Far from Rome

My new blog

2011-07-04T21:11:00.004-04:00

So, I'm back and I have a new blog. It's really an old blog that I never really did much with. I changed the name and deleted the previous contents, so it's basically a new blog. I have a bunch of stuff written for it, but I'm still figuring out how I'm going to organize it. So far I've written the "About" page and a new description of James Fowler's "Synthetic-Conventional" stage.

If you want to check it out, click on the picture above.

Okay, I lied.

2010-12-31T02:40:00.001-05:00

I said in my last post that my next post would be my last on this particular blog. But at the time I was expecting to return to blogging by late November or December, and now I have decided not to do that. I will return, but it will be in a few months’ time, possibly May or (more likely) June.

I’ve had some new ideas for my blog, and this is the main reason for the delay. I want to do something a little bit more ambitious than what I had originally envisioned. I also want to write longer series of connected posts, and I’ve learned from experience that it’s best to complete an entire series in advance rather than posting individual parts as I write them. I also want to give myself more time to revise my work; I’ve posted a lot of first drafts on this blog, and the quality of my writing has not always (or even usually) been at the level I expect of myself.

When I do start blogging again, I will announce it here. If you would like an email notification, my email address is:

Too Far from Rome

2010-10-31T00:31:00.001-04:00

A couple of days after my last post I moved into a new house and had to go a few days without internet access. This rather strange experience gave me the idea of undertaking an “internet fast,” which I’ve broken only three times to check my email (not reading your email for four weeks = very bad idea!) and now to write this post and download some of my online subscriptions. So that’s why I haven’t posted anything in so long. It’s been a good experience, and I intend to continue it for another month, at least.

Being offline has given me more time to focus on other things, including my meditation practice, which always seems to lapse in the summer (i.e., when I don’t work and therefore don’t have much of a schedule to live by). I’ve also been doing a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of thinking.

In addition, I’ve also decided to end my active participation in the sacramental life of the Church. Like my internet fast, this was precipitated by my moving house, but it’s actually been a long time coming; I suspect that anyone who has read my blog for a while will understand that.

There was a time when I thought it was important for progressives to remain in the Church. I’m not so sure about that anymore. Cathleen Kaveny, in a recent Commonweal column, wrote about others who have come to the same conclusion:

From the perspective of these Catholics, doctrine and practice are not developing but withering. But why not stay and fight? First, because they think remaining appears to involve complicity in evil; second, because fighting appears to be futile; and, third, because they don’t like what fighting is doing to them. The fight is diminishing their ability to hear the gospel and proclaim that good news. The fight is depriving them of the peace of Christ.

I certainly recognise myself in that description.

I’m going to return to blogging, maybe in a month or so. But my next post on this particular blog will be my last; it will provide a link to my new blog.

Reason and Contemplation

2010-09-11T17:30:00.014-04:00

That discursive reasoning cannot attain contemplative wisdom or enlightenment is obvious enough. As I mentioned in my last post, if it this was possible, enlightenment could be attained in much the same way one follows a reasonable argument in a book. But enlightenment is not attained in this way; the great mystics of every tradition are unanimous on this point. It follows an experience, and one cannot simply "think" one's way into the experience.

Nevertheless, mysticism cannot be irrational, though some people see it this way. This is true both of detractors of mysticism as well as some who embrace it.

Ken Wilber writes, "all true mysticism is transrational and never antirational; 'right thought' always precedes 'right meditation.'"¹ He is alluding here to two elements of Buddhism's Eightfold Path.

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, a high-ranking teacher in the Tibetan tradition, make a similar point about "right view," or "correct view," as he calls it.

Traleg Rinpoche notes that a lot of Westerners who are interested in Buddhism are very into meditation, but become resistant when it comes to studying the philosophy of Buddhism. I think this is true of a lot of people interested in contemplative spirituality in general: they want to meditate, but they don't care for philosophy.²

Traleg Rinpoche notes that many Western Buddhists believe "that meditation is all about getting rid of views or that all views will hinder us from attaining our spiritual goal." On the contrary, he says, "It is only incorrect views that we need to overcome. The correct view is to be cultivated with great diligence."³

The reason this is so important is that the experience of a higher state of consciousness is simply that: an experience. It is not itself knowledge. It has to be understood, and it will be understood within a particular framework. Taking care to ensure that the framework is adequate—that is, to make sure we have the "correct" or "right" view—is of great importance if our experience is going to be translated into authentic wisdom. As Traleg Rinpoche says, "We cannot simply practice meditation and hope for the best; we need a conceptual framework that is based on correct view."⁴

For people at the "Synthetic-Conventional" stage (or earlier), the framework in which they understand their experience will be one that is largely, if not entirely, unexamined. If someone at such a stage has a vision, there is a good chance they will take it at face value. So if I am at this stage and I have a vision of Mary or Jesus (or Krishna or Kuan Yin, or whoever) I will probably understand it quite literally as being that person or deity (or bodhisattva, or whatever).

A more rational perspective will recognise that the sensible content (visions, auditions, etc.⁵) of such an experience is likely drawn from the imagination of the one having the experience. It's not an accident that it's usually Catholics who have visions of Mary and Hindus who have visions of Krishna.

Even higher mystical states that do not feature any kind of sensible content have to be understood or interpreted. The understanding then has to be judged (which is to say, reasonably affirmed) for it to count as actual knowledge. The adequacy of this understanding and this judgment will depend on a large extent on the adequacy of our prior conceptual framework, even as this framework will likely undergo some changes as a result of the experience.

So I would say that rationality plays two very important roles in mysticism: first, in cultivating a correct view, which is to say an adequate framework in which the experience will be understood; and second, in judging whether the insight that results from the experience is itself correct.

The implications of this, as I see it, are twofold: First, you should not embark on the contemplative path unless you are willing to also learn philosophy and cultivate a correct view; you will not be able to properly understand your experience otherwise. Second, you should not simply assume that whatever insight occurs to you during the experience is correct. It is quite possible to have a mistaken insight during such an experience, and the powerful quality of the experience can too easily convince the person having the experience that the insight is correct.⁶

Cultivating a correct view, of course, is not simply something that happens before the experience, but also after. So it is not as simply as, "philosophise now, experience later." Wisdom, I think, is refined through an ongoing dialectical process of thinking and experiencing, thinking more, and experiencing more.

Notes

[1] Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 179.

[2] One reason for this, I think, is that a lot of people become interested in this kind of spirituality when they reach James Fowler's Stage 5, the post-modernist "Conjunctive" stage, which corresponds with Wilber's "green altitude." For more on the relationship between Fowler's stages and Wilber's "altitudes" see "The Colours of Spiritual Development."

People at every level tend to be very resistant to certain tendencies that are characteristic of the previous level. The previous level in this case would be the modernist "Individuative-Reflective" stage, at Wilber's "orange altitude." The orange stage is characterised by what the green stage sees as a too-strong emphasis on rationality.

The next stage, Wilber's teal-altitude Integral stage, seeks to correct this by reclaiming rationality against green, but correcting the error of orange, which generally rejects the idea that valid knowledge can be attained in non-normal states of consciousness. I've written about this stage before in "The Problem is Orange." Note that Wilber's understanding of teal-altitude spirituality is quite different from Fowler's sixth (and final) stage, the "Universalizing" stage. A number of critics have found Fowler's Stage 6 problematic, as it is not based on the same kind of empirical evidence as the previous stages. See, for instance, Romney M. Mosely's "Forms of Logic in Faith Development Theory," in Christian Perspectives on Faith Development, Jeff Astley and Leslie J. Francis, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992: 169.

[3] Kyabgon, Mind at Ease, 25.

[4] Kyabgon, Mind at Ease, 26.

[5] I use the term "sensible content" to refer to things that do not literally involve the senses, but which are described as though they were. So one does not actually use one's eyes when one has a vision, but it nevertheless has a visual character.

[6] Traleg Rinpoche says,

"Some meditative experiences may have the appearance of being genuine, but in reality are false and misleading. Such experiences can be deceptive, giving us the false conviction that we have attained a particular meditative state when in reality we have simply gone astray or fallen victim to fanciful thinking. To separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and to endeavor to find out whether anything genuine has occured, we must make use of conceptual tools that steer us in the right direction. That way, we can purposefully continue with our spiritual practice by critically examining and refining our views." (Mind at Ease, 26)

The failure of some people to recognise this, I think, stems from the erroneous belief that knowledge is attained simply through experience, which is sometimes called "naive realism": I saw it, therefore it's real.

Others might assume that whatever "insight" they had from the experience is necessarily true, apart from (or prior to) any kind of reasonable affirmation. This likely happens because the experience of having this mystical insight is so powerful that whatever one understands from it is simply accepted without question. It seems to me that the monistic non-dualism of the Advaita Vedanta tradition probably originated in this: I experience myself as "one with everything," so everything is "one," and so multiplicity is illusory. That’s kind of a complicated topic, though, so I won't go into it right now.

Wisdom 9.13-18

2010-09-06T03:00:00.000-04:00

Undoubtedly most homilies yesterday focused more on the Gospel reading (Luke 14.25-33), in which Jesus tells large crowds that they must hate their families, "and even life itself," if they wish to be his disciple. It's an interesting passage to be sure, but the first reading was, for me, maybe a little more interesting. In this post I'm going to try clarify some of the words used in the text, and in my next post I'll reflect on the meaning of the passage in a broader context. Here is the NRSV text, which is used in the Canadian lectionary:

For who can learn the counsel of God?
Or who can discern what the Lord wills?
For the reasoning of mortals is worthless,
and our designs are likely to fail;
for a perishable body weighs down the soul,
and this earthy tent burdens the thoughtful mind.
We can hardly guess at what is on earth,
and what is at hand we find with labor;
but who has traced out what is in the heavens?
Who has learned your counsel,
unless you have given wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from on high?
And thus the paths of those on earth were set right,
and people were taught what pleases you,
and were saved by wisdom.” (Wis 9.13-18)

It's a quite a good translation of the original Greek, but there are some words that I think require clarification.

...the reasoning of mortals is worthless...

Here "reasoning" translates the plural noun logismoi, the singular of which is logismos. This word appears elsewhere in the Wisdom of Solomon. The word is not negative in itself, but in this book logismos is always modified by a negative adjective or otherwise disparaged.¹

Here the reasoning of mortals is "worthless" (deilos).² We cannot come to know the will of God with our limited reasoning.

The next part attempts to explain why:

...a perishable body weighs down the soul,
and this earthy tent burdens the thoughtful mind.

Here the NRSV's "thoughtful" is somewhat problematic. It translates the unusual term polyphrontida, which appears nowhere else in the Bible. The problem is that "thoughtful" has a rather different meaning than "full of thoughts," which is what is called for here. The NAB, which is used in the American lectionary, provides a more adequate translation of this particular phrase: "the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns."

Some commentators detect the influence of Platonic dualism in this verse, but I don't think this is necessarily the best way to interpret it. The mind weighed down by "many concerns" reflects a life oriented toward merely human problems. There is an analogy here, I think, with Paul's distinction between living "according to the flesh" and living "according to the spirit." It's not that flesh is bad and spirit good. It has to do with how we orient our lives.³

The answer to the question at the beginning of the passage comes toward the end, in the form of another question:

Who has learned your counsel,
unless you have given wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from on high?

It is not, then, by our limited reasoning that we can learn God's "counsel," but only when God has "given wisdom." Such wisdom is not taken, but received, as a gift.

This speaks to something I've been giving a lot of thought to lately. On the one hand, it's clear enough that we cannot reason our way into enlightenment. Were this the case, enlightenment could be attained through a process similar to following a philosophical argument in a book. It just doesn't happen like that.

So the higher states of consciousness that we associate with wisdom or enlightenment (words I use interchangeably) are often called "transrational," and this is appropriate as far as the attainment of the experience is concerned.

And yet, "transrational" is different from "irrational." Reason cannot be discarded entirely. So what role does reason play? I think the confusion over this stems from the word "reason" being used to denote too many things.

I'll explain why I think that in my next post.

Notes

[1] It says near the beginning, "For perverse thoughts (skolioi gar logismoi) separate people from God" (1.3). A couple of verses later it says "a holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit, and will leave foolish thoughts (logismōn asynetōn) behind" (1.5). Later we find reference to "foolish and wicked thoughts" (logismōn asynetōn adikias; 11.15). It says that the "way of thinking" (ho logismos) of the ungodly "will never change" (12.10). Later, "fear is nothing but a giving up of the helps that come from reason" (logismou; 17.10). Finally, it speaks of a "foolish decision" (logismon anoias; 19.3).

[2] For deilos the NAB has "timid," the Jerusalem Bible "unsure," and the NJB "inadequate." To use "timid" or "unsure" is defensible, but this meaning would normally obtain when deilos is used to describe a person. In this instance I think "worthless" or "inadequate" are superior, as they more closely parallel "likely to fail" (episphaleis, lit. "dangerous" or "unsafe").

[3] I've written about Paul's distinction between living "according to the flesh" vs. "according to the spirit" here.

Questions about Paul

2010-08-31T12:36:00.000-04:00

I've tried writing about Paul's view of the law, but I'm finding it very difficult. When I think I've come to understand something about his understanding of the law, I discover something I had previously overlooked that contradicts it. I'm quite willing to accept that Paul contradicted himself, but for now I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and suppose that I've misunderstood him.

One series of statements that he makes has struck me as rather curious.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom 5.12–21)

I've italicised the last two verses because it's these that struck me as odd. Paul says in a number of places that the law increases sin. For example:

While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. (Rom 7.5)

He is careful to say that he is not directely blaming the law for sin:

What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. (Rom 7.7-8)

It's not the law that is responsible for his sin, but sin (understood here, apparently, as a kind of malevolent cosmic power) used the law to make him transgress the law.

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. (Rom 7.9-11)

He seems to be saying that the law, which he acknowledges comes from God, was given despite the fact that the malevolent cosmic power of sin would only use it to make people sin even more.

This would seem to raise the question, why would God give the law if it was only going to increase sin? Paul answers this, kind of, in Galatians:

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained through angels by a mediator. (Gal 3.19)

In the same letter he says "the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came" (Gal 3.24). But if the law was supposed to act as a "disciplinarian" (paidagōgos, someone involved in the education, discipline, etc., of children), and so presumably given in order to decrease sin, does this mean God didn't know that the opposite was going to happen? It is difficult to imagine Paul thinking that.

Granted, he made these conflicting claims in separate letters, Galatians first, and then Romans. It is apparent that his thinking changed over time. This would explain the conflict between Galatians and Romans, but it doesn't leave the weirdness of Romans unresolved.

For instance, he writes:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom 8.19-21)

And later:

For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. (Rom 11.32; cf. Gal 3.22-23)

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Paul thinks it was God's will that humans sin, just so that God could later save humans (i.e., through Christ).

I find this impossible to accept. But there is one thing about this idea that I think is of value, namely the idea that what Paul calls "sin," which is what we experience as estrangement from God, is not something unintended by God.

This is something I'll have to explore further in the future.

Notes

[1] These would be 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's Religious Beliefs

2010-08-29T12:51:00.002-04:00

I've been rather amused lately to read the latest attempts by conservatives to co-opt Dr. King's legacy by claiming him as one of their own.

I wonder how many of them, if they knew what he really believed, would even consider him a Christian.

Anyone who doubts that Dr. King was a dyed-in-the-wool progressive needs to read "King's God: The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." by Be Scofield.

Paul on "living according to the flesh"

2010-08-24T12:39:00.010-04:00

[Note: It has occurred to me that, if I pursued my previous plan of providing background information prior to my reflections on Paul, I would take a long time to actually get to Paul himself. Instead, I'm going to jump right into what I think needs to be recovered from Paul, and I'll provide background information along the way, as necessary.]

One of Paul's most important terms is sarx, "flesh." He uses it some 72 times in his undisputed letters, and some of the time he means what you would probably think he means. But often he means something quite different.

For example, he frequently contrasts living "according to the flesh" (kata sarka) with living "according to the Spirit" (kata pneuma):

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8.5-8)

It's not difficult to see why Paul is often interpreted dualistically, as if Paul was privileging the immaterial "Spirit" over the material "flesh." But this is not what he has in mind.

Living "according to the flesh" means living according to merely human standards. Indeed, the phrase kata sarka is often translated "according to human standards," or something similar (see how the NRSV translates 1 Cor 1.26; 2 Cor 1.17, 10.2-3, and 11.18). He is referring to how much of what we do in life is geared toward living up to other people's expectations, or living according to merely human inclinations. We easily get caught up in this, and lose sight of what is truly of value. Why does this happen? And why are merely human inclinations deficient?

Paul's answer is "sin." But he does not simply mean that people do bad things, or violate divine commandments. Paul's understanding of sin is quite distinctive. When he says "both Jews and Greeks," by which he means everyone, "are under the power of sin" (Rom 3.9), it becomes apparent that he thinks of sin as something more than a wrong action.

It might be difficult for us to hear that we "are under the power of sin" without hearing that as a moral judgment, but that is not what Paul means at all. Sin, for Paul, is simply part of the human condition.

It seems to me that what Paul understands as "Adam's sin" effects us in two ways. One is external, and pertains to the broken human world we are born into and in which we are socialised. We are "conformed to this age," as Paul puts it (Rom 12.2).¹

The other is internal, and refers to our individual human weaknesses: our minds are "darkened" (Rom 1.21), obscuring our vision of what is true and good; and even when we know what is good, we often fail to do it (Rom 7.15ff.).

When you think about it, these external and internal factors are mutually reinforcing. The social world in which we live, being the product of human weakness, sells us a false vision of what life is about, of what is true, and of what is good. And, being weak ourselves, we buy into it. Having bought into it, we pass this on through our participation in the socialisation of others, not least our children.

We see this today in modern consumerist culture, which is a particularly stark example of "living according to the flesh," when that phrase is correctly understood. The values that drive consumerism are not enlightened values. Most people will agree with this, but it doesn't mean they haven't bought into it.

But it would be a mistake to think that this applies only in the secular world. Religion, too, is easily corrupted when minds are "set on the flesh." Those in positions of power will conceive of and promulgate doctrines that support their power rather than lead others to truth, and those subject to them will fail to recognise this, because it's more comfortable to avoid thinking about it. So the blind lead the blind, as Jesus said (cf. Matt 15.14).

Paul's critique of some of his fellow Jewish Christians' understanding of the law will shed some further light on this.

I'll probably write about that next.

Notes

[1] The NRSV translates tō aiōni "world" rather than "age." James D.G. Dunn says this verse "indicates recognition of a power or force which molds character and conduct and which “this age” exercises; Paul in effect recognizes the power of social groups, cultural norms, institutions, and traditions to mold patterns of individual behavior" (Romans, WBC 38B, 712).

Righteousness

2010-08-21T21:43:00.007-04:00

As I've been preparing my series of posts about Paul, I've found myself having to provide a lot of background information that isn't specifically about Paul. I've decided to dedicate this post to the necessary background information, and will get to Paul after that.

Righteousness

One problem with reading the Bible in translation is that the connections between words in the original languages can be lost. This is true of a particular group of words that are very important in the letters of Paul. So while it is not clear in English translations that the words "righteousness" and "justification" have much of a connection at all, it is quite clear in the original Greek words, dikaiosynē and dikaiōsis, respectively. I will eventually want to say something about Paul's doctrine of justification, so it is necessary to understand the meaning of the word "righteousness."

So what is "righteousness" (dikaiosynē)? It's not a word we often use in everyday speech, and for a lot of people it has a somewhat negative connotation, probably because of the more commonly used term, "self-righteousness."¹

In Greek secular usage, the term "righteousness" was primarily a legal term. The righteousness of a judge, for example, would consist in the justness of his decisions. So, in a legal context, dikaiosynē would be understood as having something to do with justice. Paul's use of the term has often been understood in this sense. But scholars have become increasingly aware that Greek-speaking Jews would also have understood the term as having a religious meaning which was rather different from the secular one. For Greek-speaking Jews, the term "righteousness" would also be understood as a relational concept. "Righteousness," as James Dunn explains, pertains to "the meeting of obligations laid upon the individual by the relationship of which he or she is a part."²

The Righteousness of God

There is some debate over the meaning of Paul's phrase "the righteousness of God" (dikaiosynē theou). Some scholars interpret this to mean "righteousness bestowed on others by God," which would refer to the justification (dikaiōsis) of individuals. But more and more scholars have begun to interpret this differently, as a characteristic or activity of God.³

The phrase "righteousness of God" can be understood in both the legal and the relational sense. In the legal sense, it would refer to God as a fair judge, which is a common enough way of understanding God. But, understood in the relational sense, it would refer to God's faithfulness to the relationships in which he plays a part. For Jews, this would most obviously be the covenant between God and Israel. But, more broadly, it would also refer to God's relationship with all of creation. In this case, the righteousness of God would be understood as God's faithfulness to his plan for the universe. Both of these ways of understanding the "righteousness of God" will be important when we get to Paul.

God's Plan for Creation

Virginia Wiles, in her book Making Sense of Paul, explains this part very nicely. She writes,

God's goal for the cosmos is shalom—peace. Peace can be described as the absence of enmity: The lion and the lamb lie down together (Isa 11:6); warring humans "beat their swords into ploughshares" (Isa 2:4). Stated positively, shalom is that existence in which everything fits together—a good place for everything, and everything in its place. Shalom is order; it is right-relatedness; it is wholeness. Shalom is the integrity of the whole—of the whole created cosmos, of everything that is.⁴

[One meaning of] God's righteousness is God's active bringing together of the whole of the created order. God's righteousness is God's shalom-making activity. This assumes that the world is not in peace, is not at peace. And God intends to put the world at peace, to "peace" the world together.⁵

Wiles notes that, upon hearing this way of describing God's righteousness, we are confronted with a bit of a problem: namely, that God does not appear to be doing this very well. This, she says, is something with which Paul and other first century Jews would have agreed.⁶ This brings us to the next meaning of the "righteousness of God."

God's Covenant with Israel

The first eleven chapters of Genesis describe first the creation of the universe, followed by a story of things falling apart. Clearly humans are making a mess of things, but God does not give up. He decides to do something unprecedented in the hope that things can get back on track. He tells Abraham (then Abram),

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Gen 12.1-3)

So God's promise is made to Abraham and his descendents, but it ultimately includes "all the families of the earth"; indeed, God will later tell Abraham, "by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves" (Gen 22.18). From this, as well as various promises made by God throughout the Bible (particularly the Psalms and the prophets, like Isaiah), we can see that God's promise includes far more than just the people of Israel. It includes all people, and, for that matter, the entire cosmos.

Conclusion

James Dunn, in his book The Theology of Paul the Apostle, describes the relational (or "covenantal") understanding of righteousness as "through and through Hebraic/biblical/Jewish in character," and understanding it this way "is a key factor in gaining a secure hold on Paul's teaching on justification." In light of the historic tendency among Christians to see Paul as a Christian in opposition to Judaism, it is not surprising that Paul's use of the term "righteousness" has not been understood this way until relatively recently. However, although many scholars have come to acknowledge this sense of the term, "the ramifications of the insight have been too little appreciated in much discussion of Paul's theology."⁷ I'll discuss this some more when I get to Paul's doctrine of justification.

Before I do that, though, I need to say a few more things about the covenant, and specifically the Law. That will be my next post.

Notes

[1] Virginia Wiles makes this point in Making Sense of Paul, 24.

[2] James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 341.

[3] Dunn, Theology, 337.

[4] Wiles, Making, 24-25.

[5] Wiles, Making, 25.

[6] Wiles, Making, 25.

[7] Dunn, Theology, 342.

I think I need to write about Paul

2010-08-15T23:05:00.006-04:00

A lot of progressive Christians (which would mean most people who read this blog, I suspect) are not big on St. Paul. Marcus J. Borg has noted this in one of his books, and I think his explanation for this widespread dislike of Paul is basically correct:

A number of factors feed the negativity regarding Paul. Some people (including some historians) see Paul as the perverter of the gospel of Jesus, someone who turned Jesus of Nazareth into a divine being and distorted Jesus' message into a complex and convoluted abstract mythological-theological belief system. In the view of these particular critics, Jesus is good, Paul is bad. Certain other critics see Paul as a puritanical moralist preoccupied with sin and guilt, sacrifice and atonement. Still others are put off particularly by passages about gender and sex. The most negative statement about women in the New Testament is found in a letter attributed to Paul, and other passages commonly attributed to Paul speak about the duty of wives to submit themselves to their husbands. Paul is frequently quoted negatively about homosexuality and even about sexuality in general. Moreover, Paul's letters are often difficult and obscure, opaque rather than luminous.¹

I agreed with many of these criticisms of Paul myself after taking an introductory New Testament course as an undergraduate--and I would still agree with some of them--but my mind was changed considerably the next year when I took a course specifically dealing with Paul. I became convinced that Paul can be an important ally in the push to define a progressive and authentic form of Christianity, and I believe that even more today.

One important thing I learned in that Paul course--something that has not penetrated into the mainstream Chrisitan consciousness--is that Paul has been vastly misunderstood throughout Christian history. Some people scoff at this idea, and accuse the scholars who argue this of being arrogant for questioning two thousand years of tradition, but there is a compelling explanation for why this is so: for almost all of Christian history, Paul has been read as if he was a Christian writing against Judaism, when in fact he never considered himself to be a non-Jew. Even worse, most Christians have read his writings with a defective understanding of Second Temple Judaism, which is hardly surprising given historical Christian attitudes toward Judaism. If you misidentify a person's religion, and misunderstand the religious context in which they wrote, you cannot hope to understand their theology without serious distortions.

Some important developments in the last century have changed things dramatically. Most importantly, the Holocaust forced many Christians to seriously reexamine the theological roots of the poisonous attitudes Christians have historically harboured toward Jews. Additionally, archaeological discoveries, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, have allowed us to understand Judaism (particularly in its Second Temple varieties) much better than was ever possible before. It is also the case that much-improved relationships between many Christians and Jews has resulted in greater interaction between scholars of the two religions. Improvements in methodology, advances in technology, and a whole host of other things have contributed as well.

Now, in the last couple of weeks I've been (re-)reading a number of good books about Paul, as well as carefully reading several of his letters, and it has inspired me to devote some time to writing about Paul, while connecting some of his important and frequently misunderstood insights to some of the other things I usually write about on this blog. I've already written a bunch of material. If I can wrestle it into shape, I should be able to post several times this week.

Notes

[1] Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, 228. In a couple of endnotes pertaining to this passage, Borg notes that many of the offensive passages are in books that are not widely considered to be authentic among scholars, and that others can be read in more than one way (258nn.1, 2). Only the most conservative scholars, usually Evangelicals, think Paul actually wrote the Pastoral Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. A substantial majority would add Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians to the list of epistles not written by Paul. I've written about some of the implications of this here.

Secularisation: Not the problem

2010-08-12T02:07:00.005-04:00

Heidi Schlumpf posted this on NCR:

I have to agree with English Bishop Kieran Conry, who recently questioned Pope Benedict's creation of a new evangelization council because it seems to imply that secularization--rather than the church's own failures--is at the heart of declining numbers of Catholics in Europe and elsewhere.

"My own personal opinion — I would stress that this is a personal opinion — is that I am not entirely convinced by this secularization argument. It suggests that the church's problems are external, in other words society has gone wrong, but the church is fine," he told the BBC on Sunday.

Evangelization, or spreading the Good News, is the whole point of the church, he said, but the church isn't doing it very well. It needs "to become a little more tolerant, accessible, welcoming, compassionate. All the things that, for many people, it is not."

[source]

I would have to agree with that, too.

It really perplexes me when people complain about secularisation. I've become quite convinced that people who complain about secularisation don't really know what they're complaining about, or what they would "replace" it with. (I would even argue that it has been good for religion in some ways, in that it has forced a lot of people to grow up spiritually. That is the problem the magisterium needs to address, but doesn't want to, or can't.)

What convinced me of this was Charles Taylor's massively important book, A Secular Age, which I read earlier this summer. I haven't gotten around to writing about it yet--it's 776 pages of very dense prose, not including the endnotes, so it's not the easiest book to review--but I'll try to say something about it soon.

Review: Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? by James D.G. Dunn

2010-08-10T16:23:00.003-04:00

In the introduction to his latest book, James D.G. Dunn writes:

The title of this book is of course controversial--intentionally so, because the issue itself is unavoidably controversial--Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The immediate answer that most Christians will want to give is, 'Of course they did.'

Such Christians might well be surprised--possibly even disturbed--by the answer Dunn gives in his conclusion. The book is brief--only 151 pages, not including the bibliography and indices--but his examination of the evidence is very thorough, and his conclusion is well argued. He frequently interacts with the work of two other British scholars who have paid considerable attention to this question--and answered it in the affirmative--Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham.

One problem that confronts anyone who seriously engages with this question is the meaning of the term "worship." Dunn suggests that, whatever else it might mean, it amounts to an affirmation of the deity of the one worshipped. His first chapter considers the language of worship in the New Testament, which clearly demonstrates the problem. The most common word translated as "worship" is the verb proskynein, which generally means "(fall down and) worship, do obeisance to, prostrate oneself before, do reverence to, welcome respectfully," according to the authoritative Bauer-Danker lexicon. Often the word is indeed used to denote an action directed toward God. Other times, however, these same words simply mean bowing down or prostrating oneself before a superior, as when Jacob bows down before his brother Esau (Gen 33.3 LXX), or when a slave in one of Jesus's parables falls down on his knees before his master (Matt 18.26). So when proskynein is used to describe an action done toward Jesus, which is it? An affirmation of his deity (worship), or merely bowing down before a superior?

Other terms are similarly ambiguous. The ones that are not--such as the verb latreuein and it's corresponding noun, latreia--describe actions that are always directed toward God, never to Jesus. As far as the language of worship goes, the answer to the question would seem to be, as Dunn puts it, "'Generally no', or 'Only occasionally', or 'Only with some reserve.'"

Dunn next looks at the practice of worship, which is divided into four categories: prayer, hymns, sacred places/times/meals/people, and finally sacrifice. With the exception of sacred meals, where the "Lord's dinner/supper" (later, the "Eucharist") seems to reflect "a devotion to Christ that at least is not far from worship," there is little that would change the tentative answer reached by the end of the first chapter. Dunn finds that the distinctive practice of the earliest Christians might suggest that the question itself is misguided. He suggests instead that we should be asking whether early Christian worship was possible without reference to Christ, and also whether such worship was in part directed toward him, or only to God.

Dunn takes the next several chapters to answer these questions. He looks at how early ways of expressing "high christology" compare with Jewish ways of conceiving the immanence of God during the Second Temple period, for example, as Spirit, Wisdom, or Word. Since early high christologies appropriated these ideas, the question of whether they were ever considered the proper object of worship is quite relevant. He also questions whether the NT writers thought of Jesus as sharing in the "divine identity" of the one God of Israel, as Richard Bauckham maintains, ultimately concluding that they did not.

Dunn concludes his book with his final answer to the question. He notes that

there are problems, even dangers, in Christian worship if it is defined too simply as worship of Jesus. For, if what has emerged in this inquiry is taken seriously, it soon becomes evident that Christian worship can deteriorate into what may be called Jesus-olatry. That is, not simply into worship of Jesus, but into a worship that falls short of the worship due to the one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This struck me as quite an honest admission from someone who is apparently an Evangelical (something I've had difficulty confirming). But this will not surprise anyone familiar with Dunn's work. I have always found him to be an honest and rigorous scholar.

I really enjoyed this book. Dunn, a Scot who taught for many years at the University of Durham, always writes in an engaging and accessible style. He is quite thorough in his investigation, and I think he weighs the evidence carefully and fairly. I sometimes wondered if he wasn't being a little too thorough, considering "evidence" that would scarcely make a difference regardless of how it was evaluated, but this is a minor quibble. The implications of his basically negative answer are not insignificant, but I imagine this will be most true for those Protestants who are loathe to admit any serious post-biblical development to their understanding of the Christian faith. Nevertheless, this book raises some questions that every thoughtful Christian should think about, and I highly recommend it.

Review: Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles' Creed, by Brother David Steindl-Rast

2010-07-27T15:04:00.008-04:00

There is something a bit jarring about seeing the words “Apostles’ Creed” and “Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama” printed on the cover of a book, but the name of the author reassures us that somehow it will end up making a great deal of sense.

That’s because the author is Brother David Steindl-Rast, an Austrian-born Benedictine monk, who is one of the great teachers in our Church. He has been a leading figure in the Church’s dialog with Buddhism, a tradition for which he has developed considerable sympathies. He describes in the introduction how he came to write this book at the urging of the Dalai Lama, and why he chose the Apostles’ Creed, of all things:

In interreligious dialogue we tend to quote from our respective traditions those passages that the others are most likely to find acceptable. But increasingly this had begun to seem a bit superficial to me. I had come to feel that for genuine agreement we would have to go deeper; we would have to test whether even the least likely texts—say, a creed—could help deepen interreligious understanding. Wars have been fought even among co-religionists over these succinct summaries of essential beliefs. A creed would thus make the perfect touchstone for the possibility of interreligious agreement on that deep level where it matters. That's why I chose the Apostles' Creed—the oldest of the Christian creeds—and thus this book came about.

The Creed basically provides Brother David with his Table of Contents: there are twenty four chapters, each devoted to one line (or in a couple of cases, part of a line) of the Creed.

Each chapter is divided into four sections. Referring to the line in the Creed that serves as the title of the chapter, he asks, “What does this really mean?” and he offers an interpretation of the line. Then he asks, “How do we know this is so?” and explains his answer to the first question. He then asks, “Why make such a point of this?” which he answers by explaining why this matters to us today. Finally, he ends each chapter with his personal reflections.

There wasn’t a single chapter in this book that I didn’t find deeply thought provoking. Brother David takes the familiar words of the Creed—words that for many people have become stale and lifeless, if the droning recitation one hears in Church is any indication—and reveals unfamiliar depths of meaning, reading the Creed as a faith proclamation in poetry, rather than a prosaic checklist of beliefs.

His non-literal interpretation of the Creed will probably not endear him to the mythic membership crowd. Anyone looking for a reflection on a literal virgin birth or ascension into heaven will be disappointed. But even the events Brother David acknowledges as historical—suffering under Pontius Pilate, crucifixion, death and burial, etc.—are here interpreted as having a deep and enduring significance, well beyond their historical facticity.

Readers of Brother David’s previous works will not be surprised to find frequent quotations of poetry. He quotes from Gerard Manley Hopkins, Theodore Roethke, Jessica Powers, Mary Oliver, Kabir, and Patricia Campbell Carlson, among others. I often get a little impatient when writers quote poetry, but in Brother David’s work poetry is never used as mere ornamentation or for showing off.

After reading the introduction (and the foreword by the Dalai Lama) I expected there would be more frequent references to Buddhism than there actually were. But this is quite thoroughly a Christian book, in a very catholic, which is to say “all-embracing,” way. Indeed, his rather generous interpretations of the Creed’s “Holy Catholic Church” and “Communion of Saints” will leave exclusivists shaking their heads in indignation. (This is not a criticism, just an observation.)

So how, then, does Brother David further the cause of interreligious understanding? He does not do this by suggesting that the Christian beliefs expressed in the Apostles’ Creed are the same as those expressed by Buddhists or Hindus. Rather, he shows that the essential Christian message is a universal message of faith and love, of belonging and sharing, that transcends the boundary lines we draw around ourselves in the name of religion.

The great scholar of religion Huston Smith wrote of this book:

I have always felt that in endorsing a book I was honoring the book and its author. Brother David’s Deeper Than Words, however, brought a new and startling sensation: I found myself sensing that the book was honoring me by allowing me to endorse it. Never before have I felt this way about a book.

I feel much the same way. This is truly a very special book.

Second thoughts on the new Vatican norms...

2010-07-19T06:41:00.004-04:00

In a comment on my last post, Crystal called attention to an error I made about the penalties attached to pedophilia by priests and attempted ordinations of women.

I erred in saying that they were the same. As Crystal pointed out, though, they are not--a pedophile may face laicisation, but a woman who attempts to become ordained (or a bishop who attempts to ordain a woman) is excommunicated. There is a quite a disparity here in the severity of the punishment -- what they have in common under the new norms is that they are both now considered "grave crimes," which, as far as I can tell, doesn't mean much more than that they are now subject to the CDF.

I would still argue that, contrary to what many people are saying, the two crimes in question are not being "equated," which was the point of my previous post. But the disparity between the penalties attached to these crimes--which is unchanged under the new norms--is rather perplexing.

As far as the official theology of Rome would have it, excommunication excludes a person from the sacraments, thereby depriving them of the means of salvation -- it is sometimes described as "spiritual capital punishment," an somewhat apt description if you happen to buy into Rome's understanding of things. (Only "somewhat" because it can be reversed.)

Laicisation undoubtedly puts the offending priest in a difficult spot. After all, a priest who has been laicised for pedophilia (or some other sexual crime) is going to have a difficult time supporting himself, at least when he's not in jail. But in the context of Vatican teaching, this has to be seen as a lesser penalty than excommunication.

John L. Allen, Jr. reported a few days ago that

At a Vatican briefing...Maltese Monsignor Charles Scicluna, an official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, denied that the Vatican equates women's ordination with the sexual abuse of children. An illicit ordination, Scicluna said, is a "sacramental" crime, while abuse is a "moral" crime.

So I guess the real question is, why is a "sacramental" crime punished so much more harshly than a "moral" crime?

Rome has deeply misplaced priorities. So what else is new?

Do the new Vatican norms really equate ordaining a woman with raping a child?

2010-07-16T19:29:00.003-04:00

This claim is being made all over the place, but unless I've misunderstood something, I have to disagree.

Before I explain why, left me first clarify that I do not agree with the exclusion of women from the priesthood. I think it's one of the most preposterous policies in a Church with more than its share of preposterous policies. Nor am I defending the inclusion of this penalty against ordaining women in the new norms. From a PR standpoint alone that was a pretty boneheaded move.

But I have to take issue with the claim that ordaining women is being "equated" with pedophilia simply because the penalty is the same in both cases.

Imagine you are the CEO of a company. It might be the policy of the company to automatically fire an employee who, say, steals company property. Firing the employee is really the severest penalty you can hand out. Now, if one employee stole a box of pens, and another employee raped, tortured, and murdered one of his coworkers, both would be fired. But the fact that the penalty is the same in both cases does not mean that both crimes are considered to be of equal gravity. The pen thief satisfied the minimal requirements for the most serious possible penalty. The rapist/torturer/murderer far exceeded the minimal requirements, but a more serious penalty simply was not available.

That, it seems to me, is true in the present situation in the new Vatican norms. The attempted ordination of a woman to the priesthood satisfies, as far as the Vatican is concerned, the minimal requirements for automatic excommunication, the most severe penalty they can hand out. Pedophilia is obviously a far greater crime. But a far greater penalty is not available.

Again, I'm not defending the policy of excommunicating people involved in attempts to ordain women. But to say that it is being equated with pedophilia simply because the penalty is the same in both instances is simply not the case.

Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren

2010-07-13T15:03:00.004-04:00

I picked up this book with some ambivalence. When I've read Brian McLaren's work in the past, I could tell that he was a progressive thinker with a deep understanding of why and where the Christian religion needs to change, but I could never shake the suspicion that he was holding something back. This was understandable--he writes, I think, for a largely Evangelical audience, so it is not surprising that he would sugarcoat his more progressive ideas to make them palatable to his not-particularly-progressive audience. But I'm not a part of that audience, and I didn't think I had much to learn from him.

The reviews for this book persuaded me to give it a shot, and I'm glad I did, because it's quite good. McLaren seems no longer to be restraining himself and has put forth an unabashedly progressive vision for a new kind of Christianity. For the progressive Christian reader he covers a lot of familiar ground, but he does so with arguments and examples that are lucid and, for me anyway, quite novel.

The larger part of the book deals with the "Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith." (A less optimistic person would describe them as "Ten Contentious Issues That Are Dividing the Church.")

The first concerns the "overarching story line of the Bible," which McLaren argues is quite different from the Creation/Fall/Redemption narrative most Christians have been taught, explicitly or not. He describes the latter as a "six-line narrative," beginning with perfection in the Garden of Eden, then "the Fall" into original sin, and then a period of condemnation. Following this is the coming of Christ, where the path splits in two directions: salvation and heaven for some, damnation and hell (understood as "eternal conscious torment") for others.

McLaren notes that this story can lead to an understanding of the meaning of our earthly existence as simply a process of "soul-sorting," where the purpose of our lives is to "deliver souls into their appropriate eternal bin." He also notes that a lot of people have been questioning this storyline, and suggesting ways in which it needs to be tweaked, but too few have actually questioned if this story "is morally believable" or "whether it can be found in the Bible itself." (He argues that it's not and that it can't.)

This is mostly good stuff, and I agree that understanding our existence this way is a gross distortion of the message of Jesus. Unfortunately, McLaren stumbles a bit when he blames it on the "Greco-Romanization" of the Church, which he understands as the appropriation by the Church of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. This is the weakest part of the book, as McLaren misrepresents both of those philosophers and the ways they influenced Christian theology. He does this as part of the creation of a "Greco-Roman" bogeyman, complete with its own god, "Theos," against which he can juxtapose the more authentic and more Jewish narrative he wants to promote. (He would do well to follow the advice of Albert Einstein: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.") In fairness to McLaren, he does acknowledge later on that it is too simple to "blame all our problems on the the Greco-Roman captivity of the biblical narrative." But that doesn't solve the problem of what he wrote earlier, which will turn off most people who actually know something about Greek philosophy.

McLaren finds another source of the Church's ills is the tendency to read the Bible as if it was a legal constitution that is univocal and internally consistent, instead of seeing it as a community library that contains a number of often dissonant voices and preserves the "vigorous internal debate around key questions that were precious to the theological culture in which it was produced." McLaren describes a number of ways the constitutional approach to the Bible has been used to justify evils like slavery and to condemn advances in science. Many Christians like to imagine that such abuses belong exclusively to the past, but McLaren disagrees, pointing to the widespread hostility toward homosexuals by those who read the Bible constitutionally as an example.

For many progressive Christians, a lot of what McLaren writes will sound familiar: Jesus' message about the "kingdom of God," commonly (and erroneously) understood as pertaining exclusively or at least primarily to the afterlife, is much more about transformation in this life; he points out that Jesus's message was not about converting from one religion to another, and this has implications for how Christians should relate to people of other faiths. Those familiar with the thought of Ken Wilber will see his influence in the last part of the book.

None of this is earth-shattering, but McLaren articulates it very clearly and has a knack for teasing out the perverse implications of some common Christian beliefs, often in ways I had never thought of. At the same time, he recognises that this new kind of Christianity isn't for everyone, and I disagree with his critics who claim that he is disrespectful or condescending towards those who disagree with him. On the contrary, he is unfailingly nice, which is probably why so many of his critics have labeled him a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

But McLaren is not a wolf, and he's not pretending to be a sheep. He's trying to show people that they don't need to be sheep, either. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in progressive Christianity, and I think this would be a great book to give to someone who is beginning to grow out of their conventional faith.

Thomas Merton on Authenticity

2010-06-30T08:48:00.001-04:00

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It "consents," so to speak, to His creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.

The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him. If it tried to be like something else which it was never intended to be, it would be less like God and therefore it would give Him less glory.

No two created beings are exactly alike. And their individuality is no imperfection. On the contrary, the perfection of each created thing is not merely in its conformity to an abstract type but in its own individual identity with itself. This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.

Do you imagine that the individual created things in the world arc imperfect attempts at reproducing an ideal type which the Creator never quite succeeded in actualizing on earth? If that is so they do not give Him glory but proclaim that He is not a perfect Creator.

Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.

-- New Seeds of Contemplation, 29-30

NCR Interview with Paul Knitter

2010-06-26T14:30:00.004-04:00

The National Catholic Reporter has posted an interesting interview with Paul Knitter about his latest book, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian.

Knitter doesn't really say anything in the interview that isn't in the book, but if you haven't read it but think you might find it interesting, the interview is worth checking out.

I wrote a review of the book last summer. I indicated that I was going to write more about it, but for some reason never really got around to it for some reason. Maybe this summer, who knows.

New Summer Plan

2010-06-22T13:29:00.004-04:00

With the school year nearing it's end, and my summer holiday at hand, I've been giving some thought about what to do with my various blogs. I'll have a lot of time to write this summer, so I should have more time to devote to blogging than usual. (Of course, I say that at the beginning of every summer, and it never really works out that way...)

I was going to use this blog for my more theologically and philosophically-oriented blog posts, but instead I'm going to use my much-neglected known|unknown site for that -- it's already been redesigned, and I've started revising and posting some of my earlier posts about the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan on it. My stuff about James Fowler's faith development theory will be revised and posted there as well. When I write new stuff I'll cross-post it here, or at least mention here that I've posted it there.

This blog will be more of a "whatever I'm thinking (or reading) about today" kind of blog. I might merge the contents of my Bible blog with this one. I like writing about the Bible, but it's too time-consuming to do it regularly, so it's silly to have a separate blog for it.

I'm determined to continue not writing about bishops, though.

Authenticity, Authority, and Obedience, Part I

2010-06-16T14:29:00.003-04:00

The espousal of authenticity as a moral ideal is a very modern phenomenon. Charles Taylor has identified its origin in the Romantic period (beginning in the late 18th century), but notes that “it has utterly penetrated popular culture only in recent decades, in the time since the Second World War, if not even closer to the present.”¹

At present it competes with not only other modern ideals, but with premodern ones as well. Generally speaking, the dominant premodern ideal, particularly in the Christian West, was obedience to one or another external authority. In religious matters these external authorities would be things like the magisterium of the Church, scripture, etc.

Much of the present division in the Church results from the conflict between those who hold to the older ideal of obedience to external authority and those, who hold to various other ideals, such as the ideal of authenticity. For convenience I’ll sometimes use the term “conventional” to describe the ideal of obedience to an external authority and “post-conventional” to describe the ideal of authenticity. (I recognise, of course, that there are other ideals that might deserve the label “conventional” or “post-conventional,” but I’m not discussing those at present.)

The use of the terms “conventional” and “post-conventional” perhaps needs to be justified. It would seem to suggest that one can hold to the ideal of obedience to external authority before adopting the ideal of authenticity, but not the other way around. I imagine there could be exceptions, but generally this is the way it happens. Generally the ideal of authenticity can only be accepted when one has grasped the fallibility of authority. One can believe in the infallibility of authority and then discover that one was wrong. But one cannot very easily know the fallibility of authority and then forget what one knows. The movement from conventional to post-conventional is properly one of development. Movement in the other direction would be a regression.

It seems to me, then, that the conflict over these two ideals will not be overcome until a lot of people make the transition from conventional to post-conventional. There are powerful forces that make this exceedingly difficult, some within individuals, others that come from without. But part of this, I’m convinced, is that post-conventional approaches have not been articulated and made visible enough to have the kind of effect they ought to have. This is a pressing issue, because disillusionment with authority in the Church has never been higher.

One approach to authority that I think is quite straightforward and compelling is that articulated by Bernard Lonergan, which will be the subject of my next post.

Notes

[1] A Secular Age, 299.

Authenticity, Self-Transcendence, and the Transcendental Precepts

2010-06-13T02:49:00.004-04:00

[This rather brief post is primarily intended to explain some of the terminology that will be used in a series of upcoming posts.]

To be who we really are, to be our true selves, is to be authentic. Bernard Lonergan identifies authenticity as our “deepest need and most prized achievement.”¹

We achieve authenticity, Lonergan says, through self-transcendence.² It is through self-transcendence that we come to know what really is true and what truly is good – as opposed to that which only seems to be true or is only apparently good.

We achieve self-transcendence, and therefore authenticity, Lonergan says, by following what he calls the “transcendental precepts”:

Be attentive
Be intelligent
Be reasonable
Be responsible

It is only by being attentive to our experience, intelligent in understanding that experience, reasonable in judging whether our understanding is correct, and responsible in judging whether something is truly of value, that the human subject transcends his or her self.³

To be unauthentic is easy, but authenticity is hard. Authenticity, Lonergan says, “is never some pure and serene and secure possession. It is ever a withdrawal from unauthenticity, and every successful withdrawal only brings to light the need for still further withdrawals.”⁴

One would be hard-pressed to find someone who would counsel against the transcendental precepts. Still, we frequently disregard them, and this disregard is what Lonergan calls “alienation.” A doctrine that justifies alienation he calls “ideology.”⁵

(Alienation and ideology are typically the product of one or another form of bias, a complicated topic that I intend to return to in the near future.)

Notes

[1] Method, 254.

[2] Method, 104.

[3] The transcendental precepts are necessary to successfully complete the process by which we come to know what is true and what it is of value. I’ve discussed this process – which Lonergan calls “transcendental method” – before (see “Lonergan’s Three Basic Questions”), so I won’t bother explaining it here.

[4] Method, 110. I would prefer to use the term “inauthentic” rather than “unauthentic,” but for the sake of consistency with quotations from Lonergan, I’ll use his term.

[5] Method, 55.

I'm not writing any more about bishops

2010-05-23T13:54:00.003-04:00

My grandmother always used to say, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I think that's pretty ridiculous advice, actually, but when it comes to the official leaders of the Church, I'm going to follow it, at least on this blog. Starting now, I mean.

I started blogging in 2003, and for a couple of years my blog was basically what it has been in recent months -- occasional comments on the hierarchs of the Church and the people who too-uncritically follow them, and not much else.

I decided in the summer of 2005 to delete nearly everything and start fresh with a new direction. Instead of constantly writing about what I was against, I was going to write what I was for. I wanted to focus more on philosophy and theology and spirituality, and for a while I think I basically did that. But I feel like I've gotten sidetracked again.

I haven't decided that religious leaders don't need to be criticised for their failures. They most certainly do -- something Jesus demonstrated quite forcefully by his own example. There are a lot of terrific bloggers who do that well, far better than me, and I will continue to read them regularly. But I feel my own strengths lie elsewhere.

I haven't posted much lately, and it might be another week or so before I post again, mainly because it's nearing the end of the school year, which is a hectic time for any teacher. The summer will undoubtedly be a more productive period as far as my blog goes. I've already started a lengthy post (probably a series of posts) on the related subjects of authority and obedience, and I want to get back into writing more about faith development and evolutionary spirituality and good stuff like that.

More later.

Another fine episcopal appointment by JPII

2010-05-06T10:31:00.010-04:00

[T]he Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ. (Lumen Gentium 20)

Just something to keep in mind while one reads the following AP story (emphasis added by me):

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian archbishop said adolescents are "spontaneously homosexual" and in need of guidance, while society at large is pedophile, according to a Wednesday report.

Archbishop Dadeus Grings — a conservative priest who has made controversial statements in the past — told the O Globo newspaper at a Brazilian bishops conference that society's woes are being reflected in the sex abuse scandal enveloping the Roman Catholic Church.

"Society today is pedophile, that is the problem. So, people easily fall into it. And the fact it is denounced is a good sign," Grings told O Globo.

(snip)

Grings denounced the abuse within the church, but he said internal punishment of priests guilty of abuse was sufficient and that police should not be involved.

"For the church to go and accuse its own sons would be a little strange," he said.

The archbishop also said it was important to help children avoid homosexuality.

"We know that the adolescent is spontaneously homosexual. Boys play with boys, girls play with girls," he said. "If there is no proper guidance, this sticks. The question is – how are we going to educate our children to use a sexuality that is human and suitable?"

Grings also said the acceptance of homosexuality in society could pave the way for the acceptance of pedophilia.

"When sexuality is trivialized, it's clear that this is going to affect all cases. Homosexuality is such a case. Before, the homosexual wasn't spoken of. He was discriminated against.

"When we begin to say they have rights, rights to demonstrate publicly, pretty soon, we'll find the rights of pedophiles," he said.

The archbishop has made controversial comments in the past.

In 2003, he argued that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, though a few years later he recanted. Experts say 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Last year, he outraged Jewish groups in Brazil by telling a magazine that "more Catholics than Jews died in the Holocaust, but this isn't known because the Jews control the world's media."

Grings told The Associated Press at that time he was trying to advocate for the millions of non-Jewish victims of the Nazis.

* * *

Grings was appointed bishop by John Paul II in 1991. [source]

"Addition by subtraction"? Or is it more like a "brain drain"?

2010-05-01T14:26:00.003-04:00

Not every Catholic is troubled by the church’s dwindling membership. According to some conservative priests and thinkers, the sex scandals and conflicts with the Vatican have shaken out the fair-weather believers. The conservatives want a return to the Latin Mass and an end to challenges to the Vatican’s authority. A return to tradition would likely result in “a smaller but much more fervent and evangelizing church,” says the Rev. John McCloskey, a former Wall Street executive who’s an outspoken advocate of the traditionalist movement. The shrinkage would be only temporary, he says, since as liberals left the church, it would be strengthened by the core of tradition-minded Catholics who obey the church’s ban on contraceptives and rear large families. Such families would inevitably produce more sons, some of whom would enter the priesthood. Thanks to a conservative renaissance, says McCloskey, “the church in America may well be on the cusp of a more vibrant era.” [source]

If it's true that 96% of married Catholics use birth control (and apparently the US bishops think this is the case), and if all of those Catholics were to leave the Church, the "tradition-minded Catholics" who remained would have to have some pretty massive families to replenish the Church's numbers.

Somehow I think the hierarchs, who quite like the money they get from the contraceptive-using majority, will find a way to prevent that from happening.

On the need for institutional authority

2010-04-29T12:45:00.003-04:00

John McNeill posted a well-written and quite thought-provoking post on his blog recently, "The Theology of Fallibility Part IV," in which he asserted that "the paternalistic hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has lost contact with the Spirit of God and is no longer its instrument."

It's hard to argue with that. This loss of contact has happened repeatedly throughout the history of the Church, so this is neither unprecedented nor particularly surprising. McNeill notes a parallel in the book of Ezekiel, where the prophet is sent to prophesy against the leaders of Israel ("the shepherds") who have failed to take care of God's sheep:

The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them. (Ezekiel 34.1–6)

After yammering on for a bit, God finally announces, "I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep" (Ezek 34.15). The leaders, having proven themselves inadequate to the task of shepherding God's flock, are cast aside, and God himself will take on the responsibility of leading the people of Israel.

McNeill notes that "Judaism and Christianity are both religions of the collasping Temple. There is always a connection between the collapse of the Temple and the Spirit of God bringing into existence a new form of shepherding." He points out, for example, that the destruction of both temples brought about new forms of Judaism (a "text-based" Judaism after the first temple was destroyed, and Rabbinic Judaism after the second).

Of the Church he writes, "There is no doubt in my mind that we are at present in a new stage of the collapsing Temple and the emergence of a new form of shepherding." He describes Joachim of Fiore's Trinitarian conception of history, which understood the time before Christ as the Age of the Father, the next dispensation as the Age of the Son (Joachim called it the ordo clericorum), and finally the Age of the Spirit, in which ecclesiastical authority would no longer be needed. McNeill writes, "I believe that time is now."

To many reform-minded Catholics, this is indeed an appealing possibility. I have some issues with it, though, which I thought I would share.

There is a substantial segment of the Church that has developed enough intellectually and spiritually to effect "a relocation of authority within the self," as James Fowler put it.¹ This doesn't mean ecclesiastical (or other) authorities play no part, but it is more of an advisory role subordinated to the individual's judgment.

A Church full of such people would have little need for ecclesiastic authority, as Joachim of Fiore imagined. Unfortunately, the Church is not full of such people. A much larger segment of the Church is comprised of individuals who, for one reason or another, have not advanced to this stage.

The fact is that everyone has to develop through a number of stages to get to the point where external authority is no longer necessary. Where conditions are favourable -- that is, where people are adequately educated and their spirituality properly nourished -- many will do so. But such conditions are pretty rare. In the global south, where Catholicism is seeing its largest growth, these conditions are nonexistent for most people. If their Catholic leaders were to stop functioning as authorities, they'd find authorities from some other church who would be only too willing to tell them what to think and how to behave. There is no escaping the fact that most Catholics are in a dependent relationship with external authorities. (This is true of most religious people, actually.)

The problem, as I see it, is that most people in authority positions in the Church don't see development beyond the need for external authority as "growth" at all. Their "leadership" is geared towards keeping people in a dependent relationship. They have no interest in empowering anyone to relocate authority within the self and take responsibility for their own choices. If anything is going to be reformed, I think it has to be this.

Notes

[1] Stages of Faith, 179.

Br. David Steindl-Rast

2010-04-19T13:33:00.004-04:00

With so much of my free time lately being devoted to reading about the crisis in the Church, I decided I needed to take a break and reconnect with some of the worthier things in the Catholic tradition.

So last night I watched this documentary about one of my spiritual heroes, Br. David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk. If you aren't familiar with Br. David, this is an excellent introduction.

I can't quite explain why, but I was strangely moved by the sight of "St. Peter's Barn."

This is part 2, about his encounter with Buddhist monasticism:

And part 3, about dishwashing, among other things:

Finally, an article about Br. David on the subject of authority, containing an important insight that Christianity desperately needs to reclaim: "A Revolution of Authority."

Fr. Tom Doyle: "Survival of the Spirit"

2010-04-11T13:12:00.005-04:00

I just read a very insightful speech given by Fr. Tom Doyle at a SNAP gathering a couple of years ago. (I first read excerpts from it on Enlightened Catholicism, and as usual Colleen's comments on the address are worth reading as well.)

One thing Fr. Doyle said that struck me as having some importance:

Victim/survivors [of clergy sex abuse] need to explore the substance of some of the official apologies and then come to an emotional as well as cognitive acceptance of the fact that the institution and its office holders will not because they cannot respond in a manner that would reflect full awareness and accepted responsibility. Some victims get "stuck" in an almost endless contentious process trying to get the official Church to realize the enormity of their actions. They need to come to a realization that the Church's narcissistic self-concept of a perfect society renders its leaders incapable of comprehending that the responsibility is rooted in the very core of the institutional Catholic Church. (emphasis in original)

A lot of Catholics are calling for reform, but unfortunately the people who know what needs to be done and the people with the power to actually do it are two completely different groups of people.

Another thing he said:

The victim's anger at the Church and possibly at religion in general needs to be acknowledged and affirmed as a healthy response to the abuse. If it has not been done earlier in the recovery process this might be the appropriate time to examine the radical distinction between organized religion and spiritual security and strength. The toxic belief that God will be displeased if the victim feels anger towards the Church must be dispelled and replaced with a more realistic belief that the organized religious body has actually been a barrier to a secure relationship with the Higher Power. Victims attribute spiritual power to the visible Church because it has been presented as the only pathway to God. Most Catholics are never allowed to progress beyond a level of spiritual and religious development that is early-adolescent at best. The recovery process from clergy sexual abuse offers a unique opportunity for spiritual maturity. (emphasis added)

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately: the possibility that this scandal might actually encourage spiritual development -- not only in victims of abuse, but among Catholics in general. After all, an individual's disillusionment with external authority can lead them to take greater responsibility for their choices, something far too few Catholics are willing or even able to do under normal circumstances.

At least, the optimist in me imagines that that might happen. The realist in me knows that things are going to have to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

Commonweal Editorial: "Benedict in the Dock"

2010-04-07T13:34:00.004-04:00

The editorial of the April 9th issue of Commonweal has been posted on their website, and I think it is well worth reading. Here are some excerpts.

In his last years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and from the beginning of his papacy, Pope Benedict has demonstrated a real understanding of the nature and scope of the clergy sexual-abuse crisis. He came to that understanding much too slowly, but once he grasped the dimensions and horror of the scandal he acted with diligence and genuine remorse, accelerating the process for removing priests, meeting with victims, and demanding at least some measure of accountability from his fellow bishops.

(He certainly comes across as one of the good guys in the Marcial Maciel debacle, at least in Jason Berry's telling of it -- which everyone should read, by the way.)

Much of the pope’s good work in this regard is now likely to be brushed aside as the history of his own negligence in handling an abusive priest when he was archbishop of Munich thirty years ago comes to light. It should not be surprising that then-Archbishop Ratzinger accepted an offending priest from another diocese, placed him in therapy, and immediately reassigned him to another parish where he abused more children. Burying rather than confronting the problem of abusive priests is what nearly every bishop did at the time.

I've spent a lot of time trying to decide what to think about the various accusations being leveled at the pope. Many of the things being written about him, both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere, have every appearance of being knee-jerk responses that predictably line up with the writer's previous feelings about Benedict: his admirers certain of his innocence, his detractors equally certain of his guilt, even before many of the pertinent facts came out.

Now, I think, enough of the facts are out, and basically I agree with Commonweal's take on the Munich situation:

No sentient person could believe the denials church officials in Munich and the Vatican made on behalf of the pope, saying Benedict played no role in the transfer of the abusive priest. With dreary predictability, documents have surfaced showing that the pope had in fact presided at the meeting where the transfer and reassignment were approved. Even if Benedict paid little attention to such administrative details, as archbishop he was still responsible for putting that priest in a place where he could abuse again. The church should have made this story known to the public years ago. Mistakes can be forgiven; what breeds mistrust and cynicism is the refusal to admit error.

What is most bothersome to me about the Munich situation is not what he did at the time, but the fact that he's not owning up to it now, and has instead let a subordinate take the blame. I'm sure he believed at the time that the priest in question was not a risk to reoffend, and one can imagine him receiving ill-informed "expert" advice to that effect; but if he had just admitted his negligence in this matter, he would be in a very different situation right now.

I wonder, though, how much of the Vatican's response is coming from Benedict and how much is coming from the very corrupt curial officials around him (see the Jason Berry article mentioned above -- I had long ago heard of members of the curia receiving lavish "gifts" and large sums of money from Maciel, but I didn't know it was people like Cardinals Sodano and Dziwisz).

How much freedom does a pope really have? If the pope decided to blow the whistle on the corruption in the curia, what would happen? Why do I have the feeling we'd be seeing a conclave about sixteen days later?

The logic of holding priests to a higher standard

2010-03-29T14:34:00.004-04:00

I came across this rather insightful comment by someone named Matt Emerson on a dotCommonweal blog post that I thought was worth sharing here:

The Catholic Church cannot be compared to every other organization that deals with children. No other organization claims that its primary employees act “in the person of Christ.” No other organization, or institution, claims that the truth of all reality (i.e., Christ) “subsists” in that organization or institution. Indeed, as addressed elsewhere, Lumen Gentium states that he who hears the Bishop, hears Christ. What other institution makes such extraordinary claims about its capacity to speak about faith and morals?

The reason why the Church gets special heat for their sins is that it sets itself up for a higher fall. The Pope cannot claim to be the “Vicar of Christ,” and the Church cannot claim that Bishops are the successors of the Apostles, and the Church cannot claim infallibility in its ex cathedra proclamation about faith and morals, and then expect, when the abuse of children occurs under the Church’s watch, to be treated like a local public school district or the Boy Scouts. People look at the behavior of the Church, compare it to its claims of authority, and think the latter are demonstrably false and hypocritical.

The problem, in other words, is not that the Church is especially evil, it’s that it’s essentially the same as everyone else. And if the Church is so wrong on how to treat pedophile priests, why isn’t the Church equally misguided in other decisions about what is “healthy” for the human person? We can make distinctions all we want about the “office” of the Bishop or the “office” of the Holy Father or about “ex cathedra” versus something lesser; and we can blog to the end of time about how the Church, too, is comprised of sinful individuals. But, pastorally, does anyone think those distinctions matter? Is that what the Church has to do to maintain credibility? How many hairs can the Church continue to split?

"Rotten from the top down"

2010-03-28T14:42:00.005-04:00

In 1992 an American prelate who had just returned from Rome sat in my office and said bluntly, “The organization to which I belong is rotten from the top down.” He also related a 45-minute visit he had with an American cardinal who was in a long-term intimate relationship with a woman. The cardinal spent 22 minutes (he timed it) bemoaning the fact of the large number of sexually active homosexual priests in his archdiocese. No one has described the clerical structure and current state of affairs better or more clearly than Fr. Brian D’Arcy: “A combination of bad theology, the dysfunctional abuse of power and a warped view of sexuality, have contributed to what the Murphy Report repeatedly refers to as “the systemic failure” to protect the most innocent and the most vulnerable children. I believe that the evil clerical culture which pervades our institution right up to the Vatican bureaucracy itself needs to be dismantled…Part of the human structure of the church is rotten to the core.”

This is from an article by Richard Sipe, whose research and insight into the sexual attitudes and behaviour of Catholic priests are without parallel. The piece is called "The Vatican Connection: Pedophilia and Celibacy." It was apparently posted almost two weeks ago, but it was new to me.

Sipe has effectively refuted the Vatican's insistent claim that mandatory clerical celibacy has anything to do with the pedophilia problem. He describes very clearly and persuasively the system of corruption, which reaches up through the whole hierarchy to the highest levels of the Vatican. It's a must read.

So too is the article by Brian D'Arcy quoted by Sipe, which you can read here.

Try to read this without rolling your eyes...

2010-03-18T13:13:00.004-04:00

"Women can be Christ-like as well as any man, but we wouldn't choose a woman to play the role of Hamlet, right?"

This quotation comes from Janet Smith, the "chair of life ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit," in her defense of an all-male priesthood, given in an interview with Christiane Amanpour.

People desperate to defend the indefensible say the darndest things.

Clerical Celibacy and Sexual Abuse

2010-03-16T13:13:00.006-04:00

I've been reading quite a bit lately about the sexual abuse scandals in the Church, and I find it interesting how many people, including none other than Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, have raised questions about the role that celibacy has played in the abuse.¹

I don't know what connection, if any, might exist between celibacy and sexual misconduct by clergymen. My hunch is that a lot of the men who prey on minors probably had some serious psychosexual issues long before they became a priests. For such men, celibacy is undoubtedly one of the major selling-points of the priesthood.

So how would changing the rule mitigate the abuse? The best we can hope for is that celibacy will be made optional -- but wouldn't the kind of men who are attracted to the priesthood precisely because of their unhealthy attitudes toward sex not avail themselves of this option? Why wouldn't they?

One might argue that opening the door to married priests would result in a greater number of candidates for the priesthood, and so bishops could be a bit choosier and weed out the ones with the serious issues. This sounds somewhat plausible, but I wonder if there would really be enough new (married) priests to make a serious enough dent in the priest shortage. I could be wrong, but I don't think the bar would be raised very much. It would make a modest difference at best.

One might take the long view, and argue that married priests would eventually help bring the official church teachings about sexuality out of the dark ages. That's a nice thought, but I'm not holding my breath. We may see married priests in our lifetimes, but we won't see married bishops -- the Vatican, in all likelihood, would follow the Orthodox tradition of appointing only celibates to the episcopacy. We won't see married men in high positions of authority, so we shouldn't expect to see changes to official teachings just because the celibacy rule is relaxed.

More later...

Notes

[1] "Cardinal Schönborn says celibacy partly to blame for clerical sex abuse," The Times, March 12, 2010.

A spokesman for Schönborn, as mentioned in this article, "issued a clarification later claiming that the cardinal was not 'in any way seeking to question the Catholic Church’s celibacy rule.'" This doesn't appear to mesh all that well with what the Cardinal wrote, however. He explicitly mentioned "the question of priest celibacy." But what question is there, apart from whether there should be a celibacy rule?

Indeed, the article then claims that "Sources in Rome said he had been obliged to issue his 'clarification' under pressure from the Holy See."

The Problematic Basis of the Incarnation, Part II

2010-02-26T17:19:00.009-05:00

My last post was about a quite significant change that has taken place in Christian theology in the recent past. The recognition by Bible scholars that Jesus did not claim to be God, and the widespread acceptance of this by theologians, has forced Christian theology to rethink the basis of the doctrine of the incarnation. If it can no longer be based on Jesus's explicit teaching, it has to be based on something else. John Hick, in his book The Metaphor of God Incarnate, has identified four types of responses to this development, the first of which I described in the earlier post. Now I'll describe the other three.

The Christ-Event

The second type of response makes reference to the rather vague notion of the "Christ-event," a notion that generally blurs the lines between the events of Jesus's life and the Church's beliefs about him. The distinction between what Jesus taught and instituted and what the Church taught and instituted is no longer considered to be of any importance.

Hick notes that this idea does call attention to an important fact: "The meaning, for others, of anyone's life consists not only in the conrete actuality of that life itself but also in the way(s) in which he or she is perceived, revered or denigrated, remembered and responded to by others."¹

There is a problem with this particular approach, however:

We know of him (Jesus) only because others responded to him, with yet others responding to their responses, so that a movement developed which almost inevitably came to regard him as divine in the highly elastic sense in which outstanding religious and political figures were often regarded in the ancient world. This 'soft' divinity, expressed in the 'son of God' metaphor, eventually developed into the 'hard' metaphysical claim that Jesus was God the Son, second person of a divine Trinity, incarnate. But to use the 'Christ-event' concept to validate this development involves arbitrarily stretching that highly flexible 'event' at least as far as the Council of Nicaea (325 CE), and preferably to include the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE).²

One might ask, in other words, if the 'Christ-event' can last until the mid-fifth century, why not longer? Who gets to decide when enough development has taken place?

One possible answer to that questions brings us to the third type of response.

Guidance by the Holy Spirit

"This is," Hick notes, "mainly a Roman Catholic position."³ Unlike the 'Christ-event,' this idea can be used to validate any number of beliefs, which is how we ended up with two very dubious, but nevertheless "infallibly proclaimed" Marian dogmas in the last 156 years.

I don't really need to describe the doctrine, as we're all familiar with it: the Holy Spirit, some say, guides the tradition of the Church, protecting the leaders of the Church from teaching erroneously in matters of faith and morals. Since they have, in fact, taught that Jesus is fully divine, it must be true. If it wasn't true, God presumably would have intervened and stopped them from teaching it.

Hick's rebuttal of this idea is quite good, so I will quote it in full:

The claim to divine guidance of the church’s developing theology is prompted by the immense differences between that theology and the message of Jesus himself. But it should be evident that an appeal to the Holy Spirit cannot add anything to the case for the truth of the Chalcedonian or any other dogma. In propounding the further dogma that those who created the original dogma were divinely guided, one is simply shifting the point of debate from a first-order belief to the second-order belief that the first-order belief is divinely guaranteed. But we have no way of determining whether the councils were in fact divinely inspired other than by evaluating their pronouncements. If we can accept these as true we might accept that the authors were inspired in making them; if not, not. There is an obvious circularity here: one believes the dogma to be true because the ecumenical councils were divinely guided in declaring it, and one believes that they were divinely guided because one believes the dogma to be true. There is no escape here from the question of the first-order grounds for the dogma. This third response is thus deceptively redundant.⁴

The Heavenly Christ

The fourth response downplays the significance of the pre-Easter Jesus to some extent in favour of the Christ experienced as a present reality. Hick does not deny that Christians may have vivid experiences of Christ as present in their lives, but he notes that comparable phenomena are found in other religious traditions. Furthermore, I would point out that whatever people are experiencing when they experience Christ as a present reality, it is not a literal incarnation of God, which would imply a physical, bodily presence. It should be obvious, I think, that such experiences are incapable of grounding the belief in Jesus's divinity.

I'll have more to say about Hick's book in the near future.

Notes

All page references, unless otherwise noted, are to Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, 2nd Edition.

[1] 36.

[2] Emphasis added; 36.

[3] 36. Hick does note some non-Catholic theologians who take this particular approach, including Richard Swinburne (an Anglican), and Stephen Davis, an Evangelical Protestant.

[4] 37.

The Problematic Basis of the Incarnation, Part I

2010-02-19T15:20:00.010-05:00

I read John Hick's The Metaphor of God Incarnate a couple of years ago, and I quite enjoyed it, but it didn't have much of an impact on my way of thinking until I read it again last weekend.

I've decided to write an extended review of the book. It will take a few posts, as Hick packs a lot of argument into 188 pages. I want to share some of his insights, and hopefully encourage some people to read it, because I think it's a terrific and important book.

One thing Hick writes about at length is how New Testament research has completely undermined the traditional source of authority for the doctrine, namely Jesus's own teaching, putting theologians in the difficult position of finding a new basis for it.

The consensus among scholars -- even among those who affirm the Nicene-Chalcedonian formulas -- is that Jesus never claimed to be divine. Hick quotes a number of "orthodox" scholars' admissions to this effect, including Michael Ramsey, C.F.D. Moule, and James Dunn, as well as some Chalcedon-affirming theologians like Brian Hebblethwaite and David Brown.¹

This development is no small matter. Hick writes,

From at least the fifth to the late nineteenth century Christians generally believed that Jesus had proclaimed himself to he God the Son, second person of a divine Trinity, living a human life; and their discipleship accordingly included this as a central article of faith. But that supposed dominical authority has dissolved under historical scrutiny.²

With the traditional basis of the doctrine having collapsed, theologians who "adhere to the Nicene-Chalcedonian dogma...have had to find a new basis for it." He observes that they have "decided that the doctrine of the incarnation does not require the knowledge or consent of the historical Jesus himself."³

Hick questions whether an incarnate God who doesn't know that he's divine is an intelligible idea, and asks further "how it is possible for the church to know something so important about Jesus that he didn't know about himself?" He has identified four types of responses:

The first involves a qualification of the admission that Jesus was unaware of and did not teach his own deity. This response holds that he was implicitly aware of it in his uniquely intimate filial relationship with the heavenly Father, and that he implicitly taught it by his actions, particularly in abrogating the law of Moses and in forgiving sins.⁴

Hick accepts the "widely received view that Jesus' use of the word [abba] did constitute a genuinely new contribution to Western spirituality," but points out that Jesus taught his disciples to think of and address God in the same way. Hick also points out "that to experience God as one's heavenly Father is not the same as experiencing oneself as uniquely God the Son, second person of the divine Trinity."⁵

Similarly, Hick finds unpersuasive the argument that Jesus was claiming to be God by teaching some things contrary to the Torah, citing the argument by E.P. Sanders that Jesus only demanded the transgression of the law in one instance, that being in Matthew 8.22, when he said, "Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead."⁶

Another quotation from Sanders explains the weakness of the argument that Jesus's forgiving of others' sins entailed a claim to divinity:The oft-repeated claim that Jesus "put himself in the place of God" is overdone. He is often said to have done so in forgiving sins; but we must note that he only pronounced forgiveness, which is not the prerogative of God, but of the priesthood.⁷

In my next post, I'll describe the other ways theologians who affirm the traditional doctrine of the incarnation have responded to the modern discovery that Jesus did not claim to be God, as identified and described by Hick.

Go to Part II.

Notes

All page references, unless otherwise noted, are to Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, 2nd Edition. See Works Cited.

[1] 27-28.

[2] 29.

[3] 29.

[4] 30.

[5] 31.

[6] 32. The argument from Sanders is in Jesus and Judaism, 267. I would argue, following John P. Meier's fourth volume of A Marginal Jew, that there were other instances in which Jesus abrogated the Mosaic law, specifically in his prohibition of oaths. Having said that, this prohibition conflicted with a rather obscure point of the Mosaic law, and I imagine it's possible that it never even occurred to Jesus that there was a conflict. See Meier, Marginal, 4.182ff.

I would further point out that disagreeing with the law does not imply a claim to divinity. Paul was far more liberal in his approach to the Torah than Jesus was, and he certainly never claimed to be divine. Sanders argues, "It was Jesus' sense of living at the turn of the ages which allowed him to think that the Mosaic law was not final and absolute," (Jesus and Judaism, 267; quoted in Hick, 32). Paul also understood himself as living "at the turn of the ages," and claimed authority on the basis of what he interpreted as a revelation to him from God. It strikes me as probable that Jesus understood his own authority in a similar way, and for a similar reason.

[7] Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 240; quoted in Hick, 32. It's ironic that this argument is sometimes made by Catholic priests -- and Hick notes that it has been used by Cardinal Walter Kasper in his book Jesus the Christ -- despite the fact that Catholic priests do exactly the same thing in the confessional everyday.

"...medieval princes prancing about Rome."

2010-02-07T12:14:00.004-05:00

Cardinal Franc Rodé is in the news again, for reasons you can read about here.

I quite liked a comment regarding this story that was posted on the America blog, by someone named Christa, so I thought I would quote it in full:

Once again, in the mouths of the medieval "princes," the words, "secular," and "modern" are seen as evil.
The benighted hierarchy, particularly those in the curia, are trying desperately to continue "ruling" the church, but those of us who live in the real "secular" world in this very post-modern age, love the creation that God has given us and love the fact that the world is a holy place to live and work.
We do not need or want to look like the medieval princes prancing about Rome. We do not need or want to be "set apart" for special adulations. We have the intelligence and zeal to carry out the mission of Christ in this God-created, God-redeemed place called Earth. Our minds and hearts have developed to the extent that we take very seriously the message and example of Christ in ministering to his people. Like Christ, the religious and laity together blend in with all of God's people in God's marvelous world. Our faith is in our hearts and translated to our hands. What we profess is seen in what we do for others, not in how we observe the bows and folded hands of rubrics.
This glorious world is also home to our human condition - one that is not perfect or perfectable in this life. Because we are all imperfect, we find in this beautiful world the results of what Pere Teillard called our diminishments - violence, war, hatred, injustice, and all the evil things we do to each other. It is in these arenas where life is hard to the point of being snuffed out that our mission and ministry leads us - not to the hallowed halls of palatial residences or mighty cathedrals.
I believe Christ never wore a cappa magna, tiara, miter, ring, bejeweled crucifix, lace, or silk slippers. I believe he never carried a crosier or was followed by white-gloved little boys who carried his accoutrements like robotic pages. I believe that Christ saw his life and the lives of his followers as giving glory to God through what they DID for each other, not how they wanted to APPEAR to others; through how they lived their lives, not how they observed rituals.
The Good and Holy Pope John XXIII helped Ruah* breathe more freely through the church after the Second Vatican Council. Rode and his ilk still cling to form over substance and so cannot imagine how Ruah is at work today.

* The Hebrew word ruah, if you're not familiar with it, appears frequently in the Hebrew scriptures, and is usually translated "spirit," or "wind."

Evolutionary spirituality, without fear

2010-02-04T13:01:00.002-05:00

I kind of liked this quote from Andrew Cohen, the editor of EnlightenNext Magazine, so I thought I would share:

Evolution is a messy process. So anybody who really wants to make the effort to strive for something new is going to have to be willing to make mistakes, take wrong turns, even to fail, but never give up. The simple truth is this: if not failing is more important to you than genuinely succeeding, you’re never going to make it. If you really want to succeed, you have to have the big heart, heroic will, tenacity, courage, and commitment to fearlessly engage with the evolutionary process until something profound, mysterious, and extraordinary happens that cannot be undone.

More bishops like this, please.

2010-01-14T11:17:00.002-05:00

From a piece by Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa, posted on NCR:

There can be legitimate and different "opinions" at the level of the Vatican dicasteries, conferences of bishops, individual bishops, communities of religious and lay faithful. And there can be such a thing in the church as loyal dissent.

Tensions and differences should be expected among thinking Catholics, therefore, but they should be managed by people who follow, not the route of power and control, but the way of discernment in the Spirit. Then all those concerned will consciously allow God to be God, and be open to recognizing the "fruits" and that "by their fruits you will know them". This calls for a respectful encounter between religious and hierarchy, with a conscious commitment to listening to what is deeper than the words, to what God may be saying through the other.

You can read the whole thing here. It's good.

One commenter posted this quotation, from Pope John XXIII (before he became pope):

"Authoritarianism suffocates truth, reducing everything to a rigid and empty formalism that is dependent on outside discipline. It curbs wholesome initiative, mistakes hardness for firmness, inflexibility for dignity. Paternalism is a caricature of true fatherliness. It is often accompanied by an unjustifiable proprietary attitude to one's victim, a habit of intruding, a lack of proper respect for the rights of subordinates."

"Him that pisseth against the wall..."

2009-12-31T13:54:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine emailed me a link to this video today, and I nearly DIED when I watched it.

It's a sermon by Steven L. Anderson, a Baptist preacher who got some media attention a while back for saying that he prayed for Barack Obama's death.

This is about a rather different topic. And it has to be seen to be believed. If I didn't know this guy was a sincere believer, I would have thought this was a parody (proving, once again, Poe's Law).

Watch it, it's hilarious.

The Problem is Orange

2009-12-28T12:31:00.007-05:00

People often speak of "polarisation" in the Catholic Church; this term denotes a widening gap between two opposing groups, and these two groups are usually called "conservative"/"traditional"/"orthodox" on the one hand, and "liberal"/"progressive" (as well as a number of less flattering epithets) on the other. There is also a tendency, I think, for people to see these as two sides on a horizontal axis.

The reality is, as I've argued before, rather more complicated than this, and I'm going to explain a bit more how I understand this conflict in the light of developmental spirituality.

It is probably safe to say that the large majority of adults in the Church today fall into three of James Fowler's six stages of development (and the corresponding altitudes in Ken Wilber's thought, as mentioned in a previous post). These are "Synthetic-Conventional," or amber-altitude; "Individuative-Reflective," or orange-altitude; and "Conjunctive," or green-altitude. There are some adults at the "Mythic-Literal"/red-altitude stage, and others at the "Universalizing"/teal-altitude stage, but these are probably small minorities.¹

Fowler himself has noted that individuals at the (amber-altitude) Synthetic-Conventional stage tend to be the "orthodox" believers; this stage of faith, he says, "can be seen as having rootage in and preserving important elements of pre-Enlightenment forms of cultural consciousness" (emphasis in original; Faithful, 161). Beliefs at this stage are held tacitly; individuals at this stage are generally non-reflective -- or, at least, not very reflective -- particularly when it comes to matters of faith. Additionally, authority is located externally at this stage. Wilber would add this stage is typically ethnocentric, which is manifested in the triumphalism and exclusivism of conventional Christianity.

The orange-altitude "Individuative-Reflective" stage emerged with the Enlightenment, and reflects a "modern" consciousness. It is characterised by a more reflective awareness of one's faith, and a more critical approach to one's beliefs. Orange faith also features a "relocation of authority within the self" (Fowler, Stages, 179). Fowler identifies this as the "progressive" stage (Faithful, 161ff.). It was this type of spirituality that eventually precipitated the "modernist crisis" in the Church in the late 19th century, which provoked an aggressively amber response from the Magisterium. It also brought us rigorous biblical criticism, and made a measure of openness to non-Christian religions possible for the Church. (The documents of Vatican II are essentially a mishmash of amber and orange ideas, with, perhaps, an occasional sprinkling of green.)

I would argue that most of the really committed progressives in the Church are more likely to be at the green-altitude "Conjunctive" stage. Green faith moves beyond the dichotomous rationality of orange, and embraces a more dialectical form of reasoning. It can move beyond a merely critical approach into a post-critical position (Paul Ricoeur's "second naiveté"), and is more experiential and pluralistic. It reflects a more "post-modern" consciousness.

If, as I've asserted, most committed progressives are at green, then what is orange? Who do we find there?

One well-known type of orange spirituality is that promoted by the retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. This is not to say that Spong himself is at that stage (I don't presume to know what stage he's at), but his work is very much aimed at converting late-amber Christians into orange faith. Spong, at least in his works that I've read,² follows an aggressive demythologising approach. It's not uncommon for people to read Spong and ask why, if what he says is true, anyone should bother with Christianity?

And that is the problem with orange. It simply isn't very appealing. Orange is the stage where many people say their goodbyes to the Church (and religion in general), and many never look back. Some will regress, and re-embrace, often with great fervour, an amber-level spirituality. Still others will ride it out, continue to develop, and find a much more satisfying spirituality at green, or higher.

The lack of an appealing orange spirituality is, I think, the great unrecognised cause of the so-called polarisation within the Church. Many progressives look at their conservative co-religionists and wonder, "Why do they have to see everything in black and white?" "Why can't they just think for themselves, and trust their own experience?" "Why is it so important for them to believe their religion is the only way?"

"Why," we might as well be asking, "can't they embrace a green-altitude spirituality?"

The problem is orange. It's a massive stumbling block -- that is, until you've cleared it, at which point it all but disappears.

I'll talk about some of the implications of this, as I see it, some other time.

Notes

[1] Wilber and Fowler match up quite well in the stages up to Conjunctive/green-altitude, but the next stage in Wilber, which he identifies as having reached "Integral" consciousness, is probably a more common achievement than Fowler's Universalizing stage. I've indicated in the past that I have some problems with Fowler's Universalizing stage, which he identified in the 1970s, long before Integral philosophy began to find a following.

[2] I haven't read a book by Spong since his autobiography, Here I Stand, was first published in 1999. I read several of his books prior to that, with Why Christianity Must Change or Die, which I also read in 1999, sticking out in my mind as particularly memorable. I suppose he might have changed his approach in the decade since then.

The Colours of Spiritual Development

2009-12-26T13:22:00.005-05:00

I’ve written a fair bit in the past about James Fowler’s theory of faith development, and I’m going to be picking it up again in the near future. I’ve decided that I need to clarify something about how I’m going to refer to the different stages in future posts.

In Fowler’s early work, his stages were numbered. In his more recent work, he has avoided numbers. I think there are good reasons for doing this, so I’m going to avoid using numbers as well. However, because the names for the stages are sometimes long enough to be unwieldy, it is helpful to have a shorthand name for each, and for this I will be borrowing Ken Wilber’s practice of using the colours of the visible light spectrum.

The line up like this:

Wilber’s use of colours, which began (as far as I can tell) in his 2007 book Integral Spirituality, struck me at first as being somewhat gimmicky, but I’ve since realised that it is a very helpful way of comparing the levels across different lines of development. Basically, there are corresponding levels in the various lines (cognitive, moral, spiritual, values, etc.), and levels that correspond might be said to be at the same “altitude.”

For a more detailed (and more adequate) explanation of the concept of altitude, I recommend reading “What Is Altitude?” from Wilber’s Holons internet newsletter.

A house in Nazareth

2009-12-22T13:01:00.003-05:00

Interesting news story from Haaretz:

Israeli archaeologists said Monday that they have uncovered remains of the first dwelling in the northern city of Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus.

The find sheds a new light on what Nazareth might have been like in Jesus' time, said the archaeologists, indicating that it was probably a small hamlet with about 50 houses populated by poor Jews.

The remains of a wall, a hideout and a cistern were found after builders dug up an old convent courtyard in the northern Israeli city, said archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Some skeptics have insisted that Nazareth was uninhabited in Jesus's time, precisely because no first-century homes had never been found. And, naturally, if none have been found yet, then that means none will ever be found in the future, because, as we all know, everything that could be discovered by archaeologists has already been discovered.

So naturally one of the commenters on the Haaretz article writes,

This should be challenged because there is no evidence in any documentation or serious archeology that there was a town of Nazareth in the first century.

Yes, this archaeological evidence that Nazareth existed in the first century should be challenged because there is no archaeological evidence that Nazareth existed in the first century! Think critically, people!

I sometimes wonder how much evidence people expect there to be of a first-century hamlet with a population of about 200? A hamlet that, by the way, would be now be covered with not only several feet of soil, but a city of over 65,000 people? "But surely Josephus would have mentioned it!" (Really? Why?) Some people have no sense of perspective.

Anyway, here is an AP video about it that was posted on the America blog by James Martin, SJ:

Martin writes,

I've always wondered why some Christians find the search for the "historical Jesus" so uninteresting, even threatening. For me, it's absolutely fascinating. Thus my enthusiasm for books like John Meier's magisterial A Marginal Jew (the granddaddy of the genre, with everything about his life and times that you might wish to know, and now approaching five volumes), Albert Nolan's provocative Jesus Before Christianity and Daniel J. Harrington's judicious Jesus: A Historical Portrait. Any information that adds to our knowledge of the early life and the "hidden life" (between ages 12 and 30, unaccounted for in the Gospels) will help us better understand Jesus of Nazareth, his life, his time and his teachings better. Why would you not want to know as much about Jesus of Nazareth as possible?

I've sometimes wondered that, too.

A good idea that will inevitably be rejected...

2009-12-05T13:02:00.006-05:00

Here is an exerpt from a courageous and entirely reasonable article by Rev. Michael J. Ryan, from America magazine:

It is now 45 years since the Second Vatican Council promulgated the groundbreaking and liberating document on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. As an eager and enthusiastic North American College seminarian at the time, I was in St. Peter’s Square on the December day in 1963 when Pope Paul VI, with the world’s bishops, presented that great Magna Carta to the church. The conciliar document transcended ecclesiastical politics. It was not just the pet project of a party but the overwhelming consensus of the bishops of the world. Its adoption passed overwhelmingly: 2,147 to 4.

Not in my wildest dreams would it have occurred to me then that I would live to witness what seems more and more like the systematic dismantling of the great vision of the council’s decree. But I have. We Catholics have.

For evidence, one need look no further than recent instructions from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments that have raised rubricism to an art form, or the endorsement, even encouragement, of the so-called Tridentine Mass. It has become painfully clear that the liturgy, the prayer of the people, is being used as a tool—some would even say as a weapon—to advance specific agendas. And now on the horizon are the new translations of the Roman Missal that will soon reach the final stages of approval by the Holy See. Before long the priests of this country will be told to take the new translations to their people by means of a carefully orchestrated education program that will attempt to put a good face on something that clearly does not deserve it.

The veterans who enthusiastically devoted their best creative energies as young priests to selling the reforms of the council to parishioners back in the 1960s will be asked to do the same with regard to the new translations. Yet we will be hard put to do so. Some colleagues in ministry may actually relish the opportunity, but not those of us who were captivated by the great vision of Vatican II, who knew firsthand the Tridentine Mass and loved it for what it was, but welcomed its passing because of what full, conscious and active participation would mean for our people. We can see the present moment only as one more assault on the council and, sadly, one more blow to episcopal collegiality. It was, after all, the council that gave to conferences of bishops the authority to produce their own translations (S.C., Nos. 36, 40), to be approved, it is true, by the Holy See but not, presumably, to be initiated, nitpicked and controlled by it. Further, the council also wisely made provision for times of experimentation and evaluation (S.C., No. 40)—something that has been noticeably missing in the present case.

This leads me to pose a question to my brother priests: What if we were to awaken to the fact that these texts are neither pastoral nor ready for our parishes? What if we just said, “Wait”?

* * *

What is at stake, it seems to me, is nothing less than the church’s credibility. It is true that the church could gain some credibility by giving us more beautiful translations, but clumsy is not beautiful, and precious is not prayerful. During a recent dinner conversation with friends, the issue of the new translations came up. Two at the table were keenly—and quite angrily—aware of the impending changes; two were not. When the uninformed heard a few examples (“and with your spirit”; “consubstantial with the Father”; “incarnate of the Virgin Mary”; “oblation of our service”; “send down your Spirit like the dewfall”; “He took the precious chalice”; “serene and kindly countenance,” for starters), the reaction was somewhere between disbelief and indignation.

* * *

The reaction of my friends should surprise no one who has had a chance to review the new translations. Some of them have merit, but far too many do not. Recently the Archdiocese of Seattle sponsored a seminar on the new translations for lay leaders and clergy. Both the priest who led the seminar (an accomplished liturgical theologian) and the participants gathered there in good faith. When passages from the proposed new translation were soberly read aloud by the presenter (I remember especially the phrase from the first eucharistic prayer that currently reads “Joseph, her husband,” but which in the new translation becomes “Joseph, spouse of the same virgin”), there was audible laughter in the room. I found myself thinking that the idea of this happening during the sacred liturgy is no laughing matter but something that should make us all tremble.
There’s more: the chilling reception the people of the dioceses of South Africa have given the new translations. In a rare oversight, the bishops of that country misread the instructions from Rome and, after a careful program of catechesis in the parishes, introduced the new translations to their people some months ago. The translations were met almost uniformly with opposition bordering on outrage.

His proposal is, as I said, quite courageous:

What if we, the parish priests of this country who will be charged with the implementation, were to find our voice and tell our bishops that we want to help them avert an almost certain fiasco? What if we told them that we think it unwise to implement these changes until our people have been consulted in an adult manner that truly honors their intelligence and their baptismal birthright? What if we just said, “Wait, not until our people are ready for the new translations, but until the translations are ready for our people”?

Whoa! Priests standing up to bishops with a reasonable proposal to help avoid damaging the Church? The details of how this might work -- not reproduced here -- include trial runs in various parishes and consultation with the laity! Imagine!

It is an entirely sensible idea that would, if it was implemented, help to limit the fallout that is sure to follow the introduction of these awful translations.

Of course, the chances of it making a difference are slim, given the way the bishops are ruling the church. And if there are any lay people whose voices register with them, they are the ones who support the new translations -- which they support, of course, because their knee-jerk reaction is to support anything opposed by progressives in the church.

I have a feeling they'll get their crappy liturgy, and with it the smaller, "more faithful," and more flock-of-sheep-like church they so desire.

You can read Fr. Ryan's whole article here, or check out the petition site here.

I don't understand the purpose of on-line petitions, especially when they do not require the signers to give contact information. Apparently some people who have signed don't even see the need to leave their name, as many signed it "Anonymous."

*sigh*

A quick thought about episcopal authority

2009-11-26T11:36:00.006-05:00

I was reading a blog post yesterday (can't remember which, but it might have been this one), and for some reason it made me think of one of Vatican II's more preposterous moments:

[T]he Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ. (Lumen Gentium 20)

What a compelling claim for the bishops to have made about themselves!

This in turn reminded me of something Jesus is alleged to have said:

If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. (John 5.29)

"We love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!”

2009-11-17T12:32:00.005-05:00

Here's an interesting article by Hanna Rosin, from The Atlantic: "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?"

The title is somewhat misleading -- it's rather generous to describe the religion portrayed in this article as "Christian," and as popular as the "prosperity gospel" might be in the US, it's hardly representative of Christianity in general, or even American Protestantism in general.

But the article provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of the sad people who've fallen for the "prosperity gospel," something I learned about only a few years ago when, out of anthropological curiosity, I started watching people like Oral Roberts and Creflo Dollar.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa del Padre’s success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the pastor’s basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents space from a lovely old Baptist church that can’t otherwise fill its pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass—“because Americanos don’t do that,” one told me—and file quietly into church. Some drive newly leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished enough to reflect his wingtips.

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

Pastor Garay, 48, is short and stocky, with thick black hair combed back. In his off hours, he looks like a contented tourist, in his printed Hawaiian shirts or bright guayaberas. But he preaches with a ferocity that taps into his youth as a cocaine dealer with a knife in his back pocket. “Fight the attack of the devil on my finances! Fight him! We declare financial blessings! Financial miracles this week, NOW NOW NOW!” he preached that Sunday. “More work! Better work! The best finances!” Gonzales shook and paced as the pastor spoke, eventually leaving his wife and three kids in the family section to join the single men toward the front, many of whom were jumping, raising their Bibles, and weeping. On the altar sat some anointing oils, alongside the keys to the Mercedes Benz.

Later, D’andry Then, a trim, pretty real-estate agent and one of the church founders, stood up to give her testimony. Business had not been good of late, and “you know, Monday I have to pay this, and Tuesday I have to pay that.” Then, just that morning, “Jesus gave me $1,000.” She didn’t explain whether the gift came in the form of a real-estate commission or a tax refund or a stuffed envelope left at her door. The story hung somewhere between metaphor and a literal image of barefoot Jesus handing her a pile of cash. No one in the church seemed the least bit surprised by the story, and certainly no one expressed doubt. “If you have financial pressure on you, and you don’t know where the next payment is coming from, don’t pay any attention to that!” she continued. “Don’t get discouraged! Jesus is the answer.”

America’s churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity. In Garay’s church, God is the “Owner of All the Silver and Gold,” and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance. Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above. Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall into despair about the things you cannot afford. “Instead of saying ‘I’m poor,’ say ‘I’m rich,’” Garay’s wife, Hazael, told me one day. “The word of God will manifest itself in reality.”

Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.

You can read the rest of the article here.

The Casa del Padre website features a picture of an eagle on the home page. A predatory bird. Seems appropriate to me.

Image: Fernando Garay, Pastor at Casa del Padre.

From tomorrow's Gospel reading...

2009-11-07T13:37:00.004-05:00

Jesus said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." (Mark 12.38-40)

* * *

There is a shorter option in the lectionary that omits this whole section, and includes only Mark 12.41-44.

I can't help but wonder if the verses quoted here are optional because they hit a little too close to home for some people...

Cardinal Rodé

2009-10-28T12:02:00.006-04:00

Tom Fox of NCR has posted a little "meditation" on some photos of Cardinal Rodé, the curial official overseeing the apostolic investigation of American women religious.

Fox writes,

Looking at these photos, one is reminded of the cultural, ecclesial, and socio-psychological diversity that make up our church. Living, as we do, in the early 21st century, we should recognize we are products of a mix of complex and unprecedented pre-modern, modern, and post-modern influences and temperaments.

He wonders if Rodé, "whose penchant for a traditional, monarchical, European styled, pre-counciliar church, is clearly evident in these photos," is really in a position to make any judgments about the women religious in a cultural setting so far removed from his own.

Fox is not judging Rodé simply on his fashion sense. He quotes a comment made by Rodé to John L. Allen, Jr. claiming that Vatican II "triggered 'the greatest crisis in church history.'" The image of Rodé walking in a procession, with his long train being carried behind him, is also revealing.

Fox provides a link to a site featuring numerous photos of Rodé which simply have to be seen to be believed.

More on the Anglican ordeal...

2009-10-23T13:16:00.005-04:00

I’ve dreamt of a reunion of the Catholic and Anglican churches in the past but I always imagined it would be a marrying of the best of both, not a rallying of the worst.

Frank Skinner, "My Church is not a safe haven for bigots"

(Love the title of the article. Wouldn't it be great if it was true...)

* * *

An article today inThe Independent, considers the question of how many Anglican priests will actually make the move:

It is in many people's interests to big this up. There has been talk of as many as a thousand CofE priests leaving, plus thousands more in America and Australia. The 1,000 figure comes from the church's traditionalist Forward in Faith faction (whose critics call it Backward in Bigotry). (emphasis added)

I find that hard to believe. There are fewer than 18,000 priests in the Episcopal Church. Many of the conservatives, I imagine, tend more toward the evangelical wing rather than the Catholic one.

As for the number that will actually "carry out the threat," the article says,

When women priests were first ordained it was said 1,000 priests would quit. In the event only 441 took the financial compensation package on offer, and scores of those have returned from Rome disillusioned since.

Later it says the Vatican "may want a separate Anglican Ordinariate in order to quarantine the newcomers from cradle Catholics. Rome doesn't want the influx of married priests to add legitimacy to the call for married priests among mainstream English Catholics."

I'm not sure how it can fail to do that, actually.

* * *

Here's a bit by John L. Allen, Jr. from NCR:

What's the deal on married priests?
The Vatican announcement on Tuesday clearly ruled in current Anglican ministers who are married and who wish to become Catholic priests, and clearly ruled out married bishops. It's still vague, however, what the situation will be going forward. During the briefing, Levada appeared to suggest that married Anglican seminarians could also be ordained Catholic priests -- but will that be a transitional allowance, or a permanent exception to the discipline of celibacy? In other words, will be the personal ordinariates be like the Eastern churches, able to ordain married priests in perpetuity?

Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese has raised two related questions along these lines:

Could a married Catholic man join the Anglicans, enter an Anglican seminary and then return to the Catholic Church?
Could married Catholic men from the traditional dioceses join the Anglican ordinariate and become seminarians and priests?

Obviously, the question becomes what impact such allowances might have on the broader debate over priestly celibacy. Whatever happens, it seems likely that the Vatican will be concerned that the opening to Anglicans not evolve into a massive loophole that ends up eroding the discipline of celibacy on a wider basis.

* * *

A New York Times article made the following observation:

The overture toward the Anglicans speaks to a central theme in Benedict’s papacy: his desire to bring in traditional believers at all costs to help Catholicism become a “creative minority” in increasingly secular Europe.

I think it's funny that he said that. Because, as we all know, conservatives are so creative.

The "creative minority" is what historian Arnold Toynbee called the small number of people in any society who stave off decline by being the ones to find solutions in every age to the big challenges the society faces. They succeed when they are followed by a large enough segment of the population.

In our time -- or in any time, actually -- "traditional believers" are hardly the ones we should be looking to for such solutions. Creativity requires divergent thinking, which is obviously not a conservative strength.

Slightly off-topic, but it needed to be said.

Some thoughts on the Anglican situation...

2009-10-22T14:09:00.003-04:00

Some progressive may worry, with Michael Sean Winters, "that some of these newcomers will also be nostalgists, anti-feminists, and anti-gay bigots."

Of course they will, but let's not worry about that. I mean, this is the Roman Catholic Church. A few thousand more of each would be a drop in the bucket compared to what we already have.

* * *

I doubt the numbers will be very substantial. I've seen a couple of articles that pointed out that the Anglican converts will be expected to accept the teachings about divorce, contraception, transubstantiation, and the pope as "God's representative on Earth." For many of us brought up in the Church, these are easily shrugged off as relics of a bygone era, but for prospective converts I imagine they will loom a bit more largely and will likely be stumbling blocks for many.

* * *

This could well hasten the arrival of a married Catholic priesthood, which was already inevitable. As someone who thinks the ordained ministry needs to be reformed far beyond the celibacy issue, I don't know how I feel about that. It will only delay the changes that really need to be made.

* * *

An article in The Times claims, "A 'rush to Rome' would resolve Catholicism's shortage of priests, win back some ancient church buildings annexed at the Reformation and reduce Anglicanism to an anxious, liberal rump."

Actually, it will do none of those things.

With Anglican laypeople coming over along with Anglican priests, the layperson-to-priest ratio is not likely to change much at all, much less "resolve" the problem.

In a comment attached to that story, a Rev. Peter Hawkins wrote,

Most ancient Church property in England is owned by the same officials that owned it at the time of the separation from Rome in 1570 with the excommunication of Elizabeth I. It is owned by Bishops, Deans, Chapters and Incumbents. They cease to hold their office if they become Roman Catholics or any other denomination. Modern Roman Catholic Church Property is owned by Diocesan Trusts. The Church of England in this matter is a series of linked corporations. It is most unlikely that any ancient property could or would be transferred to any Roman Catholic Trust.

Finally, there is good reason to believe that a lot of conservative Anglicans aren't going to see Rome as a solution to their problem. Some of the conservative Anglicans who have already broken away from the Anglican Church of Canada, for example, have already indicated their intention to stick with the Anglican Communion.

I have a feeling we'll look back on this in the future and wonder what all the fuss was about.

What Good Is the Church?

2009-10-14T11:46:00.008-04:00

I recently re-discovered this video featuring two pretty famous Catholic monks, Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB, and Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO, discussing the role of the institution of the Church.

Br. David makes the good point that the hierarchy is not the place to look for leadership in the Church (which doesn't mean official leaders don't serve an important function). They also talk about the role of tradition, among other things. Fr. Thomas tells an amusing anecdote about Pope John XXIII. His joke at the beginning won't make sense to anyone unfamiliar with the colour-coded stages of Spiral Dynamics, but it's worth watching.

"American women religious are being bullied": Sister X

2009-10-08T14:54:00.003-04:00

Commonweal has posted an interesting and rather moving article by "Sister X," a nun for over thirty years, reflecting on the Vatican "visitations." She writes anonymously because of the "threat of disciplinary action" that has discouraged all but a few sisters from saying anything publicly about this matter.

She doubts the Vatican is primarily motivated by concern for American nuns. The question they are really interested in, she thinks, is why there aren't more of them.

(I've suggested before that if the Vatican really wants to understand why more women aren't entering religious life, they should ask the women who aren't entering religious life. My guess is they know they wouldn't like the answer.)

Anyway, it's well worth reading. Check it out here.

"Conservative Bible Project Cuts Out Liberal Passages": Not a Joke

2009-10-06T15:00:00.002-04:00

This sounds like a hoax, but it's not: the nice people behind the Conservapedia website have started a "Wikipedia-like group editing project" (as this HuffPo article puts it) to produce a conservative translation of the Bible (as if the NIV wasn't bad enough).

The aims of this project are numerous, but among them is a determination to render the Biblical text in such a way that liberals will not be able to corrupt it.

This was, for me, a bit of a head-scratcher. Closer to the bottom of the page they admit that "professors and higher-educated" people -- you know, the people who typically translate the Bible from the original languages -- "can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook." I guess I don't understand how they could ever even dare to imagine that this online amateur translation could ever serve "as a bulwark against the liberal manipulation of meaning." Are the liberals and feminists who actually read the original languages going to forget what the original texts actually say? Do they imagine their opponents will give their "translation" any credence whatsover?

They want to avoid "gender inclusive language" and they want it to be "not dumbed down." You see, the NIV was "written at only the 7th grade level." (That's because it was written for conservatives. If they're looking for something written at a high school level, the NRSV is already available.)

Curiously, they also want to avoid "liberal wordiness." No word on how that will be squared with "not dumbing it down." (Actually, avoiding "wordiness" is one way to lower the grade level of a text.)

One of the many advantages of this online Bible is that it "would debunk the pervasive and hurtful myth that Jesus would be a political liberal today." One way it would do this, apparently, is by "explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning."

They're also removing the story of the adulterous woman from the Gospel of John, as it gives liberals the idea that Jesus was opposed to the death penalty.

They already have some parts translated, including a number of passages from the Gospel of Mark. Among the proposed changes: "Holy Spirit" is now "Divine Guide." Amusingly, Jesus takes some "intellectual types" to task in Mark 2.8. Later, "the Pharisees" are referred to as "the Elite" (Mark 3.2). Another page suggests that the term "homeschool" might be relevant to Jesus's teaching of the younger apostles.

It's clear enough that the participants have no knowledge of Greek, and are merely paraphrasing (and loosely at that).

I can only imagine this will provoke horror -- not from their hated liberal enemies, but from fellow conservatives who won't appreciate the Word of God being cut up and paraphrased in such a "liberal" way.

I think it's amusing. Check it out here.

The Clash of Hierarchies

2009-10-05T14:34:00.000-04:00

Much of the conflict in the Church, I would argue, is the result of a disharmony between two different kinds of hierarchies.

One of these hierarchies is relatively obvious: it is part of the very institutional structure of the Church, with the pope and his fellow bishops at the top, then priests, and deacons. The laity is not typically reckoned as part of the “hierarchy,” but, being subordinate to the clergy, we are effectively at the bottom.

In addition to the institutional hierarchy is a hierarchy of a very different kind. It is what we might call a growth or development hierarchy.¹

Here we are talking about the distribution of people in the Church across the different levels of development (including, for example, cognitive, moral, and spiritual development).

I think there has to be an isomorphism between any institutional hierarchy and it’s corresponding development hierarchy if the institution is going to function properly. The school system, for example, would not work if elementary and secondary teachers were not more developed than their students. Happily, they usually are.

For much of the history of the Church, there might well have been a similar isomorphism between the two hierarchies. For much of that history, the large majority its lay members were illiterate. From the inception of the ordained hierarchy in the post-apostolic period, right through the Middle Ages, the line between those who were educated and those who were not would have looked a lot like the line between the clergy and the laity. We can probably surmise, then, that the clergy was more cognitively, morally, and spiritually developed than the laity.² Of course there were many exceptions on both sides of the divide – we know of many rather stupid and amoral priests and popes during that time period, as well as a number of deeply intelligent and enlightened laypeople – but generally this is likely to have been the case throughout much of the Church’s premodern history.

In the last century or so, and especially in the last few decades, a number of factors have converged to throw things quite out of whack.

One is that, at least in the developed world, Catholic lay people have become far more educated than ever before.

Another is that, not only has the number of men entering the priesthood has declined sharply, the quality of men seeking ordination has also dropped off.³

A further problem is the type of priests who have been promoted to the rank of bishop by the two most recent popes. Unhesitating conformity and excessive regard for external authority – characteristics of the relatively low Synthetic-Conventional stage – are apparently among the qualifications necessary for anyone to advance beyond being a mere priest.

All of these, as well as a number of things that could be mentioned, have put the ordained hierarchy in a very weird position relative to the laity: Many lay people are more developed than their pastors and bishops. And few if any in the hierarchy have recognised this.

Notes

[1] This is a term used by philosopher Ken Wilber to describe the more natural hierarchies (or “holarchies”) of things at different levels of development. Wilber uses the term very broadly to include, for example, the relationship between atoms, molecules, cells, and organisms. Each higher level includes the level that precedes it.

Wilber also uses the term to describe stages of human development, and I’m using it here in this sense.

[2] This is based on the belief, held by numerous researchers (such as Lawrence Kohlberg and James Fowler), that cognitive development is a necessary but not sufficient condition for moral and spiritual development.

[3] This observation has been made by more than a few people. This article by Peter Steinfels, for example, describes the findings of seminary faculty teams in the US, which found (as quoted on page 2)

Even among the academically gifted, as well as among the academically deficient, the faculty teams reported seminarians who “regardless of native abilities and educational experiences” resist “the learning enterprise” because it threatens their “preconceived ideas about theology.”

The Church is going to face an entire generation (or more) or official leaders who simply will not have the intellectual resources needed to meet, or even understand, the theological challenges facing the Church.

Here is another article about the conservatism of younger priests.

Outrage over Vatican request to US bishops for funding

2009-09-29T14:30:00.003-04:00

The comments on Tom Fox's article yesterday about Cardinal Rodé's request that the US bishops fund the $1.1 million investigation of American women religious have been so vitriolic (and, unusually for an NCR article, largely in agreement with one another) that Fox has written another article just about the comments.

It is rather astonishing that, in the midst of a recession, with churches being closed left and right due to a lack of money, the Vatican expects the US bishops to cough up that much money for something that is already so controversial among American Catholics. Really, how do they think people are going to react to that?

Well, Pope Benedict has said he wants a smaller church.

Colleen Kochivar-Baker has a nice post on this, accompanied by an amusing photo of Cardinal Rodé wearing an outfit that has to be seen to be believed, at her blog Enlightened Catholicism.

Terry Eagleton on postmodernism

2009-09-27T10:51:00.002-04:00

This quotation from Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, by Terry Eagleton, a Marxist literary critic, was printed in the current issue of EnlightenNext magazine:

“Postmodernism is allergic to the idea of certainty, and makes a great deal of theoretical fuss over this rather modest, everyday notion. As such, it is in some ways the flip side of fundamentalism... Some postmodern thought suspects that all certainty is authoritarian. It is nervous of people who sound passionately committed to what they say. In this, it represents among other things an excessive reaction to fascism and Stalinism. The totalitarian politics of the twentieth century did not only launch an assault on truth in their own time; they also helped to undermine the idea of truth for future generations. The line between holding certain noxious kinds of belief, and holding strong beliefs at all, then becomes dangerously unclear. Conviction itself is condemned as dogmatic.”¹

I haven’t read anything by Eagleton in years, and was somewhat surprised to find that he, who is himself an atheist, apparently takes Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins to task in this book for, among other things, misrepresenting religion in their recent atheist rants.

I find Hitchens, and especially Dawkins, to be rather tiresome, but Eagleton is such a witty writer that I think I’m going to have to check it out.

Notes

[1] Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Quoted in EnlightenNext. 45 (September-November 2009): 22.

The simple faithful

2009-09-26T09:03:00.005-04:00

Over twenty years ago, in a speech delivered at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, Cardinal Ratzinger said,

The church’s main job is the care of the faith of the simple. A truly reverential awe should arise from this which becomes an internal rule of thumb for every theologian.¹

I wonder how many theologians actually understand their vocation this way. Anyway, when I read this years ago, it reminded me of a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas:

[I]t is dangerous to dispute in public about the faith, in the presence of simple people, whose faith for this reason is more firm, that they have never heard anything differing from what they believe. Hence it is not expedient for them to hear what unbelievers have to say against the faith.²

Catholicism does, certainly, have a rich intellectual tradition, of which St. Thomas himself – at least, in his better moments – was an important part.

But there is also a parallel anti-intellectual strain that celebrates uncritical faith, which it sees as fragile, precious – both worthy and in need of protection.

I suppose this should not be surprising. The “simple faithful” of the Catholic Church are people who inhabit what James Fowler calls the “Mythic-Literal” and “Synthetic Conventional” stages of faith development (both of which preserve features of premodern consciousness). They are characteristically obedient to external authorities, and obedience is valued by Catholic officialdom more than anything else.

It’s not hard to find elements of the tradition that discourage people from moving past these stages. You have to question your beliefs to grow beyond them, but many Catholics (and Christians in general, actually) equate questioning your religious beliefs with inviting the devil himself to come in and punch your ticket to perdition.

The division in the Church, I think, is largely the result of some people internalising this anti-intellectual message, while others manage (sometimes only with great difficulty) to shrug it off. Unfortunately for people in the latter category, the Church doesn’t officially allow very much room in which to grow.

A Church for Grown-Ups

Michael Bayly wrote about this recently on his blog (“Time for a Church for Grown-Ups,” The Wild Reed). In his work to bring reform to the Church, he says he has often wondered if “an adult faith is even possible in today’s Church,” and he notes that it “certainly doesn’t appear to be encouraged.”

No, it certainly isn’t, at least not by the loudest voices in the hierarchy (or the laity, for that matter). Part of the problem, obviously, is that many believers have very strong emotional attachments to their beliefs, and they will not seriously question them.

A less obvious part of the problem is that the next stage of growth beyond Synthetic-Conventional, which Fowler calls “Individuative-Reflective,” has never developed into a widely appealing form of faith.

Why not? I’ll suggest some possible reasons in the near future.

Notes

[1] “The Church and the Theologian.” Origins 15 (1986): 769.

[2] ST, II-II 10.7.

The Red Book

2009-09-19T06:49:00.008-04:00

From the New York Times, September 16, 2009:

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.

And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.

Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.

Of those who did see it, at least one person, an educated Englishwoman who was allowed to read some of the book in the 1920s, thought it held infinite wisdom — “There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely,” she wrote — while another, a well-known literary type who glimpsed it shortly after, deemed it both fascinating and worrisome, concluding that it was the work of a psychotic.

I remember when I was in high school seeing a reference to Carl Jung’s The Red Book in, I believe, a footnote of another book. It mentioned that the book had never been published, which struck me as odd. Why would a book by such an important author not be published so many decades after his death?

I didn’t think much of it, and even forgot that The Red Book existed, until I came across this fascinating story (“The Holy Grail of the Unconscious” by Sara Corbett) in the New York Times.

Apparently Jung laboured over it on and off for sixteen years, and it held enormous personal significance for him. He was ambivalent about publishing it, however, as he feared it might invite ridicule from his peers. He left no instructions for his family about what to do with it, and two generations of very protective Jungs argued with each other over whether or not it should be published or not.

This October, finally, it is being published. It was written in German and features beautiful paintings by Jung himself (some of which have been shown here). An English translation of the text will be included in the back of the book.

The cover price is $195 US, but it’s selling for $105 US on Amazon. I’m very, very tempted.

Developmental Theories

2009-09-12T00:24:00.003-04:00

James Fowler's research into faith development has demonstrated how what we might call our "spiritual intelligence" develops through a predictable sequence of stages.¹ In his important book Stages of Faith, Fowler noted the relationship between the different faith stages and the stages of other developmental theories, particularly those of Jean Piaget (cognitive development) and Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development).

The stages would optimally line up something like this:²

Stage	Piaget	Kohlberg	Fowler
1	Preoperational	Heteronomous Morality	Intuitive-Projective
2	Concrete Operational	Instrumental Exchange	Mythic-Literal
3	Early Formal Operations	Mutual Interpersonal Relations	Synthetic-Conventional
4	Formal Operations (Dichotomizing)	Social Systems and Conscience	Individuative-Reflective
5	Formal Operations (Dialectical)	Social Contract, Individual Rights	Conjunctive
6	Formal Operations (Synthetic)	Universal Ethical Principles	Universalizing

I say "optimally" because moral and faith development do not always keep pace with cognitive development. Ken Wilber likes to cite the example of Nazi doctors as people who may have been very intelligent (highly developed cognitively), but whose moral development was obviously lagging far behind. Cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for development in other areas (or along what Wilber calls "lines"). Both Fowler and Wilber make this point.³

Wilber has argued that different developmental theories describe different lines, which is similar to the increasingly popular notion of multiple intelligences (IS, 59). The lines develop in each individual relatively independently of one another:

A person can evidence very high development in some lines (e.g., cognitive), medium development in others (e.g., interpersonal), and low in yet still others (e.g., moral). (Wilber, IS, 59)

A nice chart showing some of these lines, and how they correspond to each other can be seen here (opens new window).

Some Objections to Developmental Theories

There are some people who reject developmental theories, so I thought I would address that a little bit.

One argument I’ve encountered on the web is that some people don’t neatly fall into any one stage as described by a particular theory. For instance, Fowler’s Synthetic-Conventional stage is a conformist stage, and by the way Fowler describes it, one would expect adults who inhabit that stage to have very conventional views. How does one explain the existence of conformist progressives?

This reflects a failure to grasp the distinction between “contents” and “structures.” Some contents are more likely to be found in some structures than others, but there is no necessary relationship between them. Someone raised in a progressive family might well inhabit the Synthetic-Conventional stage and still hold progressive views. “Contents” refer to what we think; “structures” concern how we think about it.

A more serious and legitimate concern is that hierarchical models can be used used by the powerful for ideological purposes, with the oppression and marginalisation of others being the inevitable result. They invariably see themselves as the most developed, and relegate everyone who disagrees with them to lower levels. (See Pope Benedict’s comments about what constitutes “adult faith” in this article by John L. Allen, Jr. for a recent example of this.)

This is a legitimate concern, there’s no doubt about that. But the fact that an idea can be abused does not mean it’s mistaken. Besides, as Wilber has never tired of pointing out, those who reject hierarchies (a common enough problem among postmodernists) inevitably assert their own: To reject hierarchical theories in favour of non-hierarchical ones is itself to create a hierarchy. Wilber argues that we have to distinguish between “natural hierarchies” (which are not good or bad, but simply happen to exist) and “dominator hierarchies” (which are bad).

Another related-but-different argument is that developmental theories are “elitist.” I must admit, this particular argument doesn’t resonate with me. Are we to suppose that all people are equally adept at all things?

Wilber addressed this in an article in What Is Enlightenment? magazine a few years ago:

But isn't this view of mine terribly elitist? Good heavens, I hope so. When you go to a basketball game, do you want to see me or Michael Jordan play basketball? When you listen to pop music, who are you willing to pay money in order to hear? Me or Bruce Springsteen? When you read great literature, who would you rather spend an evening reading, me or Tolstoy? When you pay $64 million for a painting, will that be a painting by me or by Van Gogh?

All excellence is elitist. And that includes spiritual excellence as well. But spiritual excellence is an elitism to which all are invited. We go first to the great masters —to Padmasambhava, to St. Teresa of Avila, to Gautama Buddha, to Lady Tsogyal, to Emerson, Eckhart, Maimonides, Shankara, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Bodhidharma, Garab Dorje. But their message is always the same: let this consciousness be in you that is in me. You start elitist, always; you end up egalitarian, always.

For a nice take on this issue in a editors’ blog for the same magazine (now called EnlightenNext), read this.

Notes

[1] I don't recall Fowler ever using the term "spiritual intelligence," but Ken Wilber makes the point that this is essentially what Fowler is talking about (and I happen to agree that it is an apt term); see Wilber, IS, 69.

[2] Piaget development scheme ended with formal operations (which most people reach in adolescence). The gradations of “dichotomizing,” “dialectical,” and “synthetic” have been identified by Fowler. Similar gradations beyond mere formal operations are found in Wilber’s work, though the terminology he uses tends to change from one book to the next. Fowler’s “dichotomizing,” “dialectical,” and “synthetic” are, respectively, “rational mind,” “pluralistic/meta-systemic/early-vision logic,” and “paradigmatic/middle vision-logic” in Wilber. There is no single source for this information – as I said, Wilber changes his mind about what he would like to call them – but one place would be SES, 623n.6.

[3] See Fowler, Stages of Faith, 65; Wilber, SES, 689n.46.

Stages of Faith: Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

2009-09-08T07:13:00.001-04:00

The sixth final stage, Universalizing Faith, is the most difficult to write about. In Stages of Faith, Fowler provided excerpts from interviews of people at each of the previous stages, but there are no interviews with individuals at Stage 6. Perhaps this is not surprising -- apparently only one individual of the 359 in his research sample had actually reached this stage (see Stages, 318).

Fowler does name some individuals he considered to be representatives of Stage 6, including Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, as well as people like Dag Hammarskjöld, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abraham Heschel, and Thomas Merton (Stages, 201).

When I first read this, it struck me as problematic. I don't think it's legitimate, after carefully working out the structures of the other stages through careful empirical research, to simply toss that method away and start speculating. I also find it difficult to believe that one has to develop through all of the other stages in order to be a Martin Luther King or a Mother Teresa. As admirable as her life was, did Mother Teresa really ever move that far beyond conventional faith? From what I've read, it seems that she did not. I don't mean to depreciate what she did; I mean only to suggest that what she did could have been done at a lower stage, that it is not indicative of a high level of faith development as Fowler describes it. Or, to put that another way, I would argue that when someone gives him- or herself so completely for others, there is something else at work, something other than the kind of faith development we are concerned with here.

I don't have as much confidence in Fowler's description of this stage compared with the earlier stages, but I will summarise it for the sake of completeness.

Fowler writes,

The structuring of this stage derives from the radical completion of a process of de-centration from self that proceeds throughout the sequence of stages. From the non-differentiation of self and objects in the earliest phases of infancy to the naive egocentrism of the Intuitive-Projective stage, each successive stage marks a steady widening in social perspective taking. (Faithful, 66)

Or, put very simply, one's ability to see things from perspectives other than one's own deepens and widens as one develops.

People at Stage 6 overcome the need, felt in all previous stages, for the preservation for one's own life and well-being:

Heedless of the threats to self, to primary groups, and to the institutional arrangements of the present order that are involved, Stage 6 becomes a disciplined, activist incarnation -- a making real and tangible -- of the imperatives of absolute love and justice of which Stage 5 has partial apprehensions. The self at Stage 6 engages in spending and being spent for the transformation of present reality in the direction of a transcendent actuality. (Stages, 200).

Fowler says people at this stage "typically exhibit qualities that shake our usual criteria of normalcy," and "[i]n their devotion to universalizing compassion they may offend our parochial perceptions of justice" (Stages, 200).

People in Stage 5 "continue to live in the tension between their rootedness in and loyalties to their segment of the existing order, on the one hand, and the inclusiveness and transformation of their visions toward a new ultimate order, on the other" (Faithful, 66-67). In Stage 6, one overcomes this tension.

Stage 6 individuals are often charismatic leaders. The followers of some charismatic cult leaders will readily identify their leaders as belonging to this stage, so Fowler suggests how these dangerous leaders are different:

A good test for distinguishing the authentic faithful leader from the dangerously charismatic copy is whether the leader requires regressive dependence and relinquishing of personal responsibility from his or her followers. Similarly, the authentic spirituality of the Universalizing stage avoids polarizing the world between the "saved" and the "damned." Persons of this stage are as concerned with the transformation of those they oppose as with the bringing about of justice and reform. (Faithful, 67)

Universalizing Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Formal Operations (Synthetic)
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual, with the commonwealth of being
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Loyalty to being
Bounds of Social Awareness: Identification with the species. Transnarcissistic love of being
Locus of Authority: In a personal judgment informed by the experiences and truths of previous stages, purified of egoic striving, and linked by disciplined intuition to the principle of Being
Form of World Coherence: Unitive actuality felt and participated unity of "One beyond many"
Symbolic Function: Evocative power of symbols actualized through unification of reality mediated by symbols and the self (Fowler, Stages, 244)

Review: Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian, by Paul F. Knitter

2009-08-29T07:27:00.000-04:00

I could have written a book with this title, and meant it quite sincerely. (But, I hasten to add, it wouldn't have been nearly as good.)

Paul Knitter, presently the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is well known for his work on the subject of religious pluralism. This book is not like his other books, at least not the ones that I've read, or read from. Knitter has never been one to try to hide his authorial presence behind dry academic prose, but here we find him writing very personally, sharing his struggles with elements of the Christian faith, and relating how his study of Buddhism -- and his own Zen practice -- have helped him through the struggle. Indeed, he describes himself as a "Buddhist Christian" (which is a little bit further than I'd go myself).

Knitter, who was a priest from 1966 to 1975, and whose teachers included such luminaries as Jesuit Frs. Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, admits that he has struggled for much of his career with what many would insist are essential Christian beliefs -- "not the ethical teachings of Jesus and the New Testament witness," or "the controversial ethical or practical teachings" of the Catholic Church:¹

No, when I say I'm struggling, I mean with the big stuff -- the stuff that applies to all Christians, not just my own Roman Catholic community. I'm talking about the basic ingredients of the Creed, the beliefs that many Christians proclaim together every Sunday and that are supposed to define who they are in a world of many other religious beliefs and philosophies. I'm talking about "God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth," who as a personal being is active in history and in our individual lives, whom we worship and pray to for help and guidance. I'm talking about "his only-begotten Son" who "died for our sins" and will "come again at the end of time" and who will grant eternal life and personal immortality to the body and souls of all those who answer God's call, while those who reject the call will be dispatched to a hellish punishment that will never, ever end.²

Knitter claims that the traditional sources of Christian theology have proven inadequate to the task of helping him through his struggle. He has come to realise, he says, that he has "to look beyond the traditional borderlines of Christianity to find something that is vitally, maybe even essentially, important for the job of understanding and living the Christian faith: other religions."³ Following the example of people like Raimon Panikkar, Aloysius Pieris, Bede Griffiths, and Thomas Merton, Knitter says he has come to realise that he has to do his theology dialogically. "Or," he says, "in current theological jargon: I have to be religious interreligiously."⁴

Each chapter in this book follows a similar pattern: First, Knitter describes some traditional Christian belief that he finds problematic. Second, he "passes over" into Buddhism, explaining some aspect of Buddhist thought that might be relevant. Third, he "passes back" to Christianity, and explores how the Buddhist ideas might help to provide a solution.

The chapters are as follows:

Preface: Am I Still a Christian?

1. Nirvana and God the Transcendent Other

2. Nirvana and God the Personal Other

3. Nirvana and God the Mysterious Other

4. Nirvana and Heaven

5. Jesus the Christ and Gautama the Buddha

6. Prayer and Meditation

7. Making Peace and Being Peace

Conclusion: Promiscuity or Hybridity?

I won't say too much about the contents just yet, as I intend to blog about this a fair bit in the near future. I will say that I found it to be quite a satisfying read.

The book is clearly aimed at open-minded Christians willing to consider how another religious tradition might inform their own religious perspective. Knitter does not presume that the reader will know very much about Buddhism (I kind of wonder, though, how many people without a considerable prior interest in Buddhism will actually bother to read this book).

I expected it to be somewhat predictable, and I occasionally found myself thinking that I already knew exactly where he was going to go with each chapter. Sometimes I was right, but more often I was pleasantly surprised.

Towards the end Knitter discusses some of the elements of Christianity that, at least on the surface, would seem to be in stark contrast with Buddhism. One is Christianity's emphasis on history and eschatology, found most significantly in Jesus's teachings about the kingdom of God. For Buddhists, as Knitter puts it, "the world isn't going anywhere."⁵

Another difference is the traditional Christian commitment to social justice. Actually, this was one of the more interesting things in the book, at least for me. Buddhism, Knitter says, has long been concerned with peace, but not justice, which is not something I had given much thought to before (although I'm certainly aware of the relatively recent emergence of "Engaged Buddhism," as exemplified in the work of people like Thich Nhat Hanh, Maha Ghosananda, and Sulak Sivaraksa, among others). Knitter, who in addition to being a theologian is also a social activist, shares some wonderful insights into the relationship between contemplation and action, which was one of the many rewarding aspects of this book.

It is often noted that Buddhism poses an intellectual challenge to Christianity. This is true, but there is no need to take a defensive posture. Paul Knitter has shown that engaging with Buddhist thought can greatly enhance Christian faith. Knitter finds that "the more deeply one enters into the core experience that animates one's own tradition, the more broadly one is enabled and perhaps moved to enter into the experiences of other traditions."⁶ Whether one is finally interested specifically in Buddhism or not, Knitter has provided a very compelling, personal, and accessible account of how fruitful this engagement with another tradition can be.

Notes

[1] Knitter, Without Buddha, x. Of the latter, Knitter mentions "matters such as birth control, divorce, the role of women, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, episcopal leadership, and transparency." He adds, "Certainly these are matters of grave concern, but with many of my fellow Catholics I've realized that, as has often been the case in the history of our church, on such issues the "sense" or "voice" of the faithful has a few things to teach the pastors. It's a matter of time."

[2] Knitter, Without Buddha, x.

[3] Knitter, Without Buddha, xi.

[4] Knitter, Without Buddha, xii.

[5] Knitter, Without Buddha, 180.

[6] Knitter, Without Buddha, 216.

Growing lettuce is poetry...

2009-08-27T13:23:00.003-04:00

Everything we do is an act of poetry or a painting if we do it with mindfulness. Growing lettuce is poetry. Walking to the supermarket can be a painting.

When we do not trouble ourselves about whether or not something is a work of art, if we just act in each moment with composure and mindfulness, each minute of our life is a work of art. Even when we are not painting or writing, we are still creating. We are pregnant with beauty, joy, peace, and we are making life more beautiful for many people.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step, 40.

Stages of Faith: Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith

2009-08-22T11:45:00.002-04:00

James Fowler says that reaching Stage 5, which he calls "Conjunctive Faith," is "unusual before mid-life" (Stages, 198), although it should be noted that a significant minority of people in their thirties, even some people in their twenties, are best described as Stage 5.¹

"The name of this stage," he writes in Faithful Change, "implies a rejoining or a union of that which previously has been separated" (64). One moves into Stage 5 when one moves beyond the "either/or" dichotomizing logic of Stage 4, and begins to think more dialectically or dialogically (Stages, 185). He says that the name was inspired by Nicolas of Cusa's notion of the coincidentia oppositorum, "the 'coincidence of opposites' in our apprehensions of truth" (Faithful, 64). Someone at this stage grasps the interrelatedness or interconnectedness of things.

"In dialogical knowing," Fowler writes, "the known is invited to speak its own word in its own language... The knower seeks to accomodate her or his knowledge to the structure of that which is known before imposing her or his own categories upon it" (Stages, 185).

In Stage 4, one sees the emergence of what Fowler calls the "executive ego" (Stages, 179). This is when the individual begins to take responsibility for his or her beliefs, commitments, values, etc. Authority, which had always previously been external, is now located internally. This does not change in Stage 5, but now the executive ego "must come to terms with the fact that its confidence is based at least in part upon illusion or upon seriously incomplete self-knowledge" (Faithful, 64). Whereas the Stage 4 individual has great confidence in the conscious mind, the Stage 5 individual begins to see this as overconfidence, begins to appreciate the reality and the influence of the unconscious mind, and grasps the need to integrate the conscious and unconscious (Stages, 186).

Stage 5 also brings a different relationship with religious symbols. In Stage 4, the individual is preoccupied with "demythologizing":

Stage 4 is concerned to question symbolic representations and enactments and to force them to yield their meanings for translation into conceptual or propositional statements. As such, Individual-Reflective faith wants to bring the symbolic representation into its (Stage 4's) circle of light and to operate on it, extracting its meanings. This leaves the person or group in Stage 4 clearly in control. The meaning so grasped may be illuminating, confronting, harshly judgmental or gently reassuring. But whatever its potential impact, its authentication and weight will be assigned in accordance with the assumptions and commitments that already shape the circle of light in which it is being question. It will not be granted the initiative. (Stages, 187)

The Stage 5 individual does not abandon this critical approach, but moves beyond it. Stage 5 does not regress to the pre-critical approach of Stage 3 (and earlier), but moves forward into a post-critical phase, which Fowler identifies with Paul Ricoeur's notion of the "second naïveté" (Stages, 187). Here the individual develops "a readiness to enter into the rich dwellings of meaning that true symbols, ritual and myth offer" (Faithful, 65).

These need not be the symbols, rituals or myths of one's own tradition, either. Someone at this stage, Fowler writes, "is ready for significant encounters with other traditions than its own, expecting that truth has disclosed and will disclosed itself in those traditions in ways that may complement or correct its own" (Stages, 186).²

Conjunctive Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Formal Operations (Dialectical)
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual with groups, classes and traditions "other" than one's own
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Prior to society, Principaled higher law (universal and critical)
Bounds of Social Awareness: Extends beyond class norms and interests. Disciplined ideological vulnerability to "truths" and "claims" of outgroups and other traditions
Locus of Authority: Dialectical joining of judgment-experience processes with reflective claims of others and of various expressions of cumulative human wisdom
Form of World Coherence: Multisystemic and conceptual mediation
Symbolic Function: Postcritical rejoining of irreducible symbolic power and ideational meaning. Evocative power inherent in the reality in and beyond symbol and in the power of unconscious processes in the self (Fowler, 244)

Notes

[1] See the age distribution chart in Stages, 318. It shows that 14.6% of the Fowler's subjects aged 31-40 were solidly at Stage 5, and 3.3% of those aged 21-30 were in Stages 4-5. This reflects his research done in the 1970s. I suspect the number might be somewhat higher today, although my reason for suspecting this owes more to my reading of Ken Wilber rather than Fowler. I intend to touch on that in the future, when I get more into Wilber's ideas.

[2] For a quite brilliant example this, see Paul F. Knitter's recent book, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian.

Next: Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

John Hick and "Multiple Resurrection"

2009-08-17T13:07:00.004-04:00

I came across this on John Hick's website:

I found what John Polkinghorne had to say in his interview in the March Reform extremely interesting, particularly when he was speaking about resurrection. He believes not only that Jesus rose from the dead in a bodily form but also that we will also be resurrected in bodily form. He suggests that 'in some way the soul might have, in an extraordinary, elaborate sense, doors into the information bearing patterns of the body, which of course dissolve at death. But God remembers it all and God will re-embody it when I am resurrected. That will be the continuity between life in this world and life in the world to come.' Or as he has put it elsewhere, the body has a code or formula expressing its entire nature and structure, and this formula is reembodied as a resurrection body in the resurrection world.

This is a fascinating idea. It goes beyond the belief of the process theologians that we all exist eternally after death in the divine memory by adding that God uses that memory to re-embody us – which is much closer to traditional Christian belief. It is not unlike the 'replica' theory that I myself once proposed.

There does however seem to me to be a problem in it. Some people die in infancy, some as the result of an accident or war in early adulthood, some in middle age, most in old age. Whatever the age, the information or code or formula is that of the person at that age and in that condition. So a resurrected woman in her eighties dying of cancer will be the same woman in her eighties dying of cancer. And likewise with everyone else. But this cannot be what Polkinghorne intends. Are we, then, in our resurrected state suddenly miraculously to be cured of all diseases, and do we suddenly grow younger or older to some ideal age? All this is no doubt possible, but it complicates the theory to a point at which it ceases, to my mind, to be attractive or even plausible.

The older idea that at death we go to either heaven or hell is even more implausible. For at the end of this life few if any are good enough for heaven or bad enough for hell. We almost all need to develop and change, which means that we must live longer. And this must be in an embodied state in which we interact with one another, making moral choices and thus becoming better (or worse) people. This in turn seems to require another finite life, also bounded by birth and death, for it is these boundaries that make life serious and urgent. Because of life’s finitude we must get on with whatever we are going to do – we are not going to live for ever.

But one more such life will not be enough for most of us. This suggests a series of finite lives, each beginning, morally and spiritually, where the last left off. In other words, some form of reincarnation, or re-embodiment, or indeed multiple resurrection.

The article continues with an elaboration of this idea. I'm not sure how "multiple resurrection" would differ from reincarnation. Perhaps Hick feels that the terminology will be more acceptable to a Christian audience, though I suspect that if a Christian is willing to consider the concept of reincarnation as a possibility, they won't be scared of the traditional term for it.

I don't typically find ideas about the afterlife to be particularly interesting, and I don't have any particularly strong beliefs on the subject. Reincarnation is the only idea that could conceivably be empirically verified (to some degree, via past-life memories, for example).

I haven't written much on the subject in the past, but I might do a little bit in the near future, when I review Paul F. Knitter's terrific recent book, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian. I imagine I could write a dozen posts on that book alone, as it was quite thought-provoking.

You can read the whole article by John Hick here.

Detachment

2009-07-30T07:12:00.001-04:00

This is a parable from One Minute Wisdom, by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J.

It intrigued the disciples that the Master who had lived so simply would not condemn his wealthy followers.

"It is rare but not impossible for someone to be rich and holy," he said one day.

"How?"

"When the money has the effect on his heart that the shadow of that bamboo has on the courtyard."

The disciples turned to watch the bamboo's shadow sweep the courtyard without stirring a single particle of dust. (83)

Jesus on detachment, part 2

2009-07-29T02:18:00.001-04:00

It's a few days late, but I've posted again on my Bible blog about the theme of detachment in the teachings of Jesus.

Part II is here.

Part I is here.

Stages of Faith: Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective Faith

2009-07-19T08:41:00.003-04:00

[A slightly altered version of this post can be read on my new blog.]

The transition to the fourth stage, "Individuative-Reflective," ideally happens in the early to mid-twenties, though it can happen later (Fowler, Stages, 181).

This transition, which involves a movement beyond the conventional faith of Stage 3, typically follows a significant change in life. For many, it is the experience of moving away from home, into an environment where one encounters values and beliefs that differ considerably from one's own. This often forces a critical examination of the tacitly held beliefs and values of one's Synthetic-Conventional faith.

Additionally, this transition requires "an interruption of [the] reliance on external sources of authority" that is characteristic of Synthetic-Conventional faith. There must be, as Fowler puts it, "a relocation of authority within the self":

While others and their judgments will remain important to the Individuative-Reflective person, their expectations, advice and counsel will be submitted to an internal panel of experts who reserve the right to choose and who are prepared to take responsibility for their choices. I call this the emergence of an executive ego. (179)

(It's not difficult to find elements within religious traditions that aim to mitigate against exactly this transition, which undoubtedly accounts for the large number of adults whose faith development fails to keep pace with their cognitive development. In light of this, it is not at all surprising that we find so many otherwise intelligent people with such immature faith.)

So Fowler has identified two things that have to happen for an individual to move beyond Stage 3 Synthetic-Conventional into Stage 4: "the critical distancing from one's previous assumptive value system and the emergence of an executive ego" (179). When both happen, a new identity is formed.

Some individuals, however, will make one of these movements but not the other. On the one hand, there are individuals who, after moving into a new kind of environment, will encounter ideas very different from their own:

They come face to face with the relativity of their perspectives and those of others to their life experience. But they fail to interrupt their reliance on external sources of authority--and may even strengthen their reliance upon them--in order to cope with this relativity. (179)

So if I am a young Synthetic-Conventional person, leaving home to go to university, I might encounter for the first time peers who believe very differently than I do. Now I might be forced to acknowledge that I've come to believe a lot of things -- things I've simply assumed to be true -- because of the family, community, and culture in which I was raised. This might be liberating, but it might also create a great deal of anxiety, particularly if great importance was placed on maintaining those beliefs.

"On the other hand," Fowler writes, "there is a significant group who shape their own variant way of living from a shared value ethos, break their reliance on consensual or conventional authorities and show the emergence of a strong exective ego. Yet they have not carried through a critical distancing from their shared assumptive values systems" (179).

Fowler doesn't provide any examples of what this might look like in Stages of Faith (or either of his other books I've read), but I wonder if some conservative and traditionalist Catholics who reject some papal teachings (or entire popes, in the case of many traditionalists) don't fall into this category. They have learned to be critical of external authorities, but they don't critically examine their other beliefs, or consider that those beliefs came from equally fallible authorities.

People who complete only one of these two movements can remain indefinitely in a transitional space that is neither Synthetic-Conventional nor Individuative-Reflective.

Those who do make the transition completely develop a greater awareness of their own ideology, as well as the external factors that have nurtured it, and they can understand the ideologies of other people in the same way. They also understand symbols and rituals in a very different way than before. In the past, these were "taken as mediating the sacred in direct ways" and were therefore seen as "sacred in themselves" (180). In other words, people at Stage 3 tend not to distinguish between the symbol and what the symbol represents. At Stage 4, the meaning of a symbol can be distinguished and expressed without reference to the symbol.

Fowler writes,

This demythologizing strategy, which seems natural to Stage 4, brings both gains and losses. Paul Tillich, writing about religious symbols and their powers, says that when a symbol is recognized to be a symbol by those who relate to the transcendent through it, it becomes a "broken symbol." A certain naive reliance upon and trust in the sacred power, efficacy and inherent truth of the symbol as representation is interrupted. (180)

For many people, this transition brings "a sense of loss, dislocation, grief and even guilt" (180). (When people speak of "losing their faith," I imagine it is often this transition they are talking about.)

"This transition," Fowler writes, "represents an upheaval in one's life at any point and can be protracted in its process for five to seven years or longer" (181). This is less of a problem for younger people, as it can be "a natural accompaniment of leaving home and of the construction of a first, provisional adult life structure" (182). For those who are more established in this structure -- those in their 30s or 40s -- it can be more disruptive and difficult.

With the transition to Stage 4, Fowler explains, the individual begins "to take seriously the burden of responsibility for his or her own commitments, lifestyle, beliefs and attitudes" (182). Previously, the individual's faith was in large measure chosen for them. They were Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or Muslim because they were raised that way. Authority is located externally to the self. Beginning with Stage 4, one's faith is self-chosen, and while external authorities may be consulted, the final authority resides in the individual's own judgment (243).

Fowler writes in his summary,

Stage 4's ascendant strength has to do with its capacity for critical reflection on identity (self) and outlook (ideology). Its dangers inhere in its strengths: an excessive confidence in the conscious mind and in critical thought and a kind of second narcissism in which the now clearly bounded, reflective self overassimilates "reality" and the perspectives of others into its world view. (italics in original; 182-183)

Individuative-Reflective Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Formal Operations (Dichotomizing)
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual, with self-selected group or class--(societal)
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Societal perspective, Reflective relativism, or class-biased universalism
Bounds of Social Awareness: Ideologically compatible communities with congruence to self-chosen norms and insights
Locus of Authority: One's own judgment as informed by self-ratified ideological perspective. Authorities and norms must be congruent with this.
Form of World Coherence: Explicit system, conceptually mediated, clarity about boundaries and inner connections of system
Symbolic Function: Symbols separated from symbolized. Translated (reduced) to ideations. Evocative power inheres in meaning conveyed by symbols (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith

Jesus on detachment

2009-07-18T14:30:00.006-04:00

I've just added a new post to my Bible blog about the often neglected theme of detachment in the teachings of Jesus.

I've been meaning to write this post for years -- in fact, the title image I used was created in September 2005!

As it turns out, there was a lot more to say on the subject than I could manage in one post, so it's going to be at least a two-parter.

For now you can read Part I.

Part II should be up next weekend.

Stages of Faith: Stage 3 - Synthetic Conventional Faith

2009-07-11T08:35:00.006-04:00

[For a better (and shorter) description of this stage on my new blog, click here.]

Fowler's third stage, Synthetic-Conventional, typically begins around 12 or 13. A very large number of people equilibrate at this is the stage -- that is, they do not develop beyond it.

Although children and adults at this level will have some things in common, there are also some differences. Nearly everyone will enter this stage, and a certain age this is healthy. When people remain in this stage into adulthood, however, this is usually due to one problem or another. It is necessary to talk about Stage 3 first in general terms, and then specifically how it appears in adults.

An individual can move into the Synthetic-Conventional stage when they have begun to develop what Piaget called formal operational thinking.

Formal operational thinking may first make its appearance in an alegebra class or in an advanced biology lab. As it emerges it brings with it the ability to reflect upon one's thinking. It appraises a situation or a problem and forms a variety of hypothetical solutions or explanations. It generates methods of testing and verifying the hypotheses. In problem solving formal operational thinking can work with propositions and symbols, manipulating them to find solutions prior to any contact with the actual physical objects or contexts they represent. And just as it can generate hypothetical propositions of explanation, so it can envision a universe of possible realities and futures. Formal operational thought can conceive ideal features of persons, communities or other states of affairs. It can be idealistcally or harshly judgmental of actual people or institutions in light of these ideal conceptions. (Fowler, Stages, 152)

The attainment of formal operations brings with it the ability to think hypothetically. This allows the individual to create hypothetical images of how others see him or her. This leads to a new kind of "self-consciousness." As Fowler writes, "The youth believes everyone is looking at him or her and may feel either a narcissistic inflation or a self-questioning deflation regarding 'the me I think you see'" (153). In significant relationships, this ability to see yourself as others see you results in mutual interpersonal perspective taking. Both the self and the significant other "come to be experienced as having a rich, mysterious and finally inaccessible depth of personality" (153). If God is an important part of the individual's faith, then God too will be "re-imagined as having inexhaustible depths and as being capable of knowing personally those mysterious depths of self and others we know that we ourselves will never know" (153). Referring to the well-documented phenomenon of adolescent conversion, Fowler suggests that it "can be illumined...by the recognition that the adolescent's religious hunger is for a God who knows, accepts and confirms the self deeply" (153).

Significantly, he observes that it is not an accident that religious images that appeal to people at the Synthetic-Conventional stage "have the characteristics of a divinely personal significant other" (154).

Another characteristic of this stage is the importance to the individual of the expectations of others. This is reflected in the way people at this stage relate to authority. Authority, for the Stage 3 individual, is located outside the self. "It resides," Fowler says, "in the interpersonally available 'they' or in the certified incumbents of leadership roles in institutions" (154).

This is not to deny that adolescents make choices or that they develop strong feelings and commitments regarding their values and behavioral norms. It is to say, however, that despite their genuine feelings of having made choices and commitments, a truer reading is that their values and self-images, mediated by the significant others in their lives, have largely chosen them. And in their (the youth's) choosing they have, in the main, clarified and ratified those images and values which have chosen them. (Fowler, 154)

This is a good time to clarify something about the relationship between these formal structures Fowler is talking about, and the specific contents of people's faith. When we hear "conventional" we might naturally assume that Fowler means the individual holds the beliefs that are conventional to the religion. But the religious group is only one of several communities the person belongs to, and each community brings different expectations.

I, for example, was raised in a moderately progressive, church-going Catholic family. While I understood who the pope was and I knew something about the hierarchical structure of the Church, it was really my mother who served as the primary authority for me as far as religion goes. It was taken for granted in my house that women should be allowed to become priests, and if I had been asked at age 13 if I agreed with that, I would have unhesitatingly said yes. So people at Synthetic-Conventional can indeed hold views that are at variance with (for example) official Church teaching. But, importantly, they do not originate these views; they inherit them from those they regard as authority figures.

Fowler actually illustrates this difference by comparing two teenagers, a girl who belongs to a fairly conservative Lutheran church, and a boy who belongs to a Unitarian church. They are quite different in what they believe, and it appears that the boy has more mature views, but it is also clear, as Fowler points out, that "the positions he takes are really his own versions of what his community stands for rather than being self-composed perspectives" (158).

Fowler describes Stage 3 as "a 'conformist' stage in the sense that it is acutely tuned to the expectations and judgments of significant others and as yet does not have a sure enough grasp on its own identity and autonomous judgment to construct and maintain an independent perspective" (173).

Synthetic-Conventional Faith in Adulthood

As I mentioned earlier, many adults never develop beyond this stage. In fact, Synthetic-Conventional represents exactly what many people imagine being "religious" is all about:

Many critics of religion and religious institutions assume, mistakenly, that to be religious in an institution necessarily means to be Synthetic-Conventional. This mistake by critics is understandable. Much of church and synagogue life in this country [i.e., the USA] can be accurately described as dominantly Synthetic-Conventional. (Fowler, 164)

I also mentioned that, when this stage persists into adulthood, it is a sign that something less than ideal has happened. To understand why this is, we need to consider some other characteristics of Stage 3 faith.

For both adolescents in the forming phases and adults who find equilibrium in Stage 3 the system of informing images and values through which they are committed remains principally a tacit system. Tacit means unexamined; my tacit knowing, as Michael Polanyi calls it, is that part of my knowing that plays a role in guiding and shaping my choices, but of which I can give no account. I cannot tell you how I know with my tacit knowing. (Fowler, 161)

So people at this stage, though certainly aware that they have beliefs and values -- to which they might feel very strongly about -- do not reflect on their beliefs to any great extent. For adolescents this might be understandable. When this persists into adulthood, however, there is probably something preventing them from examining their beliefs and values. It may be that their cognitive development has not progressed far beyond early formal operations -- and indeed, Fowler does provide excerpts from interviews with two men who fall into this category: "Both come from backgrounds of limited education. Both exhibit difficulty in using language to communicate inner states or their attitudes, values and feelings for others... They are limited in their self-reflection...to either comparisons with or the approval of others perceived to be like them" (Fowler, 170).

Some adults at this stage, however, are highly educated, and if they have not critically examined their beliefs, it is likely, I think, that their religious formation has strongly discouraged them from doing so. They may be quite developed cognitively, quite capable of rational thinking, but they don't apply their rationality to their beliefs.

Synthetic-Conventional Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Early Formal Operations
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual interpersonal
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Interpersonal expectations and concordance
Bounds of Social Awareness: Composite of groups in which one has interpersonal relationships
Locus of Authority: Consensus of valued groups an in personally worthy representatives of belief-value traditions
Form of World Coherence: Tacit system, felt meanings symbolically mediated, globally held
Symbolic Function: Symbols multi-dimensional; evocative power inheres in symbol (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective

A conservative Catholic gets caught in the cafeteria

2009-07-09T14:19:00.005-04:00

I wasn't planning on posting anything about the pope's new encyclical until I had a chance to read the entire thing and think about it a little bit.

Nevertheless, I did read George Weigel's already infamous National Review piece, which tried to separate the "clearly Benedictine passages" of the encyclical from the parts reflecting the "conventionally gauchiste and not-very-original thinking" of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace.

Weigel alleges that the pope -- who he had previously described as one who "says what he means and means what he says" -- has included naïve Justice and Peace material not because he agrees with it, but because he wants "to maintain the peace within his curial household."

I've read a few responses to Weigel's article, but none as informed or as devastating as one posted on a blog with the somewhat scary-sounding name Evangelical Catholicism, which I first came across at Anamchara.

Here's a nice piece of it:

[C]onsider the implications of what Weigel is saying with respect to Benedict XVI’s character. If Weigel is correct–if the Pope caved in to the Council for Justice and Peace–then we have a serious problem with our ecclesial leadership. What Weigel is telling us is that Pope Benedict XVI incorporated positions that were not his own into his first social encyclical. He didn’t do this in a speech, homily, address, or apostolic letter, but in an encyclical! Weigel is telling us that the Pope was willing to use the authority of a papal encyclical just “to maintain the peace within his curial household,” meanwhile misleading the faithful into believing that the contents of that encyclical are an authentic expression of papal teaching. If this narrative is true, then Weigel is telling us that the character and pastoral discretion of the Pope is up for serious questioning. Weigel is telling us that Benedict XVI really doesn’t mean what he says in the encyclical about the importance of Populorum Progressio, distributive justice, and the logic of gift, which is tantamount to accusing the Pope of being, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, dishonest, to the faithful of the Catholic Church. What is certain is that Weigel has retracted his earlier statements about Benedict XVI’s precision in communication, that the Pope “says what he means and means what he says.” Evidently, Weigel no longer believes this.

It's the best thing I've read online in a while. Check out the whole thing here.

Stages of Faith: Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal Faith

2009-07-08T12:10:00.003-04:00

The second stage, which Fowler calls Mythic-Literal, is most common in individuals between the ages of seven to twelve (although there is a small number of adults who equilibrate at this stage).

Mythic-Literal faith typically emerges after the individual reaches Piaget's concrete operations stage of cognitive development. With the attainment of this stage, the individual can better distinguish between what is real and what is merely imaginary, and can now take a perspective other than one's own.

Fowler writes,

The great gift to consciousness that emerges in this stage is the ability to narratize one's experience. As regards our primary interest in faith we can say that the development of the Mythic-Literal stage brings with it the ability to bind our experiences into meaning through the medium of stories. (Stages, 136)

Stories are important for preoperational children, but only at the concrete operational stage are children able to generate their own stories:

The convergence of the reversibility of thought with taking the perspective of another combined with an improved grasp of cause-effect relations means that the elements are in place for appropriating and retelling the rich stories one is told. More than this, the elements are in place for youngsters to begin to tell self-generated stories that make it possible to conserve, communicate and compare their experiences and meanings. (136)

We don't lose our interest in stories as we get older, but there is an important difference in our relationship with stories at this stage compared with later stages. At later stages, we can "step back from our stories, reflect upon them, and...communicate their meanings by way of more abstract and general statements. Stage 2 does not yet do this" (136-137). Fowler uses the image of a river to represent the flow of life. At Stage 2, stories "describe the flow from the midst of the stream" (137). Only at later stages can the individual "step out on the bank beside the river and reflect on the stories of the flow and their composite meanings" (137). In other words, the meaning of the story is inseparable from the story itself.

Fowler explains that he imagined anthropomorphic God-images would be found primarily in preschool (preoperational) children, but found that they were actually much more common in Stage 2 children. He attributes this to the newfound ability to take perspectives of others. The Mythic-Literal child can now imagine God's perspective, which, he says, will have "as much richness--and some of the same limits--as the perspectives now consistently attributed to friends and family members" (139).

Someone at this stage is also likely to be at Kohlberg's second stage of moral development. At this stage justice is equated with reciprocity and fairness.

Fowler describes, near the end of the chapter on Stage 2, an interview with a grown woman who has equilibrated at the Mythic-Literal stage (which is apparently the lowest stage that can persist into adulthood). She explains that she prays everyday so that, "when I need it, it's in the bank" (147). She uses this image a few times in the interview. She believes that by praying and praising God she can, as Fowler puts it, "store up God's good favor against times when special help or forgiveness may be needed" (148).

In Fowler's conclusion, her writes,

The new capacity or strength in this stage is the rise of narrative and the emergence of story, drama and myth as ways of finding and giving coherence to experience.

The limitations of literalness and an excessive reliance upon reciprocity as a principle for constructing an ultimate environment can result either in an overcontrolling, stilted perfectionism or "works righteousness" or in their opposite, an abasing sense of badness embraced because of mistreatment, neglect or the apparent disfavor of significant others. (italics in original; 149-150)

Most people move beyond the Mythic-Literal stage in adolescence, with the transition to formal operational thinking.

Mythic-Literal Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Concrete Operational
Perspective Taking (Selman): Simple perspective taking
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Instrumental hedonism (Reciprocal fairness)
Bounds of Social Awareness: "Those like us" (in familial, ethnic, racial, class, and religious terms)
Locus of Authority: Incumbents of authority roles, salience increased by personal relatedness
Form of World Coherence: Narrative-Dramatic
Symbolic Function: One-dimensional; literal (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 3 - Synthetic-Conventional

God is becoming

2009-07-05T02:59:00.004-04:00

This is an excerpt from a piece written by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, who teaches at the American Jewish University. It appeared in the last issue of Tikkun, and is now available online:

I believe that God, in choosing to create, created us really. That means that our independence is not illusory or ephemeral. We, along with all creation, have real agency, and the choices we make are truly untrammeled, unprogrammed, and unforeseen by God. God is vulnerable to surprise and disappointment just as we are. The universe unfolds according to its own inner logic; the laws of physics operate, and God cannot/does not suspend them based on moral standards. As Rabbi Harold Kushner says, asking the universe to treat you better because you are moral is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. I believe that God did irrevocable tzimtzum (withdrawal), creating the reality of our own autonomy and agency, along with all creation.

I believe that people misunderstand the nature of divine "power" as coercive, as omnipotence, which I regard as a philosophical mistake, a religious disaster, and a source of emotional and ethical torment. Thinking of God as having all the power leaves us rightly feeling betrayed and abandoned ("was I not good enough for God to intervene?"). It leaves theologians in the position of Job's friends-discounting our core ethical knowledge in an attempt to defend the indefensible. We do know good and evil: God infuses us with that awareness. And someone dying young, someone struggling with special needs, illness, or poverty is indefensible, especially if God is omnipotent. Hiding behind "it's a mystery," or "we can't understand," or "it's all for the best" is, in my opinion, worse than unsatisfying, because it requires either blaming the victim or denying our ethical compass.

I don't think we have to abandon a conviction of a loving God. But I invite us to grow past an almighty one. If God has truly ceded to creation the ability to make choices, then God didn't kill the innocent, didn't allocate disability, didn't impose poverty. Looking for God in special effects causes us to mistake theater or science fiction for life. God is found not in the suspension of nature's laws, but in the intrusion of novelty and surprise from within fixed law, in the abiding nature of hope, and in the transforming power of love (a power that is persuasive, not coercive).

You can read the whole thing here.

I also recommend checking out more of Rabbi Artson's writings, which are available here. He has some interesting and progressive perspectives on pluralism, process theology, homosexuality, and so on.

More on Cardinal Cottier

2009-07-04T15:12:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I posted an excerpt from a blog post by John L. Allen, Jr. about an essay written by Cardinal George Cottier in which the "former theologian of the papal household under Pope John Paul II" offered a surprisingly positive evaluation of Barack Obama's approach to abortion.

Colleen Kochivar-Baker has written a terrific response to it at her aptly-titled blog, Enlightened Catholicism.

The abortion debate in the past has typically been over whether it should be legal or not. Things are starting to change, and now the debate is increasingly over the question of whether or not criminalisation is the really the best strategy for reducing the number of abortions.

As Colleen points out, "It's really an accomplishment of President Obama and progressive Catholics that the abortion debate is finally being framed in this way."

She contrasts Cottier's "realism" -- which reflects a position that many progressive Catholics have held for years, by the way -- with the opposition by Church leaders to a much-needed national reproductive bill in the Phillipines.

I urge you to check it out.

The brothers and sisters of Jesus

2009-07-04T08:48:00.003-04:00

I've posted again on my Bible blog, this time about the brothers and sisters mentioned in tomorrow's Gospel reading.

The question of whether Jesus had biological brothers and sisters is, as far as I'm concerned, a historical question with no significant theological importance.

I've drawn heavily on the work of John P. Meier, who examines the issue from a strictly historical perspective in the first volume of his terrific series, A Marginal Jew.

You can read the post here.

Stages of Faith: Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith

2009-07-04T08:45:00.003-04:00

The first true stage of James Fowler's theory, Intuitive-Projective, typically emerges at around age two, and lasts until six or seven. It corresponds with what Jean Piaget identified as the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

One of the characteristics of the preoperational child is egocentrism. This means that the child is generally unable to take any perspective other than his or her own, nor do they even imagine that other perspectives are possible.

Fowler writes,

In early childhood thought is dominated by perception. This means that the child thinks by way of mental pictures that are imitations of reality as perceived. As yet the child lacks the mental capacity to prolong actions or to reverse them, so as to test the inferences he or she makes on the basis of perception. Causal relations and connections, therefore, are poorly understood. The child's feelings and fanciful imagination have free rein to fill in the gaps in understanding that perception leaves. (Stages, 57)

This inability to take perspectives other than one's own inhibits the child from any real kind of moral reasoning, as Lawrence Kohlberg's research has shown. Kohlberg held that "moral judgment requires the construction and coordination of the points of view of self and others" (Fowler, Stages, 58). For this reason, Kohlberg understood the preoperational stage as "a premoral position." A child at this stage makes decisions on the basis of anticipated reward and punishment.

A child's thought processes at this stage are largely unrestrained by the control of reason. They are not well-equipped to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Concrete symbols, images, and stories play an important role in shaping the child's worldview, including their understanding of God. This happens even in children raised in non-religious families. Fowler, drawing on the work of Ana-Maria Rizzuto, explains that "despite our secularization and religious fragmentation, religious symbols and language are so widely present in this society that virtually no child reaches school age without having constructed -- without or without religious education -- an image or images of God" (129).

The quality of images and stories children are exposed to is particularly important at this age. These may "prove life-opening and sustaining of love, faith and courage," but they might also "[give] rise to fear, rigidity, and the brutalization of souls -- both one's own and those of others" (132).

In his summary of this stage Fowler writes,

The gift of emergent strength of this stage is the birth of imagination, the ability to unify and grasp the experience-world in powerful images and as presented in stories that register the child's intuitive understandings and feelings toward the ultimate conditions of existences. The dangers of this stage arise from the possible "possession" of the child's imagination by unrestrained images of terror and destructiveness, or from the witting or unwitting exploitation of her or his imagination in the reinforcement of taboos and moral or doctrinal expectations. (italics in original; 134)

Intuitive-Projective Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Preoperational
Perspective Taking (Selman): Rudimentary empathy (egocentric)
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Punishment-reward
Bounds of Social Awareness: Family, primal others
Locus of Authority: Attachment/dependence relationships; Size, power, visible symbols of authority.
Form of World Coherence: Episodic
Symbolic Function: Magical-Numinous (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal

Obama on abortion

2009-07-03T11:47:00.005-04:00

Here's something I was not expecting to read today. This is an excerpt from a blog post by John L. Allen, Jr., of NCR:

In the run-up to President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, an influential cardinal and Vatican adviser has praised Obama’s “humble realism” and compared the president’s approach to abortion to the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas and early Christian tradition about framing laws in a pluralistic society.

Swiss Cardinal George Cottier, 87, former theologian of the papal household under Pope John Paul II, laid out those views in a cover essay in the current issue of 30 Giorni, perhaps the most widely read journal of Catholic affairs in Italy.

Styled as an analysis of two Obama speeches – his May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame and his June 4 speech to the Islamic world in Cairo – Cottier’s essay was overwhelmingly positive, repeatedly arguing that Obama’s “realism”, as well as his commitment to finding “common ground”, resonate with Christian tradition and the social teaching of the Catholic church.

Seen through American eyes, perhaps the most striking element was Cottier’s analysis of what Obama had to say at Notre Dame. The university’s decision to invite Obama, and to award him an honorary degree, were widely criticized in Catholic circles in the States, given Obama’s positions on abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other life issues. More than 80 bishops publicly objected to the event.

Cottier, however, compared Obama’s Notre Dame address to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, in its accent on dialogue and common ground, and to the document Dignitatis Humanae of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) on conducting the search for truth in a pluralistic society. Christians, Cottier wrote, “can be in agreement” with Obama’s “way of framing the search for solutions.”

Such progressive thinking, and from a Cardinal and Vatican advisor! As I write this, no comments have appeared yet on the site. I'm trying to anticipate what the response will be from our usually-quite-predictable brothers and sisters on the right. This is not someone who can be dismissed as a liberal or a dissident.

I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

Shock: Women religious are not promoting the male-only priesthood!

2009-07-02T11:45:00.003-04:00

I've been reading a bit about the Vatican-ordered "Apostolic Visitation" that is being conducted in the U.S., which is (according to the Vatican) meant to "look into the quality of life" of women religious in America.

I had not heard about a second investigation until I read about it on the New York Times website today:

The second investigation of nuns is a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization that claims 1,500 members from about 95 percent of women’s religious orders. This investigation was ordered by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is headed by an American, Cardinal William Levada.

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.(emphasis added; source)

I thought that was interesting. Imagine asking women to promote a male-only priesthood...

Stages of Faith: Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith

2009-07-01T03:37:00.001-04:00

The infant understands no distinction between itself and everything else. At some point the infant begins to grasp that objects continue exist outside of his or her immediate awareness. (Precisely when this happens is a matter of some debate, but for our present purposes it is important only to understand that it happens, not when.)

This attainment, which Jean Piaget called "object permanence," is an important step in the individual's development of a differentiated self.

This is a traumatic development, Fowler points out, because this is when we begin "remembering our mothers when they are absent from us and...panic about whether they will return" (Stages, 120). For most of us, the mother (or other primary caregiver) does return, and we begin to develop trust.

Fowler writes,

Those observers are correct, I believe, who tell us that our first pre-images of God have their origins here. Particularly they are composed from our first experiences of mutuality, in which we form the rudimentary awareness of self as separate from and dependent upon the immensely powerful others, who were present at our first consciousness and who "knew us" -- with recognizing eyes and reconfirming smiles -- at our first self-knowing. (121)

Fowler explains that these are "pre-images because they are largely formed prior to language, prior to concepts and coincident with the emergence of consciousness" (121).

The quality of the care we receive as infants will play an important role in our faith development as we get older. As Fowler explains, "the quality of mutuality and the strength of trust, autonomy, hope and courage (or their opposites) developed in this phase underlie (or threaten to undermine) all that comes later in faith development" (italics in original; 121).

The next stage, the first true stage of faith development, "begins with the convergence of thought and language, opening up the use of symbols in speech and ritual play" (121).

Next: Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith

Stages of Faith: Introduction

2009-07-01T03:04:00.009-04:00

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to write about the things I want to write about without making reference to the work of people like James W. Fowler, whose research into faith development has had a profound impact on my own thinking.

I've decided to write a series of concise descriptions of the various stages of faith identified by Fowler, so that I can make reference to them in my work.

Faith

It's very important to understand that when Fowler speaks of "faith," he is not talking about "belief," and he is not even necessarily talking about anything religious. The "faith" of many people is often entirely secular.

Fowler draws on the thought of Paul Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith. For Tillich, "Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned" (Dynamics 1), and "whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes a god for him" (Systematic 1.211). Tillich derived this idea from Deuteronomy 6.5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Dynamics 3). Needless to say, the biblical God is not everyone's "god," even for those who might insist otherwise.

One might point out that, for many people, there is no single centre of value that commands one's faith, and this is where Niebuhr comes in.

Much like Niebuhr, Fowler uses the term polytheist to describe someone whose faith "lacks any one center of value and power of sufficient transcendence to focus and order one's life" ( 19). This might follow one of two patterns. One might follow a protean pattern, and have a series of fairly intense commitments that are nevertheless "transient and shifting," where one's faith is marked by "sharp discontinuities and abrupt changes of direction" (Stages 19-20), or one may have a diffuse pattern of faith, where one has "a kind of laid-back, cool provisionality regarding commitment or trust" (20).

Fowler writes,

The practical impact of our consumer society's dominant myth -- that you should experience everything you desire, own everything you want and relate intimately with whomever you wish -- is to make the polytheistic pattern, in either its protean or diffuse form, seem normative. (20)

On the other hand, there are those who have one single dominant centre of value and identity, but it is something that is limited and finite. This pattern of faith is termed henotheism, a term coined by Max Müller to denote "faith in one god...without asserting that (it) is the only god" (20).¹ An example of this would be someone whose primary centre of value is their career, their country, etc.

"The henotheistic god," writes Fowler, "is finally an idol":

It represents the elevation to central, life-defining value and power of a limited and finite good. It means the attribution of ultimate concern to that which is of less than ultimate worth. (20)

Finally, Fowler appropriates Niebuhr's notion of radical monotheism. As with the other terms, he is not speaking strictly in terms of religious belief. Radical monotheism, Fowler explains, "implies loyalty to the principle of being and to the source and center of all value and power" (emphasis in original; 23). In this broad sense, it is not to be narrowly identified with traditional Western theism, and it can be conceptualised in both theistic and non-theistic ways.

This does not mean that other centres of value and power do not exist, but it does mean they become far less important.

Most people tend to be polytheists or henotheists, as Fowler defines these terms. Indeed, he acknowledges that radical monotheism "rarely finds consistent and longlasting actualization in persons or communities," and he suggests that it serves as a "regulative principle," or "a critical ideal" against which we can "keep our partial faiths from becoming idolatrous" (23).

With this understanding of faith as something that is not necessarily religious, we can better understand what Fowler means when he speaks of faith development. It applies no less to atheists than it does to Christians (or Muslims, or Jews, or whoever).

It is also important to understand that the stages of faith are formal stages -- that is, they do not describe the content of faith. A Stage 3 atheist will have very different faith content (beliefs and so on) than a Stage 3 Hindu or a Stage 3 Jew. But there will be important parallels between them. They may differ in what they believe, but they will be similar in how they think about their beliefs, how they relate to authority, and so on. I will try to demonstrate this when I actually get into describing each stage.

The Stages of Faith

Pre-Stage - Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith
Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith
Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal Faith
Stage 3 - Synthetic-Conventional Faith
Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective Faith
Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith
Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

Notes

[1] Christians often believe in a plurality of supernatural beings, angels and saints and so on, who are often the object of devotion and even prayer, and so Christianity is sometimes described as henotheistic rather than strictly monotheistic. Fowler, like Niebuhr, uses the term in a much broader sense than this.

My 100 Favourite Movies

2009-06-19T13:42:00.009-04:00

Inspired by Crystal, who was herself inspired by someone else, I decided to make a list of my 100 favourite movies.

It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I tried to write them roughly in order of how much I like them, but that became somewhat unwieldy, so after the top ten they are listed in alphabetical order.

There is a disproportionate number of films from the past ten years. I suppose I remember recent movies better. If I gave it a few more days I could replace half with completely different titles.

Here's my Top Ten:

L'avventura (1960, Michaelangelo Antonioni)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Age of Innocence (1993, Martin Scorsese)
Le passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Eng: The Passion of Joan of Arc; 1928, Carl Dreyer)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)
The Godfather, Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
La dolce vita (1960, Federico Fellini)
Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

The next ninety, in alphabetical order:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)
À la folie... pas du tout (Eng: He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not; 2002, Laetitia Columbani)
Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, Adam McKay)
Annie Hall (1977, Woody Allen)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, Jay Roach)
Batman Begins (2005, Christopher Nolan)
Beautiful Girls (1996, Ted Demme)
The Big Sleep (1946, Howard Hawks)
The Bourne Identity (2002, Doug Liman)
The Bourne Supremacy (2004, Paul Greengrass)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, Paul Greengrass)
Braveheart (1995, Mel Gibson)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
Casino Royale (2006, Martin Campbell)
Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese)
Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Constant Gardener (2005, Fernando Meirelles)
The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Corporation (2003, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)
Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas)
The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)
Dead Man Walking (1995, Tim Robbins)
El maquinista (Eng: The Machinist; 2004, Brad Anderson)
Elizabeth (1998, Shekhar Kapur)
The English Patient (1995, Anthony Minghella)
Exotica (1994, Atom Egoyan)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanley Kubrick)
Fight Club (1999, David Fincher)
Forrest Gump (1994, Robert Zemeckis)
The Fugitive (1993, Andrew Davis)
Fucking Åmål (Eng: Show Me Love; 1998, Lukas Moodysson)
Ghostbusters (1984, Ivan Reitman)
The Godfather, Part III (1990, Francis Ford Coppola)
Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman)
Hamlet (1997, Kenneth Branagh)
Jackie Brown (1997, Quentin Tarantino)
JFK (1992, Oliver Stone)
Juno (2007, Jason Reitman)
Kundun (1997, Martin Scorsese)
Kung Fu Panda (2008, Mark Osborne and John Stevenson)
La règle du jeu (Eng: Rules of the Game; 1939, Jean Renoir)
Ladri di biciclette (Eng: The Bicycle Thief; 1948, Vittorio De Sica)
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Eng: Amélie; 2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995, Mike Figgis)
Léolo (1992, Jean-Claude Lauzon)
Les quatre cents coups (Eng: The 400 Blows; 1959, François Truffaut)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, Wes Anderson)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006, Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
Lost in Translation (2003, Sophia Coppola)
Malèna (2002, Giuseppe Tornatore)
Meet the Parents (2000, Jay Roach)
Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan)
Minority Report (2002, Steven Spielberg)
Monsters, Inc. (2001, Pete Docter and David Silverman)
Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone)
Once (2007, John Carney)
Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
Ratatouille (2007, Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava)
Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Rock (1996, Michael Bay)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)
Saving Private Ryan (1998, Steven Spielberg)
Schindler's List (1993, Steven Spielberg)
Serenity (2005, Joss Whedon)
The Shawshank Redemption (1995, Frank Darabont)
The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008, Danny Boyle)
Spartan (2004, David Mamet)
Spider-Man 2 (2004, Sam Raimi)
The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)
Star Trek (2009, J.J. Abrams)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982, Nicholas Meyer)
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Richard Marquand)
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1984, Irvin Kirshner)
The Sweet Hereafter (1997, Atom Egoyan)
Synecdoche, New York (2008, Charlie Kaufman)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, Anthony Minghella)
Taxi Driver (1974, Martin Scorsese)
Touch of Evil (Restored to Orson Welles' Vision) (1958, Orson Welles)
Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter)
Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Eng: Three Colours: Red; 1994, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir)
Umberto D. (1952, Vittorio De Sica)
Wayne's World (1992, Penelope Spheeris)
Why We Fight (2005, Eugene Jarecki)

Possibly the longest sentence fragment in history.

2009-06-08T13:37:00.004-04:00

From Sarah Palin, delivered before an audience in Anchorage this week:

Reagan knew that real change and real change requiring shaking things up and maybe takin' off the entrenched interest thwarting the will of the people with their ignoring of our concerns about future peril caused by selfish short-sighted advocacy for growing government and digging more debt, and taking away individual and state's rights and hampering opportunity to responsibly develop our resources, and coddling those who would seek to harm America and her allies.

Anyone else looking forward to 2012?

Celibacy and divorce

2009-06-01T11:49:00.005-04:00

I've been reading John P. Meier's latest volume in his Marginal Jew series, and came across this passage, which I thought was worth sharing:

[O]ne wonders whether there is any connection between the celibate lifestyle of Jesus and his absolutist view on divorce. I remember with a smile how, after discussing the possible celibacy of Jesus during a lecture at the University of California, San Diego, the wife of my professor-host told me that the best proof that Jesus was celibate was that he totally forbade divorce--something no married man would ever have done. This may at first seem just a joke, but I invite the reader to reflect on the different approaches to divorce in the Catholic and Protestant churches and to ponder whether there is a correlation between the legal status of divorce and the marital status of the hierarchy in the discipline of each group. Celibate Catholic bishops and priests teach the Catholic laity that divorce is not permitted, while a mostly married Protestant clergy--though certainly not happy with the high divorce rate--generally do allow divorce and remarriage in their churches. (4.118)

I think it's very likely that there is a correlation. I would also point out that the Eastern Orthodox churches, where married priests are common, also have a greater acceptance of divorce than in the Catholic Church.

Patheos and SoulPancake

2009-05-31T05:46:00.005-04:00

Lately I've been checking out a couple of new-ish websites devoted to religion and spirituality.

I first heard about Patheos on Carl McColman's blog, Anamchara, and at first it seemed like it might have some promise. Alas, most of the discussions I've seen so far have been, frankly, moronic. On the Catholicism discussion board, for example, one of the discussion topics was "Same-Sex Intimacy: A Form of Masturbation?"

Enough of that.

Far more edifying is SoulPancake. One of the people behind this site is Rainn Wilson, best known for his brilliant portrayal of Dwight Shrute on The Office. Wilson says in an introductory video that he wants to "de-lameify" talk about God and religion. Some of the questions being discussed in the Life's Big Questions section include, "Is there a relationship between creativity and spirituality?" and "Can revenge ever be therapeutic?" SoulPancake is worth checking out just for the funky background artwork.

Brokering forgiveness

2009-05-05T06:57:00.009-04:00

Not long ago, in response to this post on Mystical Seeker's blog, I posed a question about indulgences:

Indulgences were granted for specific acts or prayers, and they were given with the promise of a remission of a very specific length of time.

My question is, where did the bishops get this information? How did they know that saying this or that prayer would shorten one's purgatorial tenure by 40 or 100 or 300 days? Or the whole thing, in the case of a plenary indulgence?

Did they actually do empirical research, or were they just guessing?

At the time I was assuming they simply pulled those numbers out of their posteriors, but then I read this from an online edition of the big book of indulgences, the Raccolta. Pope Clement VI wrote,

Jesus Christ did by his superabundant holy Passion bequeath to His Church militant here on earth an infinite treasure, not laid up in a napkin, nor hidden in a field, but committed by Him to be dispensed for the welfare of the faithful by the hands of blessed Peter, who has the keys of heaven, and by his successors here on earth, the vicars of Jesus Christ.

Indulgences are basically a share of this treasure, dispensed as the pope sees fit. As the article in the Raccolta explains,

Christians are not at liberty to take and to use this treasure as they please; but only as determined by the Holy Church and this Sovereign Pontiff, when, and how, and in what measure. (italics in original)

Of course! The popes didn't claim to have discovered the relationship between indulgences and the corresponding remission of sin, they claimed the authority to decide themselves what it should be!

Look at me, always underestimating the authority of the pope!

The interesting thing is that, now that I think about it, I seem to remember learning about that as an undergrad, but somewhere along the way I forgot that popes had claimed that kind of authority for themselves. Am I repressing things? I kind of wonder about that...

Review: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution, by Steve McIntosh

2009-04-25T04:02:00.018-04:00

When I discovered the work of integral philosopher Ken Wilber about three years ago, I was very excited. Cultural evolution had long been a fascination of mine, and was central to my understanding of the gospel (it sort of relates to what I wrote here), so I was thrilled to find a contemporary thinker who wrote so compellingly about it.

At the same time I had serious reservations. His method was (and is) something less than rigorous. He has a penchant for hyperbole that is unbecoming of a philosopher. And his epistemology is idealistic, which I find problematic.

I was also unenthused with the sycophantic dogmatism displayed by many of his readers on the Integral Institute Multiplex discussion forums.

Some of my posts on those forums were copied and pasted on another blog, and someone, commenting on them, noted that I "ask legitimate questions but border on heresy and [risk] being kicked out" of the Integral Institute forums. (That last part might have been an exaggeration, but clearly I'm not the only one to notice the unwelcome emergence of an integral orthodoxy.)

I was pleased to discover Steve McIntosh's 2007 book Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. While acknowledging his debt to Wilber, McIntosh makes some quite valid criticisms of Wilber, which are not far different from my own.

McIntosh spends nearly 150 pages introducing integral philosophy. His discussion of the stages of consciousness and culture includes a nice description of the work of Clare Graves, and what has now become known as "spiral dynamics." Disappointingly, McIntosh likens the parallel between cultural and individual consciousness development to the long-discredited notion that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in biology:

Just as in biological evolution, where we see a human fetus grow through the stages of the entire tree of life as it develops, we can now likewise see within the development of each human mind, a rough approximation of the evolution of human cultural history. (32)

I also rolled my eyes a bit when I reached the chapter on integral politics, which makes the case for some form of global governance. McIntosh is aware that this idea is usually dismissed as "an idealistic fantasy best left for another century," while others consider it "the world's worst nightmare, a scenario in which the corporate elite gain complete control, and everything that is currently wrong with the U.S. government becomes writ-large on the world" (105).

While I think McIntosh makes some compelling arguments, I think he underestimates the resistance such an idea would face in the country whose participation would be most critical, namely the US. Just consider the hysterical reaction among American conservatives to such benign instruments as the United Nations "Convention on the Rights of the Child." These are people with an already-established animus against anything that smacks of "world government," and, as a Monty Python sketch once said about similar creatures, "Once they get an idea in their heads, there's no shiftin' it."

I can't do justice to McIntosh's arguments for this idea (and against the inevitable objections), but suffice it to say, I don't think it is going to be a realistic possibility at any time in the near future. But then again, who knows? In periods of upheaval like we are currently experiencing, previously unthinkable things become thinkable.

In the second part of his book, McIntosh surveys some of the important thinkers whose works have influenced integral thought, including Hegel, Bergson, Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Jean Gebser, James Mark Baldwin, Clare W. Graves, Jurgen Habermas, and, of course, Ken Wilber.

Although McIntosh is very appreciative of Wilber's contribution, he acknowledges also his weaknesses, such as "the fact that [Wilber] sometimes plays fast and loose with a lot of serious scholarship, using it in ways the authors he cites would be unlikely to agree with" (155). He notes, too, that Wilber is both a philosopher and a spiritual teacher. While there is nothing wrong with this, Wilber "does advance his personal belief system as though it were an empirical matter of fact," and "it is often difficult to separate his philosophy from his religion" (155). McIntosh says that, "for those of us who are not Hindus or Buddhists, Wilber's spiritual teaching does not always speak to our experiences of spirit" (155).

I don't think I'm as bothered by this as McIntosh is, and I'm a little bit more sympathetic than he is with Wilber's belief that a "broad empiricism" can attain objective truth from mystical experience, something I've touched on before in my consideration of Zen in the light of Bernard Lonergan's cognitional theory.¹

There are some problems. McIntosh often refers to "the will," in the problematic sense of a psychological faculty. He also confuses "intentionality" with "volition." This is partly understandable, as in popular parlance they mean basically the same thing. In philosophy, however, "intentionality" means something quite different. In philosophy, when it is said that mental states (or acts of sensation, for that matter) are "intentional," it means that they are always about something. So "thinking" is intentional because you cannot think without thinking about something. It has nothing to do with volition. He misunderstands Franz Brentano to have been speaking of intentionality in the popular sense (as volition), which was not how Brentano used the term. He misunderstands a quotation by Allan Combs in the same way (which is odd, because the quotation itself contains an explanation of the correct meaning of the term).

Those quibbles aside, I would still recommend this book to someone looking for a clear and very readable introduction to integral philosophy. The original contributions (described in a section under the helpful heading "What I Add to Integral Philosophy") are somewhat underwhelming, being mostly limited to greater emphasis on this, an enhanced understanding of that, disagreements with Ken Wilber on this, that, and the other -- but McIntosh does a good job of explaining integral philosophy, and it's good to have published criticisms of Wilber from within the community of self-identified integral thinkers. He also writes very perceptively about politics, and I suspect this is one area where McIntosh will make a very substantial and original contribution.

Notes

[1] I should add, though, that while Wilber's notion of "broad empiricism" and Lonergan's generalized empirical method have some things in common (such as the recognition that experience of data of consciousness, and not merely data of sense, can, after a process of understanding, result in objective knowledge), Wilber has not fully recognised the importance of reasonable judgment and what Lonergan calls "grasp of the virtually unconditioned" in the attainment of knowledge.

Grrr...

2009-04-04T14:36:00.002-04:00

I was slightly annoyed to discover recently that someone else is now "blogging" under the name "prickliestpear."

Just for the record, I am NOT the author of the blog "Helen Keller's Life Did Not Have Noise," located at prickliestpear.blogspot.com.

It might be time for a new handle. Or maybe I'll just use my real name.

The Pre/Trans fallacy

2009-03-26T12:58:00.006-04:00

Here's an interesting article by Ed Halliwell about the failure of many people (scientific researchers not least among them) to distinguish between pre-rational forms of religion and the more sophisticated "trans-rational" varieties, what Ken Wilber calls the "pre/trans fallacy."

It describes a recent study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found "that religious people with cancer are three times more likely to receive aggressive life-prolonging medical treatment than non-believers."

The method used to determine who was "religious" are rather curious:

In this case, the study identified the pious by getting them to agree with a variety of statements, such as whether they "focused on religion to stop worrying about their problems" or that religion "was the most important thing that kept them going."

Another study, one which found that "religious people experience less anxiety when they make a mistake," used statements like, "My religion is better than others," and "I would support a war if my religion supported it." Halliwell suggests that these beliefs "are likely to be held by those in the pre-rational phase of belief, for whom faith may be an ideological crutch that shields them from uncertainty and autonomous decision-making."

His conclusion is spot-on:

These studies probably tell us more about how scientists perceive religion than about "the religious" who, even within the same tradition, often have attitudes and experiences as different from one another as from the most hardcore atheist. If these studies were conducted in a way that reflected this, my bet is they would produce very different results... More importantly, it would do much to educate scientific materialists that not all religious experience is as unsophisticated as they would have us believe.

Read the entire article here.

Pot calling the kettle black...

2009-03-26T12:34:00.003-04:00

From the TimesOnline:

The Italian Catholic Church today berated the French government for "presuming" to lecture Pope Benedict XVI on Aids [sic] and condoms, saying that as a former colonial power, France was in no position to "give lessons." [source]

One wonders if the Church leadership's own long history of involvement in colonialism renders it similarly incompetent to "give lessons."

Why the Vatican is wrong about contraception

2009-03-19T12:28:00.007-04:00

That the Vatican is dead wrong about contraception is obvious enough to most of us. While the secular media trots out statistics claiming that, contrary to Benedict's assertion, condoms actually do help to prevent the transmission of HIV, I don't think statistics are going to change anyone's mind.

I think it's better to argue with the Vatican on the Vatican's own terms, by calling greater attention to the teaching's fatal flaw: it's actually inconsistent with the acceptance of so-called "natural family planning."

There are people who will insist that there is a moral difference between the two. That there is not, however, has been demonstrated rather decisively in a letter written by Fr. Bernard Lonergan in 1968.

I reproduce here a lengthy explanation of Lonergan's brilliant argument that I posted on this blog several years ago, in two parts:

In September 1968, the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan wrote a letter to another priest in which he explained why the official church teaching about contraception cannot accurately be said to have been derived from natural law. As he points out in the conclusion of the letter, "when there is no valid reason whatever for a precept, that precept is not of natural law" (9).

His refutation of the argument from natural law is brilliant, but some people have difficulty with some of the philosophical terminology. Below are several passages from the letter. Following each one is an explanation that can be understood, I hope, by those without an academic background in philosophy.

Lonergan begins the letter by noting

"that traditional Catholic doctrine on the sexual act followed rigorously from the position adopted by Aristotle in his De generatione animalium. That position was that the seed of the male was an instrumental cause that changed the matter supplied by the female into a sentient being...The efficient causality of the male was needed to produce the sensitive principle or soul. On that basis it was clear that every act of insemination was of itself procreative and that any positive interference was an act of obstructing the seed in its exercise of its efficient causality." (8)

The important thing to understand here is that Aristotle saw the relationship between insemination and conception as simply one of cause-and-effect. Catholic theolgians shared this view and decided that anything that hinders the cause from achieving its intended effect is unacceptable: if God intends that this cause should have that effect, it is wrong to prevent the effect from taking place.

"Two factors, however, have combined to bring about a notable change in the views of Catholic theologians on this matter. The first, of course, is the fact that the Aristotelian position is erroneous. Insemination and conception are known now to be quite distinct. The act of inseminating is not an act of procreating in the sense that of itself, per se, it leads to conception. The relation of insemination to conception is just statistical and, far more frequently than not, insemination does not lead to conception" (8).

It seems odd that people should not have seen reproduction this way sooner, given that most acts of insemination clearly do not lead to a conception. These should have been seen as distinct events, simply because the latter only occasionally follows the former. At any rate, the recognition that the relationship between insemination and conception is statistical has replaced the view that insemination is procreative in and of itself.

"So there arises the question whether this statistical relationship of insemination to conception is sacrosanct and inviolable. Is it such that no matter what the circumstances, the motives, the needs, any deliberate modification of the statistical relationship must always be prohibited?" (8).

Lonergan is asking if it there are any circumstances in which one can do something to change the statistical probability of conception taking place.

"If one answers affirmatively, he is condemning the rhythm method. If negatively, he permits contraceptives in some cases. Like the diaphragm and the pill, the menstrual chart and the thermometer directly intend to modify the statistical relationship nature places between insemination and conception" (8).

This is, I would argue, the crux of the problem, and the failure to recognise this is one of the main reasons why contraception is still being debated in the church. Supporters of the ban on contraception were deprived of the one reasonable argument they could possibly have made by the allowance of "natural family planning." So they argue unreasonably, applying made-up moral principles and concocting all varieties of fallacious arguments. But that is a subject for another day.

From Part II:

"Besides erroneous Aristotelian biology there has been another factor leading to the change in Catholic theological opinion. It is that sexual intercourse between man and wife both expresses and fosters their mutual love. This is fully acknowledged in Vatican II and also in Humanae vitae. Aristotle treated not marital intercourse but generation as common to all animals. His oversight has been corrected by contemporary phenomenological inquiry." (8)

One thing one notices when reading Aristotle's De generatione animalium is precisely the fact that humans are treated as just another kind of animal. While it is certainly the case that animals generally have sex for no reason other than procreation, it was absurd to suggest that this is the only reason humans should have sex. And yet this attitude shaped Catholic thinking for many centuries. Abandoning the Jewish view that sexual pleasure is itself a gift of God, Catholic theologians adopted the Stoic view that sexual acts that were not specifically aimed at procreation were immoral.

Jerome denied that the church appoved "of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children" and asserted that "all sexual intercourse is unclean" (Adversus Jovinianum 1.20). Augustine made the same claim (see De Bono Conjugali, esp. §6). This view was softened somewhat over time, and Aquinas held that sexual acts could be "without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the end of human procreation" (ST II-II 153.2).

The notion that sex might have purposes other than sex appears to have first been suggested by Pius XI:

"For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved." (Casti Connubii §59)

With the Second Vatican Council, procreation was no longer the only primary end of the marital act (cf. Gaudium et Spes §48). The encyclical Humanae Vitae by Paul VI reflected this. But there was still a flaw in the reasoning of that encyclical. As Lonergan explains,

"While the Encyclical acknowledges the "unitive sense" of marital intercourse, it claims that inseparable from it there is a "procreative sense." This would be easy enough to understand if one still clung to Aristotle's biology. But on contemporary biology, if insemination may be said to be inseparable from normal intercourse, conception cannot be said to be inseparable from insemination. The discharge of two million spermatozoa into the vagina does not mean or intend two million babies. Most of the time it does not mean or intend any babies at all. The relationship of insemination to conception is not the relation of a per se cause to a per se effect. It is a statistical relationship relating a sufficiently long and random series of inseminations with some conceptions." (9)

A typical married couple will have sex many times, but only a small fraction of these will result in children. On the other hand, it is quite possible that every act could serve as "an expression and sustainer of love" (9). To say that procreation is the primary purpose of marital intercourse, or that the unitive purpose of sex is inseparable from the "procreative sense," makes no sense when one considers that sex only rarely results in conception.

Lonergan's conclusion:

"I have concentrated on what I consider the main issue. Much seems deliberately done to obscure it. The issue is not whether or not people have to have reasons for accepting the Pope's decision. The issue is that, when there is no valid reason whatever for a precept, that precept is not of natural law. Again, re dissent, Vatican II refused to oblige theologians to silence after the Pope determined controverted issues." (9)

Lonergan's point, then, is not that Paul VI was necessarily wrong to condemn contraception, but that he was wrong to claim that the teaching is derived from natural law. Natural law is morality as determined by reason. There is no reasonable argument against contraception, so there is nothing in natural law to support the condemnation of contraception.

Some defenders of the official teaching have acknowledged that the natural law argument is incorrect. Still, they insist that the magisterium could not have erred, so the condemnation will have to stand on some other grounds. Here is a quotation from John Ford (a Jesuit who was involved in drafting Humanae Vitae) and Germain Grisez:

"The Church cannot substantially err in teaching a very serious doctrine of faith or morals through all the centuries -- even through one century -- a doctrine consistently and insistently proposed as one necessarily to be followed in order to attain eternal salvation…If the Church could err as atrociously as this, the authority of the ordinary magisterium in moral matters would be stultified; and the faithful henceforth could have no confidence in moral teaching handed down by the magisterium, especially in sexual questions." ("Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium," 302-303)

This exercise in desperation theology falls immediately flat when we consider previous reversals of doctrines that had been taught for centuries: the condemnations of usury and religious freedom, as well as the teaching that slavery was morally licit, to name the most obvious examples. Should we have no confidence in the magisterium because of those?

There was a time, before Humanae Vitae, when the magisterium could have changed its teaching, and relatively little damage would have been done. Contraception would have joined usury, slavery, and religious freedom as something the magisterium used to teach differently about, and people would have been as broken up about it as they are about the earlier changes. Instead, Paul VI and (especially) JPII went the other way, condemning contraception with great vehemence and thereby staking the credibility of the magisterium on this very issue. I know I'm not the only one who thinks that will prove to have been a very grave error.

Works Cited

The Lonergan letter was published in the Lonergan Studies Newsletter, which is available in PDF format here. It's on pages 8-9 of the first issue in the file.

Who knew? Condoms make AIDS worse!

2009-03-17T12:20:00.006-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI on the African AIDS crisis:

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

I suppose it was inevitable that someone would ask, even though the answer was entirely predictable. Still, with the Vatican's credibility deficit deepening by the day, this very public reminder of its most preposterous teaching could probably have come at a better time.

[source]

The "Judeo-Christian" Tradition

2009-03-13T22:52:00.002-04:00

I never used the term "Judeo-Christian tradition," because I find the idea rather silly. It wasn't until I came across this article, written by Shaul Magid, that it occurred to me that it's also rather offensive:

In the postwar period, when "Judeo-Christian tradition" came into vogue as a term, many Jews were not entirely happy with this new embrace of their tradition by secular society. Some, still wary of a lurking anti-Semitism, claimed the very notion of a "Jewish-Christian tradition" had, and has, sinister intentions. The strongest case against the term was made by the Jewish theologian Arthur Cohen in a series of essays collected in his book The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1957). Cohen argues that the term Judeo-Christian, consciously or not, swallows Judaism whole, undermining its distinctiveness and robbing it of the very rich texture of its tradition. He notes that the idea was invented by German Protestants "to come to terms with the Jewish factor in Christian civilization... We can learn much from the history of Jewish-Christian relations, but one thing we cannot make of it is a discourse of community, fellowship, and understanding. How, then, do we make of it a tradition?" (xiii).

For Cohen the "Judeo" in the Judeo-Christian Tradition (what he calls a myth) is an ostensibly conciliatory gesture of tolerance that masks an attempt to finally, and permanently, undermine Jewish distinctiveness by making Judaism simply a part of Christianity.

You can read the whole article here.

Bringing back childish things

2009-03-12T12:39:00.008-04:00

This is from a terrific article posted today on NCR. After detailing some of the numerous steps backward made by the Vatican in recent months, Jamie L. Manson writes,

At the same time, the faithful were given new opportunities to reduce their time in purgatory by days or years. They could even have their purgatorial sentence revoked via the plenary indulgence (assuming, of course, no additional sins are committed). Though they cannot be bought (such practices were outlawed in 1567), indulgences can be earned through charitable contributions and good works (limit one indulgence per sin per day).

Psychologists define "magical thinking" as the belief that one's thoughts, words, or actions can exert more power or influence over events than one actually has.

Lately I'm wondering if some of those in the church’s leadership aren't struggling with a serious case of it. Not only are they assuming power that belongs to God alone, they are using functions like excommunication and indulgences on a people for whom these realities are no longer relevant or real. Indulgences and excommunications only create barriers between people and the understanding they seek, and they drive the church into an ever-deepening irrelevance, especially for younger generations.

I agree that the leaders of the Church are definitely struggling with magical thinking. That they think they can decide that this or that action will reduce one's time in Purgatory by a given length of time is evidence enough of that.

I wish I could agree that "they are using functions like excommunication and indulgences on a people for whom these realities are no longer relevant or real." There are a lot of superstitious Catholics out there who are going to eat this up.

With regard to the use of excommunication (or the penalty of interdict) to exclude people from the sacraments, Manson writes,

Though the church may attempt to magically separate the children of God from the table of God, Eucharist will always rise out of the people. True presence, true Communion becomes real not by the will of church authorities, but through the loving will of God. The power belongs to God and God alone. If our church leaders had their minds and hearts centered in God, rather than on their own power, they would realize that they were truly powerless when it comes to determining who is entitled to be a recipient of God’s presence in this world. They would realize the absurdity of even assuming such a power. God breaks through, regardless of the defenses we construct.

The grace of God cannot be restricted to official channels. (Remember John the Baptist? Or Jesus himself, for that matter? Jewish laymen, both of them.)

You can read the entire article here.

Why isn't this completely obvious?

2009-03-03T12:32:00.004-05:00

Here's an excerpt from a blog post by Cenk Uygur, posted on Huffpo:

Alan Greenspan says he is in a "state of shocked disbelief" that the concept of self-interest did not protect the banks from taking excessive risks and destroying themselves. But he, along with Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and many others, are missing the fundamental flaw in the system. The bankers don't care about the banks; they care about the bankers.

The enlightened self-interest of the bank executives has been separated from the interests of the banks they work for. In the 1970's, the banks were still privately owned. So, the guy up at the top wanted to protect his company, his interest and his money. If his executives took unwarranted risks with the boss's money, they were goners. But these days the people at the top of these companies don't own the companies. It's not their money.

You can read the rest of the post here.

This is the sanest thing I've read about the financial crisis since it started. It seems so obvious now, doesn't it?

Far from Rome

My new blog

Okay, I lied.

Too Far from Rome

Reason and Contemplation

Wisdom 9.13-18

Questions about Paul

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's Religious Beliefs

Paul on "living according to the flesh"

Righteousness

I think I need to write about Paul

Secularisation: Not the problem

Review: Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? by James D.G. Dunn

Review: Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles' Creed, by Brother David Steindl-Rast

Second thoughts on the new Vatican norms...

Do the new Vatican norms really equate ordaining a woman with raping a child?

Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren

Thomas Merton on Authenticity

NCR Interview with Paul Knitter

New Summer Plan

Authenticity, Authority, and Obedience, Part I

Authenticity, Self-Transcendence, and the Transcendental Precepts

I'm not writing any more about bishops

Another fine episcopal appointment by JPII

"Addition by subtraction"? Or is it more like a "brain drain"?

On the need for institutional authority

Br. David Steindl-Rast

Fr. Tom Doyle: "Survival of the Spirit"

Commonweal Editorial: "Benedict in the Dock"

The logic of holding priests to a higher standard

"Rotten from the top down"

Try to read this without rolling your eyes...

Clerical Celibacy and Sexual Abuse

The Problematic Basis of the Incarnation, Part II

The Problematic Basis of the Incarnation, Part I

"...medieval princes prancing about Rome."

Evolutionary spirituality, without fear

More bishops like this, please.

More on the Problem of Orange: The Line/Level Fallacy

"Him that pisseth against the wall..."

The Problem is Orange

The Colours of Spiritual Development

A house in Nazareth

A good idea that will inevitably be rejected...

A quick thought about episcopal authority

"We love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!”

From tomorrow's Gospel reading...

Cardinal Rodé

More on the Anglican ordeal...

Some thoughts on the Anglican situation...

What Good Is the Church?

"American women religious are being bullied": Sister X

"Conservative Bible Project Cuts Out Liberal Passages": Not a Joke

The Clash of Hierarchies

Outrage over Vatican request to US bishops for funding

Terry Eagleton on postmodernism

The simple faithful

The Red Book

Developmental Theories

Stages of Faith: Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

Review: Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian, by Paul F. Knitter

Growing lettuce is poetry...

Stages of Faith: Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith

John Hick and "Multiple Resurrection"

Detachment

Jesus on detachment, part 2

Stages of Faith: Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective Faith

Jesus on detachment

Stages of Faith: Stage 3 - Synthetic Conventional Faith

A conservative Catholic gets caught in the cafeteria

Stages of Faith: Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal Faith

God is becoming

More on Cardinal Cottier

The brothers and sisters of Jesus

Stages of Faith: Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith

Obama on abortion

Shock: Women religious are not promoting the male-only priesthood!

Stages of Faith: Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith

Stages of Faith: Introduction

My 100 Favourite Movies