One of the common complaints against traditional evangelicalism is that it has been held captive by a distinctly Western approach to rationality that eschews mystery and narrative. The central target of this complaint is the “Enlightenment,” with its emphasis on reason to the detriment of revelation. Shane Hipps’ first book seems to walk down this road, though there are countless others.
As the emerging church conversation has focused on the nature and role of truth, the epistemological effects and aspects of the Enlightenment have been pretty well worn over (though I see John Franke’s latest will probably restart that conversation for a while). But as I have continued to read about the period, I have become convinced that it’s deepest impact was not on our theory of truth and its relationship to rationality, but rather on our concept of our relationship to nature. And unlike the Enlightenment’s focus on rationality, that aspect of the enlightenment has largely been ignored by evangelicals.
But consider the words of Joseph Priestley, an 18th century chemist:
Nature, including both its materials and its laws, will be more at our command; men will make their situation in this world abundantly more easy and comfortable, they will prolong their existence in it and grow daily more happy. . . the end will be glorious and paradisiacal beyond that our imaginations can now conceive.
Or Descartes in his Discourse on Method:
For by them [notions respecting physics] I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life; and in place of the speculative philosophy usually taught in the schools, to discover a practical philosophy, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature.
The rationality of the enlightenment might have been propositional, and it might fail to be incorrigible and its foundations indubitable. But that wasn’t what was most problematic about it: for Descartes, the goal of rationality is subordinated to the end of mastering and possessing nature. It is a “practical philosophy” that Descartes is after, not a speculative one. The French philosopher (don’t hold it against him) Jacques Ellul calls this, I believe, “technical rationality”–it is rationality toward the truth, but only for the sake of the pragmatic results that the truth brings about.
For Descartes, truth was a means and not an end. But for his heirs, the truth was dropped and a principle of “good enough” was adopted in its stead. And it’s easy to see how that would happen, if the goal is in fact the mastery of nature and not the knowledge of it.
I suspect that only a robust concept of ‘nature’ as having some sort of internal organizing principle, and consequently some sort of intrinsic ends (i.e. teleology), could prevent this sort of rationality from devolving into a strictly utilitarian posture toward the world. And if Darwinism has had any impact, it seems to have destroyed the possibility of natural kinds existing in nature that might limit our technological mastery of it. These two ideologies have combined and created the crises in bioethics on the one hand, and the crises in sexual ethics on the other. And meanwhile, post-modernism has sought to undercut the abstract notions of ‘truth’ and ‘rationality,’ leaving us only with pragmatism. If it works, do it. And as Ellul points out, the rule of technical rationality is that if it can be done, it must be.
If this is correct, then it simply means that the transition away from a linear, linguistic notion of rationality toward images and mystery that Hipps describes isn’t a revolution, but rather the inevitable outgrowth of the particular understanding of the relationship between rationality and nature at the Enlightenment. The problem with Enlightenment thinking, on this count, isn’t that it’s too rational–it’s that it’s not rational at all, as it is divorced from the natural laws which are tied to the structure of the created order and which ought guide thought. Once nature is mastered and possessed, there is no natural kind there to prevent it from being altered according to our whims. Rationality is, on this score, unbounded by anything except our wills.
This story about the Enlightenment opens up, I think, the possibility of reflecting about new ways in which we might be captive to the Enlightenment. Specifically, I wonder whether we have adopted of a pragmatic notion of rationality where what we think is subordinated to the ends it produces. To use a popular example, we tend to think that the missionary impulse is enough justification to engage in something like online church. But our imperatives–our missional impulse–must be chastened and directed by the very real indicatives of theology. If they are not, then we render ourselves lords and possessors of the nature of the church, a problematic result indeed.
One more potential implication: evangelicals, in our adoption of technology, need to recognize that we are taking the fruit of a sickly tree. The ideology that undergirds technological production in our era is not neutral, but is grounded in an impulse to subordinate the whole world to our whims and wills. Churches should think seriously about being technological refuges, places where we can escape the principality and power that is technocentricism and adopt–if only for a few hours–a different way of being human. That younger evangelicals continue to be drawn toward Rome, Canterbury, and Constantinople is indicative of the fact that we want an alternative to this paradigm, while many churches are unwittingly perpetuating it.
For individuals, it means technological asceticism is perhaps the most important discipline for our day. I say “perhaps” if only because I continue to think that no discipline helps us see our need for new life more than fasting does (when accompanied by meditation on Scripture). But the technological paradigm is the ruling paradigm, and it is the paradigm that we as Christians have been least attuned to. Unplugging, turning off, and sitting in our rooms in silence will free us to use technology, but to use it well. For as Calvin puts it, all things are ours, but to serve us and not to lord over us.
November 9th, 2009 | 1:21 pm | #1
“The ideology that undergirds technological production in our era is not neutral, but is grounded in an impulse to subordinate the whole world to our whims and wills.”
Reading this line made me think of “fill the earth and subdue it”, which evokes, to me at least, not so much the -one with nature- idea as it does the -use the world well, but do use it-.
How would you say that the line I quoted differs from “fill and subdue”?
November 9th, 2009 | 1:24 pm | #2
Thank you. You hit the nail right on the head. When emerging/emergent Chistians talk about how “truth” became too important or whatever in the Enlightement, they are dead wrong. I was not familiar with your quote from Descartes, but it sums the whole thing up very nicely: “in place of the speculative philosophy usually taught in the schools, to discover a practical philosophy, by means of which …. we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted…” Truth, especially capital “T” Truth, was shown the door by the Enlightenment philosophers in favor of small “t” truths and practical results. For Descartes, truth was a means and not an end. For the “ancients” that the emerging church claims to draw from, “Truth” was the Main Thing.
And you also sum it up nicely with, “But for his [Descartes's] heirs, the truth was dropped and a principle of ‘good enough’ was adopted in its stead.”
Been waiting a while to hear someone say this. Thanks.
November 9th, 2009 | 2:15 pm | #3
Daryl,
Yah, that’s a great question.
I think the important difference is that in Genesis, the earth and its inhabitants seem to have ends of their own that limit Adam’s “use” of them, a principle that modern rationality and its fusion with Darwininian naturalism seems to reject. I think a robust doctrine of creation entails something like natural kinds (and hence, teleology) and I think I see that in Adam’s naming of the animals.
Does that help at all? Really, it’s a great question. Thanks.
November 9th, 2009 | 2:17 pm | #4
Bob,
Thanks for the kind words, and I’m glad you enjoyed the post. I completely agree with you about the ancients and their orientation toward truth. That’s well said.
Best,
Matt
November 9th, 2009 | 2:18 pm | #5
Matthew, this is a very, very important question and I believe you are right. Thank you for raising it on these pages.
November 9th, 2009 | 3:31 pm | #6
Thanks Matthew,
I don’t quite get the “ends of their own” idea. And I don’t think the naming the animals equals subduing them.
I wonder if part of the naming process is identifying those things which will need subduing. Just a thought.
On the other hand, subdue probably has implications of not letting the “wild” world get in the way of what must be done, rather than (as so often happens now) run roughshod over everything just because we can.
November 9th, 2009 | 3:39 pm | #7
Daryl,
By “ends of their own,” I mean something like their own purposes or goals that are intrinsic to the sorts of creatures they are. For instance, a tree has an “end” (photosynthesis, increasing oxygen) that is tied to its nature as a tree. This structure to creation–and a tree might be a bad example–seems like it should govern ethical decision making.
I think there is a subordination aspect to naming in Scripture, as when Jesus speaks the demons. But it seems like that authority is derived from the fact that the names are tied to the sorts of things the demons are, and so to “name” something is to understand its essence. That might be a kind of subordination, but a natural kind (think, for instance, Bombadil in LOTR).
Matt
November 9th, 2009 | 3:51 pm | #8
I’m way over my head here, but trying to relate this post to C.S. Lewis Aboliton of Man in which I think he makes at least some of the same points..? As I recall he made the point that once we figure something out scientifically and put it to our own uses we have destroyed the real thing as it existed before we defined it, or figured out how to manipulate it.
Anyway, this is a great post – and I’ll have to chew on this awhile to get it all I think.
November 9th, 2009 | 5:29 pm | #9
Matthew,
Aha! That clarifies it for me. It’s pretty plain on the face of it. I’m a little red-faced that I missed that…
About the truth for it’s own sake or truth sort of taken over for our own ends…it seems a bit of a balancing act I think. I mean truth should bring us to some kind of realization that then changes our behaviour.
Having said that, living out the ramifications of truth is a radically different thing from using truth to suit our own ends.
There needs to be SOME of that I think, but certainly the former should vastly out weigh the latter.
November 9th, 2009 | 9:48 pm | #10
[...] (Cross posted at Evangel) [...]
November 9th, 2009 | 10:21 pm | #11
Paul,
Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.
Yup, Abolition of Man is right in line where my analysis is headed. It’s fair to say, in fact, that I just learned it all from Lewis. But I really wanted to frame the issue more historically than even he does.
Daryl,
I agree with you about the truth bringing about change. And I think this is very well said: “Having said that, living out the ramifications of truth is a radically different thing from using truth to suit our own ends.” I have nothing to add other than my hearty thanks!
November 10th, 2009 | 12:37 am | #12
The emerging “conversation” has tossed around some of the most slanderous material I’ve ever heard about Christians, not to mention a willful misinterpretation of history.
To say that the Enlightenment invented all this rationality stuff is too absurd to even argue with. A few hours with Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, etc., should be enough to disprove that theory.
To the contrary, modern “mystical” movements have been the direct descendants of the Enlightenment. The Romantics were Romantics precisely because they despaired of finding that truth which, prior to the Enlightenment, western scholars believed in.
November 11th, 2009 | 9:35 am | #13
“To say that the Enlightenment invented all this rationality stuff is too absurd to even argue with. A few hours with Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, etc., should be enough to disprove that theory.”
Anthony, I’d add Paul right in there too. How many times does he have to say “therefore” before people understand that he’s logically and rationally working towards something?
I’ve never understood the EC accusation either.
November 11th, 2009 | 11:18 pm | #14
[...] to continue the conversation about the Church in late modernity started by Matthew Lee Anderson here, there are a few avenues one might pursue. In the comments, there are suggestions of following [...]
November 11th, 2009 | 11:23 pm | #15
[...] to continue the conversation about the Church in late modernity started by Matthew Lee Anderson here, there are a few avenues one might pursue. In the comments, there are suggestions of following [...]
November 16th, 2009 | 9:52 am | #16
[...] been hard to pin down. Conversations at this blog have made this obvious enough. And like Patrol, I have made my own arguments that evangelicals have inherited an unbaptized modernism (though I am skeptical that post-evangelicalism escapes it), and I think we can all agree that [...]
November 16th, 2009 | 11:27 pm | #17
Rationality needs something like mysticism, otherwise it’s always stuck with the problem of the criterion.
Also, it needs free will to be anything better than what a computer can do. Computers are great at deductive logic, that’s what they do. But, people can only be more than another kind of fancy computer if they can do more than deductive logic. Free will, per ID, gives them precisely this ability, even in a formal mathematical sense.
Additionally, if we were only computers, we’d get totally screwed epistimically. So, not only is mysticism a nice, touchy, feely thing, it’s an epistemic necessity.
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