Around the Interwebs
August 6, 2010
- David CL Driedger has two posts up introducing a recent collection, The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation. Sounds glorious by the way he de-scribes it.
- Pastor Carol Howard Merritt writes about an encounter she had a party recently:
“I was at a party, holding my plastic cup of beer and talking to a stranger in a crowded house. She was in thirties, like I was. “So, what do you do?” she asked. “Where to do you work?”
I smiled because this part of the conversation can become really interesting. I’m a five-foot tall woman, who’s part of a generation that considers itself “spiritual but not religious,” so people don’t usually expect my answer: “I’m a pastor.”
“Oh my God,” she responded. “I never knew why anyone would go to church. But last year, my mom got sick. She’s divorced, and I’m living hundreds of miles away from her, so I didn’t know what we were going to do. And her church totally took care of her. They brought her meals. They drove her to the doctor. They called me when anything out of the ordinary happened.”
“Yeah. That’s what the good churches do.”
“Really?” She looked completely confused as she continued, “I had no idea. You should really advertise that.”
I don’t care much for the whole re-naming-liberal-protestantism-”progressive Christianity”-and-see-if-no one-notices thing, but I really like most people who self-identify as such and among them, Pastor Merritt, who advocates strongly for rejuvinating the Mainline and putting trust in the younger creative pastors.
- The Other Journal has a bit up about the “Righteous Rich in the OT” by Christopher J.H. Wright and I thought it very suggestive for political theology despite the fact that “list exegesis” is from the devil himself.
- Apparently there’s a site where you can download a ton of low-fi arrangements of classic tunes by some spectacular indie artists…for FREE!
- Ben Meyers tells things from multiple perspectives.
- David Congdon reviews an Arcade Fire concert in which Spoon opened. He captures why Arcade Fire is among the greatest bands of the ’00′s
Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography IV
July 31, 2010
Be it the gripping Torture and Eucharist, the insightful Mystical Theology or the symphonic On Christian Theology, books in the Blackwell series “Challenges in Contemporary Theology” have yet to not drastically shift my worldview after reading, and Graham Ward’s Christ and Culture is no exception (I can’t wait to read the rest in the series).
Despite the fact that this is a collection of previously released and delivered essays, there is a certain deep similarity in theme, style and content between them. These pick up on all the collective themes of Christology; “incarnation, atonement, the economics of the Trinity what it is to be human [and] the Church” (23) but do so in a manner steeped in discourses very distant to the sort of christology of predication that I’m used to reading such as hermeneutics, metaphysics and cultural theory. Topics like embodiment and the operation of desire also play a large role. (23)
Yet all revolve around very close readings of Scripture. Ward pays particular attention to St. Mark’s Gospel but Scripture is used thoroughly and uniquely all throughout this book. Even if one were to disagree with all of Ward’s conclusions, many of which are controversial, this book is hugely important as I see it for its christological and exegetical method(s).
Ward builds off Aquinas where in the Summa he says, “God is not known to us in His nature, but is made known to us in His operations. (Summa Theologiae, I.Q13.8). Therefore Ward asks not “who is the Christ or what is the Christ [but] where is the Christ” (1) … and I might add, “what is Christ doing?”
The introduction alone is worth the price which not only concisely lays out his own vision but offers a substantive and wide ranging critique of Karl Barth, especially his christological dialectics which as Ward sees it, makes of Christ “either the absolute subject or the absolute object.” (12) (This seems not too unlike to some of Rowan Williams’ critique of Barth, cf. – “Barth on the Triune God,” Wrestling With Angels, pp.106-149) Briefly summing it up, Ward lays it out like this:
“Barth’s dogmatic approach to Christology (a) all too thinly defines the economies of salvation in which the gracious love of Christ finds a responding desire; (b) this finds expression in the thinness of his account of mediations (c) such that his mediating christology remains tied to specific cultural assumptions about the subject and nature; (d) this binds christology to the logic of dualism, itself a product of a certain cultural heritage in modernity; (e) this logic and these assumptions, on the basis of which we develops his dialectical method, render him unable to reflect upon his own cultural production of christology. The world is so lost, so secularized, so ignorant of God that both Christ and subsequently a theology of Christ operate above and beyond such a world, in contradistinction to it.” (14-15)
Of the Ward books I’ve read, this and his Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice were the ones that really captured my imagination. It is important in its own right (or seems like it to me at least) but also in that it renders such criticisms as “RO doesn’t deal with Christ or the Bible or discipleship seriously enough” in need of more evidence. And it also disrupts the all too common saying I hear, that Ward is some sort of exception to RO, “Ward I can take, Milbank I can’t.” Nevertheless, Ward would not want to be holed up on a “side” in contemporary theology.
I can’t wait to reread this one…hopefully I’ll make more strides toward comprehending the details.
Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography, Part I
June 14, 2010
This last semester, in order to fulfill some of my Liberal Arts requirements, I took a sociology class on “Cities and Social Change.” A large part of the class is dedicated to a substantive final paper. As I look for chances to combine my schooling with my theological interests, not formally studying theology at this time, I decided to write my paper on the work of Church of England theologian Graham Ward; more specifically his three volume work on Cities. These three are Cities of God, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, and The Politics of Discipleship.
I drew on several other sources as well including the two volumes that he edited and which I reviewed on this blog, The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader and The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Especially useful was the introduction to The Postmodern God which engages with a theology of cyberspace. Additionally I read through portions of Christ and Culture and Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory.
It was my original intention to compose a roughly 30 page systematic summary of his cities work but found out (later than I should have liked) that the paper was to be much shorter so I had to completely redo it. In the end I focused specifically on the “Disappearance of the Body in the Postmodern City and the Theological Difference.” Even here I had only space and time to interact mostly with Cities of God, though I also took a fair amount from Discipleship and skipped nearly entirely over Cultural Transformation. I certainly learned a lot about paper writing as I tried to make this my first “real” academic paper. I think I did pretty poorly to be honest.
But what I can do is give a couple notes about approaching Ward and a bit about those books which I was able to work through. We’ll start with his Cities ‘Trilogy.’
Cities of God is a work in the (in)famous Radical Orthodoxy Series published on Routledge. It is divided in three parts. In part one Ward gives genealogies of both “The Modern City – Cities of Eternal Aspiration,” and “The Postmodern City – Cities of Eternal Desire.” In them he traces the fragmentation and social atomism of the body and, if you tie in a future chapter (as I think he should have) – “Communities of Desire” – with this part it ends up making what is to me a persuasive case for Ward’s reading of both cities.
In part two Ward proceeds to outline an “Analogical Worldview” which he thinks that Christian theology can offer. This analogical worldview heals atomism and fragmentation by a sketch of how we are made whole in the Body of Christ. It is here that he also outlines a theological account of the body, drawing in surprising ways on Karl Barth, and a Christian picture of desire.
In Part three, by examining several contemporary ‘angelologies,’ Ward reframes his previous discussion with reference to “Theology and the Practices of Contemporary Living.”
I was surprised to have mixed feelings about this book. I came into it quite sympathetic but I felt at the end as if he opened up more problems and unexplored rabbit holes than he did provide what seemed to me to be sufficient answers. He didn’t maintain a coherent argument throughout; for instance at least one chapter had already been released as an independent essay. Ward was his strongest when he was describing the cultural maladies that beset us in our contemporary urban context.
If one was to approach Ward’s work on cities I would first direct them to The Politics of Discipleship where he plays on many of the same themes as Cities but has obviously spent more time reflecting on weaknesses inherent in this book. I will give a few more critiques after the next two books in the series.
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.
Happy Day
August 13, 2009
More presents have arrived and are soon to arrive on my doorstep from generous publishers.
I’ve decided to go with a theme and guide some readers through what I feel are some of the basic “movements” in “post-modern” theology, to the pathetic extent that I know and understand them, and relate it to eccesial practice.
So besides the books already mentioned, I will be reviewing “The Postmodern God” – A theological reader, and “The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology.” Both are from Blackwell-Wiley Publishing (easily one of my favorite publishing houses). So a big thanks to them!
Also, Caitlin at Baker Academic, always supplying surprisingly good books, has sent me the three volumes (so far published) in the “Church and Postmodern Culture Series” – James K A Smith’s “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church,” John Caputo’s “What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church,” and Carl Raschke’s “GloboChrist: The Great Commission takes a Postmodern Turn”
And lastly, Baker was also so kind as to send me “Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation,” which, you guessed it, critically engages the RO theological streams by way of Dutch Reformed theology.
All in all, I think we will have a lot of fun, and perhaps challenge a skeptic or two to not be so down on “postmodernism” as well as challenge a few Emergent types who feel that all theology is is individual predispositions.
Greatest Living Christian Rhetoritician?
July 16, 2009
In many circles of scholastic theology, the theological discourse can take on an entirely dry and mathmatical flavor. As if, in perfect neutrality and impartiality, one is disclosing the secrets of the world. However ‘true’ some of these types of treatise’s might be, it can be understandable that I might lose interest. I’m certain of the fact that had I been tested as a child I would have been diagnosed with ADD.
I myself enjoy bombastic rhetoric. Rhetoric need not imply sophistry or veiled-falsehood. It can be coupled with precise argumentation and imagination and it can put joy into reading scholarly works. This is why Gordon D Fee can be much more enjoyable to read than many other exegetes. The man doesn’t pull any punches.
In the theological/philosophical world of today we have been blessed with a movement bravely entitled “Radical Orthodoxy.” Feasting as they do on modern Continental thought and mocking the false safety of analytical philosophy, RO, and many who could broadly fall under its banner, have given us royal treats in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, Stanley Hauerwas and David Bentley Hart (among others).
But who among them can claim to reign supreme as lord of language?
There is of course Stanley Hauerwas. A feisty Texan-high church methodist (though I do believe he is Episcopalian these days) known for his powerful testimony against liberalism and for the Church. He has given us such treasures as
(in reference to “Atonement theories”)“If you need a theory to worship Jesus go worship your fucking theory” and
“Fighting violence with bombs is like screwing for virginity”
But I don’t think he can take the cake.
We might also point to the honorable ‘high-church Anglican’ John Milbank, student of the ABC Rowan Williams. Turning randomly into his “Theology and Social Theory” (an absolute must read) we can see him at work.
“Parsonian sociology attempts to conjoin the ‘liberal Protestant meta-narrative’ as articulated by Weber and Troeltsch. . . with the evolution of Herbert Spencer which was part of his English adaptation of Comtean positivism. In the Parsonian niew, society evolves through a process of gradual differentiation into separate social sub-systems: gradually art is distinguished from religion, religion from politics, economics from private ethical behaviour and so forth. The upshot of this process is (as for Weber) that it is now possible for something to be beautiful without being good or true, and possible for there to be a valid exercise of power without it having a bearing on either goodness or truth. At the same time, a realm of ‘pure’ science emerges which (as in Spinoza’s ideal of intellectual freedom) can pursue truth independently of coercive pressure, or of practical consequences.” TST, 2nd ed, Blackwell p128
But still he cannot out-maneuver the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart. From his stunning “The Beauty of the Infinite” to his devestating “Atheist Delusions,” Hart, it is often complained, cannot be read without the Oxford English Dictionary as his vocabulary is composed of so many odd and normally unused words (not counting his own neo-logisms) that it takes ages just to get through a book. Be that as it may, he is never shy on vitrolic attacks on bad ideas and unbounded praise of the God who is God-in-Trinity. Here are two quotes taken at random from his “The Beauty of the Infinite”
“But Nietzsche also reminds theology how great is its rhetorical burden. The story of being that Christianity tells, of creation as a word of peace whose ultimate promise is also peace, looks so very frail standing alongside the imposing figures of “history” and “nature,” in their blood-dyed robes, trailing their clouds of contingency, cruelty, and ambiguity; the protological and eschatalogical tensions within the Christian story leave it vulnerable to the accusation of irresponsible idealism, or of an unwillingness to rein its narrative in when its messianic horizon threatens to engulf the clarity of “realist” thinking in a night of mythical abstraction (theology, not always unaware of this, even occasionally attempts to construct one or another kind of political “realism” of its own, even though this can be accomplished only through a series of tactical apostasies).127 – please note that that is one single sentence!
“What is truth?” – “If Christ, the eternal Word, is the Father’s “supreme rhetoric,” then the truth of his evangel is of a very particular kind. As soon as one ventures appreciably past the bounds of logic’s unadorned and uncontroversial claims (and sometimes before one gets that far), one finds that what is called truth is usually a consensus wrested from diversity amid a war of persuasions, the victor’s crown of laurels laid upon the brow of whichever dialectical antagonist has better (for the time being) succeeded in rendering invisible his argument’s own ambiguities and contradictions (has better, that is, concealed the more purely rhetorical moments of his argument in the folds of his apparently unanswerable “logic”); and into the tumult of history Christ comes as a persuasion among persuasions, a Word made entirely flesh, entirely form, whose appeal lies wholly at the surface…”331
Take up and read.
Religious Pluralism & The Social Sciences
January 30, 2009
Rublev: Rowan Williams
“One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,
slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,
said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.I said, Here is the blood of all our people,
these are their bruises, blue and purple,
gold, brown, and pale green wash of death.These (god) are the chromatic pains of flesh,
I said, I trust, I make you blush,
O I shall stain you with the scars of birthFor ever. I shall root you in the wood,
under the sun shall bake you bread
of beechmast, never let you forthto the white desert, to the starving sand.
But we shall sit and speak around
one table, share one food, one earth.”
My mom recently commented that I do not post as much as I used to. That is because I’m back in school and have substantially more homework than I did last semester and over Christmas break. But I wanted to throw in my initial two cents in on Jeremy’s posts so far on religious pluralism.
Unfortunately it will not be quite as thorough as I should like it to be, but I will still attempt to (very) briefly demonstrate why I believe the foundations for his pluralist position is in fact the “out-of-date” or “not-relevant” system.
It is not insignificant that Jeremy has thus far begun and ended his system not at all based on any religion, or even his own personal religious experience; but rather on the backs of social scientists. He gives us a grand and sweeping account of the “history of religions” and then turns to religious scientists to determine the definition(s?!) of religion.
“The problem of Meta-narrative in the “history of religions”
The large and sweeping problem off the bat is that the account of the history of religions is itself a meta-narrative of history. It says, in essense that religious history is going somewhere - “First there was primitive religion, then the axial age, then Islam emphasised compassion, now pluralism, etc…” – and that is not where it is now nor is it where it has been.
Part of deconstructing is attempting, insofar as it is possible and aparently truthful, to deconstruct even ones own presuppositions, and it is this tendency which has led me, though appreciating insights which have come of thinking in terms of the words “pre-, modern, and post-modern (even post-post-modern!)” to ultimately come to reject the notion that history is neatly divideable up into epochs where thought was broadly uniform and the presuppositions the same; whereby we are able to box people and ideas up for critique en masse. I have learned in reading some of the classic western philosophy lately, is that it is a myth to posit that it was only in the “Enlightenment” where “reason” became the base authority. A look at Socrates, Plato, and the many skeptics in our “history of thought” reveals that the same motivation for Socrates to reject the many gods of his native Athens is the same reason that led to “Enlightenment” thinkers to reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Plato was just as convinced as Rousseau that reason as opposed to revelation could be counted on to give an objective, ontologically-true account of the (uni)versal reality apart from intervening spiritualities and deities to explain the unexplainable.
Which is why I think that it is simply inaccurate to speak in terms of what religions were doing or saying during specific “eras.” The very idea of “eras” is so frustrating since it is nothing but an interpretive tool on the page. The closest we might get to an accurate account of thought over time might be to speak of “schools” but not “eras.” Especially when said “eras” become a tool of oppressive violence to another’s belief system.
“The problem of the secular in the “history of religions”
As Shawn Wamsley just asserted commenting on Jeremy’s second post, narratives cannot be universalized to be demonstrably true outside of their own meta-narratives. The bare fact of the matter is that the assertions of accouts of the history of religions are done amongst the intellectual elite in the houses of learning still living under the mistaken assumption that they can give an objective account both of history and of “religions”; of what it is, of where it is going, what it means, and what we should do about it. It defines religion, (which it cannot do succinctly enough so it must resort to multiple definitions of religion), it defines the distinguishing marks of religion, it defines the “eternal core” of those religions, and it decides what we as a society must do about it. If there is one thing I learned in Cultural Anthropology and Environmental Science, it is not a lot about other cultures or about anthropogenic global warming, but about the idealogical core of the social sciences and their own meta-narratives.
(I hope this does not to sound too nasty)
At the end of the day, I believe modern-western religious pluralism is nothing but the bastard child of secularism and its exultation of “reason” over the rest of the world.
(Lest that seem to make me a fundamentalist, consider that Walter Brueggemann himself, no conservative by any estimation, consistently says that it is secularism which is at the heart of the decline in the Mainline.) What it is is an account of the history and truthfulness of religions as critiqued by its own presumption. Though some social scientists might recognize the reality of “the trancendent (as defined by them),” ultimately it says to the great faiths “Thanks for getting us this far, we’ll take it from here. Moreover, we will personally decide what it is which actually counts for something from your religion, and in time, if you attend enough of our Universities, you will come to see it our way.” It says what “god(s)” (as we define or don’t define the term) really wants. But, religious pluralism bases this not on a belief in the revealing work of “god” but its own “objective” accounts of the faiths.
“The irrelevency of the social sciences, broadly conceived”
Jeremy posited that given the nature of our knowing about the world and about religions; and given that we are in an unavoidable pluralistic context, “exclusivist” religion is “no longer relevant” This seems to be an important phrase for Jeremy since he will not assert that “exclusivist” faith is itself “wrong.” This allows him a greater shield against the critique often leveled against religious monists and pluralists alike that their own system is “exclusive in its own way.” Yet, the foundations for his pluralism is based on the violent exlusivism of the western social sciences.
Oddly enough, given the post-modern critique, and especially the “radical orthodox” critique continually developing in post-liberal anglo-catholicism (with which I continually find myself agreeing), it is Jeremy’s intellectual foundations which are “irrelevant” as they have been crumbling since at least the time of Derrida, Focoult, Rory and Gadamer among others.
Now all of this is not to say anything negative about Jeremy. Jeremy is actually one of the most compassionate and generous people I know (that is not an exageration); but as long as his reasoning for religious pluralism is dependent on the social sciences and not on the revealing love and activity of the Holy Trinity, then I am going to have to remain unconvinced.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
