Unity of Knowledge

Today's academic ethos is one of fragmentation. Want to write a fashionable academic paper? Take any theme and pluralize it. Not "Early Christianity" but "early Christianities." Not "History of German Expressionism" but "histories of German expressionisms." Another strategy is to expose the vaulting ambitions of nineteenth century scholars in order to pick them apart, but without offering a replacement.

Of course, there's something to be said for this approach, but also for those who nevertheless attest to the very big idea of the unity of knowledge.

Accordingly Paul Ricouer ends his three volume Time and Narrative in this way:

It is not true that the confession of the limits of narrative abolishes the positing of the idea of the unity of history, with its ethical and political implications. Rather it calls for this idea. Nor should it be said that the confession of the limits of narrative, correlative to the confession of the mystery of time, makes room for obscurantism. The mystery of time is not equivalent to a prohibition directed against language. Rather it gives rise to the exigence to think more and to speak differently (274).

Then there's James Turner on how Catholic and evangelical academics can unite about the unity of knowledge.

Catholics and evangelicals - and many other people - believe that the world around us, in all its complex variety, is the creation of one Supreme Being. It seems to follow from this axiom (or so most intellectually minded Christians, Jews and Muslims historically have believed) that all knowledge forms a seamless whole - in principle - because all knowledge refers either to on Creator or to that Creator's single creation. "In principle" provides a necessary qualification: fallible human beings will inevitably fail to see all the conditions (89).

Notice how in their last sentences, both scholars qualify their statements in ways that absolve them of knee-jerk critiques from the fragmentation flock.

Fixing Seminaries

Well, at least someone said it. According to Jason Byassee:

Seminary teachers should primarily be evaluated on the basis of the faithfulness of the pastoral careers of seminarians they train, rather than on books published, contributions to journals, or offers of employment form rival institutions. Such a restucturing would require no diminution in intellectual skills. For there is no more demanding task, linguistically, theologically, or morally, than training pastors to conduct faithful ministry in the church (p. 269).

I would quibble though. There's no more demanding task than being those ministers. And not only would Byassee's reform require no diminution of cerebral capacity; it would demand an increase. Byassee goes on to suggest Seminaries move toward the monastic model, a move which - for Protestants such as Byassee - requires traversing the Jacobian gauntlet.

No doubt art history will weather this financial storm. No doubt at all.

The (mere) Wrestler

The Wrestler (spoiler code blue, not red) may begin with a stripper reciting an extensive portion of Isaiah 53, and goes on to then depict wounds aplenty - but don't take the bait. This is a film in which Christ-figuring just won't stick. True, the Asbury Park scene was exquisite - as if the boardwalk had decayed for that reason alone; and yes, it was a quintessential Jersey film (the real Jersey, not Princeton). But there is no absolution to this crucifixion.

In short, a stripper and wrester escape the degradation of their bodies at exactly the wrong times, miscarriaging the healing they might have found in one another. Aranofsky is not kind to his audiences, but nor is he reckless. His point, I think, is to implicate. This film implicates the audience for whom a wrestler died, by whose stripes no one was healed. And considering what one must go through to arrive at this conclusion, those who bought a ticket are implicated as well.

Hegelian Bible-ectic

Perhaps invoking the Hegelian method will clarify the state of Biblical interpretation.

Thesis:

Divine wisdom has arranged for certain stumbling blocks and interruptions of the historical sense... by inserting in the midst a number of impossibilities and incongruities, in order that the very interruption of the narrative might as it were present a barrier to the reader and lead him to refuse to proceed along the pathway of the ordinary meaning... thereby bring[ing] us, through the entrance of a narrow footpath, to a higher and loftier road and lay[ing] open the immense breadth of the divine wisdom.

-Origen (185-254) On First Principles

Antithesis:

The valleys of biblical truth have been filled up with the debris of human dogmas, ecclesiastical institutions, liturgical formulas, priestly ceremonies, and casuistic practices. Historical criticism is digging through this mass of rubbish. Historical criticism is searching for the rockbed of the Divine word, in order to recover the real Bible. Historical criticism is sifting all this rubbish. It will gather out every precious stone. Nothing will escape its keen eye.

-Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913) General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture

False Synthesis:

The separation between a theological-religious experience of Biblical texts and a literary one is radically factitious. It cannot work. That is to say that the plain question of divine inspiration... must be faced squarely. The author of Job.. was not producing 'literature.' Nor were those who bore witness to the 'darkness upon the earth' the evening of Good Friday. A literary elucidation of such texts is legitimate and can be helpful, but only... if it tells us that that which it omits is the essential.

-George Steiner's critique of The Literary Guide to the Bible

Actual Synthesis:

What separates us from Origen is not his lack of historical-critical techniques. Were we to presume the scriptures to be the language of God, we would be able to retain every single specific insight of modern-historical critical study. But we would be obliged to restore in our minds a functional belief in the divine economy that could order the strange, diverse, complex, and even seemingly contradictory witness of the many ages and many communities represented in the bible in such a way that it testifies to a coherent - nay, beautiful and holy - plan. It may be an existentially deep and difficult ditch to recross, but I see no reasons other than the eccentricities of modernity why we cannot do so.

-R.R. Reno's Origen and Spiritual Interpretation

It's an exciting time to be interpreting Scripture. To recall T.S. Eliot (hat tip: kp),

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Four More Years

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Hat tip to Mr. Schwenkler.

I and others have had some good discussion with Matthew Lee Anderson in regard to his recent article. Rick Warren's prayer, one must admit, tips the scales in favor of Anderson's generous estimation of evangelicalism.

Harvard's Bible

Early twentieth century American Christians - neck deep in the fundamentalist/modernist controversy - would have difficulty believing that in the early twenty-first century, the following declaration would be made by a respected professor at Harvard:

[I]n the broad perspective, the fundamentalist - occasional anti-intellectualism and all - has succeeded in preserving much of what is most basic about the Bible, the ancient approach to reading it. By contrast, what now seems naïve is precisely the liberal faith that, despite their abandonment of a good bit of that approach, the Bible can somehow still go on being the Bible.

Kugel is referring to how liberal commentators want to "have their Bible and criticize it too."

Ancient interpretive methods may sometimes appear artificial, but this hardly means that abandoning them guarantees unbiased interpretation. In fact, so much of what liberal theologians and commentators have to say is typically not all that modern scholarship has brought to light, but rather represents an attempt to find a compromise between that scholarship and what the commentators themselves would like the Bible to be. Thus liberal commentators, in the face of all they know about etiological narratives and the like, often prefer to tell their readers about other things [such as] Rahab's proto-feminism.... At times, their interpretations are scarcely less forced than those of ancient midrashists (and usually far less clever).

Kugel doesn't call this phenomenon the ManBearPig, but he might as well have. Granted, I'm sympathetic to some of the interpretations that Kugel calls "Biblical Criticism Lite" (what's wrong with pointing out the glaring differences between the Gligamesh and Genesis flood accounts?), but his point stands tall nonetheless. Attempts to contort the Bible into teaching political correctness are snicker-inducing. Kugel's way to avoid such selective interpretation? "Keep your eyes on the ancient interpreters." For Christians, this means being anchored in patristics. Hopefully the fact that Christological interpretation of the Bible is the answer to the postmodern multiple readings dilemma will not be news to readers of this blog. For more on Kugel, consider Reno, who makes the important point that his book may overplay the incompatibility between faith and critical scholarship. Grace, after all, perfects nature.

Technically, I should add that Kugel is no longer at Harvard. He left his endowed professorship for the much less secure option of living in Jerusalem, being the Orthodox Jew that he is. He wouldn't be the first. Professor Nicholas Constas, a brilliant scholar of Orthodoxy at Harvard Divinity School, also left Harvard to live at Simonopetra Monastery on Mt. Athos.

Kugel and Constas: Men of serious faith who reached the highest level of academic accomplishment only to leave Harvard behind. Maybe they know something we don't.

Atheists Cry Out

"Where wasn't God in the Hudson River Plane Crash?"

Looks like the good folks at The City have just now posted that article I was raving about online. Read it here.

The Continualist

Though it made things rather crowded, it was appropriate that Father Richard John Neuhaus' funeral mass took place at his home parish, The Church of the Immaculate Conception in the East Village. There by Stuyvesant Town he celebrated the sacrament countless times, amidst "ordinary parishioners," many of whom knew nothing of his status as a public figure, the work he engaged in beyond his role as a parish priest. As Father de Souza noted in his magnificent homily, that altar, not his column in First Things, was his axis mundi.

I realized after the service that I had wandered into the church long ago, perhaps a decade earlier. I can't remember if it was when visiting my sister at NYU or on some youthful romp through the East Village, but I slipped in once to see the fabricated cave - the "Lourdes Grotto" in the back of the church, made to look like the actual cave in France with a hovering statue of Mary. Back then, it was one of those moments when an evangelical warms up to Catholic culture, and I remember despite the kitsch, that outlet of pedestrian Catholic piety having a positive impression. I was delightfully surprised today to discover that such a commanding intellectual had served for so long in the same church.

Father de Souza's homily celebrated Neuhaus' love for "convivium." Besides the ultimate convivium of the Eucharist, Neuhaus relished the kind comprised of vivid company mixed with cigars and a drinks. "The Scripture passage for this morning doesn't mention cigars, but Father Neuhaus wasn't a sola scriptura kind of guy." The reference to RJN as a "master of the dinner table" was fitting.

Yes, Neuhaus was conservative, but Jordan Hylden points out the folly of those who would use that word to explain him away:

More than once, when discussion at the office turned to the intellectual, political, or theological trend of the moment, RJN would get a familiar, amused look on his face - a half-grin, raised eyebrow, and mischievous twinkle in his eyes that said, "I've seen this sort of thing before." Fads meant little to Father Neuhaus, and he knew well how much the allure of intellectual fashion and the approval of the "right people" could blind one to the truth. He came to be dismissed by some as simply another "conservative." But I daresay that much of what he said will, given time, prove more enduring than the several fashions with which he was out of step.

Perhaps more than a conservative, Neuhuas was a continualist. As George Weigel has mentioned, Neuhaus' two central ideas were the compatibility of disestablishment and free enterprise of religion - ensuring that religion would continue to be part of his republic; and his extension of the Civil Rights movement, with the understanding that the pro-life cause was its genuine continuation. Also, "continualist" was the word he used in one of his later books to describe those who recognized the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council. A continualist is neither a liberal who says the Council didn't go far enough, nor a conservative who saw it as breaking fundamentally with the Catholic past. Neuhaus was a Vatican II continualist who interpreted the Council as leavened by the millenia of church history that came before it, a history with which it was in harmony, not discord. The Council did bring changes, however, changes that enabled Neuhaus to become a Catholic, albeit one who faithfully lifted up daily prayer from the Lutheran prayerbook. He saw his conversion as a continuation of his genuine Lutheranism.

But Neuhaus was a continualist in another, more methaphysical, way as well. Once in a dinner conversation when I was lucky enough to sit next to him, I asked him once about his view of Marian piety and the communion of Saints. He paused, reflected, took a deep breath, and relished the chance to respond. Melodramatic as it may sound, he looked out at the dinner table like the two of us both standing on the edge of a great vista, with mountains stretching dozens of miles ahead. He explained how he expected to develop new skills of devotion, capacities he would need to nurture as he explored the horizons of communion with God and his church that lay ahead. Though it was months before his death, he sounded as if he was just beginning, which of course he was. Neuhaus continues his journey of communion with God, "higher up and further in." What a gift to have known him, and what a privilege to have seen him off.

I'm glad to see that someone who knew Neuhaus as well as Jody has had the graciousness to respond intelligently to the silliness.

As he mentions, there is a tendency now to "cash in" on one's encounters with RJN. I've been privileged to have a few, and I cherish them. But they're of more value to me than to anyone else.

Brilliant Article Alert

Matthew Lee Anderson's The New Evangelical Scandal in the current issue of The City is a triumph. I enjoyed this insider's account of evangelicalism so much that I didn't even have emotion left over to be envious that I hadn't written it myself.

A few (okay, more than a few) exerpts:

In the face of declining partisanship, patriotism, and eroding family ties, young evangelicals have increasingly turned away from their roots in search of a sense of grounding and stability. They have the intelligence to notice the flaws, but often lack the charity and the patience to work to fix them.

The renewed focus on community and on institutional structures is still grounded in the decisionism that has aways marked evangelicalism. The fact that we are born as Americans - or as evangelicals - is unimportant. What is important is that we choose to be patriotic, that we choose to be Republican, that we choose to be evangelicals (or emergent, or Catholic, or Presbyterian) - and that we make that choice independent from and irrespective of any tradition that may have shaped us.

The young evangelical fashions himself into his own preferred identity, and then finds others who have done likewise. More often than not this results in a rejection of the traditions - political or otherwise - in which younger evangelicals were raised...

No book is more exemplary of this need to create our own identity than Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz... For many young evangelicals, it functions as a modern-day Confessions, with two important exceptions: there is no attempt to discover the unity behind the decenteredness and fragmentation, and there is no interlocutor. It is difficult to see how his rambling and disjointed narrative and his distaste for social institutions and religion are not simply Fifties beatnik ideology baptized. The fact that it has resonated with so many young evangelicals reveals that most of us are struggling to pick up the pieces of an ever-expanding world and form a unique identity for ourselves, which is precisely what Donald Miller attempts to do. He simply has been more successful than most.

Younger evangelicals' claims to be above the fray may be true politically - but in the place of political power they have begun to seek cultural influence. The new movement to become culture creators is driven largely by the rejection of the evangelical artistic sub-culture... But young evangelicals' language about engaging the arts suggests that their new pursuit has little to do with excellence for its own sake - rather, artistic engagement is frequently subsumed under the hope and promise of cultural influence.

focusing on building the Kingdom here and now [i.e. Brian McLaren] to the exclusion of a robust eschatology ignores the inevitable failure of the Church to influence the world for Jesus that eschatology presupposes, creating idealistic (and ultimately, humanistic) notions of Chrisitianity and its potential for progress in the world. It is disingenuous of young evangelicals to criticize the political triumphalism of the religious right while ignoring the cultural triumphalism that this presupposes, and which undergirds our own cultural ethos.

I get the sense that for many of my young evangelical peers, the doctrine of eschatology is less important not because of careful reflection upon the Scriptures, but because of the political and cultural scorn the doctrine has earned. For most young evangelicals, eschatology is cringe inducing not because traditional formulations are wrong, but because they are weird. That all Christians would disappear in a flash will hardly earn Christians cultural acceptability - and cultural acceptance, today, is their paramount desire.

Theologically and ecclesiastically, it is fair to say that the exodus from evangelicalism by many of its intellectual leaders will continue. One could reasonably argue that the distinctives of evangelicalism are such that it is exactly where intellectuals ought to be, and that they have an obligation to remain evangelical.

I'd include more, but I may have already broken a copyright law. While the author seems to have a blog over here, you can get a free copy of the article in The City (published three times a year) by filling out this form which will take all of thirty seconds.

UPDATE: The article is now online.

An Atheist's Africa

NGO's may be cooler, but according to this courageous atheist, traditional Christian mission work is what gets the job done.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

Of course, one reason Christianity is as effective as the author suggests it is, might be because it's true.

2009: After Postmodernism

In a presidential address at the AHA last Saturday, Gabrielle Spiegel bid farewell to postmodern theory: "We all sense this profound change has run its course." All of us, that is, except for cutting edge Christians. (Don't say you weren't warned.)

As to where the field is going, Spiegel is not sure. One can always look at other AHA presidential addresses, such as Kenneth Scott Latourette's, for suggestions.