gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Gary Buchholz) (09/30/86)
In article <1605@cbdkc1.UUCP> pmd@dkc1.UUCP (Paul M. Dubuc) writes: >In article <654@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> gary@sphinx.UUCP (Gary Buchholz) writes: >> "...there is considerable pathos in these apologetic [Evangel. Theol] >> efforts. It was, after all, Christianity that tutored the Western >> mind to believe that it should know the truth and the truth would >> make it free. But now that the student has learned to prize the >> truth, he has discovered, with pain ...that it can only be gained at the >> cost of rejecting the one who first instilled in him the love of it." >> >> --The Historian and the Believer >> Van Harvey p 246 > >Seems to me that an equally likely possibility is that the sons of >the Enlightenment are thowing the term "truth" around in a manner not >unlike the sons of fundamentalism. They have modified the concept of >truth to meet the apparent demands of intellectual integrity and it is >that concept they follow in their desire to know the truth while thinking >that they must reject the One who is the truth in order to do so. Quite interesting. I've spent a great deal of time studying fundamentalist/evangelical exegesis. The "sons of the Enlightenment" and the "sons of fundamentalism" use the word "truth" in very different senses. It seems to me that the entire exegetical enterprise is fed by the desire to "make the bible true" through use of whatever literary techniques are available. Not unlike medieval exegetes, the will ascend the exegetical ladder of interpretation from literal to allegorical to moral to anagogical trying to find an interpretive technique that will render the bible CONSISTENT WITH WHATEVER A PARTICULAR GENERATION CONSIDERS TO BE THE TRUTH. The major difference between the medieval exegetes and the fundamentalists is the value they put on secular knowledge. To someone like Augustine ("On Christian Doctrine") and before him (Origen "On First Principles") up through Aquinas the more the Christian exegete knew of secular knowledge the better. I can think of no major Christian theologian that has counterposed secular knowledge and the biblical text. Interestingly, for Origen, Augustine and Aquinas the pivot point of exegesis is secular knowledge. Aquinas can even say that the world is NOT created, but eternal - and he says this on the basis of Aristotle which he refers to in his works not by name but by the title "the Philosopher", an authority in the eyes of St. Thomas. Now, for Thomas to assert that the world is eternal on the basis of greek metaphysics and not created, as Genesis (taken literally)says, is certainly to say a great deal about the place of secular knowledge in medieval Christian theology (if Aquinas is taken as representative). As regards what you write concerning "intellectual integrity". I think that Fundamentalism is the first time in the history of Christian theology where this term becomes irrelevant. Theology is by definition "theos-logos" rational thought about God. It is hard to see how anything lacking "intellectual integrity" could be called rational. If Fundamentalist theology spurns "intellectual integrity" then it is a non-theology, an irrationalism, and in the tradition of theology, it is a heresy. In a certain sense Fundamentalism is what it is because the people who practice it lack intellectual options. Van Harvey ("The Historian and the Believer") uses a nice term. He says that they lack "quality of mind". Translated, this means that Fundamentalists are stupid, and I'd concur with that. The difference between a Bultmann and a Swaggart is that the latter has no resources to get Christianity out of the mess that it finds itself in in the modern world. Bultmann does a re-interpretation job on Christianity in light of secular knowledge just as every theologian in the history of the tradition has done before him. Swaggart relies on a Christian "orthodoxy" and by this raises the collage of human tradition of theology to that of deity. >If much of Protestant theology is to be likened to a "salvage operation" >(performing surgery on the Tree of Knowledge, you might say), >I would also suggest that the activities of Enlightenment theologians >can, with equal clarity, be seen as an attempt to escape the "salvage >operations" by sawing off the branch on which they stand. >Paul Dubuc cbdkc1!pmd A physicist does not forever remain a Newtonian. Is he any less a physicist because he subscribes to the latest cosmology of which Newtonian mechanics was a precursor? Contemporary physics is both indebted to the Newtonian tradition and must necessarily see its inadequacies. Hegel, in "Phenomenology of Spirit" puts forth a progressive view of history driven by what he called "the cunning of reason". For Hegel nothing is "wrong", everything is necessary - the bud of a flower is not "wrong", it is something that "must be" before the flower blooms. If anything, Fundamentalism tries to throw a monkey-wrench into the process of history. Perhaps we "saw off the branch on which we stand" to clear the forest of the dead wood that inhibits growth. You might thank the Enlightenment theologians for risking the climb and risking their lives in performing the action. Luther, as a Roman Catholic theologian, certainly did some "sawing" in his time and just look what grew as a result of that "clearing" operation. You, Mr Dubuc, have chained yourself to that dead old tree of Christian orthodoxy, and in time, secular theology under the orders of the Western intellectual tradition, in the service of "intellectual integrity", will come with the buzzsaw and take care of you and the dead old tree in one fell swoop. Gary
smk@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Stephen Kennedy) (10/01/86)
In article ??? Paul Dubuc writes: >I think maybe you haven't studied enough. There are certainly >fundamentalists who interpret Scripture as you say. I see a similarity >(as far as intellectual integrity and *modesty* is concerned) between >that and the way rationalists (like you) take one kind of knowing >(scientific knowledge) and treat is as the only kind. > You've made this comment about scientific knowledge many time before. While I'm not opposed to the idea there may be other kinds of knowing, I still haven't figured out what _your_ kind of knowing is. I would say a kind of knowing which can't decide anything is useless. From what you've said before on the subject, I can't honestly see how you can decide anything, yet you obviously do. What gives? [stuff deleted] > >Luther sawed while standing on the Bible. I don't think there is >anything that secular theology is standing on. I rather think the Aargh. Yet another "proof" by appeal to the presupposed importance of the Bible... >-- > >Paul Dubuc cbdkc1!pmd Steve Kennedy cbosgd!smk President, Rich Rosen Fan Club Disclaimer: I don't speak for Bell Labs (unless threatened)