Dwarfs and Giants Podcast

 

“Philosophy without the history of philosophy, if not empty or blind, is at least dumb.”

- Wilfrid Sellars, Sciene and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes (1965)

My good friend Angus Courtney has started his own podcast! It’s very good, and can be found either on iTunes under ‘Dwarfs and Giants’, or on his website http://www.dwarfsandgiants.com/

The podcasts seem to be about history and theology, particularly about how history may have subtly shaped theological ideas and our reactions to them. If you are into either of these topics, or are into listening to smooth, calming baritones speak to you through your iPod, you should check it out!

I’ll be listening.

Oliver O’Donovan: In Praise of Relativism?

The New Testament can and should exercise authority over our moral thought at both general and specific levels. Yet there remains a work of moral judgment that is properly relative to agents and situations, and this is what shapes the priorities that prevail in given periods. That is why it is more difficult for us to sympathize with the moral attitudes of earlier Christian generations than it is to share their doctrinal convictions; for with our contemporaries we share a common world with its urgent questions and moral challenges. The logic of human historicity is that living in a given age means having a distinct set of practical questions to answer, neither wholly unlike those faced in other generations nor mere repetitions of them…If we ask why there should be historical differences, the answer is simple: the priorities we hold are the result of shared judgments about the demands of the age in which we live and act.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (2008), p. 45

Christians are often scared of the word ‘relativism’. Christians are also sometimes ashamed of the proverbial skeletons in their historical closet – Christians from bygone eras who did, what seems to our lights, awful and irrational things. This quote from Oliver O’Donovan throws light on both these attitudes. He surprisingly seems to suggest that there is a sense in which Christians are relativist, and he seems to caution against referring unproblematically to Christian history to shed light on contemporary questions.

Thoughts?

Richard Dawkins is so 1827

One could easily arrive at the view that a widespread, nearly universal indifference toward the doctrines of faith formerly regarded as essential has entered into the general religiousness of the public.

– G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827)

What bugs me most about the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Whats-His-Face etc.) is their self-image. They present themselves as rebels. Christopher Whats-His-Face tells us how he has petrol and nails for breakfast, and their general stance is that they are saying something which is incredibly naughty, new and brave. I think Hegel, writing in 1827, would be confused as to why someone like Dawkins and Whats-His-Face get so much press for peddling such an old idea, and maybe amused at the irony of self-styled cutting-edge mavericks peddling an idea which was yesterdays news in 1827.

On the Modernity/Post-Modernity Distinction

About two hundred years ago, the idea that truth was made rather than found began to take hold of the imagination of Europe.

– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p.3

Modernity is often characterized as arrogant atheists asserting the autonomous and apodictic authority of reason. Post-Modernity is often characterized as lily-livered liberals playing loosey-goosey with the idea of such an authority. For those of us who just love to reject simple dualisms, this quote proves a delicious treat.

Does Christianity Have Faults?

Particularly when it comes to Christianity, the past is often seen by outsiders as merely a collection of tableaux that sit fixed in one’s mind as stark moral lessons: Christians mounted bloody Crusades against noble Muslims; Christians burned hapless women as witches; Christians foolishly resisted scientists such as Galileo and Darwin; Christians oppressed women and spoiled sex; Christians overran and dominated native peoples; Christians abused the earth. For many of our neighbours, the Christian past is simply a chamber of cultural horrors…Our civilization has been deeply marked by Christianity – by it’s faults but also by its gifts and glories.

– John Stackhouse Jr., Humble Apologetics (2002), p. 50-51.

In an apologetic conversation, an impasse is often reached on the issue of the past faults, failings and mistakes of Christianity – incidents like those mentioned in the above quote. The impasse occurs because Christians find it hard to unreservedly say ‘That kind of Christianity is wrong’ and those outside the faith have no desire to align themselves with a community whose tradition includes such shames.

On the Christian side of things, I think this occurs because Christians are not sure whether they are able to say that Christianity has its faults, or whether they need to bite a bullet and maintain that Christianity is perfect. We are worried that by criticising Christianity, we will be paving the way for serious objections to make ground – claims such as Christianity does not communicate the truth about God, the Bible is not trustworthy, Jesus’ words do not give life, there is no God.

Perhaps what this points out is the need to distinguish between Christianity construed of as a cultural movement, and Christianity construed of as the work of God in action. With this distinction in place, a criticism of peoples, times, activities, and agendas, does not translate so easily into a criticism of Jesus’ words or lead to claiming that God doesn’t exist. To run these two notions together makes it impossible for Christians to criticise Christianity (or to listen to criticism), since, on this construal of things, to concede that Christianity has flaws supposes that an implicit criticism of Jesus or God is entailed, rather than merely a criticism of the particular activity of a historically located group. Looking at the tragic list above that Stackhouse recites, it seems to be that a lesson from church history is that when Christians are suspicious of criticism from within and closed to criticism from without, awful things are able to be done under the guise of Christianity.

This all can be reduced to the question: As Christians, are we comfortable talking about the faults, failings and weaknesses of Christianity as a cultural movement? Are we comfortable talking about Christianity as being (in a sense) a cultural movement rather than (unreservedly) the workings of God? Are we open to others shining a light on supposed faults, failings and weaknesses? Or do we believe that Christianity is beyond criticism?

For a movement that began as a Jewish man warned Israel, ‘Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven has come near’, I have my suspicions.