January conference coming up…

The Peaceable Kingdom, c. 1834 (Edward Hicks, public domain)
The Biblical vision (Isaiah 11) is one of peace between nature, groups,
and children and adults. How are we doing in realizing that vision?
Where are we falling short? What must we do?
______________________

“A Conversation about Environmental, Familial and Social Sustainability:
An issue for the 21st Century”

In Memory of Don Browning, 1934-2010*

Friday evening and Saturday, January 21-22, 2011
Pres House, 731 State Street Mall, Madison, WI 53703

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”–Aldo Leopold

“If justice is giving each his or her due, the family today is unable to enact justice to wife or husband, and especially to the children, who are supposed to be the primary end of the whole enterprise….Churches today are at present infirmaries for sick families, and they must continue to be so under present circumstances.”–Robert Bellah, in Family Transformed

If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.” Then (Jesus) took a child, set him in front of them, and put his arm around him. “Whoever receives one of these children in my name,” he said, “receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” –Mark 9: 35-37

As we enter the 21st century, a question is increasingly being asked on all sides: is the way of life we’ve created for ourselves (in the environment, in the family, and in society) sustainable? Can it be wished for everyone, and can it be maintained indefinitely, or does it contain within itself (if not corrected) the seeds of its own destruction? In short, despite the many advances of recent years, are we living our lives at the expense of life–and, if so, how might we (and the church) act to remedy the situation?

Participants in the conversation include: Dr. Calvin DeWitt, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, UW-Madison; Dr. Colleen Moore, Psychology, UW-Madison; Dr. Bruce Wilcox, Director, National Marriage Project, University of Virginia; Ed Brown, Director, Care of Creation; Dr. Gayle Reed,  Forgiveness Consultant; Fr. Eric Nielsen, University Catholic Center; Rev. Mike Winnowski, Geneva Campus Church; Steve Musto, Blackhawk Church; Marline Pearson, Madison Area Technical College; and others.

For the conference schedule, click here. To review the discussion leading up to the conference, click here. To read an interview with W. Bradford Wilcox on the recent study of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, “When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America,” click here. To read further in some of the issues that will be discussed in the conversation, check W. Bradford Wilcox’s article in National Affairs, “The Evolution of Divorce,” (clickhere); and in Christianity Today, “Marriage: Marginalized in the Middle,” with Chuck Donovan (click here).

* Don Browning was Alexander Campbell Professor of Religious Ethics and the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and a key participant in the developing interdisciplinary study of the family. His comment that the notion of an  ”ecology of families…makes sense to me…(and) needs to be developed” played a role in calling the present conversation into being.  Don was a personal friend of several of the participants.

Thanks to the generosity of a donor, no registration fee is required. But we would appreciate your letting us know of your interest and/or plans to attend by emailing your name and email address to: vmvisick@gmail.com, so we might know how to make the best use of the  space at Pres House for our dialogue sessions, coffee times, and reception (your name and email address will be kept confidential).

Sponsored by New College Madison, the Bradshaw-Knight Foundation, the Grad and Faculty Ministries of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Geneva Campus Church, the Presbyterian Student Center Foundation (PSCF),  and other ministries in the Madison, WI area.

Remembering “E”

Recently, via an Alumni website, I learned that “E” (not her real initial), the most beautiful woman in my freshman class in college, had died of cancer.

Since I was dating a friend of E’s, and we had some interaction with E, I had a chance to observe her interaction with others, female and male.

Females were upset when E entered the room, because all the male attention in the room went to her. Male attention went to E like iron filings to a magnet.

This was my first experience of someone so beautiful that she could literally stop the conversation in a room simply by entering it. I saw it happen many times.

One would think that being so beautiful might be a big plus in life, but at least in E’s life, the situation was much more ambiguous.

E was studying for an education certificate, and eventually she accomplished this feat, as well as an MA in English from the University of Washington. It appears, however, that she never had much of a career as a teacher. I had thought that her beauty would be a plus in a junior high school class, both for males and females. But it appears it was more of a distraction than a help.

Nor did E’s beauty bring her happiness in romance. Many of my friends made a play for her, but she stiff-armed all of them. Gradually, I came to the conclusion that something bad must have happened to her romantically, or even that she really didn’t like men.

Years later, a friend of mine from the West Coast reported that E had been a stewardess on one of the West Coast airlines on which he flew. In that role, she totally charmed the passengers on the plane, and had passenger cabin under complete control.

After college I moved to the Midwest for seminary and graduate school, and I gradually lost contact with my West Coast friends. But E remained in the back of my mind for several reasons.

You can’t study ethics, as I do, without encountering the question of the relationship between the good, the true, and the beautiful, and the relationship of all of these things (including beauty) to human fulfillment.

One can speak of the perfection of form, or the relationship of form to function, or the relationship of beauty to proper proportions, as architects are prone to do when discussing the “golden section.” One can also speak of how earthly beauty points beyond itself to the beautiful itself, or God. Or, one can be agnostic about all of the philosophical arguments about beauty, but still observe that whatever it is, it stimulates a lot of human activity, on the part of both females and males.

(The latest movie illustrating the phenomenon was The Devil Wears Prada, which tells the story of a young female college graduate (played by Ann Hathaway) who makes the transition between being a cute coed to a strikingly beautiful woman, thanks to the impact of the New York fashion industry on her young life–but not without some threats to her integrity as a person.)

I still think a lot about these matters, but in the meantime I’ve come to a conclusion: it is not a good thing in life to be given too much beauty (or wealth, or power, or any of the other good things of life).

Beauty is a great good, and a cause of great delight in God’s creation, but most people do not have the wisdom to relate to it properly, either in themselves or in others. Rather, in the spirit of Proverbs 30:1, it would be best to be given some, but not too much, of ANY of these good things, beauty included.

Whatever the complications of  E’s life and relationships, they are past now, and she is in the presence of the One who heals all hurts and repairs all damaged relationships. RIP, E.

Being Neutral is Oh-So-Hard-To Do…

Stanley Fish, not usually one of my favorite commentators, has written an excellent Op-Ed piece on the recent supreme court decision regarding the Christian Legal Society and its conflict with the Hastings School of the Law in San Francisco. His commentary, along with an amazing series of reactions by bloggers around the country, can be found here. For Fish’s review of the controversy created by his column, click here.

His argument, with which I substantially agree, is that neutrality is very hard to achieve in a public institution, and often measures taken to insure neutrality backfire, and suppress the rights of groups that don’t fit into normal “liberal” categories. The CLS, in his opinion, is a group that doesn’t fit very well in a “liberal” society, largely because it not only has an orthodox theological commitment but also a commitment to what might be called “orthopraxy,” or right practice, specifically in the matter of sexual ethics. Thus, in Fish’s opinion, the CLS didn’t receive justice in the supreme court decision under review.

At another point, I’ll comment about the arguments on both sides, and explain why in this case I side with Fish (and Alioto) on the arguments in question.

In my initial take on the controversy, however, what is amazing to me is the nature of the response to Fish’s article.

I would say that more than half of the responses are “ideological,” and depend almost entirely on the responder’s prior position on gay and lesbian issues.

Those who support the “liberal” take on sexual issues tend to take their stand on the principle of equality, while damming the opposition with charges of bigotry. Those who might have a more “conservative” take on sexual issues tend to argue on the logical merits of the case, while exhibiting a variety of interpretations about what exactly the logical merits might be.

In the exchanges I read as of last night, I would say that the conservatives made a realistic effort at discussing the matter in terms of the logic and history of court decisions in this country, and appeared more technically “reasonable.” But the liberals were winning the debate emotionally, because no one was able to challenge them on whether or not the principle of equality applied in this particular instance.

Sophistry is a live and well, as we can see from the way in which the debate over Fish’s article has been conducted. But the other thing that can be seen in this debate is that where there is no common grounding in deeper agreed upon principles, things degenerate into a simple conflict of power, a sobering phenomenon in our current political culture.

This situation, as a number of commentators have noted, is deeply troubling for the future of the democratic way of life in a liberal culture, for such a culture can’t endure forever in a state of deep conflict.

For Fish’s reaction to the controversy created by his column, click here.

How Not to Change the World

One of the more interesting books published this year was James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010–not just because of his analysis and prescription for Christian action toward culture change, which are significant but flawed, but also because of the reaction it has caused in the evangelical Christian community.

For the reader’s benefit, I list here the most significant reactions so far:  Andy Crouch’s initial review in Books and Culture, Christopher Benson’s post-publication interview with Hunter in Christianity Today, and, in the same journal, Crouch’s response to Hunter’s specific criticisms, Charles Colson’s response to Hunter’s larger argument, and, finally, also in CT, Hunter’s later response to Crouch and Colson.

In my opinion, Colson in his brash way, and Crouch, in his gentler, kinder way, get the best of the exchange, while admitting Hunter’s sociological point: that when it comes to making an impact on culture, Christians need to pay attention to institutions (Crouch agreeing, in principle, Colson in actual practice).

Basically, while appreciating Hunter’s work, both Crouch and Colson try to correct Hunter’s either-or style of thinking about cultural change, agree with his critique of American individualism, and raise legitimate questions about Hunter’s drift toward sectarianism in the latter part of his book.

So in this case, the practitioners turned out to be more profound than the professor theologically, although both could profit from his sociological analysis of culture change, within limits.

In the first part of the book, Hunter criticizes evangelicals for the individualism, idealism, and ineffectiveness in the task of cultural creation. He points out that evangelicals number in the multi-millions in the USA, but are ineffectual in their impact on the larger culture–in contrast, say, to the Jewish and gay/lesbian communities.

So, one might conclude, study how the Jewish and gay/lesbian communities influence the larger culture–and go thou and do likewise.

But Hunter has more on his mind than simple sociological description. He has a bone to pick most of the Christians involved in social action in the USA. They may be divided into “Defensive Against” (Christian Right), “Relevance To” (Christian Left), and “Purity From” (Neo-Anabaptists) parties, they are driven by ressentiment, and they are all after political power understood as the ability to command the coercive might of the state against their presumed enemies.

Here, again, Hunter’s “either-or” style of analysis, and perhaps his desire to isolate a space for his preferred style of “faithful presence,” betrays him. Although the parties he discusses in this section differ in their various emphases, especially in their reactions to the issue of poverty and to the exercise of violence, all of them have positive as well as negative emphases, and each has a vision of purity. James Dobson, Jim Wallis, and Shane Clairborne are all more complex than Hunter’s caricature suggests. I suggest rather that people focus on the genuine differences between these various parties, take seriously their critique of each other, and decide on the Biblical merits of the case.

My main objection to Hunter’s analysis, however, is his truncated view of the political as the realm of legitimate coercion, a view he shares with many other sociologists, and his related view of power as domination.

A favorite theologian of mine defines the political as the constitutive function of a history bearing group, and in this understanding, there may be coercive aspects, but there are many positive aspects as well, including the “vocational identity” of the group. And he defines “power” as the capacity to stand out of non-being. Typically, there may be aspects of domination involved in the capacity of a finite creature to endure and to flourish as a human being, but there are many other capacities as well, including the capacity for language and technology, both of which help the finite creature to be what it can be. Finite, human power, is limited, but God’s power is unlimited.

Or, if one doesn’t like the Platonic style of assimilation, there is the sophistic style of differentiation, and here the political philosopher Hannah Arendt sheds light on the matter.

“Politics,” she asserts, is the capacity of humans to get together and, beyond the necessities of labor and work, to act in concert, and what springs up between persons in this kind of community is “power.”  Far from being a realm of coercion, politics as she understands it can only arise when coercion isn’t present. And power is not the legitimate use of violence; rather, it is the utter opposite of violence, even though it is often found together in the same community. Power, she asserts, is its own end, while violence, which typically requires instruments, can never be the end of anything.

The understanding of such basic concepts as “politics” and “power” is proven by their capacity to help us understand otherwise misunderstood phenomena of our our contemporary lives–such as the “power” generated by such movements as Gandhi’s movement in India against the British, or the movement against the Shah in Iran, or the East German uprising against the Communist state toward the end of the Soviet era. In each case, movements of great power were created, without access to the far superior means of violence wielded by the British, the Shah, and the East German Communist state.

And, in the realm of religion, both the theologian and the political philosopher do a better job of understanding the power of the early church, developed entirely apart from any control over the means of violence, and strictly in response to the predicted penetration of the Holy Spirit into the lives of the members of the early church. “And ye shall receive power, after the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” Acts 1:8.

Nevertheless, as Hunter makes his transition beyond sociology into theology, he takes up some important issues. If the inadequacies of his point of view drive us to a deeper understanding of things than his “radical orthodox” community, then his book will have done us all a good service, and it can be affirmed.

I Believe in the Resurrection…

Easter Sunday, 1992

“I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

This week we reach the turning point in the church year, shifting our attention from Jesus in his interaction with his disciples to our lives as they relate to him.

And the question with which we are dealing today is the most basic one in our lives: for what, and on what basis, can we hope in this life? When it comes right down to it, what is the reality on which we can really count, and how can it be manifested in our lives? Do we have any right to expect a happy ending, and if so, what is the nature of that happy ending?

As we sing the songs and recite the old familiar phrases of the Christian celebration of Easter, we would like to think that the answer has something to do with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The story just read in Acts attracts us, the hope of the writer in the book of John inspires us, and most of all, the spirit of the early Christians recounted in First Peter, as they faced the numerous trials of their difficult lives, makes us wish that we had their strength, their power, and their ability to deal with the world in which they had been put.

We would like to believe it all, but if we are honest with ourselves, and we begin to think the matter through, it all seems fantastic, hard to comprehend, unbelievable.

Why is it that the resurrection is so hard for us to accept in this day and age?

Some Problems

Well, one reason might be that some of us have given the resurrection a bad name, and have caused other people to turn away from it to something else.

We must remember that the resurrection is an unusual, one of a kind event–an event with a factual basis, as the texts make clear, but also an event challenging the ways in which university people have come to understand historical reality.

But some of us have ignored the difficult and extraordinary nature of the resurrection and have approached it like any other historical event. So we point to the empty tomb, the recorded appearances of Jesus, and the veracity of the early Christians as proof that the resurrection really happened. Our mood becomes one of self-confident, and sometimes even, arrogant assertion of the resurrection, with the implication that those who do not believe are either unintelligent or morally at fault.

(I should say at this point that the empty tomb, the recorded appearances of Jesus, and the veracity of the early Christians–when taken in the context of the rise of the early church in the most difficult of circumstances–is convincing to me. The cause has to be adequate to the event, in my way of thinking).

But I have to remember, and WE have to remember, that no amount of evidence will convince a person if he is not ready to believe that a resurrection is possible, and for such people, almost any explanation of what happened is preferable to the one that animated the early church, and convinces me.

Intelligent, reasonable, and moral people of good will both believe, and disbelieve.

Something else is going on here, and we need to pay attention to it. Beyond all rational calculations, we need to remember that there is a mystery involved in the coming to faith of the early followers of Jesus, and of his followers down through the years, that there is a risk involved in the assertions of those who believe in the resurrection as traditionally recounted, and that there are other “rational” explanations for what we assert happened.

Intelligent, rational and moral people may have other explanations for what happened.

We forget that when it comes to foundational convictions about the meaning of life, that the reasoning process takes second place to our changing history, and to the action of God in that context. We forget that the best we can do is testify to the way it seems to us. And by our self-conscious and obnoxious over-certainty, we drive others, who might be willing to consider a less aggressively presented interpretation, away from the classical understanding of what happened.

Other interpretations

But let us now consider what happens when others of us, sometimes the very people who in an earlier time pushed the overly-certain view of the resurrection, come to the point that we feel we should consider alternative understandings of what happened and what it means–and reinterpret the resurrection in that context.

–So, we reinterpret the resurrection existentially (we assert that the resurrection represents the affirmation of life in spite of what seems like a depressing and awful end)

–Or, we reinterpret the resurrection biologically (we assert that the life force rises up and fights the trend toward death, even in the face of disaster)

–Or, we reinterpret the resurrection in terms of one or another historical trend (we assert that we ought to really put our trust in evolution [overcoming human limitations], or the development of science and technology [overcoming the bonds of nature], or the revolution [which will overcome poverty and injustice].

Each of these reinterpretations, which you can hear in one form or another in many churches and on the public media at Easter time, revise the traditional understanding of the resurrection in favor of the kinds of things that inspire us as modern citizens of the university community. They constitute a serious attempt to find meaning in a world in which the traditional understanding of the resurrection no longer is convincing.

We should honor these attempts at finding meaning in our world, while at the same time realizing that they are inadequate to what is demanded of them.

Before we get too enthusiastic about these modern revisions, let us at least try to hear the witness of the Biblical writers about these and other attempts to discern meaning in our lives apart from the action of the one true God who alone has the power to deal with our problems.

The Christian View

Let us return for a moment to the statement of the problem mentioned earlier: the problem of our finitude and limitations, our self-contradictions, our lack of fulfillment and the negation of fulfillment in our lives–underlined and punctuated sooner or later by the death that must come to us all.

It is good for us this evening to remember the Biblical realism about death and its meaning for life, because only then can we really grasp why the hope of the resurrection was so important to Biblical people.

When the Biblical writers sum up life, they are not so melodramatic or Pollyannaish as we modern citizens of the university community tend to be. If we place our hope on anything in this life, they assert, the only realistic mood for us is melancholy.

Our life lasts for seventy years, according to the Psalmist, eighty with good health; but all it adds up to is anxiety and trouble. It is over in a trice and then we are gone.

Man, born of woman, says Job, has a short life,
yet has his fill of sorrow;
he blossoms, and he withers, like a flower;
fleeting as a shadow, transient
there is always hope for a tree, when felled, it can start again;
its shoots continue to sprout.
Its roots may be decayed in the earth
its stump withering in the soil
but let it scent the water and it buds
and puts out branches like a new plant

But man? He dies, and lifeless he remains;
man breaths his last, and then where is he? (Job 14)

The problem is that our life is a brief interlude in the onrush of things, beset by contradictions, full of trouble, ending in death. And, when faced squarely, the question arises: does such a life, with such high aspirations and such ambiguous results, have meaning? What is the meaning of life, if so much toil and trouble are connected with it? What is the use of striving, of trying, if it is all for naught?

If we looks at reality on a strictly earthly plane, the Biblical writers assert, we cannot be optimistic.

–resolute people may do what is right, but life catches up with them in the end, and they are defeated

–the life force may prevail, but we as individuals may be ground up and lost in the process

–the revolution may not come, and even if it does, it may not solve everything; in fact, it may create its own suffering and destruction

–our scientists and technocrats may be able to help us increase our command over nature, but they may not be able to control the technical processes they have unleashed

–the process of evolution may sweep everything before it, but what is the meaning of the human wreckage left in its wake?

Again, I repeat: the Biblical judgment is clear. All our worldly sources of hope, all of our techniques, all of our enterprises will be brought to naught. On the human plane, the Biblical mood is one of melancholy, of pensiveness, of frustration at the contrast between the height of human aspirations, on the one hand, and the measly achievements of our lives, on the other.

How is it possible to keep on working, struggling, sacrificing, in these circumstances?

There are really only two adequate responses to this situation, according to the Bible: the first is alluded to in the book of Ecclesiastes, and in much of the classical tradition, where the answer is that one can only courageously grapple with what fate has given us, plan to enjoy what little pleasure life has to offer, and gut it out.

The other answer is the main thrust of the Christian tradition: that our efforts may ultimately fail, but that the God who brought our forefathers up out of Egypt, led our ancestors to the promised land, gave us His son, Jesus, and has sustained the church down through the centuries, will somehow retrieve our individual lives and our history and that the God who has begun this good work will surely complete it.

For those with the eyes to see, the Bible seems to be saying, for those who realize how flimsy and weak are the sources of hope which inspire us as modern people in the university community, THIS is the hope that we can hang on to:

–that something happened on that Easter morning some 2000 years ago;

–that what happened strains the boundaries of human comprehension, but that it was real, for the early Christians, for Christian over the years since then, and it can be real for us;

–that it is not wise to be overly confident about many things about the resurrection–about the furniture of heaven, for example–but that we should have the confidence that “while it does not yet appear what we shall be,” nevertheless, “when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

The faith grounded in the resurrection is certainly fantastic, against all expectations, beyond what we normally think about as reasonable–but it is less fantastic, and more reasonable, than placing our faith in nature, or science, or technology, or the revolution.

The authentic Christian mood about these things is not triumphalistic, on the one hand, or stoically enduring, on the other. Rather, it is a mood of hope against hope, hope in the midst of the direct confrontation of life’s limitations and evils, hope that is grounded in God’s power, character and action rather than our own.

An Easter Celebration

The major celebration of Easter among the Moravians of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, takes place in the cemetery, or “God’s acre,” as they call it. From the point of view that we’ve been developing this evening, it could just as easily be called the acre of shattered dreams, unactualized potential, unfulfilled life.

Between Holy Week and Easter, the Moravians arrive at the cemetery with brushes and pails of soapy water to scrub the grave stones, and on the Saturday before Easter every stone gets a bouquet of fresh flowers. Then, on Easter Sunday, before dawn, the whole community meets at the church and to the sounds of brass bands, they march to the cemetery, and there, among the tombstones, in the very teeth of death, they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

I have not personally observed this ceremony, but the reports of it are striking, and linger long in the memory.

It is as if the cemetery is the only place to have such a celebration, out there among the tombs where death is unavoidable, even in the dawning light of an April day among the flowers that have not yet begun to wilt. By all reports, it is the mood which strikes the observer on this occasion. It is not brassy or arrogant, but it is not sad, or morose, either. As one observer has noted, the bands sound slightly cold as they play antiphonally from hill to hill. There is no sermon, just the reading of the familiar gospel texts on the resurrection.

It is understated, and there is about it a quiet waiting for the sun to come up, and for more.

Additional comment by Wolfhart Pannenberg:

“The life to come is the strength of this life, the liberal German theologian Ernst Troelsch said….Contemporary secular men and women have lost this strength. The Christian proclamation should once more make it available to them and that could be done if only we contemporary Christians would ourselves recover the authentically Christian confidence in a life beyond death, in communion with our risen Lord and with the eternal life of God the Father in his kingdom to come.”–Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Resurrection: The Ultimate Hope,” in Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century, edited by Kenneth Tanner & Christopher A. Hall, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002, p. 262.

Easter in Madison, 2010

I’m attending the Easter service at Geneva Campus Church, which is located in a church building right on the edge of multiple new constructions designed to support the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s position in the world of scientific research with a business pay-off.

As I drive to church, my habit is to listen to Wisconsin Public Radio, the local classical station, and I cannot help but notice the contrast between the glorious classical Easter music, on the one hand, and the sometimes friendly, and sometimes hostile, but typically distant attitude toward the Easter celebrations going on in churches around Madison. If asked, I’m sure that none of the commentators would be able to make the connection between the Easter events and the practically oriented, scientific university in which they live out their lives.

For those interested in this question, I’m reprinting below (with commentary) how Paul Tillich saw the connection in his audacious Inaugural address in June, 1929, upon assuming the chair of Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfort on the Main. Reprinted as Chapter 1, “Philosophy and Fate,” in The Protestant Era, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, pp. 3-15, translated by James Luther Adams).

The victory of Christianity is the victory of the idea that the world is a divine creation over the belief in the resisting power of an eternal matter. It is the victory of the belief in the perfection of created being in all its levels over the tragic fear of resistant matter, hostile to the divine. It is the radical denial of the demonic character of existence as such. It places an essentially positive valuation on existence. And this implies that it places a positive valuation on the whole temporal order of events, that the “order of time” harbor within itself not only, as with Anaximander, a becoming and a passing away but also the possibility of real novelty, a creative and formative power, a purpose and end that give it meaning. In Christianity, time triumphs over space. The irreversible, unrepeatable character of time, its meaningful directedness, replaces the cyclic, ever recurrent becoming and passing-away. A “gracious” destiny that brings salvation in time and history subdues a demonic fate which denies the new in history. Thus the Greek view of life and the world is overcome, and with it the presupposition of Greek philosophy as well as of Greek tragedy. (8)

In my opinion, Tillich is better at describing what took place, and what it means for thinking, than he is about the underlying cause(s) of it all, which may be a topic for further writing further on. But his description of what this historical shift meant for the thinking process is right on the money:

Greek philosophy had developed categories and methods of universal significance. But the religious character of Greek culture prevented them from being used for world transformation. They were used either for aesthetic intuition of the world, for ethical resignation from it, or for mystical elevation above it. In contrast to these uses, Christian humanism (the fruit of this historical change) employed Greek concepts for the technical control and revolutionary transformation of reality. Especially useful for this purpose was the mathematical-quantitative interpretation of nature as promoted by the Pythagoreans and Plato….Modern philosophy….overcomes the existential skepticism of the last period of Greek philosophy by a methodological skepticism as the basis of mathematical science and its technical application. And there is no better and more continuous test for the truth of this type of scientific approach to nature than the fact that the technical creations which are based on it do work and work more effectively every day. Ethical theories for the individual and legal theories for the state, fitting the world-transforming activism of modern culture, are added to the dominant philosophy of science….(9-10)

Meanwhile, back at the UW-Madison…

While the rest of the country is in recession, it appears from all the new buildings going up on the UW-Madison campus that this university (like other top universities across the country) is experiencing boom times–at least where facilities are concerned.

What is “prophetic inquiry?”

If you’re new to New College Madison’s web site, perhaps you’re wondering what “prophetic inquiry” is all about.