Saturday, May 29, 2010

Some Articles

I read a very interesting article by Catholic thinker George Weigel yesterday called "Defending Religious Freedom In Full". The article can be found here. Here is a snippet of the article:

"Religious freedom in full also means that communities of religious conviction and conscience must be free to conduct the works of charity in ways that are commensurate with their conscientious convictions. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the problems that have been posed by tying so much of Catholic social-service work and Catholic health care to government funding – save, perhaps, to note that these problems did not exist before the Supreme Court erected a spurious "right to abortion" as the right that trumps all other rights, and before courts and legislatures decided that it was within the state's competence to redefine marriage and to compel others to accept that redefinition through the use of coercive state power. What can be said in this context, and what must be said, is that the conscience rights of Catholic physicians, nurses, and other health-care professionals are not second-class rights that can be trumped by other rights claims; and any state that fails to acknowledge those rights of conscience has done grave damage to religious freedom rightly understood. The same can and must be said about any state that drives the Catholic Church out of certain forms of social service because the Church refuses to concede that the state has the competence to declare as "marriage" relationships that are manifestly not marriages."

Another interesting article that I have read lately is really an interview of a nun who has her Ph.D in philosophy. The interview is interesting on a few different levels. Clear and sophisticated arguments are made for the important of nuns, gender roles, and the recent issues with the Catholic church. The interview can be found here.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Clarity for Religious Pluralists: Do All Roads Lead to Rome?




My mind has returned to thinking about religious pluralism because of a conversation I had with a coworker the other day, and also because of Lost (where something very similar to the above picture is in a prominent spot in the church where the final scene is held). The basic theory is this: all religions lead to God; therefore, all religions have an equal grasp of truth and goodness. It baffles me that people believe this theory, since it logically does not work. People will not say the same things of different philosophical schools, political traditions, etc., but they feel like they can say this about religions.

So, I’ve finally decided to publish a few short thoughts and questions that must be posed to the religious pluralist:

  1. The fact that we have the debate provides some sort of a clue that not all religions believe the same God.
  2. Religious pluralists can’t answer the question of what happens to people who are not evangelized, because it doesn’t matter whether you know the truth or not.
  3. In fact, a religious pluralist must decide whether or not heaven is for all, since we all pursue goodness in some regard. Bad people pursue their own pleasure, though they do it in a bad way (but how can a pluralist say that anyone’s belief is bad at all?). Therefore, even very bad people believe in God, according to the pluralist. Therefore, religion is completely useless.
  4. Pluralists deny that both goodness and truth are important. Yes, most religions agree on basics of morality (don’t kill, etc.) but the metaphysical truths taught are quite different. In fact, even the ethics (i.e. the goodness that is taught) vary greatly. Therefore, religious pluralist care little for goodness or truth, even though they believe that they care very much about goodness.
  5. There are definite truth claims that are not compatible at all between religions. Many of these claims are significant and cannot be reconciled.
  6. Religion has been around for so many years and the smartest and best advocates of these religions do not advocate that they combine. Why?
  7. No mention of pluralism is mentioned in the Bible, why is this?
  8. If all religions lead to God, would the religious pluralist be willing to die for Jesus or Allah, etc.? Somehow I doubt it. When the questions become this serious, the religious pluralist will not die for a specific figure or religion.

These are basic questions and statements that a religious pluralist must think through in order to be more faithful to themselves as human beings. For human beings are special in that they can use their brains to ponder such intricacies.

It is good to include a long quote from John Polkinghorne’s book that affirms the truth of the Nicene Creed, The Faith of a Physicist. Polkinghorne is more intelligent, eloquent, and helpful than I am, and so his words will be helpful to understand the topic a little more. I will fill out the blog post with a few more comments at the end.


The Nicene Creed was formulated in the course of the same century that had earlier seen Constantine’s conversion, with its consequence that, for a long while after, the theological debate was internal to Christianity. The ‘many “gods” and many “lords”’ (1 Cor. 8.5) of the Mediterranean world disappeared, as would the gods of Northern Europe, while the rift with Judaism was too deep for serious exchange to take place between the two religions for many centuries. For several centuries after the rise of Islam, the principal Christian response to this new religion was by way of resistance to its incursions and attempts at reconquest. How different is the situation today! World-wide communications, and extensive immigrations, have made us only too aware that Christianity is but one among the several great historic traditions present in the world of the faiths. For a bottom-up thinker there is a perplexing contrast with the spread of modern science. Originally the product of Western Europe, it has proved eminently exportable, so that one can expect to receive the same answer to a scientific inquiry, whether it is made in London or Tokyo, New York or Delhi. In contrast, while there is some degree of Christian presence in almost every country, in many it is tiny and the other historic religious traditions have shown great stability in the face of more than two centuries of widespread Christian missionary effort. It is a pressing problem for a credible theology, second only to the problem of suffering, to give some satisfactory account of why the diversity of religious affirmations should not lead us to the conclusion that they are merely the expressions of culturally determined opinions.

Of course, there is unquestionably a degree of cultural determination in our actual religious beliefs. If I had grown up in Saudi Arabia, rather than in England, it would be foolish to deny that the chances are I would be a Muslim. But the chances are also that I would not have spent most of my life as a theoretical physicist, but that does not mean that science is simply a cultural artifact. We must not commit the genetic fallacy of supposing tat origin explains away the content of belief.

To some extent the effect of culture is the inescapable deposit of the separate historical developments of communities. That does not seem to me to be enough. As with the problem of suffering, the difficulty lies not in the existence of the phenomenon, but in its scale. That there should be diversities of religious understanding is not surprising; that the discrepancies in the accounts of ultimate reality are so great, is very troubling. That perplexity is increased when we consider that it is knowledge of God, with all his power to make himself known, which we are considering. An American Indian said to a missionary, ‘If this faith is so true why was it not given to our ancestors?’ (Cragg points out that an Englishman could reply that it wasn’t given originally to his ancestors either. Some propagation of locally given revelation through space and time is not an incoherent possibility for personal divine action.)

There have been three broad avenues of approach to the problem of religious diversity. [The three avenues are 1) religious pluralism, 2) religious exclusivism, and 3) religious inclusivism. I will not include Polkinghorne’s thoughts on 2) and 3), but he settles on 3), which I think is correct.] The approach which is usually called pluralism regards the worlds’ religious traditions as being, in essence, equally valid expressions of the same fundamental religious quest, different pathways up the spiritual mountain. Its driving force is the conviction that God cannot have left himself without a witness at most times and in most places; that most people cannot have been cut off from his saving grace just by the accidents of circumstance. One of its chief proponents is John Hick, who writes, ‘Can we then accept the conclusion that the God of love who seeks to save all mankind has nevertheless ordained that men must be saved in such a way that only a small number can in fact receive salvation?’ I have already made it clear (chapter 9) that I agree with him in answering ‘No’ to that question. But ultimate universal access to salvation does no require the proposition of the essentially equal validity of all current religious points of view. Hick’s pluralist strategy is based on viewing religious tradition as alternative schemes of salvation for ‘the transformation from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness’. The Real itself is inaccessible, and it is only the culturally formed personal or impersonal masks of Reality which the world faiths present to us. Hick’s strongly instrumentalist view of religion means that, for the traditions, ‘their truthfulness is the practical truthfulness which consists in guiding us aright.’ ‘The basic criterion, then, for judging religious phenomena is soteriological.’ No one should deny the importance of religious praxis – ‘the tree is known by its fruit (Matt. 12.33, par.) – nor the presence of compassion in all the traditions, but a purely pragmatic account is as unsatisfactory for religion as it is for science.

When we come later to consider some of the conflicts of understanding between the traditions, we shall see how difficult a pluralist position is if one wishes (as I do) to assign cognitive, rather than merely expressive or dispositional, content to religion. Commenting on Hick’s programme claming to discern a noumenal common denominator, Ward says that ‘The assertion that “only the vague is really true” seems highly dubious; but even if it is made, one is making a selection from a wider range of competing truths in religion.’ It is just not the case that, under the skin, the world’s religions are really all saying the same thing, and one can question whether the attempt to impose pluralism on the traditions does not lead, as Schwobel says, ‘to a personal construction of the history of religions and religious attitudes that very few who participate in them would recognize as their own.’ The driving force of much pluralist thought is the desire to iron out differences in the search for tolerance, but this ‘can all too easily turn into a new guise of Western imperialism where subscribing to the principles of the Enlightenment becomes a precondition for participation in dialogue’ (D’Costa).. The particularities of the traditions must be respected.

Reflecting on all that has gone before, religious pluralism seems to spring from a supposedly intuitive opinion, where we realize that all religions lead to similar goods (i.e. ‘be good’, etc.). However, this opinion is simply that, an opinion that seeks reconciliation between religions, while really destroying them all. That religions are dependent on culture or “different interpretations of the one great light behind all religions” is simply not tenable, as simple logic shows us that their principal statements of faith are incompatible. (p. 176-179)


The goal, then, is to seek for the best and most true of the religions, which I am certain is Christianity. To stop gazing at and looking for the truth is to be anti-human, which is a challenge to those who simply think that we just cannot know very much about God beyond that he wants us to do good and love one another. Those people who claim that we cannot know much about God other than simple ethical truths deny the fact – or are blind to it – that love and goodness fall back on truth. For if something is not true, it cannot be good. And to seek God is the greatest task. We watch shows (I am thinking of BBC’s Planet Earth series) where we humans attempt to learn all there is about our natural planet, just so that we can ‘know.’ It is very human to ‘just want to know’. And yet, on the greatest of topics, theology, we chose to turn our brains off and settle for mere opinion, not founded on solid ground.

However, it is very important to note that other religions have aspects of goodness and truth, and that some religions are closer than others to knowing God. To deny this usually comes from a fear that does not allow for gradations of truth and goodness. To release an arrow and have it hit close to the bull’s-eye is much better than to miss the target completely. However, to hit the bull’s-eye is best by far. The bull’s-eye is to know Jesus Christ.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Towards a Philosophy of Worship

A while ago one of my cousins said that he was attempting to write a "philosophy of worship", as he really wanted to contemplate on what worship is before leading his church's youth worship band. He commented that he was unable to find much by way of books on the "core" of worship. So, over the last little while I have been doing a little thinking and reading about worship. Below is the essence of my discovery. Just a disclaimer: the below is simply meant to provide a definition of "worship", not to give any practical advice; however, much practical advice can be worked out once a definition has been given, i.e. once the essence of a thing has been discovered.

It is my hope that people would give some feedback on this. Is something missing? Is an aspect poorly stated? What practical advice can be gleaned by reflecting on how to apply this definition to a worship service?

-----------------------

What is worship? It seems to me that worship is intimately connected to 1) knowing”, to 2) goodness of the object of praise, and to 3) bestowing honours. Each moment of worship seems to combine all three of these elements.

1) What is the person doing who is worshipping? Worship comes as a result of knowing. This is easy to prove: What we do not know, we cannot worship. The more we come to know the goodness of a thing, the more we admire and worship it. Therefore, worship is limited to our ability to perceive the object of worship.

2) But what is it about the object that is worshipped that makes us stand in awe before it? We worship what we think is good. The sunset strikes us as exceedingly good, as a sign of our Creator’s care for his creation and the time he spent making certain things beautiful, for pure pleasure. The sunset strikes us as good, not only because we love beauty, but because that beauty points to something higher. The same is true of eating good food, of smelling flowers, etc. This is also true when we worship God and sing his praises. The songs we sing revolve around proclaiming and remembering God’s good character. If something is not good, we will not worship it, but disdain it.

3) Each time I have used the word worship so far, it has been imprecise. So far, I have mostly been talking of “awe” or “wonder”. Worship, it seems to me, is our reaction to seeing/knowing a good. And the better the object is, the more we will praise/honour/worship it. This is connected intimately to joy.

These three aspects are the basics of worship. In one sentence, then, worship can be defined as “the honouring of some perceived good.” Or perhaps this definition also serves us well: "simultaneously beholding and praising Goodness."

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Relatives

My uncle sent my dad this email today:

Have a happy St. Patricks Day and remember to raise your glass of Guiness and give a toast to your 4th Great grandfather, Richard Guinn, born in Monaghan Ireland in 1794, passed away Dec 1874 in Walkerton Ontario

And by the way – FYI – you are related to the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D Eisenhower, your 4th cousin, 4 x removed.

Cheers

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Great Strength of the Family

I read the below quote in Stanley Hauerwas' book A Community of Character: toward a constructive christian social ethic earlier today. The quote is not Hauerwas', but from Robert Nisbet's Twilight of Authority.

"Even if we assume that in most places at most times a majority of spouses knew something akin to passionate love, however fleetingly, the great strength of the family has everywhere been consanguineal [of the same familial descent/blood] rather than conjugal [i.e. based on emotions]. And here, not affection, but duty, obligation, honor, mutual aid, and protection have been the key elements."

This is difficult to read. Between the lines of the quote, Nisbet whispers an uncomfortable word for people who follow their emotions while forgetting their intellects. We are informed that passion grows cold, that hearts deviate when difficulty knocks, and that love is a verb that often runs away. But there is hope.
Nisbet's whispers more than gloom. When justice and fairness reign, there is hope, there is constancy, and therefore joy and more than a chance for real affections.

We learn so little from society about what things really are.
"What is marriage," I asked Society.
Society did not know, and trying for an answer said, "It is what you want it to be."
"But, Society, aren't you abandoning something reasoned and sturdy for an institution half-made and ready to crumble?" asked I.
"I am simply telling you how it is!"
I walked away, perceiving that Society's angry retort was simply an attempt at masking her stupidity and lack of clarity.
I have had many conversations with Society that run this same way. Yet, sometimes there is a decent answer, or at least half an answer. These, too, are pieces of the puzzle, but often muddied and in need of a good scrub.

"Society!, we long for steak, but you hide a snake under plates! We cry for sunlight and you inject us with B12. We ask for lasting pleasure and you send for a prostitute."

Sometimes we ask God for the same pleasures. Sometimes he gives them, most times he says "in time", other times he withholds entirely for your good. But he does not kill us, give us poor substitutes, or give us twisted goods.

"O taste and see that the LORD is good."
-Psalm 34:8a

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Lent and the Liturgical Year.

I grew up in churches that seemed to barely care about the church’s liturgical year. The more I’ve researched and participated in the liturgical year (so far only Advent and Lent) the more I have enjoyed the deepness of the seasons. By saying that I have enjoyed the seasons more, I really mean that I have found depth to them more than ever before.

I encourage you to learn more about the liturgical calendar of the church and to participate in it. You will be surprised how your spiritual life will grow deeper roots.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Review: Live Sent. you are a letter.

In his new book, Live Sent, Jason Dukes encourages Christians to live out their relationship with Jesus constantly. There are four ideas that Jason highlights in order to help the reader to “live sent”, that is, to live as a Christian focused on loving God and others, rather than having a self-serving faith like so many do today.

“First, in order to live sent, there may be some things we need to rethink. Foundational stuff. Life. Church. Relationships. Intention.
“Second, living sent is all about trusting your value. The primary hindrance for a follower of Christ who is made to live sent is that he/she does not trust their God-given value. What we need to understand is that our value is not appraised, it is declared. Trusting what God has declared about us and that He has entrusted His message to us for delivery is crucial to being the letter He made us to be.”
Third, “Living sent is all about doing life together. The epic of humanity… should be seen most beautifully within the movement Jesus started that He called His ‘church.’ Unfortunately, this is too often not the case. We tend to just be letters to each other [within the church] and miss the importance of being letters into culture.
“Finally, living sent is all about giving ourselves away intentionally. Jesus gave Himself away with restorative intent. We know what love is in that Jesus gave up His life for us, so we should give up our lives for others (1st John 3:16). It’s one thing to want to serve because of how it makes us feel. It’s another altogether to love and serve completely for the sake of what happens in the life of the ones we love and serve.”

As I read Live Sent I found myself being moved more and more to loving people all the time, to getting out of the shell I sometimes hide within, and getting to know and love others who I have not bothered with because of some sort of spiritual laziness. I was pleasantly surprised to be encouraged in this way.

However, there are two major problems with the book. The first problem is literary. To be frank, it seems that the author published his first draft without taking the time to correct grammatical errors and tighten up his prose. Of course, the book is written with the mood of a friend talking casually with a friend. I understand that. But writing is more than stringing words together. Also, the author could cut the book almost in half if he would have tightened up his sentences and stopped repeating himself, as if his audience would have trouble following:
“Your story matters, too. As do all stories of living sent. So capture them creatively and redundantly.
“Your story matters, too. As do all stories of living sent. So capture them creatively and redundantly.”
The above quotation is from page 139 of Live Sent. Of course Jason is being funny and friendly as he beats us with redundancy, but this makes for poor literature.

The other problem with the book is that it buys into a philosophy that seems weak. I was glad to read that Jason combated the problems of 19th and 20th Century evangelicalism, but I am not so sure that the system he buys into is much better. I think that Jason’s good ideas can find a home in a better philosophical system.

Part of the problem is that Jason often reacts too strongly against the negative trends of 19th and 20th Century North American evangelical Christianity. For instance, many people are tempted to relegate their relationship with Jesus to special times, places, events, and people. Although he takes issue with all of these I would like to highlight his view of the church, expressed early in the book, on page 11. Jason writes, “The suggested statement of how church has been defined implies that we go to church on Sundays to WORSHIP, as if that is the only time during the week that we worship.” Here, Jason is reacting against the idea that many people reduce their relationship with and worship of Jesus to a two-hour time-slot on Sunday morning. Of course, the reaction against such a reduced Christianity is valid, but does this mean that we should reduce the importance of meeting on Sunday mornings? No.

The kingdom of God requires that we worship God in practical and theoretical ways. For instance, it is important to love our neighbours in their practical, day-to-day lives. This is a way that we love God. But it is also important to praise God by having what I call a “philosophical awe” directed towards him. This can be as simple as seeing a beautiful sunrise and being filled with awe at God’s beauty, goodness, and ability to create. But our best and most consistent form of expressing philosophical awe is at special times, such as in quiet prayer, reflecting on the words of the Bible, or through songs of praise and worship. (Josef Pieper, in his book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, has written very well on this subject.)

The leveling of places, times, and actions is detrimental to the Christian life. I appreciate Jason’s insights into the problems of a form of Christianity, but he need not toss the baby.

Despite the two major criticisms listed above, I am very pleased that Jason Dukes reminded me to live less selfishly, to care for others, and to encourage the “sending out” and not just the “gathering in” of Christians.

I would recommend this book if it was better written. I would highly recommend Live Sent if, in addition to the last stipulation, it was less reactionary and more balanced.