Holy Skin and Bone

Love (Doesn't) Win After All. Why Rob? Why?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 15:16:00 +0000

If you’re anything like me, then you are no doubt suffering from Rob Bell fatigue. It happened to me with Bono a few years ago. I love Bono. But I grew tired of seeing him on every magazine cover and hearing about him everywhere I turned. I doubt I’m alone. I bet even Bono—big as his ego is—suffered Bono fatigue! And I bet Rob Bell is suffering Rob Bell fatigue.

So why another post on Rob Bell? Because I think that in all the malstrom of commentary, in all the defending and allegations and so on, it seems an interesting point has been overlooked. The point is this: if what Rob Bell says in his book is true, and if what Rob Bell has recently said at Mars Hill is true, then it looks like LOVE does not win in the end. And that’s disappointingly bad news, and Love Wins a case of false advertising.

To see why it is plausible to believe that, according to Rob Bell, LOVE really doesn’t win after all, let me begin by providing an argument for what I like to call Christocentric Universalism, the belief that eventually all are reconciled to God and enjoy everlasting union with him in a New Jerusalem. Here it is:

1. God’s intentions ultimately will be realized.

2. Among God’s intentions is that human beings flourish.

3. Human beings cannot flourish if they are suffering the torments of hell forever and ever and ever.

4. Therefore, eventually, all are reconciled to God (since being reconciled to God is the only way for human beings to flourish).

The only way to avoid the conclusion is to deny one of (1) – (3). Yet each has a lot going for it. For instance, to deny that God’s intentions ultimately will be realized seems to suggest that small, finite creatures like us can thwart God’s good purposes and intentions forever. And that doesn’t seem right. We can thwart God’s good purposes, of course—we do it every day. But forever? No! To borrow from Charley Sheen, God is a winner. So says the first premise of this argument anyway.

One way, however, to avoid the universalist conclusion is to deny (2). And this, I would like to suggest, is what Rob Bell does and why if what he says is true it looks like LOVE doesn’t win after all.

One way to deny (2) is to say that while it is true that among God’s intentions is that human beings flourish, God has other intentions or purposes that conflict with this one and, sadly, trump. Enter free will. The idea is that while God desires that all are saved and reconciled God also desires that all are saved or reconciled by their own free choice. And since God values free will so highly, God will not coerce or violate the free will of those who choose to separate themselves from God. The idea is that honoring the free choice of those human beings who choose their own eternal misery is itself a manifestation of God’s love.

Here’s where the problem arises, however. Does that really seem loving? Suppose I learn that one of my children abuses heroine. Suppose I know that if they abuse for one moment longer they will be irretrievably and permanently lost. Which is the loving thing for me to do here: to say “I love you but I value your free will so very much that I am going to honor your choice to continue abusing and to utterly and irretrievably destroy yourself” or “I love you, but I do not value your free will more than you; you’re going to rehab.”

As a human parent, while I value my children’s free will I do not value it more than my children themselves. Likewise, one might argue that God values human freedom as a great good. But it is a relative good, however great it is and not an ultimate good. Human beings, one might think, are ultimate goods. And God will not value human freedom over the humans who have it.

Here’s the idea. All things being equal the very best is for human beings to freely embrace God and come to him. And perhaps God will give each human being the very longest leash possible to come freely. But if ever—way, way, way down the future of eternity—one reaches a threshold beyond which if they exercise their freedom one moment longer they would be eternally lost, LOVE will say “NO! I love and value YOU more than your freedom. I will not allow you to be eternally lost.” Isn’t it plausible to believe that this is how LOVE would act?

Now I’m not suggesting that a universalist has to take this path in order to retain her univeralism. She could simply insist that eventually all are reconciled and all are reconciled freely. God has all eternity. Eventually everyone will freely and without coercion be reconciled. All I want to point out is that to suggest that God values free will so much so that God is willing to eternally lose a human creature who has it does not seem especially loving. God, it could be argued, would love and value the human being more than its freedom.

Never Let Me Go

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:52:00 +0000

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

--Raymond Carver/Late Fragment

So. It has been a very long time since my last blog post. Between that last post and this one I have been busy, living. There have been a lot of ups, and a few downs to keep me honest, and humble. What is it that has awakened me from my blog-matic slumber? A movie. A story. A true story, I would say. Never Let Me Go.

The movie follows the brief lives of three characters, Ruth (Kierra Knightly), Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield). It begins when the three are about twelve or thirteen and at Hailsham, a boarding school for “Donors.” Donors come into existence with one purpose, to donate their vital organs. I say come into existence because Donors are neither born nor conceived in the ordinary way. They are medically manufactured or made (cloned, apparently, from the expendables of society, the low-lifes) for the sole purpose of providing organs, presumably to the privileged. Donors are themselves dispensable, mere consumable goods. Literally.

Hailsham exists primarily to educate and shape the Donors’ view of reality, to inculcate in the Donors an acceptance of their “purpose” or “destiny” and to instill in them anticipation of and pride in how many donations they make as young adults before they “complete.” Which is to say, before they die.

This, to my mind, is all back-story. It is not what the film is about. Good films, I think, are like good poetry or a good metaphor. They’re not about some one thing. They don't try to “make a point.” Instead, they birth universes, open up to readers and viewers new ways of seeing or being in the world. They provoke, interrogate, unnerve, inspire, and cause us to reflect and to interpret ourselves to ourselves. Never Let Me Go does all of these things, without being pretentious and without being preachy.. It's a quiet film. It discloses quietly, provokes and interrogates gently, and from the muted gray colors of Hailsham’s school uniforms to the largely colorless, flat affects of the main characters, the film raises questions about what it means to be human.

For instance, artwork is collected from Donors throughout their lives and evaluated by the “guardians” of Hailsham. Why? Kathy, Tommy and Ruth come to believe that the purpose is to peer into the souls of Donors, to see if they love and how genuinely. If their love is deemed genuine, the three believe, then “guardians” will grant the lovers a short reprieve from donating in order to allow the lovers a little time to indulge and enjoy their love. Unfortunately, we find out toward the end of the movie that this a falsehood. There are no reprieves granted. The purpose of collecting their artwork was not to peer into their souls at all, but as one of the guardians puts it, it was “to see if you even have souls.” And by the film’s end, one cannot help but be struck with the realization that Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are actually more human, more soulful, than the guardians themselves. For they know what it is to feel, despite their often flat exteriors, and to love, to forgive and to be forgiven. The fact that the guardians (like the Nazis and all perpetrators of holocausts) must refer to Donors with dehumanizing terms like Donors, that the guardians cannot even bring themselves to say that the Donors die, but say instead that they complete, suggests that it is in fact the guardians who lack souls and are less than human. And again, the film manages to communicate this subtly and without calling attention to itself.

Ostensibly, however, the film is about the relationship(s) between Tommy, Ruth and Kathy. From the earliest parts of the movie it is clear that there is a sweet connection between Kathy and Tommy. Kathy is quiet, and knowing. She seems to have a capacity for pain, her own and that of others, She knows and understands Tommy in a way that others don’t, including Ruth. Ruth, for her part, is the more assertive of the three. And it is she, not Kathy, who gives Tommy his first kiss, his first relationship and to whom Tommy loses his virginity. Tommy, for his part, is also quiet, a bit unsure and weak-willed, his muted affect, like Kathy’s, belied by an interior life full of pathos. He seems to realize that it is Kathy to whom his heart belongs, but he is too weak to break free of Ruth’s emotional clutches. In what I thought was an emotionally painful scene, Tommy is unable even to look at Ruth as she pleasures herself on top of him.

The life of these three, like that of all Donors, will terminate in their twenties. With that knowledge, like the knowledge they have of what they are and where they fit in the scheme of things (which seems only to become apparent to them when they are in their late teens), how shall they live out their days? What kind of meaning can they—mere donors and expendables—carve out of their brief, meager lives? As it turns out, I would suggest that it is a beautiful life that they manage to wring from their brief, broken and painful lives. Indeed, whether one’s life is all of nearly thirty years or eighty, the question is the same for all: how shall we live out our days? What kind of meaning can we carve out of our brief time on this little round planet?

Early on in the film, when the three are only 12 years old or so, we see Tommy rage at having become the brunt of some mean-spirited, schoolyard prank. The depth of his pain spills out in blood-curdling screams. After Ruth’s second “donation,” and the three have been separated for some ten years, and Ruth realizes her end is immanent, Kathy and Ruth meet and decide to pay Tommy a visit. The three take a car trip back to Hailsham, which is now closed. On the trip Ruth confesses to Kathy that she realizes, perhaps realized all along, that it was Tommy and Kathy who belonged together and she seeks Kathy’s forgiveness for keeping them apart. The scene is reminiscent in a way of the sex scene between Tommy and Ruth, where Tommy cannot bring himself to look at Ruth. For here, too, Kathy looks away from Ruth as Ruth confesses, the truth seemingly too painful for Kathy to face.

Two scenes stand out to me as the most central, and important. Both scenes take place toward the end of the film. In the one, Tommy and Kathy are driving back from having met with one of the guardians about getting a reprieve. They have just learned that there are no reprieves. There they are. Their love having only just begun to bloom and flower, and now to be told that the time for flowering will be cut tragically short is simply too much for Tommy. He asks Kathy to pull the car over and he gets out, lets loose the most agonizing, existentially gripping scream, and collapses in painful recognition of the truth of his existence. The scream is that of a creature who knows both that he has been beloved on the earth and knows also that his life is all too brief.

The other scene occurs just before the last one. In this scene, Kathy and Tommy are together for the first time in a decade. The recognition of love is written all over their faces and in their eyes. They kiss. And concentrated in that kiss are all those lost years, years that were filled for both with a longing and yearning.

Apparently, some who see the movie find it utterly depressing. They find it slow and dark. It is dark, I suppose. But I find the movie ultimately uplifting. For I can imagine the question being put to both Tommy and Kathy:

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

And I think I can hear them both answer:

I did.

And what did you want? (What do any of us want?)

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

It is perhaps a truism that the degree to which we ache and grieve over the loss of a beloved is exactly proportional to the degree to which we loved . He or she who loves deeply, grieves the loss of the beloved deeply. That, I think, is what Tommy’s scream communicates: love and loss.

Henry Miller once said, "The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." This is the message I take away from the film. Our time upon this earth is brief. So live and love well. Be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. And awareness, as anyone who lives it knows, opens one to both beauty and pain.

An Amusing Story

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:27:00 +0000

Well, I didn't get to blog every day while in China like I had hoped. And since getting back there's been lots of catching up to do. Add to that my son coming coming down with a killer flu this week and things have been a wee-bit hectic.

That said, there is one really amusing story from my time in China. And it's relevant to the nature of this blog. The title of my series of lectures was "Dualism, Materialism and the Prospects of Postmortem Survival." My last lecture was titled simply "The Prospects of Postmortem Survival." It followed on the heels of one lecture on dualism and two lectures on physicalist accounts of human nature. I began the lecture by stating the problem. If we are physical creatures through-and-through (as I believe we are), how could we possibly exist in any sort of after life? After all, following an ordinary death it appears our bodies cease to exist, are laid in the ground, and over time, their constitutent parts scattered to the four winds. So, how can the physical objects we are turn up in a heavenly city? Now if you're a dualist but also a Christian, then you've got the very same problem insofar as you believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come.

In any case, the lecture explored different ways to make sense out of such a belief as life after death on the assumption that such life is bodily life. Here I explored two or three differen ways things could go, assuming a certain account of the persistence conditions of human bodies, i.e., the sorts of changes things like bodies can undergo without ceasing to exist. At the very end of the lecture I concluded that we can make sense out of such a doctrine as life after death, but if there is to be life after death it is going to take a miracle.

Now the amusing part. As I concluded, one of the Chinese professors, who had attended several of the lectures, stood up and stared at me incredulously, and said: "Is THAT your conclusion? Where's the postmodernism?" Apparently, he had been patiently waiting for postmodern survival to show up in my lectures and, as it turned out, it never did. He had, apparently, mistaken "postmortem survival" for "postmodern survival." When I pointed out his mistake he recognized it at once, was somewhat embarassed, but the two of us had a good laugh nonetheless.

As for me, I had a wonderful time. I think the highlight may have been our final night in Beijing. I took Rowan downstairs to the Hotel Lounge for a celebratory drink (non-alcoholic for him, of course!). And I asked him, "what was your favorite part of the trip?" And he said, "Well, it's between the lectures and the bird's nest." The bird's nest, of course, is the Olympic track and field complex. But, hey, I tied with that!!!! In fact, during one lecture I saw my son writing on a piece of paper. I figured he was doodling. I later discovered that he was taking notes!!!! 11 years old. Warms a dad's heart.

Human Nature in China

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Times have changed. Just last year I was in China lecturing on the metaphysics of human nature. Then I was unable to access my blog, inferring that the Chinese government blocked access. But here I am one year later, and for whatever reason, with full access!

So, if time permits I figured I blog a little about my experience and my lectures. Today I am scheduled to lecture on dualist views of human nature. I'll cover a couple of Descrartes' arguments for dualism and the compound dualism of St. Thomas Aquinas.

My son Rowan and I spent a few days in Hangzhou before settling in Beijing. We spent some time with our friend Jing and her husband Chenhui. The highlight was traveling the streets of Hangzhou on bicycle with six million of our closest Chinese friends. It was the most harrowing of experiences!!! The streets are jam-packed with bicycles, mopeds, cars and buses and there are no discernible traffic rules. Absoulte mayhem. The same holds for boarding and deborading buses and trains. It is a free for all. People push and shove and no one is phased by it. I was happy to see that the taking off and landing of aircrafts do not obey the same cultural norms!!!

My favorite experience was flying from Beijing to Hangzhou aboard China Eastern Airlines. As the plane was landing and was all of several hundred feet off the ground people in the back of the plane began getting out of their seats and reaching for their things in the overhead compartments. The flight staff yelled at the people, raced to the back of the plane, closed the over head compartments, yelled some more and then ran back to her seat before the plane touched down. It was amazing to behold!!!

And the food. Ahhhh, the food! Flavor abounds and we are in culinary heaven.

Reflections on my first lecture will follow.

They Still Haven't Found What They're Looking For: More U2 NLOTH

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Over at U2 Sermons there has been lots of discussion of the new U2 album, NLOTH. Beth, whose site it is, has been offering up really interesting and provocative musings on the album. Here’s one line from a recent post:

“U2 don't want to show us the certainties we humans make of religious experience after the fact; they want to show us actual religious experience in all its imperious, weird, transformative power.”

I think she’s right about that. I think this album (especially) provides more of a phenomenology of religious experience than an interpretation of it. The lyrics are written from the on-the-ground perspective of lived experience. They are not written in what we might call the theoretic mode, which comes after the experience has been filtered through a particular hermeneutic grid.

Life, it is often said, is always lived forward but only understood backward. This U2 album is very much written in the forward direction, not the backward. But if that’s so, then I don’t think we can say that the face looking back at the guy at the ATM machine in Moment of Surender is the face of Jesus, as one commenter at U2 Sermons does. From inside the story I think it’s ambiguous just whose face is staring back at the character. I think even the identity of the unknown caller in the song by the same name is, from inside the story, also ambiguous. Is it God? Is it a wrong number? Who is it? The ambiguity of the identity of the caller is supported by Bono himself who says exactly that in the book that accompanies the deluxe editions. He himself asks, “Who is it that’s calling? Is it God? Who?”

I think we’ve got to be careful about saying what lyrics mean or to whom the characters in them mean to be referring. As a piece of art the lyrics are open to myriad interpretations which, though they may be radically different, can all be faithful to the lyrics. From within the narrative of the album or the songs themselves, however, I think the source of transformation in MoS and UKC is shrouded in mystery.

One more thought. Also over at U2 Sermons Beth has a beautiful post titled Dhikr in which she talks about the Sufi influences on NLOTH. One of the things she suggests in her discussion is that there’s not as much ache in NLOTH as there is in previous U2 albums. She says,

“U2 often used to give us quite a lot of lament alternating with dazzled foretastes, or the two married into a kind of ache. But there is not much aching on NLOTH. The album is more settled and assured on both ends; its quest is to dwell in reality, not drum up drama, and yet it seems more confident than ever that there is a realm of very palpable connection with God available now as well.”

Well, I dunno. I think the very title of the album, together with the future orientation of many of the album’s moments, suggests otherwise. I think this album no less than previous ones drips with what the Germans call sensucht, a perpetually unsatisfied longing and yearning, an ache, at the center of the human condition. Indeed, I was just talking with students last night about this in connection with C.S. Lewis. Lewis claims in Surprised by Joy that sensucht, more than anything, was the central story of his life. I believe this to be the central message of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. The band members may have in fact been found by God, but they still hadn't found what they were looking for. That's sensucht. And it’s there in White as Snow. It’s there too in Cedars of Lebanon

This shitty world sometimes produces a rose
The scent of it lingers and then it just goes

That just about says it all, doesn’t it? That just about summarizes all U2 albums: it’s a shitty world. But sometimes it produces roses. Enjoy the roses, because soon enough their fragrance will be gone. And the longing will return. The ache, in fact, is never fully massaged away, ever; at least not on this side of the Silence.

So NLOTH, no less than U2’s other albums, is radically this-worldly. But insofar as it is I don’t think it’s any more settled or assured than previous albums. Life in the sound is intrinsically unsettled. It’s characterized by darkness and punctuated now and again by real but fleeting glimpses of the Divine. Love may have the last word and a few beautiful penultimate words. And joy no doubt gets in its two-cents worth, too, between the already and the not-yet. But the scent of them both lingers and then it just goes. And so we find ourselves always longing, always yearning, never settled.

U2: No Line on The Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Conversation in the media and around the blogosphere surrounding U2’s 12th studio album, NLOTH, is both ubiquitous and animated, much like the front man of U2 himself, the ever present Bono. Some of the faithful love the album and tout it as their best yet. Others….not so much. Despite the fact that I, like ever so many, have been suffering from a severe case of “Bono Fatigue,” (as my friend Matt likes to call it), I was eager to get my hands on the new record. Indeed, I had been listening to it for weeks before I bought it from my local record store Vertigo Music the day it was released.

Some Christians are hailing the album as U2’s most explicitly Christian since October. Indeed, Christians have been finding everything from the album’s cover to the lyrics thick with Christian content and symbolism.

Music is art and just as good works of art help us to see new worlds or to sometimes see the same world with new eyes, so the work of art itself is open to a plurality of interpretations, depending on the hermeneutic of the viewer-listener-reader.

Let’s start with the album cover, pictured above. It features a black and white Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph of sky meeting sea. Some interpret the cover as a testament to U2’s eschatological vision of that day when God’s kingdom has come to earth in fullness. I like that interpretation and think the cover is certainly open to it. Viewed from the perspective of the Christian story, what I really like about the photograph is the bottom half. The top half is very light and the bottom half much darker. It’s easy to view the image as a bold contrast between light (heaven) and darkness (earth). And yet. And yet one can’t help but be struck by the circle of reflected light amidst the darkness in the bottom half, pushing the darkness outward; a beautiful image I think. The Christian sees in this God’s goodness pushing back the darkness, all that drags us down. That’s grace. Gravity (darkness and sin) pulls us downward, but grace (light and love) push back against gravity and lift us up.

How does Bono himself describe the album cover? Well, not with the language and imagery I just used. He describes it in terms that are woven throughout the lyrics of the album and which, though not at odds in any way with Christian thought, are certainly not explicitly Christian either. He sees the photograph as symbolizing infinity, an image of a future open to infinite possibility. His focus is neither on the light nor the darkness, but on the vanishing point in the infinite distance, the point beyond our vision. The upcoming tour, by the way, will be called Kiss the Future.

The notion of infinity is, as I say, woven throughout the album. From the title track, No Line On the Horizon, where Bono croons

I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinity’s a great place to start
Oh….

to the hymn-like confession Magnificent

I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after
I haven't had a clue

to the equally confessional Breathe, where Bono speaks of the “roar that lies on the other side of silence.” I hear in all these lines an openness to the future, a denial that things must be the way they in fact are, a kind of joy in infinite possibility, and a yearning for what lies beyond. Christian? Explicitly Christian? If one is a Christian one will no doubt resonate with the themes of uncertainty in the face of infinity and that things are not now as they should be and will be in the shalomic future.

While many moments of autobiography can be detected on this album—gotta stand up to rock stars; Napoleon is in high heels; Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas, many of the songs are written, Bono tells us in the book that accompanies the deluxe editions, from the perspectives of characters he has created. The last two U2 albums—ATYCLB and HTDAB were straightforward autobiography, personal accounts of Bono wrestling with his own demons. This one less so; at least less so in terms of being written from the first-person perspective. But, as Bono himself reminds us, the mask reveals the man. And that’s no doubt true on this album.

Though not written from the first-person perspective there’s still a lot of Bono that shines through the characters he concocts for this album. What manages to shine through is humility, uncertainty in the presence of transcendence, doubt in the presence of unvarnished evil, longing, rebirth, and sheer joy, gratitude and love. If you're a Christian, all of those ideas are bound to resonate, and resonate deeply. Are they Christian? Explicitly Christian? Whatever they are they are certainly not exclusively Christian.

While Bono can be a little too full of himself for his own good, somehow he manages, I think, to convey a laudable sort of humility. This comes through brilliantly on Magnificent.

I was born
I was born to sing for you

I didn’t have a choice
But to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry
It was a joyful noise
Oh, oh…

This is not braggodocio. It’s Bono realizing that he’s been given a gift, a voice, something which, like unusually good looks, is not something one deserves credit for. It’s dumb luck or sheer blessing. And Bono, in full confessional mode, offers back to its Giver what he regards as a gift, and he does so with an obvious sense of gratitude. He even acknowledges that when he wrote the song he had in mind the Magnificat, the song that Mary sings upon her visitation to Elizabeth. Although the song as a whole is, he says, "about two lovers trying to hold on to each other and trying to turn their life into worship. Not of each other, but of being alive, of God...of spirit."

There’s another confession of humility in the full-on gaze of ego in Stand Up Comedy. There Bono sings,

I gotta stand up to ego but my ego’s not really the enemy
It’s like a small child crossing an eight lane highway
On a voyage of discovery

Bono knows his ego needs taming, but I think he’s here revealing a charming childlikeness, the smallness he feels in the face of it all and the glee we all used to take in the dare to “cross an eight-lane highway” just for the thrill of it. Bono has not lost that sense of childlike glee and adventure. The world, bent and broken though it may be, still presents itself to Bono as a vast playground or carnival, an adventure inviting him on its many rides and attractions. And he’s (sometimes) downright giddy about being in the midst of it all.

There are several places on the album that strike notes of yearning and rebirth. First, in Moment of Surrender, a song about a character Bono has manufactured, a war veteran who hasn’t been able to reinsert himself into civilian life or into his own skin or psyche for that matter. As Bono puts it, “he has dragged his wife into drugs and booze, [and] he can’t live with what he’s done to her and so he breaks down beside an ATM machine and begs God to deliver them.” The song is, I believe, the highpoint of the album. In any case, we get these chilling lyrics sung in Bono's brooding voice:

I’ve been in every black hole
At the altar of the dark star
My body’s now a begging bowl
That’s begging to get back
Begging to get back to my heart
To the rhythm of my soul
To the rhythm of my unconsciousness
To the rhythm that yearns
To be released from control

The way Bono envisions it, it’s this same troubled soul in Unknown Caller, who ends up in some motel trying to make a call on his cell phone. Who’s he calling? A drug dealer to score more drugs? Someone for help? We don’t know. But he doesn’t get a signal. Instead, someone (or is it Someone) is reaching out to him with a stunning and completely unexpected (text) message. The message tells him to,

Go, shout it out, rise up
Oh, oh
Escape yourself and gravity
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now….

Restart and re-boot yourself
You’re free to go
Oh, oh
Shout for joy if you get the chance…

I can’t help but be reminded in these lyrics of Jesus in the Gospels telling those he’s healed or forgiven, “Go; you’re free. You’re healed.” One can only imagine or perhaps not imagine at all, if you yourself take yourself to have been forgiven or healed, then you know perfectly well that feeling of unbridled joy that comes with forgiveness and healing. And there are times either in private or public you "shout it out!"

And then, these lyrics from Breathe,

Every day I die again, and again I’m reborn

The ideas of yearning and rebirth permeate the album and, I think, Bono’s way of being in the world. It’s just like Bob Dylan said “That he not busy being born is busy dying.” Anyone who is not open to being born again (and again and again and again) is already dying and is in danger of turning to stone. U2 have always been open to the new, to the unexpected, to the surprising and transcendent, open to being reborn, again and again and again. That’s what make them perpetually fresh, still attractive to fans young enough to be their teen children.

My favorite feature of the album, btw, and no doubt an element owing to the genius of Brian Eno, comes at the beginning of Fez-Being Born. If you’ve heard the chorus to the first single off the album, Get on Your Boots, you’ll recognize these lyrics

Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Meet me in the sound

At the beginning of Fez-Being Born, just behind the music, a barely audible Bono can be heard to sing, begging and pleading-like,

let me in the sound let me in the sound
let me in the sound, sound
let me in the sound, sound
let me in the sound.

That is brilliant! This is what Bono has been born to do. It’s the place he meets us, his fans, the place he is no doubt most himself, and the place he finds grace,

I found grace inside of sound; I found grace it’s all that I found.

Those beautiful lyrics are from the song, Breathe.

Is this U2's most explicitly Christian album? I'm not sure I even understand the question. Some of the lyrics will no doubt send chills up the spines of those of us who fit our own stories into The (Christian) Story. And Bono may no doubt have penned them from within The Story. But the lyrics and the album as a whole have broader appeal. You don't have to be a Christian to resonate with the realities about which Bono sings. I guess I get a little annoyed when Christians say things like "this is U2's most explicitly Christian album." While I'm not sure what that actually means, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Reading some of the theologically oriented reviews around the blogosphere leads me to believe that some are trying too hard to mine these songs of explicitly Chrisitan content. Sometimes a telephone pole in a movie is just a telephoe pole, with no deeper meaning. So, for example, when Bono sings "the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard" in I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, I've got a hunch he hasn't got Revelations 4 in mind, as someone has actually suggested. Just a hunch.

As to the question whether this is U2’s best album, I'm agnostic about that, too. It may be a best since album. Their best since Achtung Baby or their best since The Unforgettable Fire. Is it better than Joshua Tree? I think Joshua Tree is in a class by itself. And I think we have to wait to see how NLOTH ages before we can say where it should rank in the U2 canon.

NLOTH is a GREAT album; I LOVE it and can't stop listening to it. And I’m pretty doggone certain an awful lot of people are going to meet me in the sound when they kiss the future in Chicago on September 12. How about you? Meet me in the sound?

The Nature of Belief

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0000

I have a friend who is a friend of Stanley Hauerwas, the Duke theologian whose reputation for foul mouthed rabble rousing is legendary. Hauerwas has written a memoir, which he’s had my friend read through in manuscript form. Because there are relevant similarities in life experience between Hauerwas and myself, and because my friend thought it might do my soul good to read it, he asked Hauerwas if it would be okay to share the manuscript with me. Hauerwas agreed. So that manuscript has provided my night time reading over this past week.

I have never been much of a fan of Hauerwas. Though I must admit, I’ve only read two of his books. The first was Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church (1986). I was motivated to read this as a student at Yale Divinity School because of my work with people with mental retardation. (As you may or may not know I have an undergraduate degree in social work and was a practicing social worker for about three years.) The book did not make much of an impression. That may say more about me than it does about the book, however, as I was all of 23 or 24 years old when I read it. The other book of his that I read and that resonated deeply was Resident Aliens (1989), a book he coauthored with William Willimon, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke. That book I highly recommend to readers of this blog.

Here in Grand Rapids I’m part of a group called In Vino Theologica or in wine there is theology. It’s a motley little group of men and women, young and old, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant, Confused and Skeptical who come together to read and think about what it means to be Christian. I try to find short(ish), thought-provoking articles for us to read beforehand and then discuss over a couple of bottles of wine and fine cheese. Since I’ve been reading Hauerwas’s memoir I thought I would see if he had anything online that might serve the purposes of our little group. And I came across an article he wrote in 1991 that is immediately relevant to the discussion I was having with Mike Wittmer last week on his blog. Mike and I were discussing the nature of Christian belief.

In that discussion I made the following claims:

I would just point out that practices, rituals, sacraments, feasts and fasts, etc. for 1500 years of Christian history served as the primary means for the redirection and reorientation of our desires, our loves and lives, for our spiritual formation as icons of God and followers of Jesus whose end is communion with God and others. It is only since the reformation that the pendulum has swung away from the embodied practices of concrete communities as central to spiritual formation and toward the atomistic, disembodied and cerebral-centered. I suggest it’s time for the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction once again.

And,

When it comes to faith I am, after all these years, still a beginner. I am always ever a beginner. I’m coming to see, I guess, that I am still learning to believe, still learning how to believe. For a long time I was preoccupied with what to believe. As I get older I’m coming to see that how I believe is of equal importance. I am coming to see that belief is something that takes practice and something one learns to do over time.

In the article of Hauerwas’s that I found for use in In Vino, Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community Hauerwas compares becoming a Christian to learning to lay brick. He says:

To learn to lay brick, it is not sufficient for you to be told how to do it; you must learn to mix the mortar, build scaffolds, joint, and so on. Moreover, it is not enough to be told how to hold a trowel, how to spread mortar, or how to frog the mortar. In order to lay brick you must hour after hour, day after day, lay brick.

Of course, learning to lay brick involves learning not only myriad skills, but also a language that forms, and is formed by those skills. Thus, for example, you have to become familiar with what a trowel is and how it is to be used, as well as mortar, which bricklayers usually call "mud." Thus "frogging mud" means creating a trench in the mortar so that when the brick is placed in the mortar, a vacuum is created that almost makes the brick lay itself. Such language is not just incidental to becoming a bricklayer but is intrinsic to the practice. You cannot learn to lay brick without learning to talk "right."

The language embodies the history of the craft of bricklaying. So when you learn to be a bricklayer you are not learning a craft de novo but rather being initiated into a history. For example, bricks have different names--klinkers, etc.---to denote different qualities that make a difference about how one lays them. These differences are often discovered by apprentices being confronted with new challenges, making mistakes, and then being taught how to do the work by the more experienced.

Now the comparison:

Christianity is not beliefs about God plus behavior. We are Christians not because of what we believe, but because we have been called to be disciples of Jesus. To become a disciple is not a matter of a new or changed self-understanding, but rather to become part of a different community with a different set of practices.

For example, I am sometimes confronted by people who are not Christians but who say they want to know about Christianity. This is a particular occupational hazard for theologians around a university, because it is assumed that we are smart or at least have a Ph.D., so we must really know something about Christianity. After many years of vain attempts to "explain" God as trinity, I now say, "Well, to begin with we Christians have been taught to pray, 'Our father, who art in heaven. . .’" I then suggest that a good place to begin to understand what we Christians are about is to join me in that prayer.

For to learn to pray is no easy matter but requires much training, not unlike learning to lay brick. It does no one any good to believe in God, at least the God we find in Jesus of Nazareth, if they have not learned to pray. To learn to pray means we must acquire humility not as something we try to do, but as commensurate with the practice of prayer. In short, we do not believe in God, become humble and then learn to pray, but in learning to pray we humbly discover we cannot do other than believe in God.

This expresses better than my feeble attempts one of the points I was attempting to make in my discussions with Mike concerning the nature of Christian belief; namely, that Christian belief takes practice. It's not that we first become Christians and then as evidence of that engage in certain sorts of behavior. Rather, it is in the very course of engaging in the practices and rituals peculiar to the Christian way of being in the world that we actually become Christian.

We Are Liars

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:11:00 +0000

All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.

That’s what Shakespeare told us. I think he’s mostly right. But what can that mean for us? Stangely, I think it means that we’re all actors and actresses and that as such our task is to lie to the world. And to lie big and bold. Because the bigger and bolder we lie to the world the more honest with the world we will be. It’s just like Wilco says in their song Misunderstood. You’re honest when you’re telling a lie. So you and I owe it to the world to lie our fool heads off and to discharge the debt of honesty we owe to the world.

Just as our task—our godly task!—is to lie to the world, it is the task of the world to tell the truth, and in so doing dishonestly describe the world we inhabit. Our task is to lie—big and bold—and in so doing to honestly describe the world we inhabit. I know this all sounds crazy, and it is. It’s ridiculous. It’s lunacy. It’s foolishness. But, of course, the wisdom of God is foolishness to the likes of us.

If you listen to news reporters, politicians, and marketing executives they tell the truth: the world is a mess, and so are we. Greedy men bilk investors out of billions of dollars; selfish little countries consume disproportionately large amounts of the earth’s resources, while other parts of the world languish; middle eastern nations terrorize each other while we ordinary Western men and women amuse ourselves numb with entertainment and the acquisition of stuff, believing as we do that this is what it means to be human and to flourish. This is the truth. And yet this description of the world is less than honest even if it is true.

All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.

You and I, as Christ-followers, are called to be liturgical actors on the stage of the world. We are called to theatrically enact and incarnate the big lie—The Eschaton—the lie that the world and we human beings are not as the newspeople, politicians and advertising executives truthfully describe. The lie is that there’s another world, a new reality, another way of doing business with each other, a way characterized by peace, love, collaboration and unselfishness. And we’re being honest when we’re telling this lie.

Just as we answer the Divine invitation and gather around a table one day a week to dramatically enact and anticipate the eschaton—the heavenly meal where differences don’t divide and where though many we are nevertheless one—so are we called as liturgical creatures to go out into the world and to theatrically incarnate and anticipate this absurdity in the warp and woof of our daily lives, and so honestly describe ourselves and the world, as we quite literally put the lie on display for all the world to see.

We’ll fail of course, at this calling of ours to lie. That's because the truth is we’re horrible liars. Still, even though failure is certain, lie we must. It’s our calling.

The Party's On

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:08:00 +0000

I've been saying for a long time that we Christians need to relearn how to celebrate. God, after all, is a party-throwing God. And apparently, if the Gospels are to be trusted, we're all invited to the party. Yep, all of us: Me, Mike Wittmer, Pete Rollins, what's the guy's name who delivered the inaugural prayer...um...him, Bishop Spong, Ted Haggard, James Dobson, The Farting Preacher, and even that old curmudgeon Dissidens over at remonstrans.net.

That God is as promiscuous with his love and grace and mercy as the Bible makes God out to be makes some of us a wee bit upset, I know. But look: this whole bloody, awful, beautiful, confusing, depressing, delightful life and world history is going to climax in a party of universal proportions. Well, that's what the bible teaches anyway. And that's worth getting excited about. Isn't it? That's worth practicing for. Isn't it?

Well, I found someone else who who has been captivated by the image of this party-throwing God on a universal mission of reconciliation, healing forgiveness and celebration. This is how he puts it, and he puts really well:

Religion #1:

God is mean, angry and easily provoked. From day 1, we’ve all been a disappointment, and God is–justly–planning to punish us forever. At the last minute, thanks to Jesus stepping in to calm him down, he decides to be gracious.

But don’t do anything to mess that up. Peace is fragile around here.

Religion #2

God is gracious, loving, kind, generous and open-hearted. He rejoices in us as his creations, and is grieved that our sins have made us his enemies and caused so much brokenness and pain. In Jesus, he shows us what kind of God he is and restores the joy that should belong to the children of such a Father. True to his promises, he will bless all people in Jesus, and restore the world by his resurrection victory.

You can’t do anything to mess this up. God’s got his heart set on a universe wide celebration...

...We have far too many people selling religion #1. Like the Pharisees, they are the authorized representatives of the grumpy, ticked off, hacked off, very, very angry God who MIGHT….maybe, MIGHT let you off the hook….MAYBE…..IF–and it’s a very big IF–you manage to believe enough, obey enough, get the theology questions right enough, find your way to the right church, follow the right script and get the details right, down to the last “amen.”

...We have far too few Christians who are overwhelmed at the news that God has fired the bookkeepers, sent home the bean counters, dismissed the religion cops and bought party hats for the grumpy old people. The big announcement is this: In Jesus, we discover that God is just sloppy with his amazing grace and completely beyond common sense when it comes to his love. Just to enhance his reputation as the God who know how to throw a party, he’s inviting all of us back home, no tickets necessary, no dress code, for a party that will last, literally, forever. With open bar, and all on him. (Oh calm down Baptists. You can go to another room.)...

...The Father will have his party. Even for the undeserving kid who doesn’t quite get it. Even for the Pharisee-wannabe who is horrified that dad’s not cooperating with the system.

God will be gracious. God will be good. God will be overflowing in love. God will be good to the world. God will bless the nations. God will put his lamb and his Spirit and his loving face at the center of a universe made over in the image of the greatest wedding bash/banquet you could ever imagine...

...Your ticket to this event will most certainly NOT have a denominational name on it. Nor will your seat at the table be determined by your church or your theological team. The grace and goodness of God is going to erase all the lines, boxes, definitions, fences, dictionaries, sermons, announcements and pronouncements ever made. Your Biblical interpretations won’t amount to a hill of beans. God himself, and his good grace, will be the star of the show...

...God’s gracious face makes our religion fall apart. It takes away all our soapboxes. It shuts our mouths, because none of us deserve it and all of us can have it. God’s love and grace are so far beyond our ideas of what they ought to be that none of our ideas about God can survive the good news that comes in Jesus. Jesus is a salvation, grace, goodness, God revolution...

...Let’s stop it. Let’s stop hiding the face of a gracious God. Let’s show it, sing it, worship in its light, live as if we know that gracious, glorious God as the one the Bible proclaims and who comes to us in Jesus.

Let’s enjoy the face of a gracious God. Now and forever.

Preach it, brother! Preach it again! And then preach it one more time! Let's all of us preach it, try to live it and then practice for it. Practice for it? Yes; practice for it. How? By throwing some parties of our own in anticipation of the one that's coming. (First, though, I've gotta kick this sore throat.....)

(You can read the original post, by imonk, in its entirety by clicking here.)

Which Came First: Chicken or Egg? Thoughts about Belief and Chrsitian Faith

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:25:00 +0000

It’s been a VERY long time since my last post. Since then I finished an academic semester, been to London and Belfast and participated on a panel at the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship’s Worship Symposium with Jason Clark and Pete Rollins on Emerging Christianity. And I’ve also been trying to explain on someone’s blog claims I made at the panel discussion concerning belief and Christianity.

First, a word about the panel. As I said, the panel was made up of myself, Jason Clark and Pete Rollins with Jamie Smith, Lori Wilson and Mike Wittmer acting as respondents. Nathan Bierma deftly played the role of moderator. We attracted somewhere between 120-130 to the four hour panel discussion and roughly another 100 over the course of the next two days at one-hour discussions for those who didn’t make it to the panel. The Worship Symposium as a whole drew some 1400 participants from 38 different countries.

The impetus for the panel is a book that Pete, Jason, myself and Scot McKnight are doing addressing various issues in emerging. We gathered (except for Scot) the day before the symposium to go over drafts of our chapters. It was for me an enormously beneficial experience; both the colloquium at which we went over chapter drafts and the panel discussion.

Okay, now to the meat and potatoes. At the panel discussion, Mike Wittmer, a theologian at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, asked the panel whether there are any beliefs that are necessary to be a Christian. He wanted to know if someone could be a follower of Christ and lack belief in the resurrection, for example. Each of the panel members was reluctant to answer the question. Speaking for myself, I said that I was reluctant only because belief admits of different grammars and that the question(er) suggested there was only one. I said there that belief must be thought of not synchronically (as happening at a specific point in time) but diachronically (as something that happens over time). I elaborated on this later on Mike Wittmer’s blog.

Let me state briefly how I am thinking of belief and you good folks (if there are any of you left out there) can tell me what you think. The preferred grammar of the questioner is the grammar of assent, the view that belief is belief that: belief that Jesus was both God and human; belief that Jesus rose from the dead, etc. Here the idea is that belief is belief that certain propositions are true, and he wanted to know if in order to be a follower of Christ one must assent to certain propositions and if so, which ones.

My response was to tell a story about Pascal, who upon being told by a friend that he wanted to become a Christian, doesn’t tell the guy what to believe; rather, Pascal tells him to “go to Mass and take the Eucharist.”

The idea here is that belief can be the result of engaging in certain practices and rituals. Now most 21st Century, Western, Protestant Christians probably think that engaging in Christian practices or rituals follows on the heels of belief. Pascal suggests that the causal chain runs in the opposite direction, from practices and rituals to belief. Indeed, most of us probably think that belief is what brings about salvation itself and not salvation that brings about belief.

God, I take it, is never satisfied with belief that. God is interested in the total reorientation and rearrangement of our lives, our loves, our desires our entire way of being in the world. The important question is whether being a Christian is fundamentally and primarily about belief that certain propositions are true.

At the most basic level it seems clear to me that God is most interested in the total reorganization and reconfiguration of human life, of reorienting the human will, heart, desires and loves. God is interested in our moral and existential transformation. This of course is in no way incompatible with belief that certain propositions of the relevant sort are true. But the goal is transformed lives, not belief in “Jesus facts.”

And this is why when asked whether followers of Christ must know and put their trust in him, I’m inclined to point out that “being a Christian” (like belief) is progressive, that I am even now, and after all these years still becoming a Christian. Followers of Christ must, of course, put their trust in him. I must put my trust in him: today I must; tomorrow I must, and the next day I must. My frustration with myself is that I often put my trust in Christ one moment and then take it back the next.

As to the resurrection and whether someone could become a follower of Jesus before they come to believe in the resurrection, this is what I said on MW’s blog:

“I think that someone could become a follower of Jesus BEFORE they come to believe in the resurrection. But let me preface this…by saying that I agree that the resurrection of Jesus is indeed an essential piece of the Jesus story.

“Suppose you’re a fledgling writer. And suppose you meet someone at a writer’s workshop in Ann Arbor, another author with whom you share coffee and conversation during the breaks. Suppose this author speaks with you throughout the three day conference about the ins and outs of constructing plot and characters and does so in a way that you’ve never experienced before. You find yourself drawn to this author and to his words, even more so than the author leading the workshop. Suppose he has the effect of revolutionizing your own writing and that after all that time you spent together at the workshop you never bothered to get his last name. You knew him simply as John, the name on his name tag.

“Now suppose you go home utterly changed as a writer. Your writing from that workshop on is of a different caliber and gravitas than what preceded it. And then suppose that a week, a month, a year later you read an article in a writer’s magazine about the weekend John Updike attended a workshop in Ann Arbor and about the many conversations he had with this fledgling writer from Grand Rapids. You’re stunned! You’re shocked! You spent three days conversing with John Updike, whose work you love, and you didn’t even know it was John Updike. Now you do.

“The point of this little story is obvious. It’s certainly possible for you to have an experience of someone, to have your life changed by this someone, without at that very moment knowing who or what that someone is or is about. I imagine the resurrected Jesus could draw people to himself without those people knowing at the time of meeting who he is or what he’s done. Knowledge of that sort, if things go well, will come.

I went on to make a point about the resurrection itself.

“I want to stress again that the resurrection of Jesus gets its meaning and weight from the story it’s embedded in. Apart from that story it’s no more than a historical curiosity. I’m not interested in getting people simply to believe that a guy named Jesus was resurrected from the grave, and I doubt you [MW] are either. The good news is that our sins have been forgiven, that God has reconciled us, that there’s a new way to be human and that everything has changed because of the incarnation, life, death AND resurrection of Jesus. The incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are themselves embedded in a six thousand year old, unfolding story of a bent and broken world and a God working for its restoration and renewal. In other words, the resurrection as an isolated factoid is not what is of paramount importance. It’s the resurrection as part of God’s program of love and reconciliation that is the issue of supreme importance.”

Well, that was my last and final contribution to the discussion on Mike’s blog. Thoughts?

Consciousness and the Culture Wars

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:05:00 +0000

It’s been quite a while since my last blog post. And what does it take to awaken me from my blogmatic slumbers? Headlines like this: Creationists Declare War over the Brain. Not again! Not another surd in the so-called culture wars. Say it ain’t so; please, say it ain’t so.

I’m afraid it is so. Apparently, there was an “international symposium” titled Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness held in New York last month. And in August, the Discovery Institute (home to Intelligent Design thinkers and supporters) held their annual Briefing on Intelligent Design, at which two putative neuroscienists—(I say “putative” only because I have not yet had the opportunity to review their credentials and because I have suspicions about agenda-driven “science” whether it emanates from the Discovery Institute or from the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens; and I put “science” in scare quotes because usually when you’ve got cultural agenda in the neighborhood a lot of stuff gets called “science” which isn’t)—as I was saying, the Discovery Institute hosted their annual confab at which two putative neuroscientists spoke, two scientists who also headlined the “international symposium." These “scientists” (and for all I know they may have impeccable credentials; but until I get the chance to check them out, I'm going keep "science" in scare quotes) these "scientists" claim that the fact of consciousness constitutes “Darwinism’s grave.” And in the aftermath of “Darwinism,” with “Darwinism” (whatever that is; about as helpful a term as "evangelical" or "postmodernism") having been buried, there’s now room for what they call “non-material neuroscience” a “science” they themselves allegedly practice.

Well, there are many, I say MANY, issues embedded in this “non-material neuroscience” movement that deserve attention. I’m going to address a few of them. I do so not as a neuroscientist, but rather as a Christian philosopher with a keen interest in consciousness and neuroscience, a professor who regularly teaches a course called Minds, Brains and Persons, (a course in which we puzzle over the mystery of consciousness and just how it relates to neural goings-on between our ears), and someone who has published a couple of articles and books on related issues.

First, although there are others more competent than myself who can speak to the ID movement as such, notably among them my colleague, Steve Matheson, I will say this: to the extent that ID claims that the level of complexity found in biological systems exceeds that which evolution, i.e., natural mechanisms, could have produced, then if God has in fact brought about biological systems through natural mechanisms (i.e., through evolution), I think God’s going to be pretty surprised to learn that God could not have in fact done this! I can state the point much more succinctly: isn’t it a bit presumptuous to lay down a priori how God has to do things?!!! Of course it is; it’s presumptuous (as uncle Al Plantinga might say) in excelsis.

Second, let me say something about consciousness and the brain. For starters, it’s no secret, no new revelation to any of us—hard core dualists, atheistic materialists or even Christian materialists like myself—that consciousness has so far escaped the materialist-naturalist net of explanation. Why is that? Why hasn’t consciousness yielded to natural explanation? Is it because no naturalistic ‘link’ exists between neurophysiological goings-on in the brain and ‘technicolor’ phenomenology or is there a solution to the mystery that characterizes the relation between the mental and the physical and that solution is to be found in an immaterial mind or soul?

According to one atheistic philosopher there is indeed a natural property that accounts for the psychophysical link. Says Colin McGinn, a notable philosopher of mind,

Resolutely shunning the supernatural, I think it is undeniable that it must be in virtue of some natural property of the brain that organisms are conscious. There just has to be some explanation for how brains subserve minds. (From Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem,
Blackwell's, 1994, p.6)

Now McGinn thinks that we are constitutionally incapable of ever discovering that link. But, he assures us, it is a natural link and indeed it has to be. It has to be because we must—as good materialists/naturalists—shun the supernatural.

Well, it’s clear that by “resolutely shunning the supernatural” McGinn means to rule out--again, a priori--the existence of God, the soul or anything supernatural or immaterial. To put it another way, McGinn is a metaphysical naturalist, i.e., a naturalist about everything: the natural world is all there is and so it is exhaustive of reality.

But look: one needn’t embrace that exaggerated claim in order to believe that it is in virtue of some natural property of brains that organisms are conscious. I, for example, am a theist, a supernaturalist you might say. I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And since I believe in the God of the Christian Scriptures, I believe neither that the natural world is all there is, nor that the natural world is “causally closed.” I believe, in other words, that God can intervene in the natural world, that God has done so and, sometimes, continues to do so. And I believe that it is in virtue of some natural property of brains that we are conscious.

Furthermore, I believe that, for the most part, God does not directly intervene in the natural world. Since the natural world has yielded in so many ways to scientific (i.e., naturalistic) explanation over the past several hundred years, it seems eminently plausible to believe that God created the world—the natural world—with its own integrity and such that it operates according to regularities that can be grasped and understood, not only by those who acknowledge its author, but by those who do not and whose explanations, though natural and accurate, do not appeal to the author of nature.

Since God created the natural world, and all that it contains, with its own integrity, it is also reasonable to believe that consciousness itself—a feature encountered in the natural world—has a natural explanation. That’s my position anyway. So it seems clear to me that we can accept the claim that it is in virtue of a natural property of the brain that organisms are conscious without accepting metaphysical naturalism.

Perhaps some distinctions will help. Begin (and for our purposes, end) by distinguishing metaphysical naturalism from both methodological naturalism and what we might call chastened naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism, again, amounts to the claim that the natural world is all there is and is exhaustive of reality. Methodological naturalism, on the other hand, amounts to a presupposition about the practice of science. It says that scientific explanations must exclude reference to supernatural or immaterial entities.

Now if science is in the business of discovering natural causes, this ought not to surprise or offend. Methodological naturalism, as I understand it, is perfectly compatible with a robust Christian theism insofar as it does not rule out explanations that appeal to God. It simply will not count such explanations as scientific explanations. Moreover, what I want to call chastened naturalism recognizes the enormous contribution science has made to our understanding of the natural world and takes the natural world to possess its own integrity and to exemplify regularities that can be understood without reference to any immaterial or supernatural entities. What makes it chastened naturalism is its refusal to go “metaphysical” and to claim that the natural world is all there is and, therefore, that the sciences are the only source of genuine knowledge. Chastened naturalism is compatible with there being religious experience and Divine revelation. Such experience and revelation provides for religious knowledge, which is genuine knowledge even if not visible to the practice of science and by definition not scientific knowledge.

In short, to grant to atheistic naturalists that it is in virtue of some natural property of brains that organisms are conscious does not require us to sacrifice our theistic or Christian commitments. It doesn’t even require us to deny that consciousness is a result of Divine activity. Why? Because since when is God precluded from acting through naturalistic mechanisms? Did God fashion you in your mother’s womb? Yes. Well, how did he do that? I suggest picking up any biology textbook and reading the chapter on embryology. There you will find the answer. You are not, however, likely to find there any mention of God. That’s not surprising, though; is it? What you find there is the naturalistic explanation for your coming to be. And there's nothing atheistic about it. Who made up the rule that natural (explanation) is incompatible with God? I didn't get that memo.

So, what is the solution to the problem of consciousness? I'll say it again—and say so with no embarrassment—I have no idea. Like McGinn and Leibniz before him I think consciousness continues to prove itself intractable. It remains a mystery. But I'm not convinced that we will never solve it.

But doesn't the fact that materialist neuroscientists have so far failed to solve the problem drive us ineluctably to substance dualism? Well, the “neuroscientists” funded by the Discovery Institute think so. I, however, think not. Let me tell you why, why the fact of consciousness, though profoundly puzzling to materialists, ought not to be viewed by dualists as grounds for celebrating victory in the mind-body debate.

Here’s a little argument for dualism, based on consciousness:

(i) Materialism or dualism is true
(ii) We human beings are conscious creatures
(iii) It is a mystery how it is that we human beings are conscious creatures if materialism is true
Therefore,
(iv) The fact that we human beings are conscious creatures is a good reason for believing dualism is true

This is not, of course, a good argument. Suppose we know about John only that he is either a full-time auto-mechanic or a full-time janitor. Suppose too that we know that John attends philosophy colloquia at Calvin College every Tuesday afternoon. The fact that it is difficult to see how it could be that John attends philosophy colloquia at Calvin every Tuesday afternoon if John is an auto-mechanic is no good reason to believe he is a janitor. In other words, it needs to be shown how John's attending philosophy colloquia makes it more likely that he is a janitor than that he is an auto mechanic. Likewise, just because we can’t see how consciousness emerges from matter makes it no more likely that it owes to an immaterial soul.

But isn’t it much easier to see how it is that we human beings are conscious if dualism is true than it is if we are wholly physical beings, i.e., if some version of materialism is true? I don’t think so. Is it really any easier to see how an immaterial soul could be conscious than it is to see how a material being could be? If anything it may seem harder, owing simply to the fact that it is difficult to imagine an immaterial soul. Peter van Inwagen—a Christian and philosopher who is recognized by his philosophical peers as among the very best analytic philospophers currently working—has argued for the claim that since we know quite a lot about physical objects the mystery of consciousness is glaring. There is, he believes, a corresponding ignorance about non-physical objects that has had the tendency to conceal the mystery for dualists. But the fact of the matter really is this: consciousness is a mystery for all of us. It is no less a mystery for dualists than it is for materialists.

So the fact that consciousness has not yielded to natural explanation is not, despite the claims of the non-material neuroscientists, Darwinism’s grave. (I still want to know what view or views “Darwinism” is supposed to pick out. But that’s a topic better left to my friend Steve over at Quintessence of Dust. And it’s probably already been addressed there.)

I can think of at least two reasons for believing that naturalism--in terms either of consciousness or evolution--poses a problem for theism. (i) assume that God cannot work through natural mechanisms or (ii) identifiy naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. I see no reason to embrace either (i) or (ii). Until I do, I will remain a (chastened) naturalist and a Christian theist. And with any luck, I will also remain employed.

Lipstick, Pigs and Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:25:00 +0000

Politics makes me sick. And I don't generally blog about it. But, blog about it today I must. You will find below a 47 second clip of Obama's "you can put lipstick on a pig; but, it's still a pig" line. How anyone could possibly hear that as directed at Sarah Palin is baffling. That McCain allowed his campaign to pick up on it and use it in their own campaign ads to misrepresent Obama as sexist is shameful. It's clear by what immediately precedes Obama's remark that he's talking about McCain and the policies he's pushing under the banner of "change." You can call them by whatever names you want, but it's the same bill of goods we've been sold the past eight years. That is clearly Obama's point. And he's right, at least about the philosophical point. For as Lincoln taught so long ago, calling a horse's tail a leg does not make a horse to have five legs. Calling the same old policies by different names does not make them different policies.

If there's anything worth discussing it's whether there are substantive differences between McCain's proposed policies and Bush's. But this business about sexism and Palin bashing by Obama is just plain politics. And it's ugly. About as ugly as I suspect lipstick on a pig would be.

Would to God that most Americans will be able to see this for what it is.Alright. 'nuff said. Here's the clip:

Thinking Through Homosexuality

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:10:00 +0000

I've been sitting on this one for a while now. I am going to begin by laying out a few assumptions. Then I'm going to present a few thoughts and questions concerning the moral permissibility of the practice of homosexuality. I will follow this up with a discussion of a common line of argument against the moral permissibility of homosexual practice. Then I will extend an invitation to you to share your thoughts and concerns.

For the purposes of this discussion (please read those six words again, carefully; I'll wait....okay...finished?) I make the following three assumptions. First, I will assume that homosexual practice is at cross-purposes with God's design for human sexual behavior. Second, I will assume that one's sexual orientation--whether one is attracted to members of the same or opposite sex--is not, generally, under one's voluntary control. Just as I did not awake one day and decide to be attracted to members of the opposite sex, I assume that most homosexual men and women did not awake one day and decide to be attracted to members of the same sex. Finally, I am going to assume, based on the biblical witness, that under less than ideal conditions God sometimes makes accommodations to those condtions and makes allowances for activities and practices that run orthogonal to God's ultimate purposes and intentions.

I'll have more to say about the first and third assumptions as we proceed. For now, I want to note that the following practices would seem to be at cross-purposes with God's intentions for human relations (sexual and otherwise): war, divorce/remarriage, polygamy (I'm assuming for the sake of this discussion that God's design for human sexual practice was one man/one woman couplings until death does part the couple). In the case of the first two (war and divorce/remarriage), many of us believe that it is sometimes morally permissible to engage in these practices which are at cross-purposes with God's good intentions for human relations. The idea might run something like this: these practices, while not the best all things being equal, are sometimes the best all things considered. In other words, under ideal conditions (when things go the way originally intended) these practices would not be engaged in. Sadly, however, under less than ideal conditions, such as the actual conditions under which we live, engaging in these practices can be morally justified and so are morally permitted.

Interestingly, in the case of polygamy, the bible never explicitly forbids the practice, although most of the readers of this blog, and the communities to which we belong, surely would forbid it.

The question is obvious: what is the relevant dissimilarity between the practice of homosexuality and the practices of war and divorce/remarriage? Granting (again, for the sake of this discussion) that all of these practices are at cross-purposes with God's ultimately good intentions, why does the bible, and why do many of us, make allowances for war and divorce/remarriage, holding them to be morally permissible under certain circumstances, but fail to make any such allowance for the practice of homosexuality?

That is a question worth pondering, and worth answering, but only after you've first pondered for a spell. Here is one common line of response:

Well the relevant difference is that in the case of war and divorce the
bible itself makes allowances whereas in the case of the practice of
homosexuality, this is not so; and in fact, in the case of homosexuality
the practice is explicitly forbidden in scripture. Since the scriptures
make no allowance for it neither should we.

First let me just note an interesting asymmetry. There are sexually immoral practices that the bible does not explicitly forbid (e.g., polygamy), but which we do; and there are sexually immoral practices the bible does explicitly forbid and, so the argument goes, so should we, unless the bible itself makes accommodation for them. That's interesting I think. It's interesting, first of all, that a sexually immoral practice like polygamy is not explicitly forbade in the bible. (I say 'sexually immoral' based on the assumption above that God's original design was one man/one woman.) And it's interesting, not to mention relevant, that there are practices that are at cross-purposes with God's ultimately good intentions for human (sexual) relations, and which God forbids, but which the scriptures (or God) makes allowances for and permits (e.g., divorce).

Here is what I find most interesting and what I would like for you to help me think through. There is an interesting and relevant similarity when it comes to the sorts of reasons behind a biblically based accommodation of war and divorce and the sorts of reasons that might be offered for extending an accommodation to the practice of monogamous homosexual unions.

Consider: why would a practice like war or divorce be morally permissible when such practices result in fragmentation, disintegration and human impoverishment, features of human existence that are far, far from God's good, life-enhancing purposes for creation? Well, sadly, in this broken world of ours, as I've already mentioned, these sorts of practices can be better, all things considered, than any of the available alternatives (e.g., in the case of divorce the alternatives might be perpetual abuse, a marriage partner whose addictions threaten the welfare of the family, etc.). Likewise, it might be argued, that the practice of monogamous homosexual unions can be better than any of the available alternatives, e.g., a life of serial partners, a life w/o love and companionship, a life of self-loathing and flagellation, etc. Might the words of St. Paul to heterosexuals apply here too: "Better to marry than to burn."

But why, it might be asked, doesn't the bible and church history make such allowances for the practice of homosexual behavior when it does for such a practice as divorce? If St. Paul had reasoned the way suggested in the previous paragraph, wouldn't he have made just such an allowance?

Here I wonder whether or not there is a relevant dissimilarity in the social structures that existed in the ancient world and those that exist now, differences that might provide an answer to our question. Let me put it this way, had the social structures that exist today existed in biblical times would the biblical writers (St. Paul or the OT writers) have made an allowance for the practice of monogamous homosexual unions? What I have in mind here is this. It seems to me to be the case, for example, that contemporary configurations of family would be scarcely recognized in the ancient world. I'm told in fact that in the early church (and I need to verify this; so, if you have some evidence I'd like to become acquainted w/it) people with multiple wives and children were welcomed into Christian community. Again, assuming such a practice is at cross-purposes with God's intentions for human sexual practice, one can only imagine the churches were faced with a conundrum: these people came to Christ already embedded in a certain family configuration. What was the church to say to such people, "I know you have three wives and seven children between you, but I'm afraid you must sever your family if you are to be a part of the community?"

It could be argued that we are in a similar sort of situation vis a vis homosexual families. Suppose a homosexual couple with children come to Christ and seek membership in a Christian community. Is the community to say, "You are welcome here; but, first you must sever your family."?

What may be well worth considering in such a discussion as this is whether the relevant comparison is not between war or divorce and the practice of homosexual behavior, but that between the practice of homosexual unions and the practice of polygamy in the bible and the early church. Granting (for the sake of argument) that both practices run orthogonal to God's intentions for human sexuality, might accommodations and allowances be made when it comes to homosexual unions in recognition of the less than ideal conditions under which we live?

And with that, I throw it open to you. I would greatly appreciate your help in thinking through these issues.

Sin, Death and Original Conditions

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:00:00 +0000

This past week there were two very interesting posts around the blogosphere that are related, even if not obviously so. The first was a post over at Jason Clark's by Stephen Webb. This was the third post in a three-post series on creation care and animal rights. The second was a post at Scot McKnight's on Augustine (or really, St. Paul) and the doctrine of original sin. Both posts raise important and interesting questions or puzzles about evolutionary creation and the biblical narrative . (The phrase evolutionary creation is one I am very fond of and picked up from my friend Steve Matheson, whose blog is always worth a visit or two or sometimes three. EC is a more apt locution than theistic evolution in that the latter might suggest such things as theistic chemistry, theistic embryology or theistic whiffle-ball. But there's really just chemistry, embryology and whiffle-ball. Likewise, there is really just evolution. Some, like me, think that's how God created the natural world; but, adding theistic to evolution is as strange, I think, as adding it to whilffle-ball.)

Let me start with Scot's post. Scot's provocative question was simply this: is there a gospel without original sin? Now to my ears, that's not a difficult question to answer at all. The answer is, no! There is no good news without the bad news of things having gone terribly awry, without there having been a cataclysmic fracturing of creation and ensuing misery. In any event, the puzzles and questions are just beneath the surface of Scot's question (and my answer), especially for those who accept evolutionary creation (as opposed to what the ID defenders are pedaling and what old-school creationists hawk) .

The puzzles are these. According to St. Paul, sin and death are related as cause and effect. The sin of the old man, the dirt-man--Adam--resulted in death and destruction. Death, on this view, is an intrusion into God’s good creation. It is the new man--Jesus from Nazareth--who undoes, atones for, puts to rights, and otherwise deals with sin and, according to St. Paul, it is the incarnation, life, death and especially the resurrection of Jesus that gains victory over both sin and death. See Romans 5.12, for example.

The problem or puzzle is how to reconcile the biblical story with an evolutionary account of our origins, especially the idea that death is an intruder into a previously deathless, earthly paradise. (There is also the problem of reconciling the idea of a historical, single Adam. Though, I myself find that issue less troublesome than the issue of death, and sin.) If you believe that God reveals himself in both books, that of nature and the bible, then you’ve got some explaining to do, as the two witnesses seem to give conflicting accounts.

Do you think the two can ultimately be reconciled? If so, how?

Now, over at Jason Clark’s blog, Stephen Webb suggests that animals were originally domesticated and that, apparently, either those ferocious fangs of the saber tooth tiger did not, pre-fall, exist at all or, if they did, they were not used for ripping to pieces its prey. In fact, to hear Stephen tell it, the predator/prey structure of the non-human animal kingdom is not original to creation.

Obviously, Webb’s view is also incompatible with an evolutionary account of our origins, with the very idea of common descent. One way to handle this problem is simply to dismiss the notion of evolution/common descent and embrace one of its rivals, ID or Young Earth Creationism. To do so, however, comes at a significant cost, namely, the cost of discounting the overwhelming evidence of common descent as a piece of Divine Deception. In other words, it may look for all the world like all living things are related by common ancestry, but they’re not really.

With respect to the first issue—death and evolution—I have some thoughts. But I’m really interested in how you folks think about these matters.

All is Quiet

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Today I leave for Innsbruck, Austria for a week. I'll be delivering a paper at the How Do We Survive Our Death: Personal Identity and Resurrection international conference. Here's what I have to look forward to greeting me Sunday morning, as I pull into Innsbruck:

My contribution to the conference, a paper titled Constitution, Resurrection and Relationality, presents the Constitution View of human persons, which I've been talking about for the past ten years, and most recently in Rethinking Human Nature. In the paper I situate the view as a materialist alternative to dualist views, on the one hand, and reductionistic versions of materialism, on the other. I then address a theological criticism of the view to the effect that my account of human personhood doesn't take the fundamentally relational nature of human persons seriously, and in fact contributes to social isolation and a sort of introspective atomism. I show how relationality is actually essential to human personhood on the constitution view and I try to demonstrate that human persons are always--from the beginning of the Christian narrative to its very end--persons-in-relation. So relationality is not just compatible with the Constitution View, and not simply congenial to it, it is in important respects essential to the view. I also sugest that if we are to survive death, either in the sense of immediate survival or resurrection from the dead, then these very bodies must survive or be raised. If you're interested, the paper will appear along with the other papers being presented (including papers by Dean Zimmerman, Hud Hudson, Eric Olson and Stephen Davis--the rest of the U.S. contingent) in a forthcoming volume on the same topic.

All of that to say--things will be a little quieter than usual around H-SAB over the next week. I do aim however to queue up a post to appear while I'm gone, and I hope you find it interesting and have some thoughts on the subject it addresses.

What Does Human Flourishing Look Like: Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:34:00 +0000

This is a follow-up to the previous post. The video below is eminently relevant to that post, and I would be interested in your thoughts concerning the video, as they relate to that post. Be sure to watch this all the way through to the end.

What Does Human Flourishing Look Like in the New Jerusalem?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:00:00 +0000

I have always believed that in the New Jerusalem or the New Earth, human beings will realize the end for which they were created. I still do. I have believed that in that consummated kingdom, there will be healing and wholeness, that crooked spines will be made straight, that the lame will walk and the blind see. I have believed that anything that impoverishes human beings--mentally, physically, spiritually--will impoverish no more. That there and then all will be made well, and that human beings and all of creation will flourish. I still believe this.

But what, exactly, counts as flourishing and what as impoverishment? Will we all have the same IQ in heaven, or will there be a range such that anyone within that range is flourishing? Will we all have 20-20 vision? But what about those like my brother whose vision is 10-15? Is that flourishing and 20-20 not? Again, will there be a range and a threshold such that everyone will be above the threshold but some higher than others? Suppose someone is born color-blind. Is that an impoverishment? Or suppose someone is mentally handicapped. Will their being made well mean that in the New Jerusalem they will be...well...like me? Am I the standard of flourishing? Are you?

This subject came up a couple of weeks ago at our subversive little group In Vino Theologica (in wine there is theology). One of our new members asked about one of their children who has special needs. (I'm not certain what her diagnosis actually is.) The idea that this member was struggling with was that perhaps what we have labeled a defect or ab-normal may be part and parcel to who their daughter is. Why think that what we have labeled a defect actually is? Maybe in the consummated kingdom there are ways that we will be more like her than her like us.

What do you think? What does human flourishing look like? Granted that all that impoverishes will be no more in the New Jerusalem, how do we tell what truly impoverishes? Will all that we label "handicaps" or "defects" be done away with or is it possible that in some cases we've mislabeled? And how can we tell? Here and now?

Monkey See Monkey Do

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:22:00 +0000

Spain has recently passed legislation granting legal rights to apes. Animal rights activists in Austria are taking legal action to have a chimp named Matthew declared a person. They have as yet been unsuccessful but are taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights in the hope of prevailing.

Like the issues of gay rights and abortion rights, the rhetoric that generally attends 'discussion' of so-called "animal rights" can tend to produce copious amounts of heat and very little light. On the one side are the animal rights activists who sometimes say and do things that strike us as mad, or just plain silly. To cite just two example, there is Matthew's supporters in Austria who contend that everyone has a right to a fair trial, even chimps. And of course the notoriously zany Leona Helmsley who, upon her death, left her dog some 12 million dollars and directed that that her vast estate (estimated in the billions of dollars) be used to care for dogs.

On the other side are the opponents of animal rights, some of whom are Christians, of course. They argue that God gave us 'dominion' over the animals, and that, I take it, is somehow supposed to mean that we can treat non-human animals anyway we like, thank you very much. There is also the argument that if we grant (say) chimps rights what's to prevent us from extending rights to earth worms and gnats? Moreover, extending rights to chimps, dogs, earth worms and gnats has the effect of diminishing the significance and value of peculiarly human life. Or so the argument goes.

In a NY Times Editorial a couple of days ago, Adam Cohen introduces a very sensible voice into the discussion. Essentially, he suggests the reverse of this last charge. He writes:

Critics object that recognizing rights for apes would diminish human beings. But it seems more likely that showing respect for apes would elevate humans at the same time.

American law is becoming increasingly cruel. The Supreme Court recently ruled that states are not obliged to administer lethal injections in ways that avoid unnecessary risk that inmates will suffer great pain. If apes are given the right to humane treatment, it just might become harder to deny that same right to their human cousins.

For what it's worth, here's what I think, as a Christian. We human beings are of a piece with the rest of the natural world. Indeed we are animals, human animals. So that animals should enjoy a conscious life ought not to worry us since we ourselves enjoy a conscious life. Conscious lives come on a continuum, of course. The conscious life of gorillas, who seem to feel emotions and to understand and utilize language to communicate with humans, is more complex than the mental life of a dog; but, dogs too seem obviously to enjoy a robust conscious life. At the far end of the contimuum are those animals that are also persons, their conscious lives have a complexity sufficient for producing what I, following Lynne Baker, call a first-person perspective. So far as we can tell, in the natural world a first-person perspective is had only by humans.

There are two issues relevant to the discussion of extending rights to non-human animals that I want to discuss very briefly. First, I think Cohen is correct. Our practices toward non-human animals are character-forming, they shape the kind of people we become. Compassionate treatment of all living things, other things being equal, will tend to produce compassionate people. Treat non-human animals with compassion and you are likely to treat humans compassionately too, other things being equal.

Second, is extending rights to non-human individuals really that crazy of an idea? We extend rights of various sorts already to collectives such as corporations and groups. And rights, like conscious lives, come on a continuum. The sorts of rights that non-human animals may have coming to them in virtue of being created by God will be different than the sorts of rights persons have in virtue of being created in the image of God. Granted, there are difficult issues in the neighborhood; but, really, is the very idea of extending a right to an existence free of torture and exploitation to a non-human animal with a sufficiently well developed central nervous system that is capable of experiencing pleasure and pain really that crazy?

Wor(l)d and Sacrament

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:06:00 +0000

In this morning's NY Times there is a terrific article in the business section titled Warning: Habits May be Good For You. (You'll need a subscription--which is free--to be able to view the article.)

What the article does is essentially express what many of us
concerned with church and culture have been saying for a long time, namely, that the world, like the church, is in the business of formation, spiritual formation. And when you're in the business of spiritual formation, liturgy and sacrament--i.e., concrete practices-- are two very powerful means of creating, cultivating and cementing desired dispositions or characters.

In the church, it is virtues or the fruit of the spirit that we aim to form within us by cultivating various sorts of practices or disciplines. In the world, where the bottom economic line is the measure of success, it is an insatiable appetite for consumables that the prophets and priests wish to form within us.

For most of our history, we’ve sold newer and better products for habits that already existed,” said Dr. Berning, the P.& G. psychologist. “But about a decade ago, we realized we needed to create new products. So we began thinking about how to create habits for products that had never existed before.

This is a fascinating article. It tells the story, a good story, of an anthropologist with a desire to end the unnecessary spread of disease (especially in children) by getting people in certain parts of the world to wash their hands with soap. In Ghana, for example, they found that most homes have soap, but that only 4% of people used it after toilet use. After many unsuccessful educational campaigns to change the sanitary practices of the people in Ghana, the anthropologist turned to the prophets of our culture, multinational corporations, together with their priests, i.e., social psychologists and the advertising industry who consult them. The goal? To produce in the Ghana people an emotion or feeling (in this case the emotion of disgust), and then move them to cultivate a practice--handwashing--that would address the emotion and, in so doing, contribute enormously to ending or at least significantly diminishing the spread of certain diseases. And guess what? It's working.

Advertising is ubiquitous in our consumer culture. As Christ-followers, we are not immune to it or its effects. It could be argued in fact that the liturgy and sacraments of our consumer culture have more impact on our spiritual formation than the liturgy and sacraments of our churches. (Of course, part of the explanation of this fact, if it is a fact, might just be that most evangelical churches have abdicated the practice of meaningful liturgy and sacraments to our culture.)

In any case, we ought not fool ourselves. The life of consumption is, at bottom, a spiritual quest. It emerges out of the same restlessness and longing that are part of our created nature, and that drive us toward others, and God. Consuming may be a misguided quest, but it is a spiritual quest all the same.

My question is this: how can we, the church, be the counter-cultural community of Jesus that we are called to be (a community primarily of formation) in a culture whose sacraments and liturgy are more formative for us than the very society to which we claim primary allegiance?

Obama and Abortion

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:10:00 +0000

This past Tuesday Relevant Magazine published an interview with Obama. In that interview Obama is asked about his stance on abortion, specifically his stance on third-trimester and so-called partial-birth abortions. Here's how Obama replies:

I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that “mental distress” qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.

Here is one response to Obama's answer in the Relevant Magazine interview, by Jan Crawford Greenberg:

...there's no mistaking that Obama says he no longer will support what's long been a cornerstone of the abortion rights debate: The Court's insistence that laws banning abortions after the fetus is viable (now about 22 weeks) contain an exception to allow doctors to perform them if necessary to protect a pregnant woman's mental health.

Others, in comments throughout the blogosphere, are pointing the finger and saying, "there, you see; he started out left of center and now has not only shifted center, but has blown right past center on his way to the right."

A couple of thoughts. First, the binary opposition of right and left and the impulse or drive to pigeon hole and demand absolute loyalty to one "side" is as much a proclivity of the "left" as it is the "right". On this issue, Obama is not flip-flopping or threatening to take away what is now a woman's "right" to choose an abortion. And he's not opposing the Court's insistence that laws restricting late-term abortions include an exception to protect a woman's mental health. He's simply saying that states can restrict or prohibit late term abortions so long as there is an exception for the health of the mother and that mental distress does not qualify as threatening the health of the mother. Surely there is a distinction between mental "distress" and mental "illness" or "disease" where a pregnancy in the context of the latter, we might imagine, would qualify as threatening the health of the mother. If mental distress was sufficient for ending a pregnancy the exception might have the effect of eliminating the very rule for which it is an exception.

The problem, of course, is that nuance and distinction are not the stuff of mainstream america or the media that creates it. Ms. Crawford is a part of the media that creates mainstream american culture. I fear that she, and those like her, are once again making political mountains out of moral mole hills.

In any case, I suspect there are increasing numbers of people who are tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of demanding that everyone who champions life agree with them on every aspect of every issue. And let's be honest. Roe v. Wade did not create abortions. Abortions existed LOOOOOONG before Roe v. Wade. On one plausible reading, what Roe v. Wade made legal was the performing of abortions by trained medical doctors. It essentially said to women, "as full and equal citizens, you deserve better; you have a right to an abortion that is safe."

Thoughts?

Hopkins vs. Hewson?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen.

Those are the closing lines of one of my favorite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Caged Skylark.

I love Hopkins' poetry.

Glory be to God for dappled things- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim...

And then, from the same poem, perhaps my favorite lines in all of poetry:

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Those lines from Pied Beauty.

There's another poet I'm quite fond of too. Here are some of my favorie lines from his works.

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day

What you don't have you don't need it now What you don't know you can feel it somehow What you don't have you don't need it now Don't need it now Was a beautiful day

Yes, those are the words to Beautiful Day penned by none other than Bono (aka Paul Hewson). Here are a few more pearls:

Grace
She takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name

Grace
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything
...
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

If you're interested in art and culture I want to recommend an online magazine that I learned about this year called Catapult. I learned about it because a friend of mine, who is a terrific writer, had an essay of hers about the sacrament of laundry published there. They've just published a brief exchange between my colleague Jamie Smith and myself concerning dumbing down culture. This discussion was originally published in a student led publication at Calvin College where both Jamie and I teach in the philosophy department. Jamie worries over the loss of high culture among our students (and probably all twenty-somethings) and laments the fact that popular culture is "revelationally thin." I, on the other hand, reply to Jamie and defend the depth and substance of both popular culture and our students. I also confess there my low tolerance for arrogant academics. You be the judge as to who wins the argument about culture. And then, if you want, come back here and share your thoughts.

Breaking News: Stonehenge Mystery Solved

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:04:00 +0000

It's been a long time coming, but the secret of Stonehenge is finally revealed by National Geographic.

My friend Steve, a biologist, will often say "it would be great if we could run an experiment" on this that or another interesting claim or theory. Well, Nigel's is not just another theory. He's got lab work to back it up.

Tony Jones and The New Christians

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:40:00 +0000

We last left Tony in chapter four, The Theology Stupid. Today we pick up in chapter 5, After Objectivity: Beautiful Truth.

Tony notes that emergents place a high priority on interpretation and thus conversation. The more interlocutors, Tony suggests, the more likely we are to come to a better interpretation, and the closer to truth. (That's right--truth.)

Now some who listen in on conversations that take place here, whose identities lay safely hidden behind online handles that provide a safe haven from which to launch vitriol and self-righteousness, which shower down like dirty bombs causing injury to the name of Jesus and contributing to the uglification of the Church, some such as these I say, may think:

“But, c'mon; multiplying stupidity will never add up to intelligence. Hundreds of inept interpreters sitting around on couches, sipping lattes from s-bux and pontificating on blogs and in books about social justice after they just drove their hummer the 1.5 miles to the coffee shop is no more likely to get you closer to the truth or to a better interpretation than two such imbeciles chattering away to each other on facebook.”

It’s like the C student who comes to me and asks if he could write a couple of extra papers to raise his grade. How do you tell him, without crushing his spirit, that more average work will not eventuate in an above average grade?

I get the point of the naysayers (although I don’t think I’ll ever get the ad hominems and inflammatory rhetoric such folk characteristically employ). But here’s the difference between what Tony’s saying and my imaginary student. Emergent Christians speak and listen. And they are forever extending the boundaries of conversation.

It’s not unlike Wikipedia. While I advise my students that consulting Wikipedia when writing a philosophy paper is as useless as consulting a dictionary to discover the meaning of words when writing such a paper, there is a dynamic at work in the writing of Wikipedia that is absent in the case of my student. And the difference is network. Wikipedia is open to all via the world wide web and experts with access generally do not allow misinformation to last very long on Wikipedia before it is revised and corrected. Likewise in the conversations that animate emerging. Hearing the voices and stories of others can have the effect of enlarging your world and sometimes making you think “you know, I’ve never quite thought about it that way before. That does seem a more faithful reading than mine, now that I think about it.”

I’m going to keep this short and invite others to throw in. But let me pick up on just one more aspect of this chapter—beauty.

Tony tells a story of a young boy who after hearing a lecture and discussion on the (im)plausibility of the Virgin birth went up to the lecturer and declared that he himself believes in the Virgin birth. The speaker asks him why and he says “Because it’s too beautiful not to be true” (p.160).

I’ve said this many times on this blog, but it bears repeating. If I were asked why I believe in the Christian story, why I believe in a Creator God who pursues his fallen and perverted creation with the urgent love of a mother or father, I think I’d be tempted to answer as the boy. I really can’t help but believe it. I think when you really, truly sense that you are a “crooked soul trying to stay up straight”, when you sense that you are sick and in need of healing, when you sense that you don’t have it all together and stand in desperate need of love and forgiveness, when you recognize that both you and the world you live in are broken and you feel deep down in your bones that a better world and a better you are possible, then the Christian story overwhelms you with its beauty. There’s a fittingness to it. It fits your experience of yourself and the world. It’s too beautiful not to be true. Messy? Yes. But beautiful in its messiness.

What do you think about that? What do you think about beauty or aesthetic qualities as indicators of truth? Is it the case that in math and science we discard one theory in favor of another sometimes because the replacement theory is more elegant, more aesthetically beautiful than that which it's replacing? Granted, the replacement theory is generally expected to have more explanatory power. But is there nothing to the idea that elegance or beauty is truth indicative?

Well, that's enough for now. I'll blog about the final chapter next time. But let me say here that while there have been places in Tony's book where I’ve paused and thought “I don’t know about that” or “That seems a little self-indulgent to me” the major chords being struck in the book and in emergent are ones that resonate very deeply with me. Very deeply indeed.

Where Things Are Headed at HSAB

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:13:00 +0000

Hello Strangers! A spate of grading, followed by a roof tear-off and re-roofing job on my house kept me very busy (and sore) over the past couple weeks. But, all that is behind me. Standing before me now, wide-eyed and inviting, is my friend summer. And she is beautiful!

For the first time in four or five years I am NOT teaching a summer session. Instead, I will be focusing on three different writing projects. One is a paper on human nature and life after death which will be delivered in Austria at the end of July as part of a conference jointly sponsored by the metanexus institute and the departments of philosophy and theology at the University of Innsbruck. I'll be joining Dean Zimmerman, Eric Olson, Hud Hudson and Steve Davis as a plenary speaker. What an incredible privilege to be on the same bill as these folks. I'll be delivering a paper titled Constitution, Resurrection and Relationality.

The other two projects I'm working on may also be of interest to readers of this blog. Both are books. One is a book I am editing and it includes chapters by Scot Mcknight, Jason Clark, Pete Rollins and myself. I'll tell you more about it later. The second book is one I started working on over a year ago and is currently laboring under the title Incurably Human. This one is a combination of coffee house philosophy, theology and spiritual autobiography. In it I puzzle over such things as suffering and evil, pluralism and tolerance, the Christian doctrine of hell, community and consumption, what it means to be moral, creation and evolution, what it means to be human, etc.

Summer has proven to be my most productive with respect to writing and research. What that means for this blog is that I am very likely to post only two or three times per month. I'd like to finish blogging my way through Tony Jones' The New Christians and follow that up with more topical posts. So stay tuned!!!!! I'll have another post on Tony's book before next week.

Looking forward to conversing with you again.

Silence

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Corcoran) — Sat, 17 May 2008 19:34:00 +0000

The youth have been corrupted. The piper has been paid. It's now judgment day. Last week was spent catching up on pre-exam, paper grading and administering final exams. This week coming I will be knee deep in grading exams and final papers. That means things will stay pretty quiet in these parts. I'd say to expect a new post some time during the middle of week after next (27th/28th).

pax vobiscum,
Kevin