“Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
-Jaroslav Pelikan
August 2006 Archive
Church Tradition
Tuesday, August 29, 2006Posted in Quotes | Comments (4)
Blog as Discourse Medium
Sunday, August 27, 2006In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman presents the thesis that communication mediums have natural biases with regard to the discourses that they enable and encourage. For example, text messaging is not conducive for creating significant literature. Also, philosophy only came about when man started to put his thoughts down in writing and thereby allowed them to be analyzed. Postman spends the majority of the book arguing that television as a communication medium does not encourage serious discourse. His best analysis deals with television as mass media. While it is possible to videotape great lectures in biology and history and so on, television has to appeal to the lowest (or at least a much lower) common denominator of the public since it is driven by advertising. According to Postman, this results in television programming being so focused on entertainment that even serious subjects like politics and religion are trivialized by theme songs and an emphasis on visual appearance. Regardless of whether you agree with his conclusions, this is a useful framework for evaluating other discourse mediums such as the blog.
Postman believed that print is the best communication medium because it encourages critical thinking. This does not necessarily mean that all print mediums raise the level of discourse. Blogs are certainly a print medium, and some have offered up the opinion that they are positively affecting public discourse. I want to challenge this claim. I am primarily interested in analyzing blogs as a popular medium (those with thousands of hits a day).
Too many participants
Popular blogs have thousands of readers and hundreds of commenters. The individual or team that authors one of these blogs will typically post at least one new essay a day. The readers of the blog receive rapid notification of the new post through mechanisms like RSS feeds. This often causes a feeding frenzy effect for many, many comments are made in a short period of time. The large number of participants in the discussion makes it difficult for a serious, in-depth discussion. It is impossible for the author(s) to respond to each commenter due to their number. Many choose to respond rarely or not at all. The large number of commenters results in many diverse side topics being introduced. The number of participants also discourages long responses but rather encourages short, witty comments in order for the commenter to attract the attention of fellow readers. I imagine that it sometimes resembles salon discussions when the number of participants grows too large. There ends up being a lot of humorous remarks and laughter, but not much serious discourse.
Rapidity of discourse
With at least one new essay a day being posted on the blog, any single topic has a short lifetime. Even if the same topic is continued by the authors, it rarely extends beyond a few days. This encourages quick responses (as does the previous item) which is antithetical to serious discourse. A serious discourse requires thought and reflection. Facts need to be gathered, arguments sharpened, and assumptions challenged. A short time line makes this near impossible. Instead, a popular blog community can appear like a group of young children who become bored with a game after an hour and move on to the next one and then the next one and so on.
Lack of authority
While the authors of a popular blog often (sometimes?) have some claim to authority in the field of interest, commenters usually don't. Nothing is required to comment on most blogs beyond Internet access and an email address. There is no filter process to prevent the uninformed from taking an active role in the conversation. It is possible for this to be a sort of benefit if everyone would check the veracity of presented claims, but that is quite unlikely. The commenters also participate on a level playing field that has its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage being that an authority is not guaranteed of any more notice in the discussion than a junior high student. While the current system for publishing books and journals is far from perfect, it does perform some needed filtering of the noise of the masses.
There are positive things to say about blogs as a discourse medium. They present a vast opportunity for exposure to new ideas and information. These ideas and perspectives can force you to think. I should also mention the low cost for access. For all their good, I don't think we are warranted in claiming any great increase in serious discourse resulting from blogs.
Posted in Technology | Comments (5)
Natural Politics
Saturday, August 26, 2006Natural theology was popular in England in the 18th century and into the 19th century. This type of theology is rooted in the study of the natural world. Today's intelligent design arguments are an echo of many of the ideas from that time period. As a thought experiment motivated by natural theology, I wondered what a political theory developed purely on observations of nature might result in. It turns out that Thomas Aquinas already considered this in the 13th century. He determined that a monarchy was the best form of government using natural arguments. The heart is the primary mover of the body. Bees have a single queen. Reason has power of the soul. So “every natural governance is governance by one” and since “whatever is in accord with nature is best”, a single ruler must be best.
Posted in History | Comments (2)
Stupidity, Christianity & Ignorance
Tuesday, August 15, 2006David Hume used these words to describe those portions of the world that had not been touched by the Enlightenment in his time. In The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism, Peter Gay claims that this rejection of religion and superstition was necessary to give the philosophes the freedom to criticize the past — especially the Christian role in the development of Western culture. He writes that “scholars could see the Christian millennium fairly only after polemicists had freed themselves from it by seeing it unfairly.” What Gay fails to note is that his history of the Enlightenment is written within the intellectual context that was created by Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire and others. If the rejection of Christian presuppositions was necessary for the development of a true critique of the past, it seems to follow that a questioning of the foundations of a modern, rational worldview are needed for Gay's task.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Biblical?
Thursday, August 10, 2006Why call something biblical? It is not hard to see that we (Christians) do this as an appeal to authority. It is, of course, the highest authority for most, if not all, evangelical Christians. There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but the term 'biblical' tends to be overused and abused. Instead of restricting it to the larger themes and lessons of Scripture, we end up with with ideas, techniques, and products being called biblical that seem to have nothing to do with the Bible in any substantive way. In some cases, the things that are called biblical are so trite that they cause nothing more than a disapproving shake of the head or a slight snicker. In others, this easy appeal to ultimate authority prevents any serious discourse from occurring about issues that need thoughtful discussion within the Christian community. I am interested in the intellectual or interpretative milieu of the current American evangelical or fundamentalist church that leads to some of these strangely called biblical things (like health bars).
At the highest level, this use of 'biblical' is caused by a poorly developed interpretive process and a lack of the critical reflection needed to challenge the truth claims of these interpretations. The Bible does have much to say about the way we live our lives, and we ought to study it and apply what we learn from that study. There are significant challenges though in this process for we do not always agree on what the Bible says or how to apply it. I am interested in looking for patterns or tendencies in the interpretative process that often accompany these strangely called biblical notions. This is my first attempt at doing this.
A reliance on proof texts
It is quite common to support a point by quoting a verse. I do it myself. This assumes that both the person quoting the verse and those listening understand its meaning in its context. This context consists of more than just the surrounding text of the verse but also includes the larger context of the entire Bible, historical and cultural information, and even the interpretative history of the church. It is not the actual words that support the point, but the meaning behind the words. Too often verses are quoted for the meaning that the speaker thinks the words have and this meaning is divorced from the proper context. A growing biblical illiteracy within the church can only increase this type of usage.
Giving a quote from a well known source is not unique to the Christian community. It possess the capability of clearly communicating more meaning with less effort than explaining an idea due to the shared understanding of the source. I am currently reading a book about the Enlightenment. The philosophes during that time period frequently quoted from the classics in their writings. Their education was based around learning Greek, Latin, and the classics so it was a shared intellectual heritage. Upon reading one of these references, the reader would recall the passage it came from and its meaning.
The danger inherent in this is when the reader or writer is unaware of the context but attributes some other meaning to it. Combine a tendency toward proof-texting with a lack knowledge about the Bible as a cohesive whole and I think it is possible to see some of the groundwork being laid for poor uses of 'biblical'. A verse from the Bible can now take on a shared meaning that has little to do with its meaning in context. There was a recent paper in the Journal of Communication that dealt with quotes being used out of their natural context. One of the main points of the paper was that an improper understanding of the context-less quote makes it difficult to recover the true meaning when it is placed back in its original context.
Exaggerating the supernatural character of the Bible
One result of the Enlightenment was a skepticism about the supernatural character of the Bible and about the supernatural in general. During times of controversy it is natural for opposing sides to harden their positions. This is reflected in the church (especially the church in America) during this time by the exaggeration of the divine nature of the Bible at the expense of its human nature. The role of the human writers was downplayed or ignored and I think this created an interesting side effect.
If a text is written by an infinite being, then it should be able to possess an infinite amount of meaning (ignoring Shannon's law for the moment). There could be all sorts of codes embedded in the text. Every detail could have a vital lesson to teach. With human writing, we write to communicate and the meaning we seek to communicate is usually the only purpose of the writing. By this I mean that there is a single meaning to the text and everything in that discourse serves to develop that meaning. It is not the case that every sentence or phrase possesses some knowledge that must be mined for its independent content. With a wholly divine text, some read it as a richly-woven literal allegory - an interesting paradox. It is this type of approach that results in reading a verse that mentions seven different types of food and seeing a secret, divine message in that detail. (And then creating a health bar with that information.) I do not mean to imply that anyone who stresses the divine nature of the Scripture also sees secret meaning in narrative details. I think it is a contributing factor though.
Extreme distrust in the tradition of the church
The distrust of church tradition is an artifact of the Reformation and is common in many Protestant denominations in varying degrees. The most extreme form is an outright rejection of the study of church history and the theological works of the past. This is justified in a few different ways, but a common one is the idea that there is no need for anything other than the Bible and the works of the past are actually unhelpful in understanding and applying God's revelation. Those who believe and practice this effectively cut themselves off from two thousand years of theological discourse. This has multiple negative effects, but there are two important ones that I want to mention in this discussion.
First, it removes the constraining effect of the tradition on the church. What is orthodox theology? To a large extent it is defined or framed by the creeds developed by the church down through the ages. A flow of orthodox interpretations has developed. This allows us in the current day to test our interpretations and see if they lie outside of this flow. Not that tradition is authoritative but it should make us question a new interpretation that is outside of our historical understanding of theology.
Second, and perhaps more obvious than the first one, not knowing the history of the church will result in Christians repeating the mistakes of the past. Knowledge of how others have struggled with understanding a text or applying a biblical principal allows us to avoid some of the pitfalls of hermeneutics and it should also keep us humble about our conclusions. I am convinced that the ignorance of the American church about the history of eschatological doctrine has led to this present "Left Behind" craziness. It also prevents us from working through current issues with a proper historical context which can lead to 'biblical' being used in odd ways.
Posted in Church | Comments (3)