Changing the culture
James Davison Hunter, the University of Virginia social theorist known for his books on the culture wars, has written a new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford). It questions, to put it mildly, the ways that many Christians think about changing the culture. I haven’t read the book, but this brief summary and interview with Hunter from the May issue of Christianity Today are certainly thought provoking: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/may/16.33.html
In Hunter’s intellectual landscape, evangelical Protestant Christianity has always loomed larger than Catholic Christianity, so Catholics reading this have to make some adjustments. His views also seem to reflect the common assumptions of (a) those of us burdened with a good bit of academic social theory, and (b) those of us situated in universities or other outposts of elite culture. Finally, I’m uncertain, as were a number of his Christianity Today readers, about what concretely he means by some terms. For all that, this is a stimulating interview, both altogether and in its parts.
“The point is not to change the world but to serve faithfully in our relationships, tasks and spheres of social influence.”
If we serve faithfully in our relationships, tasks and spheres of social influence, we can change the World. We are here to help each other get to Heaven.
“How is it that American public life is so profoundly secular when 85 percent of the population professes to be Christian?”
This statement/question by Hunter seems to me to be incredibly naive. If 85% of the population were truly Christian there would be no doubt that there would be a prodigious influence. More accurate is Chesterton’s statement that Christianity has not been tried. Most of the 85% who claim to be Christian use Christianity for political or personal gain.
Hunter, of course, raises a most pertinent point about the influence of Christianity which should be a corrective for all those leaders who are more into politics and empire than solid discipleship. Attending public prayer meetings and the Alfred E Smith annual dinner is de rigeur for most leaders of Christianity. These events are more symbols of hypocrisy rather than proclamations of faith.
More from Hunter: “When Christians turn to law, public policy, and politics as the last resort, they have essentially given up on a desire to persuade their opponents. They want the patronage of the state and its coercive power to rule the day. What makes this problematic, in my view, is that the dominant public witness of the church is political, rooted in narratives of injury and discourses of negation. …….Whenever Christian churches and organizations partake in the will to power, they partake in the very thing they decry in society.”
This seems to be a problem since the fourth century. Amazing that there really is little influence from the churches of Chrisitanity. Most of the time we are talking about the State and very little about the Church does. Part of it is that we focus less on the “other Catholic Church” which Kristoff mentions. But our leadership lacks visions for sure. When there is no vision the people join other organizations not approved by the church to give witness to their Christianity.
For Nietzsche at least, the will to power is not the result of ressentiment (as Hunter suggests it is); rather, ressentiment is the form the will to power takes among the inferior. This is a small point, perhaps, but I found a lot of similar imprecision in Hunter’s remarks: an easy appropriation of terms that don’t quite fit his theory. (For Nietzsche, there is no escape from the will to power; for the sociologists on whose work Hunter appears to draw for his idea of cultural infrastructure, there is no escape from the dynamics of power.) And some of what Hunter presents as a conceptual difference seems, to me at least, mostly verbal. So, for example, at the end of the interview he insists on the distinction between the public and the political — and surely there is such a distinction, and surely he’s right to say it’s a distinction that’s been largely forgotten in our hyper-politicized culture — but this analysis seems to lead him to conclusions not very different from those of Stanley Hauerwas, whom he has just finished belaboring, along with Jim Wallis and James Dobson, for libido dominandi.
I believe there is a strain of alienation from mainstream culture that is more pronounced in Evangelical Christianity than in the American brand of Catholicism. I’m sure Hunter’s point about the infrastructure of cultural influence is astute, but his suggestion that Jews and gays wield disproportionate influence over that infrastructure… is troubling, particularly if it suggests that Jews and gays are somehow “crowding out” Christians from pulling the levers of cultural influence.
Matthew, regarding your last comment, Love is not possessive nor is it coercive, which is also why Mr.Hunter is mistaken when he claims that God is the author of History. To deny our free will, is to deny that we participate in our own destiny. I’m with Chesterton.
I’m with you, Nancy, all except for the “regarding your last comment” part.
Any interest I had in this book ended with the claim that God is the author of history.
Speaking as somebody certainly not at the outposts of elite culture but simply someone trying to take seriously the preferential option for the poor, there were elements of his analysis that I both agreed and disagreed with.
On the question of power and where it is exercised, his example of the civil rights movement that didn’t gain traction until white, middle class elites offered support is true from a political point of view but certainly is not true from a public point of view. It was precisely people on the fringes, people not at the outposts of elite culture who suffered the indignities and are the nameless, faceless people who really inspired the movement and not the elites who came afterwards. The elites should never, ever forget that.
The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
As for the life of the Spirit, it is mysterious and is an individual call. Moses was a shepherd. Gautauma spent a lot of time alone and in poverty. Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and frequently went to a lonely place to pray. Mohammed received his first revelation alone in a cave.
These and many others were called and sent by a voice not their own and if any of them did come from the outposts of elite culture like Moses and Gautama the quickly eschewed it.
That is the important lesson of radical faith, the faith that does move mountains and change cultures.
Catholics reading this have to make some adjustments.
A bit of an understatement, I think. Throughout the interview, I see tensions that are characteristically Evangelical, but go back at least to Roger Williams, a 16th century predecessor. Is there a way to resolve the tensions between the heartland and the elite, when Williams left Cambridge in England, then Cambridge in Massachusetts, railing against the elites at those places? It is more deeply entrenched than Hunter allows.
Compare that to Catholicism. Before becoming Pope, Ratzinger made some comments about how Christianity is always “countercultural”, adopting some of the same kind of rhetoric as Evangelicals. But context changes the tone. Was Innocent III countercultural? Could the Popes place themselves on the periphery? They always claimed the center, and at times even were the center.
That is the difficulty that Hunter is getting at, though in very Evangelical terms. If you are successful with anti-elite message, then you by definition become the elite, and your message turns to bite you. Sometimes it gets displaced into a nostalgia — oh for the days when this when a Christian nation, when we just had to fight for religious freedom. Sometimes it becomes utopian foolishness. These problems are part of what Catholic reverence for Tradition seeks to avoid, though not always successfully.
All in all the book is worthy of study. I like the way he takes on leaders of the right and left. Both have severe shortcomings. The following statement by Hunter makes such great sense:
“There are two tasks for a post-political witness. First, we must disaggregate the life of the church and the life of the nation. Second, we must renew a distinction between the public and the political.
What would a post-political gesture look like in the pro-life movement? Borrowing an example from a friend, imagine ten thousand families signing a petition in Illinois that declares they will adopt a child of any ethnic background and physical capability. If they wanted to do something spectacular, they could go to city hall for a press conference, announcing that in the state of Illinois there are no unwanted children. That would be a public—but not political—act. Such an act leads with compassion rather than coercion.”
The truth that religious leaders try to put into law what they cannot convince their followers of is spot on and an indictment of spiritual leaders who make headlines but have no substance.
” oh for the days when this when a Christian nation, when we just had to fight for religious freedom.”
Jim McK –
But was the American Revolution specifically about a general freedom of religion? The Constitution didn’t originally guarantee it, and the First Amendment just forbid the establishment of a state religion. So there’s some nostalgia there too, I suspect. (Not that you were actually there :-)
I agree with Hunter that a culture is manifested in its art, but also in its lack of art. One of the great differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, I think, is the role that church art used to play both in manifesting the Faith and in teaching it. The Catholic Church, when it was very rich, supported the arts even lavishly at times. The Protestants didn’t/don’t.
But now the Church does not have the vast material holdings it had in the past to support artistic projects, whether the plastic arts or music, plus there are now few Catholic patrons of the arts among the monied classes, and my artists friends tell me that ordinary Catholics don’t seem to realize that artists deserve a living wage. The result is that Catholic art (except for the work of some fine literary artists) is not what it once was. I suspect this is one of the reasons membership in the Church is diminishing — aesthetically the Church is not what used to be.
Another part of that problem, I think, is that the arts generally, except for literature and movies, have become pretty well dissociated from the most serious problems and issues — the existential ones — of people lives. Also, for the longest time beauty was even considered irrelevant in the plastic arts, and for some artists *the* goal of the arts was to destroy the values of the past while touting some abstract “freedom” by which they really meant license. Such nonsense. But I’ve read that beauty is making a comeback. We’ll see. The culture will be all the better for it.
And so if you read the blogs and comments on most political stories, it is clear our culture has become one of selfish me-first attitudes and a complete ‘blame the victim’ approach to economic and social problems. We have morphed into a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites who have lost our collective conscience and sympathy for anyone who suffers misfortune. The churches themselves remain silent about the abandonment of social programs and even preach a gospel of prosperity based on maximizing one’s personal frugality and savings. Meanwhile as our fellow citizens starve, remain uneducated, and simply desire a chance to move forward from their poverty, we continue to beat down, put down, and let down anyone who does not measure up to our standards of righteousness. We ourselves need reforming.
Count me among those who has no problem with the claim that God is the author of history; if not, we’re all scr**ed. Read the book of Revelation, or Augustine’s City of God.
But I do agree Matthew Boudway in being somewhat unimpressed by Hunter’s conceptual acuity. Aside from his misuse of Nietzsche (you really can’t use Nietzsche’s account of ressentiment without buying something like his account of the will to power), he has the annoying habit of saying things like “history tells us.” He (willfully?) ignores the fact that “history” has to be narrated, and how it is narrated has a lot to do with what it tells us, particularly when it comes to something more than mere data — like the theory of culture that he propounds. Of course, this seeming lack of acuity might simply be a rhetorical ploy of some sort.
With unimpeachable texts like the book of Revelation or the City of God to support the idea, perhaps I should reconsider my opposition to the claim that God is the author of history. Now, if only I could figure out what it means (since clearly it is not meant literally when affirmed by the freedom loving contributors at dotCommonweal!).
I have looked through the piece and I have the sense that the book certainly needs a careful reading and may well deserve one. I also note that I have little sense of the views of the people with who the author chiefly disagrees.
As for God being “author of history” it would seem to me foolish, if one is a Christian, to deny that nothing happens unless God permits it to happen.
I’m back from a few days in tucumcari for a State Senior Advisory Council meeting.
The perspective is (if we want to move forward) to genuinely change the way business has been done and deeply developing public/private partnerships that stress accountability.
This within the frame of diminishing resources in both the public and private sphere.
I bring all that up because I think Hunter is correct in emphasizing a movement away from power driven political approaches and the individualism that has continually moved away from comon good service.
Still, the answers will not be easy to come by in the current climate and long range change will probably only be possible.
As to religion, the notion of exercising power in the public square instead of witness is something that should be driven home, as hard as possible, to our hierachical leaders.
`”We have morphed into a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites who have lost our collective conscience and sympathy for anyone who suffers misfortune. ”
Mike Evans –
Five years ago I might have agreed with you, but I’m from New Orleans, and Katrina convinced me that most people are very much empathetic with people other people’s suffering. The response of ordinary people to our plight was over-whelming, and the response included the quick and generous response of Congress with tons of money. (Let’s ignore FEMA for the moment.) Many people still spend their vacations coming to help with the houses. Now with the oil spill it is happening again — people do care. Do not become cynical!
So why do we seem so indifferent at times? I think it’s because our poor educational system does not develop kids’ imaginations to the extent needed. They, and we, need to be able to visualize what is happening and remember what is needed to solve problems. Without a store of re-combinable images, including memories, we have no raw materials to think about problems and create solutions. The problems essentially disappear from consciousness. This is one of the main reasons why learning history and reading novels and other lit are so important.
(Don’t start me on education and imagination. I’d best shut up now.)
Having been presented with retorts claiming both foolishness in questioning that God is the author of history and a failure to realize that we would be scr**ed if it were otherwise, I would be truly greatful if some dotCommonwealer with powers greater than mine (although powers certainly still authored by God) would open a thread on what it means to say that God is the author of history. I think that those who gather here would find it an enjoyable and thought-provoking thread. I make this request so as avoid any further burdening of the discussion of Prof. Hunter’s ideas with a sidebar discussion of God and history.
Thanks.
Joe,
If Revelation and Augustine don’t cut it, how about MLK: “When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
When I say that if God is not the author of history then we’re all scr**ed, I mean something like what MLK said.
Prof. Bauerschmidt: I thought as much. For its worth, I love that quote and was a little dismayed to discover one year that it exists word for word in a Howard Thurman essay of the early 50s. Thurman, who was at Howard Divinity School, was one of King’s spiritual gurus. I guess King borrowed it. But it has gotten much more play out of King than it has out of Thurman.
However, even if the arc bends toward justice, I think it remains possible to blow up the whole works on our planet (and thus never see the fruits of this moral gravity) such that the arc’s bend will have to become visible on some other planet.
A good novelist creates characters and situations but the characters, once created, may take on lives of their own, and yet nothing happens in the novel unless the author allows it. In some such way God may be thought of as the author of history.
Joe Gannon,
Fritz clarified and you went back to Augustine. Revelation has it right when it proclaims that God will make all things new. But when we state that God caused the evil or willed it we devolve back into a God who can be problematic. We hope for a rectification from our merciful God. But to say he willed the holocaust and the crusades is an assumption that presumptuos philosophers might venture into without basis. And Augustine was perhaps the most presumptuous or at least future generations quote him as gospel even though he made serious errors. Paul describes it beautifully when he points out that where sin abounded, grace superabounds. Our finite minds can only leave it at that.
F.C., I am no Nietzsche expert, but it appears to me that one cannot buy Nietzsche’s “will to power”, without buying Nietzche’s denial of free will. Be not afraid, however, for the History of Man exists in communion with Salvation History. I am sure that St.Augustine and Revelation affirm that all is ordained for the Salvation of Man, and through Prayer, Repentance, and Conversion, we draw closer to Perfection. God is the author of Life, and those who walk in The Spirit choose Life as His Light shines through those who Love Him.
and… what Matthew said, but not just to annoy you:-)
Bill
It is a matter of logic that if God created the universe out of nothing, then no action of event can happen in the universe unless he permits it. If God did not permit the holocaust, then it would not have happened. I suspect that Augustine would agree. The mystery is why does God permit such evil. I agree, if that is your point, that it is presumptuous to offer explanations for evil. But we can certainly suppose that God has his reasons. If Augustine agrees, so much the better.
To be clear, to say that God permits evil to exist, is not to say that God causes evil or wills evil. If God were evil, Love would not exist. Love exists. God is Love. Love is not coercive, nor is it possessive. God allows for free-will in order that we can choose to Love Him. At the end of The Day, God knows The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph over all evil and only Love will remain.
The problem of evil is more than asking how a just God can *permit* evil. There are deeper metaphysical questions. One is that God *preserves* His creatures in our being, He makes us *persist*. Specifically he has made man the kind of being which is tempted to do moral evil and to use physical and emotional evil to pursue our own ends. Further, he has made His other conscious but non-willing creatures to suffer injustices from their fellow creatures. These ruled-by-instincts creatures necessarily pursue and eat each other. Unless you say that God didn’t really plan, didn’t really choose His creatures to be as they nastily are, the metaphysical problems remain.
How to cope with this? Not by denial of the problems. Jahweh Himself rewards Job because he faced his own plight squarely: God certainly seems to have been unjust to him. Jahweh responds to Job’s questioning by condemning Job’s friends for trying to blame Job himself for the injustices. But Jahweh does not tell Job the answer — He is silent as to how He remains a just God in spite of the evils He has chosen to put into His creation.
It has always seemed to me that the fact that Jesus chose to accept the Crucifixion will someday be part of God’s eventual explanation to us. (I continue to hope for some explanation.) The Crucifixion certainly makes God seem somewhat less unjust, in that He Himself chose to suffer in order to put creation right, not just for man but for all suffering creatures. But that doesn’t explain how the creation of agony or the creation of the mere capacity for agony can be just.
I don’t doubt that theology has still more to tell us. But it’s the worst of problems philosophically. When Aquinas asks the question in de Veritate how a just God can cause the suffering of innocents, he leaves a blank page in answer! Later in that work he approaches the problem again and comes up with something, but it’s not a satisfactory answer, at least not to me..
I wish Benedict would give the question some of his serious attention. Like Aquinas he seems an extremely kindly man, if a naive one. (I wonder if the scandal is giving him some insight into all the related questions about evil, insight he would not have had otherwise. I can’t help but hope so.)
I don’t turn into a skeptic, however. There is a counter-balance to the fact of injustices: beauty and extreme, even miraculous kindness (most especially the Crucifixion — that Christ would choose to suffer it for our sake). These facts too are unexplainable except there be a loving God.
Ann
I think we are better off if Benedict does not pronounce on this topic, lest his views as a theologian be presented as a teaching of the Magisterium.
Prof. G. –
I find that the Pope’s writings on the most basic issues such as charity and hope, and some of his simple Wednesday homilies have been very, very valuable. I would hope that his thinking on the problem of evil would be too. Obviously, I don’t know much theology, but I have found the Old Testament more helpful with this issue.
Which great Catholic theologians have met it head on? (The present president of the American Catholic Theological Association even thinks it’s sinful to try to solve it!) The Buddhists too seem to run away from it, while the Hindus don’t seem to be bothered by it so much as the rationalist secular Westerners do.
We have a problem with evil when we posit that God causes evil. Humans cause evil. All is well that ends well. So God justifys the just and makes all things right at the end. Jesus gave the example which fortifys the mercy of God who did not spare Jesus. The resurrection solve the problem of evil when a crucified savior is raised up. We believe the promise. It is a matter of faith. Hans Kung tackles the problem well in his classic “On Being a Christian.”
No, Bill, all is not well.
I agree that all is not well but we may hope that all will be well.
God is the author of history in the sense that only God can make sense of what happens in the world. No other can shape these events into a coherent narrative, but God can and does and will.
The problem of evil a symptom of this. Our narratives fall short of expressing the goodness in us that God so loves, and we name that falling short “evil”. Our knowledge of good and evil lets us aim to be like God in knowing what is good, but we will always fall short of God’s understanding.
Still, we always have to try to grasp what is good, hold on to it, and help it flourish. We have to trust that God loves each of us enough to make sense of it all, even when we cannot, and still strive to show that love to all in the hopes of offering some sense of that love.
“Our narratives fall short of expressing the goodness in us that God so loves, and we name that falling short “evil”.
Jim McK –
That’s only one kind of evil. St. Augustine’s notion of moral evil as a lack of a due good goes far to explain that sort. But the real problem is the positive suffering of innocent beings who have no wills, no choice to make them responsible for what they suffer. And since this suffering is not nothing or a lack of a due good (we can even distinguish different sorts of suffering), and because we believe that God is the creator of everything without exception, there is a humongous problem, and God is its origin.
Denying the problem won’t solve it.
Paul proclaims that we should rejoice always because Christ is risen. We hope for things to come. To take the negative view is to deny the resurrection.
Bill —
Facing the problems God has presented us with is not the same thing as denying the Resurrection.
Ann
Herbert McCabe wrote a piece under the title “Evil” that bears on the concerns you have expressed. It is at least worth reading. It was originally published in New Blackfriars 1981 and was reprinted in the first of McCabe’s collections the title of which is God Matters.
When I posted this interview with James Davison Hunter, I never imagined that it would lead to a discussion of truly profound matters like whether or in what sense we can say that God is the author of history or, underlying that, the problem of evil.
I had simply found provocative Hunter’s criticism of the assumption, which you can find current in Catholicism no less than in evangelical Protestantism, that ideas, pretty much apart from social context and “structures of power,” are the key to changing a culture. Likewise Hunter’s statement that culture is more than “the sum total of beliefs, values, and ideas that ordinary individuals hold.” I thought it would be worth discussing — maybe questioning — his “center and periphery” analysis of culture and his observation that American Christianity “operates on the periphery.” Then there was the point he made about the degree of panic and desperation that lurked behind much talk of changing the world or the culture. I thought that dotCommonwealers would be interested in his critique of politicized approaches to culture change and the defensive and spirit of conquest that were often associated with it. Also with his distinction between public and private.
As I tried to suggest, these thoughts of his were not necessarily earth-shattering and may even have reflected the elitism of academia but were very much worth thinking about anyway.
I’m not at all unhappy, however, that the discussion has taken this turn for the profound. I identify very much with Ann Olivier’s comments; and while Herbert McCabe is an intellectual hero of mine and I’ve read that helpful essay, I’m still struggling.
Peter
I am grateful for your pointing to Hunter’s approach, but I am currently reading two rather challenging books and I had the feeling that Hunter’s work invited serious and prolonged consideration, for which I would not have time in the duration of this item on the blog.
St.Augustine also believed that to “honor the Creator of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, is to desire Salvation not only for ourselves, but for others. When the Word of Love becomes flesh in us, according to St.Augustine, as Charity grows, lust diminishes, and when Charity reaches perfection, lust is no more. The essence of culture is “found in the hearts and minds of individuals in what are typically called values”, which is why the tabloid media, including the arts, literature, and movies reflects a society that values lustful and possessive relationships as opposed to one that reflects healthy and Holy relationships. This is certainly not what God had in mind when He stated, “Let Us Make Man In Our Image”, and called us to a Communion of Love.
If the culture of influence of Christians in America is negligible and we are no longer a Christian Nation, it is because in our lukewarmness, we no longer recognize that the Truths that are self-evident are self-evident because they come from our Creator, Nature’s God.
Prof. Gannon –
Thanks for the McCabe recommendation. I’ve ordered it.
Peter –
It seems to me that the antipathy between the contemporary atheist secular establishment and the theistic one is rooted partly in our differences over the problem of evil. Some of the neo-atheists have even expressed contempt for the theists publicly because, these neo-atheists claim, the theists do not have the courage to face the fact that if God did exist He must be a thug. (They love to throw up the apparent viciousness of Jahweh in the O. T.) And they see our purported intellectual blindness as a terrible influence on our common institutions, such as the public schools. And they have a point there, I think — just look at the Texas school book flap.
These neo-atheists are not like the historical Enlightenment savantsl, the ones who actually believed in God, but only a creator who merely set the things of the world running and abandoned it. Also unlike the Enlightenment figures, neither do they have a tolerance for differences. They view theism as a positive evil and are determined to rid the culture of it, including squeezing out the religious schools. See Dawkins, for instance.
As I see it, until we theists can show the unchurched that we have squarely faced the problem of evil, those neo-atheists will continue to be contemptuous of our naivetee and superstition and will seek to rid the culture of it. (Actually, I agree that there is naivetee’ and superstition in the churches, especailly the fundamentalisms of all sorts which refuse to look at how language actually works and who therefore stick to literal interpretations of Scripture in spite of its contradictions.)
The problem of evil is not, pf course. our only area of disagreement. But I think that they view our whole concept of God as inimical to a well-functioning democracy.
How many of “the elite” are this sort of atheist? I suspect more than are willing to speak up. Talk about religion with people other than one’s intimates was actually considered rude in the north-eastern culture which is the origin of the elitist schools. I’m talking the Ivy Leagues and others which are so influential in the media. As I see it, the media is the most powerful of institutions/influences on our culture at large — our sad, and increasingly rude, intolerant and fractured culture.
“our sad, and increasingly rude, intolerant and fractured culture.”
We are certainly tolerant of garbage, and as the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out.(e.g the monologues)
Until that Time when we are perfected in God’s Love, evil will exist, for there will be those who will make the free choice (Love is not possessive, think Filioque) to turn away from that which is Good, and choose evil. For those who Love Him, Love Springs Eternal.
Peter, the problem of evil was one of the first things i thought about on reading Hunter’s remarks, but probably only because his evangelical/academic struggle mirrors Bart Ehrman’s and he is very concerned with suffering. They both recognize something more than ideas are important, but struggle to find beliefs and values and more that are compatible with their ideas.
The one area where the inadequacy of culture, beliefs, values and ideas, it is in the problem of evil. I am not too surprised we found our way there.
Jim McK –
I think you’re right that the secular humanists are struggling to find values that will make them happy. Once one gives up on God what else is there to present even the *hope* of happiness? The Enlightenment was fueled not only by scientific hopes for solving physical problems but by an unsupported optimism about the goodness and rationality of human beings. The Holocaust proved that 20th century totalitarian brutality was worse than 13th century brutality (at least the Christians didn’t try to kill *all* of the Jews), and the behavior of the stock markets world-wide from the 30′s through right now shows that the expectation of rational judgment by human beings was and is a myth. (Yes, Keynes is back.)
So for anyone with eyes to see, the Enlightenment is dead, and among its descendants there is nothing left to replace it.
Ann,
Maybe I am too simple. But I believe that one should not blame God at all for evil. The Old Testament God was in the minds of the writers. As Jesus said it was because of the hardness of your hearts that an eye for an eye prevailed. Certainly not the will of God. I believe the Crucifixion is God’s answer to the problem of evil. Even Jesus was not spared though innocent. The point is Jesus was raised by God and by extension so will we. Paul said we are to be pitied indeed if Christ is not risen. Sure we can raise the question but God answered it through Jesus. If we cannot rejoice with Paul then there is something lacking in our faith.
Secular humanists? Who said anything about secular humanists?
Peter had described the assumption, which you can find current in Catholicism no less than in evangelical Protestantism, that ideas, pretty much apart from social context and “structures of power,” are the key to changing a culture. If anyone is seeking values that will ‘make them happy’, it is Evangelicals and Catholics who face secular humanists. The **idea** of God does not meet the objections raised by the problem of evil. Secular humanists have abandoned the idea of God because of this, so this is not their problem as much as it is a problem for those who hold to the existence of God.
I am inclined toward Bill’s answer, that the Crucifixion is the answer to the problem of Evil. I see the process a little differently, depending more on “Love is stronger than death” than on “Christ is risen”, but that may be a meaningless difference.
” If anyone is seeking values that will ‘make them happy’, it is Evangelicals and Catholics who face secular humanists.”
Jim McK –
What do you have in mind here?
“The **idea** of God does not meet the objections raised by the problem of evil. ”
I don’t think a mere idea of anything makes anybody happy, though Aristotle talked that way sometime. It’s my belief that my idea of God represents to some extent a real, actual, living Being that gives me hope for eventual ultimate happiness.
Ann, the **idea** of a benevolent God does not sit well with our experience of suffering and evil.
But God, as a real actual living being, seems to have little problem living with what we call evil. I will go as far as saying there is no problem of evil except when we are mixing abstracted ideas with experienced realities..
Note that this remark is made in the context of Evangelicals and Catholics who assume that ideas alone, apart from context and power structures, can change culture.
Jim –
i don’t know any Catholics who think that ideas alone can change culture. But I suspect that your idea of an idea ( :-) and mine are somewhat different. In the classic sense an idea of itself is only an understandings of a possible reality, and these understandings do not become operative in our lives unless we judge that such a being exists. Once we have judged (whether by experience of faith or both) that there is really such a thing then it can become operative. I say it *can*, but we can also ignore the reality.
Images, those sometimes contradictory representations, also play a huge part in our thinking, including our thinking about God. Sometimes they do more harm than good. There’s a mural over the sancturary of my parish church which has God the Father as its central figure. What a sour-faced, mean old judge he is! If I were the pastor I’d paint over it. Bad for the children.
Re Bill M’s quote at 2:31 pm.
Hunter has articulated an argument that I have been making for a couple of years now on how the US Catholic bishops deal with abortion. Their singular ineffectiveness in compelling or even persuading their own flocks on the rightness of the Church’s position has led to their capitulation to the political rather the moral sphere. This means that they are doomed to failure in this country.