spiritual disciplines and the beautiful

spiritual disciplines. at the core of christian belief is that there is a god that is infinite and incomprehensible. s/he is outside of any of our categories of knowledge. whenever we speak of god, we use metaphorical language. there is no one-to-one correspondence between our language and expressions to that of god. now this god, as christians believe, has chosen to interact with this world that we experience. exactly how this interaction works is a mystery. the celtics used to call the spaces of interaction, thin spaces. so spiritual disciplines are practices that we undertake with our physical bodies to prepare ourselves to become a thin space.

beauty. there seems to be two types of knowledge claims. a mathematical claim that 7 + 4 = 11 is true in all times, cultures and expereince. to use liebniz's terms, it is true in all "possible worlds." the second type is a value judgment. these are things such as good and bad, or beautiful and ugly. what people call beautiful does vary with time, culture and experience. empirically, this world is pluralistic in its value judgments. interestingly, chistian theology has chosen to apply value judgments to the characteristics of god. even further, we say that god is goodness, god is beauty, god is love, god is justice. so in order to make value judgments, it seems that one would have to know god.

how does one come to know god? by experiencing god in your life. which it seems the best way to go about having these experiences through spiritual disciplines.

what about the practice of goodness, justice and beauty? i would conclude that the best expressions would come from god as s/he interacts with our world. in the context of spiritual disciplines, an artist can become a thin space where beauty can overflow.

questions for further reflection:

• what is the role of the artist's intention, or should she even be intentional?
• what about iconography? it is viewed as a spiritual discipline itself, bu is it art?
• should we only observe christian artistic expressions, or can the metaphors of god be found in all expressions, whether they by buddhist, muslim or other?
• is art a communal or private expression?
  

summer rule

now that i have extra time with school out for summer, my first thought was to start in on an extensive reading list in theology.

but then i began thinking again. could i use more time studying in theology? yes. is that that most important thing for me, right now? no

i figure what would be better for me at this stage in my life is focus on spiritual formation.

so instead of a reading list, i will draw up a rule of life for the summer.

my wife and kids just left for nebraska for a week, so my plan for while they are gone is to create such a rule that might work for me.

hope in action

“christian hope cannot cling rigidly to the past and the given and ally itself with the utopia of the status quo. rather, it is itself summoned and empowered to creative transformation of reality, for it has hope of the whole of reality. finally, the believing hope will itself provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love. it constantly provokes and produces thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to man and the world, in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.”

- jurgen moltmann, theology of hope


i barely have time to keep up with this blog, yet i have started a second blog, hope in action, with the purpose of experimenting with what moltmann is talking about.

no by any stretch of the means do i know how to live compassionately and with justice in mind. molly and i are trying to figure these things out and what practical choices we need to make.

so take a look at the blog, and maybe it will get you thinking about the same things. or at least help us in our journey

remembering dietrich bonhoeffer

(4 february 1906 - 9 april 1945)

"action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility."

"one act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons."

"the ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves for its children."

"a prison cell, in which one waits, hopes -- and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of advent."

"a god who lets us prove his existence would be an idol."

"the mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. one does not exist without the other. right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech."

"to endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to jesus christ."

"gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy."

"time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering."


more info:
international dietrich bonhoeffer society
wikipedia
us holocaust memorial museum
the internet encyclopedia of philosophy
center of theological inquiry
speaking of faith: ethics and the will of god

does the christian god exist?

here is a debate held in st. joseph, mo between j.p. moreland and my professor clancy martin.

the thing that i kept thinking about was that it seems as though moreland and clancy were in a different conversation. i think traditional evangelical apologetics needs to rethink what and how they do things. and even rethink who their audience is.

moreland and clancy debate

only wish my name was as cool

You scored as Jürgen Moltmann. The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about. John Calvin 73% Jürgen Moltmann 73% Anselm 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 60% Martin Luther 53% Karl Barth 53% Jonathan Edwards 47% Augustine 40% Paul Tillich 33% Charles Finney 27% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

subjective universality

to take a step back from my last post (the language of theology), i want to look at aesthetic judgments in general, not just from sibley's perspective.

david hume and immanuel kant were really the first ones to analyze aesthetic judgments, which they called judgments of taste.

judgments of taste come from an inner subjective aesthetic experience. this is in one sense an empirical observation. the same object may be called ugly by one person and beautiful by another, or they are just left simply confused (think jackson pollock). there seems to be as many different aesthetic opinions as there are peoples, or at least cultures.

but when a person ascribes the quality of beauty to an object there is the intention of universal application. we want others to call beautiful what we have called beautiful. there is also the example that david hume gave:

whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegence between ogilby and milton, or bunyan or addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as teneriffe, or a pond as extensive as the ocean. though there may be found persons, who give the preference to the former authors, no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd and ridiculous (hume, of the standard of taste)

the point being that who has ever heard of addison or ogilby? there seems to be a universality to the statement "milton and bunyan are aesthetically pleasing."

so how does one reconcile this subjective universality? how does one make a justified judgment of taste?


is there a subjective universality to theology?

universality is easy to admit of. yes we live in the meta-narrative of YHWH's creation, redemption, and restoration. the statement "jesus is lord" does not change to "buddha is lord" when we find ourselves in a different context.

subjectivity in theology? maybe a little tougher to swallow. we want there to be an objective truth to our theological claims. we want there to be a definite rightness or wrongness to what we believe and say about god. but i think if we are honest, our theological convictions have a lot to do with our own experiences in the world and in church (some healthy and some painful). our convictions may have more to do with what denomination we grew up in than any actual adherence to the truth.

i don't know, these are just thoughts to play with.


articles for further reading:
aesthetic judgment by nick zangwill
hume's aesthetics by ted gracyk
kant's aesthetics and teleology by hannah ginsborg

the language of theology

frank sibley in his paper "aesthetic concepts," makes the claim that aesthetic terms are fundamentally different than non-aesthetic terms. this means that any aesthetic term cannot be further explained by a non-aesthetic term. in other words there are no necessary and sufficient conditions to define an aesthetic term such as 'graceful,' 'delicate,' 'gaudy,' or even 'beautiful.' aesthetic judgments are in a sense metaphors with no truth-functionality, meaning that a particular aesthetic judgment can not be true or false. but sibley does not want to commit to complete subjectivity here, he wants to say that there cann be 'good' or 'bad' judgments. a fine line.

aesthetic judgments are much like ethical judgments. they are grouped in what are 'value' judgments. so here is my question: are theological judgments value judgments?

if the language of theology could be analyzed like the language of aesthetics, many things would change.
we may no longer feel the need to use scientific techniques to prove the validity of scripture or our religion. we may not feel the need to distinguish ourselves from other christians because they interpret a passage of scripture differently than us.

maybe we could actually find beauty in the diversity of christian thought.

here begins my rambling.