Re: [asa] Random and design

At 10:04 AM 11/24/2006, David Opderbeck wrote:

>Thanks for the link Janice, it's a good (though a bit critical) summary.

@ Yes, it was a bit critical, but I thought it
was fair. Many people, including professing
Christians, "mean well", but I subscribe to the
axiom, "Caveat Emptor". Scriptures teach the
total depravity of man, therefore we can hope for
the best -- but expect the worst from each other
and from the social institutions and "movements", etc. humans devise.

That being said, there are many things / ideas
that are being promoted by the RO that are quite
attractive to me. I have highlighted some of them in the two items below:

[1] James K.A. Smith, of the Kuyperian Dutch
Reformed tradition says: "RO is advocating a
distinctly theological engagement with the world
- and the academy that investigates this world -
undergirded by the belief that the way to engage
the contemporary world is not by trying to
demonstrate a correlation between the gospel and
cultural values but rather by letting the gospel
confront these (apostate) values...The truth
telos [goal] of the RO project is not simply a
theology but a comprehensive Christian account of
every aspect of the world - .. Unlike
correlationist strategies that defer the 'truth'
of the natural sphere to secular sciences...RO
claims that there is not a single aspect of human
existence or creation that can be properly
understood or described apart from the insights
of revelation. ...." More here: What exactly is Radical Orthodoxy?:
http://calvinreformed.blogspot.com/2006/03/dialogue-between-different-theological.html

[2] RADICAL ORTHODOXY MADE INTELLIGIBLE by
<mailto:ngilmour@gmail.com>Nathan P.
Gilmour http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1029

“The pathos of modern theology is its false
humility.” This sentence launches and sets the
tone for John Milbank’s 1993 book Theology and
Social Theory, and it remains one of its most
readable sentences. When I first encountered this
four hundred page manifesto of the Radical
Orthodoxy movement, I read it in an upper
division theology seminar with my mentor from
seminary and with eight bright, motivated
students reading alongside me and engaging the
book’s ideas with me for three hours a week. Left
to my own devices, I never would have finished
the first chapter, much less become as impressed
as I am with this bold, vital movement in contemporary theology.

Because Radical Orthodoxy (RO hereafter) stands
to edify so many in our fellowship of the
faithful, James K.A. Smith’s
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801027357/theooze09-20>Introducing
Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular
Theology stands to become quite an important book
to those of us attempting to articulate the
gospel of Jesus Christ in a manner fitting our
callings and our contexts. Smith, writing from
the Reformed tradition (think Calvin, Kuyper, and
their intellectual descendents), brings the more
Catholic RO project into dialogue with his own
rigorous Protestantism, and the resulting
encounters open doors for exciting theological work yet to be done. ...

...Theology and Social Theory begins by with the
claim that social theories that call themselves
secular are most often either heretical versions
of Christian theological claims or paganism
disguised in the language of science. Subsequent
books in the RO tradition expand on these claims
in the arenas of city planning, economics,
linguistic theories, the national security state,
and several other fields that demand both
practical insight and theoretical acuity. .....

...Introducing Radical Orthodoxy also lends help
to those of us in many American contexts by
engaging fundamentalism as an intellectual
movement, noting RO’s implicit critiques and
staging his own, Reformed critique along RO’s lines.

RO’s central claim is that theology ought to be a
metadiscourse, not simply one tradition among
academic traditions that stands to be located by
other metadiscourses. Every account of things
presupposes a metaphysical framework, and
Christians ought to be equipped to confront the
“flat” metaphysics that reduce everything to the
material and ignore or deny the transcendent. In
other words, again returning to Augustine, we
believe in order to understand, and that applies
not only to those who praise rightly (orthodox)
but to those who, perhaps unknowingly, sing the
praises of lesser gods. Christians ought to be
able to give an account not only of the peaceful
Trinitarian God and the original and promised
shalom of that God’s creation but also of the
language that would elevate violence to the
primary reality in the universe as does the
philosophy of Nietzsche. We should be able to
name allegiances to the nation-state as
idolatrous when they would presume to govern our
bodies in manners that only the Eucharist should
make us a body. We should show the world that the
“secular salvation” offered by secular economics
are at best parodies of the Reign of God. Smith’s
book points to all of these projects within RO
and offers an extensive bibliography for any who
would seek to delve deeper. ....."

~ Janice

>Dick -- RO identifies, I think, an important
>problem in contemporary theology: contemporary
>theology is largely captive to
>modernity. Liberal theology accomodates
>modernity by ceding "solid" truth to science and
>reserving "personal" truth for
>faith. Conservative theology (particularly
>evangelicalism) accomodates modernity by
>cabining theology in the language and categories
>of modernity: "all truth is God's truth" tends
>to mean "theological truth is entirely subject
>to the empirical truth-tests of
>modernity." Either way, the truth claims of the
>Christian faith are compromised.
>
>RO sees that the postmodern critique of
>modernity has some merit, but recognizes that
>postmodernism presents a story of
>violence: truth is what the dominant group
>makes it. RO turns that narrative on its head,
>and suggests that Christ's atoning sacrifice on
>the cross makes possible a new narrative: by
>virtue of Christ's sacrifice, the Church
>proclaims truth that is now peaceful and not
>violent. Against the will-to-power of the
>world's truth claims, the Christian community
>represents an exclusive set of truth claims
>grounded not in human power, but in the sacrifice of Christ.
>
>Why does this matter outside Boston (actually
>outside Cambridge, England, where RO's center of
>gravity lies)? Maybe in some ways it doesn't,
>but all ideas have consequences. RO has
>implications for how the Church worships, how we
>represent ourselves to the world, how we read
>scripture, and I think how we conceive of "science."
>
>George -- interesting thoughts, but I don't see
>all that much difference between what you're
>saying and what RO is doing. Maybe I haven't
>read deeply enough yet, but Milbank et al. do
>seem to ground their project in the cross,
>particularly in the implications of the
>atonement for social theory. What they are
>saying is exactly that we need to construct
>epistemology and social theory starting with the
>atonement, and they find in neoplatonism and the
>Augustinian tradition important resources with
>which to construct a holistic theology starting
>with that premise of radical peace rather than dialectical violence.
>
>Actually, here's where I would see a
>difference: I don't think RO would "let science
>be science," so to speak, by carving out a
>naturalistic sphere for science in which it
>could operate more or less autonomously. That
>seems more "radical" (better neoplatonist sort
>of term: more unified) than a cross-centered
>approach that doesn't seem to penetrate any of
>the epistemic assumptions or claims of a separate sphere of science.
>
>
>On 11/24/06, Richard Fischer
><<mailto:dickfischer@earthlink.net>dickfischer@earthlink.net> wrote:
>For those of us not qualified to join Mensa,
>what does this mean? And would anybody south or west of Boston care?
>
>"Christian theology counters the Nietzschean
>nihilism of foundational violence (in the
>language Radical Orthodoxy borrows from
>postmodernism) by advancing a participatory
>framework, an analogical poetics, a semiosis of
>peace, a metanarrative that does not require the
>postulate of original violence. Put more simply,
>Radical Orthodoxy hopes to recover Neoplatonic
>metaphysics as an explanation for the glue that
>holds the world together. Something can be what
>it is—a unit of semantic identity or meaning, a
>person, a social practice—and at the same time
>depend upon and reach toward something else. Or
>more strongly, something is real only in and
>through this constitutive dependence and
>fecundity. For the Neoplatonist, you, or I, or
>the value of my moral acts, or the meaning of
>this essay, are as emanating from and returning to the One."
>
>Would anybody care to join "Neanderthal
>orhodoxy"? That's for us retards who are just
>dumb enough to think that when we read the Bible
>we actually understand what the writer intended
>to convey via comprehensible language. We could start a movement.
>
>~Dick
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:janmatch@earthlink.net>Janice Matchett
>To: <mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>David Opderbeck
>; <mailto:gmurphy@raex.com>George Murphy
>Cc: <mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>Don
>Winterstein ; <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>asa
>Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 12:06 AM
>Subject: Re: [asa] Random and design
>
>At 10:48 PM 11/23/2006, David Opderbeck wrote:
>
>>George (and others), are you familiar with the
>>Radical Orthodoxy movement? It seems to me
>>that the way in which RO reappropriates Augustine and Aquinas is quite helpful.
>@ Yes. It's been around for several years. It
>does seem to be an interesting approach, and may
>eventually turn out to be helpful. Right now,
>I'm watching from a distance. :) R. R. Reno
>in First things gives a pretty good overview
>along with his opinion of it. ~ Janice
>
>The Radical Orthodoxy Project - R. R. Reno
>Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 100 (February 2000): 37-44.
><http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0002/articles/reno.html>http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0002/articles/reno.html
>
>
>
>
>--
>David W. Opderbeck
>Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com
>Blog:
><http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html>http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
>MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Nov 24 11:47:59 2006