Re: [asa] Random and design

A lot could be said about the statements below but I have time now only for Smith's initial paragraph. 2 comments:

1) Good theology - i.e., that which begins with a theology of the cross - recognizes that God's activity in the world is hidden, & thus that the world can be understood qua world etsi deus non daretur, "though God were not given." Thus the notion that science needs some theological input - & more that there is some distinctively "Christian science" - is misguided.

2) The notion that any attempt at correlation means caving in to "apostate" values misunderstands what Tillich meant by his "method of correlation." It is not simply a matter of dealing only with the questions & concerns that non-Christians have. "We seek to answer their questions," says Tillich (in Theology of Culture), "And in doing so we, at the same time, slowly transform their existence so that they come to ask the questions to which the Christian message gives the answer."

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Janice Matchett
  To: David Opderbeck ; Richard Fischer
  Cc: ASA
  Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 11:46 AM
  Subject: 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 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 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 < 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: Janice Matchett
        To: David Opderbeck ; George Murphy
        Cc: Don Winterstein ; 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

    --
    David W. Opderbeck
    Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com
    Blog: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
    MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke

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Received on Fri Nov 24 13:11:01 2006