I'm from Illinois, and think it's about time we killed Chief Illiniwek; making native Americans parade around barefoot for our entertainment is not what colonizers do...look to history, death is the answer. No, seriously, I'm glad to see the mascot go. When I attended Wheaton College as an undergraduate, we still had The Crusaders as a mascot. I suggested that we change it to The Muslim Slayers. You wouldn't even have to change the costume! Well, I guess I should say something worthwhile after those sentences. So, from George Lindbeck:Thus for a Christian, "God is Three and One," or "Christ is Lord" are true only as parts of a total pattern of speaking, thinking, feeling, and acting. They are false when their use in any given instance is inconsistent with what the pattern as a whole affirms of God's being and will. The crusader's battle cry "Christus est Dominus," for example, is false when used to authorize cleaving the skull of the infidel (even though the same words in other contexts may be a true utterance). [1]==========
[1] George Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine (London: WJKP, 1984), 64.
6 comments:
Looks like we have something in common, both being wheaton grads. I was also happy to see the Crusader go shortly before I began at Wheaton (welcome Thunder).
And I'm with you on the trouble with Mascots.
I was wondering why your name sounded familiar to me. Still wondering, I suppose, though it might have something to do with the fact that I am also Wheaton grad. Under the auspices of non-politically-correct mascot, to which I say farewell and good riddance.
Good quote.
If we take the doctrine of total depravity seriously, then isn't every statement made by any given human being about God false on Lindbeck's terms? Shouldn't the trustworthiness or truthfulness of every particular theological proposition depend on something other than the status of the theologue viz a viz the theological ideal?
Hope you're well, friend....
Hello Dan.
Your blog reminds me of a comic routine I heard long ago by Chris Rock, in which he said substantially the same thing. He suggested, to be fair, we ought to change the names of a few teams to reflect other ethnic groups. His suggestion: "New York Niggers." "Kansas City Crackers."
Lindbeck is an interesting fellow. Rather ahistorical, though. Who shall determine what this "total pattern of speaking, thinking, feeling, and acting" is? Whatever Lindbeck's notion is, I can most certain affirm that it is merely the product of the contingencies of history just like everything else. Thus, Lindbeck's notion has no real claim to legitimacy than any other claiming a Christian surname, not even the crusader's.
The supposedly "orthodox" statements of trinitarian theologizing are themselves a part of a rich and convoluted history, and the "victory" (if one wishes to call it that) of trinitarianism as we know it today was not at all obvious or inevitable. Jerome himself laments that the world in his time was groaning because it was overwhelmingly Arian. For many of the earliest Christians, it was certainly the case that God was not three in any sense at all! The rise and dominance of "orthodox" trinitarianism (which finds its most clear expression in the Cappadocians, and which, also, comes in them quite deliciously close to Tritheism) can (and probably should, given our tastes for theoretical concerns) be read in Foucauldian terms, as merely the embodiment of a more successful network of socio-political power networks (and thus in a Latourian sense, too!) which can make no superior claim to truth than any other that currently is in vogue.
Christianity, like anything else in this world, is made (up) not found; constructed and not discovered; etc. Employing constructivists like Lindbeck does effectively eliminates any possibility of revelation or concrete boundary of interpretive limitations. Enter constructivism, and we have nearly a hermeneutics of anarchy! Speaking historically (a tautology to be sure, for how else can anyone legitimately speak, since that is where all of us are!), the "pattern" of which Lindbeck speaks is just as subject to the ebb and flow of interpretation as anything else is.
Moreover, the crusader's battle cries, while quite alien to Lindbeck's rather "Victorian" sensibilities, has all the red-blooded gusto of the Old Testament holy genocides, the Jesus who shall return with the blood-spattered remains all over his raiments, and the priggish penalties of Calvin's Geneva.
The fact is--and you already know this, certainly--that any historical instantiation of Christianity is inexorably bound to a particular socio-political system which informs Lindbeck's "pattern" as it does anything else.
That there is one "pattern" which is discernible and that can be seen to (clearly) reveal God's being and will assumes that there is a social, cultural, political, and/or historical place which can be inhabited and which is neither affected nor determined by any of these! But who can claim this? Who can claim to be ascertaining the Nagelian view from nowhere? Everyone and no one.
Lindbeck's is a idealistic account, which is to say a prescriptive (which is always also proscriptive!) one. Fair enough. Insofar as it is, however, he is merely adding another totalizing and ahistorical perspective to the canon of Christian interpretation.
Since this "pattern" is by no means obvious to anyone, it seems Lindbeck is open to the critique that the will of God cannot be so easily discerned. An eclectic mishmash of statements and ideologies are used to "authorize" all sorts of atrocities, and Christianity (nor anything else) is not immune to these things. Nor will it ever be. Nor is it possible to put a freeze on what is legitimately Christian and what is not. One cannot use Geertz, Wittgenstein, and Peter Berger et al (as Lindbeck does) and then apparently speak of "false" appropriations of Christian tradition--as if that tradition is itself a monolith and a self-explaining "text" which can be understood properly. There will always be a canon within the canon--a particular point of departure both within the Bible and Christian "tradition" from which all of us interpret the rest, and which is thus also utterly arbitrary.
It will always be a matter of perspective, a matter of taste--and we are not entirely responsible for our tastes, are we? I like chocolate, and not fish: sue me.
That being said, I appreciate Lindbeck's ecumenism, though it is not as embracing as I would wish it to be.
Thanks for this little nugget of Lindbeck. It has provoked my thought, and has thus produced the above--a rather ironic, pompous, and ungenerous reading of Lindbeck. It is merely a performance, and my saying that is as gratuitous and as it is stupid. Forgive me.
My apologies for allowing this to be our first real contact with one another. I'd like to think I'm a really nice guy, and sexy, too. While I'm definitely the latter, I don't know about the former.
I am disappointed that I won't be able to meet you this summer.
Pete
(If I may, once again...)
The interesting question, it seems, then, is how all of this affects (and thus effects) the traditionally central missionizing element of Christianity.
It is one thing for Christians to have a voice in the world, and offer an array of unique perspectives, tastes, and vocubularies by which to situate the human experience. It is quite another, however, to proclaim the things which the NT does about the finality, uniqueness, and definitive nature of Christian "revelation."
A Christianity without realism of some sort is a Christianity without revelation and without any missionary "teeth." It merely one preference among others, gumming its way through the world. On the bright side, though, a Christianity without teeth is one less likely to draw blood.
Be well.
Kellen--Not really, or to say it differently, I think you're right but you overstate your case. Sure sin impacts the truthfulness of the claims we make, but total depravity simply emphasizes that nothing is completely abscent from taint, not that one can't adjudicate between more or less truthful claims.
Pete--Your criticism are at the same time right on and a bit obvious. As Reinhard Hutter points out in his review of The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck fails to specify whence he writes. This is a problem as he fails to provide the context which you're naturally looking for. However, once supplied it ameliorates a lot of the problems you think to exist. Is this a shortcoming of the book? Yes, but a slight one, one easily overcome if one would write a preface to a new edition or generally have a grasp of Lindbeck's career, and therefore where he is theologically located.
Further, you're right to think this has impact on how one conceives the mission of the church, but wrong to think it means dismissing any mission whatsoever. The realism you're looking for would already be supplied by correcting the problems mentioned above. It is possible, I maintain, to have an ecclesial mission within Lindbeck's framework and, happily, one less likely to draw blood.
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