Monday, September 28, 2009

The School of Princeton


I think the theological Idealism of Jonathan Edwards, which was thoroughly stamped out by the Scottish Realism of John Witherspoon (with some help from smallpox), makes a strong case for calling Edwards and Witherspoon the Plato and Aristotle of Princeton. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of later Princeton history, and subtler photoshop skills, could match up the rest of the professorial parallels in Raphael's original.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Irving Kristol, R.I.P.

I've written before about the bizarrely rigorous intellectual training of Irving Kristol, who was strangely airbrushed out of TNR's recent reference to the New York Intellectuals. Happily, Kristol got to see the extension of the journal he founded, The Public Interest, just before he died. Here is Kristol on capitalism:
Just as a victorious Christianity needed the Old Testament in its canon because the Ten Commandments were there - along with the assurance that God created the world "and it was good," and along, too, with its corollary that it made sense to be fruitful and multiply on this earth - so liberal capiltalism needed the Judeo-Christian tradition to inform it authoritatively about the use and abuse of the individual's newly won freedom.
That is not an irresponsible endorsement of capitalism, but a robust, religiously informed critique of capitalism, one that sees the free market as a penultimate, limited good; but I wouldn't count on hearing too much of that take on Kristol in the days to come.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

I have a more personal essay in the current First Things (October 2009). It was originally called "A Flight to Egypt" (The Egyptian refuge being, in this case, a South Jersey hospital), but I feel the editor's choice of title is the better one.

Here's the news story to go with it.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Analogia Entis Revisited

The Princeton Theological Review, a journal with a long and fascinating history, recently took up the issue of the analogia entis (Spring 2009), a matter which I've discussed here before. While I summarized the 2008 Washington D.C. conference on the subject with a photograph, others might prefer Benjamin Heidgerken's helpful encapsulation of the proceedings:
The Catholic participants recognized and attempted to avoid the devastating charge that a philosophical analogy acts as a competitor to Christ, the One Mediator. The Protestant participants, for their part, were willing to put some distance between themselves and Barth's more polemical articulations of his position.
Heidgerken continues his article by complaining that even if certain Catholic theologians promote the Christocentric analogy of being, this doesn't mean it has yet percolated into Catholic theology as a whole. Unless this happens, Heidgerken tell us, "the Churches will remain divided." The assumption, happily, is that should this kind of Catholicism emerge, then the churches would reunite. Heidgerken works towards the goal of church unity with an important discussion of Maximus the Confessor's Christocentric analogia entis, one that "explicitly and adamantly defends the gulf between created and uncreated being."

In the same issue, Ry O. Siggelkow also provides a compelling contribution, engaging two - it must be said - brilliant articles by John R. Betz (Modern Theology July 2005 and January 2006). Siggelkow suggests that Betz is unaware of the latest twists in the work of Eberhard Jüngel, twists which advance the analogia entis discussion since Barth considerably. Jüngel, Siggelkow informs us, makes a statement that anyone exasperated by Protestant attacks on the analogia entis will find profoundly refreshing:
[T]he debate about the analogy has usually been carried on within recent Evangelical theology with an astonishing lack of understanding and horrifying carelessness... on the side of Protestant theology, the criticism of the genuinely Catholic doctrine of so-called 'analogy of being' (analogia entis) is directed against the very thing against which this doctrine itself is directed (282).
Jüngel realizes that the analogia entis "protects the holy grail of the mystery, and as such is really the opposite of what Protestant polemics have made it out to be." While a quick read of Summa I.13 could have gotten Protestant critics there much earlier, it's nice to hear such an assertion from a Protestant voice as authoritative as Jüngel's. Protestants were attacking a phantom Catholic doctrine after all. We can therefore lay down the polemics and get back to the business of unity, right?

Wrong. Siggelkow relates how Jüngel resumes the attack on analogy by criticizing the very mystery of God that the analogia entis hopes to protect. Notwithstanding the fact that Aquinas is a rather vigorous defender of the Incarnation, Jüngel insists that "the theological critique to be directed against the great accomplishment of [the Catholic] metaphysical tradition focuses on the fact that in its obtrusiveness the unknownness of God has become an unbearably sinister riddle." Jüngel's alternative to normative Christian theology is an eschatologically charged "analogy of advent," one that is free from Catholic metaphysical constraints.

A point of clarification for the uninitiated: Protestant critics like Jüngel are not arguing over the fact of the advent, to which Catholics would obviously assent; they are instead arguing over the placement and priority of such crucial doctrines; arguing over whether or not such doctrines are sufficiently determinative, over whether or not they have leavened the entire lump of the theological system. It may seem like quibbling, but nuance matters, and these discussions have their place. However, when one considers that such distinctions are the hangers upon which church divisions continue to be suspended, such discussions lose much of their intrigue and appeal.

To summarize, the sad reality is this: Once Protestants railed against the analogia entis because it made God too near. Now, Protestants rail against the analogia entis because it makes God too far away. One wonders, then, if this debate is telling us more about Protestant attitudes towards Catholicism than about the analogia entis itself. But the real irony, at least the one presented by this incisive issue of the Princeton Theological Review, is even sadder: The mystery of Catholic theology that Jüngel calls an "unbearably sinister riddle" is the common inheritance of Orthodox theology, which of course includes Maximus the Confessor. Which is to say, this issue builds an ecumenical bridge, torches it, and watches it burn.

So what of Heidgerken's optimistic proposal that disseminating the ideas of Catholicism's most Christ-centered theologians throughout Catholicism will lead to church unity? My guess is that the churches will remain divided even if there was a papal mandate that "Christocentric analogy of being" be imprinted onto every Catholic eucharistic wafer; for ecumenical dialogue, in our day and age, has become - strangely - an end in and of itself.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Colonial Cosmology

The new Hubble space photos make the Universe appear delightfully trippy. The contemporary Christian mind, however, often seems more disturbed than delighted by the expanse of the cosmos. Seeing that God became man, why - to put it bluntly - so much "extra"? Faced with this objection, some point to the anthropic principle, that is, all such extra is mathematically necessary to sustain the infinitely complex conditions that permit life on earth. Adequately understood, it's an impressive justification. My friend Adam, the learned Princeton astronomer who avoids Whitman's chastisement, and who is now a freshly minted Ph.D., employs another interesting maneuver. When someone poses this objection, he simply suggests that the "inner space" of atomic structure is equally infinite. Elsewhere in discussion on millinerd, Adam quoted Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet:
"He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not know how much it affected him till now - now that the very name "Space" seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead': he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: He saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes - and here, with how many more! No: space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they had named it simply the heavens."
Brilliant that, and very in line with aforementioned photographs. However, there may be another move still. The appropriate anthropocentrism of orthodox Christian faith has limits. In Concerning the End for which God Created the World, Jonathan Edwards explains:
"There is some impropriety in saying that a disposition in God to communicate himself to the creature, moved him to create the world. For though the diffusive disposition in the nature of God, that moved him to create the world, doubtless inclines him to communicate himself to the creature when the creature exists; yet this can't be all: because an inclination in God to communicate himself to an object, seems to presuppose the existence of the object, at least in idea. But the diffusive disposition that excited God to give creatures existence was rather a communicative disposition in general, or a disposition in the fullness of the divinity to flow out and diffuse itself."
This is a necessary check upon Karl Barth's important assertion that "the universe is created as a theater for God's dealings with man and man's dealings with God." It is that, but more than that as well. On this score, I find Edwards more liberating than Barth, and ironically more up to date.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Grade-Grubbing Explained


There's lots of good going on in academia, and I think I've defended it enough to permit myself another complaint. Previously at millinerd, I've expressed frustration with overly-professionalized undergraduates. Commence self-quotation:
Undergraduates today seem to lack what my generation specialized in - existential angst - erring as Gen Y seems to err on the side of careerism. As someone once put it, there is only one college major in the modern University: upward mobility.
But on further reflection, I believe I owe Generation Y an apology. If it is true, as indeed it is, that "the percentage of departments valuing research above teaching [has] more than doubled since 1968 (35.4 percent to 75.7 percent)," then undergraduates aren't to be blamed for soulless grade-grubbing; they're just patterning themselves after their tenure-chasing exemplars. And now, the 1987 anti-drug ad reference (a classic, by the way) should make sense.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Mistra


Mistra
Originally uploaded by millinerd


Some articles of mine have been posted lately at Public Discourse. The first was a more impressionistic essay inspired by Mistra (more pics here). The second was a response to questions and criticisms - which is to say, my bluff was called and I had to show some cards. The latter article, as you can imagine, was much more difficult to write.


update: Vatican launches major arts initiative after my articles. Coincidence? Impossible.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Evangelicals and Architecture

Over at the Evangelical Outpost, Tim Bartel points to the faddishness of evangelical cultural engagement:
The problem with Christian fad-mongering and the problem with liberal take-over of the aesthetic realms are the same. This problem lies in the difference between the art that replaces traditional doctrine and values and the art that doctrine and values plan for and protect. The former type of art is predicated on the assumption that aesthetic theory and artistic creation occupy the same cultural space as theology and religious practice, and that because of this, one must make way for the other; there is no room for both.
This is well illustrated in the realm of architecture. Evangelicals like Dick Staub (whose book on culture is really quite good), can in unguarded moments be found lionizing, even fawning over starchitects like Gehry or Libeskind in the name of relevance, instead of forging the kind of countercultural critiques provided by Michael J. Lewis, Philip Bess, or Catesby Leigh. Leigh, for example, articulates the architectural morality tale that Princeton will be telling for the foreseeable future:
It so happens that Princeton University has recently undertaken construction of a new science library designed by Gehry and a residential college in the Collegiate Gothic style (for which Princeton's campus is well known). The latter was designed by Demetri Porphyrios, a member of Prince Charles's circle. Just completed, Whitman College is a large, impressive assemblage of 10 buildings, arranged around two courtyards and housing 500 students. It is built with load-bearing masonry walls, meaning there is no steel or concrete frame to support the floors. The walls boast outer envelopes of fieldstone or limestone. The science library's design, on the other hand, is at least contextual in that it plays off the sharply contrasting scales of the adjacent buildings. It features the familiar twisting metal panels. It is an exercise in inorganic complexity.

Whitman is going to age gracefully as the patina of time enriches the stone. It will also perform very well from a structural standpoint. As a matter of fact, barring some catastrophe, it will be around for hundreds of years. Whitman, in other words, is likely to increase in cultural value over the long term as an asset that enriches Princeton's architectural patrimony. It will be loved. Were it not for the inadequacy of its figurative detail, it would be loved even more. As for the science library, one can only hope it does not leak. Over the longer term, it will not age. It will corrode. Moreover, it will probably peak in cultural value within a relatively narrow time frame. It is, after all, essentially an architectural fashion statement - a manifestation of an architectural theory or sensibility fundamentally conceived in terms of the negation of other theories and sensibilities. It has no normative architectural significance whatsoever: idiosyncracy is the whole point. In sum, it would be surprising if Gehry's library were still standing a century from now, both because of its structural character and because it probably will not be loved in any meaningful sense of the word. Buildings that are loved are much more likely to bear the humanist imprint, regardless of style.
I imagine most Princeton residents already intuit this. If not, they are sure to come around to agreeing when the neon fades. We can hope this long view perspective will catch on with evangelicals, if only because "When the neon fades" sounds like the beginning of a worship song.

Monday, September 07, 2009

End of Summer Lament


A millinerd production, starring millinerd and his wife and Honey Brook farm in Pennington, NJ.

H2Obama

President Obama, in a recent address, put this Muhammad Ali quote back into circulation: "Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths." I see nothing controversial in that assertion. I would only add that one of those religions, however faithlessly diluted, contains wine.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Less vs. More at Wheaton

Which is to say, the "orthodoxy on the cheap" of Baptist Timothy George vs. the "orthodoxy with a surcharge" of Catholic revert Francis Beckwith in a Penner dialogue (video here) on whether or not Evangelical Catholicism is possible. Moral of the story (according to George): Get an account statement of your own tradition and invest respective funds wisely.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Sub-culture surprise

Things you don't say to your wife, from "Christian comedian" Tim Hawkins has been going around, but I'm partial to favorite Bible verse and scary bedtime prayer. This worship song parody is very much an inside joke (you have to know the songs). So far as I can tell, Hawkins mocks evangelicalism with affection, and that's what makes it funny. Refusing to cut the strings of endearment is also what makes Marsden's scholarship so illuminating.

Let the bitter beware.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

The Frankfurt Fool

Adam Kirsch at The New Republic provides a very helpful review of Thomas Wheatland's The Frankfurt School in Exile. According to Kirsch, the book brings an appreciative, but more down-to-earth reading of the revered "fathers of critical theory" (Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Fromm, Horkheimer, etc.). Incidentally, in Seminary instead of "church fathers," we all learned to say "church fathers and mothers." But I suppose that is easier to pull off in church history than with mid-century Marxism. Here's Kirsch:
Wheatland shows how the Institute [for Social Research] came into contact with two important segments of the American Jewish community. The first were the New York Intellectuals, who were in many ways the perfect American counterpart to the Frankfurters: Jewish radical intellectuals with an interest in politics and culture. While the two groups never engaged as deeply as they mightg have - in part, Wheatland shows, due to the Frankfurters' policy of staying aloof from American politics - some relationships did form, and New Yorkers like Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, and Nathan Glazer became aware of Critical Theory.
But for Glazer, we might add, the awareness very much deepened, especially regarding Critical Theory's impact on public architecture. In his wonderful book that I continually refer to, From a Cause to a Style, Glazer is judicious about Critical Theory, but also mildly exasperated:
Young students should reach out, try, experiment. Even if the theory that speaks to them is impenetrable to me, they should try to realize the hints and insights and possibilities they divine in it. But when they design and build for the public, one factor affecting what they design must be public response... if the students empathize with the people [they build for], maybe what is necessary is not to critique it but to bring with their designs something they would not find in graceless environment[s]: perhaps humor, perhaps nostalgia, perhaps repose, perhaps even, if one is capable of it, something of beauty
But by the end of the book, the gloves come off. The sons of the fathers of Critical Theory, according to Glazer, soon became
scarcely comprehensible, and the less comprehensible... the more they engaged architects' interests, but in any case they were no longer theories that envisaged the role of the architect as enabling and improving the life of ordinary or run-of-the-mill people and communities, as early modernism did. Despite the influence of quasi- and pseudo-Marxist thinking in these advanced contemporary theories, they had little interest in the improvement of the common social life and the circumstances of the working class or low-income families, or in the social reform that is consistent with some kinds of Marxism. Rather, they showed much more interest in the catastrophism, the apocalyptic character, that is a more important part of Marxism. Theories in favor today among advanced architectural theorists and students are those that emphasize, indeed celebrate, breakdown in society and meaning, often in obscure and contradictory language.
And so, Glazer foolishly sold his birthright as the New York heir to the Frankfurt School for a mess of comprehensible language, concern for the needs of real people, social cohesion, and beauty. What was he thinking?