Missed this before but I’d like you to know I agree with this with the caveat that I conceive of God so differently that I really am obliged to describe it as that which gives rise to and supports God belief. But even though I don’t think of it as a being (Being?) apart I do think of it as absolutely real, dynamic and important. I think of it as realizing you’re not whole and worse the part that is narrowly you is almost insignificant except that, in order to accrue any fulfillment or meaning in life at all, you have to basically serve your better half and rely more in its wisdom. It is very hard to formulate what this exactly is; it isn’t a thing but it isn’t like another person who wants to engage in any of our language games. It doesn’t need to hear from me because it is only through it that I know myself at all. And it obviously doesn’t have a lot it thinks I need to hear about it, probably understanding that anything I can’t pick up on a feeling/intuitive level would just be beyond the medium or me and a waste of both our time. If this were anything like The Christian God or Jesus it hasn’t seen fit to draw my attention to that and frankly I doubt the trademark is one of its driving concerns. If it works for others great! And I think so much about the way it works provides a good roadmap for what really matters, you know love your better half more than anything else - but your neighbors too so don’t be a jerk.
I’m interested in what that means. Are you referring to how badly Christianity is perceived? How bad apologetics in general is seen? I have no doubt you are correct, just wondering about specifics.
An endless muddle of blogs, websites, and articles for and against Christianity. It appeared hopeless.
…
Or how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom.
Mike, it’s interesting that you mention this. Unlike many, many (maybe most?) people here, I have not spent time in discussion boards, until I came here. And that was mostly out of curiosity, as in: “Hmm. What DO they do here?” My foreign-ness has had to be obious to lots of people in the neighborhood, so it’s kind of people to put up with my awkwardness. Likewise, there are not many blogs I’ve found that I’ve been interested in. So, I’ve missed the online cacophony you have in mind. Thank goodness.
I have 2, now 3, girlfriends with whom I have been corresponding in hand-writing on paper for quite some time. My most recent correspondant is a friend I know from work, who is a brilliant scholar (unlike me) and a Christian. She recently proposed writing to each other, because as a fairly extreme introvert, she’s done with people by the time she’s home, and finds it workable to share thoughts through paper and ink. She is looking for a place in the Church. Lately, I am finding myself surrounded more and more by educated, professional women my age and younger who are doing the same thing.
All this to say, my experience as someone looking for answers, has been very slow. I have never felt an enormous urgency that I think many people here do. However in the last, oh say, 6 years that has changed. But not so much find answers to questions, but to find a church home that will not look ascance at me, my husband, and my daughters who all don’t fit a number of common evangelical molds. My husband and I are good chameleons both at church and work. But my slip is more apt to show. My husband is better at keeping his peace. I’m just exhausted by feeling less and less a part of the community I’m supposed to be able to look to for strength.
I’d been a part of our old church’s library for about 21 years, when we left, and had been running it for at least 10. This was an excellent opportunity for me to improve the collection, but also run across books with (to me) valuable theology. But no one I ran across was working with postmodernism. Also, it’s a field where you need to know something before you lay down money. I wasn’t looking for more Doug Groothuis. I was looking for authors who could deal faithfully with the valid criticisms put forth by all sorts of theorists. That takes more time and research than I had as a parent, volunteer, professional, etc.
Thinking about what you said, I can’t imagine being someone in the middle of a serious faith crisis and being subjected to that kind of rhetorical and emotional violence. I can’t imagine what that would have done to our friend Bill, who was finishing deconstructing, when we met him in ‘92. Well, actually I can imagine, since he had already spent some time in serious counseling and the psych hospital. Bill knew eight ways from Sunday how to make the pain stop.
Bill is someone I have in mind, every time people get slapped around or trolled here for being open about experiencing doubt or deconstruction or temptation or a different kind of faith or no faith. If someone has the guts to put their deepest thoughts and fears out for public view, I think they deserve more respect than it sounds like they would get elsewhere as the norm and certainly more than they sometimes do here. Awful. No thanks.
If you read this far, you deserve an award. And my thanks. KJD
That is what would be faced by the poor soul who wants to “hear all sides”, take in all the data, ponder all the recommended players and voices out there (who are indeed legion). That would seem to be another thing consistent with Penner’s critique of the modern program.
I think I had read that before - thanks for reminding me of it. You and Kendal have already added response to this, so I’m not sure if anything else needs adding. Given Penner’s interview responses, I shouldn’t be surprised if I learned that Penner would agree with your critique now.
@MarkD ,
I think I’ve brought order to the post I had hoped earlier to work over, without publishing.
The only thing I would add to your thoughts here is that we (should try to) learn at least some of the external contours of others’ identities as well as our own. However, because it’s impossible for any of us to control the perception of our “published selves,” we should approach our own perception of those we bump up against cautiously. Recognizing the limitations of our perception and imagining of others seems like an important facet of interacting with others, particularly in the realm of apologetics.
Mark, thank you for working more to provide a fuller description of what you mean by “what gives rise to and supports God-belief.” You’ve endured my odd questions over the last year or so, as I try to get a handle on what you mean.
I’m not sure how/that working this idea out, while we read the book will fit in the discussion, but it might. I think there could certainly be room to come back to it in a discussion of apologetics, after we finish hammering through the book, though. We’ll see how it goes.
Quick comment:
A contradiction is when A equals non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. Like being the father and son to the same person.
I never liked the term trans-rational, but in the way I see reality to be ultimately super-natural, so I would see it also being super-rational.
Perhaps this video will already have been shared but it strikes me as something that might be of interest to science embracing Christians, a talk Penner gave in 2017 titled: Scientific and Natural Explanations of Supernatural Belief
Edited to say…
I always look for the direct Google link but this one from the Canadian site comes with time stamps to subtopics which could help. Frankly I wish I had a transcript instead.
- My initial objection stands: Spinoza made no mistake, “the world is rational”.
- To suggest otherwise is to suggest that any attempt to make any sense of the Cosmos–in part or in whole–is ‘a fool’s errand’, in which case my agnostic atheist acquaintance was right: “If the universe actually does not make sense, then we should just fold our tents and get drunk or something instead of wasting our time trying to explain the universe.”
- As my second witness, I call the Psalmist:
- [Psalm 19:2-5] “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the works of his hands.”
- As my third witness, I call Paul:
- [Romans 1:19] “For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them.”
@MarkD
Move your cursor to the > button, but don’t click on it. At the bottom of the screen, you should seen a menu bar that allows you to click on the Youtube version of the video, which you can find HERE. There, you’ll see this:
Scroll down to the three dots in the lower right hand corner and click on them, which will give you the “Show Transcript” option.
I could copy the “Time-stamped Transcript” for you, if you want. Or you can do it yourself.
That makes perfect sense. One of the things I appreciate about Kierkegaard is the “Christian spirit” that moves through and enlivens his work. To force Kierkegaard to adopt “OUNCE” would be a crime against philosophy.
I’m perfectly amenable to the idea that OUNCE produces blind spots. But I want to speak up for the merits of OUNCE when it is challenged. I’m not trying to say to Penner “not so fast!” I’m enjoying being challenged by Penner. But there are plenty of responses a modernist could make to some of his statements. I can’t help but say those statements aloud. Because there are some counterpoints worth considering, IMO.
I quite enjoyed the juxtaposition in Penner’s Alice in Wonderland vs Star Trek metaphor. I’ve given it a great deal of consideration since I read it. Penner makes a good point. Our “Star Trek” view of the world is lacking. In many ways, the actual world more resembles the confusing mess of Alice’s Wonderland, while we prosaically imagine it to be otherwise.
Perhaps Kierkegaard speaks to this place in our society… this Wonderland chaos… where up is down, right is left… where the reality is nevertheless Jesus Christ (ie. Christ is here too), but --according to Kierkegaard-- we shouldn’t assume that procedural logic will get us to that reality. We need something else…
I appreciated Penners thoughts on Craig. I consider WLC head and shoulders above those who would merely assert by dogma. I appreciate his willingness to work within reason and rationality because those things are difficult to work within and subject one’s beliefs to. (Philosophy painstakingly does that, and I appreciate that about philosophy.) I also couldn’t help but to admire the integrity of Craig’s academic programme which prized reason above all else.
But at the same time, I can’t help but agree Penner’s criticism in all this: that Craig filters the truth of Jesus Christ through these institutional constraints. The death and resurrection of Christ are arguable intellectual fact: that’s why you should serve Christ. Because of the reasonableness of it all. That’s what Craig is saying. I understand Penner’s dissatisfaction with all this. If Craig is right, why wasn’t Jesus a logician?
I spent a lot of chapter 1 and 2 having much the same reaction to Penner as what you describe here. “What do you mean, suggesting that human rationality has nothing outside itself for appeal?” Scientists will happily point you to creation itself which is going to cast a significant vote on how well your ‘rationality’ stacks up. So it isn’t as if human reason is just completely untethered to any reality outside itself.
My own answer to this then (which I think would be Penner’s response) is that Penner isn’t trying to give us some new tool for exploring the cosmos, nor is he questioning the efficacy of our newly minted modernist tools toward that particular exploration. He is questioning its efficacy for answering the higher philosophical questions - the ones that religion take interest in, and ones that many (though not all) of us around here would agree that science cannot address. Penner has his sights set on the “God questions”, the ethics and meaning and beauty and value questions. And it is with regard to these that Penner thinks modernism has made a mess of it.
In a nutshell:
Is OUNCE the right tool for the job at hand?
I watched this video a while back. I felt it was worth my time, particularly the Q & A at the end.
For our engineering and cosmos exploration programs anyway!
Awesome quote, man. People say Plato and Spinoza made the blunder of assuming rationality in the world. But I don’t think it’s that much of a blunder. If either postulated that the real is necessarily rational, they were wrong. But still,…a bunch of things in the world are understandable through rationality.
Maybe not everything. But most of the things that matter to us are graspable by reason.
CHAPTER 2 : COMMUNITY SOURCED THOUGHT QUESTIONS
Check for additions. Last edited: 8/1/2022
Kendel:
One:
I hope to hear the group’s take on these four statements Penner makes on page 48 and 49:
“Note how the apologist debater functions something like an expert witness who is uniquely gifted and highly trained–and therefore especially qualified–to articulate and defend Christian truth in a way the rest of us cannot.”
“Objections to Christian faith in modernity come from the intelligentsia–from the highly sophisticated and intellectually rigorous modern scientific worldview.”
“As the challenge is for Christians to articulate the epistemological warrent or justification for their beliefs in terms that are objective, universal, and neutral, the average Christian in the pew may not possess the intellectual qualifications or have the requesite training to defend the faith. It is difficult, often, to even understand the objections to faith, let alone know how to respond to them.”
“I suggest modern Christian apologetics subtly undermines the very gospel it seeks to defend and does not offer us a good alternative to the skepticism and ultimate meaninglessness of the modern secular condition.”
And finally, how Penner’s description of the modern apologist square’s with this.
Two:
This quote on page 73My strategy to this point has been “deconstructive” as I have tried to show how modern epistemology and its assumptions about human reason are merely onedevolves into ideology.
leads me to ask, what do you read/have you read outside of white, male, western philosopy/theory/literature? Penner has not overtly stated until here (that I remember) the cultural grounding of OUNCE. I wish he had. It’s of enormous importance to his argument. Reading widely of texts from non-white, non-western, non-male, non-straight writers is revelatory.
Three:
A plea–Footnote 64 is nearly opaque to me. Can anyone help provide clarity? Much appreciated!!!
Posted with misgivings.
Well and good.
- But my point is that, unless I (or We) agree that “fact” is a useful and meaningful construct, then “fact-gathering” is not a useful and meaningful enterprise.
- Assuming that fact-gathering is a useful and meaningful enterprise, the questions arise: “How many facts do I/We need?” and “How shall I/We interpret the facts we have?”
- At that point, allhell breaks loose.
- A note about “reading Penner”: Reading Penner is kind of like mountain-climbing; there are altitudes where breathing becomes difficult, and there are altitudes where breathing becomes impossible. The impact of the altitudes is relative to some extent, depending on your physical condition, skills, and stamina. Mine is limited.
You aren’t alone. I think that attempted adjustment challenges all of us.
And that is the perfect modernist manifesto, right there! (I exaggerate, to make a point.) I can’t imagine Penner (or pre-moderns) disagreeing with us - yes, what we now call “facts” are important - many of them probably worth sharing and arguing over, even. I think the challenge is for us to dethrone “facthood” (which really means “our grasp of facts” - that’s the inescapable PoMo caveat talking right there) from being our centrally enthroned touchpoint for our faith.
This makes the modernist feel naked. Without facts, what am I? What is my knowledge? What is my faith? For the modernist (Like Descartes), facts - ones for which we can have certitude, are the barest starting point. Premoderns weren’t bereft of what we now call “facts” or propositions. If I’m not mistaken - premoderns probably didn’t have a word like our “fact”, did they? I can’t remember if I read this from Penner or somewhere else, or maybe I’m just imagining it. But they certainly claimed confidence about things (what we would now label as fact claims.) And they had their language’s version of our word “Truth”. But, as Penner discusses, that word was much more expansive for them. I’m not so sure they would have wasted it on trivial things like “did I tell the truth about what I had for breakfast” - though the notion of falsehoods (and the command not to tell them) certainly was in full use. But John makes use of the word Truth and declares that Jesus himself is the Truth. Even today we can think of someone as being true - usually meaning faithful or dependable, it referred to something more significant than just the percentage of their propositions found to be factual.
What if we still have and allow for these “facts” - even insisting on some as the Spirit may lead, but that the whole enterprise of me building and maintaining a catalogue of facthood is put off to the side as not central to what I’m called to do? Some might be called to attend to that - maybe the spirit does give them a mission of sorting out good from bad, authentic from bogus, etc. But it should be Christ on the throne calling the shots, and our pursuit of facts - our pushing of “facts” ought to be at his pleasure and in his service. And whatever we think we know intellectually, even if it’s correct and qualifies as objectively factual, may not be the important thing called for in any given exchange we have with a particular person.
As a sort of transitional question that might bridge chapter 1 and 2 material, here is something that I’ve been wondering about as I was going back to peruse Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy”.
Is there a century or a part of some century that anyone would put forward as the ‘zenith’ or perhaps a kind of golden age apex of modernism? And if so what period would you nominate?
What got me thinking of this was seeing how Chesterton’s late ninetheenth, early 20th century penchant for logic and using conversational opposition (Can anybody remind of the word for that? …didactic isn’t quite it) dialectic [Thanks, Mike] to lead his readers instructionally. You can see this influence on Lewis. It is a very mature form of modernism - the very kind Penner has in his sights. They wear it proudly and well - and very much unconsciously. I.e. - though Lewis is deep enough and reflective enough to not let all such presuppositional thinking and methods go entirely un-noted, he nonetheless assumes that mantle as his largely unquestioned armor brought to bear without question for nearly everything he addresses.