Secularization and intellectual life

11 Responses to “Secularization and intellectual life”

1. Evan
   February 23rd, 2010 @ 10:24 am

   This is a really wonderful collection of links, and some great thoughts, Davey. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.

   I thought that the Reynolds article was especially helpful, although I’d differ from his appeal to Christendom a bit, and perhaps this gets at some of your point about secularism and intellectual life. He seems to me to lean too much on a monolithic Christendom, and not allow for a pluralism of cultural manifestations of the sort of thing he’s talking about when he uses the term. I think doing so really sets up a danger for what you’re describing as a perceived “ultimacy”. I think that this can occur with regard to Christian as much as secular thought.

   So I appreciate very much the general point of all of these arguments. The trick is to avoid going overboard in our preconceptions of what the next step might look like for an evangelical intellectual revival.

   My mind at this point is naturally on the selection of Ryken as Wheaton’s next president, and perhaps that ties in here as well. Honestly, I appreciate the sort of revival work that Ryken and reformed folks like him are seeking to offer. What concerns me is the rather strict blueprint of what a revived evangelical intellectual culture will look like. What is needed is a diversity of unapologetically faithful cultures of evangelical faith that provide the empathy you speak of alongside of a missional sense of their place as distinct from other non-evangelical or non-Christian cultural forms.

2. Frank
   February 24th, 2010 @ 11:23 am

   Okay, a disagreement: I don’t think that Koyzis is advocating “a basic suspicion of the wisdom and intellectual gifts of those outside our community.”

   This probably comes down (again!) to our lifelong discussion about antithesis, but I would have thought that Koyzis would be very much on your side here. I see nothing to suggest that he isn’t accepting of those “outside our community”; it’s simply that he realizes that those outside are missing something fundamental in their work.

   Let’s switch tracks for a minute and use Christian music as a metaphor. Koyzis is warning against Christian musicians who are merely copycats of secular bands (i.e. Christian versions of John Mayer, Justin Timberlake, Radiohead, etc.). Instead, he wants to see Christian musicians who incorporate what they learn from these musicians and yet go further — both because they can excel at their craft (they’re not limiting themselves to a musical school or a to simply being a copy) and because they have something incredibly powerful that non-Christians do not.

   Now, switch “music” for “philosophy” in this last paragraph, and you get my drift. Thoughts?

3. Davey Henreckson
   February 24th, 2010 @ 11:52 am

   Frank –

   Good comments. I can’t disagree that much. The one possible point of departure for me, however, might be when you said that those outside evangelicalism are “missing something fundamental in their work.” That’s the rub of the whole matter, I think. What’s the “something”? And how “fundamental” is it? Put in other words, just how deep does the imago Dei go, and where might we expect to stumble across the gifts of the Spirit?

   Evan –

   Since you’re presenting on Kathryn Tanner’s new book, I’d be curious how you might apply Christ the Key to this discussion. Do you plan on sharing some draft of your paper on your blog at some point?

4. Frank
   February 24th, 2010 @ 1:44 pm

   Davey,

   “Just how deep does the imago Dei go?”

   That’s a good question, but not one I’m prepared to answer. However, like Donny said on HPN a few weeks back, I do believe there is a fundamental difference between a believer and an unbeliever. If worship is significant and earth-moving, then the absence of it must also be significant. Does that mean unbelievers are foundationless? Not hardly. But I do think it means their work will be missing something crucial that can only be added with a recognition of the lordship of Christ and a sense of the mission He gave us.

5. David T. Koyzis
   February 25th, 2010 @ 4:59 pm

   Davey, I see you are studying at my alma mater, Notre Dame.

   Just to respond to what you write above, no, I do not think we should come to every cultural development outside of the christian community with an attitude of suspicion. I quite deliberately used the word fundamentally, as in “fundamentally at variance,” to imply that, at a basic level, we cannot simply accept the worldview presuppositions undergirding various schools of thought even as we nevertheless appreciate many of their fruits.

   My friend Danie Strauss, who just published a massive tome titled, Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines, argues that we must approach the insights of nonbelievers with an attitude of critical solidarity: i.e., we must know what they have got right before we can even attempt to understand where they might have gone wrong. I think this is correct, and it helps us to avoid an unhealthy insularity that thinks that all truth is found only within our own circles. I hope this helps to clarify my article.

   Best wishes in your studies, Davey.

6. Davey Henreckson
   February 25th, 2010 @ 6:02 pm

   Thanks for the gracious reply and clarification. I’m very sympathetic with the overall aim of the article. My original hesitation comes in, perhaps, because of the way that both evangelicals and Calvinists (myself included) have often talked about the threat of “secularization” and the fundamental differences between generic Christians and generic non-Christians. Along these lines, I’ve wondered how as evangelicals we might approach some non-confessional figure like Marx or Derrida in the way that Augustine approached the neo-Platonists. I’m not certain we’ve had much practice at that sort of thing.

   Hypothetically, it seems like we might borrow from the language and constructs of an alternate tradition — even fundamentally — if those constructs were able to sustain a sort of proleptic participation in the pursuit of the Kingdom (and working always to point these various trajectories toward a proper end). Of course, that begs the question of whether a particular construct is capable of such a thing. But that’s when I wonder about just how profligate the Spirit might be in blessing humanity with preserving grace. (I know that there’s a long-running conversation among the Dutch Reformed on this very question, after all.)

   Thanks again for taking the time to respond — I appreciate the interaction!

7. David T. Koyzis
   February 25th, 2010 @ 9:44 pm

   “Along these lines, I’ve wondered how as evangelicals we might approach some non-confessional figure like Marx or Derrida in the way that Augustine approached the neo-Platonists. I’m not certain we’ve had much practice at that sort of thing.”

   To begin with, Marx and Derrida are not “non-confessional.” Their respective philosophical systems are worked out within the larger context set by their ultimate beliefs. I don’t know Derrida that well, but this is fairly evident with respect to Marx, whose own anthropology recognizes man as homo faber, man the producer, and whose philosophy consequently sees the whole of history animated by conflict over the differing relations of people to the dominant productive forces of the day.

   One must be cautious about separating the system from its spiritual underpinnings, because they are not so easily pulled apart. If, e.g., one applies a marxian analysis to a particular historic event, such as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, one will see the material-economic factors at play, but largely at the expense of other factors of a noneconomic character. One will thus get at best a lopsided understanding of what contributed to this historic event.

   There’s more to be said, but I’ll stop for now.

8. Steve Harris
   February 27th, 2010 @ 11:39 pm

   Interesting conversation. Perhaps it’s unfair for me to comment, since I haven’t read your article yet, Dr. Koyzis. (I’m from Redeemer as well.) But I was struck with this sentence Davey: “This seems to grant a sort of ultimacy to “the secular school” that I think we would want to withhold.”

   Since I’m pretty deeply shaped by Hauerwas, I really appreciate the point. Certainly there must be an integrity to Christian thought worked out ad intra, from within the narratives, practices and understandings internal to Christian faith. But then, yes, as well, there must be articulations of our thought ad extra–thought secondarily–in interaction with (especially) the most important thinkers of our era: people like Derrida, Rawls and Marx.

   However miserly or generous we are with borrowing terms and insights from their work, I think, in agreement, that we must first of all read charitably and understand what they have got right. Beyond this to the substance of our interaction, I can think of two criteria: (1) a missionary desire to make the teaching of the gospel attractive (Titus 2:10); and (2) a veritably catholic impulse to purify and bear all the goods of the nations into the arms of the Church. But these two must be inwardly determined by the (primary) development of theology ad intra.

9. Steve Harris
   February 27th, 2010 @ 11:42 pm

   PS. Though, of course, theology done ad intra and theology ad extra are not strictly separable.

10. Michael
    March 6th, 2010 @ 11:35 pm

    Davey, I just found your blog. I really enjoy it. I know I’m joining a bit late here, but here it goes…

    I wonder how Milbank’s theory of participation might assist us in answering your first question: “If our vision is one that assumes the “all-encompassing” dominion of Christ, then is it possible that evidence of God’s grace may be even more pervasive than we first anticipated?

    Milbank seems to think so. Being at ND I’m sure you’re aware that James K. A. Smith has attempted to “reform” Milbank’s ontology of participation, which he hints at in his, “Introducing Radical Orthodoxy.” This is seen more clearly when Smith later divides the participation theory by intensity levels: structural (all participate as created being) and directional (properly towards God). Smith sums this up by saying “In this respect, we can both affirm that all expressions of creational life participate in the Creator, and thus have some legitimacy or value, and at the same time offer a radical critique of how such realities fail to participate properly in the Creator by being ordered to the Triune God.”

    The article is entitled:”THE SPIRIT, RELIGIONS, AND THE WORLD AS SACRAMENT: A RESPONSE TO AMOS YONG’S PNEUMATOLOGICAL ASSIST.” If anyone is interested I can email you the PDF.

    Thanks again, I really appreciate the work you all are doing.

11. Peter Escalante
    March 15th, 2010 @ 11:34 am

    Davey,

    It seems that practically speaking, most of the commentators here, including Dr Koyzis, are in some basic agreement. I think there nevertheless remains a problem: the way in which neo-calvinism draws the “antithesis”, and its postulate of “worldviews” and “groundmotives”. This epistemology (and from a really traditional point of view, the very project of epistemology is misbegotten) derives much from Kant and German Romanticism, and mirrors Spengler’s concept of the “leitmotif”. Differing from the classic Reformed view that remnant reason, sustained by common grace, suffices for knowledge of nature and civic righteousness, it is profoundly skeptical, and only finds epistemological security in the idea of noetic regeneration.

    Dr Koyzis is a sterling exception to this, but it is fairly notorious that neo-calvinism’s catalogue of “Worldviews” is a gallery of straw men: even with regard to the Christian past. I can’t think of a really learned student of the Middle Ages who would back neo-calvinist accounts of Thomists somehow believing that God and creatures are ontologically continuous (!), for instance. And if the mistakes are that grave about the near, we have even greater reason to doubt the success of their archaeologizing farther afield (eg, India, China). At least Hegel was sympathetic enough, and widely read enough, to come up with positive insights, instead of seeing nothing but variants of declension.

    We don’t want to confuse common grace with saving grace, but common grace really is everywhere; and the classic tradition recognized that whatever actually keeps communities together can only be positive, not negative. Hence, the great doctors tended to say that what was truly politically foundational in unconverted Gentile orders was Noahide in origin, though fragmented and distorted by time and sin and fabulizing. Something like this situation obtains even now in amnesiac areas of Christendom.

    Further, we have no guarantee that Christian artistic production is bound to be better than that of unbelievers; the rule of art doesn’t involves revelation directly at all. It is true that a Christian people will have certain insights which, having become commonplace, will indirectly inform the arts. But that any given artist is or isn’t devoutly Christian means almost nothing. As for philosophers, they aren’t simply ciphers for a supposed worldview, doomed to simply spin out false deductions from the false foundation: if they are real philosophers, they are passionate personal knowers, and their personal encounter with nature, history, fired by common grace, is best regarded as personal trajectory generating useful expressions of insights into our commonly knowable common reality. Error is error, of course; but that is measured again by common reality. Hence, one can learn from great minds without first gearing up in the anti-worldview hazmat suit. It really is a common conversation, though the differences between the informed believer and the unbeliever will be wide. It need not be conceived, however, as an “antithesis”.

    Dr Koyzis’ generous catholicity of mind is evident, and I’m not in any practical disagreement with him. But the terms of the discussion are worth examination.

    peace
    P

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