Let me say that I think Patrol is an interesting site full of well written articles. I don’t ever want to dismiss people’s experiences or ideas because of their (relatively) young age just as I despise people who think they can explain me, because I am over forty.
I also agree with Matt Anderson that just because a complaint is old does not mean it is old to the person making it. If you have endure someone who thinks God is a Republican, saying it may matter. I just wish we could all be historically grounded enough to know our worries are not new. As I pointed out, if I were in a relationship with someone having the “same old” problems, I would have a moral obligation to hear them in a new way, but for the rest of humanity time is limited and so I try to search for new takes, new criticisms, and bold prophetic writing.
Where do I suspect I agree with the Patrol folk?
First, many of their criticisms seem sound.
Second, we should follow arguments where they lead . . . wherever that might be.
Third, we should learn from a source, if we can, before condemning it.
Fourth, there is great value and good to some of the best of popular culture.
Fifth, we should be able to have good friends who don’t share our views.
Sixth, we should not put our trust in princes on either the right or the left.
Seventh, we should beware easy answers especially our own.
However, it does worry me when Christendom is dismissed as having no answers. I have spent twenty-five years trying to understand Republic. I cannot imagine someone looking at all of Greek culture (to pick one influence on the West) and saying with confidence that there “are no answers there.” To pick three main streams of Christendom, I find John Chrysostom, Aquinas, and Calvin rich and difficult enough that I hardly dare say I know anything about them let alone dismiss their complex answers.
The thought of these times being weird to the point of allowing me to dismiss even a Nietzsche (dated as he often seems to me) as having nothing to teach me seems as improbable as if it were announced that suddenly love was no longer possible between men and women, because of some new idea published on the Internet.
In short, I want to dialogue with anybody and everybody. I know I can learn from the folks at Patrol, but I doubt . . . perhaps I am wrong . . . that we have exhausted Saint Gregory or Saint Augustine yet. We will leave Saint Paul out of it for the moment!
I would love to learn more . . . but the best way to do that seems to be wrestling with ideas, but I don’t see a well informed dismissal of those ideas most often discussed. In short, it would be like saying modern Catholicism has “no answers” while not having read any Ratzinger or having read only one book by him.
That seems (to be an Ent) hasty. Perhaps, I have missed some depth . . . blogs (and I include my own) are not really set up for depth.
So I share many of the concerns, if not the solutions. I want to learn, but I am dubious we have exhausted the treasury of wisdom just in my (blessedly cheap!) collection of Church Fathers from CBD! (Blessings on them for selling me such wisdom at such prices!)
Finally, on the wholly different issue of the internet monk. I know monks, truthfully some of my best friends are monks, and he carries on his monkish role well. I appreciate (though often do not agree) with his ministry. Having been one of those people, I know the “internetmonk” ministers to real people. I appreciate anyone who can help anybody to think well or in a new way and it seems to me he does.
Related posts:
November 16th, 2009 | 5:56 pm | #1
Thank you, Dr. Reynolds, for “reaching across the aisle” as it were. I share your desire to “dialogue with anybody and everybody.” We do indeed have a lot to learn from one another as from the thinkers who have come before us.
November 16th, 2009 | 6:02 pm | #2
Right . . .and do call me John Mark! I cannot tell you how desperately I want follow the Logos where ever it leads. Often it irritates me that best I could tell, it ended up leaving me a small conservative or believing the Bible was without error or a young earth creationist.
It is cussed bad luck given my age, gender, and background.
I am willing (and probably professionally too eager) to be persuaded otherwise . . .
November 16th, 2009 | 6:04 pm | #3
I should also add (for reasons of confession) that one of the stupidest and most inconsistent things I have done as a teacher is to “argue” with students and former students who adopted a view I did not like. It was a useless breach . . . and I can think of actual cases that still make me blush with shame.
So: obvious fact- I have not always lived up to my Socratic (or better Christocentric) goal of hearing and then speaking.
November 16th, 2009 | 6:29 pm | #4
What bothers me, JMR, is that this approach to dealing with ‘Patrol’ is somehow justified and demanded by these people. Their approach is smug and not a little biased by their lack of experience with real people in evangelidom. To turn around and receive their stereotypes as if they were best-in-class sociological analysis when they are, at best, the mirror image of what they are criticizing, seems to play the patsy for them.
It’s not constructive, nor is it the best history of western intellectual engagement, to receive one’s avowed enemies as if they were brothers.
November 16th, 2009 | 6:30 pm | #5
John Mark: many thanks for your patience and willingness to engage with us, however recycled or naive our arguments may be to you.
I think we would all heartily agree with what you’re outlining here: continuing to mine the great Christian thinkers for ideas and truths that can enlighten the modern situation. We were not saying that these men and their followers have no answers at all, but as ideologies fall drastically short of answering say, most of the questions. “Systems” — say John Piper’s Calvinism or to a lesser extend the Catholic church’s theology — have to limit their thinking in some spots in order to be a system. Rejecting that corner-cutting doesn’t have to mean rejecting the theologians, and I don’t think we can be accused of the latter.
November 16th, 2009 | 6:53 pm | #6
David,
I am unclear why “systems” are not liberating if they are consistent. One might argue that they are simply the consistent working out of ideas.
I have never found such systems as shutting down conversation, but rather allowing me to have a conversation clearly. It also allows me to accept or reject something.
I am not a Calvinist, but I greatly admire John Piper for working out his ideas carefully and clearly. People who will not do that avoid a system, but they often end in a muddle. Great harm is done (by accident) in a muddle. At least with a consistent X, I know he is likely to do x, x1, and x2.
I have never found “system” limiting my thinking and certainly have never met a Catholic (to give an example from a different group) who found that he could not think about something. In fact, in my experience my traditional Christian friends are about as counter-cultural as they could be.
To paraphrase Napoleon, “You commit yourself and then you see.”
In short, systems don’t seem like “corner-cutting” but an attempt to be as consistent as possible. That does not leave you without holes, problems, or difficulties, but I strongly suspect more potential intellectual fecundity and less chance of wasting time than trying to create a “system” or (heaven defend!) a system-less system.
It seems to me that in fact reacting to a system has provided you with some of your best ground to work! I am with Chesterton on this . . . and have come to love orthodoxy.
Frank:
Nobody at Patrol could even conceivably made more mistakes than I did/do, so I am not eager to stop listening. I guess it is my job to listen.
Your mileage may vary.
November 16th, 2009 | 7:10 pm | #7
I really like your approach. I’ve adopted you as a type of mentor since I heard you speak at a C.S. Lewis conference. I’ll be honest, when I read that a Biola/Talbot professor was going to speak about beauty, I was skeptical, to put it nicely. Suffice it to say, I was very impressed. A friend of mine attends Talbot, and last year he mentioned that he really likes to hear you lecture. After that he showed me your blog page. All I can say is thank you. I am an Anglican who has been Pentecostal, Catholic, Lutheran, and whatever one is at a Calvary Chapel. I cannot clearly explain all I believe, but I hope for Christian unity and want to do my part by following Truth.
Again, thank you.
November 16th, 2009 | 7:37 pm | #8
Orthodoxdj: I appreciate the remarks. My mom is more thankful.
David:
When you say: “many thanks for your patience and willingness to engage with us, however recycled or naive our arguments may be to you.”
I don’t dismiss them because they are old (I love old things), but because they don’t often seem to interact with “best critics” as opposed to easy targets.
For example:
The problem with your cover faith/reason article is that is badly argued not that it is a common argument. Of course, if it is an intellectual testimony (old Evangelical habits are hard to break!) then it need not be an argument at all.
John Mark
November 17th, 2009 | 4:30 am | #9
Not all theological systems are perfectly consistent or claim to have all the answers. Most theologies have open questions. Some have admitted apparent, contradictions. Luther’s acceptance of single predestination comes to mind. He said what Scripture said and that further speculation is unhelpful.
My own view is that it is unhelpful and unbrotherly to engage in happy speculation that the end is near for a Christian tradition, unless you have an argument that they are compromising the Gospel by incorrect teaching. And that has to be seriously charged and defended; general impressions that they preach too much law or have their priorities misaligned isn’t enough, as we are all sinners.
I’ve never read in Patrol or on Imonk how modern evangelicalism is compromising the Gospel, but maybe I need to pay closer attention. (I’d say Zwinglian & Calvinistic view of Sacrament is the main problem, but that’s an aside).
And, Patrol’s publishing a personal testimony for agnosticism is very poor judgment. This is the kind of pseudo-evangelical posing that kills souls. It doesn’t teach Christians, it creates a dissident, mocking subculture within the church. Why not a meditation on how to respond to a lack of faith or how reason and faith are or aren’t related? You could write volumes on it.
November 17th, 2009 | 4:45 am | #10
Wow another Fail article at Patrol:
“Church is boring and I find God where I eat, drink, laugh, and enjoy other people.”
Then go to the bar, because what you’re looking for is beer, not God. If you hold yourself out as a Christian and post something like that, be prepared to hear a little law.
God didn’t die to entertain you. He died because you’re a sinner. Church isn’t supposed to entertain, it’s supposed to comfort and remind you that you are forgiven.
If you’re bored by his message of forgiveness, take Luther’s advice:
But if you say: What, then, shall I do if I cannot feel such distress or experience hunger and thirst for the Sacrament? Answer: For those who are so minded that they do not realize their condition I know no better counsel than that they put their hand into their bosom to ascertain whether they also have flesh and blood. And if you find that to be the case, then go, for your good, to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, and hear what sort of a fruit your flesh is: Now the works of the flesh (he says [Gal. 5:19ff ]) are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like.
Therefore, if you cannot feel it, at least believe the Scriptures; they will not lie to you, and they know your flesh better than you yourself.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact