From Paul's New Perspective to a Fresh Perspective of Paul

From New Perspective to Fresh Perspective to … what’s next?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/08/from-new-perspective-to-fresh-perspective-to-whats-next/

by Scot McKnight

Oct 8, 2013

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In N.T. Wright’s earlier work on Paul he advocated a pioneering orientation we now call the New Perspective, in part because Wright himself used that expression but even more because J.D.G. Dunn called the whole movement that. Then less than a decade ago Wright wrote a little book on Paul that added to the new perspective and he himself called it the “fresh” perspective. What Wright added to the NPP was anti-imperial themes: Paul was not only extending Judaism but he was intentionally provoking the idea that confessing Jesus as Lord was consciously saying “Caesar was not.”

 

What happens now in Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and I have not worked it all the way through, will yet again advance the new and fresh perspectives. What happens here is a renewal of Paul’s Greek and Roman worlds as more central to the mission and message of Paul. In effect, Paul becomes in part a “philosopher” — of the Greek sort — not your ivory tower university theoretician but an on-the-ground and concerned-with-the-world kind of philosopher. The kind we see in Socrates and Plato perhaps more than in Aristotle, but Wright’s focus here is toward the value of the Stoics — Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. To this mix Wright adds a little bit of the great Roman, Cicero — and a sketch of the Wisdom of Solomon as a Jewish predecessor of just this kind of interactive thinking.

 

So, we get a Paul of two worlds — the Jewish world and the Roman world, now not two worlds but one world, mixed together and not separate as one might have on a library categorization. The days of Hengel’s famous studies of Judaism and Hellenism have come to fruition in a fresh synthesis in this new work by N.T. Wright. The days too of superficial parallelisms are also over: here we find a more robust set of worldview ideas being compared to one another.

 

The Paul of Acts 17; then, the one who could stand on the same dais as the philosophers of Athens, is a thoroughly Jewish and at the same time a Hellenized Jew, a Jew who could do philosophy in the modes of that day, particularly of that day, the Stoics. He was not unlike the Wisdom of Solomon, then. The old-fashioned Jew OR Greek, then, is broken down in this new edition of Tom Wright’s through on Paul. I give now samples of the progress of his chapter on this very topic…and we are just getting started in a book that goes on more than 1500 pages.

So Paul has been studied in ‘departments of religion’, though neither in ancient nor in modern terms do his letters, or the communities which he founded, belong primarily in such a category (203).

Where do we locate Paul’s world, Paul’s audience, and so Paul’s angles? Wright says in Stoicism.

Whereas the default mode of most modern westerners is some kind of Epicureanism, the default mode for many of Paul’s hearers was some kind of Stoicism. Observing the differences between the two, particularly at the level of assumptions, is therefore vital if we are to ‘hear’ Paul as many of his first hearers might have done. If, when someone says the word ‘god’, we think at once of a distant, detached divinity – as most modern westerners, being implicitly Epicureans or at least Deists, are likely to do – we are unlikely to be able imaginatively to inhabit the world of many in Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus and elsewhere for whom the word ‘god’ might reasonably be expected to denote the divinity which indwelt, through its fiery physical presence, all things, all people, the whole cosmos. 

Stoicism, after all, was the classic form of pantheism, the doctrine that sees divinity in everything. Saying this to someone today might appear to suggest that ‘everything’ is therefore in its essence ‘spiritual’, pointing back to some kind of Platonic vision of a ‘real’ world beyond space, time and matter. Stoicism, however, went in the opposite direction: everything, including the divine force or presence indwelling all things and all people, was ‘material’ or ‘corporeal’, not far from what we would normally call ‘physical’ (though all these terms are slippery with age and varied usage) (213).

An example: Paul can sound at times like the Stoic Epictetus.

Epictetus, more than any other whose writings have come down to us, exemplifies the ‘diatribe’ style, which emerges most obviously in the New Testament in some passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans. There are times, indeed, when it sounds as if Epictetus and Paul had grown up in the same street: 

What then? (ti oun) Do I say that man is an animal made for inactivity? Far be it from me! (mē genoito). But how can you say that we philosophers are not active in [public] affairs? For example, to take myself first: as soon as day breaks I call to mind briefly what author I must read over . . . 

What then? Is it we philosophers alone who take things easily and drowse? No, it is you young men far sooner. For, look you, we old men, when we see young men playing, are eager to join in the play ourselves. And much more, if I saw them wide-awake and eager to share in our studies, should I be eager to join, myself, in their serious pursuits. 

The subject-matter is of course different; but nobody who has an ear for Paul’s cadences, especially in letters like Romans and 1 Corinthians, can doubt that he and Epictetus were, to this extent, employing a very similar method of argument, which traced its ancestry back to Socrates and was to be located, within the disciplines of ancient philosophy, as part of ‘logic’. This was a way of ensuring that one was working steadily towards the truth, and not being deceived by faulty impressions or rhetorical trickery (224). 

The result of all this – flying in the face of some recent suggestions to the contrary – is that, for Epictetus, the primary task of the would-be philosopher is in fact theology: 

Now the philosophers say that the first thing we must learn is this: That there is a God, and that He provides for the universe, and that it is impossible for a man to conceal from Him, not merely his actions, but even his purposes and his thoughts. Next we must learn what the gods are like, for whatever their character is discovered to be, the man who is going to please and obey them must endeavour as best he can to resemble them. If the deity is faithful, he also must be faithful; if free, he also must be free; if beneficent, he also must be beneficent; if high-minded, he also must be high-minded, and so forth; therefore, in every- thing he says and does, he must act as an imitator (zēlōtēs) of God. 

Here, for Epictetus, is the heart both of ‘physics’ and of ‘ethics’, and all to be argued out strenuously according to his own practice of ‘logic’. Once one has this knowledge, one is ready for the philosopher’s specific active voca- tion: to be dispatched like a scout or a spy in a time of war, to search out what is really going on, and then to come back and explain to people that they are mistaken in their perceptions of good and evil, and to point out the truth of the situation whether people want to hear it or not.121 Philosophers, to return to our opening image, are to be like owls who see in the dark – and then like heralds who announce the message with which they have been entrusted. Paul had a different message, but might well have agreed with the outline of the vocation as Epictetus articulated it (227).

And Cicero, too:

Cicero, in fact, provides us with evidence of two things which are worth bearing strongly in mind when contemplating the philosophical climate of the world in which Saul of Tarsus grew up and in which Paul the apostle travelled about announcing Jesus as Messiah and lord. First, philosophy was a topic of widespread discussion and debate right across the greco-roman world, particularly among the literary and cultured elite but also – as Epictetus reminds us a century or more later – very much at street level. This was already true before the first century BC, but the events of that highly disturbed period, particularly the terrible convulsions through which the Roman world passed in the middle decades of the century, contributed substantially to a fresh opening of ultimate questions: 

These troubled times, which are reflected in the poems of Virgil and Horace, were a significant influence on the Roman turn to philosophy. As long as the main fabric of the Republic was intact, leading Romans had chiefly defined themselves by reference to family tradition and the renown that civic and military service could promote. With the state in complete disarray and no ethical or emotional support to be derived from official religion,we begin to find a more reflective and ascetic mentality, that would become still more prominent in the Empire. 

That was the world of Paul. 

Second, Cicero’s mixture of the ‘Academic’ position with several significant elements of Stoicism is a reminder that, granted there was no creedal or dogmatic structure or policing of the different schools and opinions, the influence of Plato himself remained massive throughout the period. Much of his thought – for instance, on the immortality of the soul – had passed into Stoicism, just as much of the Socratic method which he made famous had opened the door for the questioning which led some to Scepticism. The explicit revival of the study of both Plato and Aristotle, which we noted earlier, combined with the teachings of both Stoic and Academic thinkers (the Epicureans alone maintaining, as they would, a dignified detachment), to form a general climate of opinion, at least as to the spectrum of possibilities. In particular, when we ask what Paul might have supposed his hearers would be thinking when he spoke or wrote about a being he referred to as theos, about a powerful pneuma through which this ‘god’ might perform new deeds in his people, about the creation and recreation of the cosmos, and many other things besides, we must assume, and we must assume that he assumed, that the default mode for their thinking would be somewhere in the region of the Stoic development of Plato’s thought (231-232).

Here is where we have a sketch of all of this in terms of worldview from 10,000 miles high:

Above all, the worldview-questions give us a sharp insight into the world of the philosophers – and into the possibility of a comparison, when we have studied him in his own right, with Paul. Take them first as addressed to more or less the entire ancient philosophical world. Who are we? We are humans, part of the world but trying to understand it and live wisely within it. Where are we? In the world of space, time and matter, but a world which some think teems with divine life as well. What’s wrong? Most people, even most philosophers, do not see clearly enough in the darkness of the world,do not penetrate its secrets, and so do not live in the best possible way. In particular, they lack ‘happiness’ (eudaimonia), both in the normal sense that their circumstances trouble them and in the philosophical sense that, in seeking for normal happiness in outward circumstances, they are ignoring the real happiness that philosophy can help to produce. What’s the solution? Why, study philosophy, of course, and then you will (gradually) accustom your eyes to the darkness of the world so that you can grasp the truth and live in accordance with it. Part of the result will be that you come at least to resemble the divine, and possibly to be transformed into a divine being yourself. Ironically, whereas ‘religion’ in the ancient world meant submit- ting to someone (a god) other than oneself, philosophy meant that one was autonomous; either because, with the Epicureans, the gods are not concerned with what we do, so that we are only responsible to ourselves, or because, with the Stoics, the divinity is within us, so that responsibility to god and responsibility to self seem to be the same thing viewed from two different angles. Death itself will either be a return to absolute nothingness (Epicurus) or a transformation into a better life (Plato); as we have seen, some highly regarded Stoics kept this question open. What time is it? That’s the sort of question, our philosophers might say, that a Jew might ask . . . (The Stoics might have said that it was time for moral effort; the Academics, that it was time for more thought; the Peripatetics, that it was time for more research; the Epicureans, that it was time for a drink . . .)

And now even more narrowly, the reconstructed “worldview” of the Stoics:

A Stoic would, of course, give sharper answers to the questions. Who are we? We are creatures composed, as is the whole world, of a mixture of the elements, with the physical element of fire indwelling us in the form of the human psychē. We are therefore part of the divine, and the divine is part of us. Where are we? Within the Universe, the Cosmos, Nature, to pan – which is itself composed of the four elements, with fire and air acting upon earth and water to produce manifold forms of life. The same logos is at work in the world as within each of us. What’s wrong? Nothing is wrong with the world itself (the Epicureans would have disagreed strongly at this point). However, most people, deceived either by false impressions or by sloppy thinking or both, do not realize the truth of the matter, and so spend their time in futile pursuit of a mirage they think of as happiness. Even philosophers find it difficult to get it right all the time. What’s the solution? No surprises: study philosophy, start off on the path that might make you a sage, and continue to discipline yourself, to examine your own life and to take yourself in hand. All the virtues are within your grasp through the divine life within you, so co-operate with it and nerve yourself for the moral struggle. This will result in the appropriation (oikeiōsis) of what is in fact natural to ourselves. The end result (surprisingly similar, this, right across the philosophical board): a calm, untroubled life, free, self-sufficient, self- controlled. (The Stoics aimed to achieve this by refusing to regard pleasure and pain as important; the Epicureans, by regarding them as guides, but in a sophisticated fashion which looked for the real, calm, pleasure behind the mask of mere hedonism.) What time is it? For the Stoic, we are somewhere on the cycle between conflagrations; the fiery pneuma, which is the very breath of the divine, of Zeus himself, is at work in the world, and will one day transform everything into its own life of total fire before setting it all in motion yet again (233-235).

Well, this promises to set Paul in a Roman context in a way mostly ignored in the new perspective studies. In fact, ignored by most Pauline scholars today. But I do have to say I’m now wondering (aloud) if Paul would have been seen as a philosopher. So I ask a long-ish question:

 

Let us imagine our way into the elite circles of Ephesus or Corinth or Athens when a report circulates among them about a man named Paul. Would the reports of his activities — synagogue attendance, synagogue teaching, Scripture reading and explaining, division creating, debate ensuing, persistence in his point of views… then add to this that he worked with his own hands at tentmaking, whether of leather or cloth doesn’t matter much, that he was using such places to gospel and continue his debates and was gaining adherents… and add to this that his new groups were called “churches” (ekklesia, not schools, clubs, not associations) and that he and others were “appointing” leaders called “elders” and “deacons” and that they, too, were reading and commenting on Scripture… now add the big one: it all about this Jew named Jesus, whom they called Messiah of Israel, which drew all the attention to the Bible to see if it predicted that story … now I ask, Would such a man be called a “philosopher”? or something more Jewish? Like apostle? Pastor? Gospeler? Teacher? Would the elites have seen him as one of themselves, a philosopher schooled in the right books and ideas and methods of communication, or would they have said, “Not one of us?”

Continue to Index -

 

Index to the "New(er) Perspective(s) of Paul"

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Liter of Light and Hope

 

 

 

Brazilian mechanic creates light bulb using water, bleach and a bottle

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/brazilian-mechanic-creates-light-bulb-water-bleach-bottle-article-1.1427011

 

By Carol Kuruvilla / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

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Alfredo Moser’s cheap and environmentally friendly invention is picking up steam

in developing nations around the world. The 'Moser lamp' was picked up by the

Liter of Light campaign and is now brightening 140,000 homes in the Philippines.

 

A Liter of Light Tanay Rizal

 

 

Published on Jul 21, 2012

 

Seeding program goes to Tanay Rizal's My Shelter Foundation

in partnership with DSWD's Pang Tawid Pamilya program.

 

For more information email info@aliteroflight.org

 

 

All Photos courtesy of Aljazeera

 

Alfredo Moser was just looking for a way to light his workshop during a blackout. By early next year, the humble mechanic’s invention is expected to brighten about 1 million people’s lives.

 

A Brazilian mechanic is bringing light to the masses.

 

With just a plastic bottle, water, and bleach, Alfredo Moser has found a way to produce a light that is up to 40 or 60 watts — stronger than some light bulbs.

 

"It's a divine light,” the inventor told the BBC. “God gave the sun to everyone, and light is for everyone. Whoever wants it saves money. You can't get an electric shock from it, and it doesn't cost a penny."

 

Here’s his trick. Moser harnesses solar power by refracting sunlight through a clear two-liter plastic bottle that is filled with water.

 

Alfredo Moser lives in Uberaba, Brazil. He came up with the idea for his lamp

during one of his town’s frequent blackouts.

 

"Add two capfuls of bleach to protect the water so it doesn't turn green [with algae]. The cleaner the bottle, the better," he said.

 

He tops the bottle with a black cap, then pushes it through a hole in his roof.

 

"You fix the bottle in with polyester resin,” Moser said. “Even when it rains, the roof never leaks — not one drop."

 

BBC - The clear plastic bottle is filled with water and some capfuls of bleach.

 

In many parts of the developing world, electricity is still unreliable or too expensive for the poor. In rural areas or city slums, millions of families still drill tiny windows into their shacks to let a little bit of light peek in.

 

The idea for the lamp came to Moser in 2002, during one of the requent blackouts in his hometown, Uberaba, Brazil. The handyman needed a way to light his workshop.

 

Once he figured out the magic recipe, he placed the lamps in his neighbor’s homes and his town’s supermarket.

 

The bottle is placed on rooftops. Sunlight is refracted through the water and into the room below.

 

Although he charges a few dollars for installation, the invention was never meant to be a “get rich quick” scheme. Moser still drives a 1974 car and lives with his wife in a simple house. But he’s proud that his lamp has given others a little bit of hope.

 

"There was one man who installed the lights and within a month he had saved enough to pay for the essential things for his child, who was about to be born. Can you imagine?" he said.

 

By next year, the “Moser lamp” is expected to brighten the lives of at least one million people — at their homes, schools, or stores. It’s already made headway in at least 16 countries, including the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Argentina, and Fiji, the BBC reports.

 

The Moser lamp gives out as much light as a 40-to-60-watt bulb.

 

The MyShelter Foundation in the Philippines creates houses using sustainable products. Moser’s invention caught the eye of Illac Angelo Diaz, the organization’s executive director. He started the Isang Litrong Liwanag (A Liter of Light) project, which has already helped install about 140,000 lamps in the Philippines.

 

Some people have used the indoor light to grow hydroponic vegetables. MyShelter also offers training for people who want to earn money by installing the lamps in their neighborhoods.

 

The bulb doesn’t work in the night and can’t store energy. Still, Diaz thinks the light has plenty of potential.

 

"Alfredo Moser has changed the lives of a tremendous number of people, I think forever," Diaz said.

 

ckuruvilla@nydailynews.com

 

 

How To Make a Liter of Light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 5: "A Theology of Wholeness"

Today's topic brings with it decades-old lectures at university lecterns as I listened to discussions ranging from Behavioral Psychology to Biological Neurosciences, from Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung, from Jean Piaget to Carl Rogers, and their theories of psychoanalysis and development, identity and being, self and conscience. The arguments today continue to explore the many debates put forth from long ago re human vs. animal consciousness; or what might distinguish personality from character, intelligence from habit; or how the developmental stages of life are marked from early childhood to adulthood; or even if there is such as thing as morality or ethical responsibility? These items in themselves are difficult enough to decide let alone to try to discover when adding to its complexity how human development might have occurred along the many pathways of evolutionary biological development of the brain and its consciousness.

Evolutionary Consciousness and the Sense of Being - Is Man Unique?

To begin with, the bible theologian might ask "How unique is man in his consciousness and being? Too often we simply assume that God's image (Imago Dei) in man marks off all other discussions to any similarities between man and the animal kingdom. However, we might then ask just what do we mean by this Imago Dei that resides in man? We know of no beasts as consciously ruthless or deceptive, as knowingly brutal or inhuman, as corrupt or greedy, as man can be... making of man more beast than human. And if this be so, then how is it that we retain the image of God when so little evidence of this divine image seems present in our dispositions with one another: from father to son, from man to woman, clan to clan, tribe to tribe, nation to nation? Are we so sure of our pedantic truisms and knowing identity as to believe it will hold upon any further examinations?

Carl Jung contemplating "Wholeness"

"Assuredly," says the bible scholar, "sin but marks man's being, making of him more animal than human." Which if so, then naturally leads to the discussion of why is man sinful in his acts when the animal that does similar and is not - even in the act of killing? Which then brings us to the idea of human consciousness or conscience, its definitions and capacities, boundaries and limitations, its qualities or complexity. However, upon examining the many examples within the animal kingdom this very same quality of human-like conscience can be found from elephant herds to dolphins, from apes to pets, making our distinctiveness as all the less remarkable than what we first thought.

So then how does one approach this seeming nebulous idea of human uniqueness especially when it is harshly presented through strict evolutionary terms? And yet, quite curiously, it is this very idea of biological, evolutionary, development that can help us towards understanding the similarities and dissimilarities which exist between the human anatomy and that of the animal kingdom. And through the application of biologic neuro-science we might break away from our non-scientific pre-conceptions - however biblically-supported they may seem to be - to better help us ask more well-defined questions than we might fro A purely metaphysical (or philosophical) basis of argument.

Many times the studied scientist might first ask (i) how similar might man be to the animals before then asking (ii) how dis-similar man might be. And if we proceed apace to the first, then we must state flatly that the idea of "culture" is not unique to humans for the animal kingdom likewise has its own "cultures" however they are comported. And if, by our definitions of "culture" we might mean the ability to speak a kind of language, or to use and handle tools for the sustenance of life, we must be willing to comparatively study whether these abilities are likewise found within the larger presence of the animal kingdom. For if they are, then the human animal (man) is not so far off from animals than we have thought ourselves to be - even as one would presuppose based upon the evolutionary charts of mammalian development. Firstly, whether through verbal, or non-verbal communication, the animal kingdom is rife with examples of communicating with itself from mother to infant, from pride to flock. Even as  tool-usage is as pervasive from Chimpanzees to ants, birds to bees. Moreover, there is also a form of social learning and responsiveness within the animal kingdom no less than within humanity's social abilities. As such, all of this has been numerously documented, debated, fretted over, and discussed through the lenses and spectacles of cognitive and social science.

(Original) Elephant Paints Self Portrait

Elephant Painting An Elephant

Nor might we attribute greater brain complexity to the formation of human consciousness - though some would ask whether complex brains produce a qualitative difference between humans and the animals. Not many years ago (say the 18th century and thereabouts) there was the silly notion of the "animality" of the human species. That is, the idea for instance, that the white male was less "animal" than the white female. Or even, the white race was less close to the animals than other non-white races. And because of these ignorant ideas religious oppression and slavery raged on, poverty ran rampant, and people died for lack of compassion, while kings and queens dined upon the fatted calf, safe and warm within their castles of perdition, and the jolly man in the street died for lack of bread and care.

And from these early accounts, if not by our very own accounts today that are as similarly marked off by pestilence and pride, warfare and inhumanity, we must ask "Who is the more naked? Is it man or is it beast?" Modern studies in sociology have shown that the dignified, well manner human becomes too easily a beast when his environment is compressed within shared closeness, tight spaces, and want of resources. How many times have we walked through an eager, pressing, crowd to discover mothers' with baby carriages, or wheelchair-bound loved ones, callously stepped upon, disdainfully pushed away, or cussed aloud for being in the way? Or, in the supreme examples of oppressive governments ruthless killing fellow human beings which they consider as mere animals in acts of hedonistic butchery and genocidal rage? Certainly the thin veneer of civilization is too quickly stripped away from man's shoulders of dignity to leave our species much less godly in its inhuman treatment of one another when thrust into the very modes of survival. One could also cite numerous books about lifeboat ethics, or of a lot of highly civilized, castaway, British boys read of in Lord of the Flies. Or even Elie Wiesel's titled book Night with its resultant horrors from German oppression:

"Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, at the height of the Holocaust and toward the end of the Second World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father-child relationship as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver. "If only I could get rid of this dead weight ... Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever." In Night, everything is inverted, every value destroyed. "Here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends," a Kapo tells him. "Everyone lives and dies for himself alone."^[1] - Wikipedia

From these many apt illustrations we must then ask, "How unique, or how glorious, is man, when he breaks past his civilized veneer and socialization to become more animal-like and less human? Or more madman like than sane?" Even so, biological psychology might observe at man's eating habits or infidelities from a learned, evolutionary, environment where there were few sustaining resources held against the competitive demand of species survival. But then again, we must also add to these pictures the pithy ideas of self-awareness, empathy, bonding, and relationships while always asking ourselves whether we have any level of choice, ability, or human agency (as a subject) in the manner in which we might cognitively decide our future, if at all. Or if all has result from sheer biologic mechanism as determined by brute survival or instinct? And if so, whether we have any responsibility towards one another regarding the megalomanic futures we might envision for ourselves and our planet?

So then, what are the keys to being human? Are they wonderment? Speculation? Dreaming? Is it a capacity for continuing human development through evolutionary evolvement? Hence, Erik Erikson's "Eight Stages of Human Development." Or, Jean Piaget's "Scale of Intelligence" from simple to complex. Or even, Lawrence Kohlberg's "Stages of Moral Development." Each asking questions like what challenges the human capacity for social learning? Why do grooming techniques matter between us? Or that of dress and deportment? Or whether it is possible to create rich environments for growth and development against the devolving scales of warfare (PTSD), tolerated poverty and malnourishment. Which is a good question to ask because from studies of stricken, malnourished children caught in oppressive conditions, or adults enduring the same in poverty or within war zones, psycho-sociological neuro-studies have shown how shock and stress can greatly degrade the human system backwards away from any kind of progressive cognitive development across many, if not most, of the human developmental life stages. Begging the question just what is civilization, or what might we expect in the development of future civilizations, if basic humanitarian needs are not met or exceeded? And what might be expected within the evolutionary progress of the human species given these too frequent, and broad experiences, across mankind?

But say some, technology is what distinguishes man from beast! And yet scientific studies have shown again just how misinformed this reasoning can be, misunderstanding at best, that technology is always neutral to the progress of human development. That technology can as easily de-personalize humanity as it can uplift (or re-personalize) humanity. Consider science's discovery of the atom and how quickly it was used to develop the atomic bomb so much more quickly than it was used to create energy-efficient atomic power plants. The one usage kills and devastates whole biotic ecologies while the other provides warmth and light in the simplest of biomes. And thus, technology as a "tool" can be used either for good, or for ill, and is not a distinguisher of man from beast except in its novelty and complexity.

The Cognitive Science of Neurology

So when we come to Philip Clayton's multi-layered chapter on the neurosciences - neurophysiology, neuroimmunology, neurochemistry, neuropharmacology, or even neuropsychology - he works necessarily through several positions that science has attempted in creating a physical explanation of the human conscience through strict material reductionism (eliminativism), a modified version of it (epiphenomenalism), and a fuller metaphysical explanation of human consciousness (emergent systems perspective).

1 - Eliminativism which reduces all to mere biological signal and gene without any regard to the interconnectedness of the total organism. Hence there is no such thing as thoughts or wishes, yearnings or obligations. Our entire experience deceives us, and all the world "outside" is but illusion... or so say popular philosophers like Daniel Dennett. "There is no self. There is no such thing as listening and conversation. That all is reduced to whatever neurons travel into the head via the optic nerve or auditory canal as mechanistic signal." Strict physiological brain functioning must not be otherwise be explained:

"Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.^[1] Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.^[2]

"Eliminativism stands in opposition to reductive materialism, which argues that a mental state is well defined, and that further research will result in a more detailed, but not different understanding.^[3] An intermediate position is revisionary materialism, which will often argue that the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena - with some changes to the common sense concept." - Wikipedia

2 - Epiphenomenalism is the idea that mental experiences and feelings do exist... so long as they don't do anything. Hence, if a quality arises out of a system but does not in turn influence that system, it is known as an epiphenomena (or quasi-phenomena). This cognitive approach would be yet another explanation of the physical processes of consciousness.

"Epiphenomenalism is the theory in philosophy of mind that mental phenomena are caused by physical processes in the brain or that both are effects of a common cause, as opposed to mental phenomena driving the physical mechanics of the brain. The impression that thoughts, feelings, or sensations cause physical effects, is therefore to be understood as illusory to some extent. For example, it is not the feeling of fear that produces an increase in heart beat, both are symptomatic of a common physiological origin, possibly in response to a legitimate external threat."^[1]    - Wikipedia

Making Sense of it All

As can be seen from the too-shortened paragraphs above, the nub of the question is whether we, as humans, are bundles of neurons to the nth degree, or if our sense of our conscious being - our values, hopes, dreams, expectations, and so forth, might have any greater "physicality" beyond the mere wiring in our heads.

Simplistically I think it is just that... the wiring in our heads that God has created through the elongated process of evolution which has provided for a more elaborate, more developed superstructure of the human being so that the whole becomes greater than its parts. As such, our mental network (or wiring, as I called it) and its interconnectedness has created a "non-physical" consciousness giving to us our sense of self beyond mere neurons and signal.

3 - Emergent Systems Perspective. The newest buzzword amongst evolutionary scientists - known as the "emergent systems perspective" has created not only a souped-up version of the connectedness between micro- and mega- evolutionary biospheres, but always has leant deep implications for the explanation of our human brain's self-awareness or consciousness (cf. Clayton, pp 94-96, 109ff). The embedding of systems-within-systems works not only for the evolutionary development of life (cf, the recent article on "Why All the Fuss over Earth's Remarkable Cambrian Explosion?) but is a pattern established within the development of the brain itself within animals and within humans.

And from this developmental pathway comes the idea of human agency as culpable and responsible for making sense of his/her environment as before the Creator God Himself in loving display of grace and provision. Moreover, society itself can detect its own agency collectively, and when done correctly is seen in the outcomes of more people being able to eat, reproduce, and safely survive their environment.  These socially evolved factors are known as "value-blooms" that are either reinforced via success, and may appear through the cultural preferencing of ideology, religion, or the various forms of social organization and activity (what are known as human culture and heritage, family values, and social distinctions).

The greater idea here for the Christian believer is that within the very process of evolution itself, God has worked within the physical wiring of humanity its sense of self, of an awareness of a Being greater than itself - an awareness that is both spiritual and religious. And when we get together in our common social groupings it feels "natural" to us to talk about God and spirituality, even as it feels unnatural to us not do the same. It is all due to the evolutionary wiring within.

Conclusion - A Theology of Wholeness

Hebrew, "Shalom"

And lastly, in the collection or combination of all these things - from emergent systems to religious metaphysics - the image of God has become implanted within us. And more than that, God's very heart and divine passion has become implanted within our breast. Man has not merely been made in the image of God but he was made to enact God's image whereby God's Imago Dei becomes our Missio Dei. That is, God's image becomes our self-same passion, and thus, it becomes our mission. An image that is not simply something we have or possess but something we must enact, or do, in order to fulfill our divine imaging. We must enact goodness and blessing, love and hope, goodwill and cheer, in confidence and trust against a creation broken by sin of God's Imago Dei. And ripped away from God's Missio Dei.

When (evolutionary) human conscience was birthed (however and wherever that came to be in evolutionary history as we have here tried to describe in this article) so became man's awareness of his fallenness and apartness from his God (see my erstwhile theologic article, How God Created by Evolution: A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development). Our sense of needing God's re-creation is a shared sense by all of humanity. And it is a thing that this earth requires in itself if we are to live on in our present state of human existence. In essence, even as sin has broken our relationship with God, self, others, and creation (Man's 4 Stages of Brokenness and Healing), even so God's Spirit re-creation brings reclamation and healing to God Himself, even as it brings well-being to ourselves, to our community of neighbors, and to this earth's polluted and dis-connected ecology (sic, the beneficial entanglement of biotic environments). This then becomes a theology of wholeness and completeness, of divine presence and majesty, of necessity and arrangement.

Consequently death doesn't define us even as life itself does define us. We have been invited into God's image to become inseparably identified with His mission as Life-giver. This is where Christian anthropology meets Christian eschatology; and human distinctiveness becomes nested within God's beautiful re-creation of life giving to Christian science the theology and teleology that it seeks. And hence, religion is not uniquely evil, nor faith fundamentally flawed, but are uniquely re-imagined through God's ever-present re-creation and inspiration involving morality, ethics, ecology and religion. We do not live in a valueless, meaningless universe but in a universe requiring our hospital engagement to its atheistic separation from itself. Even as it requires divine contingency and guidance lest we become inseparable to this purposefully decreed divine mandate by God to nature and man. We hear it. We see it. We feel it. Let us now act on it. Letting God's imago dei become our mission dei.

R.E. Slater

October 4, 2013
edited October 5, 2013

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

Index - Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

Index to Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

Chatbot and I Discuss Whether a Christian "Can Lose Their Salvation?"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Their Separate Views & Administration of the Church"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Differing Ideas on Justification & Sanctification"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Just What Kind of Sovereignty Does Grace and Freedom Bring?"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "God's Grace: How Calvin and Wesley Differ"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Sovereignty v. Freedom"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Thinking and Living: Sovereignty v. Grace"

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "How do We Interpret the Bible?"

Why Should the Christian Believe and Live Like John Wesley?

Pushing up DAISY: Arminianism in Brief

Calvinism and TULIP

DAISYs, TULIPs and Open Theism 

Index to past articles on "Calvinism v. Arminianism" 

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Sovereignty v. Freedom"

The Big One in Calvin vs. Wesley

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/04/the-big-one-in-calvin-vs-wesley/

 

by Scot McKnight

Oct 4, 2013

Comments 

Though Don Thorsen does not say so, his study of “Humanity: More Freedom than Predestination” contains some ideas that may be the big difference between Calvin and Wesley (Calvin vs Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice). Maybe we can reduce it to this: Calvin thinks Wesley trivializes the sovereignty of God while Arminians think Calvin trivializes freedom. Let’s explore this topic through Don Thorsen’s chapter.

 

What do you think is the biggest difference between Calvin and Wesley?

 

Both Calvin and Wesley believe all humans are made in God’s image, and are fallen in Adam. There is then depravity on both sides — and it seems to me both see the fall as extensive more than intensive, that is, affecting the whole of each human more than total corruption. Notably, Calvin posits divine providence and intention behind the fall without diminishing human responsibility. God determined it; humans are responsible; Christians are to accept this. As early as 1551 in Geneva some thought Calvin implicated God as the author of evil, but Calvin banned his opponents from the city.

 

Wesley, notably again, believed God voluntarily chose to limit his sovereignty by granting humans (what he called) “free grace” or what we might call human freedom or free will. “Wesley thought that Calvin could not avoid making God ultimately responsible for evil” (33). I agree that Calvin’s logic of holding two together and contending that we are not to ask or know how they relate is not compelling. If God determined it — meticulous providence or meticulous sovereignty — and humans could not resist it, then it is not free or compatible. Calvin puts it this way: “God wills that humans want to act the way they are foreordained to act” (34).

 

Wesley did not think humans could do anything to earn redemption; everything good done is by the grace of God. In essence, Wesley follows a large bloc of the Christian tradition in arguing for a measured human freedom by grace in the power of the Spirit.

 

Hence, Calvin’s (at least later in his career) double predestination is detested by Wesley. Calvin diminishes the freedom of God’s sovereignty and God’s love and goodness… etc. So for him [Wesley] election is connected to divine foreknowledge, but what humans choose to do in that foreknowledge is prompted by God’s prevenient gift of grace. That grace, then, is the grace of human freedom to choose. God’s predestination is more connected to God’s general will*. He asked, “How can the Judge of all the earth consign them [the damned] to everlasting fire, for what was in effect his own act and deed?” (38). That is the difference.

 

Wesley preferred the expression of “free grace” over “free will.” It was God’s grace to give humans freedom.

 

Thorsen finishes with a discussion of monergism vs. synergism: [respectively,} "one divine will determining all" vs. "a divine human cooperative," though these are not terms from either Calvin or Wesley [but from later systematic theologians - res].

 

 

* * * * * *

 

*Addendum

 

Perhaps this might help... Wesleyanism (or Arminianism) does invokes God's foreknowledge as an ontological reality, otherwise the process of redemption would not have been planned even as creation was being planned. This would make of God a blundering builder and architect having to implement Plan B of Redemption after discovering sin to have ruined His Plan A of original creation. So, in terms of ontological reality, God did both plan for, purposed, and foreknew, His involvement in creational redemption.

 

But what was not decreed by God is His exacted foreknowledge upon His indeterminate creation and free-willed mankind. Even as sin reduces man's freedom, so by divine fiat of redemption would God purposely enhance man's freedom leaving to both creation and humanity an open future. A future as much open to sin and destruction as it is to holiness and redemption. Though God foreknows His plans for redemption He leaves it open to ourselves to submit to His plans. But not without the provision of His Spirit who woos all towards God's will - and not just some (elect) as Calvinism would teach. To the Arminian, the "elect of God" are those men and women who obey God's call of redemption - not by God's foreknowledge, but by their own Spirit-driven calling founded upon God's (prevenient) grace.

 

- R.E. Slater

continue to Index of Articles -

 

Index to past articles on Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

 

 

 

 

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "Thinking and Living: Sovereignty v. Grace"

Calvinist in Thinking, Wesleyan in Living

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/09/27/calvinist-in-thinking-wesleyan-in-living/

 

by Scot McKnight

Sep 27, 2013

Comment 

Don Thorsen, observing over his years many of his Reformed friends, has concluded this: “Although they claimed to be Calvinist, they lived more like Wesley.” Which leads Don to say this: “Although John Calvin profoundly influenced the development of Christianity, John Wesley did a better job than Calvin of conceptualizing and promoting Christian beliefs, values, and practices as described in the Bible and as lived by Protestant Christians.”

 

This is just the opening to Don Thorsen, Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing the Belief in Line with Practice, and no one less than Roger Olson has said this book may have a “versus” in the title but it is clearly an irenic book [("tending to promote peace or reconciliation; peaceful or conciliatory" - Webster's dictionary)].

 

I agree. So join me in this discussion, and I hope this series will inspire Calvinists to read some Wesley and Wesleyans to read some Calvin.

 

Thorsen’s intent is not to criticize so much as to compare and evaluate. Wesley agreed with Calvin on most topics, most notably on justification. So, as Don says it, don’t expect a fight or to fight. His big idea is that Wesley provides a better understanding of Christianity and the Christian life in practice than Calvin does in theory. Wesley’s theology is a lived theology while Calvin’s, so he’s arguing, was not so much so.

 

Put differently, the Christian life is not so easily susceptible to a system, which was Calvin’s soup du jour or at least his daily bread. (SMcK: I give an example. I’ve been hearing for a few years on the part of those advocating gospel-drenched and grace-shaped living that we should not preach the Sermon on the Mount or the commands of the Bible or the imperatives of the letters. That’s a theology not susceptible to being shaped by the way of Jesus, or how the apostles themselves understood how to teach the Christian life.)

 

Thorsen then proposes a Wesleyan acrostic to counter the Calvinist acrostic TULIP:

 

T- Total Depravity

U - Unconditional Election

L - Limited Atonement

I - Irresistible Grace

P - Perseverance of the Saints

 

Wesleyanism is ACURA:

 

A - All are sinful

C - Conditional election

U - Unlimited atonement

R - Resistible grace

A - Assurance of salvation.

 

OtherWesleyans like the anacronym DAISY:

 

D - Depravity of all

A - Atonement for all

I  -  Inclusion of all

S - Salvation as gift to all

Y - You, or anyone, may accept or reject

 

*cf., DAISYs, TULIPs and Open Theism, by R.E. Slater

 

 

On God: Thorsen’s main idea is that Wesley talked more about God’s love and not as much about sovereignty, while Calvin was more sovereignty and less on the love of God.

 

Calvin’s emphases are majesty, sovereignty, power, providence … Calvin himself: “To sum up, since God’s will is said to be the cause of all things, I have made his providence the determinative principle for all human plans and works… ” (3). Reason cannot comprehend God’s ways and so humility is central.

 

Wesley, too, believed in God’s sovereignty. But his approach was not so much through power but through holiness and God’s relationship with humans, a relationship noted by love. And that shaped his view of sovereignty so that the human will is not excluded. As such, God voluntarily restricted his divine power.

 

Thorsen also discusses semi-Pelagianism and semi-Augustinianism, [which is] found in Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican thinking. That is, God’s sovereignty is not diminished by empowering humans with freedom.

 

But the big one was that Wesley focused more on God’s love and he grew impatient with his Calvinist critics for not emphasizing God’s love enough. The message of the Bible is more about God’s love than God’s power. Yes, Calvin talks about it but not as much as Wesley. The emphasis is Thorsen’s point.

 

It is a distinctive difference between Calvin and Wesley, even [as it is] today between Wesleyans and Calvinists.  Wesley even called Calvin’s double predestination idea, because of the view of God implicit in it, a “doctrine of blasphemy” (13). It makes God “more cruel, more false, and unjust than the devil” (13).

 

He quotes Schaff, a Reformed theologian, saying Calvin’s system is Augustinian and is a “theology of Divine sovereignty rather than Divine love” (15).

continue to Index of Articles -

 

Index to past articles on Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley - "How do We Interpret the Bible?"

The Bible: What Kind of Book?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/02/the-bible-what-kind-of-book/

 

by Scot McKnight

with additions by R.E. Slater

Oct 2, 2013

Comments 

What we think of Scripture can be mapped on a spectrum from God to humanity, from a divine product to a human product, from God-inspired truth to human perception of God’s ways in this world. That spectrum, though, gets complicated: Do we read it in conjunction with other elements — tradition, reason, experience — or are we to suspend those three elements to get back to the Text Itself?

 

John Calvin and John Wesley differed on Scripture, not on its inspiration (a divinely-produced Book) or its authority (it stands over all humans and their endeavors), but on how that Bible is to be read and interpreted says Don Thorsen in his exceptional book Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice.  And Don raises another issue that complicates our spectrum: What you think about the Bible can be measured by how often you read it. You may say it is inspired, etc, but if you read it once a week you are saying you don’t need it that often. If you need it daily you may be confessing all you need to confess.

 

So, Calvin on the Bible: It is inspired by the Spirit and its authority is confirmed by the witness of the same Spirit, and here Calvin is pressing his view against the standard Catholic appropriation of traditions. For Calvin Scripture is not confirmed or authorized by the church. The church emerges from Scripture not Scripture from the church. Human reason is sufficient for understanding Scripture. Calvin was proficient as an interpreter. His focus was the natural sense of the text. He opposed fanatical and idiosyncratic interpretations. Scripture is sufficient, and the Spirit does not lead us beyond the Bible.

 

Calvin was a sola scriptura guy (20-21). He was a pupil of Scripture and wanted theology and truth all to be formed by the Bible. He was not literalistic or wooden [(more probably verse-by-verse set within historical context and only then verified by the Church Fathers - res]); he was “remarkably sophisticated” (21). His approach was, however, not the Bible alone — he was in touch with history and with the great tradition of the church; he didn’t want to create something new but reestablish the old. He oversaw the rise of Reformed Confessions.

 

Wesley differs a bit, but he affirms with Calvin the inspiration, authority and truthfulness of Scripture. Like Calvin he was a lover of the Bible. He said he was a “Man of one book.” The Spirit was the guide but Scripture the rule. Again, he was not simplistically a man of one book (as many like to claim for themselves, masking laziness and ignorance) but was alert to history and theological discussions. He belonged to the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England.

 

So here is a difference: the Anglicans dipped far more often than Calvin in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the church. Scripture was primary but tradition was important. Anglicans discerned truth through the primacy of Scripture along with reason and tradition. So Wesley was in the via media tradition of the Anglicans. For him “sola Scriptura” and church tradition were not at odds. He valued the great tradition but the Reformation over the Catholic tradition, and English Reformation over Continental. And from historic authorities and reason. So we have the classic form of Wesley’s quadrilateral (a term he did not use): Scripture, tradition, experience and reason.

 

Reason was the art of good sense. His sense of “experience” is the “religion of the heart” or “experimental religion.”  (I do wonder how substantively this differs from Calvin’s "testimony of the Spirit.") Regardless, this emphasis on experience marks revivalism today — current evangelicalism — as having a deep root in Wesleyan thinking. This is about experiencing God, and salvation in faith and hope, but especially also love. His perception of experimental religion then was broader and more expansive than Calvin’s more confirmation of the truth of Scripture view [(plus Apostolic Fathers - res)].

 

So Thorsen sees a difference in that Calvin’s view is more sola or solitary while for Wesley Scripture is primary [(but with the additional resources of Church theologic history, experience, and reason, to provide stability over personal interpretation and errant solitary views - res)].

 

Lastly, Calvin’s view of Scripture led to knowing the truth while Wesley’s tended more toward a living faith.

continue to Index of Articles -

 

Index to past articles on Calvinism v. Wesleyanism