I do not do Facebook, though I might sign up for MyFace. I am happily uninterested in Twitter, which as T. David Gordon has suggested, is what twits do. So using a blog to tell others about what I’m doing seems silly if not narcisistic.
With those qualifications out of the way, a recent speaking engagement at Grove City College (where I heard Gordon make a very compelling presentation on the need for caution in using technology that requires batteries and plugs) got me thinking about the world-and-life-viewitis that has reached epidemic proportions among Protestants. Most evangelical Protestant colleges these days are justifying their existence and identity by saying they provide a wholistic vision on learning that is grounded in the Christian faith. The Lordship of Christ, the authority of Scripture, even the cultural mandate come in for aid and comfort.
This ideal is an honorable one and springs from generally wholesome motives. Who would not want to see Christ honored in all aspects of the created order, and who would want to be unfaithful where Scripture has revealed God’s holy will?
There’s just one problem: the Bible doesn’t speak to all the arts and sciences, let alone whether incoming freshmen should receive a laptop or whether it should be an Apple or an IBM machine. In fact, the one place where Christ is revealed, the Bible, has very little to say about the curriculum of an undergraduate education. If we say that it does, we are in danger of putting the imaginations of men above the Word of God — that is, making the Bible say what we want it to say.
This point becomes pretty plausible if we consider that the Reformed creeds and catechisms have nothing to say about rhetoric, logic, grammar, music — the list could go on but not much longer for the medieval university’s curriculum. It has even less to say about quantum physics or critical theory and the vast range of subjects offered by today’s universities. But if the Bible speaks to all of these areas of human endeavor and inquiry, don’t we need to revise the confessions so that the church may rightly speak on what God has revealed?
Or could it be that what the creeds and confessions teach is pretty much the sum of what the Bible reveals? In which case, for the other areas of life we are left to our reasonable ability to make sense of God’s created order, thus leaving the church jurisdiction over divinity and the university faculty authority over the arts and sciences.
Old Life 
Blogs started as online journals, like Livejournal.com, with an overwhelming ratio of bad poetry and cat pictures to actual content. It’s become a more serious (/pompous) medium since, but it’s a long way from demanding justification of a four sentence foray into the first-person. You could follow this post with a sushi anecdote and no one would blink. Actually, my wife made the NTJ Y2K Bean Recipe a few weeks ago and it was a hit, so maybe that’s a request.
If the creeds and catechisms (and the Scripture, by extension) don’t speak to logic, that doesn’t bode well for the Transcendental Argument. And if the Christianworldandlifeview is highly regarded in Protestant and Reformed Christendom, TAG’s validity falls near the truth of the Trinity. Might have a fight on your hands.
It’s been a couple of years since reading it, but I thought the thrust of your essay in “Religious Advocacy & American History” was that Christians need to reevaluate their participation in higher education. Was this what you had in mind at the time?
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I think Dr. Gordon would agree with you on that opinion as well. (I’m an ’08 grad of Grove City.)
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What I believe I was arguing against was the idea of redeeming the academy. I think Christians entering the academy, if that is their calling, is fine. I just don’t think that the vocation of Christian scholars is a ministry or ushers in the kingdom. And I especially do not think that Christians entering the academy are going to change it into a place of truth, goodness, and beauty. The university does a lot of things well. Christian should use it, like Scotch, with moderation and thankfulness.
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Of course, then there is a non-biblicist alternative to a Christian idea of scholarship, which posits a distinctive relationship between religion, Scripture, general/natural revelation, and philosophy, sciences & the arts, and which eschews both the fallacies of an “encyclopedic assumption” about Scripture, and “necessary nonChristian assumption” about the non-ecclesial.
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Dr. Hart,
I appreciated the note of caution on “world-and-life-view-itis” you sounded at the conference – we all need to be very careful that any approach we call “biblical” is, in fact, in the Bible. At the same time, using simple deductive logic, it seems impossible that Scripture would not inform our thought on every area of life. Genesis tells us that God created the world, and that He created it good. How can that fail to inform our view of biology? Scripture also tells us that man fell into a depraved, sinful nature. If we believe that, how could it not affect our practice of sociology, or psychology? This is not to say only those with a Christian worldview can attain any truth. But for the Christian, would not the pursuit of “secular vocations,” including academia, without refernce to Scripture would involve a radical (and unhealthy) internal cognitive separation?
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Mr. Brinkerhoff, as T. David Gordon was saying to me after my talk at Grove City, worldviewism is a good theory but it doesn’t help much with the practice. To take one example we probably know well — eating. My worldview of eating tells me to do all to the glory of God. So before a meal I ask the Lord’s blessing. Does the Bible speak, however, to whether we use hands or utensils for eating, for sitting at a table or sitting on the floor, whether we eat vegetarian or not, whether we buy local and organic or consume fast food. I fear if we start making the Bible speak to the details, we have turned the Bible into something it is not. Thank the Lord that he speaks in two books, of Christ and redemption in the Bible, and of slow food in Michael Pollan.
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Baus, somehow I’m thinking this alternative is in the province of your singular brain.
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Darryl, I am fairly confident that this seems the case to you because you continue to ignore my suggestion to read Roy Clouser’s Myth of Religious Neutrality.
It’s a little dishartening that one would conclude that inability to imagine such a position is a sufficient argument against it.
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Baus, I really have read it and I still don’t find anything in that position that does not give aid and comfort to theonomists (and other varieties of biblicism). I also wonder if you’ve considered why you are on the “other side” in the disputes between 2k and Kuyperianism. You don’t want to be tarred with the excesses of Kuyperianism. I get that. But I’ve yet to see a framework among the Dutch Reformed epistemologists that allows for someone to embrace 2k theology, or that only sees in 2k an affirmation of “religious neutrality.”
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Darryl, what is the theonomic premise or assumption or method or whathaveyou that you think is shared or given quarter by Clouser’s position? I wonder when you did read it, because the foundation and the whole of what Clouser explicates eliminates the very possibility of deriving the content of non-theological academic work from the Bible, let alone from Moses.
Clouser explicitly denies that the Bible addresses all topics, and he says that Scripture reveals redemptive covenant (not philosophy or science or any theory whatsoever). All of chapter 6 in the 2005 edition addresses this specifically. What possible connections you see with theonomy or biblicism, I can’t imagine, so please elaborate.
By the way, I don’t believe the objects of your criticism constitute excesses of Kuyperianism or of neocalvinism. For the most part (if not entirely), the things you’ve criticized as transformationalism, biblicism, and theonomy constitute another position from that of Kuyperianism, which you keep mistaking for (or mistakenly identifying with) ours.
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Baus, in your paper on your website, you describe Dooyeweerd’s position this way:
“Christian groundmotive
“Dooyeweerd holds that the principle of societal sphere sovereignty is rooted in what he calls the groundmotive of the Christian religion, which he summarizes as “creation, fall and redemption through Christ Jesus” (Roots, p.41, 49). In general a groundmotive is an expression, both individual and communal, of one of two possible basic religious commitments or orientations. One of these is characterized by trust in the true God revealed in the Scriptures, the other by unbelief, that is, by an apostate faith in something as divine other than the true God, which is idolatry. These two possible religious commitments, in either a direction toward or away from God, are in an irreconcilable antithesis to each other (Roots, p.3-9).
“This antithesis cuts through every thought, word, and deed –even, because of remaining sin, for those who believe in God through trust in Christ. To say that any given theoretical viewpoint is rooted in an apostate/idolatrous groundmotive is not a comment on the regenerate status of, or a personal attack against, the individual espousing such a view. Our theories may be, in principle, at odds with our deepest religious orientation. Dooyeweerd is emphatic that groundmotive critique is always first and foremost a self-critique. (New Critique, forward viii)”
That sort of antithesis applied to thought, word, and deed, is precisely what theonomists over at Greenbaggins use. They may not get it from Dooyeweerd. And your application of it may not go in the direction of executing rebellious adolescents. But I find it hard to believe that you see no resemblance, or that such antithetical thinking has given aid and comfort to the meta-theorizing of theonomists.
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I have a feeling you mistake what I (and Dooyeweerd) mean by religious groundmotive, because it is something the theonomists utterly reject. Theonomists don’t want “groundmotives,” they demand chapter and verse!
Bahnsen wrote about the neocalvinist position:
“The use to which these… kinds of distinctions are put by Dooyeweerd and his disciples turns out to be completely destructive of the idea of applying Scripture to every area of life…
Since Scripture does not impart [theory], Scripture’s textual contents cannot directly inform or guide the various special sciences (e.g., history, psychology, biology)…
Despite initial impressions given by the Dooyeweerdian philosophy, the word of God in the text of Scripture is not made relevant to all aspects of human experience…
[Neocalvinists] refer to theoretical work in sociology (for instance) which is carried on by people whose hearts have been gripped by the word-as-power [Baus: Christian groundmotive], not the application of Biblical knowledge to the field of sociology…
[Those who] have had the direction of their hearts changed would be sent by Dooyeweerd into their theoretical endeavors in physics, history… but there they would be prevented from applying the textual content of the Scriptures to their disciplines!”
Bahnsen goes on to say he is siding with John Frame in this criticism of “the Amsterdam Philosophy.” Theonomists and biblicists (if Bahnsen and Frame are representative) are outraged by what you, Darryl, should recognize as praise-worthy in Neocalvinism.
Do you not realize that we neocalvinists elaborated the doctrine of common grace more thoroughly than any others in the history of the universe? Do you not see that our antithesis is not between the “Mosaic covenant-keepers” and “Mosaic covenant-breakers” of the theonomic scheme, but between two principles that cuts through the core of every Dooyeweerdian himself. That is, the antithesis does not in itself supply Christians a theoretical upperhand (however much they might memorize Scripture and try to “apply it to” the Pythagorean theorem).
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So… have I satisfied Darryl that genuine neocalvinism (or Dooyeweerdianism anyway) is not reducible to his critique of biblicism and theonomy?
If yes, this would mean that Darryl would have to re-think his understanding of our alternative position.
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Baus, I’m not satisfied. If the antithesis cuts through everyone, why the need for Christian philosophy? Isn’t the point that some philosophy is Christian and some isn’t? And that’s where I get uncomfortable. I’m not sure how Christianity was supposed to be a philosophical system. Maybe your (plural) view isn’t biblicistic. But it still seems to extend in ways that suggest a Christian university, a Christian historiography, a Christian labor union.
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One point is that there be Christian philosophy, yes. How does the nature of the antithesis confuse or obscure the meaning of this for you? I don’t understand you’re question.
Christianity is not a philosophical system; it is not a theoretical enterprise of any sort. It is a matter of eternal life or death, and it is revelation, history, faith.
If you restrict the use of Christian-as-adjective to the ecclesial and theological, then by definition nothing is Christian but persons, and their activities within the bounds of the institutional church. But that is not how neocalvinists are using the word when they apply it to universities, historiographies, and labor unions. We’re not confusing church with non-church, we’re just not using Christian as a strict synonym for ecclesial (while yet holding to churchly faith). I could elaborate here, but I’d be summarizing Clouser for you.
Perhaps if I understand your question concerning antithesis I can answer more satisfactorily.
Can you elaborate what you’re asking?
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Baus, Christianity is not a theory, but there is Christian philosophy. Neo-Calvinists don’t confuse the church with the non-church, but you have Christian philosophy. Huh? It sounds like you want it both ways. You don’t want to be accused of breaking down distinctions that would preserve a churchly Christianity but you also want a Christian philosophy that will govern advanced learning, thereby turning Christianity into something that is non-churchly.
I understand that intellectual systems are allowed to be complex. But complexity is not an excuse for incoherence.
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I’ll break down the coherence into formal variables for you, to demonstrate that there is a legitimate distinction of terms.
If I said something-X is not itself a vegetable, but there is (or can be) something-X flavored potato chips, then would that be incoherent? Not at all. Whether it corresponded to any possible reality would depend on whether something-X was the sort of thing that had a flavor.
In terms of this analogy, you’re denying that there can be something-X flavored anything, and that something-X can only be manifest in thing-Y. You think something-X (Christianity) is only manifest in the thing-Y (the church).
I’m not confusing thing-Y (the church) with thing-Q (philosophy). I’m not saying that something-X (Christianity) is something-V (theory). I’m saying that thing-Q (philosophy), which is a something-V (theory) can have the X-flavor (adjective Christian). Adjective Christian is not adjective-Y (ecclesial).
Now, all these variables, might be a little too complex for you. I don’t know. I’m trying to say as clearly as I can that your strict identification of “adjective Christian” exclusively with the church is preventing you from realizing that we are not making that same strict identification, and so you can’t seem to comprehend what we are saying.
You have not clarified your own question (about antithesis and adjective Christian), but I suspect this is because that question and the assumptions behind it are likely incoherent. But I’m still open for clarification on that.
Neocalvinists do not turn Christianity into anything non-churchly. Christian faith and worship are churchly. But there are other adjective-Christian things (not Christianity itself, mind you) that are not themselves faith, worship or the church. (I know this causes your mind to misfire because adjective-Christian is to you a mere synonym for church, faith, and worship). But, again, that you cannot imagine non-ecclesial adjective-Christian is not sufficient argument against it.
Can you show that adjective-Christian can have no meaningful non-ecclesial reference? Or what are you saying here besides “does not compute given my own assumptions” ? I’m telling you that we have different assumptions about the adjective Christian. Your response has to be more thoughtful than “no”.
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I do understand that you think Christian is bigger than church, worship and faith. But your asserting it does not make it so, nor does your pining for Christian philosophy. For something to be Christian it needs to be saved, redeemed, sanctified, converted, something. Philosophy needs to be saved? That sounds very fundamentalist, as if worldly pursuits are evil.
So how are you using the word Christian? And why does philosophy need to trust Jesus Christ to save it from its sins?
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Oddly I feel like we’ve gotten somewhere in this conversation. I say oddly, because I sense you wouldn’t agree.
But please do indulge me, as I begin to answer.
OK, if I can show that what we neocalvinists call non-Christian philosophy (done by Christians even) is ultimately idolatrous, that is it takes behind theory something other than God in Christ as God (you might be surprised to know that philosophy must take things as “behind it” and that non-theology does something as seemingly “theological” as “taking something as God” –but I digress)… and if I can further show that what we neocalvinists call Christian philosophy does and must take behind theory God in Christ as God and that knowledge of God in Christ directs this philosophical thinking, and that whether one takes as God behind ones theory an idol or the true and living God has substantial theoretical impact within ones philosophy…
if I laid this out, and then explained that this is how I’m using the word (adjective-)Christian to qualify philosophy… and if I can contrast this with both wouldbe-Christian scholastic and fundamentalistic approaches, would this be a satisfying answer?
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Baus,
Mind if I ask you a few questions? This last comment has piqued some for me.
Are you suggesting that idolatry is somehow more beyond the reach of believers because they are believers? I know, when put that way you’ll know the right answer. But it sure seems to me that you begin with a set of assumptions that forgets that the problem is abiding sin. And sin doesn’t care what your confession is. There is, for example, a thing called Roman Catholcism. It is idolatrous. That means believers in Roman communions are just as able to be idolatrous as unbelievers. I might suggest more so, but that would take away from my point, which is that sin is an equal opportunity affliction, which means idolatry is an equal opportunity possibility regardless of conversion.
Once again, it seems to me that what may distinguish your side of the table from the “paleo-Calvinist” side is the understanding of sin. For us, it’s more than a theory on paper. It’s very real and very total. People sin because they are sinners, not because they aren’t Christians. Non-Christian philosophy isn’t ultimately idolatrous, people (read: sinners) are.
I suppose that was more suggestions than questions.
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Probably not because I have heard such arguments before. It doesn’t mean I’ve heard the best ones or that I’m unwilling to lisen to more. I’m just letting you know the likelihood of my being persuaded.
Two other factors inform my prejudice. One is whether you have considered that the effort to gussy up Christ in philosophy may actually be a form of idolatry itself — sort of like taking a legitimate Christian activity, like law, and doing it on the Lord’s Day. If Christ had needed philosophy to establish his rule and carry out his redemption, why do we see no trace of it in Scripture, and why does Paul spend so much time contrasting the cross of Christ with the wisdom of the Greeks, for that matter? I understand that the motivation for Christian philosophy is generally wholesome. So is the desire for a godly society and for Christian schools, and for all the things that theonomists soft and hard want. But in many of those cases, it seems to me, believers are not content with the rule that Christ exerts for now. One day he will completely and visibly dominate every argument and every law. But that’s not what he has given to us for now. Patience, dude.
Second, you’d need to convince me that such “Christian” philosophy is better than the likes of an Aristotle. I know lots of paganism afflicted the Greeks, not to mention certain sexual practices. But boy they were smart. Even Calvin thought so.
BTW, all that you have tentatively laid out here suggests a real affinity with the theonomists that you disdain. They are also trying to make everything Christian — different means, sure, but same project. Also, this is ultimately a fundamentalist project because it shows discomfort with creaturely activities that aren’t Christian. Beatles and the Stones? No. Larry Norman and Petra? For sure and God be praised.
Well, duh.
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Zrim, I don’t mind, but your question is already answered in comments above. You are in complete agreement with neocalvinists about sin. This is what tripped-up Darryl when I explained what the antithesis is. See comments above.
So, here’s the thing, real neocalvinists are paleo in their confession. The “neo” isn’t in reference to confession, it’s talking about an elaboration of non-theological topics.
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Darryl, this “real affinity” with theonomists because they too are “also trying to make everything Christian” is like your real affinity with Islamists because they also oppose adjective-Christian things. Different means, sure. But same project.
Gimme a break.
Your comments about opposing creatureliness to what is Christian, immanentizing the eschaton, and suggesting that Christian philosophy would mean Aristotle isn’t smart… these reveal profound (if not willful) misunderstanding of our position.
Paul’s contrasting of the cross of Christ with Greek wisdom is not to say that “in secular things we should except Greek wisdom that is opposed to the cross”. But that is your conclusion, isn’t it?
(My taste in music is Will Oldham and Billy Bragg, by the way).
I will do my best to lay out the position, but probably not in comments here. I’m working on a new site with a sort of FAQ. You’ve provided a great deal of fodder, for which I’m grateful.
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Baus, I’m glad to hear that your Christian philosophy does not immanentize the eschaton. But your simply saying it doesn’t make it so. My impression of the neo-Calvinists is that they spend so much time talking amongst themselves that they don’t hear how they sound to others, like saying things about philosophizing without Christ as idolatrous without considering what that means for the wisdom of the pagan Aristotle. Seriously, I’m not trying simply to be a pain in the arse. These are serious questions that are raised directly from your own positive statements about neo-Calvinism.
So why is it so implausible to hear a fundamentalist echo in the claim that philosophy without Christ is idolatrous? Because you can spell Dooyeweerd, or because your answers are longer than a fundamentalists? (Mind you, I’d rather be a fundamentalist than an evangelical.)
I think it is odd for you to be shocked that someone would disagree with the hallowed neo-Calvinists. There are simply too many tensions that all the cheerleading in the world will not obscure.
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But we neocalvinists have not merely made claims, we’ve explained our views in volume upon volume (Clouser’s book itself refutes a significant number of your mischaracterizations/caricatures) … and then what is shocking is not that some would disagree with our views, but that they would fail to even comprehend so to distinguish our views from those we have painstakingly differentiated, even fundamentalists and Aristotle… and then to hear “hey, you guys shouldn’t say this without considering what it means for Aristotle. You must be fundamentalists”.
But, no matter. I appreciate your interaction nonetheless, and I will press on to make clearer to an ever-wider audience (though my mission field is NAPARC parishioners) the true contours and content of neocalvinism and its singular complementarity with reformed confessionalism. The tensions are in confused minds, not in neocalvinism’s positions, and if expository essays are cheerleading then hand me the megaphone.
Anyway, is it not your position that in secular things we should accept the cross-opposing wisdom of the Greeks? Really, I’m suspicious you would say “yes it is my position”… but I would like to know how you would put it. If Paul opposed the cross of Christ to Greek wisdom, then if you cannot conceive a meaningfully non-biblicist Christian philosophy is your alternative schizophrenia, or syncretism, or idolatry or what?
Maybe you have not adequately considered the meaning of paganism in your non-ecclesial life.
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Baus,
You are in complete agreement with neocalvinists about sin…So, here’s the thing, real neocalvinists are paleo in their confession. The “neo†isn’t in reference to confession, it’s talking about an elaboration of non-theological topics.
I’m trying to be charitable here, but I do find that exchanging with self-professed neocalvinists is a lot like exchanging with theonomists. I find myself making similar points. They seem to vascillate between a low view of sin and utter depravity, saying all the while that they “too believe in sin.” And just as their fixation on law undercuts their ostensible confession of Jesus’ messianic fulfillment, the neocalvinist’s broader enterprise gets in the way of his confession. I’m glad the theomists confess Jesus is the fulfillment of all the law (and prophets), and I’m glad the neocalvinists are “paleo in their confession of sin.” But what then gives with the theonomy and neocalvinism? It’s like the activist practicing civil disobedience as a virtue all the while saying he affirms decent, obedient and institutional citizenry. Huh? Again, we think sin is real, not merely a stipulated doctrine.
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Baus, two can play the game of who has read what. Some paleos have argued for a hyphenated existence that stems precisely from the paradoxical relationship between the Greek’s wisdom and Paul’s preaching. (But the neo-s dismiss such arguments as liberal, as expressions of being embarrassed of Christ.)
Paul only opposed the wisdom of the Greeks, as far as I can tell (since he allowed eating meat offered to idols), to the folly of the cross in terms of salvation or redemption. In the sphere of politics, civil society, even human ethics, Aristotle was wise and should be followed until someone comes along who is smarter. Yes, that means there is an inconsistency between the ways of redemption and the ways of creation. Duh. We would never choose faith to be saved. We would choose our own accomplishments.
And this is what has me on guard about neo-Calvinism (aside from the prefix — it is curious to me that you call yourself neo- and yet pretend to be as old as the creeds; wouldn’t paleo work better if in fact some novelty weren’t going on?). By denying a distinction between religion and the secular, between grace and creation, by trying to make it all cohere, the covenant of works by which we justify our accomplishments comes creeping back into the covenant of grace.
I get it that theoretically Aristotle may not have been able to justify his ethics. But for life in this world, I’m not sure why we want to throw away good results from underrealized theory. Nor am I sure where the Bible commands pure and holy theory.
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I haven’t had time to catch up on all the Baus-DGH discussion that follows, but I’ll try to answer this question as simply as I can. As you point out, the Bible gives only some general priniples with respect to eating. Christian worldviewism would posit that those principles are sufficient for governing moral choice in the area of eating – doing so with thankfulness, in recognition that all food and is a good gift from God, not judging herbivores, carnivores, or Gentiles for their eating habits, avoiding gluttony and drunkenness, sharing with the hungry, and enjoying the fellowship of the saints in the breaking of bread. Utensils and vegetarianism, then, are not matters of moral choice, and can thus be contextually judged on the basis of meeting practical or moral (loving one’s neighbor, enjoying the good gift of food) grounds. Then again, these comparatively trivial questions are not the focus of Christian worldviewish thought: rather, areas involving questions of morals (e.g. justice in government) and truth (recognizing man’s depravity when approaching psychology) are. You say that it works out better in theory than in practice, but I would say the examples of utensils and vegetarianism simply do not require that much thought at all, biblical or secular. They’re just not as important (which, incidentally, can be seen in the way Jesus and Paul treat dirty pots and vegetarians). Application of the imago dei and God’s wrath towards unjust nations (e.g. Nineveh) to government, on the other hand, is very practical as we deal with euthanasia, infantacide, and unjust wars.
p.s. Sorry for not addressing the local food issue. I simply haven’t thought about the subject enough to be confident in any approach, biblical or otherwise, to the issue.
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Andrew, this is disappointing if you are a neo-Calvinist. To hear you say that any part of the cosmos over which Christ is Lord is unimportant is to suggest, isn’t it, that part of creation is not worthy of Christ’s rule? I’m being serious. The Lordship of Christ is used to dignify countless creaturely affairs. So why leave out vegetables and utensils.
But here’s where the 2k perspective is better than the neo-Calvinist. By recognizing the goodness of creation, and by paying attention to creation not as a mission field to be redeemed but to be submitted to as part of God’s amazing design and providence, the 2ker says that vegetables and utensils are important. They are not important in an ultimate sense, but they are in a proximate sense as part of God’s creation, as part of something that God took time to plan, make, and nurture.
Plus, the 2ker will look to the work of non-Calvinists like Leon Kass (The Hungry Soul) or Patrick Deneen on untensils (http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=1244) to understand what our eating and the way we eat say about our creatureliness. I am serious about this. Kass’ book is among the most profound and wisest I know in discerning what our anatomy and digestive system and our capacity for eating in ways different from animals says about our spiritural existence.
So once again I find the neo-Calvinist embrace of creation to be hamfisted because it reads too much of reality as a flannel graph of morals.
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Dr. Hart,
Can’t say for sure I’m a neo-Calvinist, and I can’t say I’m not – I don’t have a firm grasp of all the categories involved, and if it covers everyone from Rushdooney to Rob Bell, it seems a bit general to be terribly useful (kind of like ‘evangelical’). “Comparatively unimportant” is, of course, not the same as unimportant in an absolute sense, and while God says “Mine!” over all creation, His policy the ant species is markedly different from His relationship with man. He makes distinctions in levels of importance, and so should we.
As stated above, I’m not necessarily up on all the terminology and how it’s used, but I can see how you might be leery of “redeeming creation.” As I would understand it, this simply means recognizing that all creation labors under the effects of the Fall (death and corruption) with man as a spiritual creature fallen morally to boot. Thus, stewarding creation involves fighting death and corruption, as well as cultivation – nothing hyper-spiritual or pie-in-the-sky-philisophical here. If any of this makes me non-neo-Calvinist, so be it.
I find your citation of Patrick Deneen interesting on a few fronts. First, his explicit relation of manners to combating original sin make him sound rather … well, neo-Calvinist(?). Second, I’ve seen a bit of this neo-allegorical or metaphysical approach to physical reality floating around, and am having a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff. “Our upright form places us above the horizon, making it possible to see further visually and metaphorically gives us the ability to set our sights to higher things.” Does this apply to giraffes? Or midgets? I’d also be interested in seeing the history behind this tidbit: “The knife – the first utensil used for eating – became understood to be a visible sign of the violence that underlies our meals.” Finally, if we are to be (properly) wary of multiplying biblical norms for behavior, we should be even more wary of multiplying non-biblical norms, such as the quote from Kass that “eating on the street … displays precisely … a lack of self control.”
As an important side note, I would say that I found most of Deneen’s article enlightening and conducive to good thinking about living well in God’s world, which seems to be the practical focus of Front Porch Republic. Much of the “worldview” teaching I’ve had at Grove City has been dedicated to establishing the existence of Creational norms for “truth, beauty, and goodness.” While we always start with Scripture, we can only get out of Scripture what’s actually there. This is sufficient to reject artists who consciously and explicitly embrace ugliness as an end in itself, for example, but insufficient to say what combination of colors and linear perspective achieves beauty.
I get the sense that, as with many reformed folks, our differences lie more in the philisophical than in the practical realm, and I’m glad to see solid practical discussion going on here as well as at Front Porch Republic.
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I must say, as significantly as I enjoyed reading what you had to say, I couldnt help but lose interest after a while. Its as if you had a fantastic grasp to the subject matter, but you forgot to include your readers. Perhaps you should think about this from a lot more than 1 angle. Or maybe you shouldnt generalise so much. Its better if you think about what others may have to say instead of just going for a gut reaction to the topic. Think about adjusting your personal thought process and giving others who may read this the benefit of the doubt.
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