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The Conversation Continues: I think I may have located the linchpin of our disagreement. Read on!

Modes: If what you are thinking about is so irrelevant that its application is powerless, then I suspect it is not worth thinking about at all.

Doc: When you say "All truth claims are power moves," do you mean "All truth claims are relevant to the person making them?" Are you simply saying, "Whatever we think is 'worth thinking about'"? The whole of your last post give me this impression. If so, then I agree. I had thought by the phrase "power move" you were meaning "vying for power." This is how the phrase is used in the literature. If you mean only that "language is performative" and "the truth we think about is relevant for us and those we communicate with," I think a different phrase than "power move" would be better.

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Yes, I am saying that all language is performative, and this too is in the literature. But I think I am saying something more than simply "all language (about truth?) is relevant." I am maintaining an infinite qualitative difference between our language and God's language, meaning the Word. Thus I am indeed relativising our language as necessarily finite and skewed. BUT to the extent that our language is even performative, it also DOES something, and thus involves power. We may or may not even be conscious of intentions, but that does not negate the fact that words have power. There is an ethics of communication. Just because it can be said does not mean it should.

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Modes: I cannot argue someone into being a Christian, but by the power of God, they can experience Christ firsthand and conversion is almost assured.

Doc: Suppose I, like my father, am a skeptic. You say this to me, and I say, "I’m sure you’ve had a wonderful religious experience, and I’m glad its helped you. But Mormons, Moonies and Muslims have great life changing experiences as well. Why should I think Jesus is the ticket? Stories of miracle workers and resurrected people are a dime a dozen. The Gospels are full of contradictions and were written by God knows who (if God exists), and the whole business of a God-man is a contradiction. Oh yes, something in me longs for more to life than the here and now. But I can’t just grab onto something because it would be nice to believe."

My point, people CAN experience Christ firsthand, but sometimes their questions and objections need to be answered first -- and sometimes even AFTER their first hand experience. They (we) need to be ARGUED WITH in an intelligent loving way. (Paul did this). Of course, if their heart is really closed (something no one can know ahead of time), then reasoning will do no good. And if the Holy Spirit isn’t working behind the scenes, then all the reasoning in the world will come to nothing. But he IS working, so reasoning can be useful. Do you agree with this Modes?

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Yes, I agree and practice this. I find though, that often a person really does beleive in God already but has personal objections and misrelations that get in the way of restoration to faith. But yes, we agree overall on this. Of course, much of what you did with your father is precisely what I am talking about, ministering to the heart in the spirit of truth while God begins a good work there.

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Modes: Show me a truth claim and give me a context and I will show you a power move.

Doc: Here’s one: "Not all truth claims are power moves." Now, if I was right above and you only mean to say "All truth claims are relevant to the people making them," then I have no squabble. But if you are saying that "All truth claims are REALLY attempts at gaining power" – the view that the deconstructionists argue for – then I have a squabble. When I say, "Not all truth claims are power moves," it is relevant to me, but I am not trying to assert or defend my power vis-à-vis others.

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The power move herein is one which attempts to counter a force you see as a threat to your way of thinking: deconstructionism. You have made it explicit. My point is that no claims that are relevant are made in a vacuum, there is a context and something is being asserted for some reason.

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Modes: I could ask you "Why bother to think this?" and if you are honest it will be to DO something, or to help something, both requiring power.

Doc: REQUIRING power, but not TRYING TO GET power. It’s becoming clear to me that you ARE using "power move" in a way that is significantly different than the way its customarily used in post-modern literature. And its becoming clear to me that THIS was the principle cause of our apparent disagreement. The phrase "power move" got my sites targetted on post-modernists of a deconstructionist variety. But you clearly are not in this camp. I think it would be better to employ a different phrase, for unfortunately, "power move" has already been co-opted by this camp.

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If you still think this, please suggest an alternative. I kinda like recovering "co-opted" words. (See the Liberation thread)

Modes: [the claim that all truth claims are power moves ] may be counter-intuitive to you, but that is about as relative a statement as one can make, it is perfectly logical to consistently employ a "hermeneutic of suspicion" I thought you agreed to this much at least. Truth is of interest, insofar as we find it to be relevant.

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Modes: what role does faith play in your argument above so that one might not get the impression that you believe we can get There from here by reason and our supposed objectivity alone?

Doc: As your old bud Kierkegaard once said (in Unscientific Postscripts): reason can point, but faith must walk. (Kierkegaard was himself very inconsistent on this point, however.) Faith is covenental trust and convenental faithfulness, and it should be as supported by reason as is necessary and, for theological purposes, as is possible. Reason and "supposed objectivity" alone can't get us THERE, but this is not to say that reason and striving for objectivity can't be helpful in getting us THERE.

Sound logical?
Later

Doc

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Perfectly, and I would expect no less from you

"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK

Edited by - modesofthought on 09/11/2001 10:42:24 AM

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a) the organic reality of the body of Christ

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I am confused, are you talking about the physical body of Jesus Christ or the Church, then or now? If the physical body of Christ, then what's the delimma? The second person of the Trinity knew from the foundations of the Cosmos that the incarnation was a part of the deal. If the Bride of Christ corporate identity thing, that is not other than the collective grouping of the individuals who are in one way or another, identified with Christ. As you said explicitly in "Letters":

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"The fact that it was the "Christian church" which chose to do the evils you write about, and to do them using God's name, in my mind only serves to show that all that goes under the name of "Christian" is not necessarily Christian. Christianity isn't a religion or an institution of any sort: it's a relationship.(Emphasis Greg's)...Thus, I want to sharply distinguish between the Christianity I'm defending and the 'Christian church': The two need not have anything more than a name in common." (emphasis mine)

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Back to the list:

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b) our solidarity in Adam

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This functions metaphorically for the covenant with all humanity, actually all creation according to the curses and blessings of Gen 3. I am not sure what sort of mileage you were hoping to get out of that one...

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c) God's treatment of nations as individuals and families as individuals in the Old Testament

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Corporate identity does not depend upon realism so long as there is an actual relation that the "realist" terminology is abstracting from...But we would not say that the identity of a nation with an individual was fully adequate would we? Do you suppose God intended us to think so? Or could it be that God was referring again to covenantal lines of connectivity which are already established...very real and particular relationships.

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d) Rupert Sheldrakes evidence (Transformation of the Morphogenetic Field) that what happens to one member of a species affects, at least in some small way, the species as a whole.

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This speaks only to the interconnectivity of things and especially things of close relation...not to the force of abstractions on reality. If nothing else, this sort of movement within a "reality" identified with such a term "species" only indicates the instability of that category, not the power of a realist epistemology.

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e) The whole "science of wholeness" movement out today (e.g. emergent property theory) that is arguing that the whole has properties not found in the parts. The TOGETHERNESS of the parts is a reality that transcends the parts and attaches to the whole.

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Again, the whole having properties which outrun that of the parts does not conflict with nominalism, for nominalism will recognize the whole as well as the parts. It will seek to speak as specificly about this new whole (a particular thing or actual occasion of some sort, I imagine) as possible and in such a way that reflects the emergent reality rather than the supposed properties that might have been anticipated by our abstractions and simplifications.

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f) Unless "laws" transcend what they govern -- if, as nominalists hold, they are merely DESCRIPTIVE terms of how individuals in fact behave, not PRESCRIPTIVE terms of how individuals must, in general, behave -- how can you, as open theists, account for the regularity of the world given a) indeterminacy and b) human freedom? Unless laws are ontologically real and determinative, I argue, God can be gauaranteed nothing -- or MUST guarantee EVERYTHING to gauarantee ANYTHING.

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My discussion at the very beginning of this response discusses this. God does transcend the cosmos. Rules are established, and then a certain degree of emergent complexity is allowed to evolve, indeed encouraged... and then there will be a moment of completion.

Am i confusing things by speaking of theological nominalism and epistemological nominalism together in this way? Don't take this as an opportunity to make me out to be in agreement with you, but just let me know if what I am describing is better limited to one or the other categories that bear the name "nominalism". I DO think I disagree with your emphasis as a realist, but I also get the empression that I can still claim to be a "critical realist" epistemologically. So I know I have some category confused somewhere, but at least I know I disagree with you somewhere in all this too...



How's that for humiliating self-deconstruction?

MEPHI!!! Help me out with some definitions!

"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK

Edited by - ModesofThought on 10/05/2001 4:16:24 PM

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(Can I buy you a copy, Modes?) He has a chapter called "Truth and Communion." His long and thick reading "Personhood and Being" is great. ...
...The Zizioulas book is offered.

PotOnWheel

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Yup Pot man, Modes will take that book. And guess who will be rifflin through Modes' stuff lookin for it.

What's the deal here anyway. How cum nobody's offerin to buy me books. I can't be that poor of an investment.

Cibertus

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A QUICK ONE BEFORE CARPOOL...

There is NO such thing as an individual Christian. ("For wherever two or three...")And, Zizioulas even went so far as to say that there is NO Christ without his Body -- just the Logos/Son.

For thought.

PotOnWheel

(ISA 64:8 "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.")

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Hmmm....
two or three what?

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two or three possums?
two or three eggplants?
two or three what?

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In an excellent study of his, Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamus gives the ecclesiological dimension of the term 'person' and points out that it is not possible for us to see and interpret man as a person apart from his ecclesial basis.

Analysing the distinctive marks of the person, he specifies them as three. One is freedom. Indeed when we speak of freedom we do not mean it in the ethical and philosophical sense of the possibility of choice, but are referring to the lack of commitment to any given, even the given of existence. It appertains to the uncreated. The second element of the person is love, since "the only exercise of freedom in an ontological manner is love". The third distinctive mark is the "concrete, singular, and unrepeatable entity".

We should point out that even these three distinguishing features which constitute the person exist only in God, since only God is self-existent, has real love and is singular. Man can become a person and attain that which is uncreated by grace, love as ecstatic self-transcendence, and "ever well being", only through his relationship and communion with God. Thus "patristic theology considers the person to be an 'image and likeness of God'. It is not satisfied with a humanistic interpretation of the person". Therefore man is preserved as a person only in the experience of deification and in living the way of salvation.

At this point Metropolitan John analyses the ecclesiological dimension of the term 'person'. He sees man in two modes of existence. "The first is what may be called the hypostasis of biological existence, the other the hypostasis of ecclesial existence". By analysing this point and in particular by analysing the sacraments of Baptism and the divine Eucharist, he presents the truth that man is born as a person through the sacraments. And therefore "the concept of the person is indissolubly bound up with Theology".

We have said before that these two particular analyses do not differ radically from each other, but they express and interpret two sides of this great theme of how man actively becomes a person. At the same time these two aspects also present the ascetic side of the subject. Self-knowledge cannot be realised and lived without ascesis, but neither can the ecclesiological hypostasis come into being apart from ascesis. Furthermore "The ascetic character of the ecclesial hypostasis does not come from a denial of the world or of the biological nature of existence itself. It implies a denial of the biological hypostasis". Thus ascesis is essential for man's fulfilment and his journey from the image to the likeness.

Nevertheless, let me point out that today a great deal is being said about the philosophical-theological understanding of the person and about the ecclesiological dimension of the person, but there is not much talk about the asceticism of the person. I emphasise the word 'much' because there is mention, but I think not what there should be. The analysis which is being undertaken is certainly essential, but someone should stay with this aspect. If we do not give due emphasis to the ascetic dimension of the person, that is, to h o w man becomes a person, we cannot effectively help the people of today. I think that the holy Fathers, especially those called neptic, offer valuable teaching on this subject. If we refuse to look at it, we are rather making Christianity an ideology. Therefore in the following section we shall concern ourselves with this important side of the subject.

from THE PERSON IN THE ORTHODOX TRADITION , by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

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We offer the world and ourselves to God. But we do it in Christ and in remembrance of Him. We do it in Christ because He has already offered all that is to be offered to God. He has performed once and for all this Eucharist and nothing has been left unoffered. In him was Life -- and this Life of all of us, He gave to God. The Church is all those who have been accepted into the eucharistic life of Christ. And we do it in remembrance of Him because, as we offer again and again our life and our world to God , we discover each time that there is nothing else to be offered but Christ Himself -- the Life of the world, the fullness of all that exists. It is His Eucharist, and He is the Eucharist. As the prayer of offering says -- "it is He who offers and it is He who is offered." The liturgy has led us int other all embracing eucharist of Christ, and has revealed to us that the only Eucharist, the only offering of the World is christ. We come again and again with our lives to offer; we bring and "sacrifice" -- that is, give to God -- what He has given to us; and each time we come to the End of all sacrifices, of all offerings, of all eucharist, because each time it is revealed to us that Christ has offered all that exists, and that He and all that exists has been offered in His offering of Himself. We are included in the Eucharist of Christ and Christ is our Eucharist.

and as the procession moves it ears the bread and wine to the altar, and we know that it is Christ himself who takes all of us and the totality of out life to God in His eucharistic ascension. This is why at this moment of the liturgy we commemorate or remember. "May the Lord God remember in his Kingdom. . . ." Remembrance is an act of love. God remembers us and His remembrance, His love is the foundation of the world. In Christ, we remember. We become again beings open to love, and we remember. the Church in its separation form "this world," on its journey to heaven remembers the world, remembers all men, remembers the whole of creation, takes it in love to God. The Eucharist is the sacrament of cosmic remembrance: it is indeed a restoration of love as the very life of the world.

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". . . I want to sharply distinguish between the Christianity I'm defending and the 'Christian church': The two need not have anything more than a name in common." (emphasis mine)

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There is something, and it is NOT a "third", something to the reality of the Church without which Christianity does not exist. There are parasitical hierarchies, etc. that mime as if they are the church. There are churches that have error in them. (And so it may be easier to say what the church is than where it is or is not.) Ther IS a historical angle to the Church, as well as a Pneumatological angle; and they go together. Z. puts it: "Pneumatologically conditioned Christology."

I'll go work on typing the Z. notes on "Truth as Life."

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Doc: "Ahhhh....I've vote eggplants"

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/10/2001 06:24:41 AM

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I am not saying that there is not power in numbers, but let us not forget, numbers are not indepentent of what they represent in any given context....

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