This is the first draft of an essay for our parish newsletter. The topic is on “science and religion.” Given my short “dread bullet list” of ideas on the essay of last week, Brandon (of Siris) suggested helpfully that I try to make clear in the essay what specifically of “religion” and “science” I’ll be trying to identify and discuss, as both topics are huge and more than a little slippery. There was another suggestion that the “three stages” seen so far in our understanding of nature (the second bullet list item) was the most interesting. So without more ado, here is a preliminary draft, i.e., it is a little incomplete … however I offer it at this point for additional comments. It’s a little long so find it below the fold. Read the rest of this entry

This is a great article from the Washington Times regarding the persecution of Christian in communist Vietnam, and our government’s complicity in it.

Over the next week or so I have to write a short essay for our parish newsletter on the topic “Science and Religion.” I’m going to do the work online here “in public” as it were and see if the comment process can get me a better essay. Anyhow … to start the dread bullet list, i.e., ideas and brainstorming about things I might discuss.

• It might be interesting to mention the two tensions that have historically, especially in the West, influenced some of the reflections of the religious though on science. St. Augustine, as noted by Mr Polanyi, had an overall negative effect on science. Mr Polanyi notes that this was because of some statements by St. Augustine that science should restrict itself to those studies which bring us closer to God. Yet, St. Augustine writes as well in his Confessions that the Nature itself worships the Creator though our understanding of its workings, intracacies, and beauty. It may be that the former statement took a wrong turn because the latter sentiment was forgotten or misplaced.
• Three major revolutions have marked our deepest physical understanding of how to view the underlying nature of the material world. Sometime between the Galilean/Copernican era and Newton’s Principia, the older notion of a geometrical order to the universe was dominant. At that time it was the Pythagorean philosophy of science dominated by geometrical concepts. This was replaced by a algebraic interaction view, with Newton and later Gauss making that explicit with the development of calculus. In the early part of the 20th century this too was replaced in turn by the idea that symmetries (gauge theories) shape the structure of physical interactions and relations. Patristic theology arose in the context of a Pythagorean view of nature. Did and does that theology depend at all on our conception of the underlying structure of nature? How might it have to adapt and change as our notions of the universe change?
• Physical theories of the Universe give us a notion of the large scale structure of space-time, especially dynamical aspects for how to make sense of it. Mathemeticians have solved the Poincare conjecture giving us a classification of all the possible ways in which our three (apparent) spatial dimensions might be constructed. Additionally quantum mechanics yields notions of free-will or indeterminacy at the atomic level. Yet theological discussions, as far as I’m aware, haven’t really confronted the implications of a God existing out of time and what that means with respect to a quantum mechanical relativistic space-time.
• Eugene Wigner penned a paper on the unreasonable nature of the success of mathematics in describing the universe. It isn’t just that we can use math to describe things we already know, it’s that math so used is unreasonably successful. The mathematical ansatze (guesses) that Newton used to describe planetary motion can without change work in regimes many orders of magnitude in precision and scale afield from the scale of the data supporting them. Mr Wigner did not connect the unreasonable success of mathematics to theology, Scripture, or God. However, that connection is an easy one to make, Genesis 1 with its ontological ordering of nature suggests that nature itself is comprehensible by the mind of man. That nature is unreasonably well described by mathematics, which in turn is an essential part of the mind of man, might suggest that this is not unintentional.

Clearly if put in an essay for a newsletter these ideas have to be clarified and expounded. All are things I’ve touched on in prior essays. Suggestions? Comments?

No.  No, they don’t.

A new three-year study of the Top 25 movies released in 2006-2008 earning the most money overseas shows that international moviegoers prefer clean movies with strong or very strong Christian, moral and/or redemptive content and values.

This study is significant because it matches our annual study of the Top 25 Movies at the Box Office in America and Canada and the top home video sales annually, and because Hollywood now makes more money overseas than it does in the United States.

The Movieguide® study found that 20 of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2006-2008, or 80%, contained strong or very strong Christian, moral, redemptive, and even biblical content, earning $8.39 billion out of $10.59 billion total, or 79.2% of the money among the Top 25.

That’s an average of $419.5 million per movie!

This is just another in a long line of studies showing the same thing.  OK, then, so why do they produce so much junk?

There’s a five books (scholars) meme going around, and I’ve been tagged (I noticed it here too). This is to list five scholars/books which influenced your Bible hermeneutic, i.e., how your read and interpret the Bible.

1. N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, which outlines the best of historical way of reading the Bible that I’ve seen.
2. Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, in which a philosophical method of reading Scripture is outlined. In brief, reading Genesis (and to extend beyond) as you would read Plato.
3. The Orthodox liturgical canon (of the morning Matins or all-night Vigil) which is drenched with the typological method of reading Scripture.
4. Origen and his introduction of the allegorical reading of Scripture. I’m peeking ahead here, I’m not up-to-speed on this yet … but will get a shock introduction shortly in a class I’m taking.
5. Robert Alter and his Introduction to his translation of Genesis (there are more now The Five Books of Moses, The David Story, and The Book of Psalms)… and the subsequent translation in which the sparse economic poetry of the Genesis writers is highlighted.

I’ll tag Matt Anderson (who is blogging somewhere but I’ve lost track of where), Brandon, and Kevin, and Doug one of my co-bloggers at SCO.

We got a tip at SCO about an article by Mike Rosen-Molina dealing with how churches can use and are using Social Media to get the Word out.  While churches have had web sites for quite some time, the emergence of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter change the dynamic.

So while static webpages might be good for drawing in people already curious about a religion’s tenants, actually getting the attention of someone who wasn’t… that was a little more tricky without coming across as spam. That is, until the advent of social media, and its accompanying ability to build relationships online.

"Creating a web site is perhaps the most basic way to use the Internet for evangelism," agreed Rev. Michael White, a United Methodist pastor and author of Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too!. He noted that newer social networking sites offered more opportunities for outreach because they could better enable conversation than a static page.

"People of faith can use such social media as Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. to reach out both to ‘seekers’ (those looking for more information about religious faith) and believers alike to share the tenets of their faith, encourage deepening one’s religious faith, answering questions of doubt, and much more," he said.

With social media, more of a relationship can be built, which is a better foundation for sharing the gospel.  Now, I would imagine that these online relationships themselves typically aren’t enough, but they are a much better launching point than even a blog.  I have a blog (of course) and a Facebook account, and frankly unsaved friends of mine are much more likely to read my Facebook posts, notes and status updates than would read the blog.

The article also touches on specifically religious social media, like Christian sites for video sharing and Twitter-like communication.

While they may be good for uniting the faithful, some are skeptical of services that allow believers to segregate themselves from the wider world. Saddington said that both secular and religious services had their uses, but that people should keep in mind that they were unlikely to spread their faith if they confined themselves to online communities that consisted only of fellow believers.

"There’s no outreach when you’re talking to the already converted," agreed Coppedge. He said that religious social media might be useful for parents worried about their children being exposed to inappropriate content on MySpace or Facebook, but saw little use for them otherwise.

"The focus should always be on building community," he said, "If you limit yourself to only Christian communities, that’s not wise. Some people are afraid of using this technology, but you have to remember that technology is not inherently good or evil. It’s all in how you use it."

It’s the "in the word but not of it" philosophy.  The article is a good read and I think a balanced look at the issues.

I haven’t posted as much recently.  I thought summer would slow things down, but apparently not so much around our house.  I’ve been collecting things to write on, but they’re starting to get stale, so before they’re completely irrelevant, here are a few quick hits to start the week.

Economy: Never mind whether or not you got TARP funds, the Obama administration may be looking to cap your executive’s pay.

Gene Sperling, a top counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, conceded to a congressional committee that imposing compensation caps on companies could lead to a flight of talent.

“I can say with certainty that nobody in the Obama administration is proposing such a thing,” he said.

Yet, at the same time, he and officials with the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission laid out a case for how payment structures rewarded short-term gains at the expense of long-term performance and contributed to the nation’s financial crisis.

The administration plans to seek legislation that would try to rein in compensation at publicly traded companies through nonbinding shareholder votes and by decreasing management influence on pay decisions.

No mention of how incentivizing the giving loans to people who couldn’t afford them contributed to the nation’s financial crisis, nor any talk of reining that in.

Abortion: Warner Todd Hudson asks and answers, “Why is Killing Abortionists Wrong? Because it is Un-Christian, That’s Why!” He uses logic and scripture to back up his position.  The key paragraphs:

The final word here is that a Christian ethic posits that men are subject to man’s laws and willfully violating them is not a Christian thing to do — but for extreme cases, and then in a more passive manner than not. Additionally man’s duly constituted law is the sword of punishment and punishment should not be carried out by the individual going off on his own hook. Christians do not take the law into their own hands.

So, in answer to Jacob Sullum’s tough question, killing abortionists IS wrong. It is also quite in keeping with Christian practice to suffer under pro-abortion laws without taking the law into one’s own hands to end the life of a doctor committing abortions. The law says that abortion is legal, only the law may impose the sentence of death, and the individual is bound by those facts under a Christian worldview.

Definitely worth a read.

Health Care: So will all those saving we’re supposed to come from health care reform going to come after the trillion dollar cost is recouped?

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. The measure’s cost is reaching well beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a 10-year down payment for the policy changes.

Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion over a decade, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.” Some Senate Republicans, including Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, say the costs will likely exceed $1.5 trillion.

And, as we all know, government estimates of the cost of a government program are a low end guess.  Somehow, I think that net tax decrease that Obama promised was never going to materialize anyway.

Separation of church and state is as a necessary element for a free society is a fundamental block in the foundational grounding assumptions on which our country is based. Americans assume that this is necessary and that it leads to a much better and happier society. But … is it even true?

Supporters of this claim point to Eastern European post Reformation wars which were nominally religiously based, i.e., the Protestant/Protestant and Protestant/Catholic struggles. There certainly was a strong religious element to element to many of these conflicts although in many cases religious differences lay parallel to other important political, cultural, and economic fault lines and therefore religion was not the sole cause of many if not all of these struggles. However, the Eastern Roman history lies as a counter-example. Over one thousand years of unbroken church/state intermingling to which one cannot attest clearly that the lack of church state separation was harmful, in fact it may have been the reverse.

An important factor however distinguishes those governments in which church/state mingling “worked” and those in which it didn’t. In the ones which “work” the religion practiced in the state was almost completely uniform, that is one single religious tradition was unquestionably dominant to the point in which it did not need to suppress or put pressure on the others. This an important distinction.

So, consider the case in which one religious tradition exists within a state. In this case when that religion is not separated but can work closely with each other this can be beneficial for both. Religious traditions can stabilize the state and build trust in its institutional organs. On the other side, the state can recognize and validate in the state arena religious sacramental activity. One might suggest that if “pursuit of happiness” were the goal that indeed people would naturally be happiest in a state which is supported and supporting of their religious tradition.

Yet, we dwell in Babylon. There is not one religious tradition in American or perhaps in any country of the world. So the question might be posed, is there any way to reap the benefits of non-separation and at the same time the protections that we hold dear that are derived from separation? Here is one suggestion. By allowing the smallest parts of government, the village, the precinct or the rural whistle-stop to incorporate and use religion and soften the church/state boundary, we retain the global protections of separation but may at the personal level reap some of the advantages of non-separation.

The logic of this is as follows.

• People in aggregate are happier when church and state are not separated.
• However, this only holds when church in question is of a tradition which is the same or very similar to a great majority of the population.
• This is not possible at a national level in any modern state.
• However, it is possible at a much finer level.
• So … perhaps it should be allowed in places which do present a uniform church tradition within a community.

Objections? Comments?

You’ve certainly seen the advertisement before; that which features a certain item, priced ridiculously low. In fact, it’s priced so low that you ask, “How can they sell it at that price and turn a profit?” Well, they can’t. It’s a loss leader, designed solely to entice people into the sales establishment upon which, it is hoped, they will purchase additional items, thereby resulting in an overall profit to the store.

The point to be taken here is that the loss leader tactic is simply a part of an overall marketing strategy – a philosophy, if you will, which fits squarely within the economic system of capitalism, to which growth and profit are generally accepted as the primary goals.

I wonder, how wedded to capitalism is the evangelical church in America?

Recently, there was a concert staged, at our church, specifically designed as an outreach to the youth in the community surrounding the church. Whereas there is typically 25 youth at a Wednesday night meeting, there were 120 youth in attendance at this concert.

Was this a loss leader? A means of enticing people in the doors, and then banking on the “numbers”, the probability that a certain percentage of them would desire to come back?

Such a tactic is hardly limited to a youth concert in 2009. I’ve grown up in the church and can look back and see the tactic deftly applied throughout my life. It is, in fact, our modus operandi.

Yet, despite the church adopting capitalistic strategies, and despite the false success of mega-churches, we now see an America which is turning its back on Christianity. Our society is becoming decidedly secular and, in particular, anti-Christian, in its base form.

While we may have succeeded in entertaining the masses, how much of the Gospel has truly been delivered? In a recent Bible Study, my pastor made note of the fact that many scholars think that the church in Corinth, that which Paul was writing to, was made up of about 40 people.

40 people.

If an evangelical capitalist had written the letters to the Corinthians, I daresay he would have given them a detailed explanation of marketing tactics designed specifically to result in church growth. Yet Paul makes no mention of church growth methodologies. He simply tells the Corinthians how to live as Christians.

What a concept.

Some remarks on the President’s address.

• “For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt’s advancement.” Hmmm. That seems a stretch.
• “I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is indeed a persistent fallacy. In the last five or ten years, I think the maxim that “Every commonly held belief about historical events and motivations is exactly wrong” is a turning out to be a fine rule. From WWI trench warfare to this one, all these notions … all wrong. That “light of learning” was carried by Byzantium and a lot of it came west at the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders and the carting off of the libraries, marble, gold and so on to Venice. If you think that’s wrong, ask yourself where, when, and how the intellectual exchange of documents and teaching between the crusaders and the West occurred? (hint: it didn’t in any meaningful way … and what little did was came via Byzantium)
• “And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” How about to highlighting the negative realities?

If we compare the responses of this speech from two esteemed bloggers from both sides of political spectrum there is, on offer, an interesting comparison (besides the nearly identical title). The pseudonymous “hilzoy” offers that this “broke the mold” and offered praise and criticism to both “sides” and that each side might take away from the lesson learned from the criticism. Richard Fernandez on the other hand, similarly comments that there is in fact praise and criticism that both sides might note … but that the effect will be the reverse. That each “side” will key on the criticism of the other and like Eris with her golden apple this will only serve to inflame each other, with each ignoring the faint mentions of their own and inflame their own image of the other’s flaws? Given human nature … which will be the more likely response. I’d offer that the ‘hilzoy’, in part because of the shared assumptions, might closely match the intention of the President and his speechwriters … but that the effect will be the more pessimistic realistic appraisal of Mr Fernandez.

But … like his remarks on the hijab a similar response might be made about the tepidity of his allusion. In a similar vein, examine this response.  Reflect for a moment on the discord vs self-examination as posed our two bloggers and examine those remarks in that light. Would you characterize these responses as self-critical or the reverse? Bringing together or apart?

Solzhenitsyn coming to the West gave four significant of addresses and spoke from a position of utter political weakness, he was after all no President and weilded no power. His words were rejected but were right in many ways and pulled no punches. Mr Obama on the other hand came to Cairo and told honeyed lies filled with calculated misdirection all intended to move people closer. His words, being fiction, have a better chance of not being rejected outright … but their effect it seems has a not unlikely chance of moving people in the direction he did not intend.

Late last week, the news was that a Bible study in San Diego county was trying to be shut down by county officials; holding a religious assembly without a permit. 

Apparently after some notoriety, the county backed down.

Sweeping issues of religious freedom and governmental regulation are swirling around Pastor David Jones’ house in rural Bonita, attracting attention from as far away as China and New Zealand.

He says it all started with $220 in car damage.

Jones and his wife, Mary, hold a weekly Bible study at their home that sometimes attracts more than 20 people, with occasional parking issues. Once, a car belonging to a neighbor’s visitor got dinged.

David Jones paid for the damage, but he thinks the incident spurred a complaint to the county.

A code enforcement officer warned the couple in April for holding a “religious assembly” without a permit. The action became an international incident when it was reported last week on the Web site worldnetdaily.com.

The Joneses assert that the county’s action violates their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. Their story was picked up by conservative Web sites for days, then made it to CNN yesterday.

Barraged by hundreds of complaints, San Diego County officials backed down yesterday from their enforcement.

The whole story about this originally being just an issue with traffic control seems at odds with the initial treatment the pastor got when visited by the county.  Sounds more like a cover story to paper over a little overzealousness.

Dean Broyles, president of the Western Center for Law & Policy, a nonprofit organization in Escondido that supports religious liberty, is representing the Joneses. He said traffic issues were not raised when the code enforcement officer first visited the Joneses in response to the complaint. The warning itself does not mention traffic or parking problems.

“Even though the county is saying it’s about traffic and parking, it’s a fake issue. It’s a fabricated issue,” Broyles said.

According to Broyles, the code enforcement officer asked a series of pointed questions during her visit with the Joneses – questions such as, “Do you sing?” “Do you say ‘amen?’ ” “Do you say ‘praise the Lord?’ ”

Wallar said the county is investigating what questions were asked and in what context. She said a code enforcement officer does have to ask questions about how a place is being used to determine what land-use codes are applicable.

“Our county simply does not tolerate our employee straying outside what the appropriate questions are,” Wallar said.

Including not asking questions about the actual issue at hand?  Indeed.

Anyway, just some good news to start your week.

The pseudonymous Larry Niven blogging as the <a target=”_blank” href=”http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/”>Rust Belt Philosopher</a> often attacks various defenses of the theodicy problem. I haven’t been reading his blog for much more than a month but it seems possibly he locates the best and most potent objections to Christian belief in the failure, in his view, to solve the theodicy problem adequately. On one former post I had commenting his comments on theodicy he remarked that I’d “offered nothing new.” Well here is something, perhaps, new.
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Theodicy centers on the question of why does the Christian God who has been declared to have significant power in the universe and who is claimed to be Good then allow evil and unearned suffering to be subjected to the innocent. I will now attempt to present what might be considered a narrative defense of this question.

Why is Dicken’s Tiny Tim allowed to suffer, Dickens is writing stories and we will, for now, assume that the story has in mind the furtherance of good and furthermore as author commands complete control over his story. Why does any number of good characters in narratives by any number of authors allow minor characters to suffer undeserved evil? Dickens is not unique. Any number of minor (and major) characters undeserved suffering in novels in which the end of the author was to expose and explore truth and beauty. The crux of the narrative theodicy response that the suffering of the underserved is justified by the demands of the larger narrative. Yet at the same time, unlike in a writers narrative, the protagonists have free will. They can make moral choices and as a result can fail to rise to fulfill the role to which they were fit.

In the book about the life of <i><a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881411809?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=pseudopolym05-20&amp;link_code=as3&amp;camp=211189&amp;creative=373489&amp;creativeASIN=0881411809″ id=”static_txt_preview”>Father Arseny, 1893-1973</a></i> toward the end of the book (which contains fragmented stories from people whose lives where touched by Fr Arseny) there is a report of a particular saintly woman, Mother Maria of whom Fr Arseny hears her final confession. The person recounting this story fragment is confused as to why Fr Arseny was so affected by her confession and life’s story for to him here story seemed mundane and ordinary. Fr Arseny explains that at this point in his life, as his own mortality was near, he was so very thankful that God gave to him the chance to hear her story and her example, which was a continual narrative of her putting her own concerns and desires aside for the sake others linked at the same time with a continual turning towards God. My suggestion here is that the suffering of those around her (whom she helped) provided grist for her life’s story <i>for the benefit</i> of Fr Arseny and his story, which being shared helps the rest of us.

Modern materialism rejects the notion that there is purpose in the unfolding of our lives and in history. Dame fortuna for the materialist reigns supreme. So the question of a narrative theodicy requires some justification for rejecting dumb luck as the only meaning for our lives. The question is not to test the narrative model against the materialist model per se (at least to begin) but first to examine if the narrative model is internally consistent.

Judeo-Christian tenents from Genesis and other writings offer that we are both made in God’s image <i>and </i>suggest that narrative is a key feature of both God’s plan and our nature. The notion of God’s unfolding narrative with Israel is not foreign to the text or the interpretative tradition. In the narrative of the man born blind in the Gospel of John the answer to why he might have suffered for decades as a blind man was answered in effect that it was so because he was to take part in <i>this narrative </i>unfolding today, i.e., so that Jesus might heal him. The justification for his being blind was his role in the narrative of Jesus life. Charles Taylor in <i>the Secular Age</i> recounts many of the reasons and mechanisms that arose through the previous four or five centuries that meaning has been leached from our view of history and the world around us.

This is all I have time for tonight, so at this point discussion may be fruitful. Hopefully there may be enough here to chew on.

I’ve begun reading John Behr’s (so far) two volume series (three are reported as planned) subtitled Formation of Christian Theology. The first volume, in soft cover from SVS Press, is entitled The Way to Nicaea. This books covers aspects of the formation of Christian theology, focusing on the development of the answer to Jesus query to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Volume 2 is split into two books and covers in some detail the controversies surrounding the two councils which developed the Nicene creed.

The first chapter of this book begins with a look at how the Scriptural canon for the Christian church developed and was set. There were a lot of alternative canonical choices at the end of the second century when the canon was set. But the result, to summarize Behr, was that two key criteria were used to select what books and epistles were included in the New Testament canon. They are that the books chosen were “according the the Scriptures” and that the cross (the passion) was central. The phrase “according the the Scriptures” meant specifically that the acts and narrative account in the selected book connected these actions with the accounts and prophecies of the Old Testament. This meant that books like the Gospel of Thomas and other gnostic works were excluded. Behr defends his interpretation of this development of canon by examining the methods and arguments used by St. Irenaeus in discussing various heresies of his day at the close of the 2nd century.

David Schraub blogging at the Debate Link, dislikes the term “Judeo-Christian”. This term admittedly can be misused. The above historical notes demonstrate how this term is at the same time correct and how the traditions diverged. For certainly in the context of investigating first and second century theological currents and ideas that term is relevant. Throughout the first century the majority of Christians were Jews who felt that Jesus was in fact the awaited Messianic figure, the fulfillment of Scriptural promise. At the same time, there is here a key difference which will form the basis possibly for the contention that this term does not make sense. Christians over the centuries following embarked on a program to reinterpret the Jewish Scriptural canon through the “lens of the cross”, i.e., via the life and passion of Jesus. That is they re-examined and reinterpreted, often as “type”, events and prophecies of Scripture to be interpreted specifically in the context of Jesus message, and his crucifixion and resurrection. Christian theology at the end of the second century defined itself and its theological methods in the light of Jewish writing. At the same time however, it was beginning to highlight the differences by beginning a program of returning to and examining that same canon in a radically different way (although it might be noted that “different” way was himself a 1st century Jew).

One of the arguments that atheists often bring forth is that the Christian notion of God is logically inconsistent. 1+1+1=1 they will point out doesn’t logically make sense. Well, on the other hand a fundamental particle being simultaneously a mathematical point and and extended object is logically inconsistent as well. Yet the latter is presently our best understanding of how nature presents itself, quantum objects, leptons and quarks that is to say matter is in fact point-like and extended at the same time. The atheists failing is that they, when confronted with the first logical inconsistency insist is it fundamental and when confronted with the second, insist that the human mind and our learning will encompass and explain the paradox more fully. I would suggest that the latter confidence can equally be applied to the former and that if they cannot yet understand it, that is because they are not engaging their imagination and optimism in the same way for reasons which have little to do with the problem posed.

Yet at the same time, there is an accusation of lack of imagination which might be returned to the court of the Christian believer. Modern physics has deepened our understanding concerning space and time. Applying the Minkowoski metrics to a four dimensional Riemann manifold describing space time as governed by a dynamical equation by Einstein in his proposal of General Relativity is a powerful way of envisioning our Universe. Similarly, Yang-Mills gauge theories, either classical or quantized provide a beautiful geometrically motivated understanding of the forces and small scale structure of space time. Ernst Mach a physicist and philosopher, prior to Einstein considered abstract ideas regarding motion and inertia, with the idea suggested that a single object in space (in the absence of any other “things”) has no inertia. In fact motion can only be described as a relation between two things. Christian conceptions place God, or at least his essence if not His energies following St. Gregory Palamas, outside of time. Certainly God prior to creation and the eschaton are placed by theologian to be outside of time. Christians have, as far as I know, not connected either large-scale or small scale (Minkowski-Riemann space-time or Yang-Mills quantization of U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) gauge theory) to the notion of what “out of time” means. For myself, while I’ve thought a little about this and have nothing useful to report as yet, this book by John Pokinghorne might spur some ideas, The God of Hope and the End of the World. it should be noted that Mr Polkinghorne was an accomplished theoretical physicist before he became a Anglican priest and theologian.

Humans endow the world with meaning. Semantic content flows from our every thought and our conversation finds expression and meaning in semantic intercourse with others. Yet, in a purely material world semanatic content is meaningless. A pattern of electro-chemical discharges invoking vibrational patterns in the air is devoid of meaning. Yet humans call that speech and embue it with semantic import in a way which can be translated to word, text, and image. Michael Polanyi in Personal Knowledge recounts that when reading his morning correspondence which arrives from friends and peers the world over is unaware during the act of reading the language in which the text he reads is transmitted (obviously he is very fluent in a number of different languages). When he wishes to share something, for example, with his son, who only knows English, he has to check to see if the letter or passage of interest is in English or not. He is not, in the act of reading, consciously aware of the langauge which he is reading. On this matter theists and atheists point the “lack of imagination” finger at the other, the latter insisting that the semantic boostrap from the material to the semantic is lacking in the imagination of the former and the former insisting that the latter cannot imagine how the semantic boostrap itself might be the essence of the soul.

In a fundamental way the church fathers and tradition has rejected the traditional attribute driven ontology. Long ago I read a presentation describing the difference between Platonic and Aristotelian ontological methods by comparing how they attached, manipulated, and viewed attribute attachments to ontological categories. The Nicene fathers and the theological/philosophical aftermath of that 4th century upheaval rejected that and arrived at a new conception. Their notion was that ontological objects and categories are not defined by their attributes but defined instead by the qualities and aspects of their relationships with other objects and categories. Existence of a thing depends crucially not on its substance of qualities (attributes) but on the aspects of its relationships with others things. A chair is not a chair because it has chair-like attributes but because people (or I for example) have a relationship with it that categorizes it as chair.

I’d like to examine a few consequences of how that works especially in a Christian context.

• A primary example of this is that the ontology of God, the Trinity is to be understand relationally. We arrive at our understanding of God not by understanding God as such, or as Father, Son, and Spirit by examing their attributes, but instead by understanding the relationship between the three. Put more radically, God’s existence depends on its relational nature between the hypostasis.
• Consider the radical science fiction notion of transference of person from one body to either a machine or another body. There is difficulty in deciding where and when “transference” is valid especially in the case of information or ability loss. But if existence and identity is defined relationally does that work? It seems to me likely that it does and perhaps avoids some of the ambiguities and difficulties that arise in the attribute model.
• In the context of abortion a lot of the arguments I’ve seen center on attributes of being. Specifically what attributes the fetus must obtain in order to qualify as person. This is often state in terms of intellectual or brain development or an attribute of “independent” living or existence, i.e., viability. However that existence of the fetus might just as well be defined relationally. In the relational model it is a little more difficult to distinguish infanticide from abortion. However, another aspect of relational ontological thinking arises … that of the disordered relationship. Abortion (or miscarriage) can perhaps be viewed as a disorder in the relationship between mother and fetus.
• Consider as well, the marriage/homosexuality discussion in the context of existence and a ontology based on connection and relationships. That is perhaps a fruitful avenue for later discussion. I think it’s clear that both sides of the question can be presented in this methodology and unlike abortion the resolution is not so clearly biased (as in the case of abortion there is a clear bias against abortion in my view with this ontological method). The real question is by framing the question in this way, can some of the heat be abstracted from the discussion? For that might be a very useful thing to do at the very least.