Fundamentalism: Whence? Where? Whither? Part 6 - Digression One: Really?
Digression One: Really?
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.
Over several essays I have been attempting to describe the intellectual and social influences that were operating within the early fundamentalist movement. One of the earliest essays offered an overview of Scottish Common Sense Realism in which I suggested that most early Fundamentalists (among others) absorbed this philosophy from their intellectual milieu. Furthermore, I argued that Common Sense Realism had a definite and rather negative effect upon Fundamentalism.
Numbers of people have written to inform me of my several mistakes. The first is supposed to be that Common Sense Realism isn’t really anything new because people have always made their real decisions on the basis of common sense. The second is that Common Sense Realism could not have affected early Fundamentalists all that much because they were Biblicists and not philosophers. The third is that the effects of Common Sense Realism cannot be as dire as I hinted.
In the present essay I wish to respond only to the first objection. The second really requires no response except to refer the reader to the rather substantial literature on the subject.1 The third merits a separate discussion.
Is it true ordinary people (as opposed to philosophers) have always acted on the basis of common sense? One fellow in particular was quite definite. “If you see a cow in a field,” he said, “You can just point to it and say, ‘That’s a cow.’” As far as he was concerned, this is just common sense, and it describes the way that people have always thought and acted.
No.
As it happens, I have some experience with this very question. I can recall standing beside a pasture with a city boy, who pointed to the large bovine and said, “That’s a big cow.” Actually, it was not. It was a bull.
When I pointed out the disparity, his retort was, “You know what I mean!” No, I did not. The only thing that I knew was what he actually said. I could guess that perhaps his vocabulary was so limited that the word cow was the only term he possessed to denote a bovine. Or I could speculate (and this was more likely) that he either did not know how to tell the difference between a cow and a bull or that the details had escaped his attention. I did not know what he meant, and it is quite possible—likely, even—that he didn’t either. It is quite possible that his remark was thoughtless.
The declaration, “That’s a cow,” seems like a simple and straightforward act, but it is nothing of the kind. It is an elaborate act of interpretation and predication. Interpretation involves identifying several points on one’s mental grid (existence, quantity, definiteness, identity, etc.) with external realities. The act of predication connects and communicates these points in a particular way.
If the last paragraph lost you, let me restate: we never perceive reality without interpreting it. More precisely, we never perceive reality until we have already interpreted it. The only reality that we notice and the only reality that we know is always and already interpreted. In short, there are no brute facts.
Reality is always and already interpreted. The ancients understood this. It was an axiom for the Greeks and Romans. It was part of the “discarded image” of the medieval world. Prior to modernity people assumed that what we perceive is not what is, but what we have understood it to be.
Because of this assumption, people were aware that real or ultimate reality might not match their perceptions. A Greek, looking at a swan or a pile of gold, was keenly conscious that he just might be looking at Zeus. A Hebrew, encountering a stranger at his door, knew that such a visitor might be an angel, or even God Himself. A man with a sword might turn out to be Jehovah, come as captain of the Lord’s host. A hillside might appear to be empty, but who knew what chariots of fire might occupy it unseen?
For premoderns, the universe was numinous. The transcendent and supernatural were always just around the corner. The seams of reality were straining with the unperceived, and you had best be prepared.
Indeed, premoderns perceived some element of transcendence in ordinary objects. They habitually looked beyond what they saw, because every object signified something beyond itself. The perceived object was rarely or never considered as an ultimate (real) reality, but normally as a shadow or image of a greater reality. Right perception always looked through and beyond the thing to the reality that it shadowed. So, to perceive water truly was to perceive something about purity. To perceive gold truly was to perceive something about heaven. To perceive fire truly was to perceive something about hell.2
The chief characteristic of the premodern mind was its humility. Premoderns understood that the world as they perceived it was always and already interpreted. They knew that the scope of actual reality was so vast as to lie beyond their ability to grasp. Without such a grasp of the whole, they recognized that their perceptions of the particulars were so limited and local as inevitably to be misleading. They realized that particulars were meaningful only within the context of the whole, and they knew that they themselves lacked access to any immediate perception of the whole.
What they needed was help from outside. They needed an overall grasp of the structure of the whole, but this grasp could not be derived from their immediate perception of finite particulars. Ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle hoped to gain some glimpse of the whole through the methods of philosophical enquiry. Christians, however, believed that only God enjoyed a comprehensive view of reality. Consequently, they looked to God for a revelation of the whole. Only in view of that revelation could the particulars be placed within a context that would make the true interpretation apparent. So Christians humbled themselves, bent their minds before revelation, and accepted God and His communication as a starting point for true knowledge of the world.3
For premoderns, reality was not only ordered but also transcendent. It could not be understood from inside. It had to be viewed from above. Without the context provided by a transcendent overview, no particular could be known as it really ought to be. This transcendent overview was the Truth, and it had to be apprehended by faith.
In other words, for premoderns, truth came before facts and faith was primary. Only through faith could the Truth be appropriated, and only in view of the Truth could facts be understood rightly. The Truth provided a context without which the right facts would never be noticed or, if noticed, would never be rightly construed. For premoderns, the Truth was up there.
Modernity, epitomized by Common Sense Realism, shifted the focus from the transcendent to the immanent and, correspondingly, from the primacy of faith to the primacy of doubt.4 Moderns no longer believed that the Truth was up there; they now assumed that the truth was out there. If any transcendent reality existed, then it had to be accessed through and justified by factors within perceived reality. The priority of Truth was abandoned and facts took center stage. The priority of faith was discarded and doubt became the vehicle that drove the acquisition of knowledge. Nothing could be believed that was not a demonstrable fact, but if only enough facts could be gathered and if only they could be observed long enough, then the truth was sure to emerge.
Common Sense Realism, in particular, abandoned the priority of the transcendent. By equating perceptions with reality, Common Sense Realists did not necessarily deny the transcendent, but they did subordinate knowledge of the transcendent to the acquisition of facts. The facts were assumed to be self-interpreting. The Common Sense notion of reality was essentially “What You See Is What You Get.”
This massive intellectual shift was absorbed by American Christians during the Nineteenth Century. It was a primary component in the intellectual atmosphere out of which Fundamentalism emerged. How it affected Fundamentalism and other forms of evangelicalism is a topic worth discussing separately. To that subject we shall turn in the next essay.
1. The influence of Scottish Common Sense Realism has been a commonplace of American intellectual history since at least the mid-to-late 1970s. Ernest R. Sandeen, writing in 1970, recognizes the influence of Common Sense Realism upon Princeton theology, but does not explore it deeply, in The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millennarianism, 1800, 1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 115. Claude Welch traces the influence of Scottish Philosophy in both New England Theology (specifically Nathaniel Taylor) and Princeton theology (specifically Charles Hodge) in Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century: Volume I, 1799-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 131, 202, et al. John R. Fitzmier discusses the combination of Edwardsian theology and Common Sense Philosophy to be found in Edwards’s grandson, Timothy Dwight: New England’s Moral Legislator: Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). Paul F. Boller Jr. notes the interaction of Unitarians and Transcendentalists with Common Sense Realism, and their exposure to it in the educational mainstream, in American Transcendentalism 1830-1860: An Intellectual Inquiry (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 42-44, 181. George M. Marsden first articulated the importance of Common Sense Realism for understanding Fundamentalism; his summary statement may be found in Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 14-16. Mark Noll exhibits primary sources that illustrate the influence of Common Sense Realism in Princeton theology in The Princeton Theology 1812-1921 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, 2001), passim. David B. Calhoun notes, “At Princeton—as in much of early Nineteenth Century Protestantism—Scottish Common Sense Philosophy reigned. Congregationalists at Yale and Unitarians at Harvard embraced it nearly as enthusiastically as did Presbyterian Princeton.” He insists that the Princetonians “saw Scottish Common Sense Philosophy as setting forth the universal and permanent truths,” Princeton Seminary: The Magnificent Testimony 1869-1929 (Carlisle, Penn.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1996), 413. For an evaluation of the relationship between Common Sense Realism and Reformed theology at Princeton, consult Tim McConnel in “The Old Princeton Apologetics: Common Sense or Reformed?” in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (December 2003), 647-671. While nearly everyone acknowledges the influence of Common Sense Realism upon American theology (and especially Princeton) during the Nineteenth Century, the exact nature of the influence is a subject of debate. See Peter Hicks, The Philosophy of Charles Hodge: A 19th Century Evangelical Approach to Reason, Knowledge, and Truth (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1997). Many of Hicks’s insights are incorporated into Paul Kjoss Helseth, “ ‘Re-Imagining’ the Princeton Mind: Postconservative Evangelicalism, Old Princeton, and the Rise of Neo-Fundamentalism,” in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (September 2002), 427-450. To see how Common Sense influenced a significant Fundamentalist leader through the Princeton tradition, see Darryl G. Hart, “The Princeton Mind in the Modern World and the Common Sense of J. Gresham Machen” in Westminster Theological Journal (Spring 1984), 1-25. James E. Bradley revisits the theme of Common Sense Realism, setting it in a broader context of influences, in “The Nineteenth Century,” in D. G. Hart and R. Albert Mohler Jr., eds., Theological Education in the Evangelical Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 148ff. Joel Carpenter notes the influence of Scottish Common Sense Realism on the Fundamentalism of the1920s through the 1940s in Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 36, 72. Mark Noll traces the influence of Common Sense Philosophy into contemporary evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), passim. He also has an article devoted exclusively to the subject, “Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical Thought,” American Quarterly 37 (Summer 1985), 216-238. A recent recitation of the effects of Common Sense Realism upon evangelical theology can be found in Lindon J. DeBie, Speculative Theology and Common Sense Religion: Mercersburg and the Conservative Roots of American Religion (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock / Pickwick Publications, 2008). For an evangelical scholar who believes that the embracing of Common Sense categories was a good thing, see Robert L. Thomas, “The Nature of Truth: Postmodern or Propositional?” in Masters Seminary Journal (Spring 2007), 3-21.
2. Please note that these descriptions—and indeed, this entire discussion—are an almost inexcusable simplification of the premodern metaphysical dream. Those who are interested in understanding it more comprehensively might begin with C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964). Among medievalists, Lewis’s work is regarded as a bit dated today, but it remains a very accessible introduction to the medieval mind.
3. Readers may believe that they recognize in my description the characteristics of Dutch Neo-Reformed thinking as advocated by Abraham Kuyper, Cornelius Van Til, and their followers. I confess that I find much in Presuppositionalism that rings true. What I am describing in this essay, however, is a way of thinking about reality that antedates the Reformation and that was once shared by virtually all Christians. Van Til did not invent this perspective.
4. Students of philosophy might wonder about the relationship of Immanuel Kant to the intellectual environment of the period. Kant did revert to the distinction between reality and perception (noumenon and phenomenon), but he continued to reject the priority of the transcendent and the primacy of faith. Rather than allowing faith to stand as the basis of knowing, Kant effectively divided faith from knowing and put the two in airtight compartments. Most of subsequent Western philosophy (and theology!) is a long series of attempts to resolve this division. Once Kant’s structures were in place, however, more and more of what used to be considered knowledge was redefined as faith, and faith was re-imagined as assumption. The philosophical structures proposed by Kant fostered the discipline of phenomenology and eventually opened the door for postmodernism. Kant may be regarded as the first modern to critique modernity (though some have understood Hume to be doing the same thing). The main difference between Kant and the later postmoderns is that Kant had not yet abandoned his optimism.
A Hymn to my God in a Night of my Late Sicknesse
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)
Oh thou great Power, in whom I move,
For whom I live, to whom I die,
Behold me through thy beams of love,
Whilst on this couch of fears I lye;
And Cleanse my sordid soul within,
By thy Christs Blood, the bath of sin.
No hallowed Oyls, no grains I need,
No rags of Saints, no purging fire,
One rosie drop from David’s Seed
Was worlds of Seas, to quench thine Ire.
O precious Ransome! which once paid,
That Consummatum est was said.
And said by him, that said no more,
But seal’d it with his sacred Breath.
Thou then, that hast dispung’d my score,
And dying, wast the death of Death;
Be to me now, on thee I call,
My Life, my Strength, my Joy, my All.
[Kevin Bauder] The declaration, “That’s a cow,” seems like a simple and straightforward act, but it is nothing of the kind. It is an elaborate act of interpretation and predication.This pretty much ends my interest in the subject. I’m pretty sure we all know that something complex is going on when we observe and interpret reality. What we (who are not philosophers or students of philosophy) also know is that this “elaborate act” is easy, we do it thousands of times per second, and the vast majority of us arrive at very similar conclusions the vast majority of the time.
(Which is not to deny that, to premoderns, the world was numinous and they expected the supernatural behind every bush. But does it matter at all that they were wrong most of the time? I think it does! It’s commonly called superstition and there’s nothing Christian about it)
I didn’t find Kevin’s cow-vs.-bull example very persuasive. After moving out to farm country where we’ve lived the last ten years, I was surprised at first to discover that local farmers do not normally distinguish between a “cow” and a “bull” in conversation. That is, they call ‘em all “cows,” except when the difference matters. Sometimes is matters alot (!), but a good bit of the time it doesn’t, so ball-parking using the term “cow” works just fine. It means nothing more than “some sort of bovine.”
My original point with the cow illustration (which someone else apparently thought of as well, or used in some kind of personal correspondence with Kevin) was—and is—that most of the time people interpret what they see in a common sense way and always have (and most of the time, that works just fine).
As an example of how old common sense is, when Moses saw the burning bush, his thought process was not “I am now perceiving something that seems to be a bush aflame but may not really be.” Rather, he was curious why the “bush” (he figured what he saw looked like a bush and was a bush) was on fire but was not burned. There is no evidence that he that thought something miraculous might be happening (though likely, had he lived in the middle ages, he would have thought of that much sooner!). Only when he arrives and God speaks out of the bush does he discover that things are not what they seem. The encounter was remarkable precisely because it was not typical. Typically, we observe, do our elaborate process of interpreting in an instant (and all by ourselves), and get on with our business.
To sum up, here’s what I buy:
a. Premoderns were generally much more inclined to look to authority for answers
b. Premoderns were generally much more inclined to believe things are more than they seem
c. The Enlightenment shift to rationalism, and the Common Sense Realism that trickled down to the US contributed significantly to our way of thinking in the west and in America
d. Fundamentalists were also influenced with the result that they placed a higher value on common sense than they would have otherwise
e. I’ll even concede that the effect of c-d was a mixed bag. The influence of Common Sense Realism was not entirely positive (and I’ll grant that I may be understating that by a good bit. I’d have to read more to know.)
What I remain convinced of, though, is that
a. the philosophy of Common Sense Realism overlaps a great deal with ordinary common sense which has been around since Adam and Eve learned DIY gardening. Their new situation forced common sense on them as a matter of survival.
b. Consequently, much of the common sense perspective of Americans (and evangelicals and Fundamentalists) is healthy. Given what Fundamentalists were reacting against, their habit of leaning on common sense was often healthy, though in many ways (in hindsight) not disciplined enough.
c. The solution to Fundamentalism’s common-sense-run-amok problems is not to reject common sense entirely and urge everyone back (I’m guessing this is Kevin’s preferred alternative?) to pre-modern superstition and excessive reliance on small numbers of theological experts. Rather, it would have to lie in the direction of better disciplining our sense of self-reliant common sense. What we need are some course corrections, not a complete philosophical gutting. (Likewise for “populism”)
I believe the need for understanding, and factoring-in, complex philosophical systems is grossly neglected by some and more than a little exaggerated by others. The truth is somewhere in middle.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
If I were talking to Dr. Bauder, I would ask the following questions:
- It seems as if he presupposes the rightness of premodern ways of thinking. Where in this discussion do we analyze the mysticism which dominated the Roman Catholicism of “the medieval world” vs. the literal interpretation of Scripture which was re-introduced by the Reformation?
- Why does Dr. Bauder use “the medieval world” as his baseline? I would think it would be more valuable to use the Old Testament mind for this than the medieval mind.
Church Ministries Representative, serving in the Midwest, for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
My understanding is that this is supposed to be a history of the development of Fundamentalism — charting its course from it’s formation, history, and giving some guesses as to where it is heading, and why.
I can only assume that Dr. Bauder does not intend to advocate a return to the pre-modern state of mind, which is perhaps best identified with the word “mysticism”. If he is advocating that, it certainly does not fit into the scope of this article series as originally intended.
While there is a sense in which all of us might be called “mystic” as Christians (we believe in things we cannot see), there are many senses in which we are not at all. I think it’s important to note that the Reformation and the Enlightenment went hand-in-hand. I’m pretty sure the Enlightenment would not have happened had it not been for the Reformation.
While I am puzzled, since this series seems to be developing backwards in time rather than forward, I intend to see where it all leads before I try to dissect or discuss it.
[Mike Durning] While there is a sense in which all of us might be called “mystic” as Christians (we believe in things we cannot see), there are many senses in which we are not at all.
I think that a better way of saying it is that the Biblical way of thinking is “revelation-based” (as opposed to rationalism or mysticism), coming from the perspective of presuppositional apologetics and the certainty and perspicuity of Scripture.
I am also comfortable saying that such a way of operating for the average person was more likely after the Reformation than in medieval times.
Church Ministries Representative, serving in the Midwest, for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry
[Mike D] puzzled, since this series seems to be developing backwards in timeI think part of the reason we’re going backwards in time has to do with the questions Paul raised in post #2. The same questions (among others) underlie my own general lack of enthusiasm for these essays thus far. (Also, it’s a “digression” to fill in some backstory)
Paul, I don’t know if this helps or not, but C. S. Lewis—whom Kevin sites as an authority in the essay—was a medievalist, and also huge fan of the “numinous” in general. I’m a fan of Lewis, myself but have so far not been won over to his view of the middle ages (which seems to be far too rose-colored-glasses to me) or his deep love (“obsession” might not be overstatement) for the numinous.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
However, Representationalism varies greatly by degree. The superstitions of the Middle Ages are definitely toned down by the Reformers (and afterward).
In Scripture, we see something sort of in-between. We might call it, “Moderate Representationalism.”
We see a good case of double-layer Representationalism:
David decides to take a census.
Behind David’s choice was God’s anger.
God’s anger allowed Satan to incite him.
2 Samuel 24:1
Now again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”I Chron. 21:1-2 reads:
Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.”Yet the Biblical teaching also encourages us to “learn from the ant.” We observe and draw conclusions from our observations.
Biblical Representationalism does not teach that there is an unperceived reality behind everything, but that there may be behind some things.
What you see is what you get — most of the time. But not always.
"The Midrash Detective"
[Aaron Blumer] Which is not to deny that, to premoderns, the world was numinous and they expected the supernatural behind every bush. But does it matter at all that they were wrong most of the time? I think it does! It’s commonly called superstition and there’s nothing Christian about itAs if anything other than hard-nosed “common-sense realism” is “superstition” (or “mysticism”, which other commenters here seem to think is a slander). The world is numinous, and it has nothing to do with “superstition”. I wonder how many hard-nosed fundamentalists have read and understood Barfield? Or even Chesterton, for that matter.
We flatter ourselves to imagine ourselves wiser, more advanced, and less “superstitious” than, our Godly ancestors.
But that said, I am uneasy (emotionally as much as mentally) with this series and find myself also wanting to defend Common Sense Realism and populism, and I am struggling to figure out why. (Aaron’s objections and concerns are similar to mine I believe.) Here is my best shot.
The conservative tendency has long been to eschew philosophizers with their bright new ideas and revolutionary conceptions of the good society in favor of the actual and the tried and true. Christians are likewise warned to avoid the vain philosophies of men. Dr. Bauder gets at this when he says that the pre-modern Christian looked to God and His Revelation for his view of reality. Is this not in a way a direct repudiation of philosophy? The Christian’s philosophy should be theology.
I may be misunderstanding it, but I see SCSR as in many ways a repudiation of philosophizing. It seems to me an anti-philosophy philosophy. So as such, it is the enemy of my enemy, and while maybe not my friend less of an enemy than muddle headed uncommon sense philosophy. I think an unnuanced rejection of SCSR could end up coming off like an endorsement of less grounded philosophizing.
The degree to which modern Christians have embraced pure materialism and rationalism is a problem, and if SCSR is partially responsible for that then that should be pointed out. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. To the degree that CSR espouses an anti-philosophy philosophy, I think it makes points that should ring true to Christians.
Also, Paul’s texts refers to philosophy that is “according to the elementary principles of the world” (that’s from memory, so it may not be exact), not philosophy simpliciter.)
Reflective awareness at a sufficient degree of abstraction and generality, first achieved in ancient Greece, necessarily raises questions which have since been categorized as “philosophical.” These questions are not avoidable once this degree of reflective awareness is achieved in a culture or even in an individual; they become ineliminable. And I say “achieved” advisedly, for not all cultures produced this kind of thinking: only Greece did. It is in no small part because of the kind and level of thinking this achievement opened up that natural science as well as what we call theology developed. Like it or not, classical theology is deeply bound up with early Greek philosophy, and the only way to gain a substantial grasp of early church theology - essential if one thinks doctrines like the Incarnation and Trinity are important - is to have a good grasp on philosophical categories. To this day, any mature and profound grasp of theology, of the kind say a professor of systematics should have, requires a substantial knowledge of the history of philosophy because of the enormous influence philosophy has had on theology, for good and for ill. If you imagine away all philosophy, you imagine away most theology because it loses the categories it uses to expresses itself.
The attempt to deny the importance, usefulness, and general validity (as a mode of thinking, not any particular system as such) of the philosophical enterprise, especially as a Christian, is like using the radio to decry broadcast technology: besides being a kind of practical contradiction (one must draw one that which one denies or decries), it also reflects a lack of awareness of the influences that have shaped one, and thus an inability either to be critical or grateful of one’s inheritance.
It is especially ironic for someone interested in or merely appreciative of politics to express an antipathy to philosophy simpliciter. John Locke, in case people forgot, was a philosopher, and the influential founding fathers were doing political philosophy, interacting with a massive tradition of such thought (ranging from Plato all the way through to contemporary thinkers in France and England).
The loss we experience by ignoring these truths is similar to the loss spoken of above, and it’s a loss that’s inevitable in the “common sense” mindset: one fails to realise that one’s “common sense” in matters of theology, of politics, even of cows, is a historical achievement, earned through arduous historical, intellectual, and cultural struggle, change, and development. To treat this achievement as self-evident in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, ranging from heretical theology to totalitarian governments and animistic beliefs of many primitive cultures (where people would disagree with Aaron about not just cows but also trees and rocks) is to assert one’s autonomy and independence, as if one was not so deeply indebted to or embedded in the past, or as if simply being ignorant of such an inheritance means it does not exist or that it can or should make no claim upon us.
But the past does make a claim upon us; our common sense has a history, and if we wish to be humble, grateful, and critical inheritors of that history we must first know and acknowledge it, else we will be tempted to dismiss those who don’t see things from our perspective as ignoring the “self-evident” and “common sense” validity of our position. And if we wish to be humble, grateful, and critical inheritors of the Fundamentalist heritage we must be unsparing in our criticism, yet always operating out of precisely the attitude so many here do not reflect (or only so selectively): a humble awareness of and gratitude for the way the past, in this case Fundamentalism, has shaped us, especially for good but also and often for ill; and it is because of our awareness of having been so shaped that we can be both grateful and critical of our inheritance, not as arrogant adolescents but as humble and mature adults who strive always to acknowledge the debt owed to their parents and those who shaped them.
[allenjs] As if anything other than hard-nosed “common-sense realism” is “superstition” (or “mysticism”, which other commenters here seem to think is a slander).
I use the word “mysticism” to refer to an unbiblical sense of spirituality which is based on a subjective view of reality. Mysticism is a natural result of rationalism (modernism), which exalts the mind as being capable of interpreting reality apart from the Word of God. To the modernist, anything which cannot be rationally understood (i.e., miracles) must either be denied or re-categorized in some mystical way.
As opposed to either rationalism or mysticism, revelation-based thinking leads a person to interpret the world around him on the basis of Scripture (which is believed presuppositionally as the Word of God [Heb. 11:3] and interpreted literally [according to the text] — even when it does not make sense to the modern/rational mind).
Church Ministries Representative, serving in the Midwest, for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry
The chief characteristic of the premodern mind was its humility. Premoderns understood that the world as they perceived it was always and already interpreted. They knew that the scope of actual reality was so vast as to lie beyond their ability to grasp.I think this is, in some ways, the heart of the discussion. I find this lack of humility a hallmark of Common Sense Realism. It relates to many theological and practical issues. For example, Nouthetic Counselors leave little room for what they don’t know. We can draw certain theological conclusions when, at times, when we need to simply propose theories.
Although we should be certain about the fundamentals of the faith and the obvious teachings of Scripture, we can get mighty dogmatic about not-so-clear verses or doctrines.
Part of the blight of fundamentalism is our tendency to be dogmatic about complicated gray issues that we present as black and white. We don’t like to admit that we do not know or that we are uncertain.
"The Midrash Detective"
Just curious — you and Charlie speak with great authority on matters of philosophy and history, and often recommend stacks of books that people should read before they can understand an issue.
You can know a lot about me because I have had an article posted on SI (http://sharperiron.org/why-i-am-dispensationalist), but some (me included) may not know anything about you.
Is there any way you can fill us in on some basics, such as highest degrees earned, and from where?? I will take your word for it, even without a last name, and would at least have some context as to where you are coming from.
Church Ministries Representative, serving in the Midwest, for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry
Now I guess you could make the point that many would now accept Locke’s individualism as the common sense position and that that makes your point that common sense is influenced by what has gone before. And you would be right, and I would agree. But that doesn’t change the fact that individualism of the Lockean sort cannot be squared with the Bible. So we were wrong originally to go with the philosopher and his philosophy against Revelation.
Comments?
I wish I could say I’ve read alot of Burke but only enough to make Red sound quite familiar. I do share Burke’s apparent impatience with philosophizing that has too much distance between it and what’s happening on the ground (to use a more current metaphor).
(Edit: Burke died in late 1700’s so I’m pretty sure he had absorbed a fare amount of Enlightenment rationalism, but he seems to have been very respectful of revealed truth… if we’ve got a Burke scholar reading, I’d love to know if he interacted at all with Common Sense Realism)
Also, about “numinous” and superstition… somebody reacted to my statements on that earlier. Just to clarify, I was comparing pre-modern to modern. I don’t think the pre-moderns were all wrong by a long shot! The world is indeed numinous. But my point was that the premoderns were not all right either and one of their failings was superstition. Something goes bump in the night and it’s gotta be the Devil… or a shade or something. Nowadays we’re closer to the truth: something probably fell over. The error of rationalism or unrestrained common sense is that it says the bump in the night must have a purely naturalistic cause. That’s not what I mean when I say common sense. To me, common sense affirms that there is more to the world than meets the eye, because things happen that cannot explained rationally. So I’m of the opinion that it’s very rational to believe that rationality has limits… pretty substantial ones.
(Actually, I need to qualify that one more time: I think pre-moderns before the middle ages might well have been less inclined than the medievals to explain the bump in the night in mysterious spiritual terms. I can’t back this up w/hard research (yet) but I think one reason Common Sense Realism seems like such a dramatic departure to many is that common sense took such a beating during the middle ages… but it probably started well before that. Still, I think there is a place somewhere back there where people are being more sensible in general, especially God-fearing people who understood there was not a different god in charge of every little aspect of life!)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Mike Durning] OK. After talking with a few friends, I believe that what Dr. Bauder is preparing for is to build a case that we are not sufficiently “revelational” in Fundamentalism. The move from pre-modern to modern cost us something (a regard for that which is not seen) just as it gained us some things.I can believe that. And if “revelationism” is seen as a corrective to premodern thought just as it is to modern and post-modern thought, I’d greet that warmly.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
-=-=-=-=-=-
But I do see Dr. Bauder’s point in the field of chemistry. Premodern alchemists were convinced that chemical transformations were spiritual occurrences. Such that if they applied their theology properly, the result would be to make gold from lesser materials.
They could, after all, make some materials into others, clearly a miraculous thing. Now, in modern times, we know that it isn’t a miracle. We’ve explained the chemical processes. Laws of creation are not violated. No miracle is occurring.
Alchemy is, then, numinous chemistry.
What I end up asking myself is, are we better off with chemistry or alchemy?
How do we know?
And does this relate back to theology?
Luther, for example, understood more to be supernaturally demonic. Note the third verse of “A Mighty Fortress” it, along with the first two verses, are an example of pre-modern (representational) thought:
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.To my way of thinking, Luther may have attributed too much to the supernatural forces of evil; perhaps many of us have been so affected by Common Sense Realism that we attribute too little?
I am really enjoying Dr. Bauder’s articles. Though I disagreed with the second one, they have got us thinking and discussing in new, expanded directions at SI. We needed this shot in the arm.
"The Midrash Detective"
[Ed Vasicek] Luther, for example, understood more to be supernaturally demonic. Note the third verse of “A Mighty Fortress” it, along with the first two verses, are an example of pre-modern (representational) thought:I think the answer is yes for some, and no for others. For my part, I believe Mighty Fortress is quite accurate and the world is “with devils filled.” They just happen to operate in more subtle ways than they once did. But your question highlights another reason why I’m skeptical that Common Sense Realism really has all that much to do with the theological drift and shallowness of the age. Why would Common Sense Realists (or those strongly influences by them) birth something like the spiritual warfare movement, or—for that matter—the pentecostalism of Azusa street and the later Charismatic movement? I’ll hazard that few would deny these have been major forces in shaping evangelicalism in the 20th century and fundamentalism has not been wholly unaffected either. Doesn’t look like “what you see is what is and nothing more” thinking to me.And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.To my way of thinking, Luther may have attributed too much to the supernatural forces of evil; perhaps many of us have been so affected by Common Sense Realism that we attribute too little?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Although I hate alliteration, it does make for a nice (and probably extremely over-simplistic) outline:
premodernity: representationalism
modernity: rationalism
postmodernity: relativism
-------
Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)
Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA
Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University
[Aaron Blumer] [Quote=Dan Miller] What I end up asking myself is, are we better off with chemistry or alchemy?Wouldn’t you say that we’re better off—not only from our point of view but also from God’s—wherever the truth is? This is why I raised the question earlier (in ref. to premoderns and superstition) does it make a difference whether they were right or not? Which is really a different way of asking Paul Scharf’s question, why is medieval thinking the baseline? (Or have we misread there and it isn’t the baseline?)
…Of course, my first reaction is that of course we’re better off with an understanding of modern chemistry.
But why?
That’s the point, I think. We’re not really discussing “Which is better, Alchemy or Chemistry?” Rather, we’re discussing, “How does one know which is better between something like Alchemy or Chemistry?” (Remember Dr. Bauder’s reaction to our reaction to the guy who was saying that the earth doesn’t move?)
If someone claims that alchemy better represents a theological interpretation of the physical world, and never mind what you think you see and understand, how should we respond?
Or if someone claims that Geocentrism better represents a Biblical view of the earth, and never mind what you think you see and understand, how should we respond?
True, modern thinkers quite quickly respond with physical evidence. But why should physical evidence be trusted, if we must look beyond what we see and understand that humility demands that we distrust our observation and understanding?
(A “while” later…) I think they pose an interesting problem for those who are down on Common Sense Realism. Not that big of a problem for those who commend “disciplined common sense.” Because in the case of the latter, you really need some kind of reason to believe that what is observed is not what it seems.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Greg Long] Could someone explain to me or point me to an online source explaining the concept of “representationalism” as it relates to pre-modern thought?You should preach this, Greg. I guarantee that you would get invited to lots of conferences and hailed as a prophet in our times. Such insight!
Although I hate alliteration, it does make for a nice (and probably extremely over-simplistic) outline:
premodernity: representationalism
modernity: rationalism
postmodernity: relativism
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
[Charlie]Thanks, Charlie! “All you need to know about the history of western thought in three easy, alliterated points.”[Greg Long] Could someone explain to me or point me to an online source explaining the concept of “representationalism” as it relates to pre-modern thought?You should preach this, Greg. I guarantee that you would get invited to lots of conferences and hailed as a prophet in our times. Such insight!
Although I hate alliteration, it does make for a nice (and probably extremely over-simplistic) outline:
premodernity: representationalism
modernity: rationalism
postmodernity: relativism
But just remember…always avoid alliteration.
-------
Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)
Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA
Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University
So, this raises a question:
Are these critics right to connect (Princetonian) verbal inspiration and SCSR?
If yes, then it would seem difficult to critique SCSR from a Fundamentalist position, as you are doing.
If no, then it would seem that their other criticisms of SCSR, which you are repeating, may also be called into question. After all, if they messed up that badly in that part of their analysis, why should we trust the rest of their theories?
I write this not to say “gotcha!” but because I’m sure that you must have faced this difficulty before you wrote this series, and you must have worked out some kind of solution as to which elements of their analysis you can accept. I would like to know your solution, because I feel caught in some of the inconsistency of my own thinking toward this matter. Of course, I understand that a full discussion of this issue may be beyond the boundaries of what you can write for a public audience, so I sent you a private message through the SI system requesting your assistance. (I thought, though, that the SI general public might be interested in the content of this post, so it is also appearing in the forum.)
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
Those are excellent questions. I had similar thoughts, but you expressed it well.
Church Ministries Representative, serving in the Midwest, for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry
Church Ministries Representative, serving in the Midwest, for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry
“Consequently, they [Christians] looked to God for a revelation of the whole. Only in view of that revelation could the particulars be placed within a context that would make the true interpretation apparent. So Christians humbled themselves, bent their minds before revelation, and accepted God and His communication as a starting point for true knowledge of the world.”
I respectfully aver that this is a idealized picture of Christian history. Where, I wonder, are such Christians to be found in the ancient church? Not Augustine; he was too influenced by neo-Platonism to shift from his thinking the unbiblical dichotomy between spiritual and material. The physical creation was second best to him, and to so many great men of the time (e.g. Athanasius; the Cappadocians).
Any reader of Colin Gunton’s works knows that the doctrine of creation, which is absolutely essential to a proper “revelational epistemology” (Van Til’s term) faired poorly in the early church up until the time of Calvin (Institutes 1.1f.). Alongside of this was the well documented influence of “the Rule of Faith” (Tradition) that had encrusted itself upon the reading of the Scriptures at least from the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian (despite his ‘Prescription’). Sola Scriptura is not an early church doctrine. Add to this the knock-on effects of an under-developed doctrine of the Holy Spirit (at least until Athanasius’s ‘Letters to Serapion’) and the slow progress this doctrine endured partly because of a wrong view of transcendence, and I think we come up short of Dr Bauder’s paragraph.
Finally, saying that the ancient peoples (saved or lost) had a backdrop of transcendence (which was, therefore, humble) is to say nothing but that they were more superstitious. The Creator-creature distinction was just as thoughtlessly ignored by the Greeks and other Pre-Moderns as it is by Richard Dawkins. Any transcendence they held to was either pantheistic or panentheistic (Plato) or functional (Aristotle). It was not the biblical view of transcendence, which refers principally to God’s Lordship over His creatures.
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
I don’t think this much benefit in trying to counter what you suggest is an idealized view of history by giving an at least equally distorting and one-sided view of things.
I appreciate Gunton’s work a great deal, but I’ve never read any Augustine scholar who knew Gunton’s work who thought Gunton was a fair reader of Augustine, and the same goes for his reading of Aquinas. Gunton privileges Irenaeus (who I love) over the the later fathers, and I think this leads to somewhat distorted, even if still insightful readings, of the other fathers (to get into why this is would be a complex and different discussion, but I think it no small part it’s due to his general acceptance of a typically Barthian rejection of classical metaphysics for some allegedly less or non-metaphysical theology).
Moreover, I would simply point out in passing that no one in Fundamentalism (or Evangelicalism) for that matter has made an major or significant contribution to the docrine of creation, so it’s not much of a criticism when it invites such an obvious and deserved tu quoque.
Your comment about transcendence is flatly wrong, I think (the whole charge of “superstition” should be rightly dismissed from any discussion in which people deploy it without historical, sociological, philosophical, and anthropological awareness; and what such is present, the term isn’t often used because of how unhelpful and distorting it is). It’s not mere “superstition” that marks the difference. I am studying secularization, and have read a good deal about modernity, its origins, nature etc. and it’s quite clear to me, and many others, that the world radically changed with and since modernity, and this change has been in certain ways hostile to Christianity in a way that times before were not. This is not to idealize the past; it’s to take it seriously and thus to acknowledge that major changes can occur that lead us into circumstances that are quite different, and in some respect, quite worse than they were before. If one only focuses on that side of the story, it will be one-sided. But if that is one’s focus, accusing someone of being one-sided or idealizing is not a substantive criticism, given the limits of what they were trying to do.
Finally, as someone with a particular interest and background in philosophy, even if I think Bauder’s image somewhat neat (this is necessary for summarizing a period in a paragraph, so I don’t view this as, necessarily, a fault), I think he’s quite right to focus on the fact that modernity and the Enlightenment in particular caused a radical change in basic intutions, assumptions, and articulate beliefs about issues of epistemology and metaphysics. And if you’re evaluating, as he is, one is entitled to view these changes as largely negative: with respect to philosophy, I think they were largely negative, and so do many of the most eniment thinkers of our and recent times. There can be no reversion to the past; but that does not mean we have to act like it was not, in some respects, superior to the present, for this recognition is helpful in the process of judgment and discernment in the present.
I am a little exasperated. You have taken what I said and turned it into various specimens of what I did not say. I did not say that the pre-modern was either superior or inferior to the modern. I did not say there wasn’t a significant change in outlook between, e.g., pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment thinking. I did not say anything about Gunton’s view of Augustine. I did not say that the pre-moderns did not see life in reference to something transcendent.
What I said was that thinking the pre-modern believers employed a humble revelational perspective on reality was dubious and, yes, idealized. They were strongly impacted by pagan philosophy and ecclesial traditon. To have a proper revelational view is to have a fully theological view. My focus was the doctrine of creation, which is vital to a revelational perspective. It is not to be found in philosophy unless that philosophy is subordinated to theology. Despite the greatness of some in the early church, this was never achieved.
I spoke of the biblical doctrine of transcendence. This is personal and involves an inseparable union with God’s immanence. To speak of a belief in transcendence is not enough. A non-biblical view of transcendence leads to superstition.
All your forays into erudition will get nowhere if you do not attend to what is actually said by the ones you presume to criticize
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
(1) All widespread philosophical paradigms have been off target since the Fall
(2) When philosophical paradigms shift, something is usually lost and something gained
(3) It can be difficult to objectively tally the gains vs. the losses in paradigm shifts
(4) The Christian must struggle to correct the philosophical errors within the paradigm of his time and culture using the Scriptures
(5) To some degree, our understanding of the Scriptures in some areas will inevitably be affected by either our own embraced philosophy (be we aware of it or not) or the philosophy of the era when our theological heritage was formulated.
(6) The Bible-saturated believer, empowered by the Holy Spirit and in fellowship with the Body of Christ, is capable of approaching a fairly accurate Christian worldview and perspective.
I personally have a hard time embracing the idea the pre-modern philosophies were necessarily better as a whole. But I think one point is clear, namely my second, that something was lost and something was gained.
"The Midrash Detective"
I’m quite clear as to what you said; it was not ambiguous.
I centered explicitly on idealism in the opening and closing section of the my post. To spell out the relevance of the other points is a bit tedious, but in brief: Gunton’s reading of people like Augustine is highly relevant to how much stock one should put into his reading of the doctrine of creation and its role in the early church; the comments about a tu quoque are obviously relevant if one is going to place emphasis on the doctrine of creation as a mark of a truly theological view of transcendence seeing as we, conservatives, have done practically nothing on this front (and I would add the many conservatives seem closer to Gnostics and Marcionites than they do to Irenaeus, a common but I regard as generally fair criticism); the specific responses to idealiizing things are self-explanatory; finally, your comment about superstition was frankly wrong, and I responded to it with comments on the changes from pre-modernitiy to modernity, comments that obviously support the idea that it’s a mistake to see pre-modernitiy as simply more superstitious, which you directly implied. They were not merely more superstitious, and imperfect views of transcendence are not the same as non-existent ones; Plato is far closer to Christianity than Dawkins and Christians have normally underestood this. It’s a gross erasure of distinctions to imply that because someone was not fully “revelational” or whatever that they are somehow comparable to a philosophical infant like Dawkins.
Finally, there were no “forays into erudition.” That people say things like this amazes me, as if I write SI posts with a set of books at my right hand, thumbing through thesauri trying to find an impressive word. It’s silly, and my posts deserve neither the praise nor censure of being said to be anything like a “foray into erudition.” I know quite well what erudition and scholarship are, and I have no intention of insulting them or aggrandizing myself by comparing (or accepting comparisons) of my forum posts to such.
[Paul Henebury]I strongly doubt that Dr. Bauder is saying that they were absolutely humble, as you seem to be reading his words. I really don’t think that Dr. Bauder sees the premodern mind’s “humility” in exclusively Christian categories. The “humility” as his context defines the term, is a person who correctly sees the ramifications of his finitude. He sees the ramifications of his smallness in the realm of interpretation. Thus, he must begin outside of self for objectivity. This is in direct contrast with the modernistic assumption of starting the whole epistemological enterprise with the finite self, grounding “objectivity” upon pure subjectivity. I would agree, however, that the premodern paganism was certainly not Christian, and I don’t think that Dr. Bauder ever remotely communicated this. I agree that the premodern paganism did miss the Creator/creature distinction, and I would also point out that I think their attempts toward the transcendent were attempts from themselves to the transcendent. While a relvelational epistemology is a view of epistemology that goes from God to us.
Finally, saying that the ancient peoples (saved or lost) had a backdrop of transcendence (which was, therefore, humble) is to say nothing but that they were more superstitious. The Creator-creature distinction was just as thoughtlessly ignored by the Greeks and other Pre-Moderns as it is by Richard Dawkins. Any transcendence they held to was either pantheistic or panentheistic (Plato) or functional (Aristotle). It was not the biblical view of transcendence, which refers principally to God’s Lordship over His creatures.
To sum up: My only point of expressed disagreement with you Paul, is that you may be over-reading Dr. Bauder’s use of “humble”.
[Aaron Blumer] This pretty much ends my interest in the subject. I’m pretty sure we all know that something complex is going on when we observe and interpret reality. What we (who are not philosophers or students of philosophy) also know is that this “elaborate act” is easy, we do it thousands of times per second, and the vast majority of us arrive at very similar conclusions the vast majority of the time.The fact that interpreting reality is easy means nothing other than the fact that the general person takes for granted the ramifications of his worldview. In apologetic encounters, it is quite helpful to show an atheist that it is his worldview that is governing the interpretation of the data. It is interesting how one’s worldview affects exactly how he sees the meaning of “consensus”. A Christian theist may make the general statement that the vast majority of people interpret the data and believe that there is a God(s). This presents the majority opinion in the realm of theism. However, the atheist, who has a different lens through which to view the data retorts with the following series of thoughts. He asks you if you believe in Thor, Santa clause, the Easter bunny, Aphrodite, Allah, and many other gods from various religions. The Christian will answer that he does not believe in the existence of those gods or mythical characters. Then the atheist responds to you that most people are atheistic at the core because they lack belief in the existence of all the other gods except their own; the atheist only takes this one step farther by lacking belief in all of them. The point is that the “vast majority” is an evaluative tool that built off of one’s worldview.
What we have here are two different majority opinions determined by one’s worldview, so when I read your appeal to majority opinion I have to sit back and scratch my head thinking. Which majority? How are you construing your majority? Who exactly is qualified to determine a majority opinion? Is this majority a majority based upon the exclusion of other data? The list could go on. The very appeal that you are making to the majority opinion is actually serving to make the point that Dr. Bauder is giving. Which is, that we all have a worldview through which we view the data. He uses the following words. “If the last paragraph lost you, let me restate: we never perceive reality without interpreting it. More precisely, we never perceive reality until we have already interpreted it. The only reality that we notice and the only reality that we know is always and already interpreted. In short, there are no brute facts.” He wants us to know that we interpret the data through a certain grid, and it is this grid that filters out data as well. It is what deems certain data relevant or irrelevant.
[Aaron Blumer] (Which is not to deny that, to premoderns, the world was numinous and they expected the supernatural behind every bush. But does it matter at all that they were wrong most of the time? I think it does! It’s commonly called superstition and there’s nothing Christian about it)This adds nothing to what Dr. Bauder stated in his opening article. He was describing premodern thinking, and he did place Christian thought in distinction to pagan superstition in the broader category of premodern thinking. Restated, the fact that he labeled all of it as premodern thinking does not imply that he endorsed all of it, for he clearly included the revelational epistemology as the correct Christian way of premodern thinking. So, in so far as one’s thinking is governed by the Word of God, one’s mind is submitted to God’s specific revelation, then this is certainly not superstition. I’m not saying that you are calling a revelational epistemology wrong or superstitious; I’m only saying that your comment does not seem to understand the categories that Dr. Bauder is using.
[Aaron Blumer] I didn’t find Kevin’s cow-vs.-bull example very persuasive. After moving out to farm country where we’ve lived the last ten years, I was surprised at first to discover that local farmers do not normally distinguish between a “cow” and a “bull” in conversation. That is, they call ‘em all “cows,” except when the difference matters. Sometimes is matters alot (!), but a good bit of the time it doesn’t, so ball-parking using the term “cow” works just fine. It means nothing more than “some sort of bovine.”I can see why you are not persuaded by his example because it seems that the common sense vs Common Sense issue is forefront in your mind, while Dr. Bauder is using CSR as a descriptor of how each of us uses his worldview to interpret reality. You are both focusing on two different points, and so you are construing the data in different ways. Allow me to restate things. You are focusing here upon a more general allowance for language vs Dr. Bauder’s more specific allowance for language. Dr. Bauder is focusing upon a lack of precision in communication that causes one to not understand what another is saying. You are focusing upon the fact that a lack of precision need not be a factor since we can and often do speak in generalizations. And this generalized way of speaking can be called a “common sense” way of speaking as you state. But again, while you are preferring to keep relentlessly hammering your point, “most of the time people interpret what they see in a common sense way and always have,” may I suggest that you have not only missed the point Dr. Bauder is making, but you are also actually serving his point with an illustration of his point. His point is that you interpret according to your worldview (stated above). You are serving his point in that you are only describing how we can tend to use words imprecisely; it does not mean that we use these words wrongly.
My original point with the cow illustration (which someone else apparently thought of as well, or used in some kind of personal correspondence with Kevin) was—and is—that most of the time people interpret what they see in a common sense way and always have (and most of the time, that works just fine).
Consider the following please. If you were a Jew, during the time of Solomon, and you were a priest, then wouldn’t you have a different perception of the word “cow”? In your mind, you would have the grid of sacrificial animals and what constitutes a good or poor sacrifice. Much more could be added. This just means that a different social environment entails a different grid/worldview. What may be “common sense” to the priest may not be common sense to you or I. What may be quite evident to one who is very precise and particular with his words may not be common sense to you. What may be quite evident to one who is not precise with his words may not be common sense to Dr. Bauder. And all of this serves to illustrate Dr. Bauder’s point, which is that we all interpret the data with a certain worldview in place.
[Aaron Blumer] As an example of how old common sense is, when Moses saw the burning bush, his thought process was not “I am now perceiving something that seems to be a bush aflame but may not really be.” Rather, he was curious why the “bush” (he figured what he saw looked like a bush and was a bush) was on fire but was not burned. There is no evidence that he that thought something miraculous might be happening (though likely, had he lived in the middle ages, he would have thought of that much sooner!). Only when he arrives and God speaks out of the bush does he discover that things are not what they seem. The encounter was remarkable precisely because it was not typical. Typically, we observe, do our elaborate process of interpreting in an instant (and all by ourselves), and get on with our business.I’m sorry, but you seriously appear to be raising a straw man here. Dr. Bauder did not use, “I am now perceiving something that seems to be a bush aflame but may not really be.” Rather, he used the Biblical example of a person appearing before your door, and this person may perhaps be an angel. You have failed to distinguish between the already critiqued premodern superstitious thought and the premodern revelational epistemology that Dr. Bauder does endorse. Your statement that there is no evidence that he thought something miraculous might be happening and your additions into the text are completely an argument from silence. The text is not that specific, so your are supplying your own details in accordance with how you think he might have responded. May I suggest that you are anachronistically importing “common sense”, as you have loaded the term, into the biblical story. Not only is this anachronistic, but it is also bad historiography. One should first seek to determine the larger worldview of Moses, in Moses’s time, before trying to perform psychological exegesis of the Biblical character. You area appealing, at the end of the quoted material, to the categories of “typical” and “nontypical” as governing what is and is not “common sense”. This again fails to critique anything whatsoever of what Dr. Bauder is saying; it only serves Dr. Bauder’s point. What is and what is not viewed as “typical” is governed by one’s worldview. The following is an illustration of this point.
The materialistic atheist comes up to you and tells you that it is just “common sense” that the material world is all that there is. You haven’t seen God have you, but you have seen this world; you have seen testable observable things all around you, so why must you jettison your common sense and go beyond what you see. You are only multiplying the complexity of explanation in order to account for God (he just appealed to Occam’s razor on you, which you have used in some sense as well). Why don’t you just follow your “common sense”, which is what is typical, and just leave things at that. You don’t need to think that there is something behind what you immediately perceive.
The point in bringing that up is again, what you view as typical is governed by your worldview. I would (in a very simple, time saving way) respond that God is always at work, and He typically works in the same way. Hence, we have scientific laws. And when God does something out of the ordinary, we generally call that a miracle. Further, Occam’s razor is not applicable on a worldview level for a multitude of reasons. Again, because you are not getting Dr. Bauder’s point, you are missing the fact that you are only supporting his point by giving us examples of how one interprets reality according to his worldview, which Dr. Bauder would word that you have already interpreted the facts before you see them.
I’m omitting the material where you express agreement and disagreement.
[Aaron Blumer] I believe the need for understanding, and factoring-in, complex philosophical systems is grossly neglected by some and more than a little exaggerated by others. The truth is somewhere in middle.Sometimes I go for a walk. It is an enjoyable time to just relax, think, and pray. Sometimes I’ll walk at night, and my little half-mile loop has many light poles. You pass by them as you walk. Suppose for a moment that I go over to one, hit it, point at it; and then I point at the one next to it; and now I walk right in-between them. I’m in the middle!!! I often think of “which poles?” when I read a statement about the truth being in the middle. The “middle” could be in-between any of the poles that one picks. What makes your “middle” any different than mine, which is different than yours? Which pole of exaggeration is exaggeration, and which pole of neglect is neglect?
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
I’m not going to spend time answering implications from my posts which were hatched in your head. I will say a few things:
1. Gunton is viewed almost universally as an authority on the doctrine of creation (and the Trinity). He is used this way, e.g. by P. Feinberg in his “No One Like Him,” especially his chapter on creation. He recommends people read Gunton’s “The Triune Creator” for “further discussion of the doctrine of creation in church history.” (p.839 n.37). Gunton is also appealed to in P. Copan & W. L. Craig’s book “Creation Out of Nothing.” I’ll go with them, and I urge readers not to take your criticisms seriously.
2. Your comment about conservatives having done “practically nothing” on the doctrine of God’s transcendence just shows your lack of reading in Calvin, Owen, Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Van Til, Murray, Frame and many others.
As for the rest, I invite interested readers (if any exist) to compare what I said with your re-interpretations of what I said. You should not read thoughts into other peoples minds. I said what I meant.
Btw, thanks to Ed V. for some productive thoughts
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
I have read the Triune Creator as well as a number of texts by Gunton and never said he was not an authority on the doctrine of creation; more people should read him. Being an authority on a constructive/systematic topic hardly means one is an authority on a particular historical figure. The fact that people question his reading of someone like Augustine (and Aquinas; cf. Fergus Kerr “After Aquinas”) is relevant to assessing his reading of the other Fathers vis-a-vis creation. That’s what I said, and you seem to either not understand that or to strangely encourage people to ignore it. Moreover, Feinberg is not an Augustine scholars, so how is he is relevant to what I said?
If you class “Calvin, Owen, ” etc. as “conservatives” when it was quite clear the context was Fundamentalists and evangelicals (something I said explicitly) then we’re having a different discussion, aren’t we? Also, that’s a ironically uncharitable and bad reading of what I said (but not unexpected given you tone: “hatched in your head,” “not going to bother” etc.), given how obvious the contextual delimiters on “conservative” were.
Moreover I’m not sure “Calvin, Owen, Kuyper, “etc. would be a big fans of American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (and I hardly see anything in someone like Frame comparable to the contribution of someone like Gunton on creation; nor have does any other scholar that I’m aware of).
You clearly are not terribly interested in responding charitably or carefully to what I say, so I’ll knock off direct dialogue at this point, especially since you repeatedly ignored, not refuted or responded to, most of the criticisms I made of you (e.g. about supterstition and transcendence).
As Bauder’s most recent essay reveals, at least one Fundamentalist agrees with me on this (footnote 10 in part seven of this series):
[Kevin Bauder]Ignoring people who disagree with you seems an effective way to produce poor discussions; likewise, ignoring their criticisms and insulting them with verbal jibes is an effective means (if done well) to make discussion with them seem pointless. It’s also one pretty obvious reason that Fundamentalist as a group have produced so little worthy, substantive work on theological and philosophical topics; such an approach to conversation is going to inhibit substantive engagement. It’s also inhibiting substantive conversation on this thread.
It is a conceit of modernist Philistines that the premodern metaphysical dream is superstitious. The fact that some evangelicals—and fundamentalists—could repeat this absurdity is evidence of how profoundly modernist they have become in their hearts and souls.
Hopefully Aaron and others will respond to Caleb’s excellent post, which accurately conveys what Bauder communicated.
I was not insulting, I was correcting your misrepresentations and misreadings of what I said. Now you add another:
ME: Your comment about conservatives having done “practically nothing” on the doctrine of God’s transcendence just shows your lack of reading in Calvin, Owen, Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Van Til, Murray, Frame and many others.
Joseph: I hardly see anything in someone like Frame comparable to the contribution of someone like Gunton on creation.
I did not SAY anything about Frame’s contribution to creation. Read it again. Then go back and read whether or not I referred to Gunton’s view of Augustine in my first post.
You said:
Joseph: Gunton’s reading of people like Augustine is highly relevant to how much stock one should put into his reading of the doctrine of creation and its role in the early church.
Sounds like you didn’t think he was much of an authority; not just on Augustine but on early church doctrine re. creation. Now you say:
Joseph: I have read the Triune Creator as well as a number of texts by Gunton and never said he was not an authority on the doctrine of creation.
If Owen et al are not evangelicals then what are they? Tyndale coined the term.
I can’t reply to all your “critique” since my laptop is on its least legs and may freeze at any moment. But most of what you’ve written is not a critique of what I actually SAID. I did not say, e.g. that ancients were more superstitious than moderns (if by superstitious one has in mind immanentistic superstitions as well).
I would like to say more but I must post before I freeze up!
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
Discussion