FredP

That's a good question. I do think there are important differences between the kind of manipulative, fear-based "conversion" tactics of most fundamentalists, and a genuine desire to open someone's mind to what you believe is a fuller, more all-encompassing point of view. I don't go out trying to coax people into anything, because I think that tactic will almost always fail in the long run anyway. Longer-term studies of "altar call" respondees reveal that very few who respond to these kinds of manipulative calls to conversion remain attached to a church community for more than about six months. However, I think, in the world as it is, that many people really are looking for something more, something beyond the daily grind -- but they may not know what it is, or where to go about looking for it. If a person is genuinely searching, and I have something they might be looking for, it would be silly to keep it to myself out of a phobia of "coaxing" them into something. As far as entering into arguments with people who already have a belief system, however, and are convinced and happy with it (which is what you're asking about with this thread), I think in general these types of discussions don't get very far -- which is why you'll notice I haven't started any such threads, or spent much time in them. (At least beyond defending their right to exist.) I'm willing to go a certain distance sometimes, if I really spot a big hole in someone's logic and I think I could convince them of it. But in those cases I'm not really trying to sell them on my own beliefs, so much as trying to show them a deficiency in their own thinking that they need to address. Sometimes a person will see the hole, sometimes not. Sometimes they'll come closer to my beliefs, sometimes not. But overall, it's not that productive an approach. Hence, you will notice that I've never spent a single keystroke trying to convince our conservative posters to become progressive, or to judge their faith based on patently progressive criteria. You may also notice that they haven't tried to convince me to become a conservative either. I think we all mutually understand that it's going to be an exercise in futility, and the result will be lots of bad blood and harsh feelings. There are just certain brick walls beyond which discussions simply can't progress, because there is a fundamental disagreement about basic assumptions. At that point, when I know I'm not going to convince someone of my basic beliefs, I'd rather put out the fires and just focus on what he have in common -- a committment to growing closer to God in our hearts as well as our minds, and to seeing God in ourselves and in the world around us more fully. That's my $.02, hope it helps.

Yes, it can mean that, but not necessarily. I usually score closest to the middle on the thinking-feeling scale (ironically enough, being the cold, heartless philosopher type J/K), but close to unanimous on the others. I always enjoy comparing results, and seeing how well the compact descriptions of the various types apply or don't apply in individual cases. Most descriptions of INTP fit me pretty well, but I definitely have strong INFP leanings as well. You should start a Meyers-Briggs thread in the cafe.

I don't know what the big controversy is here. Yes, a person's beliefs can -- and should -- directly affect their actions, or a person can act hypocritically in spite of their beliefs. Not everyone puts their beliefs into action, but not everyone is a hypocrite either. "People don't generally do what they believe" doesn't follow from the fact that hypocrisy exists, and that we see a lot of it in the world. Belief isn't nothing, but it's also not everything. If I didn't believe that union with God is the ultimate goal of existence, then why would I act in such a way as to bring that union about? Why would I want to be just, or compassionate, or merciful? On the other hand, if I DO believe that union with God is the ultimate goal of existence, but do nothing about it, then I don't really believe it, now do I? Belief and action aren't two separate things -- they're the contemplative and active dimensions of a single process. Separating and pitting them against each other is an exercise in verbal futility.

This is my point exactly. You can't compare murder to showing ankles in public, because one is a (nearly) universal principle of morality, while the other is simply a social norm. If you seriously think the prohibition of murder is nothing more than a mere social norm, then you really have gone off the postmodern deep end, and any further philosophical argument is going to be pointless. How do you argue with someone who believes that a homicidal rampage is on the same moral level with showing your ankles in public?

October, this logic is too quantitative; even if the prohibition of murder were the only cross-cultural moral standard in existence (which it isn't), it's still the most fundamental standard on which a society can be based. The fact that it is shared nearly universally is a strong argument against moral relativity.

Ahh, but two really good choices! I saw your post Aletheia. I'm not gone for the holidays, but will be around the house, and ironically not online as much.

A pure pantheism, with no transcendent reality or standard, sort of forces you into these positions, though, no? Merry Christmas, if I don't "see" you before then!

In the philosophical spirit of coining new terms when no suitable ones exist, I think I will coin the term "metalife." I think we do play out some of the drama of procession and return in the world of manifestation -- death, obviously, being the final material return. I believe life already has a place in God, and that the totality of manifestation exists, and is perceived and enjoyed, eternally in God -- but that life, by its very nature, is itself finite and temporal. I'm not picking apart your temporal language, by the way, just stating what I think at the present moment. All the same, I stand before the gulf of infinity thoroughly expecting to be terrified, surprised, and overjoyed beyond my wildest dreams at whatever awaits me "there." Yes, indeed. That sounds like a good prayer mantra if I've ever heard one. No way!!! That would be amazing! If anybody needs Christmas present ideas for me....

It's all very dialectical, isn't it? Alas, Pseudo-Dionysius is one feast I've not yet had time to partake of. But it's really high on my list. You can actually get the complete works of Pseudo-Dionysius in the Classics of Western Spirituality series. I find that I don't convince people to become Platonists, so much as convince them that they already were, and just didn't know it. I know the last time we tackled monism, I had distinguished between oneness in the numerical sense and oneness in the unitive sense. I think in that post I equated monism with numerical oneness, when it's more likely correct to say that one could be a monist in either sense. The monism article at Wikipedia is pretty good too, as it distinguishes between a handful of different types.

Plato did teach that universals are real objects (things, beings, whatever), just like the particulars which are imperfectly patterned after them. I'm unclear, or probably just don't remember, if he conceived of The Good (the Form of all forms) in this way or not. There is much controversy over how to interpret Plato's metaphysics anyway -- dualist, monist (what kind of monist?), rational, mystical, etc. -- hence the variety of systems that arose in his name. Hegel was pretty much a bottom-up Platonist, and Whitehead was famous for saying that the entire history of philosophy consisted in a set of footnotes to Plato. Obviously I've already claimed a connection between Tillich and Plato, but there's probably room for argument there. I think people criticize Tillich too much for being an existentialist, for being theologically dated, etc. I was very surprised when I read Systematic Theology I, how very metaphysical and Platonist his ideas were. Here he was talking about things like Being and Essence in the mid-20th century, in ways far more reminiscent of Augustine and Aquinas than of, say, Kierkegaard and Sartre, long after philosophy had officially pronounced metaphysics a dead end. I'd say you have a lot of Platonism lurking in those influences.

I think you make a pretty good Schleiermacher, as you always emphasize the emotive and experiential as central to your spirituality and notion of God. I can't comment on your winsome looks, and how they may or may not have affected this identification.

That makes you the perfect person to take the test, because you won't be second-guessing all the questions. You don't really want me to jump down your throat about this comment do you?

By Platonism, I don't mean "what Plato himself taught." Plato's importance really consists in his introduction of the idea of universal forms and structures of thought, and of the transcendent and ultimate reality of the Good. In his wake though, many different interpretations of and approaches to his philosophy came into being -- some dualist, some monist, some nondualist, etc. The most enduring and convincing approach was Neoplatonism, which I've said elsewhere was the explicit philosophical framework of Origen and Augustine. I generally embrace this label for myself as well, albeit with some Christian and modern caveats. I would argue that the Neoplatonic conception of the One is exactly what Tillich's "Ground of Being" is -- not an individual being, but a pure universal, Pure Essence. God is Being itself -- what all beings have when we say they exist. Does that answer your question, or does it just bring up 20 more? Here are some good Wikipedia articles for your enjoyment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Absolute

Huh. I thought just the opposite. With each question you have the chance to answer across a 5 point spectrum. Well, a spectrum of importance isn't sufficient for this type of qualification. You really need another question to qualify it. The problem is, based on the way these quizzes are usually scored -- that is, way to simplistically -- each question simply contributes some number of points to a total for each category, and at the end you just sum everything up. To really get an accurate sense of where people are coming from, I think you need to plot different types of questions against each other, and your answers to some questions need to affect how the answers to other questions affect your score. Even plotting not important <-> important against literal <-> symbolic would be a step in the right direction. In all my free time, maybe I'll see what I can come up with.

I think an obvious deficiency in the quiz was the complete absense of sifter questions for anything remotely resembling a mystical or contemplative approach to Christianity. Obviously we're going to notice that deficiency more here than in your typical slice of culture-at-large, but still, it's a deficiency. There's too much of it going on out there to completely ignore it as a perspective.

EXACTLY! I deliberately answered according to the intent of the question, or else our answers would have been more similar.

It's hard to put too much weight on this, as I answered the vast majority of the questions dead center -- meaning, in most cases, either 1) the question itself is misguided, or 2) who gives a flying ****. (Hoot, that means hoot!) Of course, when most of the questions are about whether I take the Bible literally, I'm going to sound like I'm a Spong fanatic. But there weren't any questions about, now that we know you don't take it literally, what do you actually do with it? But Aletheia wanted our results, so here they are. ========== You scored as Modern Liberal. You are a Modern Liberal. Science and historical study have shown so much of the Bible to be unreliable and that conservative faith has made Jesus out to be a much bigger deal than he actually was. Discipleship involves continuing to preach and practice Jesus' measure of love and acceptance, and dogma is not important in today's world. You are influenced by thinkers like Bultmann and Bishop Spong. Modern Liberal 68% Emergent/Postmodern 64% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 61% Neo orthodox 61% Classical Liberal 57% Roman Catholic 39% Charismatic/Pentecostal 36% Reformed Evangelical 14% Fundamentalist 0%

Not too surprising, I guess. The only questions I answered "most strongly agree" were the blatantly Tillich ones. Unfortunately, the "God does not exist" thing tends to trip people up. I've immersed myself in enough Tillich to know what he meant by this -- which is that the reality to which the word "God" refers is so foundational, that it even transcends the concepts of existence and non-existence, which are terms that can only properly be predicated of individual beings, not of Being itself. Sounds like Platonism all over again. Which is why I agree with just about everything Tillich ever said. Btw, Aletheia, I suspect the high Calvin score comes from the sovereignty question. I ranked it highly because I do believe that the supreme transcendence of God is crucial to theology, but that doesn't mean that I adopt the same thing Calvin meant by sovereignty. I imagine these types of misidentifications occur a lot with this kind of test. ============ You scored as Paul Tillich. Paul Tillich sought to express Christian truth in an existentialist way. Our primary problem is alienation from the ground of our being, so that our life is meaningless. Great for psychotherapy, but no longer very influential. Paul Tillich 93% John Calvin 60% Friedrich Schleiermacher 40% Jurgen Moltmann 33% Karl Barth 27% Martin Luther 20% Charles Finney 20% Jonathan Edwards 13% Augustine 13% Anselm 7%

Well, I didn't go to seminary, but having been a philosophy major at Wheaton, I may as well have. Yes, I've come to many personal conclusions, and I feel more solidly rooted in a belief structure than I've ever been in my life. A little while back, I posted some unstructured thoughts in the "Progressive/Conservative Typology" thread about the main "topics" in Christianity, which might be a good starting place to find an answer to your question. I really enjoyed coming up with it, and was genuinely hoping for some feedback, but it seems to have gotten lost in the great electron bucket: http://tcpc.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopi...=6280#entry6280 Anyway, I imagine you'll find a lot in there to agree with, and a lot to disagree with. Probably our key disagreement is that I regard the core stories and images of Christianity to be fundamentally allegorical and symbolic of the spiritual and metaphysical structure of reality, and put practically no historical weight on them whatsoever. As such, these stories and images have monumental and far-reaching importance, but their revelatory significance is as objects of contemplation -- looked through, rather than at. This makes Christianity in my view primarily two things, that nevertheless influence and flow into each other: 1) a contemplative tradition embodying practices of spiritual awakening, purification, and transformation of the self and society; and 2) a system of philosophical and theological reflection on ultimate reality in light of these stories, images, symbols, practices, etc. That's probably enough for now. Thanks for asking.

I agree with that assessment. Based on the issues he's addressing, the folks he's interacting with in interviews and letters, and his generously long subtitle to Generous Orthodoxy, he seems to be squarely located within mainstream Christianity. Obviously you've read more of him than I have, so I can't comment too much on him personally. But you can't get too much more conventional or evangelical than the belief statement from his church: http://www.crcc.org/content.php?ContentID=877&OID=1938 Anyway, my comments are coming more from my own background in postmodern theology and worship, which I do happen to think the current emergent movement has grown out of -- and this is where I feel the possibility for critique is weakened. Essential to postmodern theology is that debate and dialogue can only take place within some kind of shared understanding of basic assumptions, i.e., there's no neutral place to stand from which to compare claims across completely different belief systems. And so this gets used as a kind of get out of jail free card for continuing to stand on very challengeable foundations, rationally, scientifically, historically, etc., with nothing for an apologetic but "come and see for yourself," "the new Christianity is based on relationships, not propositions," and so on. I might say I was exaggerating, if I hadn't been a part of it, and embraced it myself, for so long. Oh well, take it for what it's worth.

I've been reading posts and articles on the McLaren board Aletheia posted (www.anewkindofchristian.com), and honestly, I find myself unable to resonate very strongly with either emergent Christianity or the conservative criticism of it. I guess in some ways I have a kind of unique perspective. This whole idea which is now becoming culturally more widespread, was already in full swing at Wheaton and other similar evangelical Christian colleges ten years ago. The 1995 Wheaton theology conference was, in fact, dedicated to the very topic of postmodernism in theology, and to what extent there was common ground between theological postmodernism (which also went by postliberalism) and evangelicalism. Many people in conservative Christianity were welcoming the postmodern antifoundationalist turn, because it freed them from the "burden of proof" that modernism placed upon religion in pretty much all forms. In a postmodern context, evangelical Christianity could now freely and justifiably carry on in its distinctive belief structure without the need to appeal to rock-solid epistemological foundations like warrant, justification, rational criteria for validity, etc. Most of the criticism of the "emergent" or "postmodern" movement in theology, of course, comes from more conservative folk who feel that it undermines a more solid defense of the difficult claims of orthodox Christianity -- and by that I mean the rationally difficult claims, not the personally or ethically difficult ones. The interesting thing is, I criticize it for the opposite reason -- because it severely weakens the possibility of a solid critique of the claims of literal Christianity, that, if it weren't for their "inspired" or "inerrant" status, would be seen as transparently mythological and allegorical in nature. The problem is that the collapse of epistemological foundations can often result in the return to a premodern naivete about beliefs, which no longer tries so hard to distinguish superstition, fact, and truth -- a naivete which I witnessed among droves of eager, young, and otherwise incredibly bright and rational evangelicals. I want to be able to intelligibly argue that much of the content of literally held Christianity falls into the category of superstition, but postmodern theology responds by saying that this is modern secularism overstepping its boundaries, and encroaching on religion. That's a cheap out. Science and reason, while not perfect or beyond criticism, still give us the best available frameworks for defending or rejecting physical or logical claims. We need to use them critically, but we still need to use them. Alright, that's enough ranting for today.

Come from, yes -- but we differ on how much evangelical distinctiveness we still incorporate into our way of being "progressive." Well, be careful with your terminology. Emergent folk aren't saying that there are no absolutes -- they're saying that we have to be a lot more humble about them, because there are many factors that influence, and limit, our knowledge. So the emerging church (as I understand it from my own experience and what I've read) is saying: Yes, we believe in the Trinity, yes, we believe that the Bible accurately tells the story of Jesus, etc. -- but we're not pounding our pulpits at you if you have honestly and faithfully reflected on the matter, and come to other conclusions. We faithfully stand in our theological tradition, and allow it to shape us, but we realize that absolute certainty, resting upon unquestionable foundations, is simply not a reality. Maybe this distinction helps: it's not that there are no absolutes, but that there is no purely rational, objective certainty about them. I think it's likely that such a person would be accepted; the question is whether that person would feel spiritually and theologically at home. And that depends on the person, and how far they are located from the theological distinctives of the church. For example, a person who believes the gospels are essentially biography, but contain some theological embellishment, will probably feel at home. However, a person (like me) who believes the gospels are essentially allegorical and symbolic of spiritual realities (especially the key texts, like the virgin birth, baptism, temptation, passion), but contain some historical references, will probably not. Not because I'd feel unwelcome, but simply I wouldn't be sharing some very basic assumptions.

It is a good article. Obviously the modern/post-modern philosophical issues are things I've thought a lot about. I chuckled a little bit about the reference to the Jonathan Wilson book, Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s After Virtue, because I wrote my undergrad philosophy thesis on After Virtue, back when I was a card-carrying post-modernist. Since then, I've really come back to more balanced "critical modernism," where I still recognize the value of communities and traditions carrying on relatively independently of each other, and the inescapable debt we have to non-rational forces in the holding of our beliefs; but I'm optimistic that we can still find a place to stand from which to adjudicate historical, or philosophical, or theological, etc. questions both within and across traditions. Without at least some form of critical foundationalism, it seems hard to find much of a vantage point from which do this. At the same time, as I was skimming the whole thing over, I also felt a kind of apathetic detachment from it all. In many ways, the whole phenomenon feels a lot like an attempt to preserve a mostly evangelical mode of Christianity in a postmodern context -- i.e., without foundations, without exclusivism, and without all the grandiose claims to absolute certainty. It reminded me a lot of my philosophy days at Wheaton -- wanting to take the criticisms of foundationalism into account, wanting to respect and value philosophical insights from other cultures and traditions, but at the same time not lose our distinctively evangelical identity in the process. Indeed, as the article points out, most of the movement's leaders have "emerged" from evangelical Christianity, and so it still bears that imprint very strongly. It's just that I no longer have much attraction to evangelical Christianity in any form -- not even a culturally-sensitive, inclusive, postfoundationalist one -- so the movement really feels somewhat beside the point for me.

I agree that humans have a fairly (maybe even totally) unique capacity for self-awareness, "knowing that we know," etc. But I don't think it "grounds us in eternity" in a way that the rest of the world and/or cosmos doesn't share. I think it makes us consciously aware that all temporal reality is grounded in eternity, which is part of what gives us the unique role and responsibility I alluded to in my earlier response. If we were hypothetically to discover another species in the cosmos who had an even higher degree of reflexive capacity than we do -- which seems far from unlikely -- how would that discovery alter our eternal standing? Or, for an example that hits closer to our experience, what about people who are born with severe brain damage, and lack the level of reflexive capacity that "ordinary" people possess? Do these people have less eternal significance? We have to distinguish the capacity for reflection on our existence -- which varies widely both within and across species -- from the actual ontological character of our existence itself.

Well, I don't mean literally unconscious. I mean unaware of our union with God. "You're living in a dream world, Neo." Why, thank you. There's nothing that your sleeping self can do in the sphere of activity or effort. Christ wakes you up -- but then Christ has always been your True Self anyway, hence the somewhat paradoxical concept of waking yourself up without actually doing anything, and then realizing that you were doing it all along. (Perhaps this plugs into your query whether God wakes us up, or whether we need to actually do anything? My answer: Yes, of course.) Hey, I didn't say it made logical sense! I'm improvising on a paradox here. Heh, I was going to reply originally and say that you had two different sets of antitheses wrapped up in there, but decided to cut it short for brevity' sake. Then you responded with exactly what I was going to say!