Rescue

From xkcd.

What will future generations condemn us for?

A very interesting piece in the Washington Post by Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who notes first the fairly obvious point that perceptions of what is appropriate and good have shifted over the years, and are likely to continue to do so. Where the article becomes interesting is when he asks if there is any way of predicting which contemporary practices might be destined for future condemnation. He suggests three criteria:

"First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. The case against slavery didn't emerge in a blinding moment of moral clarity, for instance; it had been around for centuries.

"Second, defenders of the custom tend not to offer moral counterarguments but instead invoke tradition, human nature or necessity. (As in, "We've always had slaves, and how could we grow cotton without them?")

"And third, supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they're complicit. Those who ate the sugar or wore the cotton that the slaves grew simply didn't think about what made those goods possible. That's why abolitionists sought to direct attention toward the conditions of the Middle Passage, through detailed illustrations of slave ships and horrifying stories of the suffering below decks."

Appiah then goes on to suggest four possible sets of contemporary practices that our children or grandchildren may well find abhorrent: the prison system (he has his eyes especially on the US situation); industrial meat production; the institutionalisation of the elderly; and our ecologically destructive lifestyles.

I briefly considered this question myself towards the end of this post on morality as distraction, specifically focussing on the issue of whether the church is offering hostages to fortune through our current practices and attitudes.

Are there more examples you can think of that meet his three criteria? In your estimation, which one(s) is (are) most likely to see future shifts in judgement?
H/T Bryan.

What is going on at Middlesex?

Death by managerialism
Philosophy has long been part of the heart of western universities. The rise and rise of universities run by a managerial class as a for-profit business over the last few decades is clogging the arteries. Many universities now employ more administrators than academics. The closure of the philosophy department at Middlesex University shows one institution that has gone into cardiac arrest. The department has an excellent reputation and recently was given the highest RAE rating of any department in the university, recognising the national and international significance of its research. When students and staff engaged in non-violent protest against this decision, they were harshly penalised by the university administration. Letters of support for the department have come from scores of academics around the world (including my own philosophy supervisor, I was pleased to note) and from a wide range of national philosophy societies.

A world without philosophy is a world without thought. Philosophy departments are not the only places for thinking, but this move represents the creeping suppression of profitable thought by thoughtless profit.

Read what is happening.
Sign the petition pledging academic boycott (especially if you are an academic or research student).
Most of all, think.
H/T Ben Myers.

"How much does the sky weigh?": and other questions

The BBC News Magazine is running a little competition in which they ask readers to answer questions asked by kids (with the questions sent in by flummoxed parents). The kids were generally between the ages of 4-6 and the answers ought to be engaging for children of that age. It is an interesting challenge. How well would you do on some of these questions? If you think you've got a good answer, you can post it on the BBC site - and make sure you tell us here too. The BBC site calls them all "science" questions, but about half of them belong elsewhere: ethics (3, 10), aesthetics and/or psychology (8), theology (7) and perhaps the hardest of all in philosophy (5). Here are the questions. I'd quite like to know some of the answers myself.

1) Why don't all the fish die when lightning hits the sea?

2) How much does the sky weigh?

3) Why can't people leave other people alone?

4) Why are birds not electrocuted when they land on electricity wires?

5) What is time?

6) Why is the Moon sometimes out in the day and sometimes at night?

7) Why did God let my kitten die?

8) Why do I like pink?

9) Why is water wet?

10) Why does my best friend have two dads?

Image by HCS.

Studying ethics

What do you think of when you hear the word "ethics"? What are the connotations?

As a postgraduate student who is currently meeting a lot of other postgraduate students, after "where are you from?" (which usually means they spoke before I did. If I speak first, then the first question is "are you from Australia?" (or "are you from Australasia?" for the more cautious ones)), the next question is almost always "what are you studying/researching?"

I have experimented with a variety of answers to this question: Divinity, Theology, Theological Ethics, Christian Ethics, Political Theology, Social Ethics, Moral Theology and more. But the only answer that seems to generate further discussion (and nearly always does so) is when I simply say "Ethics". Perhaps the others are too intimidating or simply incomprehensible, but ethics is something that people have an opinion about. And that opinion is frequently: "Why bother?" The study of ethics is seen as superfluous, with little claim to focused attention as a serious intellectual discipline.

Even putting aside a militant scientism that assumes only the natural sciences are genuine forms of knowledge, there seem to be two assumptions that lie behind this common response. The first is that ethics is simply personal: "Isn't it all just a matter of opinion?" In this case the questioner has swallowed the liberal paradigm in which "values" are a matter of personal preference and as such rational discussion or evaluation of one choice as better or worse than another is either trivial (on a par with criticising a preference for chocolate ice-cream) or even mildly offensive (like disparaging someone's fashion sense). As a long-term student (and occasional teacher) of literature, philosophy and theology, this objection and at least a few strategies to answer it are quite familiar: "It's not just opinion, but whether one's opinions are justified."

However, the second assumption has been a little more surprising (though perhaps it ought not to be). A few interlocutors have been audacious enough to claim or imply (and all this within seconds of meeting me) that ethics is peripheral to life: "I put in my ethics reports for my research, and then I have fulfilled my ethical requirements." Ethics is seen as simply a baseline minimum standard of behaviour, which, once satisfied, can be ignored so that life may proceed. I think this too is a result of liberalism. In a liberal society we conceive of ethical responsibilities through the language of rights. These rights are owned by each individual and some/all of them may be traded, exercised or waived by myself and threatened, broken or defended by others. However, such rights only relate to certain areas of life, leaving the rest of existence as an arena of "freedom" (or, to say what amounts to the same thing in other words: of the market).

In this view, most of our decisions have little or nothing to do with ethics, as long as we're not actively hurting someone else. Most of life is amoral. This also means that most of life is off-limits for rational deliberation. We can't decide which is a better or worse option because each option is simply a matter of personal preference (notice the link here with the first response). For whom are you going to vote? Well that's a private matter. Notice how only some political issues are called "moral issues", and they are ones in which someone's rights are at stake. I have discussed the limited range of this kind of rights-language at more length back here.

But this approach leaves ethics on the margins of our daily lives, only relevant in an emergency, like the fire extinguisher on the wall. Someone has to make sure it still works from time to time, and so ethicists are given a grudging acceptance for this basic maintenance. Or perhaps there is also a peripheral role to play in adjudicating line-ball cases, or areas of life that are particularly complex. The proliferation of ethics committees at hospitals is a symptom of this.

However, by reducing the ethical to observing the rights of others, morality is pushed to the margins, and life is lived in an ethical desert, with only an occasional cactus breaking the surface of a vast and featureless "freedom". In frustration, some attempt to plant more cacti, multiplying rights until they are trivialised into the right to do what I want any old time. By speaking only in a single tone of voice, an unconditional demand that my rights be respected, the rights-discourse is unable to resolve claims between competing rights: my right to bear arms vs your right not to be shot; your right to be born vs my right to avoid the complications a baby brings.

One serious challenge to the liberal consensus comes from natural law ethics, most pressingly represented in recent discussion by various streams of environmental ethics. There are simply ways of living that are against nature, and when you live contrary to nature long enough, nature fights back. This approach has the great advantage of irrigating the desert, bringing the life-giving waters of moral responsibility into every area of life so that all kinds of growth flourish until there is a veritable jungle of obligations. Soon we find that everywhere we step is squashing something.

Without denigrating the place of (a certain qualified form of) natural law ethics, my response in these conversations over the last few weeks has been to reach instead for virtue theory: ethics isn't just "do no harm", "violate no rights", but instead keeps asking questions like "who am I becoming?" In the jungle of life, where am I going and how I am getting there?

The Word became flesh: looking again at Jesus III

A sermon from John 1.1-14: Part III
1. WORD – a conversation we did not begin
John begins with the famous passage read for us earlier. In the beginning, John takes us back, all the way back. For any reader of the Bible, you can not help but hear the echoes of Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But our first surprise comes when we read not In the beginning God, but In the beginning was the Word. The Word, the "logos" - in Greek philosophy, the basic organising principle of rationality that holds back chaos and brings order. In the Old Testament, the personal message of the Israel’s God, usually expressed through the prophets: Hear the word of the LORD. In Genesis 1, God creates by speaking: Let there be light. And it was so. And for all these reasons, perhaps we’re not surprised to hear verse 3: Through the Word/Logos all things were made; without the Logos nothing was made that has been made. Indeed, so closely associated with God’s creative and originating power is this Logos that it was there in the beginning with God. And yet, the Word was God. The Word is both something else, another with God right from the start, and yet also identified as God.

Perhaps John has already lost you. Right from this opening verse, we’ve been warned that his simple statements will be confusingly and even explosively complex once we start to put them together. But why would we expect God to be easily understood?

Here already we have something profound, if we will give John the time and respect to ponder it. Unless we are ready to receive, we will stare frustrated at the dots on the page.
Eight points for guessing the country.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

All roads lead to...

...the Rome theology and philosophy conference, The Grandeur of Reason. At least, my road leads there this week. Speakers include Agamben, Hauerwas, Milbank and O'Donovan, as well as Myers, Russell and many more - should be a good week! Blogging will resume upon my return.

UPDATE: Conference programme now available to download [102KB], H/T Ben.

Jesus and climate change VII

Alternatives to 'Creation': a brief tangent
For those interested in philosophy and worldviews, a Christian understanding of creation can be usefully contrasted with at least three other commonly held views: materialism, pantheism, and deism. I realise each of the following descriptions are rough sketches requiring much more detail to be useful engagements with alternative understandings, but I offer them briefly to help delineate a conception of the world as 'creation'.

• Materialism is the view that only what is tangible is real, that we ought not to be distracted by dreams of an otherworldly beyond and instead focus on what’s in front of our eyes, what can be grasped and manipulated. There’s something very helpfully pragmatic about this approach. I’ve already claimed that matter matters, that our responsibilities lie here and now with the good we can actually do. Yet the atheism implicit in this claim renders empty or at best a useful lie our earlier discussion of existence as gift.

• Pantheism, or everything-is-god-ism, treats the cosmos as itself divine. Thus, you and I and the trees and the stars are all fragments of God. Once again, there’s something in this view that resonates deeply with our experience and with the Scriptures. The world is filled with wonder. If we start to pay attention, it is filled with jaw-dropping marvels in which we can catch glimpses of divine glory. But according to Jesus, only if we treat it as a secondary good can we enjoy it properly. Once we start treating anything good as God, then we not only ignore and dishonour God who gave us the good thing, but we also start to distort the gift he gave.

• Deism is the idea that God may have made the world, but he is like a clockmaker, who sets the clock ticking and then walks away and perhaps just watches from a distance. This view highlights the regularity, predictability and complexity of the systems we inhabit, as well as our responsibility to live well within them. But in the Scriptures, we find a God who not only made the cosmos but who continues to take responsibility for it, who continues to be intimately involved.
Twelve points for correctly naming the city.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; IX(b); X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV.

Dawkins night review (Part II)

More heat than light?
This is the second part of a review of a Dawkin's discussion forum at church last week. Part I is here.

Dr Greg Clarke continued his discussion of Dawkins with a brief bio highlighting Dawkins' sense of wonder at nature from an early age and his "normal" (nominal) Anglicanism. He now holds a chair at Oxford designed specifically for him - the Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, which he uses to promote Dawinism and atheism (seeing the two as synonymous).

We then turned to considering his highly publicised recent material: The God Delusion and The Root of All Evil?* This material is not aiming at a dispassionate investigation of the issue, but is a polemic aiming for converts to an atheist 'church'. This needn't be a problem, but in these cases it has resulted in material more vigorous than rigorous.
Dawkins was uncomfortable with the sensationalism of the latter title, suggested by the BBC, and argued that at least it ought to end with a question mark.

Dr Clarke (who has a background in literature) noted the rhetorical strategies upon which Dawkins' suasive attempts rely. There is an agressive disdain for theology, without deep engagement with the recognised voices of the church through the centuries; you'll find no discussion of Augustine or Aquinas, Barth or Basil, Calvin or Chrysostom. He refuses to acknowledge probabilistic arguments, assumes you agree and employs emotionally charged terms: belief is a 'virus'. His overall approach relies more on the emotional connection gained through anecdote than argument or fact.

Yet where arguments do appear, they come in four kinds: philosophical, sociological, Darwinian and ethical.

1) Despite his influential work against teleological arguments in The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins makes little use of philosophical arguments in his recent works. Most prominent is his Boeing 707 argument, which runs roughly thus: the universe is very complex and is therefore unlikely to be here simply by chance (as though a wind might blow through a junkyard and assemble a Boeing 707). Yet God, as the alleged designer of this complex world, must be even more complex than his design, and so is even less likely to exist. While somewhat cute, and nicely taking a common teleological argument as its starting point, it fails appreciate a basic point commonly held by thoughtful Christians. Namely, the belief that God as creator is not simply one more being amongst many beings (even the greatest being amongst beings), but is a different (though perhaps analogous) kind of thing to his creation.

2) His most prominent sociological argument is that mature societies become more atheistic. Dr Clarke noted that while there is some evidence that prosperous societies are more atheistic, this reveals more about us (and our beliefs) than about God. It is important to both the Christian and the sociologist to investigate the function of religious belief (or the lack of it) in the life of the individual/community.

3) Dr Clarke noted that the technical details of Dawkins' Darwinian arguments were not his [Greg's] area of expertise, but that philosophy (especially philosophy of science) is not Dawkins' area of expertise. Darwinism as an explanation for the origin of the species is one thing, but it is something else when applied beyond this sphere to become an encyclopaedic worldview that attempts to answer all questions. Such explanations, though not necessarily ruled out a priori, are not in the realm of hard science. In particular, Dawkins' arguments about belief transmission through the notion of 'memes' is highly speculative.

4) Dawkins' ethical arguments for atheism are by far his most interesting and strongest. Dawkins finds belief in God disgusting and morally corrupting. He offers his own version of the ten commandments, a set of universal moral principles readily acceptable by all reasonable people. Dr Clarke found this claim particularly naïve. Not only does it ignore philosophical debate problematising any easy reference to universal rationality as a basis for morality,* it also fails to offer any advice on what to do with the ubiquitous problem of moral failure. Even if we can get everyone to recognise universal ethical rules, what shall the church of atheism do when a member sins? (More to come)
*I thought more could have been said about Dawkins' Enlightenment assumptions regarding Reason, particularly his thoroughgoing opposition of faith to reason.
After the heroic efforts in the comments on the previous Dawkins post, I offer the same competition on this picture: twelve points for the best explanation of the relevance of this picture to this post.

The play's the thing: Vanhoozer's Divine Comedy

The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005)
What is the place of doctrine in following Jesus? Is it a human construction that distorts the Bible? Or a luxury of decadent, introspective Christianity substituting for practical action? Neither, claims Vanhoozer in The Drama of Doctrine; doctrine is precisely what relates the Scriptures to our individual and corporate obedience. In doing so, he aims to reclaim doctrine as energetic, energising and ecumenical in an age that sees it as dull, distracting and divisive.

--------

Taking his cue from the world of theatre, he proceeds at some length to develop the metaphor of drama in four directions: drama, script, dramaturge and performance.

First, adopting and adapting von Balthasar's Theo-drama, Vanhoozer recasts salvation history as a divine comedy, a ‘theo-drama’ in which God is protagonist and Jesus the pivotal climax. Of course, like all good plays, this one has five acts: Creation, Israel, Jesus, Church, and Eschaton (which came first, the metaphor or the biblical theology, remains unspecified).*
*Indeed, it is difficult to either prove or disprove the effect of the theatrical allegory in providing an unacknowledged (even unconscious) ‘confirmation’ of certain details of his approach.

The triune hero performs a fully rounded part; the destructive dichotomy between divine actions and words is healed with the help of speech-act theory. God’s mighty actions communicate, and his words get things done.

Second, having oriented us to the (theo-)drama, we meet the authoritative script: the Bible. In constant dialogue with Lindbeck’s influential The Nature of Doctrine, Vanhoozer agrees with Lindbeck’s desire to move beyond a narrow pre-critical cognitive theology of fundamentalism and an equally reductionist liberal experiential-expressivism. For Lindbeck, the cultural-linguistic turn in twentieth century western thought means that biblical hermeneutics (and thus theology) must be grounded in the practices of the ecclesial interpretive community. Yet there is a dangerous circularity in which the Bible read through the lens of contemporary church life can only affirm that very life; the church becomes unreformable and the externality, the potentially critical otherness of God’s voice in Scripture, is silenced. Therefore, while loath to lose the hermeneutical insight linking reading to community praxis, Vanhoozer argues for authorised canonical practices that guide our reading and help avoid the solipsism of fundamentalism.* Thus, he retrieves the possibility and actuality of error in and by the church (p. 233), yet without thereby cutting loose hermeneutics from tradition. And so, instead of Lindbeck’s postliberal cultural-linguistic theology, Vanhoozer introduces a postconservative canonical-linguistic one.
*Two examples of such canonical, even dominical, practices are figurative readings of Scripture (pp. 220-24) and prayer to the Father (pp. 224-26).

Third: enter playwright, stage left. Just as in the larger theo-drama, the climactic third act of the book sees the author join the action. Unlike the primary performance, however, this is no divine hero-saviour come to set all things right, but merely a theologian. The function of the theologian is instead that of the little-known dramaturge, mediator between script and director.* The theologian as dramaturge is a resource for the company, helping the director in ensuring the script is understood and applied with creative faithfulness, neither parroting nor forgetting previous acts and scenes of the theo-drama.** Performing this task requires both scientia (to read the script with disciplined understanding) and sapientia (to relate it practically to the mundane dramas of quotidian experience); each scores a full chapter.
*The director (or at least assistant director to the Holy Spirit) is the local pastor, mediating the script(ures) to his company of players.
**Faithfulness is thus dramatic fittingness: both to the primary theo-dramatic performance and to the contemporary context of a local production (pp. 256-63).

One example of theology’s sciential function is seeing the doctrine of Trinity as a dramatis personae, a crucial abbreviated guide for an understanding of the canonical script, yet itself arising authentically from a careful scriptural reading.

A key sapiential concept is ‘improvisation’, which, when undertaken by serious actors, is no arbitrary ad-libbing of lines for quick laughs, but a discipline of focussed memory and creative attention that seeks what new thing must be said or done in order to drive forward the action while remaining consistent with the drama thus far. Understood in this way, even God is an improviser: ‘The theo-drama itself develops largely through divine improvisation on a covenant theme…. God overaccepts even human blocking by incorporating it into the broader covenantal comedy.’ (pp. 340-41)

Fourth, the contemporary performance itself takes the spotlight. Again, he shares Lindbeck’s concern for the regulative function of doctrine but wants to based this primarily on canon, not church. More than a collection of true statements about God, doctrine orients performers towards apt action. Here, his ubiquitous (and by this stage more than slightly stretched) metaphor comes into its own in foregrounding the instrumental rather than intrinsic value of the Bible and theology. The goal of both script and direction is to serve the drama: ‘script and performance are equally necessary, though not equally authoritative. Biblical script without ecclesial performance is empty; ecclesial performance without biblical script is blind’ (p. 362). The authority lies with script (Bible); the teleology with performance (praxis); the mediation with direction (theology). Indeed, in yet another self-reflexive moment, Vanhoozer’s theological metaphor-making is at this point executing precisely the task of theology in his allegory: helping us see how the Bible can and must be lived out with creative faithfulness. To illustrate theology in service of praxis, he stages some scenes with the motifs of martyrdom and forgiveness under the direction of atonement.

For an encore, he places creeds, confessions and pastors as, respectively, masterpiece and regional theatre, and assistant directors (under the Holy Spirit): pp. 445-58.

--------

Vanhoozer admits at the outset that the relationship between theologian and thespian has long been frosty, and many readers may feel uneasy about the trapdoors hidden in the floorboards of his metaphor. Before walking out too quickly, however, it’s worth taking a seat and perusing the benefits of admission.

All but the most unreformed modernists recognise the great explanatory power (and canonical basis) of narrative in theological reflection. Drama is a species of narrative, and so retains all its conceptual benefits (e.g. sequence, configuration, characterisation), while adding fruitful modifications, such as a synergy with speech-act theory and a greater potential to get ‘caught up in the action’ through a more permeable barrier between ‘text’ and responder (pp.48-49).

The concept of ‘speech-acts’ helps to disentangle knotty disputes about the relationship of Scripture and tradition through the distinction between locutions (the words used) and illocutions (the actions performed by those words: promising, warning, inviting, asserting). Merely replicating canonical locutions can (and in shifting cultural-linguistic contexts will) result in distorting God’s scriptural illocutions (pp. 126-28). It is the illocutions that tradition seeks to preserve and translate, though it is only these locutions that are authoritative guides to the illocutions (p. 74). The concept of illocution also reveals the limitations of locating our doctrine of Scripture simply under the heading of ‘revelation’, since God does more through it than merely reveal himself (pp. 45, 277).*
*While appreciating the intellectual yield of speech-act theory, some basic narratology would have sharpened his claim that the illocutions of Scripture are God’s (p. 67) by specifying which illocutions are the relevant ones (viz. those of the implied author, though not necessarily of the narrator or every character). Similarly, infelicitous claims about the addressees of Scripture (p. 67) could have also been avoided.

These dramatic (in both senses) benefits notwithstanding, apprehension remains concerning his almost allegorical application of a single metaphor to explain a whole company of concepts. Has theatre become the master key to all theology? He vigorously criticises directors who use a ‘production concept’ to usurp the communicative intent of the authorial script (p. 250); is he, to invoke the Bard, ‘hoist with his own petar[d]’?

Before we jeer this show with cries of ‘hypocrisy’, it is important to note four mitigating factors: (a) the frequency of non-theatrical metaphors and the pivotal roles they play in his cast of images;* (b) the acknowledgement of the necessity of other voices in the theological dialogue (p. 275); (c) the recognisably orthodox account of doctrinal touchstones it yields; and (d) his en route corrections and criticisms of the limitations of his selected metaphor. This final one is worth further comment. Sometimes he corrects one piece of the analogy with another: using ‘improvisation’ to supplement and correct potentially misleading aspects of treating Bible as script. At other times, he debunks commonly misunderstood theatrical realities: improvisation as arbitrary ad-libbing (pp.340-41). Occasionally, he even simply abandons implications of the metaphor: ‘Like other analogies, this one can be pressed too far. To insist that everything in drama must have a theological counterpart runs the risk of turning a simple analogy into a complex allegory.’ (p. 243)
*To spotlight a few: trial (pp. 21-24), epic/lyric (pp. 84-93), fittingness (pp. 108-10), ‘transposition’ (pp. 254), map (pp. 294-99), habits (pp. 374-77), and dieting to be spiritually ‘fit’ (pp. 374-80).

Perhaps it is pressing too far to criticise the implicit activism of the church, whose raison d’être as company of performers is construed in instrumental fashion to the detriment of its intrinsic value as redeemed community (p. 71). Perhaps not.

There is nonetheless a certain messiness to the metaphor as it is pushed and expanded in multiple directions. Like a Shakespearean company with more roles than players, the same faces appear in different guises. God is the playwright, the executive director, and the protagonist (pp. 64, 243). While a robust Trinitarian theology may take this in its three-legged stride, the Bible also (somewhat disconcertingly) makes three appearances: as the authorised memory of the original theo-drama, as an actor in the ongoing performance (p. 35, 48), and as script for that performance (p. 115-241). Christians are alternatively audience then actors, mirroring God’s move from actor to audience (p. 37). Part of the confusion is comprehensible when one keeps in mind there are two performances: the primary theo-drama in five Acts, and a multiplicity of secondary local shows that comprise Act Four (p. 252).

Even so, the characterisation of the Bible remains somewhat unresolved. The Bible as ‘script’ works well in discussions of authority in Part Two, yet becomes cumbersome and is virtually denied by the idea of ‘improvisation’ in Part Three (pp. 307, 335). The ‘script’ doesn’t have all the lines for Act Four (the life of the church) and so its authority is of a particular kind: setting the dramatis personae, plot line, and ultimate resolution in Act Five,* as well as exemplifying previous faithful improvisations (p. 344). The Bible as actor also seems to be a category error (p. 48), unless it is always understood as a shorthand for God’s agency through Scripture as instrument.
*Indeed, much more could have been made of eschatology’s role in bringing a dead performance to life. The weight of the volume was retrospective.
**On this point, N. T. Wright is both Vanhoozer’s source and is clearer: “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?”, Vox Evangelica 21 (1991): 7-32.

The slight ambiguity raised by the frequent personification of Scripture as agentive is compounded by some undifferentiated linguistic parallelism between Christ and the Bible (p. 31, 35, 295). Of course, Scripture as a fourth hypostasis is denied (p. 227),* but John Webster’s careful account of Scripture as a sanctified divine servant is less prone to confusion on this matter (p. 293).
*Does anyone own up to that?

Although it may seem masochistic to accuse such a voluminous volume of sins of omission, the treatment of Scripture’s relationship to Christ also lacked much recognition of the theo-dramatically relative role of Scripture: ‘The only Christ we have is the Christ of the Scriptures.’ (p. 46, emphasis added) Although it is true that even the apostles had ‘the Christ of the [OT] Scriptures’, they also had the Christ of the flesh.* Vanhoozer’s reluctance to get his hands too dirty in the history of canonical formation (pp. 142-43) is echoed in the lack of a detailed theo-dramatic account of how God communicated prior to the completion of the canon.
*And what of the Christ of the pre-(proto?)-scriptural oral traditions?

Those criticisms aside, his theological treatment of Scripture remains a highlight of his approach. Central to his project in Part Two is the claim that sola scriptura is not so much principle as practice (pp. 115, 141, 153). Crucially, this Reformation battle cry was not answering ‘How many sources should one use in doing theology?’ but ‘where can we find the supreme norm by which to measure Christian deeds and Christian doctrine?’ (p. 232). The sufficiency of Scripture is material, rather than formal (p. 156). Vanhoozer’s rich and nuanced account is thus able to acknowledge that tradition and church are valuable, even indispensable aids in the interpretive process, without compromising the irreplaceable and unaugmentable centrality of the Bible in our knowledge of and obedience towards God. The ‘logic of justification’ needn’t follow the ‘logic of discovery’ (p. 165).

Similarly, his recognition of the dangers of generic reductionism is refreshing (pp. 139, 215. 285). Each genre has its own voice (p. 270), its own factual precisions, ways of life and higher order illocutions (pp. 283-87), its own irreducible input to the diverse unity of God’s scriptural communicative act. The canon has ‘an eschatological completeness, differentiated wholeness and plural unity’ (p. 275). As with canon, so with theology: what no single genre can assert (a unique and exclusive possession of the entire truth), no tradition can demand; what each genre can enjoy (a unique and necessary contribution to the apprehension of God’s being and acts), each truly Christian tradition must be granted (p. 275, 422).

This insight promotes his vision of a catholic-evangelical orthodoxy: keeping a definite theo-dramatic centre without denying the genuine and legitimate catholic diversity of contemporary and historic performance (p. 30). In this vision, doctrine divides the right things, rather than Christ’s body, and this, not because theological truth isn’t important, but precisely because it is (pp. 421-26).

Of course, Vanhoozer is not the first theorist to earn an intellectual living making a spectacle of this metaphor in our mise en scène. Even theologians, traditionally slowest off the mark in realising the backdrop has changed, have started rehearsing their lines in preparation for this ‘brave new world that has such people in’t’. Vanhoozer’s novelty lies in attiring the task of doctrine in this fashionable analogy. And not only dramatologists, but also a number of influential voices in contemporary thought make significant cameos: Bakhtin, Derrida, Gadamer, Nussbaum, Wittgenstein. Divers alarums: has he sold out to philosophical trends? Has his great learning driven his orthodoxy mad? This very dynamic is (in line with postmodern orthopraxis) reflected upon in the text. His response is that plundering this particular Egyptian trinket is justified as part of theology’s task of translation, or transposition, of the canonical melody into a contextual key. And of course, as one voice in a dialogue, his contribution suffers critical appreciation and correction.

His eclectic and multi-disciplinary interlocutors enrich his contribution to each of the many academic conversations he joins. However, as already noted, this breadth can occasionally leave him looking sloppy or naïve. In his epistemological discussion (pp. 265-305), he mistakenly assumes foundationalism entails infallibilism (pp. 292, 295), misapprehends the purpose of the web metaphor and so commits a category error in comparing it to his map metaphor (p. 297).* Similarly, his brief reference to photography shows little awareness that the ‘objective’ reputation of photos is as ripe for deconstruction as that of maps (p. 296). His discussion of ‘propositionalism’, presumes an atomistic semantics (pp. 266-78).
*These two metaphors illustrate answers to different questions. The map is an attempt to say something about how knowledge relates to ‘reality’; the web is a picture of how different parts of a worldview relate to each other. Thus, web should be contrasted to foundation, while map should be pitted against the early Wittgenstein’s (indeed Aristotle’s) idea of language ‘picturing’ reality.

Unfortunately, even his specifically theological epistemology confuses the effects of sin with (good) creaturely limitations on our knowledge, and in doing so, obscures the hermeneutics of suspicion behind the hermeneutics of finitude. Human fallenness does not lead to fallibilism as he claims (p. 303),* but to a healthy suspicion of our ability to hide selfish motives, even from our own consciousness.**
*Fallibilism is instead another epistemic implication of being created in embodied socio-cultural particularity. See James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (Downers Grove, Il.: IVP, 2000).
**For an excellent discussion of this theme, see Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (New York: Fordham, 1998).

--------

When all’s said and done, Vanhoozer’s (over)long performance is sometimes sloppy, often inspiring, always stimulating. The stars that shine most brightly are the indispensability of canonical authority (or rather Christ's authority through the canon), the urgency of contemporary obedience, the responsibility of conceptual creativity and the possibility of dogmatic relevancy. Four stars.

'Being philosophical': Christianity vs Stoicism

Christianity vs Stoicism
Today, upon hearing that I work for a church, a doctor told me that I must be approaching my situation 'very philosophically'. In my experience, this phrase is used to mean that one is being 'stoic' despite bad circumstances. I understood what he meant, but had to disagree. I think that on this score, being Christian is the opposite of being Stoic.

The ideal in Stoicism is to cut oneself off from the world, to avoid making emotional attachments, to experience apatheia (apathy!), to become numb. (In my limited knowledge, this is similar to Buddhism in many respects.) Suffering is inevitable and the healthiest response is to avoid the attachments that will inevitably lead to pain when such transient things pass away. This includes (in fact, perhaps begins with) family members and other 'loved' ones. To be Stoic is to be pessimistic and so to avoid love out of fear of loss.

However, apathy is not a valid Christian response to suffering. Instead, loving God means loving what is good in creation for God's sake, and groaning in hope for its redemption. Because of hope, it is possible - even necessary - to love.
I would offer points for the identity of this sculpture, but I can't remember myself who it is! Instead, I'll offer eight points for the country is it located in. Bonus points if you can give me a convincing answer about the identity of the subject (preferably with a link to an image proving it).