Hegel vs. Pomo

I honeslty don't seek this stuff out, but when I come across it, I feel obliged to let you know. Call it the millinerd contract with America (and Canada). So here it is, one more contemporary critique of postmodernity brought directly to your screen, this time from the Hegelians.

"[W]hat postmodernists present as the fatal flaw of modernity and its philosophy - their lack of any final given or postulatable foundations in subjectivity, nature, language, being, etc.- Hegel recognized and proclaimed as the initial key to, and the first step in understanding, modernity's and philosophy's triumph. In Hegelian terms, it is only postmodernists' tacit foundationalism, their obdurate and otiose attachments to the belief that freedom and reason must be grounded in some givens, that leads them to the illicit conclusion that the absence of such given foundations must result in the nihilist victory of arbitrary caprice and irrational subjectivism...

As if that wasn't itself a brainfull, get ready for "cryptofoundationalism":

What [postmodernsits] fail to see is that the absence of foundations for modernity's freedom need not necessarily lead to a nihilistic will-to-power as some sort of 'postfoundational foundation.' Paradoxically endorsing some version of Nietzshe's cryptofoundationalism, they miss, or ignore, Hegel's discovery that the conceptual and practical legitimacy of modernity can be demonstrated by a systematic philosophy that originates in the liberating discovery that the foundational assumption is itself wihout foundations (x)."

Though it's not news that postmodern thought rejects Hegel, what is news is that a gaggle of neo-Hegelians are making a fresh case that the rejection was based on a profound misunderstanding. I'm not a Hegelian any more than I am a Marxist, but in both this and that case the books quoted from are not the product of an isolated author, but are the collected essays of multiple authors.

Like I said, I don't go looking for such things, but I wonder how much I'd find if I did.

In Defense of Teenagers

When a scholar begins a book with an extended personal confession, beware. Which leads me back to Bart Ehrman, who begins his Text Criticism 101 with the story of his teenage conversion. His youth pastor Bruce was

"a completely winsome personality - younger than our parents but older and more experienced than we - with a powerful message, that the void we felt inside (We were teenagers! All of us felt a void!) was from not having Christ in our hearts. If we would only ask Christ in, he would enter and fill us with joy and happiness that only the 'saved' could know" (3)

As one can imagine, Ehrman relates that the journey then begun led to a (his words) "dead end." The conformity and comforts of adulthood showed him that "void" he felt as a teenager was an illusion.

In contrast, consider the work of the late Princeton Seminary professor Jim Loder, who made quite an impact on campus after a crisis in his life (a horrific car accident) led him to shake off the comforts of adult conformity. His renewed spiritual fervor made many at P.T.S. nervous. Loder relates that the he was even accused of reverted to his (brace yourself) Methodist roots (gasp). But with impeccable Harvard credentials, and already having secured tenure, what could be done? Loder did not slacken academically as a result of his spiritual renewal, and the best of his many books is perhaps the Christ-centered psychology of the human lifespan (that runs circles around its therapeucrocratic alternatives) The Logic of the Spirit. Here's a snapshot of what Loder has to say about teenagers:

"Because of their totalism, their deep ideological hunger, their heightened awareness of their potential nonbeing, and their sense of urgency about the meaning of life, adolescents are especially capable of the kind of commitment and 'fidelity' in self-sacrifice that life in the Spirit calls for. Apart from a sense of identity, commitment may come too easily and be misleading, but given clarity about the object of faith, Jesus Christ, and the transformational work of this spirit, the struggle to work out who one is only in relation to why one exists at all forges an identity of theological proprotions (248)."

Certainly teenagers need continue to mature, but Loder's point is that the "void" Ehrman felt was real. Adulthood sometimes gives the illusion of having conquered it, but such false security is the real illusion. The void, to which teenagers are particularly sensitive, should lead us to its opposite, which is God. Perhaps then teenagers know something we adults do not, or more accurately, have forgotten.

I heard once there was evidence to suggest the disciples (not to mention Mary) may have been teenagers when they were called. Thank God then for ill adjusted teenagers, car accidents, and the dissatisfactions of the fishing life. Without them the void might go unnoticed, and God might go unsought.

Incidentally, I wonder if Professor Ehrman's research has uncoverd any scribal variations on Revelation 2:14?

Logic is Back

Surely, in those quiet moments, we all ask ourselves that nagging question: Why does millinerd always discuss postmodernity? Though I too grow bored of the topic, the reason, dear reader, is bad teaching. I heard several lectures that used "postmodernity" as a passport to sloppy thinking and just plain awful theology. This wouldn't have been too much of a concern, as no one can entirely avoid bad lectures - but the problem with these is that the listeners were nodding their heads... vertically!

With MacGyver-like urgency I patched together an initial response with the chewing gum and paper clip of my own intellectual resourses - such heroism! I even managed to secure a minor publishing contract to broadcast my attempts. Not without struggle did I resist the temptation of the standard knee-jerk traditionalist critique. Soon however I was made aware of thinkers much wiser than I, Christian and non, who had developed sophisticated responses to postmodernity of their own, and my confidence gained. I summed up the journey with the millinerd motto, "The answer to false stories [i.e. one's stemming from materialist or amorphously transcendentalist assumptions] is not no story [Lyotard's famous definition of the pomo as "incredulity of metanarratives"] but the true story" [that is, the sweeping narrative of creation, fall, redemption and consummation we call the Gospel].

But now, to mix 80's T.V. metaphors, my MacGyver efforts have been even further assisted by the late arrival of the A-Team, that is, the oft-ignored tradition of analytic (as oppose to continental) philosophy.

Of course, all such reinforcement may be overcompensation. In our post-Sokal hoax world, it is doubtful whether formal rejection of postmodernity is even necessary, possible as it to now reject it on purely postmodern grounds: That is, if being "transgressive" is commendable, then the phenomenon of pop-postmodernity makes postmodernity no longer truly transgressive at all.

Nevertheless, turn up the accompaniment and click HERE to see the A-Team in action.

The Distinction
It's not that continental philosophy is to be discarded. I agree with David Hart who writes that the continental tradition has a special realtionship to theology, which is

"always already involved in the Continental tradition - its longings and nostalgias, its rebellions and haunting memories, its interminable flight from the Christian rationality that gave it life - and so is responsible for and before it; ... This is the burden of consanguinity: theology cannot disown its history - or its children" (30).

But whereas continental philosophy is an runaway child of theology, the analytic tradition was adopted by another family. In a recent article entitled "Theology's Continental Captivity," R.R. Reno argues that while continental philosophy sought to replace Christianity, analytic philosophy thought science did that, and therefore always understood philosophy to be of more limited aspiritation. The analytic tradition

"announces by its name the secondary or handmaidenly role it is to play: not revealing or disclosing truth but analyzing the exigencies of what is taught or disclosed."

And for those of us who realize that science hasn't replaced Christianity, the soft reading light of the analytic tradition is an attractive alternative to the sun-mimicking stadium lamps of the continentals.

W.V. Quine?!
In contrast to the extreme atheistic branch of analytic philosophy known as logical positivism, Reno seeks to recover the movements more moderate proponents such as Quine who dared think

"that good arguments should compel the mind and that a responsible intellectual should set out to discern what is and is not true about the world... Quine was skeptical about the ability of philosophy to explain why particular beliefs are justly held as true (thus nonfoundational in epistememology) - while, at the same time, he did not think that truth and the human ability to know truth are illusory or sources of violence and oppression (thus foundational in the more robust, metaphysical sense)."

No doubt this might conjure up someone's postmodern metaphysiphobia, but the prejudice against metaphysics is, if only to be informed of the flood of recent work on the subject, something one needs simply overcome. Do so, if you must, in the name of mere tolerance. After all, meta (i.e. beyond) physics is merely the realization that the cosmos we find ourselves in "is astonishing beyond measure and cannot be exhaustively explained by any cause which derives from within [it]" (615).

Recovering the analytic tradition's use of logic enables Reno to dispell the cloud of suspicion cast on rationality by postmodernity. This leads to some pomo-party-pooping problems such as,

"In what sense does the principle of noncontradiciton lead to colonialism or gender inequality? How does 2+2=4 suppress religious differences?"

In a statement that recalls the thought police in Orwell's 1984 who rather than attacking their victim's logic, did everything to remove it, Reno reminds us that

"Totalitarian governments tend to silence reasoned arguments, not encourage them as tools for domination."

John Locke?!
Moving beyond Reno's article, what happens when we keep following the strands of the primarily English, analytic tradition to what are (arguably) its roots, even daring to taste the forbidden fruit of the hopelessly "modern" John Locke? In a review of Nicholas Wolterstorff's books on Locke, I read the following most unusual remarks:

"Wolterstorff quotes Locke in what could be a rebuke to the postmodern skeptics of our own time:

'We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us; for of that they are very capable: And it will be unpardonable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. ...If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things; we shall do much - what as wisely as he, who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.'

So much, then, for the stereotype of Locke as the Great Modern Knower whose reason magisterially sweeps over the empirical landscape and comes to universal, certain conclusions about it all. Instead, we find a Locke who is fearful precisely of those who are willing to do battle as fanatical believers in this or that-shall we say it?-metanarrative. Locke seeks to chasten us all with his restricted view of what we can properly claim to know. Locke stands between the premodern and the postmodern in his distrust of "community lore"-whether the appeal to a universal tradition or to the traditions of this or that party-as he seeks to live his life, as he hopes others will, according to our best perception of the true nature of things."

Thomas Reid?!
Could it be however, that as the mists of postmodernity fade, we would even be willing to trespass into the thicket of Thomas Reid's dreaded "Common Sense Realism?" Continues the same reviewer regarding Wolterstorff's book on Reid:

"We all thought we knew that Thomas Reid taught 'Common Sense' as a kind of willful ignoring of the 'real issues' thrown up by Hume and Kant. Thus we felt no qualms about neglecting the work of a man who was perhaps the most popular philosopher in Britain and North America for almost two centuries - one who, in Wolterstorff's view, deserves to be recognized as the peer of Immanuel Kant.

It turns out, at least in Wolterstorff's portrayals, that these philosophers were more circumspect, more relevant, more interesting, and even more Christian than we knew. It turns out that we have a lot to learn from them... Reid dispenses with modern hubris on the one side and postmodern despair on the other. In the latter case, Wolterstorff puts a remark of Wittgenstein's into Reid's mouth as they both, so to speak, confront the philosopher who, just like a clever adolescent, professes to doubt what everyone else knows is true. (This is the sort of person who says, 'You just think you're sitting in a chair now, but in fact you could be anyone, anywhere, just imagining you are you sitting in a chair.') To such foolish skeptics, who are patently ungrateful for the knowledge they have gained so effortlessly by the grace of God, Wittgenstein/Reid affirms that we should respond not with disputation, but with contempt: 'Ach! Unsinn!' we should say. 'Oh, what rubbish!'

The burden of proof, then, is put where it belongs: on the skeptic who has to show why we should doubt what is otherwise so immediately evident, rather than on the believer who has to show why one ought to believe what seems effortless to believe."

The Task Ahead
So there you have it. Reno a Catholic, flanked by Wolterstorff, a Protestant are closing in on postmodern skepticism with the resources of the forgotten analytic tradition (and its "modern" predecessors). Not that it will be easy. Writes Reno,

"I do not doubt that there are many long, complex, and obscure arguments that must be made in order to shape analytic philosophy into a truly Christian project."

To be sure, winning the heritage back from Bertand Russell won't be duck soup, especially considering those of us educated during the analytic eclipse have much catching up to do. But it won't be without its thrills. Because pomo told us all this was a nono, doesn't it all feel, well, transgressive?

Balthasar Off Broadway

My sister is movin' up. She was even personally complemented on her recent performance in The Mag 7 by Austin Pow--- I mean Mike Myers. But given the choice, I'm sure she'd prefer being featured on millinerd.

Though you wouldn't know it from the New York Times review, much of her most recent play was, though in a secular theatre (Naked Angels), exploring specifically Christian themes.

It's no coincidence that the times avoids Christianity, but is it coincidence that modern drama does not?
Continue...

Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, once called by Ratzinger "perhaps the most learned man in Europe" (and reading him substantiates the claim), ably takes on the question with some sweeping reflections in his multi volume work Theo-Drama :

"In the drama of old, which was religious at least in a background sense, there was a real, absolute horizon (however hidden it may have been) which threw into relief the hero's actions, whether he eventually won or lost."

In addition, older drama had the political backdrop to provide meaning, for

"in Athens plays are performed in and for the framework of the polis; in Shakespeare they concern an empire, a court, a republic... even in Lope de Vega's serious plays the prince can be a scoundrel: his kingdom remains intact and often there is an ex machina conversion in which, in tears, he regains the dignity of his office. In Racine the power of Rome restrains the free play of the passions..." [more examples abound, but you get the idea].

However, when "the difference between horizon (God) and actor (man) disappears because both are only real in the living totality of the human species [i.e. modern atheism]," and when the absolute political framework was "destroyed by a sociology which declared that models of society were mutable," and when the ancient hero found himself "eroded by psychology," drama was, to say the least, in trouble. It kept itself going through modern regurgitations of ancient myth, but with the difference that the "center is in fact occupied by Freud, this modern substitute for the ancient world's daimon. George Steiner in his Death of Tragedy called these attempts "inspired plagiarism."

Our current dilemma then looks like this:

"We must assert that dramatic action is ultimately only meaningful when seen against the background of a given, absolute meaning... In Christian terms such absolute meaning can only be grapsed in the leap of faith, which is why many see drama inspired by Christianity as the only way out of absurdity (and hence the only way out of theatre's self-betrayal). Other systems of meaning can vie with the Christian meaning - for example, that of Lebensphilosophie (since Nietzsche) or of communism - and this competition, to see which system of meaning is the more comprehensive and cannot be undercut, can act as a spur to new theatre and new dramatic approaches" (quotes from 74-81, and thanks to drulogion for leading me to them).

And so, should one desire more than mere entertainment, one is left with the existentialist's theatre of the absurd, Marxist theatre which is "fundamentally antitragic and optimistic and fundamentlly antiindividualist" (i.e. boy meets plow)... or, most interestingly I think, theatre that explores the Christian horizon and/or rails against it.

Naked Angels pulled off the third option quite well. They may be onto something. Someone please tip off the Times.

Ehrman Omelette

Kellen uses the eggs-in-one-basket analogy to describe how "controversial" (read: cha-ching) scholar Bart Ehrman, who put all his eggs in the biblicist basket, lost his faith. I will henceforth refer to this dilemma as the "Ehrman omelette," if only because the convertible BMW mentioned in the article reminds me that he sure has made the most of those sadly broken eggs.

It was an unnamed PTS professor who cracked the egg that remained with the words, "Maybe Mark made a mistake." The interesting thing for PTS to ask itself (as if an institution could ask itself something, but still) is whether or not Ehrman represents a failure or a success. If PTS is committed to the church Ehrman is a serious failure. If PTS is committed to the academy (and if the academy is measured by publication) Ehrman is a booming success. It's a straight question I'd love to hear an answer to, but doubt I will - for like I said, hard to ask a question to an institution. Maybe it's a question each person associated with that institution needs ask themselves.

The basket labelled "Great Tradition" sure would have helped Ehrman's faith mature beyond his conversion as a 15-year-old, and I hope it still can. But just like some children don't get inocculated against curable diseases and consequently die from them, so some Christians don't realize early on that tough questions are nothing new, and before you know it, well, you know the story.

It also sure helps to remember that the person who (I am told) advised Ehrman's dissertation is a much greater scholar (I'm sure Ehrman would agree) and still has his eggs intact. A well confirmed local legend has it that one student asked Bruce Metzger once whether or not he memorized the entire Greek New Testament. Metzger's answer: "Most of the variants."

Wait, you mean you can be intimately aware of Scriptural manuscript variants and not lose your faith? Uhh... yes. You might not get the beamer, but that's alright.

I bet Ehrman would prefer to have back his eggs.

Istanbull

My friend Eric got to go to Istanbul. Well guess what? So did I. At least to one of the few preserved churches, St. Savior in Chora. And then by scrolling right on this super-site I visited scores of Europe's major architectural sites from across the millenia.

Now Eric is jealous of me.

Or more accurately, the thrill of Quicktime has worn off and I'm still jealous of Eric. Don't get me wrong, a lot of hard work went into these sites and they're a great help - but it's dawning on me that the digital revolution hasn't replace actual travel, and more importantly, historical study.

But you knew that.

Stout and Wilken

Herein is the last post for sign-my-Bible-week. After all, I do have class. Having added two bonus lectures from the original lineup, I don't feel so bad. For Robert Jenson coverage I suggest you turn, as will I, to KP who plans to post on his talk. Meanwhile, onto Jeff Stout and Robert Louis Wilken:

Cardinal Virtue
In yet another of the week's public lectures, this one on the Role of Religion in Education, Jeff Stout emerged from sabbatical to make the point that education involves "break[ing] through the dreamworld produced by the adolescent privileged ego." A classroom environment should "try to create a context where people are trying like crazy to tell the truth to each other," and the question for a teacher leading a discussion is "How can you get the bull@!#ting to stop without people getting constipated?" Teachers are those who "love their subject matter in public" and should try to point students away from the mediocre toward what is truly excellent. The Aristotelian references continued, for to do this requires that one exhibit the cardinal virtues (justice, practical wisdom, temperance and courage), which any good teacher should be able to cultivate. Perhaps this puts Stout's remarks more in the sign-my-Nicomachean Ethics than sign-my-Bible category, but still, how refreshing to see a professor wise enough to not need to reinvent the wheel.

Stout is what one might call a referee for democracy, calling the American citizenry to steer a middle course between Rawlsian liberalism and religious traditionalism. Though not a Christian himself, Stout is hot at the Seminary due to his being friendly to and conversant with theologians, and unafraid to call them to task if he thinks their rhetoric unhelpful to democracy as he understands it (the most famous case perhaps being Stout's critique of Hauerwas). Stout suggests a "modus vivendi" pluralism, by which he means not a philosophy of pluralism, but a pragmatic defense for the pluralism in our society that already exists. He argues that this kind of pragmatism's

"purpose should not be to put theologically inclined citizens on the defensive.... If the God of the philosophers is dead, not everthing is permitted. There can still be morally valid obligations to constrain us, as well as many forms of excellence in which to rejoice" (268).

Though I'm not unsympathetic to Stout's suggestions, for an alternative perspective do consider Alan Jacob's reflections on novelist George Eliot. Furthermore, I'm puzzled as to why Stout doesn't include Richard John Neuhaus in his list of democracy-friendly theologians, making as he does the intriguing case that healthy democratic loyalty is best realized when democracy is rightfully seen to be of penultimate concern, an insight which (for evident reasons) is often best grasped by the "theologically inclined."

Professors Cornel West and Eddie Glaude had some worthwhile remarks as well, West for example saying that the point of education is to show students there is more than the "hedonistic narcissistic individualistic careerist road." And as there most certainly is, I left the event with great confidence that what was said was good. But also with the sense that what was said was not enough. For those of us that agree that careerism is a bad thing and cardinal virtues are good - then what?

To put it another way, Stout illustrates his defense for good without God at the end of a chapter revealingly entitled Ethics without Metaphysics by playing with a stairway image borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"The stair I am on is higher than the one below me. It affords a better view. This view excels the other. I declare it excellent - but not perfect, for I can imagine a better one. Does this judgment depend, for its objectivity, on whether the uppermost actual stair affords a perfect view [i.e. theological claims]? If I cannot yet see to the top, don't I still know what I'm talking about when I assert the excellence of the view I now enjoy" (269)?

I suppose I can grant that. But why on earth, especially considering the tenuous status of the stair we're standing on, wouldn't one want to keep climbing?

Theological Virtue
Wilken's talk moved into the realm of the theological virtues (faith, hope and love), taking on specifically the question of which church is their best conduit. As Wilken, (like Reno) is a Tiber swimmer, his remarks made the case for the Catholic conduit. He embarked on well trodden turf by arguing for Rome's continuity with the early church. The question is not whether development occured, but whether it is the right kind of deveolopment. As put G.K. Chesterton, it's not whether or not the puppy grows, but "Does the puppy become more doggy or become a cat?" This is of course classic John Henry Newman, who certainly got his due in the talk.

Wilken proceeded by focusing more on practice than doctrine (how postmodern of him), specifically by contextualizing three classic Protestant scruples: The Mass as sacrifice, prayers for the dead, and the office of the Bishop. He quoted a host of early church fathers to prove deep precedent for each one. I shant bore you with the details (there were many), for the interesting things came out in discussion when, as is often the case with Catholic leaning talks at Princeton, the true Prots get smoked out and ask the tough questions. Wilken handled himself quite well, and two points worth noting I thought emerged:

1. Wilken claims that the search for the essence of Christianity is futile; to single out one aspect is to seek for something that never existed and never can exist.

2. In regard to diversity in the early church, it is one thing to learn from the heretics and appreciate their arguments, a practice which Wilken encourages. It's another thing to side with them, something Wilken fears happens all too often in the excitement of "rediscovering" heretical thought today.

Whether or not one decides to become Catholic (here are some interesting reasons not to), I would hope one can agree with Wilken on both counts.

Reno and Marsden

R.R. Reno
As what I'll call "Sign my Bible" week continues here at millinerd, I should relate that R.R. Reno is also in Princeton working on his upcoming Theological Commentary on Genesis, a fact which led to a last minute chance to hear him speak on the future of Roman Catholic Theology. Philly Emergent gave a helpful profile when he spoke to them (to which I will append one detail).

R.R. Reno, along with theologians Reinhard Huetter and Bruce Marshall (et. al.) are all continuing their academic work from the far side of the Tiber, that is, they are members of a generation of professional theologians who have converted, as adults, from various forms of Protestantims to Catholicism. Reno was trained at Yale under George Lindbeck and teaches theology at Creighton, a Jesuit school. He gave a very interesting account of his transition. Conversion for Reno was not a process of rifling through his Protestant intellectual scruples, but of yielding to the "default option" in Western Christianity. His mind hasn't changed as much as his spiritual life has. Reno expressed the refreshment he has found in not having to re-invent orthodoxy with his own cleverness as is sometimes the Protestant case. He spoke of many in his generation who enjoyed deep engagement with and admiration for Karl Barth, but ultimately with their having to plead guilty to the cult of theological genius, and their frank inability to follow suit. Nevertheless, he heartily recommended Barth to the group, specifically in the form of one of his latest and perhaps most accessible book.

The fact that Reno lacks the questionable zeal one might expect from a typical convert illustrates that just as there are 50 ways to leave your lover and skin a cat, there are at least as many by which to swim the Tiber.

And this is not remarkable, for church history often reveals more variety within Catholic Christianity than outside of it. As commented a somewhat influential Catholic recently, the unity the Church seeks

"does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline [but] unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity" (from an interview at World Youth Day in Cologne, 2005).

What is remarkable however, at least to my preconceptions, is that Reno seems to be experiencing more intellectual freedom within Catholicism than he did within the supposedly more open-minded Episcopal Church. In short, the impression that converts to Catholicism are all hopeless conservatives would have a difficult time surviving a meeting with Rusty Reno.

Rather than seeing his new faith with rose-colored glasses, Reno had a realist's perspective on the future of Roman Catholic theology. Vatican II was split, he suggests, between the aggiornamento ("updating") camp, whose most articulate representative was Karl Rahner, and the ressourcement ("going back to the sources") camp whose best advocate was probably Henri de Lubac. Reno was apprecitative of both sides, but was most critical of "pop-Rahner" theology that seeks to update Catholicism to contemporary culture while always being a decade behind the times (not unlike what one might call "pop-Bultmannian" or "pop-Tillichian" Protestantism). Unfortunately Reno fears that academic theology in the Catholic Church is still weighted towards just this kind of stale Aggiornamento, putting it at increasing odds with the magisterium. He pointed to the work of Matt Levering as one of several sophisticated alternatives.

George Marsden
No need to go into detail on George Marsden's talk when the details can be found in the new preface to the second edition of his respected historical treatement of Fundamentalism (which by the way is worth it if only for the fundies' polemical cartoon reproductions). My summation:

Fundamentalism is what happens when the immovable object of conservative values meets the unstoppable force of radical social change.

Marsden went through the standard fundie to evangelical 20th century transition, and while presenting the movement warts n' all (surely to the delight of many attendees), also remarked on the failed ability of early 20th century modern scientific liberalism to provide an enduring consensus, thinking as they did that fundamentalism of all forms would vanish in the morning light of higher educational standards. Marsden ended by quoting one journalist's describe of William Jennings Byran, who was

"always right in his political prognosis but always wrong in his prescription."

So Marsden said it is with Fundamentalism - right about a society that has lost its way, wrong about how to fix it.

Hart

Here are my notes ont Hart's talk, which is mind you, a summary of a summary of the above book. For the full story, you'd best go there.

Religion's Peace with Death
Early 20th century anthropology, Hart explained, thought that religion was an attempt to flee the reality of death. Anthropologists once insisted that to the primitive mind, "death was not natural." The masters of suspicion and their progeny followed suit by insisting that religious ideas of the afterlife were pathetic compensation for the fact of human mortality.

More research however has suggested that this connection was a false one. Most ancient cultures thought immortality was only for the few (e.g. kings and emperors), and even if it was attainable, wasn't necessarily desirable, as in the the Greek's shady underworld or Hebrew's infelicitous Sheol. Religion, instead of fleeing the reality of death, has sought to reconcile us to it. Religion indeed is Marx's opiate, or at least the wine of Dionysius seeking to make life bearable in the face of death. But rather than defend this position, Hart sought to show that Christianity best have nothing to do with it at all.

When Hart examined responses to the tsunami, he regrettably saw "Christian" responses which were soaked in just this kind of "metaphysical optimism or pious fatalism." (I like to think mine is off the hook.) Examples would be Christians who said either the Tsunami was a good thing for having wiped out so many heathen, or (perhaps even more insidous) that in the light of God's providence such a tragedy was somehow "all for the best."

Christianity's War on Death
In contrast to these facile responses to the problem of evil, Hart suggested that the skeptical Ivan in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov provides the seeds for a truly Christian response. Ivan's argument against Christian belief is that the suffering of children should lead one to reject God on moral grounds. Even if it all turns out well in the end, the torture of a little girl is not worth the cost, and Ivan refuses to accept a God who thinks it would be. Though this is often seen as an unanswerable argument against Christianity, Hart contests that the argument in fact comes from Christianity.

Ivan's logic which insists that death and suffering are to be protested is what most closely resembles the complex, subversive logic of the New Testament. According to Christianity, we abide in the "aftermath of a primordial catastrophe," a world gone wrong. This is the "provisional cosmic dualism" of the New Testament which uses language such as "the prince of the power of the air" and "the god of this world" to name the captain of the current cosmic state of affairs. Jesus is a usurper, at odds with the "principalities and powers of the present age."

Hart, it became clear very soon, wants to take the language of spiritual warfare back from the crazies - because it doesn't belong to them - it belongs to the New Testament.

How different this warfare language is than the "solicitude of divine providence" through which modern apologists try to somehow reconcile God and evil. The New Testament provides a "contrary history" where nature, though indeed a "spectral remnant and divine fortaste" of what is to come, still awaits its future liberation and cannot be unconditionally accepted. Ivan's similar refusal to accept the state of the world where children could suffer then stems from "an intuition that is purely Christian."

Christ is often rejected because of the cheap consolation offered in his name. But Christians are "not permitted to enjoy such religious consolation" for "by our baptisms we have been conscripted into an ancient revolution." Easter is not a happy holiday but an "act of rebellion," and "Ivan's rebellion is redeemed by the Pashcal rebellion."

The death of a child cannot then be explained away by third generation Hegelians as being a stage in the realization of God. "The death of a child is not the face of God but the face of his enemy." Christianity then, as a friend of mine remarked not too long ago, is war on death. Hart ended with the classically Orthodox move of pointing to the tortured child's eventual divinization.

Q: One very direct questioner asked Hart, "What would you say to the parent of a child who had been tortured as Ivan described?"

A: Hart said he wouldn't say anything - but when pressed he suggested this: "God does not seek to reconcile you to this evil. He seeks to destroy it."

The Stars Aligned

Admittedly celebrity scholarship can be a bad thing - but only when it's bad scholarship, making the upcoming week look pretty good as two of the best theologians and two of the best church historians in the country make their Princeton appearances.

1. Orthodox Theologian David Bentley Hart (discussed here before) Saturday March 4th 4:30pm at the CTI. He's speaking on Ivan Karamazov: Suffering of Children and the Justice of God.

2. American Church historian George Marsden Monday March 6th 4:30pm at McCosh 50 (PU). He's speaking on "How 'Otherworldly' American Fundamentalists Became Political."

3. Early Church Historian Robert Louis Wilken (of millinerd sidebar fame) Wednesday March 8th 8pm in McCosh 10. He's speaking on the important sources of continuity between the early Church and today.

4. Lutheran Theologian Robert Jenson on Thursday March 9th at 8pm also at the CTI.

Jealous? Don't be. It's not always like this. And furthermore, millinerd's got your back for coverage (at least I'll try).

And what better way to kick off these events than with another millinerd free tour of the Princeton University Chapel, this Friday March 3rd at 3pm? There's so much to do, you'd think it wasn't even Lent.

UPDATE: Please notice room change, Marsden's talk on Monday is not in McCosh 10 but McCosh 50.