I'm sure it means very little in the big picture, but we were voted #3 in the "ivory tower" category of the ABA's top 100 blawg survey, behind only the Volokh Conspiracy and Balkinization.
Friday, January 4, 2008
And the bronze medal goes to . . .
Friday, December 21, 2007
Tamanaha on Araujo on Eschatology & Public Policy
Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha responds to Robert Araujo's recent post of a hypothetical conversation between a believer and nonbeliever about eternity. Fr. Araujo wrote:
Let me offer a humble and modest suggestion by posing a question for the secularist who has at least an equal share in the direction of public policy as does the theist: have you thought about the future? The secularist may dismiss the direction in which my inquiry is going, i.e., in an eschatological path. All I can do then is to propose that the secularist reflect on something that he or she may have never considered. And how might I do this?
Let me offer the following illustration: I could say, “You may be right, Secularist, that it is all over when we die. But I ask you to consider the following: we both will die (however that happens), and this event is inevitable. You may look at me and say, ‘see I (the Secularist) was right. You have wasted a lifetime.’ But, my suggestion to you is this: But if I (the theist) am right, I will not have wasted a lifetime, but you will have wasted an eternity.”
An excerpt from Brian's response:
[F]or the broader issue of the relevance of religious views in political decisions, there is a notable asymmetry in the consequences that follow from these two positions. If non-believers make political decisions by the lights of their best moral judgments, the fact that they wrongly do not believe in the Christian story does not prevent Christians from enjoying eternal salvation. No harm done to them, at least with respect to the hereafter.
However, if Christians make political decisions by the lights of Christian doctrine, and it turns out that there is no God or that Christianity is wrong about the nature of things (two distinct possibilities), then Christians will have inflicted their false religious beliefs on others, with immediate consequences.
Noonan on Huckabee
Since Rick has brought up Mike Huckabee, let me say that I find him to be the most huggable presidential candidate, but I'm not tempted to support him. Neither, apparently, is Peggy Noonan. Here's her commentary on the infamous "cross" commercial:
I love the cross. The sight of it, the fact of it, saves me, literally and figuratively. But there is a kind of democratic politesse in America, and it has served us well, in which we are happy to profess our faith but don't really hit people over the head with its symbols in an explicitly political setting, such as a campaign commercial, which is what Mr. Huckabee's ad was.
I wound up thinking this: That guy is using the cross so I'll like him. That doesn't tell me what he thinks of Jesus, but it does tell me what he thinks of me. He thinks I'm dim. He thinks I will associate my savior with his candidacy. Bleh.
She also sees him as a hybrid of two leading political figures, and not a good sort of hybrid:
Mr. Huckabee reminds me of two governors who became president, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Like Mr. Clinton, he is a natural, charming, bright and friendly. Yet one senses something unsavory there, something not so nice. Like Mr. Bush, his approach to politics seems, at bottom, highly emotional, marked by great spurts of feeling and mighty declarations as to what the Lord wants. The problem with this, and with Bushian compassionate conservatism, which seems to have an echo in Mr. Huckabee's Christianism, is that to the extent it is a philosophy, it is not a philosophy that allows debate. Because it comes down to "This is what God wants." This is not an opener of discussion but a squelcher of it. It doesn't expand the process, it frustrates it.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Smugness and Salvation
Regarding Michael's question to Fr. Araujo, I do not know whether belief is necessary if one hopes to "gain eternity," and I do not feel confident enough to tell my many nonbelieving friends that they have "wasted eternity." I venture to say that I have experienced, and continue to experience, more than my fair share of anguish wrestling with the truth of Christianity and the prospect of immortality. Nevertheless -- and this is where I might part company with Michael -- that anguish arises from uncertainty about whether the Christian story to which I have committed myself is actually true, not from uncertainty about whether its truth value shapes the nature of salvation. If the story is true, then faith is unquestionably a path to salvation -- perhaps there are paths of salvation that do not proceed through faith (I hope there are), but the Christian story does not tell me that they exist, much less what they might be. If the Christian story is not true, then the nonbeliever's guess is as good as mine on questions of salvation. Perhaps the moral quality of my life provides a potential path toward salvation, regardless of Christianity's truth, but I'm not in any position to know that.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Opderbeck on "Just Passing Through"
Seton Hall law prof David Opderbeck, an evangelical, offers this response to my "Just Passing Through" post:
This reflects an interesting tension in the evangelical community right now. I think the "just passing through" sentiment is indeed a hindrance to environmental stewardship in the large segments of the American evangelical community that are tied into premillennial dispensational theology. Premillennial Dispensational theology, as popularized in the "Left Behind" novels, posits distinct historical breaks in the manner in which God deals with people. Currently, in this system, we live in a time when the Church's primary mission is evangelization. This time will end immanently when Jesus returns to remove the Church from the earth (the "rapture"). A seven year period of judgment will follow the rapture (the "tribulation"). After the tribulation, Jesus will return again with the Church to physically reign from David's throne for 1000 years (the "millennium"). At the end of the millennium, people will again rebel and the earth will be destroyed, along with all the rest of the existing creation, to be replaced by an entirely new heavens and earth. For many premillennial dispensationalists, environmental stewardship merely distracts the Church from its primary mission of evangelization and is in any event fruitless in light of the coming tribulation.
In contrast, a growing number of American evangelials have embraced a more classically Reformed understanding of creation and eschatology. In this view, part of the Church's present task is to participate in the redemption of all creation. Under at least some versions of this Reformed understanding, this task will be completed at Christ's return, at which time the present earth will be transformed into its final eschatological state as the home of God's resurrected people; the "replacement" view of creation in eschatology is rejected. Thus, "creation care" today is in some sense a way of participating in the process by which all of creation is being redeemed in Christ. See, for example, the eschatological thrust of the "Evangelical Declaration on Creation Care" published by the Evangelical Environmental Network.
Yet another version of Christian environmentalism is rooted in process or quasi-process theological views about creation such as those promoted by Ted Peters and John Polkinghorne. In Ted Peters' view, for example, the "omega point" of creation is the end of an evolutionary process by which God is bringing all of creation towards a harmonious telos. You can hear echoes of Teilhard de Chardin here. This sort of view is outside the mainstream of American evangelicalism, but some U.K. and American evangelicals involved in faith-and-science discussions are attracted to it.
Political Discourse and Christian Eschatology
Fr. Araujo is correct that scientists recognize that earth is not eternal, but I think there is a fundamental difference between that scientific assertion and Christian teaching. If it is true that we will one day crash into the sun, that is irrelevant at this point (because it is millions of years away), and if it ever became relevant, then our entire society would devote itself to avoiding the event's occurrence. Christian eschatology puts the earth's demise in an entirely different light: we (theoretically) want the end of this world to come. (e.g., Rev. 22:20: "Come, Lord Jesus!") I know Catholics don't get pumped up about end-times talk quite as much as my evangelical brethren do, but there are public policy implications of prophecy. For example, one of the "signs" of the end times pertains to earthquakes, storms, and other "birth pains" of the new world to come. Is it proper for a Christian to applaud climate change as facilitating the end times process? Or is it proper for a Christian to support a foreign policy that encourages Israel to rebuild the temple, thereby fulfilling other end-times prophecy?
My bigger question for all of us religion-in-the-public-square-advocate types is this: if I'm going to discourage my fellow Christian from basing their political positions on these grounds, should I limit my arguments to theological ones (e.g., they're misinterpreting Scripture), or should I also discourage them on political / prudential grounds (e.g., we can't contribute to the common good by basing policies on a belief that the current world's demise is an unavoidable and good thing). In other words, are there some Christian beliefs that should be unwelcome in our political discourse?
Waterboarding is (still) torture
Thanks to Chris Eberle for his thoughtful response to my posting of the Armed Forces Journal's editorial regarding waterboarding.
First, I'm not sure what his friend means by likening the AFJ to the National Enquirer. Does he mean that the AFJ usually focuses on reporting scandalous rumors regarding the Joint Chiefs of Staff? That their reporting is often proved false? That their editorial opinions are shown to be biased against the Bush Administration? I posted the editorial because, in light of the fact that I've never even contemplated stepping onto the battlefield or into the interrogation room, I welcome perspectives from folks who have. Because they are not affiliated with the military formally, does that negate any expertise the editors would have? Are the editors actually a bunch of long-haired pacifists posing as military types? I'm not clear on the nature of the objection.
Second, creating an apprehension of imminent death through waterboarding is entirely different, in my view, from threatening death via a pointed gun. Waterboarding, in my (admittedly limited) understanding, inflicts extreme physical suffering to the point that the subject expects death to result. It is not simply providing information to the subject that they will be killed unless they cooperate. Waterboarding violates the person's physical integrity, inflicts extreme physical suffering, and as a product of that physical suffering, creates the perception of imminent death. I'm open to arguments as to why that's not torture.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Just Passing Through
Growing up, I sang a hymn with the opening line, "This world is not my home I'm just passing through." We don't hear that sentiment much anymore in conversations about Christian stewardship and the environment, but it undoubtedly still shapes many Christians' hesitation about fully embracing the climate change struggle. Writing in the New Atlantis (HT: Touchstone), S.M. Hutchens explains:
The principal difference in the horizons against which orthodox Christianity and earth-piety work is that the earth as it presently exists is the eschatological telos of the latter’s vision, while for the former it is subsumed under the more general category of Creation. The concept of Creation carries with it belief in the biblical God as its Creator, and thus acquires subordination to a purpose in which it exists not as the end of a vision, as it must be to non-theists who believe in no other home, but a means to the accomplishment of a divine purpose that transcends and shall eventually subsume it.
Here, then, is the first inescapable offense Christianity gives to earth-piety: the earth as we know it empirically is not a final thing but a first creation. The second offense is that Christianity’s principal reason for the earth’s existence is to serve the cause of human redemption, to be defined and carried out not by what seems reasonable to man, but the purpose and method of God. The earth is presented to the faith as sacramental, and as sacrament its end is to be consumed so that a second and higher Creation may come. Its end is as the end of man who has been made from and returns to its dust, who must pass away so the Second and Eternal Man can arise to take his place in a new heaven and earth, the old having passed away. It is difficult to exaggerate the breadth and depth of the chasm that exists between biblical religion and earth-piety.
Most (all?) MoJ-ers believe that faith is relevant to political deliberations regarding the common good. But does the passage quoted above suggest that faith's relevance is not all-encompassing? The Christian belief in the earth as a "first creation," rather than as a "final thing," seems practically impossible to translate into secularly accessible terms. Is this an example of a belief that is, in the Christian's exercise of prudential judgment, best left at home when entering the public / political sphere? (Perhaps another example is leaving biblical prophecies about the nation of Israel out of our public deliberations about foreign policy?) And if I'm correct, do we leave these teachings out of our political conversations because of the degree of Christian uncertainty regarding the timing of these events (the divinely ordained end of the earth as we know it; the realization of prophecies regarding Israel), or is there a reason derived from the substance of the teachings that separates them from biblical teachings about the sanctity of life, sexual morality, etc.?
Waterboarding is torture
I oppose the use of waterboarding, but I admit that I have zero expertise on issues of national security. The editors of the The Armed Forces Journal, however, are more credible and experienced, and they have made their views crystal clear in response to Rudy "every method they could think of" Giuliani and our linguistically Clintonesque Attorney General Michael Mukasey. (HT: Sullivan)
In an interview, Giuliani was asked for his views on using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding. He responded that in a hypothetical scenario that assumed an attack, “I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they can think of.” Prompted again on the specific use of waterboarding, he repeated “every method they could think of.” Mukasey said he found waterboarding to be “repugnant,” but he wouldn’t answer whether it amounted to torture.
Let AFJ be crystal clear on a subject where these men are opaque: Waterboarding is a torture technique that has its history rooted in the Spanish Inquisition. In 1947, the U.S. prosecuted a Japanese military officer for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II.
Waterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death. And as with all torture techniques, it is, therefore, an inherently flawed method for gaining reliable information. In short, it doesn’t work. That blunt truth means all U.S. leaders, present and future, should be clear on the issue.
I can't resist offering my favorite description of Giuliani from one of today's leading political theorists, Chris Rock. Rock explained that Giuliani is great “in a crisis. But in real life Giuliani’s kinda like a pit bull. He’s great when you have a burglar, but if you don’t, he just might eat your kids.”
Monday, December 17, 2007
Equality and the Family
In the current Commonweal, I review Don Browning's Equality and the Family: A Fundamental, Practical Theology of Children, Mothers, and Fathers in Modern Societies. It's only available online to subscribers, but here's an excerpt:
Browning’s theological method of cultural engagement does not signal religion’s capture of public policy, as feared by those who cry “theocracy” whenever Christian views are aired in debates about the family, marriage in particular. Instead, theology is one source by which to “create a public philosophy about marriage.” While marriage is not solely a religious institution, the covenantal and sacramental quality of its religious dimension can be one theme that helps capture marriage’s centrality to personal identity and the social order. Our public philosophy, according to Browning, must also recognize marriage as a natural institution that satisfies and directs a wide range of natural human inclinations, as a contractual institution between two consenting adults, as a social institution that contributes to the public welfare, and as a communicative relationship that requires a high degree of interpersonal skill and sensitivity. Browning helpfully broadens the public conversation by reminding us that the multifaceted role of marriage demands that we utilize a broad set of historical, religious and social scientific sources. Maintaining a rich public understanding of marriage is hard work, but abandoning the project creates a void that is quickly filled by the concept of marriage as a private contract, which itself exacts a significant personal and social cost.
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