After the Future: Grace in the Wilderness

After the Future: Grace in the Wilderness

Because this is the difference between the Nietzschean and the Christian. For the first, the world is radically open-ended and any human future is a possibility. The Christian would also acknowledge that because humans are no longer fated by the gods and determined by outside forces in the way they were, that a wide range of futures is a possibility, but however it is attained the future has a goal, a telos,  an Omega point.  And the striving toward that endpoint is what gives meaning and significance to what we do now. 

Underlining is my emphasis

Sack cartoon: Climate-change denial | Star Tribune

Sack cartoon: Climate-change denial | Star Tribune

Deviant and Proud

Last night I stopped by the site of George Monbiot, an author who writes for the Guardian in the UK.  I was thinking to myself that I had not been there in a number of months.  He's a thoughtful guy.  I was so glad I did as he provides a critique of what is called neoliberalism in Europe which he interprets as free market fundamentalism.  Below is much but not all of the article.  Please go the site and read the whole thing.  I have never bought the idea that unfettered greed is good.  I admit there is value in competition but can't believe it stands by itself as the key to everything.  

Do you feel left out? Perhaps it’s because you refuse to succumb to the competition, envy and fear neoliberalism  breeds

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th August 2014 

To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed. 

I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe(1). What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why. 

We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identity is shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.

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The same forces afflict those who can’t find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy. 

These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders. Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia; both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors, the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and loneliness plague us. The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways(5): just as we congratulate ourselves for our successes,we blame ourselves for our failures, even if we had little to do with it. 

So if you don’t fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.
www.monbiot.com 

Antarctic and Greenland Ice Mass Change

I downloaded data from this NASA site and plotted it up.  I combined the data into one plot as shown below.  Data is from the Grace Satellite and here is the reference.

Quoted from the NASA site:

Data from NASA's Grace satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass. The continent of Antarctica ... has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002.

Along the same lines, here's an article Putting Antarctica Sea Ice Loss Into Perspective.

Creation Has Not Stopped

In recent years I’ve been reading John Haught and Ilia Delio.  They are associated wth Georgetown University and each has written several  books that take seriously the writings of Teilhard du Chardin and seek to interpret and build on what he said.  The first quote is from a John Haught book, Deeper Than Darwin, and the remainder from a compilation of different authors, including John and Delia, titled From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe.  Of course these are things I’ve highlighted and then downloaded from my Kindle and the Highlight locations are given. I find these writings comforting and exciting.

Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect For Religion In The Age Of Evolution (John Haught)
- Highlight Loc. 785-86 | Added on Saturday, May 17, 2014, 06:03 AM 

By our best  reckoning, the universe is a story in the process of being told. Evolutionary  narrative clearly implies that the cosmos is still coming into being.
 From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 184-87 | Added on Wednesday, May 21, 2014, 07:12 AM 

He found the basis for spiritual renewal in the awareness that “creation has never stopped.” “The creative act,” he concluded, “is one huge continual gesture, drawn out over the totality of time. It is still going on; and incessantly even if imperceptibly, the world is constantly emerging a little farther above nothingness” (PU 120–21).
 From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 203-4 | Added on Wednesday, May 21, 2014, 07:17 AM 

With rare exceptions, Christian thought has not yet looked carefully at the dramatic implications of evolutionary biology and astrophysics for our understanding of God and the world.
 From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 272-74 | Added on Thursday, May 22, 2014, 10:34 PM 

Lack of interest by theologians in the new scientific cosmic story only weakens their intellectual opposition to the current academic cult of cosmic pessimism. Cosmic pessimism is the belief that nature has no purpose and that whatever meaning exists in the world is our own human creation. the ancient Hebrew discovery of the future can hardly object.

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 313-15 | Added on Saturday, May 24, 2014, 07:31 AM
 Those who dwell within a worldview rooted in the motifs of promise and hope will rightly suspect that Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomistic, and most modern philosophies have blunted the futuristic edge and thrust of early Christian life and thought. 

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 321-23 | Added on Saturday, May 24, 2014, 07:33 AM
 A sense of darkness, a realization that the intelligibility we seek is always partly obscured by shadows, is inevitable in any universe that is still in via. As long as the universe is not yet fully actualized it cannot possibly be fully intelligible to those who journey along with it (CE, 79–86; 131–32).

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 324-25 | Added on Saturday, May 24, 2014, 07:34 AM
 Like truth, intelligibility is something for which we must wait, since—if it is to be a continuous source of nourishment—we can never possess it.

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 351-52 | Added on Saturday, May 24, 2014, 07:40 AM
 That is, contemporary physicalism and its attendant cosmic pessimism are based on the uncritical belief that only through breaking things down into their subordinate parts can we finally satisfy the human craving to understand the world.

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 385-86 | Added on Saturday, May 24, 2014, 08:10 AM
 it leads Christian educators and ministers to ignore both the dramatic, emergent character of the universe and the promissory thrust of biblical faith.

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe (Ilia Delio)
- Highlight Loc. 398-99 | Added on Saturday, May 24, 2014, 08:13 AM
 Teilhard’s search for a grounding of solidity and consistency, therefore, led him eventually to claim that the universe leans on the future as its true foundation (AE, 139, 239).

Some Links Related to Climate Models and Antarctica Sea Ice

Some things I've been reading lately.

Study Vindicates Climate Models 'Missing the Pause'.

And here is the study the above article refers to:

Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase

And, with regard to Antactica Sea Ice:

Global warming expands Antactic sea ice:  In a polar paradox, melting land ice helps sea ice to grow

A New Church

We have been in the Memphis area, Collierville actually, since last September.  This is the longest I've ever gone in my life not affiliated with a particular church.  I have visited 11 churches so far.  Only five have been of the Churches of Christ which is my heritage and where I've been all my life.  It has been interesting seeing how others handle their worship.  We've been to traditional and contemporary.  Conservative and liberal. What I don't like about the contemporary ones is that they are basically concerts and you sit or stand passively.  Some of the time no one or just a few people in the pews will sing along.  When there is congregational singing, often the instrumentation drowns out the singing.   Another thing I noticed is how the services are more complicated.  There may be a march into the auditorium by participants all dressed up, maybe carrying a banner.  There is reading and response by the crowd.  There is more popping up and down than I'm used to.    After all these years reading about mainline Protestant liberal churches, it was a surprise to see how much they talk about their love for God and Jesus and what God has done for them and how Jesus is important.  

I've been wondering about what kind of church I might invent if I could.  Here are some off the cuff thoughts. It would be on Friday or Saturday night so as not to interfere with Sunday churches.

The Mysteries of the Universe Church 

1.  Welcome to everyone and a few announcements.  Background music is played but not loudly.  Instrumental contemporary but not obtrusive.  Something that builds up and leads one to think that something good will be coming along. 5 minutes. 

2.  A short message and video that relates to Art and Beauty.  10 to 15 minutes 

3.  A short message and/or video that will be known as the Science Moment.  5 to 10 minutes.
A break to visit.  5 to 10 minutes 

4.  A message from our Christian and Spiritual Heritage and History.  This may be the closest thing to a sermon.  A Biblical passage may be highlighted or a story from subsequent Christian History.  10 to 15 minutes. 

5.  Practical News and Service.  What has everyone learned this week that we can use.  Some new health tip, recipe, investment advice, shopping recommendation, whatever.  Discussion about how to help others and status of various projects.  5-10 minutes 

6.  Food .  Not sure if to do a meal or snack.  

Need to add music in between segments.  External and participatory.

The Point of Writing

I have not been writing enough lately.  Been to London, UK and Raleigh, NC recently.  Lot going on.  Still getting settled with our new life here just outside of Memphis.  Need to get back to this.  Why write?  I took on my trip and read on the plane over the Atlantic Kevin Hart's book titled "Postmodernism".  Originally read it five or so years ago. Here's a nugget.  Kevin is describing what Maurice Blanchot said:

he declared that the point of writing is not self-expression but meeting risks that will change the writer.

and a few sentences later.....

In outline, the claim is not a new one:  St. Augustine testifies in one of his letters that he comes upon new ideas only by writing.

Even in my technical writing, I find this is true.  One takes data and in the act of analyzing and gathering up background and supporting information, one always learns.  I enjoy that exploration.
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I was in London on business but did have time to stop by the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone and other wonderful ancient things.

James Joyce Quote

I loved this James Joyce quote that popped up on my screen a few days ago.  

“The spirit which proceeds out of truth and beauty is the holy spirit of joy. These are realities and these alone give and sustain life.”

Hit me at just the right time.  Noticed on David Dark's Facebook post of his article at the web site On Faith.  The article is titled, "Top Ten Reasons We Are Glad a Catholic Colbert is taking over Letterman's Late Show". 

The End of Apologetics Chapter 4 - The Politics of Witness

"We are not going to be able to reason ourselves back to paradise."

That is one of the closing sentences from Penner's book The End of Apologetics.  The book as a whole is a critique of using an over reliance on expert reasoning as the primary means of combating skepticism and atheism in defense Christianity. 
 

"... I cannot use the objective truths of Christianity to tear down others and think that I am thereby communicating the truth of the gospel."

He looks to the prophets for example of effective, fitting and appropriate witness:

"What is also true of prophets, then, is that while they challenge and even speak against their traditions, they are also more deeply committed to them than those who are comfortable in the status quo.  It is precisely because they are so committed to their tradition and believe in its deepest impulses that prophets sometimes attack it.  The prophetic call is always to a deeper fidelity to the founding event of the tradition, but not in such a way that controls it or even tries to make it into a univocal, monochromatic tradition."

And he looks to Paul whose approach is an example for us of what prophetic witness should be. 

"Paul engages believers and unbelivers, Jews and Greeks, men and women, slaves and free, all patiently and carefully in terms of their concrete, particular identities within the context of their actual situations.  He lives with those to whom he preaches.  He eats with them.  He works and worships with them.  Consequently, his theological categories do not blind him to the particularities of those to whom he witnesses - to the point where Paul does not even think of others in terms of a "universal human condition,"  Paul's preaching calls the people of the nations not to be conformed to the theological categories he inherited from Jewish orthodoxy (e.g., "circumcision"), but to faithful confession of Jesus as Lord within their cultural forms, whatever they may be.  It is as if for Paul, as missiologist Andrew Walls observes, Christianity "has no fixed cultural element" and is therefore "infinitely transferable."  For not only can the Christian gospel be translated into new cultural and linguistic thought forms, but given the missionary imperative explicit in Paul's letters (and the entire biblical narrative", there is a sense in which the truth of the gospel requires this kind of translation:  'It is as though Christ himself actually grows through the work of mission.'"

And this, after Penner has initiated the chapter by conveying that the social dimension of Christian witness and states that "edification is taken to be the primary act of witness." 

In closing out my comments about this interesting and, for me, difficult book, I direct your attention below to a page from The Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia 1952 edition.  I grew up with this set and it helped to form me.  This page shows the development of the pen from Roman times to the middle of the last century.  You see that it has changed drastically as the medium upon which it writes has changed.  This is a metaphor for Christian witness and even for Christian belief, in my opinion.  Change will happen and we do not help ourselves if we become obsessed with using exclusively the tools that have outlived their usefulness. 

Truth Is That Which Edifies

From Chapter 4 "Witness and Truth" of The End of Apologetics, Penner says:

The modern concern with truth marks a sharp departure from the premodern focus on natural substances that make the world what it is and, in turn, make it possible for our words or thoughts about them to be true.  It is because things are already true to themselves that premoderns believe we can perceive, think, or talk about them truly.  Prior to modernity, just as with reason and rationality, it is the cosmos and its being - the it is - that make our thoughts and our words about it possible.  It is because things have forms or essences that are identical to themselves, as it were, that our minds and our words can ever have any thruth in them.  This is not the case, however, for moderns who reject the old-world cosmology.  Modern thinkers tend to believe that our thoughts and statements can be true when the things we speak and think about are self-evidently the same as our words and thoughts.

We are at the beginning of a new era where we are moving beyond this modern way of doing truth.  It seems to work well when trying to do science and technology.  This is the domain of simple inanimate things or simple biological creatures.  When it involves creatures with consciousness then things get sticky.  How we know or think we know truth matters.  Penner suggests we move from a "correspondence" theory of truth, the modern conception, to consider that truth is that which edifies.

When we speak about edification and witness, we are never talking about a purely private relation to anything......There is something of an intrapersonal and public element to truth, and because we are social beings, the edification of an individual person necessarily takes place within a community of other persons wo share (very nearly) the same commitments, values, and vocabularies.  

Is Reality Ironic?

Irony generally involves an incongruity between how we act in, talk about, or think about a situation and the usual expectations for that situation - between what is formally presented in a statement or situation and what is obviously true about it.   

The above is another quote from Chapter 3 of The End of Apologetics by Myron Penner.  For some things irony is the best way to communicate.  Irony is indirect.  Jesus ministry is full of the indirect.  He often uses reverse wisdom like in "the first shall be last".  Have you ever wished that Jesus would just come right out and say it sometimes.  Why did he use parable?  Are you or aren't you?  Speak to us with what we think are words of common sense. Say it like it is?   But he often does not.  He replies with a question or story.  His life was the ultimate irony.  God and Man.

This is the supreme irony, as Kierkegaard would say: that God was a human being and there were people who lived with him, spoke with him, ate with him, and heard him speak, and yet did not realize they were in the presence of God.......God, to put it another way, is a master ironist whose Word comes to us in a form that is not directly identical to the message.

I don't seem to be able to bring anything up inside me so I continue to quote.

The nature of reality, the world, and God himself is such that truthful speech about them - the kind of speech that communicates what is most important - ultimately is ironic.  

Chapter 3 of The End of Apologetics - How We Believe

Chapter 3 starts out with the author and a professional acquaintance who has lost his faith.  They are having lunch.  Though he has lost his faith, it is with regrets and he realizes he desires a return to it in some manner. He is open to receiving help in this regard.  Along come two young Christian apologists who figuratively bash him over the head and punch him in the gut with their supposedly rational and unyielding arguments.  What do you think happens?  Instant conversion?  Nope.  Did they help?  

No.  According to Myron, belief should not be just rationally coherent but it also must be existentially coherent.  It is not enough or even required that we have an airtight, logical, scientific, philosophically sophisticated up-to-date justification.

Myron next considers the apostles and the prophets.  Do Amos and Jeremiah provide crafty knock'em out arguments?  No, they proclaim a direct message for the specific audience that is what they need to hear, what they need to do, and appeals to what they are doing and acting out.  That is prophetic speech.  Myron says:

"faith is tied to often-unacknowledged background values, assumptions and practices that give shape to our perspectives and meaning to our lives."  

"When I witness, I do not take up a self-centered, asymmetrical stance closed off to the needs, wants, desires, goals, dreams, story, or insights of the person to whom I witness."

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Sidebar:  This brings to my mind one reason it has been so hard for many people to accept the overwhelming evidence that we humans by our actions are affecting the climate and that the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere and ocean is something to have great concern about.  On the one hand I recognize that climate science is difficult and complex.  It has taken awhile for the story to unfold and there is much more to be learned.  There are legitimate questions on various aspects.  But the above also tells me that no amount of science however good is going to convince those who have a perceived existential investment in it being wrong.  In the long run, I think it is an erroneous perception.
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Myron also asks what is the purpose of belief anyway?  According to him, there is a purpose and that is to build the person up.  It is to edify.  

To put it another way, when we take prophetic speech as the basis for apologetic witness, we move from an abstract epistemology of belief to an ethics of belief.  When I speak of an ethics of belief, I mean a focus not just on what one believes but also on how one believes.

More Quotes From Chapter Two of the End of Apologetics

Here are some quotes from Chapter Two.

One of the serious problems for modern apologetics is that it treats Christianity as if it were an objective "something" (e.g., a set of propositions or doctrines) that can be explained, proven, and cognitively mastered.

Well, Christianity does seem to have some of that, propositions and doctrines, but I am coming around to a belief that Christianity is not one thing but a moving, shape-shifting, adaptive, progressing, thing that is growing and changing with those who live in it.

Kierkegaard's favorite response is to point out that being a Christian is far less a matter of knowing the truth than that of becoming the truth - that is, of being truly rather than thinking truly

Everyone would agree with this.  It seems that one should be able to figure things out mentally.  The Enlightenment inside me would agree with this.  But this statement does not support that.  One can only know the true if one practices truly. There is something about that which rings true.  I can intuit that but I wish I knew better how to put it in words, coming up with a rational explanation for it.

In order to accommodate this, we will need to shift from an epistemological approach to something like a hermeneutical one.

The next quote expands on this.  We have a text and a tradition that we have received.  It is a reality that is here and now.  Myron says that it is the Word from God.

The pressing issue is not solving an abstract set of theoretical problems but interpreting the symbols and texts of a received tradition in order to understand their meaning and significance in relation to a concrete set of problems and exigencies that we encounter.

This is how many Jewish thinkers have approached the scriptures through the centuries and that now makes a lot more sense to me than it did when I was younger.

Reason is useful to us when employed to understand where and how we live, but is "suspended" (or limited) in this paradigm, as it does not plumb the depths of reality, nor is it capable of functioning as a context-free judge or standard for human belief and action.

Important to the developing narrative in Myron's book is that "reason" is limited.  It has a gaping wound. He says in one place.

We are in some respects, then, caught between the rock of modernity and the hard place of the premodern worldview.  Premodernity, with its hierarchical universe and naive picture of the world, is simply no longer viable, but we are also far too aware of the problems of the modern paradigm to find its program tenable.  A shift to a hermeneutical approach to Christian faith, like the kind I propose, carefully negotiates faith in reference to the texts and traditions out of which we hear the apostles and prohets speak.

Next to chapter 3

Thoughts on Chapter 2 of The End of Apologetics: Apologetics, Suspicion, and Faith

This was the most difficult chapter to comprehend and summarize.  Here Penner draws from S. Kierkegaard for an insight and critique of our present situation.  In the time before the modern era, that is, before the Reformation, appeal to tradition and supernatural revelation provided the guidance and authority for how things are to be done and life is to be lived.  Kierkegaard observed even in his time, the mid-nineteenth century, that this had changed and this was replaced by something he called "genius" though Penner states that what K is getting at may better for us be described as "expertise".  And K looks to someone different than that, one whom he calls an "apostle", one who is called and who appeals not to reason but to revelation.  To quote Penner

The apostolic message does not have authority because it is demonstrably rational or exceptionally brilliant but because it is a word from God.  God's word does not come to us as the result of human calculation or brilliance and cannot be improved upon, nor will it ever become obsolete.  The truths of revelation are not realities humans will inevitably discover through their research projects, nor will they be able to assimilate them into their collective potential.  

Aside #1.  It is not discussed in this chapter how we know what is revelation and what is not.  That is not the subject here but is a question I had.  I think it is indirectly addressed later.

Aside #2.   I'm thinking that in K's day and even way far back in the mid-twentieth century when I was starting out, there were fewer experts and they were held in higher respect and awe than today.  Right here and now everyone is a specialist in something.  We recognize that we have to call on experts every day for help to fix our car, plan our finances, cure our ailments, buy and sell a house, choose our paint, etc. To keep a job we all have to become experts in something,   For this reason, in our current situation we do not ascribe the same respect that earlier generations of the modern period did to the smart, the intelligent, the expert.  And when we are in our right mind, we do not accept everything the expert tells us without asking questions and making sure we communicate with each other properly and that there are no hidden agendas or misunderstandings.  Life has become so complicated and there are so many possibilities and contingencies that it is best if we partner with the expert and develop a relationship when possible.

Now back to the book, Penner recounts that for Kierkegaard,

the claims of revelation are what Kierkegaard describes as a "paradox" to human reason, because they seemingly eclipse the rational reach of any human epistemic community - yet, as genuine truth claims, they are not utter nonsense to reason either.

Penner states that reason is always conditioned and that it ultimately, because of sin, deteriorates to an ideology because of the spirit of the times, the age, the crowd.  Human reason often turns out to be the product of bias and prejudice and a battle of power relations. That is basically the postmodern critique, that reason has no external reference point, there is no absolutely fair and unbiased location from which to stand and announce the absolute truth.  Penner connects this to nihilism and that others like Nietsche and K saw this coming.

The problem that both Penner and Kierkegaard have with modern apologetics is that it bases apologetics on secular reason and "genius" to ground the faith.  They are on the same page with the new atheists, playing the same game and with the same drawbacks.  It devalues what it is trying to prove.

The paradoxical result of the modern apologetic defense of Christianity, then is that when God's existence is established according to modern secular reason, all that really is demonstrated is the dispensability of anything that resembles belief in God.........so belief must be coaxed and cajoled from the crowd in terms they find acceptable and appealing.