Misoslav Volf Video on Forgiveness

Showed this video to my youth tonight to reinforce the conclusion of some talks from 2 Peter 1 from the last few weeks. For summary purposes, Peter is encouraging his readers to respond to their faith in Christ by building it up with a character that is modeled after Christ's character. Ultimately, this culminates in a character which can show love even to our enemies, just as Christ showed us love while we were still his enemies by dying for us. So as a facet of that kind of love, we talked about the need for giving forgiveness tonight.



Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World

Response to Peter Millican's Critique of Aristotle

Reading Hume on Human Understanding

Realizing that this is ambitious, I'm going to take on Oxford's Peter Millican (click the link above to see his book which I have not read...). I have been listening to a recent pod-casting of his lectures from the course "General Philosophy" which covers the emergence and development of Modern/Enlightenment thought.

Honestly, I have been quite disturbed by his presentation of the critique of Christian and Aristotelian thought by the early moderns. Millican makes a strong effort to associate the Christian/Aristotelian view with a particular, Ptolemaic view of the cosmos. He then argues that the rise of mechanistic view of the universe beginning with Galileo and Descartes results in an essential undermining of the religious viewpoint.

It certainly seems to be the case that Modern philosophy developed in large part due to a reaction against the religious wars associated with the Reformation. In that sense, it was, as Millican argues, largely aimed at finding a philosophy of reason that could stand over and above the competing religious ideologies of the day. At the same time, a more mechanistic view of the universe emerged. Where I might differ with Millican is that it seems the rise of the mechanistic model had less to do with problems with Aristotelian philosophy as with the reaction of the Church.

Let me elaborate: Aristotle proposed a certain cosmological model of the universe, this much Millican has correctly asserted. However, this model is not the entirety of Aristotle's metaphysics. In fact, I would argue (and now I am in conflict with Millican) that the model is nothing more than a particular manifestation of the more foundational metaphysical principles that Aristotle argued for. Those principles, especially the ideas of an empirical basis for knowledge, constancy in nature, etc, played a huge role in the science of the Enlightenment. In fact, the new Astronomy proposed by Galileo, I would argue (against Millican), offers no real conflict to Aristotle's metaphysics, merely to a particular cosmological model that embodied his metaphysics. Unfortunately, the Church had become attached to that model and the ensuing conflict, which was utterly pointless, has led to a great deal more of conflicts between science and religion since then. So essentially, here is my beef with Millican. It seems to me that Millican has adopted a straw man by conflating the metaphysics of Aristotle with his cosmology and arguing that if we lose one, so with the other. I am arguing that this kind of reasoning only works in one direction- if we drop Aristotle's metaphysics, then certainly his cosmology will make little sense. However, the opposite is not true. Aristotle's cosmology is dependent on his metaphysics, but not the other way around. We can drop the cosmology and keep the metaphysics by pairing it with a better understanding of cosmology. Historically, of course, this was not really done.

This is because Modern philosophy ends up parting with ways with Aristotle on at least one point- teleology has been dropped for a mechanistic view of nature. Millican's presentation here is again a bit biased. Millican offers two arguments against Aristotle's teleology: First, that it is tied to a particular cosmological model (we have already seen that this is a straw man argument), and second, that it is redundant. Essentially, Millican argues that Aristotle's teleological explanations are merely restating the description of the phenomenon in question: this object does this because it is striving to do this. This is why Modern philosophy opts for a more mechanistic view, Millican claims. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If we clear up some of Millican's straw man language a little and give a more concrete example of teleology, we can see that that a mechanistic view gives no greater explanatory power. A rock falls, Aristotle would say, because the essence of the rock is to be drawn toward the earth. Later Modern thinkers will say that the rock falls because a unobserved force exists which pulls the rock towards the earth. In both cases, we have described the phenomenon, and in both cases I would argue we have given something of an explanation for why it happens (essence or unobservable force). If one of these lines of reasoning provides no explanation, I would argue neither does the other and Millican has gotten us nowhere. A more plausible explanation for the adoption of the mechanical view over the teleological one is the desire of the Enlightenment to break with religion and exalt the reasoning of man.

It is at this point that I take a great deal of issue with Modern philosophy- the mechanistic view cannot be sustained, I want to argue. Ironically, the mechanistic view, I believe, makes it impossible to escape the skepticism of Hume and causes the entire Enlightenment project to come crashing down on itself. Better to keep with Aristotle in terms of teleology. Yes, the model we use must be updated to reflect more recent observations, but metaphysically this presents no conflict except to those who wish to escape the need of the supernatural and continue to exalt the reason of man.

Review: Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf

I think I may have found my new favorite author! And to make this even better, he will be my theology professor at Yale!! Miroslav Volf does a fantastic job of blending theology, psychology, and philosophy in this book, Exclusion and Embrace. The book is a personal response from Volf to wrestling with the issue of how to follow Jesus' command to love our enemies in the face of atrocity (he wrote this in the wake of a civil war in the Balkans in which many of his own native Croatian people were brutalized at the hand of Serbian forces). In responding to this deeply personal issue, Volf attempts to develop a distinctly Christian, Trinitarian view of how we can love others.

Here, essentially, is the argument that Volf makes: The duty to love others is an individual, not a collective duty. We cannot change society to include others unless we have changed ourselves to be willing to include and embrace them rather than exclude them. So Volf's solution to the problems associated with the sin of exclusion (a sin that he says lies at the heart of all sins) is a change in ourselves. In saying this, Volf recalls what he says is maybe one of the most controversial (from a political standpoint) of Jesus' teachings: that the victim must repent every bit as much as the perpetrator of a crime. In essence, Volf's argument is an attack on the prevailing ideologies of both Modernism and Post-modernism: as long as we insist on viewing conflicts in terms of one innocent and one guilty party, as long as we insist on justice being the vindication of the innocent (a liberation motif) at the expense of the guilty, we will only perpetuate the conflict because the innocent, once in power, will subject the guilty to equal if not worse atrocities. Instead, argues Volf, we have to recognize two things: 1) it is almost always the case both parties are guilty, at least in part; and 2) no amount of reparation will ever make up for an abuse (you cannot undue the crime done, and no payment will ever make up for the loss). Instead, Volf argues, the message of the gospel is one of reconciliation, which means both sides laying down their arms and embracing the other, forgiving the crimes committed and forgetting them, starting the relationship anew. This kind of forgiveness does not mean casting aside all our means of protection (though Volf does seem to advocate absolute pacifism, I'm not sure that is a necessary corollary of his argument), but it is an inherently risky business (but witness Jesus' ultimate embrace, the embrace of the cross, and recognize that the risk is necessary)- we cannot control the other person, we can only open ourselves up to the embrace. The risk of rejection is real, but the faith of Christianity is also a faith that in the end God will triumph and those who reject his embrace will be brought to justice!

Like I said, it’s a fantastic book and I highly recommend it. I think it should be required for every Christian in ministry to read, it does an excellent job of cutting right through the many inconsistencies in the way the Church has responded to contemporary Western culture, I believe. The language is a bit technical sometimes- he interacts a lot with Nietzsche, and the post-Modern philosophers (especially Derrida) . But, as a little bit of encouragement, I can say that I have spent very little time studying existentialist and post-Modern philosophy and still understood most of the discussion (he does a good job explaining the ideas he is interacting with). There are many points where Volf challenges our natural thinking, which is healthy whether or not we come to full agreement with him. I think that on a whole in those points where he challenges our thinking he does an excellent job explaining why the challenge is necessary and giving a good argument for why we might want to change stance. Beyond that, the book does an incredible job of highlighting the absolutely beautiful and personal significance of the message of Christianity, the message of the cross, for us. Very well written, very, very helpful!!

Free Will and God's Sovereignty

So a while back I wrote a post that seemed extremely Calvinistic (for me) about the sovereignty of God and the way we have downplayed it in our society and our churches for our own gratification.

Now, I want to try and reconcile what I said there with what I also believe to be true- that we as people have free will. I think this is true primarily for philosophical reasons- I think the absence of free will entails a logical absurdity and would require us to all be either skeptics or completely irrational. However, I also think that belief in free will is in line with the teaching of scripture (which also supports this very strong sense of God's sovereignty that I discussed before). In essence, what I am going to say is that there is a tension between these things in scripture itself, a tension that I think is true to our life experience as well, and that tension is one that I don't feel we can resolve.

So in very, very broad terms, here is how this tension seems to play out to me:

1. God is sovereign. He chooses whom he will to be his. This has nothing to do with their meriting being chosen, it is entirely up to God and his purposes.
2. People are free. God's choosing us may not be up to us, but fulfilling our being chosen is. God's choosing people is not a blank check, it’s a calling with great responsibility and high expectations. Whether we will be true and faithful to that calling is what we choose. The fulfillment or working out of our salvation is up to us (at least in the sense of cooperation) even if the initial calling is not.

We see this played out in scripture, for instance, in the example of the people of Israel. Read through Deuteronomy and you will notice both these themes coming out over and over again- Moses tells the people they have been chosen by God (and not because they deserve it). Then he urges them repeatedly to choose to follow God in their calling and to be faithful to what he commands. The New Testament seems to me to suggest a similar tension. What's more, our lives seem to reflect this tension. God has worked mightily in our lives as Christians in a way that perhaps we did not seek and certainly we did not deserve. Yet, it seems all too apparent to most of us that we are responsible for how we live out and work out our lives after that (and before it). And unfortunately it is all too apparent that we frequently live and work out our lives badly. Thankfully, God is not limited by us, nor does he abandon us. The Grace that found us also wants to transform us. That has to be a process that we choose to cooperate in, however.

This is Where I am Going!

Fairly decent article on the origins of post-liberalism, which is more or less what I will be studying at Yale Divinity beginning next fall. I'm excited, I think this is a very intriguing and constructive movement in theology!