First, you write:

As for whether we are “infinitely malleable” or not–I need to think about that. While I would say our “structure” (nature) can’t be effaced, it does seem to me that our “directionality” is susceptible to being quite radically disordered.

I agree with your assessment here in large measure. However, I do not believe that the reality of things being radically disordered implies that they are incapable of being redirected, at least in principle. I am wary of those who would draw boundaries around something in God’s good creation and decree it off limits to Christians, which borders on gnosticism. We do not give up eating because of our tendency towards gluttony.

Of course we may have to avoid certain things for strategic reasons. I would not urge a recovering alcoholic to abandon his or her determination to avoid drink altogether just to prove that she’s not a gnostic! But if she tries to impose this on others who do not have addictive tendencies, she goes too far, in my estimation.

Similarly, if a believer visits a mall to purchase, say, a handbag or (in my wife’s and my case some years ago) an engagement ring and wedding bands, does that necessarily entail being caught up in a neopagan liturgy? (I ask this as someone who dislikes malls rather intensely and avoids them whenever possible!)

Second, as for the Kuyperian organism/institute distinction, I would be interested to know exactly why you question it. I myself have come to think that it’s a vital distinction, without which we are likely to get caught in a number of false dilemmas. You might wish to read something I wrote this past spring: Towards a proper ecclesiology: a key distinction.

Again, I hope we can keep the dialogue going when you are with us.

Your review deserves more than a blog comment, but let me try to address some of your concerns, all of which are entirely fair and on-the-money:

1. @”Mind and heart”: Yes, I’d certainly agree that “ideas have consequences,” as Weaver put it. In fact, in the context of Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries he is particularly interested in showing how the ideas of Locke and Grotius trickled down into a wider social imaginary. So certainly that happens. My concern, however, is that we often overestimate the “causal power” of ideas. Ultimately what’s at stake here is a philosophy of action, and that will be a significant focus of volume 2, which I’m working on now.

2. Re: the desire/love relation/distinction. I’m sympathetic to your desire [sic!] to nuance this. Part of me was concerned about a de facto “Nygrenism” that evangelicals have tended to absorb which tends to be anti-erotic. And I do think that for Augustine, love is a kind of desire and longing. And since it’s a desire for God, it is never satisfied (think of Gregory on “Song of Songs,” too). But I don’t want to equate desire with an emotion–though I found my lexicon very limited in this respect. It’s definitely something I need to clarify in volume 2. In any case, I don’t think I’m quite guilty of reducing love to an emotion–or at least I don’t want to.

3. Re: your “creation order” concern: very interesting point. I think you’re right: ideological, disordered liturgies will always be running against the grain, so to speak, so while they can remain powerful as long as we’re immersed in them, there might also be something deep in our nature that is fundamentally resistant to them taking root. As for whether we are “infinitely malleable” or not–I need to think about that. While I would say our “structure” (nature) can’t be effaced, it does seem to me that our “directionality” is susceptible to being quite radically disordered. (Isn’t this exactly Augustine’s account of the devil?) I don’t think creation provides any guarantee that we can’t be radically misdirected; it only guarantees that we can’t NOT love; and perhaps we could say that it means that there are “grooves” that remain in place so that when we’re rightly directed, it “fits.” Don’t know if that makes sense…it’s a first shot at answering a good question.

4. Regarding “structure and direction”: I’m very intimidated to take on an expert in Dooyeweerdian analysis who’s at Al Wolters’ home institution! And I don’t want to punt, but this will be a question pursued in volume 3 (on “liturgical politics”). Let me just say a few things:

(a) Rather than thinking about “where to draw the line,” I want to consider the degree to which things are misdirected. So following Augustine’s De civ., my measure is more like a protractor and less like a yardstick. So I can recognize that some social orders, institutions, practices, etc. are less misdirected than others.

(b) My rather offhanded comments about “competition” are made with John Ruskin and William Morris in the background. So I’m worried about the social ontology that is assumed when human relations are construed in terms of competition, as they are in all theories that assume the social contract.

(c) Now, whether the church is a polis: that would take a little more time and space. I can’t just easily absorb the Kuyperian organism/institute distinction in this regard. So I feel like if I answer the question in terms of the church as an “institution,” I will have already conceded to a paradigm I want to question. Let me just say that I see “the church” as the collective “new people of God,” who constitute “a people” (a holy nation), and who also find themselves in the midst of other “peoples” and in shared work of institution-building to some degree. And I think that culture-making people is ineluctably constituted by the sacraments of the “institutional” church (dang it–I just used your term!).

But this needs to be said much more carefully. I have some forthcoming work on Augustine that will get at this in more detail. For now, let me express my gratitude for your review; I’m adding your questions and concerns to my file for the next volumes.

At my church, the staff read the book together.