The great cataract of nonsense

Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many place is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune form the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

—C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time”

How the Eucharist effects salvation

Since [the Eucharist] is the sacrament of the Lord’s passion, it contains in itself the Christ who suffered. Thus whatever is an effect of our Lord’s passion is an effect of this sacrament. For this sacrament is nothing other than the application of our Lord’s passion to us. . . . Hence it is clear that the destruction of death, which Christ accomplished by his death, and the restoration of life, which he effected by his resurrection, are effects of this sacrament.

—St. Thomas Aquinas, In Ioannem 6:56, para. 963 (cited in Eugene Rogers Jr., Blood Theology [Cambridge UP, 2021], 192–93)

Aliens

Last month Ezra Klein wrote a refreshing column on the UFO revelations of the last few months (and years).* It was refreshing because it not only carefully distinguished between alien and supernatural but also avoided the silly trope that the existence of alien life would undermine, transform, or even substantially affect the doctrines or practices of major world religions like Christianity. Here’s the money graf:

There is a thick literature on how evidence of alien life would shake the world’s religions, but I think Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, is quite likely right when he suggests that many people would simply say, “of course.” The materialist worldview that positions humanity as an island of intelligence in a potentially empty cosmos — my worldview, in other words — is the aberration. Most people believe, and have always believed, that we share both the Earth and the cosmos with other beings — gods, spirits, angels, ghosts, ancestors. The norm throughout human history has been a crowded universe where other intelligences are interested in our comings and goings, and even shape them. The whole of human civilization is testament to the fact that we can believe we are not alone and still obsess over earthly concerns.

This is exactly right. At least for Christians, while the discovery of alien life would be momentous as a discovery, and while it would certainly raise theological questions, it would not in the least threaten or even disturb faith in the gospel. Whatever exists in the cosmos—indeed, whatever exists outside of time and space that is not God—is a fellow creature, just like us, created by the God of Abraham from nothing, just like us. Read C. S. Lewis or Mary Doria Russell or Michel Faber or any other science fiction author from the last century who has imagined intergalactic missions to meet or learn from or evangelize non-terrestrial rational species. Lewis in particular loved to speculate that Jesus’s comments about “other sheep, not of this fold” in John 10:16 applied not only to gentiles but, potentially, to intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Who knows?

Whatever the answer, the collective response from Christians to the demonstrable existence of alien life will and should comprise four options: doxology; wonder at the mysteries of creation; desire, with appropriate caution and within limits, to learn more about and form some relationship with these fellow creatures; and, for the most part, getting on with the business of life.

Kudos to Klein for seeing that, and cutting through the nonsense.

*In my own mind, there are five possible interpretations of the seemingly physics-defying happenings recorded and witnessed by the pilots (and their flight cameras): (1) human technology; (2) alien technology; (3) natural occurrences; (4) supernatural phenomena; (5) nothing—a trick of the light, a fault of the eyes, a mistake of the video, or some other similar explanation. It seems to me the only frightening option is the first, though perhaps I should be more fearful of the second.

Welcome to the new blog, same as the old blog

Welcome, all! This is the new and permanent home of my blog, Resident Theologian, which used to be hosted at Blogspot. All the old posts have been imported here, and while I don’t anticipate deleting the old blog anytime soon, I may well do so at some point.

There’s not much to offer by way of orientation: here’s the blog, same as the old, only housed on my personal site. If you want to know more about me, click the About tab above; if you want to know more about this blog, click the About the Blog link just below the blog title on the blog home page (how many times can I say “blog” in one sentence?).

What with the move, I’m hoping to ramp up my so-called mezzo-blogging this summer, perhaps as soon as next week. So stay tuned for that, and in any case, thanks for reading.

Addendum: If you are receiving this post via email, then you either signed up to do so on the Home page, or were already signed up to receive posts via email from the old blog. If there has been an error, or you no longer want to receive these posts in your inbox, just click “Unsubscribe” below, and you’ll be taken off the email list automatically (and permanently). Thanks for your patience as I navigate moving the blog from its old environs to these lovely new digs.

Heresy and orthodoxy

"Heresy" and "orthodoxy" (and their variants) are two terms I hear and read with some frequency in low-church Protestant and evangelical circles. Their usage has always nagged at me, though, and lately I've realized why.

Heresy is first of all a term of church discipline, not false belief. It is the application by duly constituted ecclesial authority of a certain status to persons, groups, movements, practices, or ideas. That status is anathema: the curse of excommunication. "Such entities do not belong in the community of Christ" is what heresy announces, publicly and definitively. If the relevant persons or groups do not thereupon repent, they become "heretics" or "heretical," which is a formal status relative to a concrete Christian community or communion. Subsequent to the decisive events that constitute said entities as "heretical," similar ideas and practices might be judged at the popular level to be of a piece with that which was previously anathematized; thus ordinary people might label a notion "heretical" by derivation from prior authoritative pronouncement. But heresy as such remains a matter of church discipline. It isn't something one makes up oneself, much less promulgates on one's own.

Thus understood, heresy is the shadow side of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the positive dogmatic teaching of the historic church, that is to say, of the historic episcopal and conciliar church. You do not have to wonder what orthodoxy teaches. Read the canons, creeds, definitions, and anathemas of the seven ecumenical councils, alongside and as an interpretation of Holy Scripture. That is orthodoxy. That, at least, is what the term "orthodoxy" means, if it is to have any substantive or historically coherent meaning at all. It may mean more than that, given the divided state of the church in the last millennium, but it does not and cannot mean less.

I trust that goes some way toward explaining my dissatisfaction and confusion with conventional low-church Protestant and evangelical usage of these terms. For such usage, the terms not only come to be defined wholly relatively—in terms of this or that sub-sub-group new on the ecclesial scene—they also assume meanings contrary to their original historical and dogmatic sense. So that, for example, "heresy" names the veneration of icons, or the mandatory celibacy of bishops, or having bishops in the first place, or the acclamation of Mary as Theotokos. But this is gibberish. One may certainly make arguments that such teaching and practice are wrong, or unwarranted by biblical precedent. But to call them "heresy" is to invert the term's historic sense. Moreover, it is to ignore the word's original and abiding force as an expression of churchly authority, and to deploy it instead as meaning merely "something with which I/we disagree."

"Orthodoxy" fares no better. In popular usage in the last century—popular, that is, among the non-catholic groups I've identified above, but used broadly by their scholars, pastors, and theologians—"orthodoxy" comes to mean "those parts of the historic tradition we continue to affirm, minus those parts we do not." But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Such an operation is surgical. It slices and dices, cutting off elements of the tradition that the majority church (both globally and historically) once thought and still thinks essential. The result is something of a Frankenstein's monster, only without the admission that it is man-made. But the so-called "historic" or "traditional" "orthodoxy" thus proffered and appealed to as "common" and "ancient" is self-evidently an artifice. Perhaps it is true artifice—perhaps it cuts through those other man-made traditions that, like so many weeds, grew up around the gospel, threatening to overwhelm it—but that is a different claim than calling it "orthodox." To do the latter one aspires to participation in and affirmation of the ancient patristic (and perhaps medieval) articulations of the faith. But in lopping off one-third of those articulations while revising or amending another third, one undercuts the perceived benefit of appealing to ancient tradition. If the dogmatic inheritance is revisable, but one's appeal to its antiquity and unanimity is meant to shore up its unrevisability, the internal contradiction should be obvious. You can't have it both ways.

This is all a very long way of saying that division in the church matters. Such division is not only real, it is rooted in and gives rise to opposed doctrines and practices. There is, in other words, a logic to the mutual anathemas of the 16th century. If we teach X and y'all teach not-X, either one of us is right and the other wrong, or both of us are wrong. It can't be the case that both of us are right (at least if we understand what we are saying). So far as I can tell, we want today to be able to affirm a deep commonality across church division: and that is a good desire. But it ought to be grounded in the truth. Some church traditions can affirm what I outlined above as the bare minimum of historic orthodoxy. It seems to me that those traditions have a good deal of common ground on which to talk about their differences. Other traditions, less so. That doesn't mean the ecumenical task is dead on arrival. Nor does it mean per se that the "orthodox" churches are eo ipso right and therefore those that cannot claim orthodoxy are in the wrong. It simply means that we should use these terms with care, so that they have discernible content. It also means that those traditions that have departed from historic orthodoxy ought to admit the fact; ought to stop using the term; and certainly ought to quit the rhetorical habit of laundering the purity of their doctrines through a misplaced appellation of a venerable ancient term.

I'll let Inigo Montoya have the last word: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The four best essays I’ve read so far this year

We are four months into 2021, and the number of hands-down brilliant, print-them-out-and-mark-them-up, share-them-with-your-friends-and-assign-them-to-all-future-students essays I've read this year is also four. In the order in which they were published:

–L. M. Sacasas, "The Insurrection Will Be Live Streamed: Notes Toward a Theory of Digitization," an entry in his peerless newsletter The Convivial Society. By far the best thing written about and in the wake of the Capitol Riot on January 6. Subscribe to TCS today: it's consistently unique in its sober and brilliant analysis of technology, media, culture, and the production and distribution of knowledge.

–Ian Olson, "Marcion's 'Gift,'" Mere Orthodoxy. Olson threads the needle just right in his treatment of the church's inseparability from the Jewish people and its own history of injustice toward that same people. The exegetical, theological, and rhetorical subtlety on display here is not to be missed.

–Elisa Gonzalez, "No Good Has Come," The Point. Someone finally got Marilynne Robinson right, and that someone is Elisa Gonzalez. This is heads and shoulders above any other interpretation of the Gilead tetralogy, incorporating its two irreducible major themes: on the one hand, a Calvinist perception of the world as the theater for God's glory and of human persons as souls mysteriously bearing the divine image one to another; and on the other hand, the tragedy of our opacity to each other, which manifests as escalating harms cloaked in self-deception: above all, in the United States, the still unresolved collective failure of white Christians toward black Americans. Reading Gonzalez on Robinson only established further for me the extraordinary achievement of the four Gilead books; together they constitute a singular masterpiece in moral, national, and spiritual imagination.

–Phil Christman,"How to Be White,"Breaking Ground. Always be reading Christman, as a rule; now put this at the top of the list. It's the best thing I've read on race and racism how to talk about both in a long time. If you find yourself annoyed by The Discourse, not to mention the inane corporate consultant hucksters who dominate it, but nevertheless agree that there is atherethere, even if our flailing attempts to name it with our shared public grammar (such as it is) routinely fail: this essay is for you.

Humor and despair

Last month a review of Jordan Peterson's latest book made the rounds. It was justly held up as a serious, charitable attempt both to understand Peterson's project on its own terms (along with why it has attracted such a following) and to critique his execution of that project. The substance of the critique is that, in an acute manner and to a painful degree, Peterson lacks a sense of humor. He is earnestness incarnate. He never laughs, he never jokes, he never reveals a wry wit or sheepish grin at the joys or absurdities of modern life. He only grimaces, shifting the burden of finitude from one shoulder to the other, and inviting others to do so, in the same unsmiling manner.

I've not read one word of Peterson's work, and I have no desire to defend his ideas per se from this charge. But the critique, though plausible and even probably true as far as it goes, fails in two respects. And it does so whatever the quality of Peterson's thought in itself.

In summary form: the critique fails, on the one hand, because it presupposes a priori that despair is not a viable or rational option for considered reflection; and, on the other hand, because it assumes a modestly affluent and pleasurable quality of life sufficient to ground the humor that winks or smirks at, or spits in the eye of, the abyss of death.

In other words, Burkeman (the author of the review) recommends a coping strategy at the practical level regardless of its truth at the theoretical or existential level. To which the Petersons of the world are justified in replying: I don't want to cope with the un-copable. I want to live in the truth. And if the truth is the sheer implacable terror of mortality, of the inexorable power of unconquerable death, which will swallow up me and everything and everyone I love, rendering us not only nonexistent but our lives and loves meaningless—if that is the truth, then I would rather suffer that terror humanely, truthfully, and therefore humorlessly, than play-act with jokes and empty grins.

The other side of such a reply is that one can only imagine coping with finitude through humor no matter the truth of the matter if one's material conditions rise above a certain level. That is, if my day-to-day activities include modest pleasures and even delights—fulfilling work, faithful marriage, beloved children, delectable food, enjoyable leisure—then these can provide respite from the existential torment of endlessly meditating on suffering, death, and loss. And in such respite one is permitted the therapy of humor, even gallows humor.

But again, here a Peterson is able to mount a reply: Our affluence may be nothing more than a conspiracy to hide the truth from ourselves, indeed society itself may be just that: a systematic attempt to make us forget, for sustained stretches of time, the absurdity of our lives and the single common fate awaiting us all. And, again, if the highest aim of the human creature is to live in the truth, then better to resist this massive operation at collective deception; better to live, miserably and humorlessly, in the truth that quotidian pleasures try to mask, than to live a falsehood that includes laughter.

Put differently, if humor is nothing but a way to cope with suffering, then it is perfectly reasonable to decline the invitation, given a different hierarchy of values. But if it is meant to be more than merely a coping mechanism, then more is required to ground it in the soil of the real. It must arise from and share in the truth. If it does not, then despair may be a legitimate response to the realities of bare human life (and nothing is less funny than despair). At the very least, it cannot be ruled out in advance.

Biographies of theologians

Alan Jacobs suggests that we need more biographies of theologians. By which he means, on the one hand, quality biographies (not chronicles) written with style and insight; and, on the other hand, biographies about contemporary theologians, such as Robert Jenson or John Webster.

I would love nothing more than a biographer on a par with Ray Monk to tell the story of, e.g., Jenson's life and work. And in general I heartily second his recommendation. But it prompted a thought.

What makes a life worthy of a biography? Or put differently, what makes a biography worth reading?

It seems to me the answer is threefold. Either the person is herself interesting (something about her charisma or temperament or virtue or genius); or her life was interesting (she fought back the English after having a supernatural vision, say, or traveled through the Balkans in between the world wars); or her thought, beyond being interesting in itself (that justifies secondary literature), produced interesting and notable effects in the world, whether within institutions like the academy or outside of them, say in politics or art (think the Frankfurt School, or Darwin or Einstein).

The question is: Do theologians today meet any of these criteria? Note well: a memoir is distinct from a biography, in that the former invites us into the inner life of the theologian; hence it is easy to imagine theologians writing memoirs worth reading. But what of biographies about them?

It seems to me that the stature of contemporary theologians has fallen so dramatically in the last three generations that, in general, it would never occur to a Ray Monk to profile a theologian for the simple reason that he would see nothing to profile in the first place. What a biography needs, in one variety or another, is drama. And once the leading lights of public intellectual life stopped reading or even caring about theologians—indeed, from the other side, once theologians stopped having social and political cachet, stopped being invited (like Maritain, like Niebuhr) into the halls of power to shape and inform the decisions and policies enacted therein—the potential for drama in theology vanished. Every actual drama was and is thereby reduced to interpersonal squabbles, institutional gossip, and tempests in teapots.

When I try to imagine how a theologian's biography would read, I simply can't get past the sheer tedium of it. "He read and wrote all day—sometimes teaching small seminars of doctoral students—before returning home to his family; his books, while celebrated among his peers, were ignored by everyone outside the field. Occasionally churches would invite him to deliver a lecture; sparsely attended, the gatherings would pay him a modest honorarium and politely applaud what they otherwise only half understood."

I don't mean to make fun: such a life is my own, or at least my own as I hope it stretches into the future. It's a good life, and a life well worth living. But it isn't the stuff of biography. Which is fine, since almost no life is.

In sum, something extra has to make a theologian's life worth telling: wide, impassioned reception of her work; impact on extra-ecclesial institutions; sheer popularity; intersection with major historical events or figures; or perhaps appointment to a major position in church leadership, such as the papacy or see of Canterbury.*

Or, I should add, sainthood. If and when a theologian is possessed of unvarnished, unimpeachable holiness, we ought to write and read biographies about her. I will not hazard to speculate about the prevalence or paucity of saints in modern theology; no doubt there have been and are some, invisible as saints often are. But I do wonder whether holiness is aimed at in the formation of academic theologians today, or whether holiness is actively opposed and routed in such formation, and therefore whether we would be wise to look elsewhere than the ranks of theologians for the discovery of modern-day saints.

*This is why biographies have been written about, e.g., Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Rowan Williams. And Jenson, mentioned by Jacobs in his original post, is himself something of a throwback; his life (1930–2017) bridged the rapid transformation between the age of Niebuhr, Maritain, Lewis, and Barth (on the one hand) and the age of what I've elsewhere called the public theologian in retreat (on the other). Stanley Hauerwas is here the exception that proves the rule, both because there is no one quite like him on the American academic theological scene in the last four decades and because his memoir, while a lovely read and wonderfully illuminating, would have been a bore had it been written by a biographer.

Two new essays on the long Lent of Covidtide

Last week in Mere Orthodoxy I wrote about Tish Harrison Warren's terrific new book, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep.

Today I’m in First Things reflecting on what it means to celebrate the Triduum in Covidtide.

The essays are, in a way, companion pieces. Both are about persisting in Lent as we approach Easter Sunday; both reflect on the long Lent of the last year (the emergency liturgical season of "Covidtide"); both insist that resurrection is coming; both remind us that the passage to Sunday runs through the passion of Jesus. Some of us need to know in our bones that Jesus is risen; some of need to recall that Holy Saturday comes first.

Yesterday I read St. Luke's account of Jesus's final hours with his disciples. The passage in 22:31-34 is almost too much to bear:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” And he said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” He said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me.”

The Lord calls us and prays for each of us by name. Like St. Peter, we will fail (vv. 56-60), and beneath the gaze of the Lord (v. 61), we will weep bitterly (v. 62). But borne up by his prayers and the power of his cross, we will turn again, strengthened and ready to strengthen (John 21:15-17). Only then will we be truly ready to take up our own cross and follow him (vv. 18-19).

A blessed Triduum to all of you.

Dame, ACU, sports, glory (TLC, 1)

Two years ago I wrote the following in a short tweet thread, in response to Damian Lillard's walk-off buzzer-beater to win Portland's playoff series against Oklahoma City:

What's revealed by Dame's buzzer-beater walk-off series-winner, and the hoopla surrounding it since, is something simple but often forgotten in today's analytics-driven journalism: People do not watch or play sports for the sake of technical proficiency. They do so for glory.

What Damian Lillard did was all-caps GLORIOUS. The stakes, the moment, the narrative, the beef with Russ, the degree of difficulty: People watch what is often sheer monotony in sports for a single, once-in-a-lifetime moment just like that.

Paul George's comments after the game that "it was a bad shot, though nobody's going to say it," was true but seriously beside the point. Of course it was a bad shot! If by "bad" we mean "having a low probability of going in," it was definitionally bad. And yet it went in!

Watch the video, and look at the reactions: OKC's, the crowd's, Dame's teammates, and Dame's own. Sheer, stupefying, lightning-struck glory. Athletes devote the entirety of their lives, soul and body, to be ready for a moment like that—and not, say, to finish 4th in MVP voting.

Sports journalism's in a weird place, drawn in a few directions: hyper-analytics; First Take stupidity; Twitter cleverness; athletes-as-celebrities gossip. What I'd love more than anything is a recognition of what makes sports great, and matching prose to the glory of the thing.

I stand by all of that. Every day that analytics makes further inroads not just on backroom GM decision-making but on the whole public culture of professional (and amateur!) sports is a step in the wrong direction. Sports do not exist for "wins," Ringz, or championships. They certainly do not exist for statistical supremacy. They do not even exist first of all for the display of physical excellence and bodily self-mastery and the combat of competition. They exist for people to behold unpredictable epiphanies of human glory. All the other goods of sports are contained therein.

Which brings me to ACU, where I teach. My colleague Richard Beck wrote up a nice appreciation of our "little ol'" basketball team's dethroning—decapitating? horns-sawing?—of the University of Texas in the NCAA tournament. Watching our team upset UT in the opening round, by icing two free throws to go up by one point before stealing the inbound pass as time expired, put me in mind of Dame's walk-off buzzer-beater. Sheer pandemonium, wild release, pure glory: the reason why we do this in the first place. That glory spread like wildfire across sports media and social media alike, and rightly so. How often in your life will you see something like that?

It would have been wonderful for our guys to have won the next game (and the next, and the next...). But that loss doesn't remotely diminish the glory of the initial upset. It happened, it always will have happened, and those players will be the toast of west Texas for a long time to come. Good for them.

NYT, guilt by association, and libraries

It's a relief to see so many thoughtful—albeit blistering—responses to the long-awaited NYT hit piece on Scott Alexander and his erstwhile blog. It means that I'm not crazy for having the reaction I did when I read it, and that I don't need to write much to draw attention to the article's numerous flaws: only to point you to all the existing ones that already do the job. That's only a few, and none of the Twitter threads and dunks. I must say, the immediately striking thing about the piece is how boring and boringly written it is, in such a bone-deep passive-aggressive voice. Why all the fuss (internally, that is, at the NYT) for that?

But: one additional thought. It has to be strange, at the experiential (nay, existential) level, for a writer truly to think that he can damn another writer through nothing but guilt by association. And not just association in general, but association understood, first, as proximate contact (i.e., having read and engaged a "dangerous" or non-mainstream or legitimately Bad author); and, second, as having potentially contributed to the potential acceptance of said unsavory character's unsavory ideas (i.e., not having controlled in advance the judgments one's own readers might make in reading one's engagement of another's writings).

The entire hit piece is structured this way. "Alexander might be an okay dude, but it's possible that his blog might have led some readers to Wrong Thoughts." What I cannot for the life of me understand is what it means for a fellow writer to think this, to have written this way. Does he really suppose the way authors and their works ought to be judged is by the sheer possibility that some readers might draw undesirable conclusions? or misunderstand the authors' views? or go beyond the authors, or follow their evidence or arguments to different ends than the authors?

This view is patently preposterous. It's self-defeating for any writer to hold. And it's even worse as a picture of reading and learning. Imagine it applied to libraries:

1. Libraries invariably contain books of all kinds.
   
2. Some books invariably contain Bad Ideas.
3. Moreover, All Kinds Of People read books.
4. Therefore, some people will have Bad Ideas as a result of reading certain books contained in libraries.
5. Therefore, libraries are Of Questionable Quality.
6. Therefore, ban all libraries.
   

There is a real hatred afoot today: a hatred for learning, for thinking, for reading and giving space to ideas and authors outside of a narrow mainstream—whether or not that mainstream is a mushy moderate middle or something else entirely—and this hatred not only animates the hit piece on Alexander, it is a sort of electrical current pulsing through our culture today. Resist it, y'all. Resist it in any way you can.

Anthropomorphism and analogy

Andrew Wilson has a lovely little post up using Herman Bavinck's work to show the "unlimited" scope of the Bible's use of anthropomorphism to talk about God. It's a helpful catalogue of the sheer volume and range of scriptural language to describe God and God's action. It's a useful resource, too, for helping students to grasp the notion that most of our speech about God is metaphorical, all of it is analogical, and none of it is less true for that.

In my experience not only students but philosophers and theologians as well often imagine, argue, or take for granted that doctrine is a kind of improvement on the language of Scripture. The canon then functions as a kind of loose rough draft, however authoritative, upon which metaphysically precise discourse improves, or at least by comparison offers a better approximation of the truth. Sometimes those parts of the canon that are literal or less anthropomorphic are permitted some lexical or semantic control. But in any case the idea is that arriving at non-metaphorical and certainly non-anthropomorphic language is the ideal.

But this is a mistake. Anthropomorphism is not an error or an accommodation to avoid. It's the vehicle of truth, the sanctified means of truthful talk about God. It may in principle speak more truly about God than its contrary. And Scripture's saturation in it would suggest that in fact it is God's chosen manner of communicating with us, and thus a privileged discursive mode for talk about God.

The upshot: theological accounts of analogy and language about God are meant not to sit in judgment on Scripture but rather to show how Scripture's language about God works. It is meant to serve the canon and to ground trust in canonical idiom, not to qualify it. "Given divine transcendence and the character of human language, how is what the Bible says about God true?" is the question to which the doctrine of analogy is an answer. Analogy does not mitigate the truth of Scripture's witness. It is a way of establishing it philosophically.

So that when the Bible says God has a face or arms or nostrils, or has wrath or grief or regret or love, or knows or forgets or begets or weds, the Christian is right to hear it as what it is: the word of God, trustworthy and true.

Digital ash

I'm on the record regarding "streaming" the sacraments, or otherwise digitally mediating the celebration of the Eucharist. With Lent approaching, the question occurred to me: Might churches "stream" Ash Wednesday? That is to say, would they endorse or facilitate the self-imposition of ashes?

Nonsense, was my initial thought. No way. Of course not. Who would suggest such a thing?

But that was naive. Surely, after almost a full year of administering the body and blood of Christ to oneself at home, the imposition of ashes upon one's own forehead at home is but a small leap; indeed, it is not so much a leap as a logical next step. If the blessed sacrament admits of auto-administration via digital consecration, how much more so the rites of Ash Wednesday?

I am prepared, therefore, for digital ash. Which is another way of saying that I am praying: Lord, deliver us from Covidtide.

“You are your actions”: close, but not quite

Over on Freddie deBoer's blog, he has a sharp piece up criticizing the vacuous identities induced by mass entertainment in late modern capitalism. Instead of having a nice time watching a Marvel movie, for instance, one's sense of self gets wrapped up in "being a Marvel fan." But Marvel doesn't care about you. Nor can it offer that depth of identity-constitutive meaning. It's just a movie that's a pinch of fun in a dark world, for which you fork over some money. Forgetting that, and allowing Disney to define who you are, is both childish and a trap. It doesn't end well, and it's a recipe for arrested development.

Here are the closing two paragraphs (my emphasis):

I wish I had a pat answer for what to do instead. Grasping for meaning – usually while drenching yourself in irony so that no one knows that that’s what you doing, these days – is universal. I will risk offending another very touchy subset of the internet by saying that I think many people turn to social justice politics and their prescriptivist politics, the notion that your demographic identifiers define you, out of motives very similar to the people I’ve been describing. There are readymade vehicles for acquiring meaning, from Catholicism to New Age philosophy to anarchism, that may very well create the solid ground people are looking for, I don’t know. I suspect that the best answer for more people would be to return to an idea that is very out of fashion: that you are what you do. You are your actions, not what you consume, what you say, or what you like.

It’s cool to name the bands you like to friends. It’s cool to be proud of your record collection. I’m sure it’s fun to create lists for Letterboxd. But those things don’t really say anything about you. Not really. Millions of people like all the things you like, after all. And trying to build a personality out of the accumulation of these things makes authentic appreciation impossible. I think it’s time to look elsewhere, as much as I admit that it would be nice if it worked.

The critique is on point, but the solution is not quite there. Part of the reason why presupposes what deBoer in turn presupposes is off the table (though he acknowledges it as a possibility for others): Christian anthropology. But the following points, though they trade on theological judgments about the nature of the human person, can be defended from other perspectives as well.

So why is defining one's identity by one's deeds an inadequate prescription?

First, because most people's actions are indistinguishable from others' actions: you wake up, you eat, you punch a clock, you watch a show, you pay the bills, you mow the lawn, you grab drinks with a friend, you text and email and post and scroll, maybe you put the kids to bed, you go back to sleep, you repeat it all over again. Such things "don't really say anything about you" either, since "millions of people [do] all the things you [do], after all."

Second, because meaning comes from without, not from within: even if your actions were robust enough to constitute a worthwhile identity, you'd still be seeking, desiring, yearning for that which is other than you, that which transcends you—whether in a lover, a friend, a child, a marriage, a job, a group, a church, a nation, a deity. Not only is it humanly basic for the source of our identity and meaning to come from beyond us (David Kelsey defines human life as "eccentric existence": the ground of our being stands outside ourselves); not only is it literally true that we depend on what is outside us for sustenance, care, and flourishing (gestation, birth, food, relationships, art); even more, turning in to oneself for one's own meaning is a dead end: simply put, none of us is up to the task. True navel gazing is monastic: it turns the self inside out—to find God within.

Third, because (positively speaking) your actions will never be enough: not impressive enough, not heroic enough, not virtuous enough, not even interesting enough. If I am what I do, I am a poor, indeed a boring and forgettable, specimen of the human species. Even if it were true that all that I am is found in my actions, that would be a cause for despair, not hope or meaning.

Fourth, because (negatively speaking) you are an inveterate sinner: you will fail, you will falter and stumble, you will invariably harm and hurt others, not always without intending to do so, but by commission and omission, you will err, you will induce pain, you will fall short—for the rest of your life, world without end. Christians don't think this is the end of the story (God not only forgives you but provides means of reparation for others, healing in oneself, and moral improvement over time), but there is a reason that Chesterton called original sin the one empirical doctrine. Look around at the world. Look at your own life. Does either inspire confidence? Does it suggest a source of reliable meaning and stable identity going forward? I didn't think so.

None of this means it's either deBoer's way or the church's. Even if my description were right, perhaps that merely means that life is meaningless and there is nowhere to look, even in one's own actions or character, for personal significance and rich identity. (Though in that case, who can blame the geeks for their projections?) Or perhaps I'm right at the formal level, but there are sources of transcendence beyond the church that folks like deBoer are remiss in overlooking. In any case, though, the upshot is clear. In terms of deep personal meaning and life-giving identity, the last place to look for who I am is in what I do. Look instead at what I'm looking for—looking at, looking to—and that'll tell you who I am. Or at least who I hope to be, who I'm trying to become.

Alan Jacobs on avoiding unpaid labor for surveillance capitalism

...it’s important to understand that a lot of what we call leisure now is actually not leisure. It is unpaid labor on behalf of surveillance capitalism, what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism. That is, we are all working for Google, we are working for Facebook. I would like to spread a model of reading that is genuinely a leisure activity and that escapes the loop of being unpaid labor for surveillance capitalism. That will start small, and maybe it will stay small, but my hope is that it would be it would be bigger. Even people who have very hard, demanding lives can spend an enormous amount of time in this activity that we have been taught to feel is leisure, but is as I have said unpaid labor.

It’s interesting to see how things come into fashion. Think about how in the last few months we have decided that nothing is more important than the Post Office—that the Post Office is the greatest thing in the world. One of those bandwagons that I’ve been on for my entire life is libraries. I think libraries are just amazing. I grew up in a lower-middle-class, working class family. My father was in prison almost all of my childhood, and my mother worked long hours to try to keep us afloat. My grandmother was the one who took care of my sister and me, and we didn’t have much money for books. There were a lot of books in the house, but that was because members of my family would go to used bookshops and get these like ten cent used paperbacks that had been read ten times and had coffee spilled on them and so forth. So we spent massive amounts of time at the library. Once a week my grandmother and I would go to the library and come out with a great big bag full of books and we would just read relentlessly.

I’m the only person in my family who went beyond high school—in fact I’m the only person in my family to graduate from high school. Yet we read all the time. We always had a TV on in our house, but nobody ever watched it. A characteristic thing in my family would be me, my mother, my grandmother, my sister when she got old enough, sitting in a room with the TV on, the sound turned down, and we were all just sitting there reading books. That was everything to me. It opened the door for everything that I’ve done in the rest of my life. I owe so much to the city of Birmingham, Alabama’s, public libraries. I think when I was doing that I was simultaneously engaging in genuine leisure while also being formed as a thinker and as someone who could kind of step out of the flow of the moment and acquire perspective and tranquility. So I believe that I’m recommending something that is widely available, even to people who have very little money and very few resources, and I know that from my own childhood.

—Alan Jacobs, "The Fare Forward Interview with Alan Jacobs," Fare Forward (30 Dec 2020)

“TV" by John Updike

TV

By John Updike

As if it were a tap I turn it on,
not hot or cold but tepid infotainment,
and out it gushes, sparkling evidence
of conflict, misery, concupiscence
let loose on little leashes, in remissions
of eager advertising that envisions
on our behalf the better life contingent
upon some buy, some needful acquisition.

A sleek car takes a curve in purring rain,
a bone-white beach plays host to lotioned skin,
a diaper soothes a graying beauty’s frown,
an unguent eases sedentary pain,
false teeth are brightened, beer enhances fun,
and rinsed hair hurls its tint across the screen:
these spurts of light are drunk in by my brain,
which sickens quickly, till it thirst again.

A surefire way to increase the number of books you read this coming year

is to read less online. Not just to be online less, but to read online less. Read less news (or no news), fewer blogs and newsletters and Substacks, altogether fewer websites and online essays and articles, and replace that time with reading books. I promise you that your book-reading will increase dramatically, even exponentially, in 2021.

Nor would you lose much. Whatever you are reading online, of whatever quality, it will always prove to be inferior in substance, style, or relevance to your life than what has already been published in a book. Have you read Auden, Eliot, Thomas, Rilke, Levertov, Hopkins, Herbert, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante? All of them, and all of what they wrote? If not, then what you're reading online is subpar by comparison. What about the novels of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Eliot, Austen, Melville, Twain, Trollope, Ellison, Baldwin, Morrison, McMurtry, Robinson, et al? No? Get on it. It's better than whatever you're reading on the internet. Take that to the bank.

Very nearly everything you have ever read and will ever read online is instantly forgettable and will make not a bit of difference to your life. Even in those rare cases where that is not true, what you are reading remains forgettable by comparison to what you are able to find already published in a book. Go read that instead.

Note well: Though your life would surely be improved by dropping online reading entirely, I'm not making that (salutary) suggestion. I'm saying you ought to read less online. Do that, and not only will your intellect and wisdom and soul be improved. You willl read more books this year than last.

Such sage advice I offer free of charge, first to myself, then to you, dear reader. Close this tab—turn off your phone—and go read a book. Thank me in a year.

Publication round-up: recent pieces in First Things, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Mere Orthodoxy, and The Liberating Arts

I've been busy the last month, but I wanted to make sure I posted links here to some recent pieces of mine published during the Advent and Christmas seasons.

First, I wrote a meditation on the first Sunday of Advent for Mere Orthodoxy called "The Face of God."

Second, I interviewed Jon Baskin for The Liberating Arts in a video/podcast called "Can the Humanities Find a Home in the Academy?" Earlier in the fall I interviewed Alan Noble for TLA on why the church needs Christian colleges.

Third, in the latest issue of Journal of Theological Interpretation, I have a long article that seeks to answer a question simply stated: "What Are the Standards of Excellence for Theological Interpretation of Scripture?"

Fourth and last, yesterday, New Year's Day, First Things published a short essay I wrote called "The Circumcision of Israel's God." It's a theological meditation on the liturgical significance of January 1 being simultaneously the feast of the circumcision of Christ (for the East), the solemnity of Mary the Mother of God (for Rome), the feast of the name of Jesus (for many Protestants), and a global day for peace (per Pope Paul VI). I use a wonderful passage from St. Theodore the Studite's polemic against the iconoclasts to draw connections between each of these features of the one mystery of the incarnation of the God of Israel.

More to come in 2021. Lord willing it will prove a relief from the last 12 months.

Peter van Inwagen on disciplinary hubris, relevant expertise, expectations of deference, and ordinary prudence

In the early 1990s the philosopher Peter van Inwagen wrote an essay called "Critical Studies of the New Testament and the User of the New Testament." It is a long, detailed philosophical investigation of the epistemic nature, or status, of academic biblical scholarship; specifically, it asks whether ordinary Christians or readers of the Bible ought to consult such scholarship, or defer to its judgments, prior to or in the course of their readings of the Bible or accompanying theological judgments. After many pages, his answer is a firm No. Here are the final paragraphs of the essay (bolded emphases are mine):

I conclude that there is no reason for me to think that Critical Studies have established that the New Testament narratives are historically unreliable. In fact, there is no reason for me to think that they have established any important thesis about the New Testament. I might, of course, change my mind if I knew more. But how much time shall I devote to coming to know more? My own theological writings, insofar as they draw on contemporary knowledge, draw on formal logic, cos­mology, and evolutionary biology. I need to know a great deal more about these subjects than I do. How much time shall I take away from my study of them to devote to New Testament studies (as opposed to the study of the New Testament)? The answer seems to me to be: very little. I would suggest that various seminaries and divinity schools might consider devoting a portion of their curricula to these subjects (not to mention the systematic study of the Fathers!), even if this had to be done at the expense of some of the time currently devoted to Critical Studies.

 Let me close by considering a tu quoque. Is not philosophy open to many of the charges I have brought against Critical Studies? Is not philosophy argument without end? Is not what philosophers agree about just precisely nothing? Are not the methods and arguments of many philosophers (especially those who reach extreme conclusions) so bad that an outsider encountering them for the first time might well charitably conclude that he must be missing something? Must one not devote years of systematic study to philosophy before one is competent to think philosophically about whether we have free will or whether there is an objective morality or whether knowledge is possible?—and yet, is one not entitled to believe in free will and knowledge and morality even if one has never read a single page of philosophy?

Ego quoque. If you are not a philosopher, you would be crazy to go to the philosophers to find anything out—other than what it is that the philosophers say. If a philosopher tells you that you must, on methodological grounds, since he is the expert, take his word for something—that there is free will, say, or that morality is only convention—you should tell him that philosophy has not earned the right to make such demands. Philosophy is, I think, valuable. It is a good thing for the study of philosophy to be pursued, both by experts and by amateurs. But from the premise that it is a good thing for a certain field of study to be pursued by experts, the conclusion does not follow that that field of study comprises experts who can tell you things you need to attend to before you can practice a religion or join a political party or become a conscientious objector. And from the premise that it is a good thing for a certain field of study to be pursued by amateurs, the conclusion does not follow that anyone is under an obligation to become an amateur in that field.

This is very close to some of the depreciatory statements I have made about the authority of Critical Studies. Since I regard philosophy as a Good Thing, it should be clear that I do not suppose that my arguments lend any support to the conclusion that the critical study of the New Testament is not a Good Thing. Whether it is, I have no idea. I don't know enough about it to know whether it is. I have argued only that the very little I do know about Critical Studies is sufficient to establish that users of the New Testament need not—but I have said nothing against their doing so—attend very carefully to it. (God, Knowledge, and Mystery [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995], 189–190)

The choice quote here, reduced to a general maxim:

If an [expert in X] tells you that you must, on methodological grounds, since he is the expert, take his word for something, you should tell him that [X] has not earned the right to make such demands.

One cannot substitute just anything for "X," but one can substitute most things, and certainly anything outside the hardest of hard disciplines. Any and all discursive practices and realms of knowledge in which prudence is required or normative questions are involved, or in which ongoing contestation, adjudication, and dissent are prominent or at least typical, are by definition substitutable for "X." Moreover, if a legitimate expert in X attempts to mandate deference to her authority, but in this case regarding not X but Y, the attempt is patently fallacious, mendacious, confused, and absurd. One owes such an attempt and such an expert little more than an eye-roll, though laughter and mockery are warranted.

Let the reader understand.

New piece published in Mere Orthodoxy: "Befriending Books: On Reading and Thinking with Alan Jacobs and Zena Hitz"

I'm in Mere Orthodoxy with a long review-essay of two new books: Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs and Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Here's a section from the opening:

If the quality of one’s thinking depends upon the quality of those one thinks with, the truth is that few of us have the ability to secure membership in a community of brilliant and wise, like-hearted but independent thinkers. Search for one as much as we like, we are bound to be frustrated. Moreover, recourse to the internet—one commonly proffered solution—is far more likely to exacerbate than to alleviate the problem: we may find like-minded souls, yes, but down that rabbit hole lies danger on every side. Far from nurturing studiositas, algorithms redirect the energies of the intellect into every manner of curiositas; far from preparing a multicourse feast, our digital masters function rather like Elliott in E.T., drawing us on with an endless trail of colorful candies. Underfed and unsatisfied, our minds continue to follow the path, munching on nothing, world without end.

Is there an alternative?

Jacobs believes there is. For the community of potential collaborators in thinking is not limited to the living, much less those relatively few living folks who surround each of us. It includes the dead. And how do we commune with the dead? Through books. A library is a kind of mausoleum: it houses the dead in the tombs of their words. We break bread with them, in Auden’s phrase, when we read them. Reading them, we find ourselves inducted into the great conversation that spans every civilization and culture from time immemorial on to the present and into the future. We encounter others who are really and truly other than us.

Go read the rest here.