Remonstrans
Years Of Talking Rubbish
11/10/08
Years Of Talking Rubbish
And the man who told me that story also related a conversation between friends.
First Friend: Alice is a nice girl.
Second Friend: Alice smokes cigars.
First Friend: Well, that's true enough, but she is still a nice girl.
Second Friend: I don't see how you can possibly say with any hope of consensus that Alice is a nice girl; Alice smokes cigars!
First Friend: Look, while it is true that the sight of a woman smoking a cigar is not the image we conjure when contemplating one who might some day before shuffling off her mortal coil launch a thousand ships, that fact does not gainsay the truth. Alice is a nice girl.
Second Friend: Alice smokes cigars.
What these two chaps cannot resolve is whether nice girls can smoke cigars.
T. S. Eliot spoke of a 1945 draft constitution for UNESCO.
"I am not at the moment concerned to extract a meaning from these sentences: I only quote them to call attention to the word culture, and to suggest that before acting on such resolutions we should try to find out what this one word means. This is only one of innumerable instances which might be cited, of the use of a word which nobody bothers to examine."
Words which nobody bothers to examine (like nice and culture) are dangerous things, and the inability to examine our own prejudice is just comical. Evangelicalism has danced around the meaning and use of "culture" for long enough. Evangelicalism since, say, 1860 has not produced any cultural tradition worthy of the name. What it has produced for decades under the name of worship has been bought out by secular businesses who consider it a product.
Emergence has no culture, and if we were to pretend it has, we would be forced to conclude that culture is tattoos, piercings, a love of profanity, a fascination with pornography and a devotion to ignorance. What used to be condemned as moral shortcoming is now vaunted as some sort of twisted lifestyle evangelism.
"Look, I've poked holes in my skin and stuck bits of metal in there! Now will you believe me when I tell you about God's Kingdom?"
And just last Saturday I read this from a Fundamentalist:
"If culture is a purely human activity and if those humans are profoundly sinful, how is it possible that much/most of what humans do outside the influence of God is not likewise profoundly sinful in its orientation?"
Please read that statement over to yourself as many times as is necessary. Does it make any sense to you? If it does make any sense to you, I should like the answers to a few questions.
What about the culture of Israel? Was the writing of the Tanakh a purely human activity? Does it have cultural value? Is Israel's history purely a human activity? Are the perceptions drawn from that experience purely human activity? Were the Psalms written by men who were profoundly sinful? How about Psalm 51?
Is your God any less active and sovereign in our history and thought than he was in Israel's? Do we perhaps worship different Gods? Has God withdrawn his grace from human experience and human culture in some way we might have explained to us?
Does not sin also affect the way we worship? Does not sin affect the way we preach? Does not sin affect the way we sanctify ourselves in the world? Does not sin affect how we love our wives and children? Shall we despise these things as well?
Why this prejudice against culture?
Who exactly lives outside the influence of God? What unexamined prejudices are in play when we conclude that an undefined "culture" is any more susceptible to the noetic effects of sin than any other aspect of our lives and thoughts?
__________
I do not believe this is the end, but I do think that on a clear day we could climb a small tree and see it from here.
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1 Comment from: exlibris [Visitor] 
Culture is a purely human activity.
Humans are profoundly sinful.
Culture is profoundly sinful.
First, the major premise may be questioned - if indeed we believe that culture may be "graced." In other words, culture is not outside the influence of God.
Second, humans in themselves and human activity are not the same thing.
Or so, it would seem. Is this merely the work of sloppy logic, or is it an overenthusiastic Calvinistic positivist?
Watch out, that sophist Matzko might come calling!
Humans are profoundly sinful.
Culture is profoundly sinful.
First, the major premise may be questioned - if indeed we believe that culture may be "graced." In other words, culture is not outside the influence of God.
Second, humans in themselves and human activity are not the same thing.
Or so, it would seem. Is this merely the work of sloppy logic, or is it an overenthusiastic Calvinistic positivist?
Watch out, that sophist Matzko might come calling!
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11/10/08 @ 09:22 2 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
Yes, I put this sentiment alongside evangelicals’ and emergents’ because it seems this pendulum has swung so wildly that we can’t even examine the simplest words.
On the one hand we had a generation of evangelicals who sought to justify culture, art and creativity of every sort with reference to the imago dei. This partial truth has been used to justify everything our sensibilities rebelled against.
On the other hand you have this pious pose: “defining beauty involves creation and culture which are tainted by the curse”.
Folks, everything about us is “tainted”. (Some people’s hermeneutics seem to have been especially tainted.) Everything about us fell. Not just culture. Our reason was corrupted, our sensibilities were corrupted, our affections were corrupted, our religious aspirations were corrupted, our ideas of God were corrupted.... All our thoughts are corrupted, not just our poetic thoughts. We are as corrupt behind the pulpit as we are in the bed.
And we all fell: the Fathers, Prophets, Psalmists, Apostles and Evangelists just as much as pimps, prostitutes, thieves, murderers and tyrants.
We have got to stop deceiving ourselves, and we had better start examining our words.
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11/10/08 @ 10:52 3 Comment from: Pseudo [Visitor]
Dissidens,
Would you place (what for sake of my question I assume we would both call) culture under the umbrella of "common grace?" Is it an adequate vehicle for all of humanity to communicate the image of God to one another?
Is there an aspect of human culture which will always declare the glory of God regardless of the intent of the communicator simply because he is an image bearer? I think there is, but you think better than I do, so there.
Would you place (what for sake of my question I assume we would both call) culture under the umbrella of "common grace?" Is it an adequate vehicle for all of humanity to communicate the image of God to one another?
Is there an aspect of human culture which will always declare the glory of God regardless of the intent of the communicator simply because he is an image bearer? I think there is, but you think better than I do, so there.
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11/10/08 @ 18:25 4 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
I have no doubt of it.
John Jefferson Davis defines common grace as “the general benevolence of God toward the creature, benevolence which restrains the destructive consequences of sin, and enables the unregenerate to act in external conformity to the moral law and to exhibit creativity in works of culture.”
That definition works for me.
As for the second question, I think the answer could be yes or no, depending on how one defines one’s terms. In one sense there will always be certain acts observed in nature which will be seen as unfitting and debased when practiced by man.
But I think we have been way too sloppy for way too long with the term “image bearer”. It has been a matter of speculation as to what constitutes that image, and, I think, inexcusable ignorance of exactly to what extent we defaced that image.
To take a simple example. Some, like Dorothy Sayers, attribute our creativity to the image of God in man. She says that like there is not a profound difference between how God creates and how we create. To what end God creates and to what end man creates. I’m not saying there might not be some overlap, some similarity, but there is too big a distinction there to slide over without giving it some serious thought.
I would say that man’s creativity (take JSB or Mozart as examples), though far superior to the bower bird’s has more in common with it than with God’s.
I don’t so much fear seeing a continuity between God’s nature and acts and man’s, but I think we will go very wrong if we do it with a sentimental understanding of these things.
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11/11/08 @ 07:17 5 Comment from: Todd Mitchell [Visitor] · http://www.firstbaptistgranitefalls.org
· http://www.firstbaptistgranitefalls.org
Just musing, here . . . I wonder if appealing to what Fundamentalist think of organized sports might help them to think about this?
"Christian Schools" are usually enthusiastic about "character building" with an organized sport. They eagerly and scrupulously take the yoke of culture upon them, for the purpose of Christian Education, no less, as they seek to conserve the rules of the game.
Of course, even considering this approach shows how desperate the situation is. As long as the aesthete has to beg for some of the athlete's honor, he'll always be just another Geek in a Jock's world.
"Christian Schools" are usually enthusiastic about "character building" with an organized sport. They eagerly and scrupulously take the yoke of culture upon them, for the purpose of Christian Education, no less, as they seek to conserve the rules of the game.
Of course, even considering this approach shows how desperate the situation is. As long as the aesthete has to beg for some of the athlete's honor, he'll always be just another Geek in a Jock's world.
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11/11/08 @ 08:07 6 Comment from: Watchman [Visitor] · http://www.watchmanswords.blogspot.com
· http://www.watchmanswords.blogspot.com
Reading this I couldn't help remembering the fanfare with which Cedarville University announced last year that all of their Bible faculty had signed the schools Truth and Certainty pledge and that the institution could therefore be trusted...and then reading on to see that while they had all signed it, they could not agree on what certainty was.
Or perhaps the recently concluded election, where I heard many "earnest" Christians profess their refusal to vote for McCain because they wouldn't vote for the lesser of two evils...and then they voted for another fallen man as if he were not evil. We have lost the language, and with it the ability to even comprehend what is being discussed.
Even so Lord Jesus come quickly.
Or perhaps the recently concluded election, where I heard many "earnest" Christians profess their refusal to vote for McCain because they wouldn't vote for the lesser of two evils...and then they voted for another fallen man as if he were not evil. We have lost the language, and with it the ability to even comprehend what is being discussed.
Even so Lord Jesus come quickly.
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11/11/08 @ 09:22 7 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
Todd:
Comical, isn’t it?
We had as models the erudite separatism of the Puritans and the simple separatism of the Amish, and this is what we got stuck with: St. Jock Baptist Church (IBF) and fundamentalists laughing at Oscar Wilde’s devotional literature.
That’s every bit as funny as a pencil shoved in your eyeball.
Watchman:
Mark Twain said the Book of Mormon was chloroform in print; I take these evangelical pledges and statements of belief to be syrup of ipecac in print.
Keep an ample supply of them in your medicine cabinet.
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11/11/08 @ 09:52 8 Comment from: Pseudo [Visitor]
I see the concept of image bearing to mean that man's non-physical attributes are ideally analogous to God's attributes.
Perhaps our creativity is to some extent analogous to that of God's? I don't see how they could be the same except for in the case of the inspired autographs of Scripture.
Perhaps our creativity is to some extent analogous to that of God's? I don't see how they could be the same except for in the case of the inspired autographs of Scripture.
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11/11/08 @ 12:10 9 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
Oh, yes, don’t misunderstand me.
There are many evangelicals who think Moses cannot be trusted to describe God’s creation; I am not one of them. Gen 1:27 clearly says: “in the image of God created he him”. It is what we have done with this idea, the silly little arabesques we have engaged in, that concern me.
I answered your comment late because last night we had a Bible study. We were in Mark 5. We have three men here, and I will add a fourth. We have Jesus, the (pre-delivered) Gadarene, and Jairus. Let’s add a man, any man, in Hell. Which of these four was created in the image of God? I think all four were. I also think all four will always retain, in some sense, the image of God. (I’ve toyed with the idea that the man in Hell will be so destroyed as not to retain the image, but I haven’t resolved my problems with that.)
Anyway, each of these four men bear the image of God, but what reasonable conclusions can we draw from that fact? It is a truth, but I’m not persuaded that it is a useful or dispositive truth when we ask the question in respect to his culture. The culture of the demoniac, the culture of a leader in the synagogue demonstrate the imago dei how?
My salient point is that we really have not known what we’re talking about; we haven’t examined our words in a serious way. We have evangelical and fundamentalist, both orthodox by his own and each other’s definition, both trying to justify a prejudice in total darkness.
(Nor does it seem to me that their disagreement is on non-essentials.)
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11/11/08 @ 13:12 10 Comment from: WLJ [Visitor] · http://www.cogitavi.wordpress.com
· http://www.cogitavi.wordpress.com
Dissidens,
Many people(I'm one of them) think Sayers took her concept of the imago dei a little too far, but much of what she has to say is still helpful. And she does distinguish between how we create and how God created. God created ex nihilo, we simply rearrange already created matter.
I think the prejudice against culture, at least from a fundamentalist's perspective has something to do with the fact that everything must come from a Christian worldview in order for it to be accepted. Therefore much is either rejected or "Christianized." I grew up in a Christian school where American history was "Christianized," and literature was "Christianized." You wouldn't believe the themes that were squeezed out of poetry or the Christian character attributed to men that were adulterers. You get the idea. This is why an understanding of common grace is so crucial. Sayers is a help there, although she does not use that term.
Many people(I'm one of them) think Sayers took her concept of the imago dei a little too far, but much of what she has to say is still helpful. And she does distinguish between how we create and how God created. God created ex nihilo, we simply rearrange already created matter.
I think the prejudice against culture, at least from a fundamentalist's perspective has something to do with the fact that everything must come from a Christian worldview in order for it to be accepted. Therefore much is either rejected or "Christianized." I grew up in a Christian school where American history was "Christianized," and literature was "Christianized." You wouldn't believe the themes that were squeezed out of poetry or the Christian character attributed to men that were adulterers. You get the idea. This is why an understanding of common grace is so crucial. Sayers is a help there, although she does not use that term.
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11/12/08 @ 08:22 11 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
Hmmm.
You and I may disagree, but so far I have not seen any evidence of it. I used Sayers merely as an example of how we can think badly about things we agree are true. I would not deny for a second that human creativity finds its origin in God’s. No problems at all going that far. This becomes an issue only when we get sloppy in our thinking.
You’re right that Sayers distinguishes between ex nihilo and ex materia creation. But even that distinction is not as productive as we might suppose; i.e., I don’t see how our conclusion would be significantly different if God also created a statue of a woman out of marble. I’m just saying that our arguments are too rickety; they are slap-dash and ad hoc. They show a carelessness that ought to frighten us. This is where Eliot is often helpful.
I also agree with the first sentence of your second paragraph. This is also true of evangelicals, though perhaps less comically.
As it happens, my wife taught in a school that relished this dollop of flummery. She was required to teach out of the Hall and Slater “Red Books”. Don’t know if you are familiar with those or not. We used to own them, but I think we ditched them once we crossed the Boulder county line. This was also where we learned of the proper Christian understanding of English vocabulary as found in the hallowed Webster’s 1828 dictionary where “Biblical definitions are restored”.
…our first American Dictionary - the only dictionary in the world to "draw water out of the wells of salvation".(So they had that going for them.)
I fear I do have some idea of what you’re talking about.
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11/12/08 @ 10:52 12 Comment from: WLJ [Visitor] · http://www.cogitavi.wordpress.com
· http://www.cogitavi.wordpress.com
Yea. I've heard of them. Ugh. Stuff like that drives me crazy. People shove this kind of drivel under my nose all the time. They assume they understand me when I say I am homeschooling my child to give him a Christian education.
As far as Sayers, I started to read The Mind of the Maker and had to stop. I couldn't agree with her comparison of the creative activity of the artist with the Trinity. At least I couldn't quite buy all the implications of that argument. It seemed a stretch. I do think she is helpful when she explains that we create(or should) things that are beautiful because we are created in the image of God. In other words, God did not simply create a utilitarian world, he made a beautiful one: the sky is blue, the grass is green. And although the image of God has been marred in man due to the Fall, this is our goal, and can be accomplished by the renewing power of the Spirit through our redemption. I think in our postmodern culture, with its' utter lack of meaning and emphasis on utilitarianism, this can be a good starting place for thinking about culture, but perhaps I'm wrong. I am certainly willing to hear what you think about it. You have helped me think through a lot of things in the past, which I appreciate.
As far as Sayers, I started to read The Mind of the Maker and had to stop. I couldn't agree with her comparison of the creative activity of the artist with the Trinity. At least I couldn't quite buy all the implications of that argument. It seemed a stretch. I do think she is helpful when she explains that we create(or should) things that are beautiful because we are created in the image of God. In other words, God did not simply create a utilitarian world, he made a beautiful one: the sky is blue, the grass is green. And although the image of God has been marred in man due to the Fall, this is our goal, and can be accomplished by the renewing power of the Spirit through our redemption. I think in our postmodern culture, with its' utter lack of meaning and emphasis on utilitarianism, this can be a good starting place for thinking about culture, but perhaps I'm wrong. I am certainly willing to hear what you think about it. You have helped me think through a lot of things in the past, which I appreciate.
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11/12/08 @ 13:26 13 Comment from: MAS [Member]
I myself have been pondering these issues for the past several months - namely, that the influence of the Spirit seems to result in better art (If I may use such a crass term), and that degeneration into kitsch, shallowness and general badness that is displayed as common grace is removed in other areas. It seems clear that our capacity to create and appreciate good art is hindered as sin's result, and that our decadence in art is as much in need of repentance as our decadence in morality - the two branches grow from the same tree.
What I find perplexing and troubling is that professing Christians take such tawdry excuses for art and offer them in worship to God. I am reminded of God's words in Malachi 1: 'When you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor? Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly?" says the LORD of hosts.' Not that lack of skill in creating or enjoying excellence in art is inherently sinful, but our pastors and theologians, not to say musicians, ought to know better. It is very sad to consider that unredeemed men of the past, by common grace, created art superior to that of the supposed regenerate men of our day.
What I find perplexing and troubling is that professing Christians take such tawdry excuses for art and offer them in worship to God. I am reminded of God's words in Malachi 1: 'When you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor? Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly?" says the LORD of hosts.' Not that lack of skill in creating or enjoying excellence in art is inherently sinful, but our pastors and theologians, not to say musicians, ought to know better. It is very sad to consider that unredeemed men of the past, by common grace, created art superior to that of the supposed regenerate men of our day.
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11/12/08 @ 15:59 14 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
And that fact right there tells us more than we want to hear.
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11/12/08 @ 17:34 Leave a comment:
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