That seems like a good plan. I’m looking forward to a better introduction to Kierkegaard’s thinking and from one who does not “wish” to read him as a fideist.
As far as the necessary being and uncaused cause in classical apologetics, based on what I’ve read I don’t expect Penner to disprove the arguments, but I do see how he finds the arguments distasteful in the present context. Not so sure it was really all that different in the premodern context, the emphasis was probably different and the culture was doubtless worlds apart. I am also interested to see how this contrast is developed in the book.
Jumping in here to say that Kruger’s Canon Revisited is a stupidly good and pleasantly easy read. Not to mention a breath of fresh air in a domain of study that can often be dominated by academic cynicism.
Have you read his book on second century Christianity, “Christianity at the crossroads”?
Liam, thanks for this recommendation. There is plenty of controversy these days over the source material for our faith. I often feel myself worked over by a mugger. “Just take my purse and wallet, will you!?! Can I hang on to my Bible?” I have no idea when I can fit this book in, but it sounds refreshing.
Edit: Aaaargh! So many of the books I want are not available in the format I need in a library database, or my Bookshare account. I value copyright. I despise DRM. Requested digital version through Bookshare. We’ll see if they “make it so.” $30 is way pricey for epub from Crossway.
Liam,
I am looking into some strange things that have happened with messages between me and some other participants lately. If you have not received notifications of PMs from me, would you please check your emails and let me know, if you get those but not other notifications? Thanks!
The discussion of Penner’s book on the thread @Kendel created got me remembering this song by the Crashtest Dummies, a group name I somehow identify with in this context.
I was wondering what the lyrics meant so I asked. Google shuffled its feet and stared right back at me, then delivered this among a number of other suggestions:
My $0.02 :
1: God creates the universe and gives mankind everything that is great.
2: On top of all that, he sets aside some time to do absolutely nothing but enjoy paradise.
3: Mankind starts to ask questions about what life is like somewhere else.
4: God reflects their question in a parable:
a: Boy wakes with blue hair and thinks its great.
b: Boy worries about having to explain it and decides it might not be so great.
5: The people don’t get the message.
The parable from God’s perspective:
a: God created something great.
b: Now people want him to explain it and it might not be so great to have to go through all that.
It’s like demanding that a magician who just entertained you for an hour should now explain all of his tricks. Everyone was happy, why spoil it? Why do you need more than paradise?
From Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” (chapter 2: The Maniac)
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not attacking logic: I only say that this danger [madness] does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his necessitarianism dragged him… He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin.
…
Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so to make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
Maybe all of that would also be relevant to the Penner thread where Penner has a thing or two to say about the limitations of human rationality!
…And from myself - a math / geometry / logic teacher no less. I should probably be visiting the language arts teacher for therapy.
[But in fairness to myself … I never much cared for Chess either. And derive much more pleasure from immersion in a poetic expression or the fantasy of shared literary voyage. So maybe my soul is already saved.]
Just got this message from our health system leader, Tina Freese-Decker… It’s not a typical book reading, but seemed profound about putting priorities first, and caring for the person rather than the task. I would like to hear what you think.
Thanks.
July 26, 2022
Across our system, state and nation, there are so many stories and issues competing for our attention, it can be easy to lose focus and difficult to know what we should be paying attention to. So, I want to share a story that I also shared at last week’s Town Hall, about the importance of putting things into perspective.
Back in 2019, the professional golfer Brandon Matthews was attempting an eight-foot birdie putt when a yelp from the gallery distracted him. As a result of being distracted, he not only missed the sudden death shot, which cost him the tournament, but he also lost the chance to play in the British Open. At first, he thought someone had intentionally distracted him, and naturally, he was frustrated and in shock. But then he learned that the yelp came from a fan with Down syndrome, who was just extremely excited to be there.
When he learned the truth, Brandon asked to meet with him. And when they met, Brandon opened up his arms and gave the fan a huge hug and asked if he was doing okay and if he was having fun watching golf. Brandon said later that missing out on that tournament win, and that prestigious British Open, stung. But he put it into perspective. He said, “Some things are bigger than golf. And this was one of them.”
Putting things into perspective is so very important. At times, we all miss out on things. We feel pressure and stress for very understandable reasons. And we experience extreme situations that we just can’t control. The lesson of Brandon Matthews is, we don’t always know what others are going through. Rather than giving in to frustration, we need to make sure that we’re treating each other with compassion, respect and love. And we need to engage in conversations with one another and make sure that we are really listening to each other.
We all know that there’s a lot coming at us, including some complex issues to navigate. There are and there will always be environmental and societal events that impact our plans. But they do not alter our mission and our vision. If anything, these “distractions” add to the reason why we are here, why we do what we do, and why we must double down on our goals and strive for a future where health is simple, affordable, equitable and exceptional. I am incredibly proud of our organization, for how we support each other through every single challenge. Together, we are helping people and caring for people.
“His philosophy is, as it were, a lived philosophy. And one of his objections to Hegelianism is that one cannot live by it. Obviously, Kierkegaard has to universalize. Without universalization there would be only autobiography. At the same time it is abundantly clear that it is the actor who speaks rather than the spectator.”
If I may hop in here and humbly disagree with Mr Chesterton, for a moment. William Cowper was categorical not driven mad by John Calvin (since he was dead) nor by Calvinism. The cause was that William Cowper suffered from a chronic mental illness. His affliction was physical, medical and personal, not theological or even logical.
Might his theology have exacerbated his condition? Possibly. However, given that Calvinists do not have the Christian monopoly on neither mental illness nor debilitating doubt, I’d hardly say that this is damning evidence of predestination’s “ugly and alien logic”. Personally, I would have thought that Chesterton fans would be embarrassed by the man’s co-opting of Cowper’s mental anguish for theological point scoring. I wonder, for example, how people would react if Chesterton had said, that Charles Spurgeon suffered from depression because of the “ugly and alien logic” of his Baptist denomination?
That said, I don’t know much at all of Chesterton’s work. It has always been on my list to read Orthodoxy but there was always been something that seemed more pressing to read. So, if I am missing some kind of context that provides further detail to Chesterton’s Cowper reference, I heartily welcome it. Otherwise, to me, it just seems a bit glib on Chesterton’s part.
I can’t speak for his view on poetry, but John Calvin and many who followed him didn’t put much stock in religious artwork, you just have to see the inside of the church building in Geneva that Calvin pastored to see that. This is in my view an example of the Reformation pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction. Driven partly by a godly desire to keep the Bible central to church worship but also by an overreaction to the Roman Catholic use of icons and artwork. Sadly, on art inside the church walls, the baby went out with the bath water.
Now I feel a little guilty for offering you the quote and the microphone so glibly on the basis of recollecting how many times you have given a larger frame to counter other dismissals of Calvinism’s positions. Being quite likely the theologically most ignorant person on these forums it never occurred to me to differentiate between the nan and his theology, let alone between that approach and what it means in the lived experience of those whose faith is buoyed by it. I can’t remember you glibly @‘ing me with a similar invitation when something casually dismissive of aspects of my beliefs (or the absence of any proper ones) comes up. For that I feel quite appropriately ashamed. It won’t happen again.
That you may, of course! And I’m glad you do. Chesterton is Catholic, through and through - and so all of us Protestants do tend to attract his jaundiced eye, I think. And in any case, I think he does make sweeping “over-the-top” claims in rhetorical service of his larger point - which (as I see it) is that there is more philosophical mischief afoot in our veneration of rationalism than there is in our practice of poetry. Of course not all Chess players go mad, and poetry does not prevent all madness. And I don’t know of Cowper or Gilpin at all and am happy to accept your corrective word here regarding Cowper’s condition. Perhaps Chesterton’s larger point does suffer from the checkered success of the examples he chose. I don’t know - and maybe that’s worth more discussion.
Chesterton just strikes me as someone who, at one moment, is happy to poke quite savagely at our grandiose self-appraisals of how rational we all are, but in all his other literary moments is happily making the best use of all the best rationalism he can muster. So it makes him (and Lewis) interesting characters to be reading in parallel with our considerations of the influence of Modernism over in the apologetics thread.
And kudos to Ms. Freese-Decker.