- A “Stringfellow Footnote” (my term): The last Stringfellow link that I gave above was an article by William Wylie-Kellerman entitled: “Naming the Powers: William Stringfellow as Student and Theologian”. In that article is the following story about “Stringfellow’s first real dose of powers theology came at the World Conference of Christian Youth in Oslo, Norway which he attended in 1947 as a college sophomore.”
- "Given such bridges of conversation and reconciliation, Stringellow was thoroughly scandalized when Bishop Stephen Neil, on behalf of the archbishop, asked the Anglicans not to receive Eucharist at the Norwegian high mass since they were not properly “in communion”. Not bound in this matter of conscience, he and others in the delegation went forward to the altar nonetheless, and made a point of underscoring this in his formal church report, citing the prayer of confession from the liturgy itself: “Christian disunity…has been brought by pride…There is only one place where this pride can really be destroyed… that is in the very act of Holy Communion, of communion with Jesus Christ.”
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I shared this in another thread, but I will also link it here since it seems to be Wright summarizing and following up on his own Gifford Lectures! It’s an article authored by Wright at First Things. Enjoy!
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I did enjoy the article, “Loving to Know”, @Mervin_Bitikofer . Thanks for sharing it.
Wright makes a few claims, that cause me to groan a bit, that I’ve heard him make in other places as well.
This however, has this non-scientist, non-poser puzzled:
Early modern scientists were often quite explicit about “thinking God’s thoughts after him” (Kepler’s words). They understood their task as responding to reality, not investigating it with supposedly neutral objectivity. To see the natural world as “creation,” not as a self-governing or self-making “nature,” is a big step in that direction, particularly because it puts the human researcher on the same footing as the research: as one creature to another. This is where the biblical doctrine of the “image” stands out. The idea of the image comports with the idea of the cosmos as a vast temple
I’m not a scientist and couldn’t pretend to be one. I can easily hold the ideas of creation and neutral scientific study at once. I have no real reason to reconcile them. But for the scientist…
How does Wright’s claim here work without becoming creationism or ID?
I’m not only asking Merv alone. Any practicing scientist will do!
And hopefully you’ll hear from one, because I’m not a practicing scientist either. Maybe a step closer than you since I teach science. At the highschool level. So only a little step closer at that!
As a non-scientist - I can only observe the following: I hear Wright claiming that scientists from earlier centuries had no problem seeing their own creaturely status alongside whatever else they were studying. We all share in our ‘creatureliness’. Modern scientists (it seems to be implied) have fallen into a delusion of self-detachment. They pretend that they look down on or in on their subject from a removed perspective that somehow has risen above its creaturely status.
Wright takes issue with even the existence (much less the claim upon) such a ‘neutral’ platform from which any observer could observe - which sounds like a plausible and solid objection to me too. My knee-jerk is to say Wright is right about this (if I’ve understood him correctly). But I’m curious where your point of confusion begins, if you can parse your shared paragraph down even further to where the difficulty starts.
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Another quotation from Wright’s recent book …
It is fiercely ironic then that the secular Kulturkampf is really a critique of Christian ideas with other Christian ideas. Hence G. K. Chesterton’s complaint that ‘the modern world is full of old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.’ Western liberalism, with its talk of rights and aversion to injustice, is Christianity’s prodigal son squandering his inheritance on ‘disordered loves’, while claiming it has inherited nothing from its parents. It is a comic irony that the secular State has an innate inability to realise the ideals of love and justice taught by Jesus precisely because they believe such ideals must be attained without him! Yet the pulpit-pounding preacher and the irreligious professor are all attempting to tune their moral compasses after crawling out of a crater created by Jesus and his gospel. Progressives need to understand that we have all internalised the Christian revolution and we are all riffing off the ethics of Jesus of Nazareth and his followers whether we care to admit it or not.
Wright, N. T.; Bird, Michael F… Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (pp. 143-144). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
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Crickets are getting deafening. [I see Merv has posted something, while I’ve been laboring over this reply! Ah, well. Great minds and all that.]
In this post I’m going to quote a lot from Wright’s article that @Mervin_Bitikofer shared the other day. I will also add bolding to emphasize segments of quotes I think are especially important.
I don’t claim confusion. I am puzzled, as I don’t believe the statements that Wright makes necessarily line up or relate as closely as he claims they do. Let’s look at a few things.
Early in the article Wright said:
My proposal is that paying attention to Jesus as a real figure of first-century history can point some ways forward for the Church and, through the Church, for our misguided and muddled world. And for all this—and for the multiple resultant tasks in theology and mission—we need to understand, and put into practice, new ways of knowing: specifically, an epistemology of love.
This seems appropriate to me regarding the study of Jesus and his lifetime as well as the lives of his original disciples, particularly in light of the brief explanation Wright gives of “the epistemology of love” much later in the article:
The epistemology of love, applied to history, insists (along with Vico and other early critics of the Enlightenment) that understanding the past means entering sympathetically into the minds of people in cultures very different from our own. It is all too easy to project our own hopes and interests onto “the other.” Pure objectivity about other persons would appraise them at a distance, rather than engaging with them; pure subjectivity would use them to gratify one’s own whims or desires. Love means not just allowing others to be themselves but relishing them as being themselves, as being both other than ourselves and other than our initial hopes and expectations of them. Thus, the historian will study in full detail the thought world of the culture and people under investigation—its symbolic structure, its underlying taken-for-granted narratives, its characteristic praxis, and so on. This is the larger social and cultural structure that I have loosely and heuristically called “worldview.” It is a matter of the historian’s due diligence.
I take this relishing as part of the careful work of “rebuilding” a person in their time in order to understand them. However, this has to be done with objectivity, as well. Otherwise the historian is creating an idealized version of the person, much like the American myths regarding our “Founding Fathers,” for example, or whitewashed versions of characters from church history. That would not do. That is not history but mythology.
In dealing with science, I think Wright does far less well. In fact, I’m not sure he demonstrates a strong grasp of what “doing science” is. I can engage with, be fascinated by and explore nature – and praise God for it. I am sometimes nearly overwhelmed by God’s grandeur I see in nature. Some people do much more in more depth and have similar responses as creatures within an amazing creation. This is, however, not the same thing as practicing science.
Early modern scientists were often quite explicit about “thinking God’s thoughts after him” (Kepler’s words). They understood their task as responding to reality , not investigating it with supposedly neutral objectivity. To see the natural world as “creation,” not as a self-governing or self-making “nature,” is a big step in that direction, particularly because it puts the human researcher on the same footing as the research: as one creature to another.…
Clearly, the scientist who is a Christian has the added benefit of seeing herself in this way. But Wright seems to believe that this idea of delighting in the object of study, in attempting to “think God’s thoughts after him” are lacking from the work of the one who cannot practice science in this way, resulting in work that is also lacking in some way. How could this really be the case? If the scientist is not going to employ “gaps methodology” the work of the strict empiricist and the scientist who is a Christian, should appear identical to anyone outside their heads and hearts?
…This is where the biblical doctrine of the “image” stands out. The idea of the image comports with the idea of the cosmos as a vast temple. Humans are the image in this shrine, designed to stand at the threshold between heaven and earth, transmitting the loving stewardship of the creator into his world and translating the unspoken worship of all other creatures into articulate praise. In this context, to speak of humans “knowing” God, or “knowing” the rest of creation, would demand a higher value to the word “knowing” than we are accustomed to accord it.
I’m sorry, but what does this have to do with science as a formal area of study?! It’s beautiful theology. As a Christian, I can respond to it. A scientist-Christian should be able to respond to it and seek as any other Christian with a vocation (all of us) to use her vocation to serve and obey God – to carry out his stated will. But to act as images in God’s shrine is not a matter of science in itself and certainly makes no sense to the scientist who is not a Christian.
Image-bearers are called to be “knowers”— that is, to be suffused with a rich and personal knowledge of God, through which to bring blessing to his world; and to understand in all appropriate ways what the created order is all about, so as to sum up and express something of the reality of the richly varied creation. Both the suffusing and the understanding involve speaking words that construct the true reality . That is the prophetic vocation of the image-bearers, standing alongside their royal vocation of being stewards and their priestly vocation of summing up creation’s praises…
What is “speaking words that construct the true reality” in relation to science? How does the professional scientist do this in the actual practice of science? One cannot end an article or a write up or a grant proposal or … with a declaration that the true reality is God’s loving gift of creation! Can she? If not this, then what is Wright proposing?
…These vocations combine in a rich vocation of “knowing,” in which the scientist will relish paradigm-shifting discoveries, not least those that contradict a priori theory. Here we note an irony: Even as eighteenth-century science was challenging the theological a priori theories of the time, it was eager to set up its own, so that the evolution of species was approached not simply as a newly discovered bit of inductive knowledge from below, but as the necessary postulate from evolutionism , the Epicurean assumption that if the gods do not act within the world then the world must make itself; and with that “must” we have just as much a deduction, a top-down theory, as what was being rejected. If we could hold on to that distinction, a lot of current bother could be set aside.
My impression is that Wright is relying on stereotypes here as well as anthropomorphization of things that cannot have will or intent (the 18th century and the Enlightenment). It would, I think, be accurate to say that science is limited to comprehending the natural world; it is simply the wrong tool to use to understand God. But to employ an epistemology of love in an attempt to describe an overlap of heaven and earth in the way evolution works, to use Wright’s example, goes beyond the bounds of science. The Christian may see through love and faith that God is at work, of course. But if scientific work is to be consistent, as I understand from many, many, many BL discussions with IDers and YECers and Gappers and whoever else, the scientific work, methods, and descriptions produced by Christians must be undetectable from those produced by anyone else. Which, in the case of Wright’s example, must look like evolutionism. Or shall we Christians demand that non-christian scientists employ an epistemology of love in their research?
Wright has spoken in his Giffords, as well I think in this article, about the overlap of heaven and earth, that God is not off somewhere ignoring his creation, but here and active in it. As a Christian, yes, I understand that; I think it’s the case. But I perceive this by faith. I seek to live in light of this faith and in love and obedience to Jesus. As Wright never, as far as I remember, applies his arguments regarding the epistemology of love specifically to Christians I think he is at best overreaching.
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Overwhelmed with Wright reading over here these days! Your article, Terry’s 1978 article, Jesus and the powers, all the other stuff I’ll never get to.
Kierkegaard is gathering dust these days.
My brain is about to explode.
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Sorry about the firehose feed! Maybe the crickets in this thread are the blessing to give the brain some blessed relief. I do have some thoughts in response to your post above, but can post those later. I’ve been fairly busy with other stuff myself.
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- One of the most, or at least more troubling things about Wright that I find is that, like the naturalist John Muir, who wrote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”, Wright writes like he’s trying to cover as much of the Universe as he can for the average reader. For me, reading Wright is like tugging at a thread in a sweater, and before I know it, I’m naked, cold, and looking for a blanket to cover me.
- There’s a moral there somewhere, I think, maybe more than one.
- Searching Wright’s article that you reference, I note that there are 16 instances of the term “epistemology of love” (a term, by the way, that leaves me cold.) Sixteen instances which I would have to list on paper, read and re-read, and reflect on for a while in order to figure out what I’m supposed to do with or about it.
- So I did the next best thing: I googled the term and came across this short “read”, The Epistemology of Love by Dr. Steven Garber of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture .
- Garber did something interesting, IMO. He focused on the American novelist, Walker Percy, who wrote: Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome, among other things.
- The relevance? Here’s a paragraph from the middle of Garber’s essay:
- “The dreams and debates of modernity, cascading as they are into postmodernity, are always at the heart of the human condition. It cannot be otherwise, as we are never more and never less than sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. So we take our place as folks who long to love and to be loved. Percy understood that with an unusual eye: historically, philosophically, psychologically, politically, and, yes, theologically, seeing the complexity for Everyman and Everywoman. We want love, yet we also know how hard it is to love and to be loved.”
- Curious? Read the essay: the header says it’s only a 5 minute read.
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I have to rush off, so this will be short. But as a scientist, I agree with your puzzlement here, @Kendel , about how the “epistimology of love” is supposed to apply to conducting science. I don’t think the scientific method (methodological naturalism) operates on “love”. As you say, precisely because individual scientists may have personal biases, the scientific method is is designed (as much as possible) for replication by others precisely to control for those worldview biases. I’m not sure why Wright is praising Kepler? For not being an atheist who is “detached” from the world? But I know many atheist scientists who love and are enthusiastic about what they study, just as I know many Christian scientists who are so… I come to know my “image-bearing” role through my faith, not through science.
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An Amish farmer was once asked by somebody whether he was a Christian. The farmer’s response: “Ask my neighbor.”
The above anecdote recently came up for me in another context, but I’m wondering if it applies here. In that the wisdom showcased in the story is that whatever life or love or integrity (or lack thereof) is observed in me by my neighbors - that will be a more revealing picture for the inquisitor than any words he might solicit from my own mouth. In the same way - I don’t think Wright is advocating for science to somehow be done differently - he would be the last to put himself forward to give any advice for such a thing anyway; so I’m fairly certain he is not critiquing current scientific methodologies. But what I gather instead is that his critique is more for something much larger (that certainly includes science and our posture towards it and within it), and which would probably also transcend our tribal declarations that we outwardly wear - I.e. “I’m a Christian” - or “I’m an agnostic” etc. But most mature Christians would agree that a person’s true character is more revealed by their works than their words. (I.e. - ask my scientific colleague what they think of me and my integrity, and you’ll probably learn more about me than if I presumed to evaluate myself.) So it isn’t about trying to change science. It’s about the hearts and minds of the people already doing science - or any other tasks of life they’ve been allotted.
What is our view for the entire context of what we’re doing - and more importantly - why we’re doing it. As a person of integrity, hopefully I’m not lying or misrepresenting results to colleagues and/or competitors - that’s pretty basic professionalism that would be expected across all science - whether done by Christians or not. But what is my heart and mind even set on as I’m doing this (hopefully high quality) science? Am I pursuing some eugenics agenda that will end up being used against significant portions of population? Am I helping to develop devastating biological weapons systems that will be the scourge of large populations? Hopefully my alleged Christianity (if I claim such) has more than just passing influence on how I feel about pursuing such endeavors. An ethic of love should be our governing outlook that drives (or perhaps curtails) our pursuits.
That’s how I’m understanding Wright at the moment.
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I agree that
but doesn’t this apply to everything we do as Christians, and not uniquely to science? So then I’m still puzzled why Wright highlights Kepler’s scientific work as specifically praiseworthy? Or why Wright is focusing explicitly on “science” here (as opposed to human’s work generally)?
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My guess is that he views science (or maybe scientism) as the most substantial intellectual rival (in a philosophical sense) to Christianity. I.e. - many of most vocal critics of Christianity of the last couple of centuries have used (misused) science by trying to turn it into a ‘philosophical’ rival to what they caricature (often all-too-accurately) as typical Christian thought. So in a world of rivals, maybe Wright is just defaulting to what has been presumed as the biggest one to Christianity (despite the work of so many thinkers and organizations like Biologos).
Since Kepler is credited with the thought that ‘science is thinking God’s thoughts after him’ - maybe he’s holding up Kepler as an exemplar of how to contextualize science as an activity of praise? My guess is that if you pushed Wright about this, he would say that you’re absolutely right that for the Christian it is all areas of thought and activity (not just science) which are or should be subject to Christ.
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Agreed. Wright may be trying to argue against Scientism. But if a Christian scientist (lets use Kepler as an example) “thinks God’s thought’s after him”, that seems to be a result of his philosophy/theology and not a result of doing the actual science any differently than an atheist would. So, at the base of things, it seems to me that Wright merely wants to praise Kepler for being a Christian (for philosophically recognizing God’s role in things), as opposed to anything unique about his scientific technique…? What is the Epistomology of Love, then, as applied to science–the practice? Is it anything? Or is the epistemology only referring to the faith/philosophical position of the practitioner?
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I’m trying (with some difficulty) to think of an example of how science itself might be practiced differently as a result of having such an epistemology.
The only thing I’m coming up with is not so much from Wright as from the Catholic theologian Von Baltazar - “Love Alone is Credible”. (And I think Wright may actually have referenced him - unsurprisingly). Having read that work by Baltazar, I was impressed with his contrast between what he portrayed as a kind of dry or ‘dead’ or sterile science of studying an insect or a plant by having it cut apart (dead) on the lab table vs. studying it by going to it (alive) in its habitat and learning from it on its terms and by its life. Now - this isn’t a contrast between how Christians and non-Christians do things. He wasn’t simplistically asserting that Christians would all be in favor of the “living study” while only atheists and heathen would choose the dissection table in the lab. But I think he was contrasting the two methodologies (by whomever they may be practiced!) and privileging the latter as the one that has the most to teach an attentive learner. Now - I’m not even a life-sciences teacher (much less a professional biologist like yourself) - so I can imagine you would scoff at any privileging of one methodology over another here - especially as advocated by outsiders to the profession. Anatomical studies no-doubt have just as much place and legitimacy in their own specialty as field studies have in theirs. So maybe this is just a whole lot of nothing. But it’s all I’m coming up with at the moment for any possible influence that love itself might have that comes to bear in the actual practice of science. I have no problem thinking that one would rejoice more in the flourishing life functioning in its niche within its expected life cycle as opposed to seeing it lifeless and therefore not functioning at all. Of course it’s much easier to wax poetic about how lovely this all is if we’re speaking of some warm fuzzy and cute creature and not mosquitoes or some species of slime mold. But to each their own. I can imagine some scientists getting excited about whatever sorts of life they’ve taken to studying.
Maybe all this difficulty is just succeeding in highlighting how right you are that, in the end, this has no discernable effect on the actual practice of science (beyond the giving it some purpose and passion - motivation) from without.
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Maybe this could shed some light on the question: does a scientist do anything differently in the practice of her science within the philosophy of “thinking God’s thought’s after Him”.
A computer scientist might search for a “beautiful algorithm” for solving a problem, and not be content with an “ugly” algorithm. (I can use these terms in talking about inanimate things). The terms “beautiful” and “ugly” are not well-defined, but there is a lot of commonality among image-bearer (ie. all) computer scientists on what is “beautiful” and what is “ugly” in algorithms. Having said that, sometimes only an “ugly” method is known for a certain problem, and that is still something, and may be worthy of publication, and may be implemented to solve real-world problems. But a Christian computer scientist may have some extra motivation to search for deeper structure in a problem that doesn’t have a known “beautiful” solution. Of course, plenty of non-Christian computer scientists would also have such a motivation, beause often the search for “beauty” leads to important new fields of study. But there must be a philosophical aspect of working to improve on something that already “works”. Of course practical realities of time and economics often preclude spending time searching for more “beauty”, but the challenge can be put forward for future researchers.
I could try to think of an example of this in the history of computer science.
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I may not be a scientist, but I have been around many in various disciplines and mostly non-christians. I have seen utter joy explode, when the “beautiful” solution is achieved. I don’t think this is a marker.
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Not a marker in the sense of … only “believing Christian” scientists can experience this. But if you subscribe to the notion that all truth is God’s truth, then wouldn’t this unmitigated joy be a common grace [from God - whether or not that be acknowledged or known] shed to all who partake in any form of new understanding or insight into some bit of hitherto puzzling phenomenon?
I propose that the discussed “epistemology of love” is not so much an outcome of belonging to the correct religious tribe as it is a marker that one has made inroads into (or at least towards) this higher kingdom, even if they don’t declare their membership to any overtly religious tribe. One can hear echoes of Jesus very words to the religious elite of his day, and apply them now … “Look! The ‘atheists’ and ‘heathen’ are entering the kingdom ahead of you!”
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- The Resurrection of the Son of God. by N.T. Wright
- Contents: PART V Belief, Event and Meaning. Chapters 18-19, pages 685-736
- Just as the book could have grown considerably if I had entered into debate with, or even simply cited, all the writers from whom I have learned, whether in agreement or disagreement, it could easily have doubled in length if I had explored all the interesting-looking secondary roads that lead off this particular highway. There are lots of side-issues that get a cursory mention, if that Those who continue to work on the Turin Shroud, for instance, may be disappointed to find no further mention of it here. l am aware that I have annotated some discussions much more fully than others, and that in some cases a bare statement of my own view has had to stand in for the detailed debate with colleagues and friends that should ideally have taken place. This is so particularly in Part II, on Paul, for which I hope to make amends, to some extent at least, in the next volume in the series. My main concern here has been to lay out the large-scale argument which seems to me in urgent need of clear statement. I envisage the present book, unlike either of its predecessors, as essentially a simple monograph with a single line of thought, of which I provide an advance map in the first chapter.
- Source cited for the Shroud of Turin: Wbanger, Mary, and Alan Wbanger. 1998. The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery. Franklin, Tenn.: Providence House Publishers
- Just as the book could have grown considerably if I had entered into debate with, or even simply cited, all the writers from whom I have learned, whether in agreement or disagreement, it could easily have doubled in length if I had explored all the interesting-looking secondary roads that lead off this particular highway. There are lots of side-issues that get a cursory mention, if that Those who continue to work on the Turin Shroud, for instance, may be disappointed to find no further mention of it here. l am aware that I have annotated some discussions much more fully than others, and that in some cases a bare statement of my own view has had to stand in for the detailed debate with colleagues and friends that should ideally have taken place. This is so particularly in Part II, on Paul, for which I hope to make amends, to some extent at least, in the next volume in the series. My main concern here has been to lay out the large-scale argument which seems to me in urgent need of clear statement. I envisage the present book, unlike either of its predecessors, as essentially a simple monograph with a single line of thought, of which I provide an advance map in the first chapter.
- Disappointed indeed. Wright writes a book about the resurrection of Jesus and all he does is say, to keep my book shorter, I’ll mention the Shroud of Turin and say nothing about it.
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Different methods are needed to find different information. They are not a substitute for each other. Dissection can be performed respectfully in the interest of the living. How much of medical understanding has had to be gained that way?
I think Von Baltazar is waxing poetic, as you said. Or creating categories where there are none.