Hmmm… difficult for me. I don’t think I can remember the context of each lecture waiting so long in between, and if I don’t write these things down immediately they will be quickly forgotten. I am not sure I could of even done so much better (on a topic like this) when I was young. So… the best I can do is keep going and link back to these comments when the time comes.
I don’t have this problem with math because everything get used over and over again as you go on.
For context, my note was
9:54 Epistemology of love as the appropriate means both to grasp new creation and to think from that back to the original creation itself.
Like you and @Mervin_Bitikofer, I’m curious how Wright defines “love,” but I’m more interested in how he relates that to epistemology, and I’m dubious about any conclusions that can be drawn about the natural world by working backward from new creation to the original creation. I hope that’s not where he’s going. We’ll see.
A couple of loose ends before diving back into the first lecture …
Related to the earlier PoMo discussion, I’m just now getting around to @JRM’s blog post updating his thoughts on a book he wrote on the subject 30 years ago. Three articles and a whole bunch to chew on:
Finally, I suggest making a separate thread on Jan. 19 for the 2nd lecture. Include a link to the lectures and a synopsis of the lecture. Much easier for newcomers and more welcoming for folks who may be interested in the subject but not committed to the full series. Just my 2c. Others can weigh in with their opinions.
Now, back to listening …
Heh. I just tried to access my notes from the lectures, only to discover that notes from lectures 1 through 3 aren’t showing up whether I search for “Wright”, “Giffords”, or “lectures”. There goes my ‘auxiliary memory’.
I think you’re ahead of the rest of us!
Though there was one thing I recall from lecture five: he said there were “seven heavenly bodies” in Genesis 1. I’ve hunted and can’t find any reference to that, so I have no idea what he was talking about!
I’ve never heard of such a notion before, and I agree – that’s a silly notion. We are broken, not God, and the only “damage” to God would be grief.
I listen to the lectures with WordPad running so I can take notes.
This is one of the common errors that drives me crazy: it’s “could’ve”, short for “could have”. [Though I think it should be “could’v” since the e is pointless – of course for that matter it should be “hav”.]
I’m having to go back and listen since my notes vanished into quantum limbo. It’s annoying because I have at least twelve hours of Michael Heiser videos, at least nine hours of Orthodox basic theology videos, and another eight or nine hours of various other speakers.
If only I could do a Druid ‘spell’ from my old fantasy RPG and hire someone to sleep for me!
Same. I really liked that one quote from Pascal that said as much.
I’m looking over the preface of the book and the end of the first chapter right now for clues.
In the preface he enumerates a number of meanings of the term Natural Theology, and then says this on xiii:
‘Natural theology’, in other words, has become a loose label for a string of questions, all of which have to do with the relationship of the world and God…I am proposing that we relocate them within the larger setsof questions to which, historically, they ethemselves belong, and that we do so with a fres historical look at Jesus himself (indeed, with “history” itself clarified and resced from its own similar distortions).
History, in other words, matters; and thus Jesus and the New Testament ought by rights to be included as possible sources for the task of ‘natural theology’. In saying this I am certainly not attempting to revive the kind of rationalist apologetic that would seek to ‘prove’ the Christian faith by a supposed ‘appeal to history’. …Neither in method nor in results will I be following normal apologetic pathways. To make the case for including Jesus in the topic at all, I shall dismantle some of the now standard misunderstandings of his public career and teaching and go on to argue for a fresh placing of him within the Jewish symbolic as well as historical world of his day.
From:
N.T. Wright. History and Eschatology.
Later, on page xvii, Wright describes some of the later lectures with this:
On the contrary, the resurrection opens up instead a new public world in which the questions raised by humans within the present creation can be seen as provisional signposts to God.
They are, however, ‘broken signposts’, since the highest and best aspects of the human vocation, from ‘justice’ to ‘love’, all create paradoxes and sharp disjunctions…At this point [the cross] the particular kind of "natural theology’ which comes into view, unlike most kinds in the last three centuries, takes a specifically Trinitarian form. Reflection on the “broken signposts” and the paradoxical way they point to God challenges the older implicitly Deistic models which either leave Jesus out of consideration or try to fit him in at the late state into a picture of ‘God’ generated on other grounds.
Wright obviously failed his high school freshman comp class with the 5 paragraph essay and thesis statement clearly at the end of the first paragraph. Stay tuned for more.
@Jay313 Thanks for the piece from Middleton. I’m going to start that when I’m done here!
PSA – That would be: Public Service Announcement, folks.
@Jay313 mentioned starting a new thread for the second lecture. I’m not inclined to do that, but will, if that’s what folks would prefer. PM me with your thoughts. What I have in mind is similar to what I did with the End of Apologetics thread. I put a Table of Contents at the beginning of that thread, and added links to the first slide for each new chapter discussion. This time I would include the same Table of Contents with the same navigational links at the first slide for each discussion section, AND place a link that goes back to the OP as well.
I’m starting to think in the structure of a simply designed e-book!
I am right there with you, Mitchell.
I have to treat these book discussions like a course with a final at the end. They are an enormous amount of work for me. There’s no way I could redo the pace of the Penner discussion.
Check your notebook!
And sentences with from 16 to 22 words.
I signed up for a university course where the first day the instructor gave us a handout that included this silliness as a requirement for all our papers. I walked out, leaving the handout in the trash, and went to switch to a different section of the course with a different professor. I don’t recall if she asked why I was leaving – if she had I would have listed several famous writers who didn’t follow those rules, starting with Sir Walter Scott.
I absolutely love that term and wish I’d encountered it before university! It’s got so much theology wrapped up in it I would venture that an M.Th. thesis could be written on it.
I vote for this.
While we are processing Lecture 1, I think it could be interesting and useful to talk about what experience ye have with Natural Theology.
Some of us are familiar with it as a form of apologetics. But I don’t know much about it. How about ye?
What other concepts of Natural Theology are you familiar with?
WHat are your thoughts on it?
Sorry… as I continue with lecture 6.
Wright talks about the epistemology of love… and to even understand what he is saying I need to compare this with my own epistemological framework.
He gives a list of claims as a part of this epistemology of love:
Compare these with these things I say which connect somewhat…
The point of this comparison is to invite the criticism… “no that is not what Wright is talking about” so you can explain to me what he is talking about instead and thus help me to understand what he is saying.
I am not so familiar with the idea and Wright’s mention of this has continued to intrigue me. I am hoping for some explanation in the last lecture. But it seems so far that his argument is that natural theology is one which accepts history as the “nature” which needs to be examined for human events and motivations.
P.S. As I start lecture 7, I find Wright turning to the question of natural theology and what is it? So we do not have to wait to the end of lecture 8.
Traditionally, it seems natural theology has referred to arguments from nature for the existence of God. I think I have made it clear that I do not support these, I don’t think the arguments are sound or convincing. Not only that but I think they distort our understanding of God and mislead us to replace a faith in God with a faith in the premise of these arguments. I think the belief in God must be a choice and a matter of faith – all about what kind person we want to be and what kind of existence we want to be a part of.
So, basically I would give a different role to natural theology. To leave the question of God’s existence to faith and instead natural theology would inform us about what kind of God (and theology) would be consistent with what we see in nature. Wright’s approach focusing on history is interesting but I lack his confidence in historical science. On the other hand, I see little reason not to take the accounts in the Bible seriously whether they meet the standards of modern historical science or not.
I make no pretense to objectivity in religion. I frankly think that is inconsistent with the purpose of religion. Wright seems to be looking for an objective basis for Christianity in history, and that is hard for me to get excited about. I would limit apologetics to a defense of the logical coherence of Christianity and not look for an objective basis for believing in it.
Wright first developed his idea of an epistemology of love in The New Testament and the People of God (1992), where he noted: “The lover affirms the otherness and the reality of the beloved. Love does not seek to collapse the beloved in terms of itself.” (p. 64). I used this quote in explaining my own methodology in my book The Liberating Image.
Wright’s point in his “epistemology of love” is twofold. First, as a critique of the stance of modernity, true knowledge is not predicated on any supposedly “objective” distance of the subject from the object of knowledge; rather the knower must care about (and engage with) the object; we bring ourselves with all of our assumptions and experiences to the project of investigation. But, second, as a critique of much postmodern discourse, the subject must respect the otherness and integrity of the object of knowledge (on analogy with one’s love and respect for another person).
You probably have made it clear, but thank you for repeating for the sake of those who aren’t that familiar with you.
I don’t find these arguments convincing, either, at least the few that I’ve been exposed to, but probably for different reasons than you. As someone who has only a basic (and antiquated) science background, I am frustrated when it seems like people with strong science backgrounds use “nature up to God” arguments with people outside their fields, because “just trust me on this” isn’t a sound way to deal with such monumental matters.
I am even more frustrated by people who don’t have a background, say, in physics, who try to argue from physics the existence of God. I can’t get past: “Does this person remotely know what they’re talking about?” and “Is the claim true?”
And on it goes…
Exactly this: “a faith in the premise of the arguments”
If the arguments contain flaws, but are foundational to a person’s faith, then what? Rather than harranging people for not being convinced by unconvincing arguments, and blaming them for a lack of faith generated in response to logical or factual flaws, the apologist should examine herself.
I’ve heard too many misapplications of Romans 1:18-23, as if a person unconvinced by an apologist’s arguments already knew the truth, denied it and continued actively, deliberately to disbelieve it. Particularly, when the problem was with the apologist’s reasoning!
@mitchellmckain, when we finally get to the later lectures you are responding to here, would you be willing to copy the pertinant sections of these earlier posts into later ones, so they’re more in the flow of the discussion on those lectures? Your insights are valuable; I would hate for people to miss them, when the rest of us catch up with you. Thanks for considering.
@Terry_Sampson thanks for putting this in the discussion. I hadn’t thought of putting in “Reference Resources” this time.
Thank you for this explanation. That helps a lot!
It will be interesting to see how Wright applies this to his concept of natural theology and what he believes it can show us.
Thanks, @Jay313 I"ve been enjoying these a lot!
By that last word “itself” I take it this refers to the lover rather than the beloved. In other words, love does not seek to reduce the beloved to the advantages and such the beloved provides for the lover. It reminds me of Kant who says that not using people as a means to an end is the foundation of ethics.
Of course, I agree. In fact, I would say this is the reason for God’s creation of the physical universe and natural law, to give us a basis of existence apart from Himself. And thus I oppose the efforts of many to see Hebrews 1:3 as meaning our continued existence depends on the continual work of God. I think this is essentially pantheistic and makes these words of Wright “collapse the beloved in terms of itself” apply to us in relation to God. Frankly I think this interpretation of Hebrews 1:3 has more to do with the religionist exaggerating his own importance vicariously from that kind of all importance of God in maintaining our existence. But I think this demotes God from being a true creator to merely a dreamer (we being nothing more than what He dreams).
Should the individual Christian want or look for objective bases? How about the unbeliever? Think of Phil Yancey, for instance. There are of course others who can be mentioned with factual details.
[ETA: This may have sounded upon first reading like I was contesting Rich @JRM, but no, not at all (notice my ‘Like’ above 
). I am just trying to emphasize objectivity, factualness, in a loving relationship – in both directions.]
The lover of God affirms the otherness and the reality of God, the beloved. The lover of God does not seek to collapse God into terms of itself and its feelings or imaginings and as just another ‘part of me’ and everyone else.
Can we know God? Do we care about the object, God? The first petition in The Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:9, is caring about him. Can we engage with the object, God, objectively?1 Otherwise we aren’t we merely postulators at keyboards.
If (and since) we are speaking with respect to God who is personal, our love and respect for him does not and should not need to be an analogue.
And if we as individuals are the beloved, as the object of God’s love, we should desire, yearn for and seek objective evidence of that love, as did Tim Keller’s parishioner, so that we can say in the first person singular, “I am loved”:
1 (We can objectively be obedient, but is that the same as engaging? I do think it is part of it.)
[See the ETA note at the beginning, if you haven’t already.]
As an addendum to the last, and lest we imagine or fantasize woo, intellectualize, philosophize or theologize too much about where we think Dr Tom is coming from, I think this is worthy of note to bring us down to earth so to speak: he considers God’s love for him to be an objective fact (or a factual fact, if you don’t like ‘objective’ ; - ), has for a long time, it has shaped his life, and admirably so …also notice he uses the word ‘fact’:
Everything that has happened to me since has produced wave upon wave of the same.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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