As an aside, I am strongly enthusiastic about Paul, hence my strapline. All criticism of him is based on rejecting Luther’s second rate mistranslation or anachronism.
1 Like
Paul may have gotten himself there … but what I heard these two agreeing on was how radical this idea was (that God might be present in a mere man) at the time, and how this would not have occurred to any ‘good Jew’ … and they certainly wouldn’t have taken it sitting down, so-to-speak. Another thing to remember, is that Paul’s conversion (and transition to his ‘new line of work’) seems sudden to us readers, but we tend to forget that he spent a few years after his Damascus road experience in apparent retreat for study, contemplation, meeting with disciples, etc before he began his ministry in earnest.
1 Like
Can I talk you into a reminder of what that was to which you refer? Or a link or reference to where it’s already been discussed before?
1 Like
Barth thought so. So he stitched it up at Richmond and Chicago! ‘Jesus loves me, this I know…’.
1 Like
To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, ‘Deconstruct! Deconstruct! Deconstruct!’. One can easily cut through that Gordian knot. Nature is entirely, parsimoniously, sufficient. Everyone is in a position to agree with that, not subject to abstrusely esoteric knowledge, but due to common sense, which includes the hermeneutic of suspicion with regard to the fallacy of incredulity, and, young Mark, the axiom of eternity, and the validity of rationality. Even though nature is not ultimately rational, not apprehendable in somewhat esoterically having negative entropy in dark energy accelerating the expansion of spacetime. The ineffable complexity of nature still does not imply meaning, agency, intentionality, emergent consciousness beyond creatures like us.
Ah … had to read up on that a bit. Thanks.
It seems to me too that there is a distinction to be made between “commony accessible” reason - the sort that all of us ‘commoners’ can be expected to have, versus the highly sophisticated mental gymnastics exercised by an elite few either by highly distinguished natural ability and/or highly advanced education. When Paul exhorts others to ‘reason together’ about matters of faith, or he expresses concern that not just our Spirits, but also our minds should be productive, I think most would agree he would be referring to a level of reason accessible to most everybody.
Of course, part of our “common reason” may be the very thing that also prompts us to listen to and learn from any gifted geniuses in our midst. To ignore such gifts may be an inexcusable neglect of our own common reason, so even this doesn’t seem to weigh heavily one way or the other with how Penner is characterizing “genius”.
3 Likes
Regarding the N.T.Wright / Tom Holland interview - that may provide at least one more clue among many of the possible differences between modernity and pre-modernity: the status of victimhood. For pre-moderns, victimhood was a reality to be accepted. And (according to Wright and Holland), it was Christianity that slowly (and very radically) turned this on its head to where today, a claim of victim-status has become synonymous with a claim of right to at least some special dispensation or consideration, if not even a claim to power itself. (It could be the privilege of power itself speaking here, if this observation is offered with an edge of opprobrium or lament - hence dicey partisan waters are fully in play.) But in any case, to hear these two tell it, such elevation for the victim was unthinkable before Jesus and Paul made that radical sharp turn, changing western civilization ever since.
- Granted, if and when I meet a genius, I’m not likely to inquire about where he or she got their Roman tutelary spirit, but “expert” and “expertise” seem to gloss over the fact–or at least my belief–that geniuses are born, not “self-made”; brilliant, not just erudite or clever; creative innovators, not just skilled experts.
- One does not have to be a theist or a Christian to be a genius. Nor does one have to be a male or a female, white, peer-reviewed; wealthy, a product of the best schools; have power, social-standing, authority, nor be certified by a human commission.
- Being a genius is “in the genes”, not in the environment: and we get our genes at conception. If I’m not a genius, I don’t sit around hoping that I’ll become one or wishing I could become one.
1 Like
Well I am in such a position at least. But I find no warrant for insisting all others must be as well. Maybe they are but if they insist they are not then I’m inclined to allow that how the world seems to me and what I take to be our place in it may not be the arbiter of what must seem to be so for all others. Looking around at things in the world I’m far more sure of what is reasonable for a person to believe. But if it is our own subject-hood that is to be examined with an eye to determining what conclusions are inescapable for everyone then I start with the conviction that all are entitled to their own opinion and all I can do is own mine. I am not as ready to fortify what is really just my own view with the supposed testimony of parsimony and rationality. I do not because I cannot speak for those disembodied qualities and I don’t cede to anyone else the genius/expert status to do so either. Whenever anyone else claims to, I always look for the curtain behind which I expect to find just another little man like myself projecting a great and powerful presence which is illusory.
There is much to despise in Modernist Christian apologetics but I find the efforts that arise to combat them on other side no less guilty and no more noble. In matters of the empirical I’m glad there are experts and where their process has been vetted within their fields I freely accept and will make use of their conclusions where I have need of it. But faith in what we are and what we are here for will never bend the knee to the authority of anyone’s claims to genius/expert status in the realms of the subjective. Certainly everyone is justified to hold in suspicion the claims of experts such as Krause and Dawkins when those extend outside their fields.
2 Likes
I watched the discussion when you first posted it but my reactions are conflicted. It was interesting to learn more about Paul and why he is so highly regarded. Like @vulcanlogician I’ve always been puzzled at how his words and ideas so often eclipse those of Jesus in importance or emphasis let’s say. Why not Paul’ians instead of Christ’ians given that valuation? What I gather now is that Christian’s regard Paul as important apostle bearing “expert knowledge from God” regarding how to live their lives in light of of Jesus’ life and death, maybe especially since like all of us Paul wasn’t there and so perhaps is more relatable?
Of course from my point of view the direct line between the advent of Christianity to our evolving regard for human rights is not as clearly causal rather than correlative, but I don’t rule it out.
2 Likes
Om a very simple man me. As I said, everyone is in the position if they can ‘just’ look out the window and think doggedly, taking no BS (my favourite Makaton sign is for that), no esotericism, no intellectualism, no claim, along unsparingly simple, rational, minimal lines. Which is an extreme minority pursuit it turns out. Most of us, we the folk, are swamped most of the time by the passions. I was. Only for half a century and more. Sex and death. A great cocktail. Especially for religious. Like me. Although there have always been clear thinking folk, shorn of superstition. Too little, too late I’ve been forced in to their ranks. I wish I hadn’t been: Ignorance was bliss. It was Hell actually, but that was OK. But there’s no going back.
Being a fully paid up Humean, I don’t expect anyone to understand anything. Especially as they don’t, they can’t. It’s a fairy godmother effect. Having it doesn’t benefit you. Worse, it doesn’t benefit anyone else either. More like Seneca. At least it makes one ‘philosophical’. Stoical. I was offered diamorphine once for mind wiping pain that affected my speech. Heroin. But I declined. It passed in a couple of weeks. Idiopathic IBS. Learned a lot about myself. Not enough of course. Caring for my demented mother who’d always been a disappointment to me exposed… lack beyond that.
1 Like
Because as great as Christians may consider Paul to be, they are then forced to note what Paul teaches … that it is all laid at the feet of Christ. That’s why Paul and Co. (like Barnabas) can be so horrified (as they actually were!) at the thought that people might want to worship them instead.
2 Likes
But not so simple as to carry no bias into your thinking as we all do.
Here it is. I see you are a fundamentalist of the school of nothingbuttery. Only that which fits simply into a rational view point is to be allowed. That way you can dismiss every other possible perspective without the bother of seeking to understand what motivates them. You can just assume that it can’t be anything of value. Very tidy approach to execute too. If anyone objects you can try to shame them out of their immature avoidance of the plain advantage of nothing-but-rationality. If you repeat it often and loud enough it might work. 
But just because it works so well with empirical matters is no reason to think it will apply as well to an understanding of what we are and what should matter to us. If it actually is a possible let alone superior approach that would need a different foundation than science and I don’t think there is one that is suitably objective, universal and neutral.
So no worship of God’s mouthpiece(s), though they can pass on guidance regarding what the relationship with God does require. That’s reasonable provided you accept that an intermediary is needed to understand what that relationship requires. I don’t doubt that the Christian tradition does that but of course I do doubt that it alone can do so. That gets us to a snag that every modern Christian apologist fails to heed as readily as every hyper rationalist overlooks the possible value of any arational approach.
We are very sensitive about power dynamics around this today - and Paul was not unaware of it either. It should come more easily for us one would think, as we’ve been breathing more egalitarian air than in Paul’s time. So if one person today claims to have God’s uncontested word for all the rest, we look askanse and immediately think: “cult”. But if we accept that each member of the body has something of God to offer the rest, and nobody thinks they “own” God as in being the sole mouthpiece, then we’re fine and we call that “church”. And I personally see no reason (now) that this same principle doesn’t apply to the world at large outside the church. The church does not “own” God any more than any individual in it does. So we are all obliged to keep humility at hand no matter whose company we’re keeping.
4 Likes
I would say “doesn’t own” in a “lose your civil liberty” sense if you don’t agree with Paul.
The Church however does own by way of adoption the blessings of the New Covenant.
Merv, I haven’t had a chance to hear this (or any of the recent extra materials), but I want to address the term victim in conjunction with Penner’s book. I don’t remember him using the term in the book. I tried searching electrically as well, and got no hits on “victim.” Although I admit the search function is not great, the word doesn’t seem common in the book.
This is important. We in dominant culture often feel protest is a claim of victimhood, even when it is criticism of oppressive systems by anyone. Penner is very clear that by involving themselves in the modern apologetic paradigm, Christians easily involve themselves in a system of oppression. Penner mentions Craig’s desire through apologetics to establish a dominant “Christian” culture that acknowledges his particular propositional construal of Christian faith as the correct one . Pg 61. This is precisely oppression and on a number of fronts. The implication is there, that there would be victims, but Penner is looking at level of systems here, and that Christians have no business involving ourselves in faith by dominance or force.
1 Like
Yeah - it’s some other interactions I have going on the side that have been ringing the victim status bell, and so my ears perked up on it in both the Luke Burgis (memetic desires) interview as well as this more recent N.T. Wright/Holland interview. You’re right … Penner has zero hits on the word “victim” - so it is not directly addressed in his book. I only relate it here because it might be an interesting facet of our quest to tease apart pre-modern from modern.
I’m not sure where you’re going here. But I suppose I could agree so long as one is willing to allow for an extremely broad definition of church … as in it is any and everybody across the world that allows themselves to be used by God to advance God’s kingdom. And actually, sadly - that might prove to be an extremely narrow definition of church if one focuses on the “narrow is the way, and few are those who find it…” observation. But it would be broad in terms of crossing not only denominational lines, but probably religious and philosophical lines of nearly every kind. “God without borders” so to speak. The borders are all of our own making.
2 Likes
Agreed.
“Dominance” is such a loaded word. Is Penner really going to suppose that Craig can have no humility accompanying his essential apologetic? Am I as a science teacher not showing adequate humility if I don’t grant flat-earthers equal time in my classroom? Since we all believe in Truth, how do we dodge being accused of domination if we see evidence converging in one direction? But I digress for the umpteeenth time back into these easier science questions which is not the field where Penner is active. Regarding higher and harder questions, where room for perspective and disagreement is virtually “built-in” to the nature of the question itself, - it’s there, I think, that humility must prevail over domination.
2 Likes