I recently had the (these days) rare opportunity to purchase some new books and I decided against filling in more of my contemporary theological library and opted for some of the Patristic Fathers. Among them I decided to procure works by St. Anselm of Canterbury.
In my experience most people on the English scene these days instantly think of the Oxford edition of his “Major Works.” Indeed I was going to get this collection. One of the obvious problems for some who lean academically is that while this book has most of his primary works, there are several, especially of a “less theological” kind, that are omitted. On top of that, the book is sort of a piece of junk; the paper is thin and easily warped, the cover is less-than-substantial, and the introduction is brief.
Luckily I stumbled across this book, The Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Anselm of Canterbury, by Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, out on a small Twin Cities publishing company, Banning Press.
The book as a physical product is vastly superior. The cover is a regal hard-cloth purple, the pages are thick and the font basic and strong. If this weren’t enough, as Hopkins himself wrote it, the “Introduction” to the volume is the entry on Anselm contained within the meticulous Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (one should strongly consider getting this “Shorter” Routledge Encyclopedia).
Besides this, the volume contains the complete intellectual works of St. Anselm, including four didactic letters and his Meditation on Human Redemption; all the translations are based on the standard critical texts, the Sancti Anselmi Opera Omnia. The book also points you in the direction of English editions of Anselm’s letters not found within.
All in all, at a mere $11, this is the obviously superior edition of these wonderful works.
As icing on the cake, having looked into Dr. Hopkins, it turns out that he teaches here at the University of Minnesota where I am currently engaged in study. I was going to pursue at least some studies in Medieval Christian thought and how great it is to know that I may be able to steal some time with an Anselm expert!
If you follow the link to his personal site, you will find online all of these translations in downloadable format for free, including other works not in this book! Dr. Hopkins apparently is also well studied in Nicholas of Cusa, and he has a sister book to the Anselm one, a collection of The Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, all of which again are freely accessible on his site or in book format. Dr. Hopkins has also written introductions and commentaries on both theologians.
Enjoy!
The Life of the Body in this World
December 17, 2009
Part of an ongoing series on Leviticus and Law in Post-Culture War America.
"Hoarfrost" Camille Pissarro, 1873
“The question of human limits, of the proper definition and place of human beings within the order of Creation, finally rests upon our attitude toward our biological existence, the life of the body in this world. What value and respect do we give to our bodies? What uses do we have for them? What relation do we see, if any, between body and mind, or body and soul? What connections or responsibilities do we maintain between our bodies and the earth?”
- Wendell Berry, “The Body and the Earth“
More than any other book, Leviticus is often treated as one picks a strawberry bush: carefully fingering through the leaves, the reader searches out the fruit that seem to him or her ripe and pleasant while avoiding those spoiled or malformed. Each reader—like each picker—finishes the day with a different basket, a collection made more or less by personal preference rather than by any particular system. Such haphazard treatment has resulted in Leviticus—especially in twentieth century North America—being one of the most quoted yet least read biblical texts in public moral discourse.
My posts will survey creational themes in one of the most contentious sections of Leviticus, the Holiness Code (chps 17-26). These posts are not meant as an overly simplistic scheme, but an exploration into the ethics of the community that held these notoriously troublesome texts together. Of course, a degree of tension should be expected between our worldview and scriptures’—such vulnerability is what makes new insight possible. Thus it is my hope that a thematic approach will shake loose fresh takes on what this ancient literature meant—and for the person of faith—what it means.
The theme of Creation is one that permeates the Pentateuch, and the law texts in particular. It is not enough to simply record the story of creation—the authors evoke it in the phrasing of their poetry, in the clever crafting of parallel texts to tell different stories with the same words and in the underlying worldviews that feed the behaviors of ancestors and enemies. The themes are especially prevalent in the tabernacle passages (Ex. 25-31) depicted in seven divine speeches designed to evoke the seven days of creation, both ending with the Sabbath. The verbal blueprints of the tabernacle:
“[…] underscore the depiction of the sanctuary as a world, that is, an ordered supportive, and obedient environment, and the depiction of the world as a sanctuary, that is, a place in which the reign of God is visible and unchallenged, and his holiness is palpable, unthreatened, and pervasive.”- Jon Levenson, “Creation and the Persistence of Evil“
It is important for me to at least highlight this creational theme before moving into sex, dirt, food, blood and all the other titillating topics that characterize this section of Leviticus. Without bearing in mind this ancient but cohesive worldview, the plethora of prohibitions in the Law will inevitably feel heartless and arbitrary.
We can take comfort too, knowing that our ancestors in faith—ancient and distant though they are—believed that:
…vulnerable reflection and humble maintenance of these texts somehow made the holy presence of God possible amongst his people—and by extension, within creation itself.
|
||||||||||
Review: “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism” Pt1
October 20, 2009
***My special thanks to Caitlin at Baker Academic for the review copy!***
- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Baker Academic & Brazos Press; 2nd edition (April 1, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 080102918X
- ISBN-13: 978-0801029189
- Baker
- Amazon
If a pastor or educated layman or undergraduate were to ask me where to start with getting a grip on “Postmodernism” and Christianity I would without question point them in the direction of the series put out by Baker Academic – now spanning an impressive 5 volumes – entitled “The Church and Postmodern Culture.” We will be examining several of the volumes and I think that they shall prove quite valuable to the task at hand.
The first volume is authored by the Series editor James K. A. Smith. What separates this book from say, Stanley Grenz’s intro is that Smith is a professional philosopher trained in Phenomenology. Smith was an AG elder for some time but has since moved on and now teaches at Calvin College. Unlike Grenz’s intro which looks into the various cultural manifestations of postmodernism, this book makes no attempt at comprehension. There is an introductory chapter, a chapter on Derrida, a chapter on Lyotard, one on Foucault and a final chapter which points to “Radical Orthodoxy” as faithful way for the Church to incorporate postmodern insights to be more fully itself.
Each chapter begins with an illustration from a film, then moves into an examination of a particularly famous phrase from one of the three thinkers and attempts to move us past “bumper sticker” interpretations of these phrases. Concluding each chapter is a section on “Taking X to Church” that moves us into praxis.
Smith sees himself as doing what Francis Schaeffer did for a previous generation. Rather than thinking that “culture” gives birth to “ideas” both Smith and Schaeffer see “ideas” and academic ideas in particular as having the primary place of influence. And so Smith intends to look at the issues with a critical depth and one never gets the feeling that they are reading a shallow critique of the issues.
After the introductory chapter Smith begins with an examination of Derrida. More specifically the famous Derrida quote that “There is nothing outside the text.” This phrase is often taken to mean that Derrida believes that there is nothing “real” or that there are just “ideas.” This position would make it difficult to reconcile with Christian witness that there is a transcendent God prior to the world on whom the world is dependent for existence.
Smith rejects this interpretation and points to later Derrida to help fill in some gaps. Derrida explained later that the phrase should be taken to mean that there is nothing outside context. Smith points out that “On Grammatology” is in large part an extended dialogue with Jean-Jauques Rousseau’s essay “On the Origin of Language.” Rousseau posits that language is a sort of lens or film clouding our understanding of what objects are. That is, language distorts reality and the objectively real is something that must be known in ways that do not use language. To this Derrida says “NEIN!” – Well actually he says something in French but you get the idea.
Against this Derrida says that there is no reality that is experienced without interpretation; without mediation. Even seeing a cup “in the flesh” requires interpretation. It is just that our extensive cultural conditioning does not allow for an easy look into our a priori understandings of how things are.
To illustrate this Smith uses the cartoon “The Little Mermaid.” As a whole he takes the story as an evil that promotes consumerism and greed, but he makes swell use of the pericope of “The Dinglehopper.” Not having any knowledge of how humans act apart from her information received from Scuttle the Seagull. It is Scuttle who informs Ariel that a Fork is actually a Dinglehopper and is used to comb ones hair. In an amusing scene once Ariel is finally ‘human,’ at a dinner she grabs a fork (or is it really a Dinglehopper?) and confidently begins to comb her hair. Obviously this is “not” what a fork is for.
At this point one may not actually feel that Smith has made a convincing case for Christian appropriation of a Derridean insight because if “everything is an interpretation” then Holy Scripture and the Gospel is “merely” an interpretation. Smith proposes that this is not as bad a thing as it initially seems to be and challenges readers to think about the implications.
Instantly the Scriptures become a public and communal document thereby in a certain way legitimizing historical readings of Scripture against individualism and a spirit of non-accountability. Which, at the same time does not shut off new readings in Community.
What then…? Some might ask. Isn’t there any way to “truly” and “objectively” “know” the truth of the Gospel? In a word, no. But, Smith points out, one can reduce the message of Salvation to “The Romans Road” or a series of logically symbolic propositions and teach them to a goat but that doesn’t produce saving faith. Similarly, we should never have been expected to “know” the Gospel in such a fashion.
He finishes on a brief note supporting a “deconstructive” Church that refuses to close the text off from new readings. He could have quoted the ole’ saying: “God hath yet more light to break forth from Holy Scripture.”
From Derrida Smith then examines Lyotard and his famous quote “Postmodernity is incredulity toward Meta-Narratives.” Aptly using the film “O Brother Where Art Thou?” to begin the chapter Smith says: “Postmodernism can be understood as the erosion of confidence in the rational as sole guarantor and deliverer of truth, coupled with a deep suspicion of science – particularly modern science’s pretensious claims to an ultimate theory of everything.”
It is plain to see that we have not broken into a new “postmodern” world, rather postmodern suspicion is evinced by the landscape of LA with the curvaceous non-linear architechture of Frank Gehry next to the crumbling and pathetic modern glass boxes and projects from the likes of Le Corbusier. A few posts into the future I will examine Architecture as a key to understanding Modern and Postmoder.
It is right here though that the scared Christian (or scientist!) might wonder how we can possibly support such a claim. Is not the Bible a “meta-narrative” of epic proportions covering everything from Creation to Apocalypse?
This is precisely where Smith insists that the bumper sticker reading of “meta-narrative’ is simply not correct in its diagnosis. Smith believes that Lyotard’s “Metanarrative” is not concerned with the size of the narrative but the nature of the claims they make. Modernity is the original “meta-narrative” because it tells a story and appeals to authority in “Universal Reason:” Science, like any story, when pushed must give reasons of legitimization which it claims to find in “Reason,” an a-historical, trans-cultural, pre-linguistic, universally excessible “thing” called “Reason” to which any rational creature anywhere at anytime has direct and near infallible access provided they use objective means to search out their answers.
Another way of putting this is that modernity (because to the “modern” scientific, “real” science began post Enlightenments) appeals to authority outside of it’s own story. Lyotard says it thus: “I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit [Hegel], the hermeneutics of meaning [Schleiermacher?], the emancipation of the rational [Kant] or working subject [Marx], or the creation of wealth [Adam Smith]…”
Against this Lyotard says that narratives are and should be auto-legitimizing needing no justification outside of their own story. Calvin comes almost precisely near this by speaking about the self-authentication of Scripture.
This allows for the Church to be faith-full to its witness and need not sacrifice its story the many competing stories.
Note, that this is not a call for modernity or “science” to give up its narrative. Rather it needs to recognize the narrative as such and seek to put some freakin’ clothes on.
Practically speaking this Christian giving-up of a meta-discourse should entail that we become a story-telling-Church again. The/a Lectionary is a must to allow the Church to be governed by the whole Scriptures and not the whim and favorites of a lone pastor. And in the final two chapters we will discuss in more depth the discipleship practices that these thinkers open up.
Augustine, Luther, And The Development Of Predestinarianism In Reformation Thought: Part II
September 16, 2009
Luther and Predestinarianism in the Reformation
The similarities between Augustine and Luther extend beyond Luther’s experience as a monk of the Augustinian order, which seems a forgone conclusion at first. Clearly, Augustine heavily influences Luther regarding presuppositions that underpin their predestinarianism. Bayer contends that Luther’s interpretation of Scripture leads him to the same conclusions about human nature as Augustine: the nature of sin in man is both, “superbia and desperatio.”[1] However, Luther has more in common with Augustine than just a hermeneutical predisposition. Augustine affected Luther’s thinking so significantly because of a shared soteriological need. Luther offered more than intellectual obeisance to Augustine; he needed Augustine to lead him down a philosophical path that would clear his conscience.
Luther’s life was plagued with the same kind of religious upheaval that Augustine experienced. An important difference, though, is that Luther seemed to be cognizant of an internal upheaval that drove his various religious experiences. Augustine sought explanation for his seeming reluctance to seek Christ wholeheartedly, but Luther was so consumed by a pursuit of piety that he could not easily find solace. Luther’s early life lacked the wholehearted embrace of sinfulness that plagued Augustine, but his angst over the origin, nature, and effect of sin were strikingly similar. As a monk, Luther sought consolation in works of grace hoping for absolution and justification. However, even a strict regimen of sacramental observance and contrition left him with the dread of damnation. Luther became so obsessed with absolution that he pathologically pondered his sin and found that confession only intensified his guilt. After a foray into mysticism, Luther abandoned his strict sacramental pursuit for an endeavor in loving God. Sadly, his childhood experience with severe authority figures left him hating God instead.[2]
At the behest of his confessor, Luther entered into a lectureship at the University of Wittenberg. His superior hoped, as in the case of Jerome, that Luther would find his temptations and guilt abated in the study of Scripture. This appointment now seems providential. While preparing a lecture in the Epistle to the Romans, Luther concluded that both faith and justification are the work of God, alone.[3] This revelation about the nature of grace and its correspondence to both faith and justification were the balm that Luther required. Augustine’s work on predestination in relationship to Romans provided the fine-tuning that Luther needed. This predestinarianism, then, became for Luther what it had been for Augustine, a means of confidently receiving grace. Luther was lead to affirm predestination both because, “it was a corollary of justification by faith as a free gift of God, and because he found it amply supported by the authority of Paul and Augustine.”[4] However, this doctrine also provided a point of attack for the increasingly Pelagian Catholic Church.
Just as Augustine found cause to sharpen his predestinarianism in Pelagius, Luther found cause to refine his position because of Desiderius Erasmus. Luther and Erasmus, who had averted being involved in the conflict with reformers to this point, engaged in a published dispute over the ability of humanity to cooperate with God in achieving salvation. Erasmus’ view that the human will is capable of fighting “against the flesh or for the Spirit,”[5] was rejected wholly by Luther. He countered with arguments, which reasoned, “Man can contribute nothing toward his own salvation good enough to be juxtaposed with any work of God.”[6] Interestingly, Luther sided with the most revered scholars of the Catholic Church, Augustine and Aquinas among them, against Erasmus and the church. Luther’s defense of Augustinian predestinarianism would not be emulated by the rest of the Protestant church, though. The other Reformers took the example of Luther and the work of Augustine a step further.
The Reformation’s Departure from Augustinian and Lutheran Predestinarianism
The various incarnations of Augustine and Luther’s soteriological doctrine eventually yielded to a theological system that expunged human cooperation in faith and broadened the doctrine’s scope to the entirety of God’s providential rule over creation. Certainly, many agreed with Luther and sought to expand his influence and teaching. Many hoped, though, to expound upon or deviate from the teaching of Luther. In fact, Luther found his ideals and doctrine caught between the Catholic Church and the likes of Carlstadt and Calvin.[7]
Nevertheless, the remaining important issue revolves around Luther’s resolve in pursuing Augustinian predestinarianism, though not likely out of any inordinate dedication to Augustine himself. Nonetheless, McGrath observes that, “Of the reformers, it is Martin Luther who is closest to Augustine in his teaching on justification.”[8] He remains the closest to Augustine because he did not attempt to derive a theological system out of his notions of predestination. While Luther spoke plainly of ecclesiastical and priestly behavior he found contradictory to Scripture, he did seek to know the word of God truly, even if it meant agreeing with the church. Melanchthon viewed Luther within the Reformation context as a voice “interchangeable” with Augustine: a voice that was renewing the early teachings of the church.[9] In fact, according to McGrath, “Augustine’s conflict with Pelagianism in particular is seen by Melanchthon as an exemplar of the Lutheran protest against the Pelagianism of the sixteenth-century church.”[10]
Wallace provides helpful categorization of the change that occurs after Luther in the Reformation:
“A more significant division between doctrines of predestination is not whether it is single or double, but between those versions where its soteriological impact remains central and those where the doctrine becomes an organizing principle for a theological system and is thus intertwined with the whole consideration of providence, something which became increasingly the case in the later part of the sixteenth century.”[11]
This kind of predestinarianism seems present in Augustine and Luther. However, historians and theologians alike have long commented on the polarizing, often inflammatory, nature of both Augustine’s and Luther’s polemical treatises. Wallace notes that while there is a strong predestinarianism in Luther’s reply to Erasmus in the Bondage of the Will, a marked emphasis on double predestination does not occur in the English Reformation until it is formulated by the Swiss and Rhineland Reformed traditions.[12] These reformed traditions inherited their emphasis on double predestination from the likes of John Calvin.
It would be a mischaracterization to promulgate a claim that Calvin merely expanded the scope of Augustine’s theories. McGrath notes that Calvin, in his Institutes, does not wholly approve of Augustine’s treatment and departs from Augustine’s belief that “Christ is the source of man’s righteousness, in that the Spirit is poured into man’s heart on account of his obedience.”[13] Calvin insists that the transformative work of faith and grace are completely alien to the human nature. God is sovereign over all of creation and its redemption, and humanity is utterly depraved. Calvin’s departure from Augustine and Luther occurs most notably in the creation of a theological system that locates double predestination as one of its pillars of thought.
This shift in theology has been rejected by church councils for over a thousand years. It demands that all of Scripture bow to its methodology. Geisler points out that the consequences of this system burden humanity with a God that is the direct author of evil and that hates the non-elect.[14] As one who worked tirelessly and meticulously to avoid those very consequences in his own theology, this outcome would have been completely unacceptable to Augustine
However, it also suffers from crippling philosophical contradictions, and it should suffice to note that Augustine’s predestinarianism has been relegated to an element of theology until the emergence of lapsarianism. This system of decrees and there seeming authority, even over the biblical text, create a web of presuppositions that rest squarely on Augustine’s philosophy of the origin of evil. Robert Brown identifies the philosophical problems associated with using Augustine’s predestinarianism as a foundational system of thought, explaining that Augustine’s explanation of first sin is at best incomprehensible.[15] If it becomes something more than incomprehensible, then the system’s other claims regarding God’s nature or his culpability in creating evil is suspect at best. Geisler has already hinted at this in his theological critique of double predestination, but this is clearly his point of reference for making the claim.
Conclusion
While predestination is an unavoidably biblical concept, Augustine and Luther intended to direct the hearts of men toward God in gratitude for grace received, not to establish a lens through which all other Scripture must pass. Predestination achieved, for Augustine and Luther, a different end than what is achieved by a system based on double predestination. Augustinian and Lutheran predestinarianism provides a soteriological framework to understand how humanity, in its plight, is able to receive and be confident in justification. This predestination declares the God is the author and finisher of our faith, and that there is no person or thing that can separate us from that work.
[1] Oswald Bayer, “Freedom? The Anthropological in Luther and Melanchthon Compared.” The Harvard Theological Review, 91 (October 1998): 375.
[2] González, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2, 16-17.
[3] Ibid., 19-20.
[4] Ibid., 42.
[5] Oswald Bayer, “Freedom,” 377.
[6] Roland N. Bainton, Christianity, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000): 253.
[7] Though for very different reasons. Ibid.
[8] Alister E. McGrath, “Forerunners of the Reformation? A Critical Examination of the Evidence for Precursors of the Reformation Doctrines of Justification.” The Harvard Theological Review, 75 (April 1982): 230.
[9] Peter Fraenkel, Testimonia Patrum: The Function of the Patristic Argument in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon, (Geneva: Droz, 1961) 32.
[10] Alister E. McGrath, “Forerunners of the Reformation,” 229.
[11] Wallace, Dewey D. “The Doctrine of Predestination in the Early English Reformation.” Church History, 43 (June 1974): 203-204.
[12] Ibid., 202.
[13] Alister E. McGrath, “Forerunners of the Reformation,” 233.
[14] Geisler, Systematic Theology, 567.
[15] A term Brown utilizes as an expression of a temporal happenstance with a transcendent cause. The sin of Satan and Adam may have happened temporally, but its cause is outside of our closed finite system. Brown argues that any other explanation of Augustine’s postulations results in grievous philosophical error. I contend that Brown is reading Augustine through the lens of Calvin and a theological system. If Augustine can be read concerning the origin and effect of a sinful will in relation to humanity’s ability to save itself, then Augustine has accomplished what Brown had hoped he would, a structure for interpreting one’s present existence (324). See Robert F. Brown, “The First Evil Will Must Be Incomprehensible: A Critique of Augustine.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 46 (September 1978): 315-329.
Augustine, Luther, And The Development Of Predestinarianism In Reformation Thought: Part I
August 29, 2009
I felt like I would try to tackle the “free will vs. predestination” debate from a different angle. I am pretty sure that I have settled the argument here (bring on the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes – read sarcasm, if you’re not sure). Consequently, I’m off to solve world hunger and the problem of evil after I have a midnight snack.
Introduction
As Augustine’s predestinarianism was developed by Luther and assimilated into Reformation thought, an inexorably flawed theological system based on double predestination quickly emerged. Prior to Luther’s utilization, prominent figures in church history left Augustine’s doctrine relatively intact. As early as the Synod of Orange in 529 and notably in the Belgic Confession of Faith in 1561, church leaders rejected the assertions of double predestination.[1] Gottschalk hazarded an attempt at interpreting Augustine in a theory of double predestination in the ninth century, but was condemned of heresy because of it in Maiz. Anselm of Canterbury promoted the Augustinian position in the eleventh century. Thomas Aquinas elaborated the Augustinian position by differentiating between God’s general will and his special will in the soteriological realm in the thirteenth century. If any real deviation from Augustine’s predestinarianism took place, it was in the Catholic Church’s general trend toward Pelagianism.[2]
For eleven centuries, then, endeavors to deviate from the Augustinian position on predestination were generally met with condemnation by the church. Though Luther played a seminal role in the Protestant church’s schism with Catholic thought, he too maintained an Augustinian predestinarianism. Scholars cannot agree concerning a cause for the longevity of Augustine’s postulation. However, history makes clear the fact that attempts to create a system of thought centered on his postulation would not be tolerated. The Reformation, though, provided grounds to contradict the wishes of the Catholic Church. This provided opportunity for the Reformation’s thinkers to speculate the value of theological system based on Augustine’s philosophy and theology independent of church councils.
Unfortunately, only one of those thinkers really understood Augustine’s agenda and, perhaps, the doctrinal consequences of basing a theological system on it. The correlations between Augustine and Luther reveal that their theologies sought to accomplish a different goal than those found in the reformed tradition that emerged from Calvin’s influence on the Reformation. The predestinarianism of Augustine and Luther was born out of a personal struggle with sin and served as the means to a soteriological end, not as the framework for a theological system.
Augustine and Early Predestinarianism
Religious upheaval, bearing profound consequences, regularly struck at the core of St. Augustine’s life prior to conversion. This upheaval centered on Augustine’s lifelong struggle over the problem of evil with near exclusivity. While his mother had trained Augustine in the tenets of Christianity, he could not reconcile the existence of evil in the world with that worldview. This and other early irreconcilable differences with Christianity drove Augustine to dabble in Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism. Fatefully, once again through the influence of his mother, Augustine agreed to hear the preaching of Ambrose, and came to a point of personal crisis regarding Christianity. Namely, Ambrose’s preaching inadvertently quelled Augustine’s most vexing contentions. However, having many of his intellectual disputes settled, Augustine struggled with the moral demands that following Christ placed on a person’s life.[3]
Ultimately, this internal upheaval replaced the external, intellectual upheaval that had dominated the landscape of his life prior to conversion. Augustine long remembered the internal struggle, and the point of his will’s desire to fight off grace’s apprehension influenced his defense of the faith. Some like Gerald Bonner suggest that Augustin’s theology of predestination began here long before the Pelagian controversy, and, in fact, that his predestinarianism was a result of his stress on original sin and internal struggling against the Spirit of God. [4] Gonzalez also identifies this internal upheaval as the point of contention between Augustine and Pelagius, noting that Augustine rejected Pelagius’ claims to the simplicity of human will. Because of Augustine’s personal struggle with sin, the reader finds him postulating, “the will is not always its own master, for it is clear that the will to will does not always have its way.”[5] For Augustine, something overrode his internal will that wanted to continue in iniquity; he identifies that “something” as the grace of God.
Consequently, predestinarianism is something that Augustine grows into. Fendt argues that Augustine’s writing in Confessions, De Libero Arbitrio, and the anti-Manichaean works adequately developed the predestinarianism “about which Augustine seems to grow more adamant as he ages.”[6] This predestinarianism, though, analyzes the role of the created will relationally to the holiness of God, not the role of God’s providential rule over the created order. This remains the important difference between Augustine’s predestinarianism as means to understanding justification and subsequent developments of the doctrine as a theological system.
At every point, Augustine’s evaluation of the will indemnifies the Creator against the guilt of creating evil, and at the same time locating the responsibility of justification squarely on the good pleasure of the greatest Good, God. Therefore, God has not created evil, propagated evil, or preemptively damned the existence of any created will; but He alone reserves the right to express grace or not to express grace to that created will. Augustine writes, “The supremely Good thus turning to good account even what is evil, to the condemnation of those whom in His justice He has predestined to punishment, and to the salvation of those whom in His mercy He has predestined to grace.”[7] Accordingly, Augustine’s predestinarianism involves itself with the business of offering salvation or offering consequences, whereas subsequent theological systems create a priori criteria and preexistent decrees that stem supposedly from the providential rule of the creator. Then all of creation is bound by the content of these decrees and restrained within the parameters of a system where God expressly creates wills in order to damn them.
The seminal stages of Augustine’s predestinarianism play a significant role in the aftermath of the Pelagian controversy as well. If, as Fendt suggests, Augustine cultivates an increasingly rigid predestinarianism, then it is because of polemics and not because of conviction. Augustine seemed destined to contend for Christianity against enemies of the faith and Fendt warns that Augustine’s later writings bear the mark of rhetorical certitude and not necessarily that of an increasingly severe idea of predestination. Fendt writes, “Augustine must feel at the time of writing this part of DCD the threat of Pelagian huzzas, for if we do not make salvation the direct determination of (predestining) grace, it sounds like it is within our power to save ourselves.”[8] Augustine, then, has polarized the issue with Pelagius somewhat. Later writings carry the weight of a hard predestination, only if the reader ignores the rhetorical context. Fendt concludes his argument by observing that Augustine not only has a vaster education in rhetoric than he does in the intricacies of philosophy but also that it is, “required of a bishop in the pressing situation to be forceful and obvious.”[9]
From start to finish, the student of Augustine can appropriately understand his predestinarianism within the context of a personal struggle with sin and the philosophical quandary over the existence of evil. Though the content of Augustine’s later writing bore the mark of reactionary pontificating, his writing should not be held hostage by a situation that can be explained within a historical context. Augustine wrote extensively concerning his early life and conversion, documenting in brilliant commentary the skirmish that he personally waged against the sinful will. This propensity for documentation not only provides modern scholars with insight into his thinking, but it also provided a young Augustinian monk going through a very similar struggle with the means to articulate his own treatises on predestinarianism.
More on that young Augustinian monk in Part II…
[1] Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology. Vol. 3, Sin, Salvation. (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2004): 565-566.
[2] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998): 925.
[3] Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper, 1984), 208-211.
[4] See Gerald Bonner, Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom, (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007) This contention is indeed the thesis of Bonner’s entire work, and is argued to the effect that Augustine’s predestinarianism stemmed more from this soteriological source than a polemic against Pelagius. See also Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed., (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 922.
[5] González, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, 214.
[6] Gene Fendt, “Between a Pelagian Rock and a Hard Predestinarianism: The Currents ofControversy in ‘City of God’ 11 and 12.” The Journal of Religion, 81 (April 2001): 211.
[7] Philip Schaff, ed. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: First Series. Vol. 3, Augustin: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers Inc., 2004), 269.
[8] Fendt, “Between a Pelagian Rock,” 222.
[9] Ibid.
Fantasy Literature and Philosophy: Part III
August 22, 2009
|
The Bestiary: Animals Who Think and Talk
The professor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (aka Digory, Lord Digory, et al) personifies Socrates in Plato’s Republic better than any other figure among the collective writings of Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling. He questions Peter and Susan after they have had a fight with Edmund over Lucy’s claim to have entered Narnia through the wardrobe, asking whether they ought to believe the report of a known liar (Edmund) over that of a trustworthy person (Lucy) just because the liar’s data seemed to back up what they already believed about the world.[i]
This session with the professor is the turning point in the novel regarding Peter and Susan’s attitudes toward Lucy and the possibility that there is more to reality than the world they can perceive with their senses (a lesson they have to repeatedly learn in the series). While the effect that traveling between parallel universes has on time is a fascinating philosophical problem within the Chronicles, the real elements of Platonic Form are found in Lewis’ Bestiary (yes, that is spelled correctly). The talking animals of Narnia represent what it means to be the true form of the creature. For instance, while there are non-talking (h)orses of the “normal” variety in Narnia, it is the noble, talking horses that are the “true (H)orses.” Furthermore, though there may be true Lions of the talking sort, Aslan is The True Lion. Once again, the desired affect is the creation of an order or system of Platonic Forms that will allow the reader to interact with important truths surrounding justice, forgiveness, and redemption. If the forms interacting with these truths are “real forms,” then the conclusions drawn must ultimately be “real principles.”
Magic: When the Supernatural Is Ordinary
Harry Potter’s journey into the wizarding world is just as much a journey into “real reality” as it is a journey to boarding school. Rowling uses magic in much the same way that Tolkien uses items of lore and Lewis uses the bestiary. Magic in the Harry Potter series stands in direct contrast to the technological boon that we experience on a daily basis. Characters like Mr. Weasley, who work for Ministry of Magic, are fascinated by the gadgetry of our lives. However, they never assume more than an anecdotal or trivial attitude toward modernization. The life they have experienced through magic is in tune with nature, but it is not archaic. It is, in fact, much more convenient than technology and gadgetry makes our lives in a number of ways. All of this serves to set the stage for metaphysics and Plato’s Theory of Forms.
“Them!’ said Stan contemptuously, ‘Don’ listen properly do they? Don’ look properly either. Never notice nuffink, they don’.”
Perhaps more than the other worlds, Rowling challenges other readers to doubt their certainty with reality by constructing her world alongside our own. In one scene in the Prisoner of Azkaban, one character explains to Harry that muggles never notice the wizarding world (even the most outlandish behaviors and mishaps) because they are not open to anything but their own expectations. “Them!’ said Stan contemptuously, ‘Don’ listen properly do they? Don’ look properly either. Never notice nuffink, they don’.” Rowling’s Platonic Forms take the form of the wizarding community itself. They are true people in the sense that they have seen what “real” reality is and have not shied away. It can be chaotic, untidy, and unsettling, but there is wonder in all of it. In a sense, even education becomes part of the mystical. Practices of the most existential or supernatural kind in our world take on the tone of the knowable, testable, and controllable in the classroom for Harry Potter. Something that would never be a suitable conclusion to be drawn for someone like the quintessential muggle family, the Dursleys. This is not to say that there is no danger or evil in the wizarding world. If love and friendship can be had in their truest sense, then evil and conflict take on a danger that is much more “dangerous” than those that concern the muggle world.
Fantasy Literature and Philosophy – Part II
August 13, 2009
|
Items of Lore: Rings of Power, Elvish Swords, and Dwarvish Armor
For Plato, true forms must be considered when selecting one’s “fundamental character.” In order for a person to overcome the pull of an immoral life or the injustice proliferated by unbridled power, a person must understand existence in its true form. Tolkien borrows from these themes most industriously in his lore surrounding the One Ring. Throughout the journey of the fellowship, Frodo and crew are continuously learning of the power, and consequently of the corrupting nature, of the One Ring. The power of the ring, then, is not that it represents the corrupting nature of limitless power, it is that nature intrinsically. The ring functions as more than a symbol, it is an embodiment of sorts. As such, the One Ring hearkens back to Plato’s use of true forms. In the Lord of the Rings, the One Ring is the real object casting maleficent shadows of corrupt behavior across the “cave walls” of Middle Earth.[i]
Tolkien’s use of Platonic Forms does not stop with the One Ring, though. The reader is invited not only to ponder the realities behind power and corruption but also those behind valor and heroism. In the Lord of the Rings, history has played host to an era where true forms are present in the world of the common person. For Tolkien, there are swords and there are true swords, armor and true armor. These true forms usually find their way into the possession of true beings, heroes. Tolkien uses lore and christening to distinguish between weapons and armor that represent the Platonic Forms.
These items of lore are typically the companions (even in the sense that they may actually exist as a type of person in their own right) of the story’s archetypal characters. Gandalf the Gray wields Glamdring, a rune engraved sword that was thousands of years old by the time Gandalf enters into the affairs of the Shire. The sword was discovered by Gandalf in the Third Age along with Orcrist and Sting (a sword later wielded by Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring) in a troll cave. Andúril is the sword that was forged from the remnants of Narsil (the sword that was broken when Elendil battled Sauron in the Second Age) for Aragorn. In the book, Andúril shines with the light of the sun and moon just like its predecessor Narsil. Finally, but certainly not exhaustively, Frodo has a shirt of Mithril gifted to him by his Uncle Bilbo. Bilbo received the shirt from Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit when they defeated the dragon Smaug. This shirt of mail felt light as silk, but could turn any blade. It was nearly indestructible and worth more than the entire Shire.
All of these fantastic items represent the author’s desire to communicate the urgency and importance of the world that exists beyond our perception. In an age of terror and conflict, when the world was under the threat of devastation, these items of lore in the hands of champions were the hope and the certainty of values and attributes that transcended the dim view with which many perceived the world that surrounded them.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
