Greece: superstructure test?

Greece’s government are talking openly about the need for austerity, freezing public sector wages, increasing taxes and the like. Will this lead to a different ethical-economic outlook in the longer term? It’s well noted that as mass production began to emerge, people were encouraged to consume more, to take a different approach to their economic activity. People enjoy the less restrained, more consumptive approach. So it surely is easier to move a population from an austere economic ethic to a consumption based one; but what about moving the other way? Of course, if people have very little spare money (and are not allowed to borrow) they simply cannot consume in they way the rest of Europe is encouraged to. But, supposing people restrict their spending for the time being, will they keep those habits? Could there be a long-term return to ‘austerity’? In this case, it wouldn’t be considered austere any more, but simply normal (‘why would I spend money on stuff I don’t really need?’) This probably won’t happen. Partly because it would require a different economic model, one not based on constant expansion, but Greece is still working within this model. It will encourage its citizens to consume as much as they can, and as they can afford more/as the recession lessens, to consume more, which will lessen the recession further. A virtuous cycle within this model. Partly because that’s what the rest of Europe is encouraging them to do. So people will be encouraged to return to the consumption ethic as soon as possible. And, since it’s so pleasurable, people need very good reasons not to follow that lead.

Can trust be distinguished from fideism?

‘Because Christians believe that God is a God of love and power, and that God’s creation partakes of these qualities, they trust in God and the real goodness of the world.’ (Eugene McCarraher ‘The Enchantments of Mammon: Notes toward a theological history of capitalism.’ MoTh 21:3 July 2005, 429-461).

Trust is also a major theme of the theology of Rowan Williams. In the Orthodox Church, and for a lot of Christian tradition, the saint has knowledge of and access to God that the rest of us don’t. So when a saint tells us something about God we tend to trust it as true, since they know God better than we do. This is not to say we cannot ask questions, or that what they say is completely opaque to reason. It is more like they have seen something we haven’t and so we have only their word to go on; though of course we have seen something of the same thing as them and so have some sense of what we might expect or what to find outrageous. This sense is by no means infallible. Neither is the saint or their knowledge infallible.

If that is a basic way in which we approach knowledge of God, we may reach times at which the saint says x is true, and the rest of us either must choose to believe it or not, but cannot prove it in any way. Of course, a lot of things are like this. We can give reasons for and against, but they may be equally good arguments on both sides (think of Kant on arguments for God’s existence). The decision to believe the saint or not then depends on what we already know and think, any of our own mystical experience, exposure to tradition, exposure to other Christian lives. If we are believing theologians, we will tend (again, various caveats) to have the posture of faith seeking understanding. If we are more sceptical, we will take the more usual philosophical approach of doubt and questioning. The point at which we possible begin to verge into fideism is if we say, which I think the majority of the tradition has done, that to know what is true about God requires knowing God, and that this only comes through experiencing God, and this is evidenced in lives of love and holiness. The latter is frequently a vague term, but there are some people whose lives have an effect on us, who make it difficult to say, ‘so what?’ in the way we can to arguments about God. This may be because of a brave action, a miracle/s performed, or just some inchoate and difficult to pin down sense we have.

Now fideism is often the academic equivalent of name calling, and/or a term for which each person has their own understanding so that people talk past each other rather than to each other. I take it to be an approach to Christianity (I think what I’m saying may be generalisable to other religions (and that in turn raises questions about what we are experiencing and the social formation of experience) but let’s keep it simple for the moment) that says we can only know about God from our experience of God. I’m not sure if anyone has ever said that. I think most theologians have admitted a mixture of experience/revelation and just thinking about what’s around. Yet even if we allow that people can know a lot about God without knowing God, I still wonder if, in saying that one must meet and love God, in order really to know God, Christianity has a kind of irreducibly fideistic element. That is not necessarily bad or wrong, it just makes for awkward conversations with philosophers. It puts the theologian in a difficult position because, on the one hand, they are saying, ‘I can’t really explain this to you, you’d need to experience it yourself,’ which perhaps shouldn’t be surprising, it is what we say about love, sex, marriage, all major metaphors for divine-human relations in the tradition. On the other hand, it is possible to show that belief in God is not completely ridiculous, or that what Christians say about x seems true or useful or good or beautiful.

Another question raised here is, why do people interpret religious experiences differently and how could one decide between interpretations? Christianity has means for judging interpretations within itself, but it hasn’t until recently spent as much care on working out how to judge between, say, a Christian’s claims to experience the Trinity in prayer, and a Muslim’s claims to experience a monistic God in prayer.

I’m more subversive than you are

A lot of theology and philosophy likes to style itself as radical or subversive. Whether it’s subverting the bible (and thus orthodox Christianity) or using the bible from an orthodox perspective to subvert societal norms, no-one wants to be seen as going with the crowd. I’m sure there are various reasons for this: pressure to produce new research, being ‘cool’, but I’m not interested in that at the moment. What sometimes, often, results is ever more complex attempts at theory, but a lack of common sense. This is understandable. What’s the point of writing what everyone knows? And getting your head around theory is fun for a lot of academics. It was quite refreshing, however, to read Luke Bretherton talking about political consumerism in his new book Christianity and Contemporary Politics. He makes what I think is a solid case for political consumerism, if and only if it is embedded in other practices and traditioned communities, as being one way in which ordinary people who have little to no political power can try to bring change in economic, political and social areas. Bretherton gives us something to do. I wonder if academics sometimes fear to suggest courses of action because it would seem both an anti-climax after all the theory and as if it makes the theory redundant (’so, after those five chapters on ideology and the psychoanalysis, you’re telling me to help the homeless and buy Fair Trade?’) But if reflection doesn’t issue in praxis (at least in some fields) then it’s impotent. (Of course, not all theory has immediate application, etc, etc). Bretherton has dared to write about our  mundane lives and to suggest that small, ordinary, ambiguous actions can be the site of divine working. He does it with intelligence and experience. He deserves to be widely read.

Oh. My. Word.

Marilynne Robinson is going to teach people how to write theology for a wider audience. Oh to be a tenured lecturer.

British Patristics Conference (cfp)

September 1-3 at Durham. Mark McIntosh and Kallistos Ware will be there, as well as Andrew Louth and Lewis Ayres, and many more. There’s a call for papers too.

See here.

Stephen Pattison being polemical

Pattison wrote a deliberately polemical essay about theology and its relation to society and the academy. I liked it so much I’ve summarised it below. I think he’s on to something.

Stephen Pattison, The Challenge of Practical Theology: Selected Essays. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2007.

Ch. 16 ‘Public Theology: A Polemical Epilogue’, 212-228

221 Theology shouldn’t smooth all the edges by constantly refining metaphors and ideas. It should leave things untidy so that people are puzzled and called out to new thoughts. [should be generative].

‘theological activity should actually make a real difference to our lives and thinking of peoples of all kinds.’

 Theologians should be able ‘to create and analyse the myths, symbols, metaphors and narratives that constitute the action-influencing world views that people inhabit.’ Trying to create ‘transformative, mutative understandings and meanings’ – [so not just analysing but creating, offering, even if you’re just helping improve someone else’s vision without adding anything from Christianity.]

222 theology should be trying to contribute to human flourishing in general

- deal with new and different types of religious performance, not just texts

- ‘playful, imaginative and porous, a zone of experimentation and innovation, rather than a closed domain of orthodoxy and conformity.’ ‘Human beings cannot live without action-influencing world views and faith systems, but they need to have the possibility of testing their boundaries, validity and potential to nurture flourishing.’

223 ‘Theologians must learn to commend themselves as useful in the public domain.’ [no need to interpret this as needing to serve power; might be useful to people by being prophetic]

223 notes meant to be controversial:

1. Offer fragments of insight to public discussion to be useful.
2. Stop religious studies and theology as its own department/subject and make it interdisciplinary.
3. ‘Make all theology issue based.’ Don’t talk to ourselves but to others engaged with problems. Can’t use a ‘private language’ or become obsessed with methodology. [coming to sound like feminism – not a department but a way of approaching any subject. McIntosh said something similar. Think it’s wrong to deny that, e.g., systematic theology has no use, but Pattison is on to something]
4. Avoid the ‘self-ghettoizing’ use of the term ‘theology’. Call ourselves ‘public critical thinkers’ who engage with common concerns from a ‘particular faith tradition’.
5. Decide who theology is for and what it is trying to accomplish.
6. Recognise theology done outside institutions.
7. Treat the tradition as ‘an imaginative resource or spring board’ rather than something closing you down. Theologians should be ‘coaches’ for performances of theory and practice.
8. ‘Work on making theology a more truly imaginative and innovative activity that is universally accessible. For example, it may be possible to create new religious stories that are not the old stories in new words but are actually new stories that have some indebtedness to the old. This will ensure imagination and inventiveness as well as continuity. Means of conveying these stories should not just be books or analytic narratives. Media such as films, art and poetry need to be considered as appropriate ways of conveying theological insights and analytic perceptions.’ [e.g. put them on the syllabus!]
9. Make the main vehicle for theology 500-1000 word articles in the national press. We can still do extended analysis in books but we’d be more accountable this way.
10. Study public religious performances and discourses that ‘struck a chord’ in public, such as CofE report Faith in the City, or Bishop David Jenkins’ works.
11. ‘A certain amount of interpretative ingenuity and stealth is needed in terms of analysis and expression if people’s anxieties about the ideological and obscurantist nature of theological activity are to be allayed.’
12. ‘Theology should be practised with passion and commitment.’

C K Barrett Lecture

PROFESSOR MORNA HOOKER
(University of Cambridge)
‘Scriptural Holiness: Paul’s Understanding of Sanctification’
Tuesday 16 February 2010
7.30pm
Kingsley Barrett Lecture Room, Calman Learning Centre,
Science Site (behind the Library)
Stockton Road, Durham
(For map, see http://www.dur.ac.uk/map/durham/)

It’s free and open to the public

The news on Haiti

Why is news of looting read with such disapproval by news readers and reporters? Do people think looting is unreasonable if you and your family are starving and the infrastructure is destroyed and aid isn’t reaching you? It’s better than leaving food around to be eaten by dogs.

Flat earth News

Observe.

Is the filioque really that big a deal

The Roman Catholic church and the Orthodox Church have had different views on it for a very long time, but neither church is demonstrably better or worse for it. Different churches have different views and different structures from one another, there’s no one-to-one correspondence between a view on the filioque and church structure. For instance, the OC and RC have opposing views on the filioque but are both episcopal, conservative and (often) patriarchal. Maybe the idea that it’s a problem is more of a problem than the issue itself. (This is more about the idea than the historical process by which the Western church acted unilaterally to change a creed that was up till that point ecumenical).