A Thinking Reed

Month: February 2007

  • Plantinga on Dawkins and Calvinism and (vs?) philosophy

    Alvin Plantinga, probably the most important contemporary Christian philosopher working in the analytic tradition, has a lengthy review of Dawkins’ God Delusion.

    I have to say that I have almost no appetite for these back-and-forth polemics; I was an atheist for a considerable period of time and don’t feel much need to revisit it. But you always learn something from reading Plantinga. Here he deploys his trademark self-refutation argument against naturalism, an argument which I think has a good deal to be said for it (C.S. Lewis famously deployed a similar argument in his book Miracles, as did Stephen R.L. Clark in his Gifford Lectures).

    Also of interest to the philosophically-inclined, there’ve been a series of discussions on the Generous Orthodoxy: Thinktank site about theologians and theistic philosophers, specifically about why the latter don’t seem attracted to the Calvinism that’s making something of a resurgence in evangelical circles. In particular, most analytic philosophers who are theists, even ones from Reformed backgrounds (like, say, Alvin Plantinga), defend libertarian views of free will, which is at odds with the traditional Calvinist view. It’s interesting to see the different ways in which philosophers and theologians approach these issues.

  • They’ve got personality

    Jon Katz writes the series Rural Life for Slate.com; he’s a writer who started his own farm with his wife and now writes about it.

    One of his recurring themes is the intelligence and personality of farm animals and how human interaction can affect them. Today’s entry is about a sassy hen named Henrietta and the way she interacts with people and other animals. She perches on the donkey, plays hide-and-seek with the barn cat, and generally behaves in ways not typical for your average hen.

    Katz writes that

    Henrietta is the most recent subject of the unofficial study I’ve been conducting to see if how we treat farm animals can affect their personalities. Animals of the same species can behave very differently, yet there’s little research that explains why. Genetics is a factor, so are health and environment. And I’m coming to believe that humans can also shape the natures of domesticated animals, even creatures that seem to lack individuality.

    This reminds me of a suggestion once made by C.S. Lewis. He said that, in entering into relationships with human beings, animals can in some way participate in human personal life, and maybe even enjoy a postmortem existence having been “taken up” into the lives of their human friends. Stephen Webb, a theologian who has written two books about our relationships to animals, holds up the domesticated animal as in some ways the paradigm of animal existence; the telos of animals is to be taken into community with human beings, and ultimately God.

    It makes a certain amount of sense that if you treat animals like machines or objects, then that’s what they’ll become, but if you treat them like fellow beings with whom some kind of relationship is possible, then who knows what might develop? We hear stories of the saints talking to, bargaining with, and preaching to wild animals, in some ways anticipating the eschatological reality of a restored creation.

    On the other hand, though, I think this needs to be balanced with a sense of the wildness of animals, and a respect for their otherness. Presumably animals have their own worlds of experience which would be as foreign to us as ours would be to them, were we able to experience them (what’s it like to be a bat?). There are kingdoms of which we know very little, and a bit of humility presumably wouldn’t be out of place.

  • Eat less meat, save the planet

    The Christian Science Monitor reports on yet another report linking the raising of livestock on an industrial scale to climate change:

    As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines.

    Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing what we drive.

    It’s not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that’s the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

    “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November.

    Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that’s more than the emissions caused by transportation.

    Read the rest here.

    After a while it starts to look like the case is over-determined for at least cutting back on the amount of meat we eat. If you’re not persuaded by animal welfare arguments, there’s the environmental impact, the equity angle (land used for raising livestock that could be far more productively used to raise grain for impoverished peoples), the labor issues (exploited workers, often illegal immigrants, who make up much of the workforce in slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants), and, of course, personal health.

  • A reflection on Ps. 109

    I imagine that anyone who makes regular use of the Psalms in their devotional life has had the experience of stumbling over sentiments that seem … less than edifying, or even un-Christian.

    For instance, last night I was reading Psalm 109, following the old-style scheme for praying the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer, and was struck by vss. 1-19:

    Hold not your tongue, O God of my praise; *
    for the mouth of the wicked,
    the mouth of the deceitful, is opened against me.

    They speak to me with a lying tongue; *
    they encompass me with hateful words
    and fight against me without a cause.

    Despite my love, they accuse me; *
    but as for me, I pray for them.

    They repay evil for good, *
    and hatred for my love.

    Set a wicked man against him, *
    and let an accuser stand at his right hand.

    When he is judged, let him be found guilty, *
    and let his appeal be in vain.

    Let his days be few, *
    and let another take his office.

    Let his children be fatherless, *
    and his wife become a widow.

    Let his children be waifs and beggars; *
    let them be driven from the ruins of their homes.

    Let the creditor seize everything he has; *
    let strangers plunder his gains.

    Let there be no one to show him kindness, *
    and none to pity his fatherless children.

    Let his descendants be destroyed, *
    and his name be blotted out in the next generation.

    Let the wickedness of his fathers be remembered before
    the LORD, *
    and his mother’s sin not be blotted out;

    Let their sin be always before the LORD; *
    but let him root out their names from the earth;

    Because he did not remember to show mercy, *
    but persecuted the poor and needy
    and sought to kill the brokenhearted.

    He loved cursing,
    let it come upon him; *
    he took no delight in blessing,
    let it depart from him.

    He put on cursing like a garment, *
    let it soak into his body like water
    and into his bones like oil;

    Let it be to him like the cloak which he
    wraps around himself, *
    and like the belt that he wears continually.

    Let this be the recompense from the LORD to my accusers, *
    and to those who speak evil against me.

    I realize there are other “cursing” Psalms, but this is one long, serious curse, and I was struck more than usually by how hard it is to see these as sentiments that should be prayed.

    Sometimes, when I come across passages where the Psalmist is protesting his innocence, I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s insight that Christ is here praying the Psalms with us and in us, and we are praying them in him. Only he can truly claim to be innocent.

    But in this case, the extended cursing seems entirely removed from the spirit of Jesus, who prayed on the cross that his enemies be forgiven. And yet, thinking about that, I could see this curse as something that, by most normal human standards, Jesus would have been eminently justified in hurling at his enemies! But he didn’t, and therein seemed to be a lesson. The contrast between the cursing of the Psalmist and the forgiving love of Jesus caused the latter to stand out for me in starker relief than ususal.

    And this is driven home even further when I reflect on how often I succumb to the temptation to curse other people in my heart (though not nearly as eloquently as the Psalmist!) for offenses, real or perceived, that are, at their worst, trivial compared both to Jesus’ suffering and to the suffering and oppression that the Psalmist may well have experienced (not to mention all those who suffer in our world today). I can see my own petty resentments reflected in the Psalmist’s curse and, like a photo negative, the suffering love of Jesus.

  • Simplicity and Lent

    I’ve recently started reading a book called Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth by Jim Merkel. Merkel worked for years as an engineer designing weapons systems for arms dealers(!) until, one day, sitting in a bar in Sweden he watched the tv coverage of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Struck by his (and everyone’s) complicity in the lifestyle that made such a disaster possible, he went back to California and went from being “a jet-set military salesman who voted for Regan” to “a bleeding-heart pacifist, eco-veggie-head-hooligan”: he quit his job, and began to use his engineer’s brain to calculate how he could live in a way that reduced his ecological footprint to sustainable levels. The first part of the book describes his research into the theoretical underpinnings of more sustainable ways of living, while the second part offers tips for putting it into practice.

    I’m not an ecological catastrophist, but I’m also not not an ecological catastrophist. I think global warming is real, but I also think it’s possible that we may develop some kind of technological fix. But it’s hard to escape the sense that we’re living on borrowed time and that we won’t be able to dodge the bullet forever, whatever form it comes in (peak oil? avian flu? mad cow disease?). So, there’s certainly a case to be made that it behooves all of us to reduce our footprint, even if most of us aren’t going to go as far as Jim Merkel (though I’m open to arguments that we should).

    But given that it is Lent, I think there’s also a spiritual dimension to the practice of simplicity that’s worth thinking about. Even if living more simply isn’t necessarty to stave off ecological disaster, it’s hard to overlook the fact that a modest lifestyle has been commended by sages of all traditions. Plato and Aristotle along with the Church fathers and doctors, were pretty much of one voice in commending simplicity, moderation, and frugality (and parallels in other traditions are easily spotted). As C.S. Lewis once observed, our society is unique not in the pursuit of wealth, but in upholding it as one of the highest goods, in opposition to the virtually unanimous counsel of our tradition.

    I tend to think of the fasting of Lent as intended in part to create a “space” in our lives where God can be present. There’s a traditional line of thought which says that, since God is by definition present everywhere, the barrier to our awareness of that presence lies in us. And one way of building that barrier is by filling up our lives with distractions. Blaise Pascal (the inspiration for this blog’s title) said with typical hyperbole that “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” I take this to mean that our penchant for distraction makes us unable to perceive reality as it really is.

    Simplicity as a spiritual discipline (which needn’t, it seems to me, be sharply distinguished from doing it for other reasons) might then be understood as an attempt to “cleanse the doors of perception.” Part of our problem is that we tend not to see reality as it really is, but instead as something for us. Instead of affirming reality with Augustine’s “being qua being is good” we ask “what’s in it for me?” This is arguably the root of our mistreatment of nature; we see it primarily as a resource for our use rather than as a gift and something that has intrinsic value. Perhaps the practice of simplicity can be a way of “letting things be” and seeing them as the handiwork of a loving Creator.

    On a more practical level, giving up something – a food, an activity, etc. – can allow us to spend more time doing the things we are always struggling to make time for, like prayer or helping others. I know I could certainly stand to spend more time doing both of those things. Lent seems like a good time to reflect on how I could live more simply, and hopefully this book will be of some help.

  • A veggie Lent

    Perhaps as one of your Lenten disciplines you’ve decided to give up meat (our Orthodox bothers and sisters go full-on vegan for
    Lent). If so, you may be wondering “What am I going to eat for the next 40 days?” Well, The Order of Santa Ignora has got you covered.

    Who knows, you might like it so much you’ll decide to make it a year-round thing.

  • More on giving teeth to JWT

    In a comment to the previous post, Michael Westmoreland-White asks a fair question of Just War theory:

    Has JWT EVER led to massive civil disobedience and refusal to fight on the part of a church’s members? Pacifists have often been arrested or executed for refusing to fight. When has this been true of JWTers? CAN the doctrine be given “teeth” or will it always just be a sop to the consciences of nationalistic warriors?

    The reason this is an important question is that, if the only effect of JWT is to bless whatever wars the government undertakes, then it’s not functioning as a theory of the morality of warfare. And I think it’s fair to say that many American Christians have gone along with the state’s war plans while using the rhetoric of just war more as a fig leaf than as a critical tool. Both the mainline and evangelical churches have been guilty of buying into forms of nationalism that serve to blunt criticism of the government’s actions, especially during wartime. It’s also worth pointing out that the vast majority of Christians aren’t taking to the street to engage in civil disobedience in protest of any of the other great evils our society is complicit in, whether that be abortion, poverty, ecological degradation, or what have you.

    Still, it has to be pointed out that many Christians, both clergy and laypeople, who have protested war have done so for broadly Just War reasons. Unless we’re going to assume, for instance, that everyone who protested the Vietnam war was a committed pacifist, there must’ve been at least some cases where opposition was motivated by people concluding that the war didn’t meet the standards of a just war. And I think it’s safe to say that this has been the case in more recent years as well. The mainline churches, none of which are officially pacifist, have been very critical of the Iraq war and many of their members took part in demonstrations protesting it. Granting all that, though, it’s safe to say, I think, that JWT doesn’t provide the controlling template for how most American Christians think about war.

    Whether or not JWT can become more effective as a genuine restraint on Christians’ willingness to participate in unjust wars depends, I think, on whether it can be effectively taught. My evidence is strictly anecdotal, but my impression is that JWT is rarely taught or discussed in most congregations. No moral framework can be put into practice if it isn’t taught and received. And this is true of any morality. Sexual morality doesn’t require abstinence in all cases, but it does require the practice of restraint and discrimination, as well as the development of virtues necessary for that practice. Likewise, putting JWT into practice means not just learning a theory, but also learning the virtues of restraint, moderation, and justice as well as faith, hope, and charity. That it hasn’t been taught and internalized isn’t necessarily a knock against the theory, but a knock against us. If mainline chruches are serious about JWT, maybe a first step would be to learn from the peace churches how they reinforce and inculcate the practices of peacemaking in their members.

  • William Cavanaugh, localism, and giving Just War theory teeth

    Eric directs our attention to this Godspy interview with Catholic theologian and “Radical Orthodoxy” fellow-traveler William T. Cavanaugh. He’s got some interesting stuff to say about globalization, the church, freedom, and just war theory among other things.

    I don’t agree with everything Cavanaugh says, but here are a couple of things that I thought were noteworthy:

    Globalization is an aesthetic which produces a way of looking at the world. It assumes that we’re a universal subject. We can go anywhere and do anything. But this has damaging effects. A few years ago my friends and I gathered for a dinner party and started discussing what should be done about Kosovo. I remember thinking how incredible it was that most of us had never even heard of Kosovo just a couple of weeks ago. But suddenly we’re all talking as if we know what’s right for this place on the other side of the world. It’s absurd.

    […]

    America in particular has this tendency to think it’s the universal nation, the exceptional nation, which means that we know what the solution is to everyone’s problems.

    I sometimes joke that if I were invited to give a commencement address—which I never will be—I’d never say the usual thing they tell the graduates: “Go out and change the world!” I’d tell them: “Go home! Go back to your little towns and please, dear God, don’t try to change the world!” The world has had enough of American college graduates who know what’s best for the world.

    He also talks about how the churches might give just war theory some bite when it comes to Christian participation in war:

    If we’re going to have a functioning just war theory, then we can’t abdicate this judgment to the leaders of the secular nation state, as if they can decide when a war meets Christian criteria and when it doesn’t. Historically the prince was traditionally responsible for making these kinds of judgments. But the prince in medieval Europe wasn’t outside the Church. This wasn’t a secular role, but a pastoral role within the Church.

    Also, individuals were never absolved of responsibility for deciding when princes’ judgments were just and when they weren’t. It’s always up to the individual to decide and to apply these criteria. And bishops and popes often intervened in these matters, excommunicating looters, imposing truces, interdicting the Eucharist, and so on. The recovery of the Church’s sense that it needs to be the place where these decisions get discerned is absolutely crucial, otherwise we’ve lost any sense of what it means to be Church.

    […]

    The first thing the Church needs to do is stop fighting unjust wars. Take the just war theory seriously. I’m not talking about pacifism. If there’s a war that the Church judges is unjust, then Catholics shouldn’t fight it. That’s the way the just war theory is supposed to work. It’s sometimes supposed to say ‘no’ to acts of violence. What the theory is usually used for, of course, is to justify whatever violence is going on. I can’t think of a single instance where it was used to stop violence. That is the most pressing issue.

    Imagine what would have happened if Catholics in the previous war had said in significant numbers, “No, sorry, this is an unjust war; we’re just going to sit this one out.” The world would have turned upside down.

    Of course, there may be a bit of wishful thinking in the idea that the church, even the Roman Catholic Church, will not only make definitive pronouncements on the justness of particular wars but get its members to go along with those judgments to the point of not participating in them. For instance, John Paul II and Benedict XVI may both have opposed the Iraq war, but neither one, to my knowledge, declared it unjust outright in any official capacity, much less forbade Catholics from participating in it.

    In the case of Protestant churches (which I realize Cavanaugh isn’t speaking about) it gets even muddier. Without a magisterium it’s not at all clear how they would make and enforce this kind of judgment. Or, for that matter, whether they should. Cavanaugh is surely correct in rebutting the charge of theocracy in recommending that Christians put their allegiance to Christ ahead of the nation, but there is a danger of a kind of ecclesiastic authoritarianism if we decide that the church should legislate on such matters for its members.

    But, in fairness, maybe this kind of top-down legislation isn’t what’s being recommended. Maybe a better way to think about it is that Christians who are formed, at the parish or congregational level, by worship, prayer, sacraments, study, mutual encouragement and consolation, fasting, almsgiving and other charitable works, and other traditional Christian disciplines will come to see the world differently and this will shape their response to decisions like this. But this also has to allow for the possibility of divergent responses among different Christians. Which is, perhaps, as it should be. In the course of a post on the present difficulties in the Anglican Communion, *Christopher linked to this piece by Fr. William Carroll on subsidiarity in the church. Carroll is writing about the strife over homosexuality, but the principles he outlines seem like they would have wider application:

    True subsidiarity empowers local bodies to incarnate the Gospel in their local context. Much like modern organizational theory, it pushes power and authority as close to the action as possible. This enables the Church to become more flexible and mission-driven. It also brings us closer to Gospel models of authority. … A more adequate notion of subsidiarity, which characterizes historic Anglicanism at its best, emphasizes that decisions should always be made at the most local level possible

    Shaped by the context of their local church, Christians may well come to different conclusions about questions of war and peace. But that’s to be expected; Christians come to different conclusions on virtually all matters of significance. Rather than diktats from above, congregational study of the principles of just war theory, for instance, might be one way in which a responsible deliberation about these matters could be incarnated at the local level.

  • Nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving

    Today’s Daily Office reading from 1 Timothy (4:1-16) gave me pause, verses 1-5 in particular:

    Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. 3 They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.

    As someone who tries to abstain from certain foods, it might be useful to think about what’s going on here. The context doesn’t make it clear, but it seems like Paul may be referring to a kind of gnostic tendency that takes a dim view of the body and material creation. At least that’s the impression I get from someone who would “forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods.” Paul suggests that such abstinence is an affront to God since the goods of this world were “created to be received with thanksgiving.” So, my sense is that Paul is dealing with a type of gnosticism rather than a “Judaizing” tendency that would insist on an observance of the OT dietary laws.

    And Paul elsewhere comes out strongly against the view that any part of God’s creation is unclean in itself; in 1 Corinthians 10 Paul seems to be advising his hearers not to eat meat sacrificed to idols if their eating it will cause offense to others, i.e. they will appear to be eating it as a sacrifice. But he goes on to tell them to eat “whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.’ If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.” The idea seems to be that one should avoid meat sacrificed to idols not because there is anything unclean about it in itself, but because it may create the appearance that Christians endorse the sacrifice.

    A similar attitude may be at work in Augustine’s critique of the vegetarianism of the Manicheans. While many of the early Fathers were vegetarians or at least tended to abstain from meat, Augustine sharply criticized what he regarded as the Manicheans’ superstitious practices of not eating meat. There certainly is a strain of vegetarianism that avoids eating flesh in order not to “pollute” the self. And the Christian rejoinder is entirely proper: nothing is bad or “unclean” in itself; all things are created by God and, insofar as they exist, are good.

    However, are there grounds for abstaining from meat (or other foods) for other reasons of conscience? They key here seems to be provided by Paul himself when he says “nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving.” A surface reading of this would suggest that it’s enough literally just to give thanks to God for our food. And this is surely right. But I wonder if there’s more to be gotten out of the notion of receiving with thanksgiving than just that.

    Maybe “receiving with thanksgiving” implies an attitude toward creation which ought to be expressed in our practices of eating (among other things). How can we say we are receiving food with thanksgiving if, for instance, our methods of farming pollute and exhaust the land? Or, indeed, if farm workers are coerced or exploited? To receive with thanksgiving would seem to imply, at the least, respecting the integrity of creation. If someone gives you a gift, you don’t express gratitude by destroying it.

    Likewise with respect to animals. It would be odd, to say the least, if someone used this passage as a proof-text against vegetarianism and to defend current industrial farming practices. Few contemporary vegetarians adopt their diet for fear of being “polluted” by animal flesh, and one hardly shows respect for one’s fellow creatures by torturing them.

    But: aren’t I contradicting the Apostle here when he advises us against “raising any question on the ground of conscience”? The most accurate way of reading Paul here, it seems to me, is that he’s cautioning against ostentatious displays of one’s own oh-so-refined moral sensibilities. For, while he tells us not to ask questions about where food presented to us by a host comes from, he does say that we should refuse food if we’re informed by our host that it came from a sacrifice. And this is both for our sake and theirs. For, if we were to accept meat which we were explicitly told was sacrificed to idols, our host might take that as an endorsement of the idolatry, which could potentially lead them astray, possibly by reinforcing their own belief in the efficacy of the sacrifices.

    How might this translate in our contemporary world? For one thing, it cautions us against flaunting our scruples in front of others. But at the same time it warns us against setting a bad example or witness for others. In most cases only an insufferable prig would demand of his host whether the food being served was organic, fair trade, shade grown, etc. Surely the right thing to do is to accept the food offered with thanksgiving (both to the host and God). However, on other occassions it might be necessary or at least laudable to witness for a better way of interacting with creation. Just as there were idols in the ancient world, there are idols today: efficiency, profit, wealth, displaying a refined palate, or appearing sophisticated or worldly. There are occassions where it might be better to refuse something becuase not to do so will reinforce, in oneself and others, allegiance to these false idols. Refusing a modest meal from a friend is one thing; refusing foie gras at a fancy cocktail party something else.

  • Blasphemous bloggers?

    My only comment on the John Edwards/bloggers brouhaha is to note how deeply even “conservative” religious groups have drunk from the well of liberal interest-group ideology. For consider: all parties to the argument implicitly agree that the issue is one of bigotry – whether hatred was expressed toward a particular group of people – rather than, say, blasphemy.

    I realize you’re not going to get very far in modern America complaining about bloggers’ blasphemous remarks; it’s just interesting how religion is being assimilated to the category of a personal trait of its adherents, analogous to race or sex, rather than being about, y’know, God.