will substantially different from the way Arminian Protestants would use it? I just don't know enough about Eastern theology to know.
In this section, Hart turns his sights away from the "village atheists" to Christian apologies he finds unsatisfying (and in some cases, repugnant).
After briefly dismissing the log-cabin crazies, Hart finds fault with two mainstream apologetic traditions: the Reformed and the Catholic. Though different from each other in content (in the examples he uses, the Calvinist explains suffering as revealing aspects of God’s glory, while the Catholic argues for the meaningfulness of suffering as a sharing with Christ in his suffering) Hart argues that they have something in common: they proceed wishing to believe that 'there is a divine plan in all the seeming randomness of nature's violence that account for every instance of suffering, privation, and loss in a sort of sum total.' (29)
Hart acknowledges that 'there is a transcendent providence that will bring God's good ends out of the darkness of history' but argues that providence is 'not simply a "total sum" or "infinite equation" that leaves nothing behind.'
For Hart, these theodicies become so comprehensive that they cease to explain anything at all. Without room for created freedom, you end up asserting nothing more than 'the world is what it is.' (29)
Hart also rejects the notion that original sin means that any suffering experienced by humanity is, strictly speaking, deserved. Despite some differences between the Eastern and Western theological traditions on the doctrine of original sin, Hart concludes that in neither tradition 'is it possible intelligibly to assert that the death of a small child is in some unambiguous sense an expression of divine justice.' (34) To argue that all suffering is deserved is, in the end, to argue for, in some sense, the non-existence of evil.
So, Hart rejects any apologetic impulse that attempts to resolve the problem of suffering 'that precludes the possibility of any absurd or pointless remainder in the order of creation...' (34-5). Then Hart preempts his own answer (if "answer" be the right word) by alluding to the New Testament language of cosmic warfare, the Chritus Victor motif and the general New Testament refusal to find any final reconciliation with death (e.g. 1 Cor 15). Hart acknowledges the New Testament teaching that even suffering and death can, in God's good providence, be turned to God's good ends. But he concludes:
...the New Testament also teaches us that, in another and ultimate sense, suffering and death—considered in themselves—have no true meaning or purpose at all; and that this is in a very real sense the most liberating and joyous wisdom that the gospel imparts.
Super Summary: Section IV in two sentences
Many Christian theodicies try to show that every instance of suffering and death is (theoretically) explicable and meaningful. But, says Hart, who wants meaningful and explicable evil? Surely we don’t want an explanation of evil, we want it to be got rid of.
Questions
- As a reformed Christian, I found this section quite challenging. Nevertheless, even in the reformed tradition, we don't understand God to have a symmetrical relationship to good and evil, right? And reformed writers like Henri Blocher (Evil and the Cross) sound similar warning bells about apologies that leave no remainder and therefore no room for a cosmic victory. So, Hart's just talking about the bad reformed guys, right? Not us nice ones.
- Is Hart's appeal to created free will substantially different from the way Arminian Protestants would use it? I just don't know enough about Eastern theology to know.
31 March 2008
Theodicy for two
Every Monday I meet up with a good friend of mine to discuss a host of issues, the biggest ticket item being Christian theodicy. In a number of places Dostoyevsky's The Brother's Karamazov has come up as a must read, so we are going to read it together. I've never read it before. Looking forward to it!
24 March 2008
The Doors of the Sea # 2
Summary: Universal Harmony, Section III
Hart's prose is so beautiful it can be tempting to quote him at length (a temptation I think I succumbed to in my last post on this topic). However, the purpose of this little series is not to extol the virtues of Hart's writing. It is to try and clarify in my own mind Hart's argument and to summarize it so that you, dear reader, can a) test my comprehension of Hart's argument and b) help me in reflecting on its value. So, a more disciplined post this time.
Hart now turns to discussing Voltaire's Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. In 1755 a massive earthquake struck the Portuguese capital. It was a Sunday morning and most people were in church. The earthquake became a benchmark for horror in the age of enlightenment, much like the 2004 Tsunami is for ours.
Voltaire's poem rails against the sort of theodicy apparently popular at the time--that this is the best of all possible worlds and that incidents of cosmic evil are part of a system of universal law "...that have been set in place to assure the greatest possible good for creatures and are therefore, necessarily, binding even upon God." (17)
Voltaire heaps scorn on this view. Hart says he "invites all philosophers who say that 'all is well' to come and contemplate the wrack and ruin of Lisbon."(18) By what calculus is horror like this a cosmic necessity? If it is God's vengeance, what of the 'infants crushed and bleeding on their mother's breasts?" (Voltaire, quoted by Hart, 19). Hart concludes that 'either response, in the face of such suffering, is manifestly repellent." (19)
So, Voltaire ridicules a view worthy of ridicule. But, says Hart, he ridicules a view (or a god) 'not directly concerned with the God of Christian Doctrine'.
That is, this view (the 'best of all possible worlds view") concerns a god who governs a world that is exactly as he intended it to be. But the Christian God governs a world which is not as he intends it to be.
And so Voltaire buries a god for whom Christians need not mourn. But does that end the tension? No. For Hart, even though the object of Voltaire's rage is not our God, he is non-the-less a faint and distorted echo of our God. The atheist who argues against God on the basis of worldly suffering argues from moral expectations of God 'shaped at the deepest level by the language of Christian faith.'
For Hart, though their arguments may 'fail strictly at the level of logic', and though they 'may not demonstrate a keen understanding of the Christian tradition', they still grasp toward the Christian God because they demand of God something like what Christian doctrine claims of him--utter moral goodness.
Super Summary: Section III in two sentences- Figures like Voltaire ridicule a god who is not the Christian God because the Christian God governs a fallen world, not the 'best of all possible worlds'. Still, the outrage of Voltaire et. al. demands an answer from Christians because, for all their faults, their arguments against God are shaped by expectations of God derived from Christian tradition.
Questions
I think I pretty much grasp this section (though correct me if I don't). One question: when Hart says that the classical argument against the existence of God on the basis of suffering and evil (i.e., 1. God is all good, 2. God is all powerful, 3. Evil exists: one of those can't be true) fails strictly in terms of logic, where exactly does it fail? I get where it fails in that it ends up talking about a different god to the God of Christianity, but where does it fail in terms of logic?
Hart's prose is so beautiful it can be tempting to quote him at length (a temptation I think I succumbed to in my last post on this topic). However, the purpose of this little series is not to extol the virtues of Hart's writing. It is to try and clarify in my own mind Hart's argument and to summarize it so that you, dear reader, can a) test my comprehension of Hart's argument and b) help me in reflecting on its value. So, a more disciplined post this time.
Hart now turns to discussing Voltaire's Poem on the Lisbon Disaster. In 1755 a massive earthquake struck the Portuguese capital. It was a Sunday morning and most people were in church. The earthquake became a benchmark for horror in the age of enlightenment, much like the 2004 Tsunami is for ours.
Voltaire's poem rails against the sort of theodicy apparently popular at the time--that this is the best of all possible worlds and that incidents of cosmic evil are part of a system of universal law "...that have been set in place to assure the greatest possible good for creatures and are therefore, necessarily, binding even upon God." (17)
Voltaire heaps scorn on this view. Hart says he "invites all philosophers who say that 'all is well' to come and contemplate the wrack and ruin of Lisbon."(18) By what calculus is horror like this a cosmic necessity? If it is God's vengeance, what of the 'infants crushed and bleeding on their mother's breasts?" (Voltaire, quoted by Hart, 19). Hart concludes that 'either response, in the face of such suffering, is manifestly repellent." (19)
So, Voltaire ridicules a view worthy of ridicule. But, says Hart, he ridicules a view (or a god) 'not directly concerned with the God of Christian Doctrine'.
That is, this view (the 'best of all possible worlds view") concerns a god who governs a world that is exactly as he intended it to be. But the Christian God governs a world which is not as he intends it to be.
And so Voltaire buries a god for whom Christians need not mourn. But does that end the tension? No. For Hart, even though the object of Voltaire's rage is not our God, he is non-the-less a faint and distorted echo of our God. The atheist who argues against God on the basis of worldly suffering argues from moral expectations of God 'shaped at the deepest level by the language of Christian faith.'
For Hart, though their arguments may 'fail strictly at the level of logic', and though they 'may not demonstrate a keen understanding of the Christian tradition', they still grasp toward the Christian God because they demand of God something like what Christian doctrine claims of him--utter moral goodness.
Super Summary: Section III in two sentences- Figures like Voltaire ridicule a god who is not the Christian God because the Christian God governs a fallen world, not the 'best of all possible worlds'. Still, the outrage of Voltaire et. al. demands an answer from Christians because, for all their faults, their arguments against God are shaped by expectations of God derived from Christian tradition.
Questions
I think I pretty much grasp this section (though correct me if I don't). One question: when Hart says that the classical argument against the existence of God on the basis of suffering and evil (i.e., 1. God is all good, 2. God is all powerful, 3. Evil exists: one of those can't be true) fails strictly in terms of logic, where exactly does it fail? I get where it fails in that it ends up talking about a different god to the God of Christianity, but where does it fail in terms of logic?
22 March 2008
CPX goes live with its website
The web will be richer for the addition of this site, launched over Easter. (Any Christian website that reminds you to go pick up the new Nic Cave album has to be worth something, right?)
19 March 2008
Big it up for Bruce
They say you can’t take it with you,
But I think that they’re wrong,
Cause all I know is I woke up this morning and something big was gone.
“Devil’s Arcade” from Magic, by Bruce Springsteen.
To all you losers who have written off Bruce Springsteen as an aging stadium rocker, even a cursory listening to the new Album Magic will have you writing a letter of apology to The Boss for your attitude. Springsteen has to be in the top 5 popular music singer-songwriters of all time (up there with Dylan and Cohen for sure).
(PS: Regular readers may have noticed the last few posts have been a tad frivolous. This may have surprised people popping in to follow the promised series on David Bentley Hart’s stunning [anti] Theodicy The Doors of the Sea. As it happens [among other things] a few people close to us have recently faced personal situations where a theodicy wouldn't have gone astray. I’ll be returning to the series presently, though this time with a more than academic interest. Also got one more post to go on my Lessons Learned in the UK series.)
But I think that they’re wrong,
Cause all I know is I woke up this morning and something big was gone.
“Devil’s Arcade” from Magic, by Bruce Springsteen.
To all you losers who have written off Bruce Springsteen as an aging stadium rocker, even a cursory listening to the new Album Magic will have you writing a letter of apology to The Boss for your attitude. Springsteen has to be in the top 5 popular music singer-songwriters of all time (up there with Dylan and Cohen for sure).
(PS: Regular readers may have noticed the last few posts have been a tad frivolous. This may have surprised people popping in to follow the promised series on David Bentley Hart’s stunning [anti] Theodicy The Doors of the Sea. As it happens [among other things] a few people close to us have recently faced personal situations where a theodicy wouldn't have gone astray. I’ll be returning to the series presently, though this time with a more than academic interest. Also got one more post to go on my Lessons Learned in the UK series.)
17 March 2008
A suggestion
Talking to a friend today, we both agreed that if the new Rudd Labor government in Australia wanted to cement its popularity, Rudd should definitely make Hot Cross Buns available all year round. One week out from Easter and I'm just warming up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
