a few words

(Back to Part 2) 

5. In the end, I still dislike framing the question in terms of justification, as if there is a right path (presumably paved with gold) to be found. Are the activities of reading, writing, and teaching just in the face of the world’s poor? I am tempted to answer simply and quickly, “no.” Nothing can be justified in the face of five year-olds dying of malnutrition and diarrhea or young girls violently robbed of virginity by uncles and cousins. To be blunt, the whole situation is shitty and we are all implicated. We all, academics included, need to hang our heads in shame—and redouble our efforts to eradicate such blatant evils. But how are we to go about dealing with these problems? Obviously, we should not isolate ourselves from the world’s horrors (frequenting only “the nice parts of town”), and when we are in position to act directly (by providing food or intervening on behalf of the vulnerable), we ought to do it. But we also need to see more clearly the tangled network of problems (cultural, social, economic, political, spiritual, ecological) that make these horrors more likely to occur, and take steps to counter them. And we all need to see it, at least in part, which is why we need skilled teachers in many disciplines. The analysis, conversation, and collaborative action that this requires is a larger and (unfortunately) much slower project.

And even beyond the quest to overcome specific problems with exact solutions, academic inquiry is no worse-off in a quest to justify its own continued existence than is, say, painting, playing the cello, attending an opera, or debating the merits of some piece of legislation. One of Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison has been haunting my thoughts for months, “The only thing I am really clear about in the whole problem is that a ‘culture’ that breaks down in the face of danger is no culture. Culture must be able to face danger and death….By finding forgiveness in judgment, and joy in terror?” The gist of Bonhoeffer’s statement (assuming I understand it), is that any activity that cannot be carried with us into the hardest and most broken parts of the world is not worth bringing along at all. Culture, in this sense, cannot be diversions that ignore suffering (like the Buchenwald zoo) or the dissipated merriment of cynics resigned to a dark “fate” (fiddling while the Titanic sinks). But, it is possible, I dare say necessary, to put expression to profound moments of beauty, rage, fear, and reverence even where taking the time to do so seems, at first glance, superfluous. What else might the first seeds of redemption (a “re-deeming,” a new birth of meaning) in the present look like? It is impossible for any of us to hold shattered lives together in a seamless narrative of “meaning,” but giving some fragments of meaning space to expand—whether howling lament or salvaged scraps of laughter-is perhaps to find God’s Spirit at work already. I do not want to be a part of any theology that floats by the slums on a luxury cruise-liner, or tours them on an air-conditioned bus. Rather, I want to find theology “in the face of danger and death,” to search out “forgiveness in judgment, and joy in terror.” Anything less is no theology at all.

(Back to Part 1)

3. The study and teaching of theology, of all disciplines, is perhaps most likely to turn out to the benefit of the poor. This assertion has never been truer than it is in the present. The hegemonic economic and political structures that bind people in poverty (or encourage them to bind themselves) are based on myths about humanity and humanity’s role on the planet. The beginnings of justice are found in the telling of a better story; the trajectory that leads to real justice culminates in worship. The operant myth behind the thick curtain is that human beings are essentially (naturally, rationally, pragmatically—pick your adverb) in charge, in control, and self-directed. Some people lose, and some people win, but the game is all about who gets the most choices. And far too many of us are eager to participate in the eschatological promise of “Progress”: perpetual growth through cycles of innovation, consumption, and commodification that opening ever new vistas of “liberation” enabling us to increasingly self-determine the reality we recieve (from family size to facial structure, from the temperature of our desk chairs to the “branding” of our own personalities).

Thus, the interminable conversation about who should bear the blame for poverty—in caricature, either the lazy, good-for-nothing, mooching addicts or the self-interested powermongers perpetuating the oppressive system that locks people out—is interminable because both options are sub-plots of the same story. Mutual service, genuine friendship, or really anything beyond the hollow pretense of politeness are not possible where the human ideal is buffered autonomy. Puffed up in our own knowledge of good and evil (our pretense to sovereignty), we die. As we die, we kill. Who can tell a story that excises this curse?  The old myth (the old lie, really) needs to die, and theology patiently but adamantly proclaims the truths that choke this dragon. Human beings are for worship and for service; human beings are for the delight of their Creator; human beings are for the good of the whole planet.  Liberation is found in the community reconciled to one another, to God, and to all creation.

Where is this story told? Foremost, it ought to be the hallmark of every church on every street corner. Yet all too often, churches have assimilated (and subsequently promulgate) aspects of the old lie. Theologians are charged with two tasks in this regard: 1) helping (polemically, if necessary) the church to express more clearly in words and action her central commitments, 2) exposing the dangers and deviations, through careful and rigorous analysis, of false stories about gods, humans and creation. Those tasks involve long conversations with people on all sides—those who are members of the church, and many who are not. Theologians, at their best, help to keep the church faithful to the poor. In part, they do so by calling to account the people and systems that benefit from exploitation.

4. Really learning theology (which only means thinking deeply about the whole gospel) always drives people toward the poor because this particular good news is about the God who favors the poor and dwells with them. There are few truly original ideas under the sun (none, according to Qoheleth), so the theologian’s task is not necessarily to formulate a host of new ideas, but to find ways of expressing the gospel that lead people to action. The ideal mode of theology is a conversation rather than a book—an interaction between people (perhaps even in a classroom) that moves toward action. The writing of books is a requisite part of this endeavor, but theological texts can only be understood properly within cycles of conversation that incorporate concrete practice. The impartial or disinterested theologian is a most perverse creature because theology is necessarily modeled as much as it is taught, insofar as it is expressed in the church’s preaching and prayer (neither of which make any sense without active service).

(On to Part 3)

About a week ago, Dan asked folks to consider the merit of their academic endeavors in light of the plight of the world’s poor. He argues, quite rightly, that:

I believe that, confronted as we are with the massive brokenness of the world, and the suffering of our neighbours, our academic endeavours must be shaped by certain commitments. We are not free to pursue every little rabbit-trail that we find captivating.

And so Dan asks us: “When confronted with “the Poor” of today, how do you justify your academic endeavors?” 

I wrote this before starting to read Dan’s own efforts to answer the question posed, not least because his answer is likely to be more thorough and insightful than my own. I have five responses, which I will post in three segments. 

1. The strange place of theology within the academy is both a boon and a burden of responsibility in pushing to reconcile the activities of study and teaching with the realities of poverty. Many theologians profess to work for the church even as they are employed by a university (and other academics sometimes wish that they actually did). Theological writing and teaching is always, from my perspective, done in service of the church’s preaching and prayer. Good theology is an aid to preaching the gospel with clarity and an effort to pray more truly. My own modest academic goals are entirely circumscribed within the life of the church-the church whose life is bound to the poor (even and especially when that is forgotten). If I didn’t think that academics could genuinely be an act of service on that order, I hope that I’d have the integrity to start bending nails for a living.   

So if academic theology cannot be done as an act of service, one rendered unto “the Poor,” then I do not want any part of it. No doubt there are countless academics gratified by the satisfaction they find in being able to introduce themselves as some sort of scholar. No doubt there are many who enter the academy with the intention of crafting for themselves a lasting name through a brilliant career of research and publication. I cannot totally disavow every trace of such motives in myself, though I confess them before God and others. But there is still more substance to the academy than mere pretense-abusus non tolit usum-the abuse does not negate the use.

2. Second, taking up academic work is no more a barrier to working for and with the poor than earning one’s living by, for instance, selling shoes. The choices made as an academic can insulate someone from the plight of the unfortunate and broken, or they can bring someone into closer proximity. While academic study does require hours (and hours) of solitary reading, thinking, and writing; when that work is placed within the context of a whole life, it is not inherently alienating-one’s companions are still a matter of choice. Both as a student and as a teacher, one can hide behind a pile of work and find oneself “too busy” to do anything for others-but there is nothing necessary or inevitable about this. In speaking of academics and poverty, we are not talking about oil and water.

Dan started a meme on the question: “When confronted with ‘the Poor’ of our day, how do you justify your own academic endeavours?” While there is a limit to the value of introspective and meta-level analyses (let’s do something more than just talk about why we do what we, supposedly, do), this is an inquisition well-worth enduring. And it is especially timely for me to think through the question in light of my own plans for the fall. So, I’ve been intending to respond ever since Dan posted the question, and actually working one out on paper in the last day or so. Until I put those words in their final form, here are a few posts and conversations related to the theme, mostly instigated by the wild fellow from Montana.

On the off chance that things were getting a bit too stuffy around here, I’ll offer a little gem from the Confessions: 

“I read and understood by myself all the books that I could find on the so-called liberal arts, for in those days I was a good-for-nothing, and a slave to sordid ambitions” 

_____________________

Augustine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), 88. 

Here are my notes (lightly edited) from the second session of the conference this weekend (why am I posting my notes?). Papers were given by Jon Butler and Colin Jager. A response was offered by Craig Calhoun. John Milbank asked a particularly provocative question. 

** Jon Butler – GSAS Yale – PEOPLE, HISTORIANS, AND THE PHILOSOPHY PROBLEM

Historical vs. Philosophical. [A methodological quibble?] Butler is going to argue that history is primary to Taylor’s argument, even the philosophical parts.

The Philosophy problem:
The world is moved by ideas. Taylor seems to argue that ideas, and almost ideas alone seem to drive history. Taylor does a better job of doing history than merely doing intellectual history.

Historians (Butler included) will find the argument “too philosophical.”

Around 1500 the rupture occurred that will set “modernity” against everything that came before.

Belief and unbelief are “neat” philosophical terms that don’t always jive well with what happens on the ground in history.

Religion and History:

The distinguishing features of secularity is not unbelief but choice.

Taylor washes over too much differences in belief and unbelief. Who was calling who an “unbeliever?” And who was believing in which God, for what reasons, and to what end? Who is the “God” that is being believed in or disbelieved. Where did accusations of heresy come from?

Is the inconstancy of belief before 1500 as rare as Taylor seems to argue. In what way is the nature of the world’s medieval “enchantment” a slippery term? Does Taylor presume a total Christianization of Europe that history cannot bear?

Taylor’s argument against subtractive theories of secularization is valuable, but is perhaps correct only because subtraction implies a substance to begin with. Butler is not sure just how Christian the West ever was.

Butler thinks that Taylor over stresses the late modern, post-industrial age, and overstresses the role of ideas in moving Western society toward secularism. He understresses the role of environmental factors, social factors, economic factors. These economic changes had more to do with secularization than the ideas did. Taylor seems to argue for secularization without industrialization, bureaucratization, urbanization, etc.

The persistence of religious faith in America is a very significant event. What is new in our time is simple indifference toward religion.

** Colin Jager – English @ Rutgers – CHARLES TAYLOR’S ROMANTICISM

What would a non-transcendent enchantment of the world look like? What would it mean to experience the world that way? Secular spirituality.

Taylor’s method of telling the story of history is phenomenological. Taylor is really interested in a first-person perspective and moves periodically from first to third. Taylor’s method is Herderian, he is always trying to “feel his way in” to other ways of experiencing the world.

What is the place of literature in the argument about secularization. What is the changing role of literature? What happens when people are encouraged to read scriptures as “literature.”

Romanticism:
A period in which “literature” replaces religion. (but telling the story this way, while partly helpful assumes “literature” as an already-formed object waiting for “religion” to get out of the way).

Taylor’s contribution is not to be found in the plot, but in the details. A Secular Age is a book which cannot be summarized, but must be read. It must be lived through. In that sense, his book is “literary.”

Relationship between Literature and the Secular: Reading the Bible as Literature

Herder:

• Primary Romantic figure. “Feel yourself into everything.”
• Primary proponent of reading the bible as literature. Reading the bible as a literary text is a crucial aspect of the new understanding of literature in the late eighteenth century. Reading the OT as inspired poetry—by reading through a “feeling” hermeneutic, one can be united with the spirit in which it was written.
• Hebrew poetry: Herder notes the centrality of Verbs
• Lack of vowels: writing the inessential; omitting the essential (the breath, the spirit).

Spiritualization of literature and the expressivist turn.

Wasserman—the loss of a public poetry. The lack of a “background” that we all share out of which deeper metaphor and meaning can be drawn. On this count, the Romantic poets have to invent a new language in order to describe reality. In this “restructuring” a space is opened up that feels “neutral” or “free” in a way that foments disenchantment, even secularization. Seeing the world in one way and not another becomes a choice, something that one selects. The posture of selection is one of standing back at a distance, in open/neutral space. Romantic poetry starts, from a certain perspective, starts to look like trying to live without ontological commitments, something that starts looking more sinister more dubious to Taylor.

There is a tension between Taylor’s humanism and a genealogical imperative (to discover the roots, history, and context of all).

Nietzsche’s anti-humanism that feels the imperative for genealogy would be a very helpful point for Taylor to hang on to, while the Romantic humanism might actually undercut his position.

Literalism and Literature:

Wordsworth vs. Boyle: counter-accusations of idolatry.

Wordsworth wants to pen a “philosophic song” – tell the story of the world wrought with meaning. Describe the world in such a way as to bring life and depth to what seems, superficially, dead.

Boyle thinks that attributing anthropocentric qualities to inanimate objects (i.e. meaning!) is the source of idolatry.

Jager argues that Taylor is trying to fill the world with meaning—to write a philosophic song.

** Craig Calhoun – President SSRC

Taylor’s book performs what it speaks about. By placing opposing views in juxtaposition he often undermines their claim to objectivity; he subjects them to “secularizing” forces (in the sense of a surfeit of options).

Taylor’s way of doing philosophy depends on a narrative. This is neither a history of philosophy, nor a history (as such).

Critique: Along with Butler, Calhoun thinks that Taylor is too much reliant on a top-down model and places too great a weight on ideas as the prime movers of history. Butler’s main point is that “variety” cannot do the work that Taylor’s ascribes to it because there has been variety of belief-patterns all along (therefore variety itself is not inherently secularizing).

Taylor’s historical narrative hinges on providential Deism and the notion of an impersonal order. By impersonal, we might understand purposeless.

Reform movements encourage a sharpening of positions and a policing of boundaries, as well as an emphasis on the internal integrity and coherence of a movement.

Putting our story within a narrative.

** John Milbank:

Why did Christianity largely back mechanism against vitalism? Something like Boyle’s argument—that “meanings” had accreted to inanimate objects that was something like idolatry. In this Christianity is attempting to purge itself of its own ineluctable pagan parts (and feeding secularization in the process). 

Tomorrow morning Carolyn and I are going to drive over to New Haven in order to spend a few days listening to people interact with Charles Taylor’s recent book, A Secular Age. Taylor has become something of a hero to both of us in the last year or so, and we are both looking forward to meeting him there. In particular, Taylor (along with Alasdair MacIntyre) has helped me to articulate the instincts and patterns of thinking that foment doubt. Situating those patterns of thought historically and culturally  does not make them go away, but it strips them of any claim to absolute objectivity—and in so doing, increases the plausability of faith (which nonetheless always remains a “leap”). This is not the place to go into the exact shape of my doubts, but by “patterns of thought” I am referring to fairly common tendencies in our culture; a penchant for reductive explanation, instrumentalizing and pragmatist thought, and the critiques of characters like Feuerbach and Freud.  Taylor did not set out to write an apologetic in either Sources of the Self or A Secular Age. Nonetheless, both of these books have allowed me to see through my own doubts in fairly significant ways—which is something I count as a great gift. 

In the next few days, I intend to post basic outlines/notes from a few of the sessions at the conference (a schedule is available here). I am not sure whether we will have internet access in New Haven, but regardless postings will appear soon. Your thoughts and comments are not only welcome but solicited. 

To start things off, I’ll offer a few quotes that adumbrate the basic argument behind Taylor’s attempt to tell the story of secularization in a new way in A Secular Age:  

“The change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others. I may find it inconceivable that I would abandon my faith, but there are others, including possibly some very close to me, whose way of living I cannot in all honesty just dismiss as depraved, or blind, or unworthy, who have no faith (at least not in God, or the transcendent). Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives. And this will also likely mean that at least in certain milieux, it may be hard to sustain one’s faith. There will be people who feel bound to give it up, even through they mourn its loss. This has been a recognizable experience in our societies, at least since the mid-nineteenth century. There will be many others to whom faith never even seems an eligible possibility. There are certainly millions today of whom this is true…

“Now in this regard, there has been a titanic change in our western civilization. We have changed not just from a condition where most people lived ‘naively’ in a construal (part Christian, part related to ’spirits’ of pagan origin) as simple reality, to one in which almost no one is capable of this, but all see their option as one among many. We all learn to navigate between two standpoints: an ‘engaged’ one in which we live as best we can the reality our standpoint opens us to; and a ‘disengaged one in which we are able to see ourselves as occupying one standpoint among a range of possible ones, with which we have in various ways to coexist.”

For Taylor, the story of secularization is not primarily the story of the removal of religious figures from positions of political power (the disestablishment of churches and the separation of church and state), nor is it the story of the decline of religious belief and practice (however that may be measured), rather the story of secularization is the story of the plurality of plausible interpretations for human experience, and the inability to reach a perspective where one can finally and decisively inhabit one interpretation or another. As such, Taylor is arguing that secularization is not the result of the inevitable march of scientific knowledge or changes in political and economic structures; rather, it arises as the result of the surfeit of plausible self-understandings, some of which have no recourse to any transcendence.

The thesis of the text, (which will likely need some unpacking in the next few posts) is this:

“I would like to claim that the coming of modern secularity in my sense [the third "story" in the paragraph above] has been coterminous with the rise of a society in which for the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true.”

__________________________
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3, 12, 18.

I’ve been delaying this announcement on the blog for a variety of reasons (some of them might even be good reasons), but its time has arrived.

A few weeks ago (March 17th) I went to the mailbox outside our apartment, put my key in the slot, and turned it with a tiny prayer on my lips. This scene had been a daily routine for about three weeks by this point. From the end of February, every few days another small envelope with a school’s insignia in the return address would arrive, and all of them held only one sheet of paper. They were all succinct, all polite, and all of them informed me that I was among the carefully-considered, entirely-qualified, but finally excluded candidates.

Harvard, Princeton Seminary, Union Seminary, Columbia, Boston College, Princeton University, Yale—eight pages thick in all, and a stack of paper freighted with disappointment, fear, and self-loathing.

But on March 17th, I opened the small door and found a big envelope inside. I sucked in a half mouthful of air and then held my breath as I turned the envelope around and saw “Fordham University” written on the outside. The package itself was thick, at least twenty pages. I thought to myself, “I know that Catholics are renowned for their guilt trips, but I don’t think that anyone one is cruel enough to send a thirty page rejection letter.”

As I walked back to the apartment, I whispered to myself in a squeaky little voice utterly unbecoming for someone of my size, “It’s a big one… it’s a big one…” Inside I found a letter offering me a place in the doctoral program of Fordham’s Department of Theology, and a teaching assistantship with a generous stipend to boot. It would be putting it mildly to say that I was thrilled. I walked (or maybe ran) over to the hospital where Carolyn was studying in order to share the news.

Fordham will be an excellent place for me to study for the next few years. Their theology department is very strong and the university is putting in a concerted effort to make it even stronger. The academic strengths of the department lie in Patristics, medieval theology, and systematics, so the school is very well-equipped to help me draw on the deep resources of the Christian tradition in order to articulate the faith in compelling and illuminating ways. Perhaps most importantly, I have visited the school twice now and both times come away struck with just how friendly, open, and welcoming everyone has been. I am absolutely certain that Fordham will provide a venue where I can study rigorously and prayerfully while conversing with people from a great range of perspectives. Cut-throat competition seems totally absent and the atmosphere of the department is warmer and more personable than anywhere else I’ve been on the East Coast. Add to all that the opportunity to live in the heart of the Bronx—it’s hard to say no!

To complicate matters slightly, in the last week I’ve been offered the opportunity to study in Syracuse University’s department of Religion as well. I have yet to visit Syracuse (which I hope to do next week), but my inclination at the moment is strongly toward Fordham, in large part because of the historical emphasis and sense of tradition in Fordham’s program in comparison to the strengths of Syracuse’s program in religion and contemporary culture.

Of course, I am grateful for the prayers and encouraging words over the last few months from many of the people who are reading this. 

The Social Science Research Council has announced a conference that it is co-sponsoring at Yale University surrounding Charles Taylor’s recent (Templeton Prize winning) book A Secular Age. The book has attracted significant attention from a wide range of critics (some deeper, some more superficial).

 Carolyn and I are going to gear up for a short road trip to Connecticut and attend the conference, which is free and open to the public. Besides the keynote address by Taylor himself, I am particularly looking forward to John Milbank’s paper entitled, “What is Ordinary Life? Taylor, Catholicism and Modernity.” I hope to post my notes and reactions to a few of the sessions here. Anyone else in the area ought to consider attending (and should also let me know so that we can go ruminate on the lectures over a pint or two).

The papers presented will be published by Harvard University Press and carry the title of the conference.

Fellow Regent student Ryan Dueck has recently published an excellent article that details the heart of his thesis. He argues that the friendly new atheists on the block have, at the core of their moral argument, a concern for theodicy. Well worth your time and effort.

At long last, I put the final touches (and blows) to the thesis today, and it is ready to be shipped off for grading. Quite a relief to have this monkey off my back and to be on to other projects. Below I’ve posted the abstract to the thesis; if you are interested in a copy of the whole thing then drop me an email.

Knowing the difference between good and evil seems central to any account of ethical thought. Yet Dietrich Bonhoeffer argues that Christian ethics’ “first task” is to supercede this knowledge. Rejecting the knowledge of good and evil, Bonhoeffer regards modern ethics as continuous with Adam and Eve’s illegitimate meal in the garden of Eden. Grasping at wisdom apart from God, the earliest humans brought death and division into the world. Bonhoeffer’s account of Christian ethics is inimical to the self-justification, judgment of others, and autonomous notions of individual freedom that the knowledge of good and evil provides. Human beings employ their knowledge of good and evil in efforts to unify their lives and communities, but Bonhoeffer sees that these actions spring from the divided state of fallen humanity. Yet if Christian ethics really involves “un-knowing” good and evil, on what basis can Christians confront the complex and difficult decisions that they face daily? How are Christians to respond to violence, destruction, and immorality—both in their own lives and in the acts of people around them? How are Christians (and others) to teach their children how to behave without recourse to some conception of good and evil? This thesis explores the knowledge of good and evil in Bonhoeffer’s writings and traces the development of his ethics as an alternative account of moral knowledge. The ethics of the church, in Bonhoeffer’s understanding, is grounded in the knowledge gained through being incorporated into the body of Jesus Christ, through extending his mission, and through proclaiming his gospel.

Someone I greatly love and respect recently sent me a copy of Emerson’s essay on “Self Reliance” as an expression of his basic instincts with regard to religion, power, and the study thereof. He asked for my thoughts on the matter—which is a rare enough event these days that I jumped at the opportunity. I thought I would share the comments more broadly. They come in two forms: 1.) Below is a summary of my basic feelings on the piece. 2.) By clicking here (On Self-Reliance), you can access a Word document that has my comments written in the margins of Emerson’s text. I would love to hear what others think of Emerson, or my take on his thought.
_______________________________
The creed that Emerson is preaching seems to me to be the perfect religious expression of the Romantic wing of the Enlightenment. He is attempting to be very counter-cultural, and I have no doubt that in his day he was perceived by many people to be quite radical. But what he is offering, I will suggest, is not counter-cultural but is only the expression of the liberal half of the culture. His adamant non-conformity only represents conformity to a broader tradition than the traditions he saw at hand. To do that claim justice would require elaborating further on the history that I only briefly mentioned in one of the notes, but maybe I can offer a few points.

What is radical about what Emerson has to say?: That we should all decide for ourselves and guide ourselves? That authority cannot be trusted? That anything outside our own experience is liable to be the expression of someone else’s attempt to control us? Again, that is only the expression of an attempt to get “back to the sources” back to the very beginning, the very root of human existence, to see the very beginning and so to see human life in its pure form. With such a vision (we imagine) we could live rightly. The Enlightenment has been the sustained attempt to think or to experience ourselves back to our own beginnings. It is a fundamentally religious endeavor. And that is why persons within the Enlightenment tradition find themselves perpetually at odds with religion—and perpetually drawn to explain it. On that note, Kant tried to keep religion, but he had to divorce it from philosophy. Hegel tried to keep religion and philosophy together (because he knew they couldn’t be separated) and he ended up declaring himself to be God! Marx was wise enough to know that religion had to be one of the first things to go in his utopia because it offered a competing meaning for human life. To go even further back, Plato wanted to banish poets from the Republic—stories are not good for ideal citizens. The best theologians have always recognized Western philosophy as another religion. Modernity itself is a religion of sorts, or a whole host of little sects if you’d rather. Romanticists think that they’ll plumb the depths of truth by living with their hearts wide open to the world, because they understand human beings as primarily an experiencing creature. Many of them ended up in very, very dark frames of mind, wearing a lot of scars. Idealist and rationalists sought to establish human beginnings by putting themselves in contact with (supposedly) universal Reason.

Here’s a bit of Bonhoeffer: “Thinking pounds itself to pieces on the beginning. Because thinking wants to reach back to the beginning and yet never can want it, all thinking pounds itself to pieces, shatters against itself, breaks up into fragments, dissolves, in view of the beginning that it wants and cannot want…. Critical philosophy may proudly renounce what it lacks the power to attain or else lapse into a resignation that leads to its complete destruction; either alternative stems from the same human hatred of the unknown beginning.”

The other side of this dynamic, and to my mind an equally unhelpful one, is an insistence on traditions and institutions for their own sake. Emerson and folks like him often have people to argue with who are little more than their mirror image on the other side of the same cultural movement. One side pulls while the other pushes. I may sound like I’m taking that other position (honestly, if I had to choose I might lean to that side at the moment). I hope that I am not being blind in the importance I place on tradition. There is no point in space “out there” where we can stand and objectively evaluate traditions from outside them. But after all that I’ve said, I am grateful to the Enlightenment for the notion that we should think as objectively as we can about different traditions. A big part of my decision to stay in the Christian tradition has been the help I’ve gotten from others in recognizing modernity as a tradition unto itself—and one that equally deserves evaluation.

All that to say, when Emerson urges “self-reliance” as the key to living well as a human being, I can’t help but hear him echoing a lot of other figures, and I’m not yet convinced that the religious option modernity has on offer is the best one available.

That’s not to say that I don’t love philosophy, nor that I don’t see value in studying it. But it often comes with its own account of history, reason, and what it means to be human—and when those presumptions are examined, what is taken to be “foundational” is no less “superstitious” than what is rejected out of hand. That realization is driving a lot of post-modern philosophy, or hyper-modern if you’d rather, and philosophy is literally consuming itself. I’m getting off track.

My main gripe with Emerson, besides what lies above [in the marginal comments], is not that he isn’t looking hard for truth. I just wonder if he is looking in the right places. He argues that truth can best be found within one’s self – apart from tradition, apart from history, apart from authority, apart from the advice (imitation) of others. But what is left of the “self” that Emerson describes? I’m not sure that the self can be understood outside of all the relationships that Emerson wants to strip away. And derivative of that, I’m not sure that he’ll find truth there. I don’t necessarily expect Emerson to come to a final agreement with me, but I’m not sure about the wisdom of searching for the meaning of history outside history. Looking for spiritual truth in lofty heights of personal experience and inward navel-gazing means that one will always miss Jesus, born in a rough and simple manger, died on a rough and simple cross, who lives still in the rough and simple realities of the world, and even communicates through the rough and simple realities of human habits, customs, and traditions.