Cyclical versus Linear history 1

I feel like I'm a little more than half way around the track on the final lap of this philosophy thing!  Here beginneth the second to last section of the chapter on the philosophy of history...
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The default human sense of history would seem to be cyclical, a perspective captured well in the famous words of Ecclesiastes 1:9-11: "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new'? It has already been, in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them" (NRSV).

It is well for us to remember that these words came before the New Testament and that they express the perspective of perhaps all cultures prior to the centuries just before Christ, as well as most cultures to this day outside the influence of the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  This perspective is what we might call a cyclical view of history, a sense that the story of the past is merely a series of repeated vignettes in which the same basic types of things happen over and over again.  People are born.  People die.  In between they find food, find shelter, raise children, and grow old.

For the bulk of living, this view of the world has much to commend it.  Perhaps we are so used to technological developments coming along every two or three years that we forget that most of what we do as humans in the world is mostly the same as what humans have always done.   Because of the massive scientific improvements of the last century, we have come to expect the way we live our lives to improve quickly.  But the basic categories remain the same as always: food, shelter, pleasure, clothing, and so forth.

[George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."]

In a purely cyclical view, history is not "headed" anywhere.  It is not waiting for some day when all the dead will come back to life.  It is not waiting for Christ to come back to earth and set up an eternal kingdom.  In other words, the cyclical view contrasts with a linear view, where history as a whole is moving toward some ultimate culmination and "end" of some sort.  It is a significant insight into the original meaning of the Old Testament to realize that the vast majority of its authors understood the world in a cyclical way, just like the people of their day. [1]

Remember in the last section when we talked about taking into account the paradigms of a culture at a point in history?  The historical paradigm of the bulk of the Old Testament was, in its original meaning, cyclical.  We tend to read the Old Testament in linear terms because that is how the New Testament recasts the individual stories of the Old Testament.  It takes what to the original readers were fairly localized petits récits (small stories--see earlier in the chapter) and reinterprets them in the light of a grand récit (larger metanarrative).

For example, we do not find Solomon in 1 Kings talking about the temple as a temporary solution to the problem caused by Adam in Genesis, to be solved once and for all in Jesus Christ.  This sort of large narrative understanding of history was completely foreign to the time of 1 Kings.  Rather, people have always offered sacrifices to secure good relationships with God and the gods.  Important kings build big temples.  It is only when we get to the time of Christ that such events are recast in the light of an overall story of salvation planned by God before the creation of the world. [2]

Remember also Troeltsch's rule that says we should try to account for an event in terms of the things that happened before and after it?  Unlike Troeltsch, most of us will want to leave open the possibility for miracles in history, but we might apply his rule in relation to what biblical texts most likely meant.  If we can account for the meaning of a biblical text in terms of the thought categories of its day, we should tend to see that meaning as what the original authors and audiences were likely thinking.  Accordingly, since we are able to read the bulk of Old Testament texts in cyclical terms and that is how the people of the day likely thought, then that is the most likely meaning such texts originally had.

We might use 2 Samuel 7:16 as a case in point.  Here God tells David, "Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever" (NRSV).  But what did "forever" mean at the time.  Because most of us come to this text with a linear and absolute sense of history, we assume "forever" means that even 3000 years later--indeed a million years later--we will find a descendant of David ruling.  This plays into our sense that Jesus is that descendant of David and that, yes, he will rule forever, literally.

This is certainly something most of us believe and affirm--that Jesus will be king forever, literally.  The New Testament understands the Old Testament in this way and that makes this interpretation legitimate.  But this is not likely anything intended in the original meaning of 2 Samuel 7 because its author would have understood "forever" more in the sense of "for a really long time."  This example brings together a number of key points.  It brings together what we have said in chapter 4 and will say in the next chapter about words being capable of multiple meanings, and it brings together our sense in chapter 8 and this chapter that we interpret things from within paradigms, so that the same words might have quite different connotations in different contexts.

[1] The philosophy novel Sophie's World understandably lumps Judaism, Christianity, and Islam together as having "linear" views of history without seeming to realize that it is really not until the time of Christ that some Jewish groups began to have a linear view.

[2] The same principle applies to the way most of us look at prophecy about Jesus in the Old Testament. The New Testament applies many words to Jesus from the Old Testament in new ways.  Take Isaiah 7:14.  Matthew 1:23 reads these words in relation to the virgin birth of Jesus.

However, if we read Isaiah 7:14 in the flow of its own text, the verse seems to promise a king at that time, Ahaz, that the child of a young woman already pregnant would not reach maturity before the kings to the north were removed from power.  Both in terms of the flow of the words (the literary context) and the way history was understood at the time (cyclical paradigm), it is extremely unlikely that Ahaz would take a sign to him to be about something that would take place over 700 years after he was dead!

The original meaning is a petit récit, a small story.  The New Testament then legitimately gives those words a "fuller sense" (a sensus plenior) and places them into a grand récit.  For more on New Testament interpretation in a "fuller sense," see Walter Kaiser, Darrell Bock, and Peter Enns, Three Views on the New Testament Interpretation of the Old (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 167-225. 

McKnight 8: Jesus and the Gospel

Next is chapter 7 of Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap. 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap. 2:Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture
Chap. 3:From Salvation to Story
Chap. 4: The Gospel of Paul
Chap. 5: Salvation Takes Over the Gospel
Chap. 6 The Gospel in the Gospels

Now Chap. 7, "Jesus and the Gospel."

If the gospel is the story of Jesus' death, burial, resurrection as the fulfillment of the story of the OT, did Jesus himself preach it?  Scot's answer is yes.  Did Jesus preach that he was the completion of Israel's story?  Scot argues that he did.

He starts with pre-Jesus stuff, Mary and Zechariah in Luke.  Yes, they see in Jesus the completion of the entire sweep of God's covenant with Israel.  In Jesus the awaited kingdom comes, involving a new kingdom society and a new citizenship.  Jesus is at the center of this kingdom.

In his dialog with John the Baptist, Jesus implies that he in fact is the messiah, the culmination of expectations.  In three "look at me" passages, Jesus says that his moral vision is the culmination of the OT. He appoints 12 disciples, which implies the restoration of Israel. He foresees his death and sees his role in terms of the Son of Man of Daniel 7.

The conclusion--Jesus preached the same gospel.
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I agree with a great deal here, although I wouldn't put it together quite this way.  I do believe Jesus saw himself as the messiah.  I believe he foresaw his death.  I believe that his appointment of 12 did indeed indicate the restoration of Israel.

I actually start my understanding of gospel with Isaiah 52:7 and the ministry of John the Baptist as the anticipation of God's impending restoration of Israel.  It is the good news that God's kingdom is coming.  So, yes, I do believe Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom's arrival and that he saw himself as an intimate part of it. But I don't think that the word was yet used in reference to Jesus as king until after Jesus' resurrection, and I don't think Jesus' preaching of the gospel initially included any teaching about his death or resurrection.

To me, Scot gives the word "gospel" too continuous a meaning and runs a lot of nuances and historical developments together.  From a scholarly perspective, there are also a lot of assumptions here about these being exactly the words spoken on various occasions.

Historical Theory 3

This should be the last of this specific section.  Previous posts include:

Ranke
Troeltsch

Now, Collingwood and Foucault.
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In the mid-twentieth century, we look to Roger Collingwood for the next major moment in the philosophy of history.  First, Collingwood calls the historical method prior to modern times a “scissors and paste” method. [1] To present a particular moment in history, these historians found an appropriate figure from the time they wished to describe and “pasted” an appropriate quote from that figure as an authority on the event.  One problem, as we have already seen, is that these "pre-modern" historians largely did not take into account the biases of the people they were quoting.  Collingwood sees a move forward when such individuals were seen as sources rather than authorities on the day.

His main claim in The Idea of History is that the task of the historian is to “re-enact the past in his [sic] own mind.” [2] It is to bring the past into the present by reliving it.  To do so, one must go well beyond the “outside” of an event, the individual facts. [3] The historian must instead get into the “inside” of the event, what the thoughts and intentions were of the individuals who took part in these events.  Why did they do the things they did?  Collingwood wanted to get beyond simply thinking of cause and effect as a matter of events and get into the minds of the individuals participating in the events.  What was the human question to which the action was the answer?

As we look back at Collingwood, his focus on human intentions seems a bit ambitious and perhaps overstated.  On the one hand, his sense that we only have access to the past in the present is potentially insightful for the historical task.  Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) would later argue that we do not really have access to the intentions of the authors of texts (let alone the thoughts of people from the past themselves).  We only have the effects of texts as they have played out over time and reached us in the present. [4]  And even then, we come to the text with our own socio-cultural influences.  Reading a text is thus a process of “fusing” two horizons, our horizon with that of a text as it comes to us (see chap. 4).  We have no certain way of knowing how well that fusing relates to the original intentions of the authors of those texts.

Colingwood’s focus on human intention also seems myopically focused on ideas.  What of the experiences of people and their feelings as the events of the world play themselves out in their lives?  Why make rational intentionality the primary focus? [5] More recent times have seen a focus on narrative as more fundamental to human ways of identifying ourselves and thinking about the world.  Arthur Danto’s 1965’s An Analytical Philosophy of History rightly argued that the historical significance of any event can only be unfolded in the context of a story because “history tells stories.” [6] Story seems potentially to capture in proper perspective all the elements that previous historians sought to incorporate and balance—including ideas, intentions, and natural cause and effect. We will return to this potentially fruitful idea at the end of the chapter.

Surely to bring the philosophy of history current we must at least engage the thinking of Michel Foucault (1926-84), whom we will look at in our final chapter as one of the main figures of postmodernism.  Predictably, Foucault resisted labels of this sort, and we wish to discuss him from our perspective rather than from his own.  In particular, Foucault saw his discussions of history mostly as discussions about language as an expression of power and certainly not "what really happened."

From the critical realist perspective we have adopted in this textbook (see chap. 8), what Foucault is helpful for is in calling our attention to historical paradigms and how they shift over time.  He helpfully moves us from merely thinking of individuals and their intentions (Collingwood) to the societal assumptions and matrices by which we assign meanings to events.  Further, he helps us see how structures of human power affect the way we look at the world and at history.

Foucault’s historical studies included topics like how societal understandings of punishment, insanity, and sexuality have changed over time. For example, at one point insanity or "madness" was almost considered a blessing from the gods. [7] In the 1400's, a common image was that of a "ship of fools," where society saw the idea of a wandering ship going unpredictably from port to port on the water an appropriate image of the wandering minds of these "mad" individuals on the borders of society.  Foucault then pursues changes in conceptions of madness until he reaches modern society, where we diagnose and try to treat insanity as an illness.

With regard to sexuality, Foucault argues that the very category of sexuality as we think of it is a recent invention. [8] In previous days, people did not divide human sexuality into the categories of hetero- and homosexual with distinct “orientations.” Homosexual activity was exactly that—sexual activity that some people engaged in. However, such individuals would likely have been married and have children as well. To use our language, earlier generations would have assumed that everyone was a heterosexual but that some people engaged in homosexual behavior as well. But they did not have a category “heterosexual” in their mind.

A good deal of what Foucault had to say about such things seems to work when we apply them to history. For example, the Bible arguably never addresses the question of homosexual orientation—attraction to the same sex.  It only seems to address homosexual activity.  The category of a “homosexual” arguably did not exist until the 1800’s.  It is our contemporary way of thinking about sexuality that leads us to assume that the men of Sodom and Gomorrah must have been homosexuals because they want to have homosexual sex.  In the thought world of Genesis, these are more likely men who want to rape the angels.  Judges 19 confirms this conclusion because in this very similar story, the men of the city go on to rape a concubine to death. [9]

Foucault thus corroborates what the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) taught when he advocated what he called a "thick description" of culture.  Indeed, as Collingwood indicated, true historical understanding cannot think it has explained the meaning of some event by telling the facts of what happened and certainly not if we simply assume the key players thought exactly the way we do.  This is a major issue when we as Christians read the Bible.  When we read of a biblical figure doing something or even saying something, we must explain the meaning of those actions and words in terms of the socio-cultural matrix in which they were done or spoken, which will not at all likely be the same as our socio-cultural matrix.  Further, this warning applies even to the very nature of the narratives themselves--we cannot assume that we are seeing a straightforward presentation of what happened in the biblical narratives, since this is also an assumption of modern historical narratives.

A second caveat with which Foucault has bequeathed us is the fact that "history is told by the winners."  In a set of public lectures in 1976, Foucault indicated that those who emerge the winners in societal struggles have a tendency to try to eliminate competing versions of the past.  Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) put it even more accurately: "We carry forward at the same time several versions of history... We turn to them, abandon them, resume telling them much like a chess player who plays several games at once, now playing one game, then the another." [10]  Those in power have a tendency to use their power to support their version of the past in order to support who they are in the present and what they wish to do in the future.

[quote from Orwell's 1984--"He who controls the present, controls the past.  He who controls the past, controls the future.]

We end our treatment of historical theory with brief mention of new historicism, which is not so much a movement in historiography as a movement in literary theory. [11] As a perspective on literature, new historicism represents a return to trying to read literary texts in terms of their original meanings, although not from the narrow historicism of the past but an understanding of history that takes on board Foucault's "insights" into how broad cultural dynamics and power structures affect meaning.  While it is known significantly for its interest in "lost histories" and mechanisms of repression and dominance, it can represent for us a "chastened" approach to historical inquiry that has learned from the postmodern critique without abandoning its sense that we can still legitimately investigate the past and come to valid conclusions.

[1] The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University, 1994 [1946]).  I am thankful again here in what follows for Day’s presentation of Collingwood in Philosophy of History, 16-18, 121-29.

[2] Idea, 282.

[3] Idea, 213.

[4] Truth and Method

[5] A similarly, almost bizarre ideological perspective on history was that of Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873-1962), who might be considered the originator of a field known as the "history of ideas."  In his The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936), he laid out the notion of a "unit-idea" or individual concept.  Like an atom of thought, he saw the history of thought as the assembly of such unit ideas into various combinations.


[6] An Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), 111.

[7] Madness and Civilization (1961).

[8] History of Sexuality, 3 vols (1976, 1984).

[9] Indeed, if we look at the way Jesus discusses Sodom and Gomorrah in the light of the socio-cultural categories of the day (Matthew 10:15), the way Sodom treated guests is the most significant wrong in the story.  The context is talking about cities and villages that might reject the disciples, just as Sodom and Gomorrah rejected God's messengers. The wrong of the homosexual act in the passage compounds the wrong to be sure, but it is only our current cultural paradigm that makes this act the central point of the passage.

[10] History and Truth (1965), 186.  As usual, I have paraphrased him to give his thought greater clarity.

[11] Stephen Greenblatt (1943-) is generally considered the originator of the movement.

McKnight 7: "Gospel in the Gospels"

Next is chapter 6 of Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap. 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap. 2:Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture
Chap. 3:From Salvation to Story
Chap. 4: The Gospel of Paul
Chap. 5: Salvation Takes Over the Gospel

Now "The Gospel in the Gospels."

In this chapter, McKnight argues that "the Four Gospels and the gospel are one" (81).  These books are called "the Gospels" because they are the gospel (80).  This, he argues, is why the early Christians called them each a Gospel because they are the gospel, the story of Jesus including his death, burial, and resurrection.  This statement is striking: "they didn't call the first four books of the New Testament the 'Gospels.'  Instead, they called each one of them the 'Gospel'" (81).

The Gospels are often said to be "a Passion story with an extended introduction" (83).  So, "The Gospels are called 'The Gospel according to...' because they declare the Story of Jesus according to the apostolic script: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus--and this all according to the Scriptures" (85).  "One could say the four Gospels are extensive commentaries on 1 Corinthians 15 or the apostolic gospel tradition" (90).
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I've written a bit about how I see the use of the word gospel developing recently--here's a suggestive summary.  I would have started with Jesus and watched the use of the term grow over the course of the New Testament.  I see it having related but nevertheless developing nuances.  So at some point it takes on the imperial connotations of Luke.  It originally did have connotations of the restoration of Israel, I think.

I do think that Mark 1:1 is an important moment in the development of the word, where the good news about the arrival of Jesus, messiah gets attached to a book.  I suspect that the use of it thereafter in reference to Matthew, Luke, and John followed naturally.

Historical Theory 2

Continuing this train of thought since this post.
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One of the most important issues in historical method to arise in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was the question of supernaturalism, whether a good historian could allow for the possibility of divine intervention in history.  Of course this issue had been around in philosophy for a long time, with the Deism of the 1700’s effectively trying to bracket the idea of God’s involvement in the world.  But with the rise of modern historiography, the necessity to exclude God from one’s explanations of historical events became a dogma.

Perhaps no one captured the spirit of the age better than Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) in his 1922 book on Historiography. For him, no explanation of nature is allowed to resort to metaphysics (what is supposed to stand behind or above nature), which includes God.  The historian and scientist must stick to concrete, material causes and effects.  Notions of ultimate reality have no business in historical description.

Accordingly, he formulated three basic principles for critical history.  First, all decisions regarding history are open to revision.  They are never a matter of certainty but of varying degrees of probability.  Secondly, he assumes that historical events today happen similarly to the way they took place in the past.  This is a principle of analogy.  So if people do not come back from the dead today, he rejected any suggestion that someone might have come back from the dead in the past.  Finally, historical events are intertwined (they correlate) with what comes before and after them.  They must be explained in the flow of clear historical causes and effects.

Most Christians today will question the complete exclusion of God and the supernatural from Troeltsch’s historical method.  However, it is just as clear that he well describes the way most of us approach our daily lives.  If we cannot find our keys, we do not initially think, “What demon has hidden my keys,” especially if we are always losing them, if we have a roommate with a mischievous bent, or if we have a child who likes to put keys in his mouth.  And as much as we believe that Jesus rose again from the dead, few of us would go to a cemetery three days after the death of a friend to see if she will rise.

Indeed, different Christians see the level of God’s direct involvement in the world differently, as we saw in chapter 10 when we discussed determinism.  Some see God steering everyday events down to small details, often working in and around people and events to accomplish his hidden purposes. [1]  Such believers spend significant amounts of time trying to guess what God is trying to teach them by causing them to catch a cold or forgetting to call someone.

Others like myself think that, while God does act in history, his purposes and interventions are much more mysterious.  We might suggest that God wants us to think more for ourselves, to take responsibility for the consequences of our choices, as well as be able to accept the unpredictable ebb and flow of the world.  The former approach seems hard pressed to see much of anything that happens simply as the normal flow of cause and effect that God has built into the creation (i.e., the rules that scientists and inventors have capitalized on to give us cell phones and lap tops).  Rather, for them things that happen are primarily God behind the scenes, orchestrating everything. By contrast, the latter approach expects to be able to explain most things by normal causation and would only conclude a miraculous intervention when the normal paths of explanation were exhausted...

[1] A good example of this approach is Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here For? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).

Modern Historical Theory

More on the philosophy of history...
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In more recent times, historians have looked to Leopold van Ranke (1795-1886) as the originator of historical investigation in the modern sense.  In a famous line, Ranke indicated that the task of a historian was to present history “as it really happened,” [1] an approach to history that we might call historicism.   At the end of this section we will question Ranke’s “modernist” idea that it is possible for anyone but God to know “what really happened” in any fully meaningful sense. [2] Nevertheless, several features of his method of doing history are central to the way we approach history today. [3]

For one, far more than even Herodotus and Thucydides, Ranke insists that historical writing must be based on evidence.  For Ranke, he thought mainly of documents when he spoke of evidence.  But those that followed rightly expanded our sense of evidence and primary sources to include things like “material culture,” the physical remains from a particular time and place.  For example, if we want to investigate what people at the time of Christ in Israel thought about the afterlife, we will not only want to look at the relatively few writings that have survived from that time.  We will also want to look at things like the way they buried their dead. [4]

Perhaps more important is the emphasis in Ranke’s method on questioning the sources.  One must not simply take the word of one’s primary sources but approach them with a critical eye.  For example, when reading the Jewish War of the Jewish historian Josephus, we cannot simply assume that he is giving us an unbiased presentation of events.  We need to be aware that he was a general in the war and actually surrendered to the Romans.  Is there a hidden agenda of defending himself?  We need to be aware that he was writing for a Roman audience and those who won the war.  Does he make them look better than he would have in private conversation?  Does he modify his descriptions of groups like the Pharisees in order to make them intelligible for his audience?

We are now far more aware of bias than Ranke was in his day.  You might say that while he set us on a good course for questioning the biases of sources, today we realize that it is just as important for us to question our own biases.  I grew up in a “conservative” group in the Methodist tradition.  How does this fact affect the way I read the writings of John Calvin?  I like ideas and theology.  How does this affect what jumps out at me when I read a source like Josephus?

A third, very important insight Ranke brought was that the historian should let the concrete historical phenomenon drive your interpretations of history rather than some abstract ideological framework in which a historian may want to fit that historical data.  His thoughts here were probably a direct response to G. W. F. Hegel’s theories, which were very dominant at the time and which we will look at a little later in the chapter.  Sometimes we as Christians may have this tendency, to want to take the very complex currents and opinions of various periods of history and put them into a box that says, “This was the era in which people believed x because they had turned from God” or “This was the time where y happened because people served God.” 

Ranke thus anticipated what Jean-François Lyotard would say in the late twentieth century about grands récits, “grand frameworks” or “meta-narratives” by which we organize the complex phenomena of the world.  We are far more likely to be accurate in our descriptions of the world if we stick to the concrete data and petits récits, the smaller stories where we are better able to account for more data.  It is much easier to capture the essence of a meeting you had this morning than to summarize the way meetings went in the twentieth century.  And it is easier to say how meetings went in the twentieth century than to demonstrate that meetings tend to go better for Christians, which tries to put an ideological grid over meetings...

[1] Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (“History of the Romantic and German Peoples from 1494-1514,” (1824).

[2] See the next chapter for a description of what we mean by “modernist” here.

[3] For the paragraphs that follow, I am deeply indebted to Mark Day, The Philosophy of History: An Introduction (New York: Continuum, 2008), 6-9.

[4] Although the evidence is far from conclusive, the fact that Jews at the time of Christ took the bones of their dead and “re-buried” them after a year in a stone box called an ossuary is sometimes taken as an indication of belief that those bones would one day come back to life.

McKnight 6: Salvation takes over Gospel

The next in our pilgrimage through Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel.

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap. 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap. 2: Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture
Chap. 3: From Salvation to Story
Chap. 4: The Gospel of Paul

Now Chap. 5: "How Did Salvation Take Over the Gospel?"

This was an interesting chapter.  It seems to me that we can sum it up in two claims: 1) the early Christian creeds were basically expansions of the gospel narrative found in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 and 2) the Lutheran Augsburg Confession (1530) and Calvinist Genevan Confession (1536) started a trajectory that eventually led to the question of "how to get saved" taking over the matter of "the gospel of King Jesus."

This is very interesting and I was once again thankful for coming from the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition and thus through Anglicanism.  I did not grow up worried about the "five solas" of the Reformation or the hot button issues of neo-evangelicalism.  I grew up concerned about whether you'd had the experience of entire sanctification.  While that revivalist emphasis had it's extremes as well, I never felt like the things Scot clearly has to tippy-toe around were that big of a deal.  [warning Wesleyans--don't borrow unnecessary baggage from other evangelicals just because we are currently in bed with them]

So he grew up in circles that were squeamish about saying the creeds (his background is Anabaptist).  To be sure, not a lot of Wesleyan churches say the creeds either.  But I wouldn't say there's much opposition to them either.  Wesleyan Methodist churches certainly never had a problem with the creeds.  Scot sees the creeds as expansions of the basic narrative of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.

He has a very good thought here to those who opposed the creeds--what would you object to in them?  There really isn't much to which a Christian could object.  Rather, most Christians would have real problems with someone who actually rejected the things in the Apostle's or Nicene creeds.

With the Augsburg and Geneva Confessions, the issue of how and why a person can be saved came to the foreground.  This is natural since the Reformation itself centered on such issues.  Protestantism became oriented around personal salvation and, eventually, individual experience of personal salvation (Scot quotes Wesley's famous "heart strangely warmed" journal entry).

Eventually, the salvation bits that were added to the Protestant "creeds" took over.  We no longer talk about God the creator or Jesus who became flesh and rose again.  Now we start with the sinfulness of humanity and end with our salvation.  Now our theology is focused around us rather than God and his story.

Scot ends with a quote from Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy: "'Gospels of Sin Management' presume a Christ with no serious work other than redeeming humankind... they foster 'vampire Christians,' who only want a little blood for their sins but nothing more to do with Jesus until heaven" (76 of McKnight).
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An afterword seems in order for Wesleyans.  I believe that McKnight does indeed point to some potential blind spots in Wesleyan theology and gives us a concrete example of what I have meant at other times when I have pointed out that Wesley is more our grandfather than our father.

Wesley was both a child of the Enlightenment and lived near the birth of the Romantic era.  He tried to steer a center course between too much and too little an emphasis on personal experience.  My read of his personal introspection is that he never quite found the right mix, and I identify with his seeming roller coaster of personal uncertainty.  Been there.

Today, we probably do need to balance out his emphasis on the ordo salutis, the "order of salvation," in our thinking.  The priorities should be the more central features of the gospel (God, Christ).  The materials are there in Wesley and, more importantly, in the 2000 year old faith of Christendom.  The things Wesley emphasized had to do with the most pressing issues of his day. Probably, our more immediate heritage in the 1800's revivals only moved us further away from balance in these areas (two trips to the altar and you're done).  

My bigger take away is this.  We've had two hundred years to refine Wesley's trajectory.  There are parts of his theology that should be smoothed out, parts that should be elevated, probably parts that should be eliminated.  Those who are a slave to Wesley run the risk of being about two hundred years behind!

Herodotus: father of history?

Now in the final missing piece of the philosophy book puzzle: chapter 14, the philosophy of history.  Hope to have the whole first draft off to the publisher by Monday.
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... For example, the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero (106-43BC) once called the Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 484-ca. 425BC) the “father of history.” [1] The philosopher of history asks questions like, “Why did Cicero think Herodotus was different from the others before him who recorded events from the past?”  “Have others agreed with Cicero—why or why not?”  “What assumptions did Cicero bring to the issue that we might question?”  “What was Herodotus’ distinct contribution to history writing, if any?”

We begin to investigate.  Cicero does not fully explain why he calls Herodotus the father of history, and it is not at all clear that he came up with the idea.  The context is a distinction between the genres of poetry and history.  History is supposed to be about truth while poetry is more about pleasure.  Herodotus is the father of history because he wrote about things that actually happened, although Cicero acknowledges that some things in Herodotus' Histories are legendary. By contrast, poets like Homer wrote more about gods and legends that were more for pleasure.

So the standard Cicero seems to be using for "history" is that someone is writing about what actually happened rather than about legends and myths.  Indeed, other ancient writers devalued Herodotus by the same standard, and he has almost as often been called the "father of lies" as the father of history.  The Greek writer Plutarch (ca. AD46-120) wrote an entire treatise called, "The Malice of Herodotus," which frequently refers to what he considered to be lies in Herodotus' Histories.

As we dig around other writers from the ancient world, we find more confirmation of this basic standard.  The satirist Lucian of Samosata (ca. AD120-90) writes in his book, How to Write History, that the job of a historian is "to tell the story as it happened." [2]  Thucydides (ca. 460-ca. 395BC), who wrote later in the same century as Herodotus, may allude to him when he says that he is not going to include any "fables" in his history and that his aim is to present truly what happened and what might happen again. [3]  Because Thucydides does not include the gods as actors in his history, because he seems to have been more scrupulous in his use of sources, sometimes he is called the father of history--or at least the father of critical history.

The philosopher of history examines the assumptions both of these ancient writers and of those "historiographers" who have followed.  For example, it would be wrong to assume that the ancients considered it wrong for there to be some legendary or non-historical material in a history book.  This is more an assumption of modern history writing.  Cicero himself acknowledges that there is a good deal that is legendary in Herodotus.

Perhaps even more striking is the fact that Thucydides himself tells his audience up front that he has composed some of the speeches in his history.  He says that when his sources were not sufficient to recall exactly what was said on some occasion, he had created material that he thought would have been appropriate to the occasion. [4]  So clearly the rules for what you could do in ancient history writing were different from the rules we use today. [5]

The philosopher of history also notices that this entire conversation has taken place in a particular region of the world.  The Romans had absorbed a good deal from their neighboring Greeks and Plutarch himself was Greek, as was Thucydides centuries before. [6] The individuals who continued this discussion after the Renaissance were riding a cultural wave that started in Italy and looked back to the ancient Greeks and Romans as their supposed cultural ancestors.

In short, this discussion is a regional discussion.  What are we to say about the ancient Egyptians or Babylonians, let alone the books of the Old Testament?  What about the stories the Aztecs told each other or that circulated in China or Africa?  In the light of this bigger picture, can we really still consider Herodotus the "father of history" because his work was written down and survived because a thread of individuals preserved it?

Nevertheless, despite these meta-questions, there do seem to be some features of Herodotus that make him a good starting reference point for a discussion of what history is, not least because his work has survived.  First, he does not merely give the point of view of his people.  Indeed, one of the reasons Plutarch may be so critical of him is the fact that Herodotus is less biased than he is toward the Greeks, giving the perspective of the Persians as well, the enemies of the Greeks. [7]  Secondly, he did research with sources in preparation for his writing.  It may not have been as extensive as that of Thucydides, but Herodotus did not simply repeat local oral traditions.

Thirdly, although the gods feature in his narrative, he pays significant attention to the normal processes of cause and effect.  Things that happen are not simply discussed as the will or intervention of the gods, but in terms of real conflict and chains of events as a result of human decisions in conjunction with their circumstances.  Finally, we might mention that he was not writing merely as the arm of some kingdom or establishment.  He is not the chronicler of a king but an independent author...

[1] Laws 1.5.

[2] How to Write History, 39.

[3] History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.

[4] History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.

[5] This is an important warning to those that assume biblical narratives must be absolutely historical for them to be "true."  To think so imposes a modern standard rather than the standard of their day.

[6] As the Roman poet Horace (65-27BC) once wrote, "Captured Greece took captive her ferocious conqueror" (Epistles 2.1).

[7] R. H. Barrow, Plutarch and His Times (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1967), 157.

McKnight 5: Gospel of Paul

Moving on to chapter 4 now of Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel.  Previous chapter reviews include:

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap 2: Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture
Chap 3: From Salvation to Story

Now, Chap. 4: "The Apostolic Gospel of Paul"  In this chapter we hit pay dirt, in my opinion.  First my summary then my thoughts.

Although it is not the only reason McKnight starts with 1 Corinthians 15, I think it was good strategy to start here.  Why?  Because Paul is exactly where those who equate "gospel" with "how to get saved" think they have their strongest evidence.  But as Scot indicates, this is not the heart of what Paul had in the bubble over his head when he used the word "gospel."

In 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, Paul reminds the Corinthians of the good news that, not only he announced but that he was passing on as something he received from believers before him (i.e., the first apostles).  What Paul goes on to present is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.  Scot argues that this story is what Paul means when he mentions the gospel, the good news.  The story consists of four parts: 1) the death of Jesus, 2) the burial of Jesus, 3) the resurrection of Jesus, and 4) the appearances of Jesus.

He then makes 8 points.  I won't mention them all but some of the most important include the fact that Paul didn't come up with this himself (49) and that the gospel is the resolution and fulfillment of Israel's story and promises (51).  He draws this latter point from the recurring mention that these things happened "according to the Scriptures."  Salvation flows from the gospel as a result, but is not what the gospel itself is.

An important quote for Scot from Tom Wright appears here: "I am perfectly comfortable with what people normally mean when they say 'the gospel.'  I just don't think it is what Paul means" (What Saint Paul Really Said, a great place to begin studying Paul, by the way, although you might also like one of mine off to the right ;-)

So, Scot summarizes: "Every time Paul mentions 'gospel' in his letters... he is referring to this four-line gospel."  His main warning, and here I completely agree, is that the other focus has inevitably led evangelicalism to make the gospel be about "me and my own personal salvation" (62).  This tendency does indeed have New Testament theology completely out of focus.

The gospel is the good news about Jesus and the kingdom of God.  That's good news for me too, but I'm an incredibly minor character in the story.
______
My additional thoughts:
First, I very much agree with what Scot says at the beginning of the chapter about where you begin such discussions being very important.  Hermeneutically, I would put it this way: because the biblical texts are texts of particularity, texts written in differing, specific contexts, we have to map them to each other.  One thing I insist on is that we must allow that not only may different books have a different nuance or even meaning to the word "gospel," but Paul himself cannot be assumed to mean the same thing every time he uses a word.

To map particular texts and passages to each other, especially when we find diversity of nuance or meaning, we must choose an "Archimedian point" from which to integrate them.  This means either 1) choosing one of the passages as the controlling passage and mapping the others to it or 2) choosing an ideological point "beside" the text from which we integrate the particular texts.  Scot is writing a popular book, so I suppose these musings of mine have more to do with my own hermeneutical pet peeves about flattening out the nuances of particular texts in the name of an overall biblical theology.

Secondly, with the phrase, "according to the scriptures" I come back to what I was saying in the last post about the difference between grands récits and petits récits.  Does this phrase in Paul here mean to evoke some entire story of Israel or does it more function along the lines of a proof text?  In my opinion, the NT authors used OT Scripture much more along the lines of proof texts than in terms of the kinds of grand story we as Christians see there.

Again, I am not hereby rejecting the "grand Christian narrative" reading of the OT.  I'm just saying I'm not sure that Paul conceptualized the story bits in such a grand, unified fashion.  It is appropriate theologizing beside the text, drawn from pieces and hints in the text, but never quite done so holistically in the text, in my opinion.

Finally, I tip my hat to Scot's completely accurate observation that when Paul says Christ died "for our sins," Paul does not say how Jesus' death did something for our sins (51).  It is a reminder that to see some systematic "penal substitution" here is to overread the text, to be unaware of the dictionary you are bringing to the words.

Evangelical Philosophy

One thing I noticed as I wrapped up a chapter on postmodernism is that the "evangelical" philosophy to which I've been exposed in North America is firmly in the analytical tradition.  This was true at Asbury with Jerry Walls, with Richard Swinburne and Tom Morris as reading.  It was true of Plantinga.  I believe it is true of William Lane Craig at Biola.

Analytical philosophy is known for its attempt to break down arguments into well defined, clear propositions of a quasi-mathematical nature.  It is very oriented around logic.  The interesting thing is also that it is very much an Anglo-American approach to philosophy this last century.  It thus probably reflects some of the influences of context on the American neo-evangelicalism that rose in the 1940's.

The Postmodern Critique: Possible Christian Take Aways

I'm trying to write a textbox that captures the take-away for Christians from the postmodern critique of knowledge.  What do you think about the following?
____________
1. None of us have a God's eye view of the world.
Perhaps the most important Christian take-away from postmodernism is the strong reminder that we are not God.  It is not only that our finite minds have a partial understanding of the world.  Even the partial view of the world we have is filled with blind spots and skew of which we are not aware.  Our minds cannot see the world as it is for we inevitably see it from the perspective of where we sit in our localized contexts.  This situation calls for an "epistemological humility" on our part, a humility about what we think we know for certain.

2. Faith is far more fundamental than reason.
The evidence does not demand a verdict, but what we believe as Christians is far more a matter of faith than of proof.  That is not to say that faith is irrational.  It is to say that even the most fundamental elements of Christian belief are more a matter of faith than of evidence.  It pushes us to see God as far more interested in our attitudes than in the specifics of what we believe.

3. The Bible as a text is polyvalent (susceptible to multiple interpretations).
No matter how perfect a truth the Bible might represent in God's mind, we as finite, contextualized humans can never escape our situation in order to know it as God does.  We cannot arrive at a God's eye view of truth from the Bible because we are incapable of having one.  We see the Bible through our partial, skewed lenses just as we see the rest of the world.

Further, as texts encapsulated in human language, the words of the Bible are susceptible to a multitude of interpretations and configurations of meaning.  Even more, reading the Bible in context reveals that God actually intended to speak to its individual audiences in their own context-dependent categories.  The result is that we as readers of the Bible are inevitably forced not only to interpret individual texts but also to organize their particular meanings into a coherent whole.  This situation calls for a more robust sense of the role of the Holy Spirit and God's speaking through the church than many Christians have.

4. The larger a system of ideas is, the more likely the skew.
The more particular data we try to sweep up into a generalized system or "worldview," the more likely we are oversimplifying and in the process omitting or skewing individual bits of data.  This is true of our generalizations about the Bible ("the Bible says..."), and it is true of our theological systems.  Given #1 above, this is even true of systems that are largely deductive (e.g., Calvinism) because it is likely that our starting premises are already somewhat figurative in ways we could not comprehend. This situation calls for increased Christian conversation between believers who come from different Christian traditions with different theological systems.

5. Power plays a role in what we call truth.
We should acknowledge it openly so that it does not play out secretly.  What is considered true at any time and place, not to mention how ideas are policed, involves a significant element of power.  The best ideas are not always the most popular, nor can we trust those in authority to police ideas with justice.  Once again, we are pushed toward seeing the attitudes of others far more significant than the specifics of what they believe.

McKnight 4: From Salvation to Story

I've been working through Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel.  The previous posts include:

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap 2: Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture

Today it's Chap 3: From Salvation to Story

In this chapter, Scot argues that "The Plan of Salvation and the Method of Persuasion have been given so much weight they are crushing and have crushed the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus" (43).  To put the plan of salvation in proper perspective, he argues, we have to understand it in the context of the story of God walking with Israel which culminated in the story of Jesus.

He also reveals his hand in this section, he is going to argue that "the word gospel belongs to one and only one of our four sets of terms [story of Israel, story of Jesus, plan of salvation, method of persuasion], and I will contend that it belongs to the Story of Jesus as the resolution to Israel's Story" (44).  In other words, the gospel is not the plan of salvation but the good news about Jesus.

McKnight will no doubt get to the implications.  I think we can again see the two I have already mentioned--getting it right and where we put our emphasis.

I do think that Scot, like Tom Wright, overreads the role the story of Israel played in the thinking of the NT authors.  When we draw from history, we tend to be very selective.  We use what Lyotard called petits récits.  Wright and McKnight in this chapter blur, in my opinion, into theological interpretation (rather than historical exegesis) when they import too much of a grand récit from the OT into the localized meanings of specific passages in the NT.  And they run the risk of creating too unified a grand récit of the NT use of the word "gospel" as well.

In short, creating an overarching sense of the gospel in the New Testament moves beyond exegesis into theologizing, just as drawing on some supposed unified story of Israel is neither OT exegesis nor a story presupposed in its entirety by any one NT text.  It is theologizing.  I have no problem with such theologizing, only that it so often pretends to be exegesis.

The "grand narrative" that Wright and here McKnight are building is constructed out of biblical materials but it goes well beyond the "local narratives" presupposed by individual NT texts. It blurs into theological interpretation and at that point is not exegesis.

Top 10 Things about Florence

I didn't have much access to the internet last week, but here is a top ten list I made earlier in the week about Florence, Italy, where we were last Sunday and Monday.

10. Having Spaghetti carbonara in Italy.  For some reason, Americans can't cook it.

9. Gelato... what more need I say?

8. All the copied statues around the Uffizi museum--not the originals but they have all these great copies out in the open (a second David, for example).

7. Botticelli's famous painting, The Birth of Venus (otherwise known as Venus on a half shell)

6. Galileo.  He was born in Pisa, lived growing up in Florence.  Law of inertia... weight doesn't affect how fast something falls.  Yeah, that was him.  Known for saying, "Duh, what was I thinking" when asked a second time if he believed the earth went around the sun in the Inquisition. "No way," he said.  "I think that's what my sister said."  He was a model for anyone who doesn't want to get burned at the stake for being a closet heliocentrist.

5. The Ponte Vecchio.  Apartments on a bridge... just not done in recent times.  "London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down..."

4. Dante Alighieri was from Florence and basically invented the Latin language with his Inferno.

3. The leaning tower of Pisa.  Ok, ok, it's not in Florence, but it's close and it is amazing.  Knock one off the bucket list.

2. The cathedral of St. Maria del Fiore.  I couldn't believe how huge this church is. The color and detail on the thing all the way to the top boggled my mind.  And these things are suddenly just there.  You're walking down a street and, boom, you're looking at this amazing, humongous thing.

1. Michelangelo's David statue.  We've all seen it in pictures and various places, so I was a little surprised to find that it is actually amazing.  It's about 3 of me in height and the detail down to the fingernails is just astounding.  I've concluded by far that Michelangelo is the greatest artist of all time.

McKnight 3: Gospel Culture/Salvation Culture

I’ve had sporadic internet these last couple days. Rome is not for the faint of heart.  May post my reflections on the trip when I’m back in Germany.

The previous summaries of McKnight’s King Jesus Gospel are:
Evangelism Explosion and
The Big Question: What is the Gospel?

Today, chapter 2: Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture

Scot begins the chapter by showing his evangelical credentials: “Personal faith is both necessary and nonnegotiable” (28).  He adds, “The sacramental process isn’t enough; there must be a call to personal faith” (29).

I would reword these comments as these statements still have a very cultural feel to me.  Crucial for me as a Wesleyan is the point at which the Spirit makes personal faith possible.  At that point, personal faith is both necessary and nonnegotiable.  Nevertheless, I agree with Scot’s basic point, which is to address people who might think that their lives and attitudes are irrelevant to their status with God because they were baptized as a child or because they participate in Mass every once and a while.  The sacraments do not work in the heart of the Devil.

He then gives the thesis of the book: “We evangelicals (as a whole) are not really ‘evangelical’ in the sense of the apostolic gospel, but instead we are soterians” (29).  The distinction he is making between the two is that a gospel culture will move a person beyond entrance into the church (where the sacramentalists sometimes stop), beyond bringing people to a salvation decision (where the “soterians” stop) to discipleship and maturity (where a true “evangelical,” gospel culture would lead).

A “salvation culture” is thus one that “focuses on and measures people on the basis of whether they can witness to an experience of personal salvation” (30).  This sort of approach, he is saying, is “soterian” rather than truly evangelical.

I think most of us, especially Wesleyans, would agree with his basic point.  We have overemphasized a moment of decision and neglected discipleship.  I will be interested to see how he develops it.  It still seems to me to miss out on the fact that some people’s decision for Christ may not happen as consciously as he is still discussing it.  It must happen when the Spirit presents the light of Christ, but it may not be a dramatic decision point of which a person is fully conscious.  This orientation neglects the fact that most of who we are is a function of our subconscious mind.

His use of the word gospel and salvation still don’t seem changed radically enough.  We’ll have to wait to see what he does with gospel but in this chapter it still seems focused too much on us as individuals rather than on King Jesus—I suspect that will change as we move on.

My main critique would be that his understanding of salvation seems too narrow.  The word salvation is sometimes used for physical healing and rarely if ever used in relation to justification.  Paul’s use of the word is overwhelmingly focused on escaping God’s wrath in the coming judgment.

The question of who will be saved is a whole different can of worms and much bigger than the very narrow way Scot is talking about it in terms of getting a person into the church to the point of decision.  So I think I get his point, but so far I’m finding the way he’s presenting it a little strange to me.

McKnight 2

I don't know how fast I'll be able to work through Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel, but here is a second post.  The first one is here.

Chapter 1 presents the "big question" of the book: "What is the gospel?"  He gives three stories in this chapter.  The first was an email wondering what the fact that Jesus is king has to do with the gospel--the assumption being that personal salvation is the center of the gospel.  The second was John Piper demonstrating to a conference that Jesus taught Paul's justification by faith by finding a rare instance in the gospels where the word justified is used (Luke 18).  The third was a casual conversation with a pastor who not only did not think Jesus preached the gospel (of justification by faith) but that he couldn't have because he was on the "before it could happen" side of the cross.

Then we get McKnight's basic point, something those who have read something like Wright's What Saint Paul Really Said will recognize.  This is not what the New Testament means when it talks about the gospel.    Scott F. asked in a comment after the last post what difference it really makes.  I think some possibilities will emerge as we work through McKnight's book.

Since it is still Reformation Day as I prepare this post for Tuesday morning, let me say that one effect is to clarify our emphases.  On the one hand, I am a little more open to using the word gospel in a very general way in relation to these sorts of things.  On the basis of the sermons of Acts, I believe all the consequences of the good news are part of the good news.  So in that sense, I am willing to say that justification by faith is part of the good news just like the resurrection and all that other good stuff is.

This is by extension, however.  It don't think it was in the bubble over any New Testament author's head in a single instance where the word "gospel" is used in the New Testament.  Justification by faith was not even the focus of Paul's preaching (the cross was... no, they're not the same... the cross is about something Jesus did, not something I do), let alone what appeared in the bubble over his head when he used the word gospel.

And it WAY was not the focus of Jesus' preaching, and certainly not what the gospels mean by the word gospel in any instance where they use the word.  This really annoys Scot. "Isn't the more important question about whether Paul preached Jesus' gospel?" he says, gently questioning John Piper's quest to show that Jesus preached Paul's gospel (25).  

So there are at least two reasons to read Wright and McKnight on this topic: 1) just to get it right and 2) to get our emphasis right...

Happy Luther Day

Happy Reformation Day! ;-)  I'd post the picture of my family in front of the Wittenberg door but can't at moment.  Some of you may know that October 31 is not only Halloween but the day Luther nailed his famed 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral.  I first learned about Reformation Day when a church didn't want to celebrate Halloween and found another reason to do something when all the other kids in town were having fun.

My kids have about an hour and a half a week in the German gymnasium on religion, and I put them in "evangelisch" or the Protestant (which means the Lutheran/Reformed) section.  For the last two weeks they've watched American movies on Luther (which they couldn't understand because they were translated into German ;-) 

Luther's legacy is often formulated in terms of the Protestant "sola's": sola gratia, solus Christus, sola fide, sola scriptura.  Sometimes a fifth is added but it is more Reformed and less Luther.  One of the things McKnight is treating in his book is the fact that these origins have sometimes led Protestants to focus too much in their thinking on individual salvation, as if we are the center of what it's all about.  

sola gratia: "by grace alone"  On this one I think everyone (including Catholics today) agrees.  It is only because of God's grace that anyone can come to be in right relation with God.  No one can earn salvation.  It is a gift from God.  A good understand of grace in the NT, I would add, implies the necessity of an appropriate response to God's grace, which has been a weakness of Luther's system.

solus Christus: "Christ alone"  Again, I think everyone (including Catholics) would agree that it is only through Christ that anyone can be reconciled to God.  The debate is over what this means.  Two key debate points are over how this works (is God a slave to his justice or did he freely choose this path) and whether God saves through Christ many who have never heard of Christ.

sola fide: "by faith alone" Lutherans and Catholics have come a long way toward common ground on this topic as well.  The point at which Lutherans and Catholics have tension is exactly the point where Lutherans and Wesleyans have tension.  What do we say about those passages where God judges even believers according to their deeds (e.g., Rom. 2:6 and 2 Cor. 5:10), not to mention James 2:24?  For the Wesleyan tradition, deeds do not justify but they can be a key indicator of un-justification in progress.

sola scriptura: "by Scripture alone" What this really amounted to was "back to the Bible."  Luther only turned back the church about a 1000 years.  He didn't touch doctrines that reached their current form in the 300s and 400s, beliefs about things like the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ.  And of course, he felt free to decide which books belonged in Scripture in the first place.  2 Maccabees was rejected; James almost didn't make it; Romans is great.

This was, in my opinion, a high moment in Christian history, October 31, 1517.  There are important discussions and nuances to be made about all of these.  But Luther accomplished his initial goal: perhaps the best "discussion starter" in all history!

McKnight's King Jesus Gospel 1

I was able to get a copy of Scot McKnight's new book, King Jesus Gospel over here.  My initial hunch is that it might be a very helpful book at this time.  I thought I would try to dawdle through it these next few weeks.

1971
In this opening foray, Scot paints the picture of what he is addressing--American evangelism that is overwhelmingly focused on getting someone to make a decision, pray a prayer.  He recounts the story of visiting a man in the days of Evangelism Explosion (we Wesleyans did the same thing with Maxwell's stuff).  The key point was to get some stranger or near stranger to pray a prayer.

In the story he recounts, the deacon he is with misses all the social cues at someone's house.  They have gone to the home of a one time visitor to the church.  After prolonged persistence, the guy prays the prayer.  They leave.  The deacon celebrates--someone's been saved.  The man never darkens the door of the church again.

Then Scot gets real.  He figures that by conservative estimates, 50% of these decisions don't amount to much of significance afterwards.  Teasing American evangelical biases, he suggests that the correlation between evangelical "decisions" and solid faith later is about the same as the correlation between Roman Catholic children baptized and significant faith later.

Here's a poignant quote: "Focusing youth events, retreats and programs on persuading people to make a decision disarms the gospel, distorts numbers, and diminishes the significance of discipleship" (20).

So it begins...

Philosophy after Kant 2

... A second reaction to Kant was that of G. W. F. Hegel, whose sense of history we discussed in the previous chapter.  We can now process those ideas in terms of his reaction to Kant.  It is possible to see him as presenting a sense in which philosophy over time is indeed coming to know the world as it actually is, truth in itself.  Up to this point in history, such understandings have been partial.  The whole point of his thesis-antithesis-synthesis process is the refinement of ideas, with each synthesis removing partial untruths and synthesizing ideas that are purer.  Eventually, these ideas would reach the point of absolute truth, true knowledge of reality as it actually is.

It is fascinating that a person such as Hegel can have such an astounding influence on later thinkers when so much debate exists over what in fact he himself meant to say.  Nevertheless, we saw in the last chapter that Hegel in fact had that influence.  Karl Marx is of course the best known example, who took Hegel's ideas and applied it to his sense that world would eventually evolve into a society without class distinctions (see chaps. 12 and 14).  But his ideas also had a significant impact on many other thinkers, not least on biblical studies in the later nineteenth century through the so called Tübingen School. [1]

The name of Hegel's masterpiece is often translated as The Phenomenology of Spirit.  The word phenomenology has to do with the way things appear.  In Kant's language, the world-in-itself, as it is apart from us thinking about it, is the world of the noumena.  He thus used the word phenomena to refer to the world as it appears to us.  Therefore, when Hegel spoke of the "phenomenology" of Spirit, he was writing about the manifestation or the unfolding appearance of Spirit in history.

Indeed, in the twentieth century, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) started a school of philosophy known as the phenomenological school.  Husserl tried to "bracket" consideration of things-in-themselves as Kant had understood them.  Our experiences were the things-in-themselves worthy of consideration.  So Husserl tried to analyze how our minds relate to objects as they appear in our minds and ignore Kantian questions about what they might be without minds looking at them.

Heidegger developed Husserl's approach and took it in an existentialist direction. [2]  Heidegger defies the traditional use of the word "being" as some external world distinct from ourselves and defines being entirely as a matter of being-in-the-world (Dasein).  Husserl was still very much focused around our intentions toward the world as it appears to us.  For Heidegger, the key issue is our concern or "care" (Sorge) about being in the world.  The goal is for us to take responsibility for our being in the world, to embrace our mortality and the cares of living.  It is for us to be in the world authentically.

The way in which these approaches flow directly into French existentialism is fairly easy to see.  In chapter 9, we saw that the French existentialists Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were focused on inventing a meaning for your life, a reason to exist.  This is much the same as Heidegger's goal of us being in the world authentically.  We embrace the world as it is for us and choose an existence to embrace.  When people speak of "continental philosophy," they are largely referring to the phenomenological school and existentialism...

[1] See chap. 14, n. **.

[2] The personal relationship between Heidegger and Husserl has been a notorious topic of interest since World War II.  Heidegger was Husserl's student, and Husserl arranged for Heidegger to take over his post when he retired.  Heidegger even dedicated the first edition of his famous book Being and Time to Husserl.   At the same time, Husserl was Jewish, even though he had early on become a Lutheran.  Meanwhile, Heidegger publicly supported Nazism.  Some have accused Heidegger of doing nothing to try to help Husserl after the 1933 race laws in Germany removed all his academic privileges at the University of Freiburg.  Heidegger later indicated that the two had already split well before that time.  Thankfully, Husserl died in 1938 before Hitler's anti-Jewish agenda gained full force.

Philosophy after Kant

Alfred North Whitehead once said that the history of European philosophy was basically a series of footnotes to Plato. [1]  In a similar way, we might say that the history of philosophy for the last two hundred years is one long footnote to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).  We have already discussed the impact of his thinking on the key debates of philosophy.  In chapter 4 we met his understanding of knowledge.  In chapters 7 and 8 we processed the implications for what we might know about reality.

However, in this section we want to fill in some blanks about how his ideas played out historically in the key thinkers of the last two hundred years, most of whom we have already met at some point in this book.  We want to set up the context within which the key players of postmodernism emerged, the thinkers we will discuss in the next section.  By the end of the chapter, we want to argue again that a "critical realist" approach to the world is both justifiable and an appropriate Christian understanding (see chap. 8).

Kant, if you recall, was wrestling with the competing claims of rationalism and empiricism.  Rationalists argued that truth was a matter of clear thinking and tended to see our senses and experiences as potentially misleading.  Empiricists emphasized the importance of our senses in coming to truth.  David Hume took empiricism to its most extreme form, showing that ideas we have about thinks like right and wrong or about cause and effect have no real basis in our experience.

Hume woke Kant from his unexamined assumptions about such things.  His conclusion, as we have seen, was that the content of our thinking does indeed come from our senses and experiences.  But the organization of that content takes place according to certain innate categories in our minds--categories like space and time, cause and effect, and the moral law.  As a consequence, we cannot know the world as it actually is in itself (das Ding an sich).  We only know the world as our minds organize it.

For Kant, we had good reason to trust the way our minds organized things.  God was trustworthy.  Many of the philosophers who followed Kant were not so convinced.  Some were not so convinced that it made sense even to speak of a "world as it really is" in the first place.  Others thought we could know the world as it is by some other means.

Before we organize the thinkers we have in mind, a strong word of caution is in order.  One of the "truths" of which postmodernism has reminded us is that organizing specific, concrete people as I am going to do almost always--if not always--involves skew.  These thinkers probably were not consistent at every point.  They lived at specific places and times--contexts that colored and affected what they said and how they said it.  They may have changed their minds on some things over the course of their lives.

In short, categorizations like the following, often called typologies, almost always--if not always--skew reality as it is.  Beware of the either-or.  Beware of those who set up false alternatives.  Beware of "labeling," as we said in chapter 11.

The first thinker we want to consider after Kant is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who clearly reflected the influence of Romanticism on his thinking (see chap. 13).  If Kant argued that we cannot know the world as it actually is in itself, Schopenhauer believed that we could, just not through our reason.  Rather, our "will," the drives and desires in us, give us direct knowledge of the world as it is on an intuitive rather than rational level.  There is a pre-thinking, emotional intuition that gives us direct knowledge of the world as it actually is.

We are less likely to have heard of Schopenhauer than some of those he influenced.  For example, the psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung took cues from his sense that our rational minds were directed by the pre-conscious forces of our desires.  Further, Schopenhauer believed that the most significant motivation of our lives is our "will to live"--the drive to survive.  This idea was a major influence on Friedrich Nietzsche in the late 1800's, who argued that a "will to power" was our most basic drive, a drive to achieve, gain power, and dominate.  They then directly and indirectly influenced the existentialists of the 1950's we discussed in chapter 9, who believed that the primary human task is to determine who we are and why we want to continue living.

A second reaction to Kant was that of G. W. F. Hegel, whose theory of history we discussed in the previous chapter...

[1] Process and Reality (Free Press, 1979), 39.

Merkel's bailouts...

Two headlines caught my eye today in one German newspaper: "Hopefully, they know what they are doing" and "The Germans are becoming fewer and fewer."  I think I mentioned about a month ago that because Germans don't have much more than one child a couple, their share of Germany is in decline.  I don't think I ever posted a reflection on American immigration by way of Germany's issues, but I've found being here helpful in conceptualizing similar issues in America.

The main talk of the town, of course, is the German Chancellor's (Angela Merkel) attempt to hold the Euro and EU together by forgiving a substantial portion of Greece's debt.  Greece is hopeless financially, but the sense of the EU's leadership is that it will be less catastrophic on Europe's banks to write off some of their debt than it would be to let Greece fail.  In return, economic problem states in the EU like Greece will have to become more capitalistic.

I was reminded of the GM, Chrysler bail-outs in America--of course much less problematic.  They've paid their money back.  The US taxpayer lost nothing in the end.  In return, 1000s of people kept their jobs, countless companies (even beyond GM and Chrysler) stayed in business, and the US economy was spared the domino failure effect their failure would have caused. It seems to me like it was a good thing.

We'll see what happens here, where there will be no pay back, and there is always the fear that no amount of money could save the situation.