Whither Wheaton?

I don't think there's any real debate about the long term answer to that question. When I attended Wheaton in the 90s, author Robert Coleman, an old time evangelical saint if there ever was one, once looked out at a small group of students and said, with no bitterness but only deep concern, "Make no mistake. Wheaton will go the way of Harvard." Books like The Soul of the American University and The Dying of the Light confirm such a prophecy, illustrating - almost beyond dispute - the eventuality of American Christian schools going secular. Yes, there are exceptions, but a better word might be "delays." To point this out is not, of course, to condone heavy-handed administrative tactics. Nor is it to despair, for as the "Whither Wheaton" article accurately points out, a college is not the church.

The debate surrounding the article, following the author's lead, has been generally civil. Chignell, a philosopher, wrote the piece in hopes that "perhaps a philosopher can rush in where historians fear to tread." Some historians have differed with him on this. But whether or not we admit it, everyone knows the heavy academic lifting is always done by art historians. Problem is, their in-demand skills make them hard to find. But, I'm here. Using the searing powers of visual analysis that I have developed over the last many years studying art history in academe, I will now take things to a whole new level.

The art historical analysis of this dispute zeroes in on the most prominent image connected to the matter, pictured above. It is profoundly revealing (nearly as revealing as the fact that the article, after C.T. pulled the plug, ended up running at SoMA.) "The Flagship Charts a New Course" is optimistically inscribed above the beloved Blanchard Tower with - wait for it - a flag upon it. Glorious autumn flanks one side of the ship, photoshopped darkness enshrouds the other. The observer is faced with a visual dilemma similar to the founding fathers' wondering whether or not the revolutionary sun on George Washington's chair was rising or setting. The immediate interpretation of the image is that Wheaton could go right, into that darkness where magisterial authority clamps down on evangelical diversity, or Wheaton could go left into the shimmering fall of academic freedom. The tree seems to almost beckon Blanchard to its autonomous destiny. But one might also view the image another way. The golden legacy of Wheaton's evangelical heritage is inevitably fading. As the flagship moves "forward", Wheaton looks ahead to the featureless, homogenous darkness of academia as usual, with its own unwritten statements of faith, enforced with heavy hand indeed.

Cosmological Despair is so Eighties

I spent much of the weekend as a chaperone at the Franklin Institute, field trip destination for all who grow up in the Philadelphia area. The program was a thrilling catechesis in the nature of reality, from a compelling basic chemistry lecture, to marine biology, human anatomy (we slept by the giant heart), and ending with deep astronomy. As the lights dimmed within the Institute at night, Philadelphia's Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, just outside the window, became more visible, prompting afresh the question: What has Christianity to do with science? Let's let the Franklin Institute gift shop answer that question. I wandered in and picked up a book at random, just to see what popular science looks like today. Here's what I came across in The View from the Center of the Universe, co-written by University of California astrophysics professor Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams:

Many years ago a friend of ours, who is both a Catholic priest and a philosopher of science writing books on astronomy, visited our home for several days. Every few hours he interrupted whatever he was doing and went off to read his Bible. One day Nancy asked him what he thought was real: the scientific story or the biblical stories. "The Bible is the word of God," he responded. "It's universal truth." "Then do you think there could be aliens on other worlds?" she asked. "Of course," he replied. "What a waste of a gorgeous universe if all those trillions of planets are uninhabited!" "If the Bible is universal truth," she puzzled, "How can it be true for aliens we know nothing about?" Our friend's reply has been an inspiration for us for years. "Universal does not mean ultimate," he said. "The Bible could have the same relationship to alien morality as Newton does to Einstein." Moralities, he was saying, could encompass one another. In the same way that Newtonian physics remains true everywhere in the universe on special size-scales, a biblical understanding of morality could in his opinion remain true under certain circumstances even if humans discover alien wisdom that is far deeper and more advanced, because alien wisdom could encompass, rather than overthrow, that understanding.

I'll admit to being not that interested in alien life forms until any are actually discovered, but this priest nicely models how to help people pursue their vocations without losing their faith. The message got through pronouncedly, for by the end of the book, the two authors evolve - not despite of, but through their study - from skeptics into theistically inclined anthropocentrists:

We both started in the existential camp ourselves. In Joel's widely read 1984 lectures about the Cold Dark Matter theory, he said that if the bulk of the matter in the universe is not made of atoms, "that is yet another blow to anthropocentricity: not only is man not the center of universe physically, (as Copernicus showed) or biologically (as Darwin showed), it now appears that we and all that we see are not even made of the predominant variety of matter in the universe!" Humans are indeed not. But it was pure interpretation to conclude that not being made of the predominant variety of matter is somehow a blow and rules out human centrality... The entire existential facade of despair and stoicism flips inside out if we simply view the universe from the inside, where we indisputably are. Once we made this mental shift and opened our eyes to the view from the center of the universe, we not only kept discovering more ways that we are central: we found that doing so evoked the opposite emotions from the existential stance - not despair but hope, not resignation but excitement. These may be equally arbitrary emotions, but they lead to nonarbirtrary actions..."

And, I might add, nonarbitrary beliefs like the Incarnation. The book is, admittedly, popular science; but so was Carl Sagan's Cosmos. In addition to complementing Stratford Caldecott's ongoing thesis, perhaps the moral of the The View from the Center of the Universe is this: Next time you encounter a skeptical cosmologist, relax. Give them time. If they're good, they may end up refuting their earlier, skeptical selves. I might have looked out at the kids I was chaperoning and said, "Boys and girls, I'm old enough to remember back when people use to lose their faith through the study of science!" It would have been great for a laugh, but I doubt they would have believed me.

Tony Woodlief understands television and Lisa at A Bloomsbury Life understands marriage.

Eywa Saves

Due to a unique social situation, I was in the position of seeing Avatar again. The literary demerits of the script became all the more evident with a second viewing (I would not survive round three); but tasteless as it may be to admit, I feel vindicated in my review. FroPoCon/PoMoCon matters aside, the theological fruits are there for the picking: "Eywa has heard you! Ewya has heard you!" shouts Neytiri, a native. She is shocked that Jake Sully's kneeling petition, his Judeo-Christian gamble that Eywa might not be merely the "sum total of all living things," (as one bookish earthling insists), but personal and volitional, even salvific, paid off. The instinctive piety of Jake Sully teaches these natives something about their deity that the natives did not previously understand. As a result, their deity intervenes at the darkest hour to save them from certain destruction, which is to say, the Na'vi graduate from Pantheism. The film, weak as it may be in many aspects, teaches something about missions. There is enough actual anti-Christian rhetoric in Hollywood that Christians need not imagine it when it's not really there.

urgent update: Vatican attempts to refute millinerd. Don't be alarmed. They're just trying to get back at me for New Moon.

"Do you want to go away as well?"

Whenever Jason Byassee writes a guest editorial for Theology Today, don't miss it. In the latest issue he describes his experience with young ministers:

Another sign of hope is the posture of these young ministers toward institutions. Many of my former seminary classmates left the ministry after they tried to fix things at warp speed. They tried to make the whole church pacifist. Or inerrantist. Or as inclusive as they are in their enlightened, tolerant state. All in a year or two. They wrote some articles, served a church or two, went to some conferences, and it just didn't work. So they became Latin-Mass Catholics, for whom Pope Benedict XVI is a dangerous liberal with too compromising a posture vis-à-vis the modern world. Or they became bicycling, farmers-market shopping crusaders against carbon-based fuels. Now they look at people like us and are puzzled: "Why are you still messing around with church and those same old pitiful problems?" In their impatience they fail to see that God chooses to save corporately, through institutions... God saves by Israel and the church after all - it should be no surprise to anyone who's even glanced at the Bible or church history that institutions are often corrupt. And as the young ministers often showed me, institutions are the most beautiful thing there is.

Of course, a given reader might find themselves quibbling with portions of Byassee's editorial, such as his upholding Andrew Sullivan as an example of what it means to faithful to an institution you disagree with. Furthermore, a Catholic convert from Protestantism might reply: "I fully agree. Where were those arguments in the 16th century?" But those are quibbles. Like Kevin de Young, Byassee exposes the immaturity, a thwarted hunger for power, in those who are too good for institutions. Needless to say, such deserters are in significant company. John 6:66 comes to mind: Christ had an embarrassing public moment, after which, "many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him." The verse that is the title of this post immediately followed. Would that we had a shred of the faithfulness of David, who, with a clear shot to eliminate the undeniably corrupt institutional leadership of Saul once and for all, was egged on to murder by his men, but instead replied, "The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed" (1 Samuel 24:6).

Now, as an American evangelical, if someone could clarify to which of the dozen or so ecclesial institutions that have shaped me I should be faithful, I'll get right on it.

[cross-posted at Evangel]

East of Pandora

Just in time to lift the Avatar Blues, my take on the movie is at Public Discourse today, which does I think - if this is possible - say something that has not yet been said on the matter. I also attempt to address the PomoCon/FroPoCon rift in the mediating spirit of Bob Cheeks. In short, I use Lewis to make the point that Avatar does not illuminate the difference between liberals and conservatives, but instead reveals the more basic division between Adam and Cain.

The Largest Show on Earth

Ah, movements: Conceived in aesthetic wonder only to calcify into aesthetic ideology. Take MoMA's impressive Bauhaus exhibit. The first room of the show, depicting the early stages of the movement, are a delight. Gerhard Marcks' 1920 triptych, sporting traditional Christian imagery, was completely acceptable alongside a totemic carved airplane propeller depicting a cosmic vision. The artisan/artist barrier was meaningless in the first stages of the Bauhaus, just as it was in the Middle Ages. Painters were required to learn metallurgy and pottery. Klee taught bookbinding! This was quickly abandoned, however, as the distilled essence of pure design - free from the taint of the past - was isolated and then propagated. Architecture took over. The original director, Itten, resigned in frustration, and the Bauhaus (not without Nazi approval) conquered the world. They knew it as Hannes Meyer's Marx-inspired Volkswohnung (people's apartments) that would mercifully provide affordable design for the masses. We know it as Ikea.

The story has been told many times: See Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House (ripe for a re-reading) or Nathan Glazer's From a Cause (Meyer) to a Style (SWPL #79), oft-cited here. Bauhaus shaped chairs, rugs, tables, lamps, tea kettles, even toys and cribs. The hand that makes the cradle rules the world. No one can deny that many of these products are beautifully sleek. I like a Michael Graves teapot as much as the next guy. But the Bauhaus didn't know when to stop, as Ludwig Hilberseimer's chilling cityscapes make plain. Here's Michael J. Lewis on the matter: "The same Cartesian coordinates that are so stimulating when applied to textiles or chess sets take on a rather different aspect when the grid grows larger than the individual, who shrinks into a speck."

Stop what you're doing and look around you. Granted you have a window nearby (but even if you don't), how long does it take to find an object or building influenced by this imperious simplicity of the Bauhaus? This show does not end at the walls of the exhibit, but extends into the Bauhaus structure of the museum itself, and onto the more cheerless of New York skyscrapers, through the low-income housing projects that Bauhaus ideals inspired, and on further into anonymous edge-cities, suburban office parks, and dreary residential realities. The show closes soon, but don't worry if you can't make it. You can't not make it.

The Continualist

In light of the memorial Mass for Father Richard John Neuhaus tomorrow (which, this time at least, is at St. Patrick's Cathedral), I'm re-posting my reflections following the funeral last year:

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, and perhaps that's what made him a conservative. 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 this 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 metaphysical, 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.

Exhibition Review

The Origins of El Greco at the Onassis Center (adjacent to St. Patrick's Cathedral) has been extended to February 27th, and it's still free. To spur you to attendance, I have a review of the show at The New Criterion this month, in which I tried to make points not made by the admittedly excellent synopsis at the New York Times.

Some of the most sumptuous holes in the history of art are on offer in this exhibition, and one really should see them, if possible, in person. When scuffs afflict the simple wood surface of an icon, they can cluster to create gold-flecked craters that no artist, however inspired, could have conceived. In one particular piece, a fifteenth century Noli me tangere, these wounds of time complement the sacred five of the resurrected body of Christ. Canvass deteriorates, but wooden panels age. If you'll pardon some overblown rhetoric: As with wine, so with icons: Far sweeter now than at the hour of inception.

This is far and away the best icon display in New York since Faith and Power exhibition in 2004. It is perfectly suited to vindicate Peter Brown's observation that El Greco was "The Last of the Hesychasts." But, properly understood, the show could inspire more.

Happy 2010

Owen Sound, Canada
Originally uploaded by millinerd

Life tip for 2010: Don't just marry someone beautiful; marry someone from a place that's beautiful so you can visit that place often. (See also the related life tip regarding the journey thereto.)