August 19, 2010 1

Eavesdropping

By Jacob Kroeze

I work 20+hrs per week at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills.  Most afternoons, producers meet with writers, writers type away in solitude, well-to-do older women sip tea, and the occasional mother pushes in her stroller while toddlers pick at the display case.

I love to eavesdrop in the shop because the whole neighborhood is very foreign to me–immensely wealthy, mostly Jewish, 7 banks in 3 blocks, and many people eat out for 2 meals a day.  I want to recall a conversation between a coworker of mine and a regular customer, but first I’d like to characterize them both, and then add a third character–my supervisor.

The customer came into the shop one month ago, an hour after I started my first day at the shop.  He said he wanted a specific blend of three coffees.  I said, ok.  He eventually said, “Make a Presspot, you’re new, and I want you to taste this.”  So, I brought out the pot.  ”Too Small.”  I brought out a larger one, and we tried the “perfect blend” of African, Indonesian, and Central American coffees.  I now know that the man had returned from Indonesia, and he was to become a regular who has meetings with future restaurant business-partners and potential employees.

My coworker is typical in a few respects.  His arm-broad tattoos and gages in his ears indicate that he evaluates life visually, loves “do art,” has art in gallery shows, and slightly surprisingly, wants to illustrate for Family Guy.  From the Northeast, he calls life as he sees it, and most people are “out” or at least throw quite a few strikes.

Customer and Coworker began to agree about the sad consequences of the Bush administration.  This moved toward Indonesia, and some comment that was typically multicultural in a Pop sense.  Customer says he is Jewish Italian and his Indonesian wife was Catholic.  He just believes that whatever is the heart must be authentic, and he’s so proud that his kids have had such various experiences in life.

Coworker has the religion of art.  His spirituality is art.  This is his religion.

Michigan native Supervisor declares that, “I just try to give my boy the most experiences he can have,” adds some other comment to agree with the scope of the conversation.

I thoroughly agree with a specifically defined multiculturalism that is the basis for a Western culture that defends different groups’ rights to exist, to speak, and to live life.  But, what’s with all this agreeing about religion?  What is this new religion that we all have in common?  I should have joined the conversation, but I was sweeping.

July 19, 2010 0

Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Lakoff–two sides of the metaphor coin?

By Kenny Gradert

I first remember seeing “metaphor theory” in the linguistics section hidden far atop the Taylorian library where I did most of my work for the semester (and where I heard a screaming crowd greet the queen a few stories below). I didn’t get to read on metaphor theory until I got back to the states and found Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By in a used book store in Chicago.

The basic argument is this: our conceptual mode of thinking (dominated by language as we’ve all been informed as of late) is essentially metaphoric. Not only in language do we model higher concepts on more earthy, physical phenomena, but this metaphorical process dominates our thinking too. Really, we’ve all known about metaphor in language for centuries. All Lakoff did was to glue that with the current philosophical trends that argue that language dominates thought. Some popular examples Lakoff uses are: A.) ARGUMENT IS WAR, B.) IDEAS ARE OBJECTS, C. HAPPY/LIFE/POWER IS UP.  An example of A: “We crushed his argument,” “I broke down his defense,” etc. Example for B: “I gave you that idea,” “His thesis is buried deep in the dense jargon,” etc. And examples for C: “My spirits rose,” “His health declined,” “She’s on top of the situation.” Lakoff argues this isn’t inherent to language alone but actually structures the way we think about the world. After reading the book, it felt as if Lakoff was doing the field work of Derrida’s theorizing about everything being dominated by language. Lakoff tries to sort through actual expressions and figure out how this plays out in common speech. Quite interesting to think of how metaphor dominates our thinking.

I read Lakoff over the past spring break, but I thought of him again this morning while reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s fourth chapter of Nature, entitled “Language.” Emerson likewise argues for the primacy of metaphor in language (though not applying it to mental conceptual systems as Lakoff does, of course).  His basic argument is outlined immediately: “1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.”  He then argues that “man is an analogist” and “immediate dependence of language upon nature….never loses its power to affect us.” He continues: “hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories.” And then Emerson says something that sounds straight out of Lakoff: “Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

However, the two thinkers come to slightly different conclusions. Whereas Lakoff simply argues that our conceptual thinking models “higher” (see, already did it again with a spatial metaphor), more abstract concepts on “lower,” more earthy phenomena. Emerson argues that “visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side.” If we can frame it in body/soul terms, Lakoff argues that our notion of the soul is built upon the feelings of the body while Emerson argues that our feelings of the body must lead to thoughts of the soul.

The trend today is with Lakoff, of course. But need they be mutually exclusive? Need one be dualistic and the other materialistic? Can’t they be two sides to the single coin of metaphor? Lakoff frames it in physical, psychological terms compared to Emerson’s romantic transcendentalism, perhaps leaving ole’ Ralph in the dust for our contemporary minds. But just because our soulful reflection is modeled on our physical interaction with the physical world, this doesn’t need to deny us the validity of soulful reflection, of the very human feeling that there is something more to every object than the thing as a lump of atoms alone.

July 8, 2010 1

Anachronistic Prophecy

By Kenny Gradert

Some improper speculation I stumbled into during morning devotions. I’m in Isaiah, slowly plodding through all of the old testament. This morning I came to the messianic prophecies in chapter 53. And I thought.

Why does the author speak of the messiah in the past tense?

June 26, 2010 6

Put out the Torches

By Kenny Gradert

Isaiah 50:10-11 (New King James Version)

10 “ Who among you fears the LORD?
Who obeys the voice of His Servant?
Who walks in darkness
And has no light?
Let him trust in the name of the LORD
And rely upon his God.
11 Look, all you who kindle a fire,
Who encircle yourselves with sparks:
Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled—
This you shall have from My hand:
You shall lie down in torment.

Such poetry sets up the standard of the human condition: wandering in the dark. After all, the Roman was right who said errare est humanum, not simply with our English notion of the word “to err” as “to make a mistake,” but with the full force of the Latin “errare”—to wander. Contemporary philosophy, thank God, partially undoes the Enlightenment torchbearing to plunge us back into where we were all along, Dark Ages.

Such poetry strips our ecclesiology of the foolhardy notion of torchbearing—“we are a city upon a hill.” These verses smack John Winthrop right over the head. The arena is the same: darkness. One can only “fear,” “obey,” “trust,” and “rely.” Such a vocabulary ought to continually ricochet in our skulls with such humbling, metallic force that we never again boldly use Winthropian-rhetoric.

Such poetry steals our torches. Thank God. After all, Lucifer (Lucem Ferre) was the light-bearer, even in the glory of Heaven. And the poet was right who continued sed perseverare diabolicum–but to persevere [in error] is of the devil. Put out your torches.

Because I love Gustave Doré

May 26, 2010 0

Towards an Erotics of Wisdom: Part 2

By Matt Gerrelts

Rather than ask for certainty of one’s own being, because even an affirmative answer to that question is yes, Marion posits another, more fundamental question which he terms the erotic reduction: “Does anyone love me?” Only a positive answer to this question can answer vanity’s “What’s the use?”

The immediate objection that can be raised, and what is, I think, the underlying objection that Marion seeks to answer throughout the remainder of the book, is: “does not the demand that someone love me presuppose that I first be?” There is no quick and easy answer to this question, as the book plays out. Instead of offering an immediate answer, to which there can be none without first establishing a new erotic logic in place of the ego cogitans reason. Once again, against vanity, it is not enough for a person to see himself as a certified or certain object; he must find himself to be an assured phenomenon that is given and free from pointlessness. This assurance, distinct from the certainty of the epistemic or ontological reduction, can only come from elsewhere; that is, the ego cannot assure himself of himself, for that would require a love of self. Loving the self, if that should provide assurance, would be no different from the burden that the thinking ego feels in attempting to legitimate its being.

What happens, when the erotic reduction becomes an issue, is that one admits to a lack in one’s self. That is, I cannot be complete without assurance against vanity, and because I cannot assure myself against this vanity (for that would be a circular endeavour anyway), my legitimation, and hence myself, must come from elsewhere. Thus Marion says,

The very one who could assure me must estrange me. In short, certainty can lead me back to myself, because I acquire it by subtraction,[...]while assurance separates me from myself, because it opens within me the separation of an elsewhere.

Of course, many will immediately object that they do not lack and can indeed assure themselves because they love themselves. After all, doesn’t everyone love themselves first before all?

Marion retorts,

How can an I become doubled, as the ambition to be assured from elsewhere demands, while at the same time remaining the same, as the intention of love oneself requires? [....] A single and compact I cannot become an other than itself, in order to give itself an assurance that responds to the question Does anyone out there love me?”

He goes further, however, to give three reasons for the absurdity of thinking one can love oneself. First, self-love would require that one precede one’s self. Marion, supposing that love is necessary for and prior to one’s self, points out that his parents could only love him originally because “they loved me before I was even in a state to receive their love; loved without yet being, I was thus preceded by the response to the question ‘Does anyone love me?’ which I could not yet pose to myself.” This point is, I think, difficult to grasp at first, because we still wish to assume that something must be before it can be loved. But, if one supposes as Marion does, that one is not until one is loved, then love must come first in everything circumstance.

Second, an answer to the erotic reduction requires a complete conviction, leaving no room for doubt and falling into the suspicion of vanity, if love is to be effective. In other words, there must be an excess of love as “an answer that is only affirmative is not enough—only the excess that surprises and surpasses would suffice” for the erotic reduction. “The measure of this love requires loving without measure” because “every love simply commensurable with vanity would only reinforce its dominion.” Thus, I would have to demand an excess of myself over myself in order to sufficiently love myself. Marion proves this point with the common situation where the love of another is not enough because one considers them to be equal as one’s self, having the same lack of assurance as one’s self. The question that remains, and which will be addressed later, is how the other comes to be able to exceed and supply the excess of love that is required for one’s assurance.

Third, although one may provisionally divide one’s self (the I can play the role of an empirical me even as it can play the role of the transcendental I), loving requires an effective exteriority that involves crossing a true distance, a distance that is not feigned. Without the crossing of a distance because distance is what is required for something to be distributed, to go, come, and return. A true action must always cover a distance, and the self, although it may divide itself, cannot ultimately cover this gap. The lover must come from elsewhere.

May 25, 2010 1

James K.A. Smith and the Pentecostal Breach

By Kenny Gradert

A continuation of my last post, as prompted by Robert’s recommendation of James Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation.

Smith’s book definitely helps. I’m not quite done, so I may have more remarks later.

In the book, Smith focuses on four different hermeneutics, crudely and quickly summarized below:

  • Traditional Evangelical: views interpretation as result of the Fall, something to be overcome. Rather, they desire unmediated and immediate full presence of God’s truth. Individual interpretation (which Smith equates with our contextuality in the world–our culture, our history, etc) can and must be submitted immediately with a purely biblical interpretation for believers. Thus, diversity of interpretation is frowned upon and–as Smith equates interpretation with a person’s context in creation–diversity in general is frowned upon, Smith argues. This leads to their traditional interpretation of Babel: the diversity of languages is a wholly negative punishment. In contrast, Smith argues–in the line of Kuyper–that God’s punishment at Babel was against human desire for unity (he doesn’t use “uniformity,” but seems to mean so). Thus, the dispersment of humanity into diverse langauges, cultures, and contexts (and hence, diverse interpretations) was the natural way that Creation ought to be.
  • Habermas, Godamer, Pannenberg: acknowledge the ubiquity of interpretation, but still argue that it will eventually be overcome by God in the consummation–just not right now as the evangelical camp believes. Thus, they still imply the unnatural, fallen nature of interpretation.
  • Heidegger- Defines “fallenness” as human finitude–and thus, ontologizes the Fall and makes it natural.
  • Derrida- Interpretation is essentially violent, cutting and seperating. Deconstruction is an example.

The one thing in common to all these views is a rather negative view of human finitude and interpretation. Heidegger makes the Fall ontologically natural by equating it with human finitude, the evangelical camp frowns upon human contextuality as something to be overcome, etc.

In contrast, Smith puts forth his “creational-pneumatic” hermeneutic. In this view, human finitude is natural. Smith then argues against Heidegger; if finitude is natural and inherent in creation, and if Creation is–in line with Genesis 1–good, then human finitude likewise is good. A person’s contextuality is to be rejoiced as a natural and good part of what it means to be a human being. from this comes Smith’s interpretation of Babel and his joyful approval of diversity (in interpretation too).

Smith mentions Pentecost directly more than once, giving it a central place in his argument:

“The heart of a creational hermeneutic is also rather ‘Pentecostal,’ creating a space where there is room for a plurality of God’s creatures to speak, sing and dance in a multivalent chorus of tongues” (Smith 21)

“Further, as a creational-pneumatic hermeneutic, my model relates the multiplicity of tongues not only to this Babelian trespass but also to the experience of Pentecost. For at Pentecost Yahweh’s pneuma affirms the multiplicity of creation and the post-Babelian era, in direct contrast to the quest for unity that initiated the construction of the towers. It opens the door for an understanding of truth divorced from monologism, which in itself opens the door to those who have been shut out of the kingdom, so to speak—excluded because their interpretation was different. The truth, in creation, is plural” (Smith 60).

This is a different take than mine, but helpful, I think, in further reflection. A few thoughts this led me to:

Initially Smith’s arguments seem to go against mine. Pentecost for Smith is not a breach of human finitude in which individual consciousness can come to know God directly. The word “breach” itself has negative connotations that I think Smith would protest–if human finitude is good, there is nothing to “break through” or “breach.” Likewise, Smith’s book argues against the evangelical desire for unmediated experience of God’s truth. Then, for me to say that the Spirit is a means of God to crack through human finitude and give immediate experience of God to individuals would be distasteful at best for Smith, I think.

Could Pentecost be a means of preserving both the naturally good human finitude/creational diversity and direct, unmediated experience of God?  In reality, I think that Pentecost tends to muddle and deconstruct the binary of mediated/unmediated. For instance, we see that the Spirit itself is mediated–from God, through Christ, to us. Yet at the same time, the indwelling of the Spirit–especially in mystic traditions–has been supposed to give the individual, finite human direct (albeit momentary) access to God, i.e. speaking in tongues, prophecy–all the charismatic gifts of the Spirit seem to suggest a flow directly from the Divine, into and out of the finite creation–even though is mediated to us via the Word. Really, much of the mystical experience of the Spirit seems to be the mysterious, paradoxical encounter of finite with Infinite in which the good and natural finiteness of the individual is still preserved, but in experience of the infinite.

Finally, does Pentecost guarentee the possibility of a universal language with fixed meaning for all people? I don’t think so. The indwelling of the Spirit could be the Infinite speaking directly to the finite, but if the finite tried to communicate this experience of the Transcendental Signified to other finite individuals, he/she would fail, as these other individuals are still seperated from him/her by their own different context. All people are finite, but this is made manifest in different contexts for each individual. Thus, God speaks directly to everyone in their finiteness, but it is an utterly individual affair in which one individual’s direct encounter of God cannot rise above another’s in prominence precisely because every individual has a different context.

So, if this is the case, we seem to have done one giant circle. Fixed, extralinguistic meaning is possible through the Pentecostal breach. But, it is only possible on an individual basis because of human finiteness and differing contextuality. And, as Smith rightly shows, this is as good as Genesis 1 says. Is this relativistic? Perhaps. I’d be more inclined to say that Pentecost is the gift of absolute truth distributed on an individual basis. This isn’t to destroy truth, but to put it in its rightful place and likewise, to humble our own position in the scheme of things. I don’t think this is to throw away the distinction of “absolute,” as God is this absolute truth. But, it is an absolute, infinite truth meant to be experienced by finite, diverse individuals.

Thoughts?

May 24, 2010 2

[Yet Another Late] Introduction: Daniel Kessel

By Daniel Kessel

To keep up Jacob and Adam’s late introduction streak alive, here I am with my own….

I am presently 21 years old, the oldest of five siblings, and the son of a wonderful mother and father. I was born in good ol’ North Dakota, but spent close to three-and-a-half early and formative years growing up on an orphanage my parents helped establish in Uganda–a beautiful country located in the heart of Africa. After returning to the United States, my family re-settled on a farm in North Dakota, where my mother somehow managed to homeschool myself and the rest of the rascal siblings up till I was a junior in high school. I spent the last two years of highschool at a tiny public school (20 in my graduating class), and after graduating took a year off to work, visit my old home and friends in Uganda, and get some direction on my next step in life. After a year, I decided to head to Dordt College with the aim of training to be a pastor someday. Since then, at the end of my sophomore year at Dordt, I have redirected my goals a bit, now majoring in both Theology and Philosophy with the intention of going on to further studies at the Graduate level, and to someday teach Theology at a highschool or college–God willing.

I’m a bit of a book-a-holic, and am ever cycling through delightful new reading material. My interests are very broad, ranging from rocks and minerals to Medieval philosophy, and sci-fi to the Mystics, but some of my primary reading is done in the areas of Theology, Philosophy and History. In addition to reading, I spend lots of time in the outdoors–camping, hiking, kayaking, and doing landscape photography. I could go on and on, but then I feel like I’d be bordering dangerously close to a Facebook/Myspace-like list of likes/dislikes, interests, relationship status, etc… So–I’ll end it here. I count it a great privilege to be able to learn from others’ ideas at the Veil Away, as well as contributing my own two cents.

May 23, 2010 4

Pentecost: The Breach of the Transcendental Signified?

By Kenny Gradert

This morning I delivered a sermon on the text of Acts 2, the story of Pentecost. The message was fairly simple, but further reflection on the passage led me to some philosophical speculation that would have been out-of-place at the humble farmer church of Ireton CRC.

One reflection: Could the story of Pentecost be a theological response to poststructuralist thought regarding meaning in language? Elaborations:

1. “There is nothing outside the text,” Derrida says, quite rightly I think. Yet my Christian beliefs incline me to think that this can only be said for creation. For all humans know, language dominates everything.

2. Fixed, extra-linguistic meaning is impossible without a transcendental signified, Derrida argued. I think he didn’t go far enough. Even if we can equate God with the Transcendental Signified who endows language with fixed external meaning, would creation (individual people) be able to understand such meaning when limited by individual perspective? I think not. The fixed meaning of the Creator must somehow breach the ontological ex nihilo gap between Creation and creation–this being done through Christ, I think would be the quickest theological reply. There is nothing new here. Christ is the Word, made flesh, dwelt among us, He who as fully God fully man bridges this infinite ontological chasm.

3. Yet, even though Christ is the Word sent to us and living among us, we are still simply witnesses to the Word (or witnesses to the Witnesses of the Word, further removed from Christ himself)–still ontologically separate and thus still limited by individual perspective in interpreting the language that Christ is.

So–even if we choose, through faith, to retain belief in a Transcendental Signified, and even if we choose, through faith, to retain belief in the incarnate Word who bridges the gap between us and the Transcendental signified–we still are limited by individual consciousness in interpreting this Word. We are still ontologically separate from Christ and thus, Derrida’s idea of language still hold true for the individual consciousness. Christ is just one more Word of many words–even if there is extra-linguistic meaning to be found in Him, we certainly cannot perceive it from our individual perspective.

Where my Pentecost reflection comes in to play: Could the outpouring of the Holy Spirit witnessed at Pentecost be the final means of breaching individual consciousness? Couldn’t the Holy Spirit’s indwelling be a means for the Transcendental Signified to 1. breach general creation (through Christ) and then 2. breach individual consciousness (through Christ’s leaving behind his Spirit)?

The spectators of Pentecost are left “amazed and perplexed”–”we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongue,” they say, and ask “what does this mean?”

Could it not mean that, through the Holy Spirit, the Transcendental Signified breaches the final ontological gap of individual consciousness and makes extra-linguistic meaning possible?

Just a reflection. Thoughts?

April 28, 2010 3

The Erotics of Wisdom: Part 1

By Matt Gerrelts

Over the last few weeks, I have been working on Jean-Luc Marion’s The Erotic Phenomenon in my dwindling spare time, and I have found it thoroughly enjoyable. In this book, Marion wishes to recover what philosophy has lost: a concept of love. At first, this may seem odd because one typically does not associate love and the conceptual realm—love is supposed to be irrational. Indeed, as Marion goes on to affirm later, love is irrational, at least according to one form of reason, but it is by no means senseless or opposed to the conceptual, which must not be identified with the rational.

Philosophy needs a concept of love because, as Marion says,

Without a concept, we can of course feel violently such or such erotic disposition, but we can neither describe it, nor distinguish it from other erotic dispositions, nor even from nonerotic dispositions, much less articulate them in a right and sensible act. Without a concept, we can even make for ourselves a very clear idea of a love we have experienced, but never an idea the least bit distinct—one that would allow recognition of when it is and is not the case, which behaviors arise from it and which in no way concern it, what logic necessarily binds them or not, what possibilities are opened or closed to action, etc.

This reason (or even speaking of a reason at all, for I do not know which order of reason Marion refers to) is intriguing to me because he identifies the starting point of his inquiry at the point where philosophy has denied love it’s unity—that is, philosophy has divided love into various kinds of love (e.g. agape, eros). On the contrary, Marion argues, a serious concept of love “distinguishes itself by its unity, or rather by its power to keep together significations that nonerotic thought cuts apart.” Developing the concept of love, says Marion, should not begin by immediately dividing but by holding the unity of the concept of love for as long as possible. I have not finished the book yet, but with only two chapters left to go, I have found no division of the kinds of love yet, and I am waiting to see where a division may emerge. In my mind, his discussion is purely of what I would call the erotic side of love, which seeks the flesh. Of course, as Marion warns against, I am assuming a division in the kinds of love from the start. Thus, I must wait to deliver a reasoned opinion on this point, at least according to erotic wisdom.

Second, Marion’s project is to give the concept of love “a rationality to all that nonerotic thought disqualifies as irrational and degrades to madness.” Love, as Marion wishes to describe it and conceive it, then, is in no way nonrational or opposed to the conceptual, lying instead in the emotional. Breaking out of the rational/emotional paradigm is guaranteed to be a difficult endeavour, for the reader as well as the author, but I think it a noble one, and it is a line of argument that Marion constructs solidly as the book goes on.

Third, the foundations for a concept of love must start with the experience or phenomena of love, giving the question of erotics primacy over questions of ontology. Parallel to Marion’s critique of ontotheology, he here wants to subvert the notion that one must first be or exist in order to be loved. On the contrary, one must not even first love in order to be, but love without being even becoming a question. This is the primary argument that is developed through the rest of the book.

The ego cogitans (the thinking I), or the modern subject, the transcendental I of Descartes’ famous dictum, is always seeking legitimacy and certainty of itself. According to Descartes, man is primarily a thinking being, and he affirms his own existence in his thought. Supposing that we are insofar as we come to know ourselves, man discovers himself (that is, he certifies his own existence) by certifying whatever else he encounters. That is, man, in determining so-called objective knowledge of the objects around him, through math, logic, and historical facts, makes certain their certainness and, since man is himself the one declaring these things certain, must be certain himself. In a sense, then (not in Marion’s words), the concern with objective knowledge is just a matter of self-affirmation, though it be, as Marion wishes to demonstrate, an illusionary certainty.

The ego cogitans is always concerned with certainty and affirming his own existence, lest he doubt and fall into despair. However, Marion asks, “What’s the use?” I think that a better translation, at least coming from my own scholarly ignorance, would be, “What’s the point?” but I digress. In asking this question, Marion undermines the modern metaphysical project by pointing out that simply affirming existence has no meaning and must fall into vanity. “Logical calculation, mathematical operations, models of the object and its technologies of production offer a perfect certainty, a ‘total quality’–but so what? How exactly does that concern me, if not for as much as I am engaged in their wold and I inscribe myself within their space?” In other words, as the I is transcendent, above the world of mere objects and hence is able to objectify them, it is ultimately irrelevant to reach any certainty of knowledge about these objects because they can give the I no knowledge of himself. Thus, Marion concludes,

Certainty attests its failure in the very instant of its success: I indeed acquire a certainty, but, like that of beings of the world certified by my efforts, it sends me back to my initiative, and thus to me, the arbitrary operative of every certainty, even my own. To produce my certainty myself does not reassure me at all, but rather maddens me in front of vanity in person. What is the good of my certainty, if it still depends on me, if I only am through myself?

From this point, Marion moves to the erotic reduction, which I plan to take up in my next post.

April 10, 2010 10

Thoughts on “Calvinism for the 21st Century”

By Robert Minto

Since several contributors to this blog presented papers at Dordt’s just-finished calvinism conference (Schultz, Mangold, Den Boer, Veldkamp, and me), I thought it would be a good idea to briefly recap what struck me as its values and its downfalls, and to give a placeholder (in the comments) for discussion about it.

The conference was about “Calvinism for the 21st Century,” and — naturally, I think — most of the keynote addresses, and the most well-attended concurrent sessions, dealt with political life and what calvinism/neo-calvinism could mean for it. Some hard questions were asked (for instance, by Bacote about the racism of Kuyper, by Howard Schaap about the anthropocentrism of neo-calvinist “progress” and “development” rhetoric from an ecological perspective, by Smith about un-antithetical acceptance by such thinkers as Wolterstorff of liberal democratic assumptions about anthropology and ethics). The range of attendees was splendidly diverse (along that artificial liberal-conservative line, I mean), and the papers spoke to each other and contributed to the over-all question in a way better than what could have been planned.

But I was disappointed that none of the presenters challenged the premise of the conference in their paper — that one of our big goals should be to salvage something we can call calvinism for the purposes of the 21st century. I happen to think we can — though the project is fraught with the necessity of careful discrimination within the corpus of “Calvinist thought,” and the importance of maintaining the word calvinism is unclear to me for any but tribal or sentimental reasons — but I think the case can (and should have been) made that we cannot. To me this failure spoke of the enduring “lawyer” mentality of those who consider themselves reformed: like lawyers, they are above all interested in finnegling  a crafty path through existing structures to their own goals (which have an origin outside the structures, and are frequently contradicted by the structures) rather than approaching the question of structural change. I was gratified, however, by Smith’s presentation, in which he layed down the gauntlet to “reformed thinkers” who seem to accept liberal democratic notions of human rights and human freedom without dealing with the supporting theoretical structures of such ideas. There was a very Levinasian strain within the conference — particularly in the papers of Smith and Haan, and explicitly in the paper of Mark Tazelaar (and, I guess, implicitly in Schaap’s paper on anthropocentrism). I appreciated and was consoled by this.

Those are my over-all thoughts. Do other contributors have opinions they would like to air?

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