These are the words

There is something exquisitely theatrical about Deuteronomy (I suppose Vanhoozer is right on that one). This is not simply a restatement of the law given to the Israelites. It is Moses' great farewell speech, rounding out the Pentateuch with a glimpse of the future to come. The book flows beautifully from a recounting of Israel's journey through the wilderness to a series of exhortations to remember the commandments diligently, followed by a detailed examination of those commandments, then a dramatic enactment of the covenant, and finishing with Moses' song. The epilogue with a bold summary of Moses' life: "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."

I wish I could read through this book in one sitting. It isn't necessarily too long to do, but it's just long enough that time doesn't always allow it. One thing I find incredibly amusing about the modern Christian reading of the Old Testament law is how people are overwhelmed by how long it is. What I find remarkable is how much the opposite is true: this law is profoundly concise. Considering a single bill in the U. S. Congress can be more than 2000 pages, it is totally laughable that anyone would balk at the number of commandments in Torah. What I am getting at here is that each book in Torah deserves to be read as a whole, perhaps in a single reading or even narration. (What kind of insight might we gain if we listened to a professional actor read the whole of Deuteronomy as a dramatic monologue?)

Theological jargon and the Church

Kevin Vanhoozer's The Drama of Doctrine attempts to address "the strange disappearance of doctrine in the church." He attempts in many long, drawn out sentences to illustrate how doctrine can be the "stuff of life," related to everything we do. Yet his own tendency to say everything in more words than necessary gives us all the evidence we need to understand the disconnect between theology and the Church.

Let me pick a typical paragraph from this book, and then I'll translate it for you.

It is tempting to reduce the communicative act to its proposition content alone. Yet such an identification of divine discourse with propositional content is too hasty and reductionist, for it omits two other important aspects of the communicative action, namely, the illocutionary (what is done) and perlocutionary (what is effected). To repeat: what is authoritative about the Bible is what God says and does in and with its words. To equate God's word with the content it conveys is to work with an abbreviated Scripture principles that reduces revelation to the propositional residue of it's locutions [!]. Such an abbreviated Scripture principle, in overlooking the illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, is both christologically and pneumatologically deficient. It fails to see that what Scripture is doing is witnessing to and hence mediating Christ, and it fails to do justice to the role of the Holy Spirit in making sure that this witness is effective.

Translation: "the authority of the Bible isn't just about ideas; it's about knowing Christ through the Holy Spirit." There, now I think everyone in our congregation gets it. If someone translated the whole book in this way, I might be done with it in one sitting.

There is nothing wrong with technical language where absolutely necessary to convey meaning. As a mathematician, I very comfortably use highly technical language which is packed with meaning. In other words, any other possible way to say the same thing in a mathematical argument would be longer, not shorter. As an off-the-cuff example, there simply is no shorter way to say, "Every bounded linear operator is continuous." In theology (or at least in this book) it appears just the opposite. It reminds me of a sign on one of my college professors' office doors: "Think! There has to be a harder way to do it." We are doing the Church a terrible disservice if theologians continue to endorse language which, though translatable into simple terms which any layman could understand, is meant solely for the purposes of conversation between theologians.

Such convoluted language is generally symptomatic of ideas which cannot be defended in the face of current evidence. The fact that I am 70 pages into Vanhoozer's book and he has yet to actually begin to defend his main thesis is deeply worrisome. I am more satisfied by two blog posts from my brother than I am with 70 pages of flowery reinterpretation of doctrine as "theo-drama."

Happy Birthday, Wealth of Nations

In celebration of Wealth of Nations being published this day in 1776, The Freeman has an interesting article on the use of the phrase "Invisible Hand" in Adam Smith's political and economic philosophy. Here's an amusing excerpt:

A fascinating discovery uncovered by Daniel Klein, professor of economics at George Mason University, may shed light on this debate. Based on a brief remark by Peter Minowitz, the Santa Clara University political philosopher, that the “invisible hand” phrase lies roughly in the middle of both of Smith’s books, Klein made preliminary investigations. He next recruited Brandon Lucas, then a doctoral student at Mason, to investigate further. Klein and Lucas report in Economic Affairs (March 2011) that they found considerable evidence that Smith “deliberately placed ‘led by an invisible hand’ at the centre of his tomes” and that the concept “holds special and positive significance in Smith’s thought.”

The idea they're getting at? Wealth of Nations has a chiastic structure, with "invisible hand" in the center!

You've seen it all when people are doing Midrash on Adam Smith.

Happy International Women's Day

Here's a lovely article about a woman of international significance:

www.feministsforlife.org/taf/articles/Bhutto.pdf

Not to be all cliché, but it is somewhat amusing to note that Pakistan has had a female prime minister before we've managed to have a female president.

As a little child

Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. (Mark 10:14-15)

I've always found this amazing quote from Jesus to have a very quaint interpretation in the church: you must have "child-like faith" the enter the kingdom of God, meaning that you trust unquestioningly. But that's a pretty flat picture of how children actually are. Children are normally rather inquisitive, imaginative, creative, eager to test boundaries, disruptive, playful, and often quite unintelligible despite having so much to say. They are at once struggling for independence and clingy, both trusting and skeptical, both fragile and surprisingly strong. They have no fear of exploring the world--that is, until they look up and mom and dad are no longer there. Children are, in a word, free. Free precisely because of the intimate trust of the family. Free because if they venture too far, mother and father will be there. It is not even a question of presuppositions. Children don't have to believe in their parents; they simply never have to face the question why life should be so safe for them (never, that is, until they are forced to leave the intimate trust of the home).

It is typical to interpret Christ's words in terms of trust, but rarely in terms of freedom. What might it look like to base the Christian life on child-like freedom in Christ?

Essence of human

Fascinating book review on the NYT (HT: Mockingbird blog) talking about the neurological roots of de-humanization, from genocide to slavery. In the book Less Than Human, philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues that we may be in some sense hard-wired to de-humanize people:

Smith clearly explains why many cognitive scientists believe this tendency is innate and then links it to another predisposition that seems “built in” to the human mind: our inclination to see living things in hierarchies, as in the “great chain of being” of medieval European Christians, with God at its perfect top, human beings above “higher” animals, and so on down to worms and plants. Because we feel that living things are defined by their essence, and because we feel that each creature has its rank in the world, Smith argues, dehumanization comes easily to the human mind: we accept that someone can look human but have a sub­human essence, and we accept that what is not human must be inferior. “When we dehumanize people,” he writes, “we think of them as counterfeit human beings.”

But reviewer David Berreby thinks this explanation doesn't match reality:

All these troubles arise because Smith’s insistence on immutable essences is only half right: people do categorize themselves and others using essences, but there’s nothing immutable about them. If, like trained philosophers, we could settle for good who is essentially human and who is a zombie vampire squid, we wouldn’t have, or need, this drama of dehumanization, rehumanization, then more dehumanization, and so on. Instead, the who-is-and-isn’t-human question is never truly settled. In fact, it is the dynamic, even mercurial nature of “real human” status that makes this mystery of our psychology so fascinating. What Amenemhet wants us to remember isn’t that he thought Asiatics were dogs, but that he made them act like dogs.

It's something worth thinking about: given dynamic conceptual frameworks, how do we become more just? Is it by taking the philosopher's approach, which is essentially to make our concepts more static, or is there a way to account for justice for an evolving human consciousness?

Democracy and Freedom

In an age of social upheaval in the Middle East and Africa, many are asking a typically Western question: can democracy spread to other parts of the world? The question is misguided in its approach, since it equates democracy and freedom. The two are not the same. Democracy may follow from freedom, but freedom does not follow from democracy. Freedom follows from the Rule of Law, a tradition whereby all laws are themselves subject to general principles agreed upon by nearly all the society which submits to a common government. Freedom requires that a society adopt the traditions which we in the West have enjoyed for centuries: each individual is respected as such, and no one is authorized to interfere in an individual's personal sphere unless it is according to some procedure already anticipated by the general public and in accord with a long-standing public moral conscience.

In a free society, the right to vote may actually be the least valuable freedom an individual has. So long as he has the means whereby he can support himself and his family and pursue his interests, a man has no need to feel empowered by voting. Every year we hear complaints from idealists about "voter apathy," meaning they feel we should be more excited about the electoral process. This is symptomatic of an unhealthy view of democracy which elevates the "will of the people" above the value of the individual. This is precisely the kind of democratic thinking which we should not want to see spread to other parts of the world. This can only lead to more conflict between large factions vying for democratic dominance. The tyranny of the majority is all too easily manifest in countries with a long history of civil unrest.

It seems fashionable these days to decry Western individualism as the source of many social and economic problems. In reality, it is precisely this individualism, rooted in a strong moral tradition which sees inherent value in human beings, that has made the West and America in particular a great civilization. There is no reason why similar ideas should not be able to take shape in other parts of the world; but it will take far more than an elections process to make it happen.