Staring is Power

The BBC just released its 2016 Most Striking Photographs of the Year.  Highlighting its artistic value Kelly Grovier summarizes the power inside this photograph:

"'Staring is power,' writes Kelly Grovier 'The ability to command another’s gaze, to transfix their mind and muscles by using nothing more than… one's unblinking eyes, requires discipline and courage of purpose.' This photo of a standoff between a protester and a Chilean policeman in Santiago prompted Grovier to consider the meaning of an unflinching gaze. In her 2010 work The Artist is Present, performance artist Marina Abramović stared into the eyes of visitors. It was a reminder of John Ruskin’s belief that 'All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.'"

Interesting side note: John Ruskin was the art mentor of Lillias Trotter, of whom our daughter Hannah Lillias is named after.  

From Refugee to Refuge, A Christmas Prayer

Lord,
Be merciful to those with little hope,
To those who must flee their homeland.
Look with favor upon those who are surrounded by danger,
Become, for the refugee,
   a refuge.

Your Son after being honored by foreigners,
became hunted by the ruler of his own land.
To Egypt, to Africa,
He, who would become the world's ultimate refuge,
   Had become a child refugee.

Remember them Father,
With merciful eyes,
Look upon them like your Son.

Passion and Pizza Making

The first new Pizza Hut arrived in our town a few months ago.  Being a former employee and a softy for the deep-dish, we found ourselves checking it out a few weeks ago.  Heidi and I had an interesting conversation after we saw this advertisement on the interior wall of the Pizza Hut dining area:

   

"Passion."  "Inspired."  Pizza Hut cooks are passionate about making their pizzas.  Pizza Hut cooks are inspired to make something excellent.  They are not just experts apparently, they feel something deep down when they make their pizzas.  Of course, it is just a silly advertisement that probably only lives in the thoughts of some marketing executive.  That aside, the interesting part for me is why does the advertisement see those words as particularly powerful?  Why "passionate?"  Why "inspired?"  Why not say our cooks have thoroughly memorized all the best recipes for perfect pizza?  Why not our chefs perfectly follow all the spec-chart regulations for great pizza-making?

The answer is simple.   Because that is only half as good as someone who is actually passionate about what they do and what they create.  Someone who is passionate about what they do cares about the product they are making.  The person who has merely memorized spec-charts, does not necessarily care about the product he makes.  Pizza-making only has instrumental value to him.  He is actually passionate about something else (impressing the boss, keeping a pay-check to do more enjoyable activities, etc.).  Pizza-making only helps him, for the time being, accomplish other things that he is truly passionate about.

If the highest display of dedication to pizza-making involves passion, inspiration, and other deeply felt affections, then would it really be that different for measuring one's dedication to anything?  Would someone's dedication to a marriage or to a sports team or to a country be complete if they don't genuinely feel anything for it?  If they just simply do all the activities normally associated with it, and lets even say they do it with an unwavering consistency, does that sufficiently express the highest level of dedication?  Without any genuine feeling, it would seem not.

Knowing this, we were forced to ask: why then do most religious systems say the highest display of dedication to God is not something we feel, but the collection of things we do?  What are the typical reasons we think that Mother Theresa, for example, or the Dalai Lama, or the Ayatollah of Iran might demonstrate some of the highest levels of dedication to God?  I suppose we would say something like their fasting, their self-sacrifice, the hours of meditation, their memorizing large sections of holy books, or how meticulously they follow their moral codes, etc.

Of course, this type of dedication might show a true deep heart-felt passion for God.  But can you do all these things and not actually care about God in any ultimate sense?  The answer of course is yes.  In the same way a cook who merely follows the spec-chart rules because he is deeply passionate about something else (like saving for a new dirt-bike).  It is actually quite astounding the type of things we commit ourselves to, in hope that it leads to something else entirely.  And if this is the case about religion, then it would seem most religious systems (and even many religious people) have missed the main ingredient of true dedication:  Cultivating a genuine passion for God himself.

It reminds me again how unique Jesus' statement is that the greatest commandment (as well as the second greatest) is actually a feeling. (Matt 22:37-40).  Every other religious task and commitment only finds its meaning when it is orbiting around genuine love and passion for God, and others.  

Nicholas Wolterstorff's Cheap Shots

Those of you up to speed on Christian Philosophy know that Nicholas Wolterstorff is one of the big hitters.  Over at First Things, Wesley Hill gives a powerful response to a lecture on homosexuality that Wolterstorff gave last month.

Wesley’s article on First Things

The Nature of Beauty (Part 2)

The subjectivity of beauty, as the whole story, appears counter-intuitive from quite a few angles as we have seen.  But there are equally some reasons to think objective beauty might have its own problems as well.  I'll offer a few of those briefly.  However in the end I hope to show these problems are less formidable than they might initially appear.  And that the subjective component to beauty should really be limited to the applicational context of the experience of beauty, not the foundational (or ontological) component of what beauty is.

When it comes to beauty it seems obtuse to think one person's perspective must be right and the other must be wrong.  Imagine two siblings walking out of the movie theatre and the older sister exclaims "That movie was fantastic!" The little brother is unconvinced: "It was okay.  There were a lot cheesy scenes..."  he says.  But who is right?  The subjectivist wants to say why does someone have to be wrong?  The sister sees it as beautiful and the brother doesn't see it that way.  It is beautiful for her.  It is not beautiful for him.  And that's it.  No one is right, no one is wrong.  Along these lines the subjectivist could give even more stronger examples. Say a young man thinks a particular woman is beautiful and another man disagrees, it seems a bit crass to say that one of them must be mistaken (especially if the woman is the man's wife!).

This seems like a hard bullet to bite for the objectivist.  But is it?  Remember when your family brought out your grandmother's old wedding album.  What did they all say when they saw the photo of her in her bridal dress?  "Wow you look so beautiful!"  In that moment, your family is observing how dramatic the physical appearance has changed such that they are stunned by the beauty she once had.  Of course we are careful how we talk about a woman's changing beauty, but notice we can only make sense of situations like these by seeing it within the framework of an objectivist understanding of beauty.

Our intuitions about human beauty are difficult to adjudicate naturally, since we don't talk in certain ways about people's beauty often because it is rude, rather than because it is incorrect per se.  That said, looking at less complicated examples will be much more instructive for us.  So we can ask the question: Is a 7-year old banging on a piano on equal footing with the majestic works of Bach or Mozart?  Is my dog rubbing off mud onto onto a white canvas on equal footing with a famous portrait from Van Gogh or Rembrandt?  The subjectivist is strangely forced to say there is nothing intrinsically different about the beauty of each of these.  The resources of their view do not allow for that sort of distinction.  But the subjectivist does have a possible back door.  There could be an extrinsic (not intrinsic) way of grounding beauty which might salvage their view against these counter-intuitive examples.  How?

Cultural norms could seem to play a quasi-grounding role in settling obvious disagreements about beauty.  Since nothing is intrinsically beautiful in their view, some things can be said to be beautiful by general collective agreement (and to be not beautiful vise versa).  So the reason why a 7 year-old banging on a piano is not beautiful is because we as a culture do not see that as beautiful music (notice it has nothing to do with the quality of the sound itself).  Or the reason why Van Gogh produces masterful art is because the majority of people think so, not because of any sort of intrinsic qualities that are a part of his paintings.  Do you see the move here?  It is subjectivism on a community level, not on an individual level.  The community ultimately decides subjectively what is or is not beautiful.

But this maneuver suffers from quite a few major problems.  First, this position still would not be able to escape some of the problems already mentioned in the first article.  Particularly the third argument about beauty actually changing if perceptions of beauty change.  Again it is a bit confounding to have a view that might force one to say a painting was ugly in 1786, but the same painting somehow became beautiful in 1986, for example.  Second, it seems to give no room for artistic reformers.  A reformer by definition cuts against the grain of cultural traditions and perceptions.  But if cultural perceptions are the very definition of what beauty really is, any artistic reformer will always be producing works of art that are -by definition- not beautiful!  Third, attempts at defining what is a 'community' or 'culture' has proven to be admittedly quite arbitrary according to many anthropologists.  Lastly, art on this understanding seems to become something only meant to ultimately amuse and entertain.  If artistic beauty is being defined as the sort of thing that people just happen to 'like', it seems to rip away some very powerful features regarding the essence and function of what art really is.  Art is supposed to give meaning and power in some of the ideas it presents.  It is often intended to challenge people, to give new perspectives, to stimulate thought and reflection.  All these intrinsic categories are reduced away on this view.  There is no meta-narrative.  And what is left is a field that is strangely just a function of the entertainment industry.

But if beauty is an objective property, according to what standards or according to who's standards can we come to know whether something is actually beautiful?  It seems like it might be inevitably biased.  Who gets to decide what is beautiful?  And even if it is not biased, it would seem even the search for some objective standard would be a bit unwieldy.  What sort of standard could explain all the things we think are beautiful?

It is a good question, but notice this is an epistemological question.  It is a separate question entirely than the question of what beauty ultimately is.  Whether someone can tell you the aesthetic reasons why a piece of music is beautiful or not, has no bearing on whether its beauty is an objective reality.  Just because I can't define love doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Likewise, whether a satisfactory definition of beauty can be given or not, doesn't directly address the question of the existence of objective beauty.  Nevertheless, I will try to give a possible direction that could start to answer this question.

Beauty is a sort of meta-property.  Its a property of a property.  That said, it comes at a certain level of abstraction (in the epistemological sense) that makes an intuitive definition difficult.  My first attempt at a definition might say:  Something is beautiful in so far as it reflects the order, proportionality, harmony, and/or grandeur of what is good, true, and real.  There is a lot that might be said here to try and clarify or defend, but I think I'll just let you chew on it for a while.  Is the definition too narrow?  Is it too vague?  I'd be intrigued to hear your thoughts, especially from some of you artists and musicians!

So if subjectivity is not at the center of how we think about beauty, what role does it play?  I'll try to unpack that in a final post.

Parent of the Year

Apparently there are rules that immediately disqualify you from becoming Parent of the Year.  I know this now.  A little too late.  If you are in the running, hope knowing these will help your chances.

(1) You might get disqualified if you've ever justified not brushing your kids teeth before bed, because "they're going to lose those teeth anyway."

(2) You might get disqualified if you're jealous that your wife has taught them to eat healthier food then you.

(3) You might get disqualified if you think one of the best chew toys for your baby is the chord of an electric phone charger.  There was a double disqualification on this one actually, they say electrocution AND strangling hazard.

(4) You might get disqualified if (because the elevator takes too long at the mall) you try to use a double-stroller on the escalator.

(5) You might get disqualified if you express how proud you are of your 1 1/2 year old being able to stuff 3 full cookies in his mouth.

(6) You might get disqualified if pee in their diaper isn't 'enough' to take the time to change it.

(7) You might get disqualified if you take pictures of your child's colored-in 'Hitler mustache' and post it on the internet.

Disclaimer: One out of the two parents in our family holds no guilt in the previously mentioned disqualifications.  The guilty party shall remain anonymous.  You'll be forced to guess with great difficulty I'm sure.

The Nature of Beauty (Part 1)

One of my favorite questions to ask a musician or artist is: "Is the beauty you try to create in your art objective or subjective?"  In other words, "Is the beauty you're trying to create simply in the eye of the beholder?"  The answer to this question carries with it some assumptions that I'm unsure whether people have thought much about.  I do believe there is a subjective experience of beauty, but I'd like to make a brief case for the position that beauty at its core is an actual property of objects or events.  That is, it is an objective reality.  But first, what does it even mean for beauty to be objective?

It means that beauty is something that exists in the object, not in our perception of the object.  It means beauty can be there whether any one sees it or not.  It means that people can perceive beauty correctly or incorrectly (now this is where toes get stepped on, but be patient).  It means there are some aesthetic standards fitting to the object, to the event, or to the art that make something beautiful or not.  So what reasons would compel us to think about beauty like this?  Here are a few:

Beauty seems to be something that an observer discovers, not something an observer creates.  The difference between discovering and creating is simply this:  I discover something that is already there.  But when I create something, it wasn't there before I created it.  When I look at a waterfall or a sunset, when I listen to a moving poem or song, it seems like we want to say I'm experiencing for the first time the beauty that was already there.  For example, I could have listened to a piece of music twenty times and felt nothing, maybe even disliked it.  But on the 21st time perhaps I sensed something wonderful about it (notice the language: 'about it') that I came to discover.  So when was the music beautiful?  This is an argument from intuition, but it would seem strange to say the music became beautiful at the 21st listening of it.  It seems much more natural to say I discovered its beauty on the 21st time I listened to it.  If that's true, beauty at its core is a property of an object not of a 'beholder.'

There are things to learn about creating beautiful art.  This seems obvious, but this is a powerful argument for objective beauty.  We have entire universities, schools, and departments dedicated to the training of young artists and musicians,  People hire tutors and instructors, we have libraries of books and research all for this expressed purpose.  The fact is however, training in the arts so that people refine their ability and sense for how to create beautiful art is a contradiction in a world where 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder.'  You cannot improve your art if there is no objective standard of what constitutes improvement. In fact, in this world artistic refinement and improvement does not actually exist.  This seems quite counter-intuitive.  If there is something to actually learn about creating beautiful art, than there is something non-subjective about beauty.

Things do not get more beautiful the more people like them.  For example, say we uncovered a new painting from Rembrandt last year.  Would we ever say things like: This painting had no beauty for 400 years, but now this year it has become beautiful? (because now the 'beholders' can see it).  We just don't talk like that, because our language betrays that we don't really think beauty works like that.  What we would say is:  The beauty of this painting lay hidden for centuries.  And now the beauty that was hidden in the painting has been uncovered.  Beauty is a property of objects, not of the people that perceive it.

Different levels of expertise are possible in art.  Do we not say that this person is an expert composer or she is a top film writer, etc?  According to what standards could someone know more than another about what is beautiful in the various arts?  Only if there are objective features to beauty, could someone then be more gifted than others in perceiving and producing beautiful things.

Disagreements about beauty are not meaningless.  It is one thing to say people need to be more open-minded in how they evaluate poetry, music, films, or other art.  It is another thing to say those evaluations are meaningless.  A world without objective beauty must see any disagreement about beautiful art as saying nothing more than: "I like this, You don't like this."  If you move beyond this, to give actual reasons why the person should like it, or should not like it, you're trying to use objective features of the art to evaluate its aesthetic value.  But there are no objective features that have aesthetic value in this world!  They must be committed to the position that beauty cannot be measured by anything objective.  But any artist knows that these evaluations whether given or received are not meaningless even if these evaluations could be mistaken.

God is beautiful whether anyone perceives Him that way or not (Psalm 27:4, 96:6). It is a theological fact that God was beautiful and majestic before creation ever existed.  That is, before there was anyone to perceive him.  And he has remained such even in the midst of a creation that largely doesn't see him as beautiful and supremely desirable.  God's aesthetic features don't change in value based on the perceivers (beholders) that might view him differently.

Why does this all matter?  Philosophers have a tough time knowing how to characterize the sort of thing beauty is.  Think of all the things we call beautiful: Stories, paintings, music, waterfalls, a women's hair, the design of a home, self-sacrifice, a gentle disposition (1 Peter 3:3-4), etc.  How can all these things have the same property?  If they do, what kind of property would it be?  The trend toward entirely reducing the reality of beauty to a subjective experience is partly motivated by the fact that naturalism doesn't have the ontological resources to account for objective beauty.  In fact, the existence of objective beauty is a reason itself to find naturalism's account of what exists unsatisfactory.

Roots of Democracy

"I am a [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.

I think most people are [proponents of democracy] for the opposite reason.  A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.

The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true... I find that they're not true without looking further than myself.  I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost.  Much less a nation...

The real reason for democracy is just the reverse.  Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.  Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves.  I do not contradict him.  But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters."

—C.S. Lewis, "Equality in Present Concerns 

How Classical Philosophy Utterly Failed

The classical world utterly failed in their attempt to bring people to moral goodness says the late Dr. Dallas Willard.*  Early thinkers like Plato and Aristotle (along with the Stoics and Epicureans later) did not ultimately understand the root of moral reality.  This is what he means:

"One of the most wonderful books in the world besides the bible is Plato's Republic.... And Plato's Republic looks like it is about 'the republic,' but its actually about the human soul.  It's a study of the human soul and how the soul works and in particular it is devoted to the question: "How can we train and develop people so that their soul actually works as it should?  Some of you may have read it and you know that Plato's view was that the good person is one with a balanced soul.  In particular it is a soul where the reason is doing its job, the appetites are doing its job, and the emotions are doing their job.  And the idea is that the emotions are supposed to align with reason to govern the appetites.  Well its certainly a fascinating theory and a wonderful story.  And his view is that the way you get this is you develop an educational system in which people who are able to reason well rise to the top.  And they then are able to get the emotions in order and so that will handle the appetites.  And then the state would also reflect that same order.

"And then Aristotle basically has the same theory, except his view is that you don't get this by education, you get it by legislation.  And what you do is you organize the government in such a way that you establish institutions that shape souls that are good.  And then people do the things they are supposed to, and so on.  But of course it didn't work.

"If you look at the history of Greece and the history of Athens and you'll see the miserable thing it fell into. The Greeks couldn't stop killing one another.  And actually Greek history as an independent deal up until very recently ended when they had to invite the Romans in to keep them from killing one another.  The world in which the people before Christ existed and the world in which the people at Christ's time existed (the Epicureans included) was one where people were just striving to somehow get a hold of moral reality.  And they never could do it."


* Willard begins this discussion at 1:01:40 of the video.  He continues afterward to make some interesting observations about how ancient Christianity and how our contemporary culture much later deals with these very same questions.  

Jerusalem the Movie

If you get an opportunity, check out the beautiful footage of the land of Israel captured by National Geographic in a short film called Jerusalem:

*Disclaimer: As it is a National Geographic feature you might have to excuse the incredibly shallow assessment of the difficulties, conflicts, and differences over Jerusalem.

Returning to Eden and Other Hopeful Delusions

The human condition is unavoidably filled with brokenness, pain, and grief says psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Jennifer Kunst.  In her book Wisdom from the Couch she says further that we also innately feel that "suffering was never meant to be.  The toil, pain, and profound sense of alienation that we experience are all a big mistake.  The world wasn't supposed to be broken.  It didn't have to be this way..."  We long for something more.  She continues: "Whether we are searching for the fountain of youth, unconditional love, or transcendental mountaintop experience, we human beings seem to have an innate longing to return to a lost ideal, a protected, blissful state.  Some call it the Garden of Eden.  Others call it Nirvana.  Psychoanalysts call it the womb.  In any case it seems clear that we have a picture of a perfect place that we once inhabited, and then lost, and now we're trying to find again."

Kunst goes on to share that these longings and stories about our origins get one thing exactly right: Our world is a very broken world.  But the additional part that says, 'it wasn't always like this or it wasn't meant to be like this' is actually a fantasy.  The brokenness of the world is no ones fault.  It is just broken.  The reason we feel this way is the subconscious effects that come from being forcefully evicted from our safe, sheltered, and continuously nourished state within the womb.  We subconsciously want to return to that untroubled paradise.  Feeling deep down that there is something more, something we lost, we tell stories that makes sense of it -stories like the Garden of Eden.

Kunst writes about psychoanalytic theory from within the Christian tradition.  Despite the limitations she perceives, her background and faith clearly seem to inform her picture of a healthy life and psychology.  There are parts of her faith she proudly commends, but others she finds hard to digest.  I deeply appreciate the honesty and the beautiful way in which she attempts to synthesize both these sources of wisdom to cast a vision for a truly healthy life.  But what should we make of this contention?  Is brokenness just what it means to be human?  Is it a fantasy to hope and long for a world without brokenness?  Is the brokenness of the world really no ones fault?

I'm sure you know my answers to those questions.  But I want to commend to Dr. Kunst the scope over which these questions hang.  These are not peripheral questions that Christianity is relatively neutral on.  These questions stand at the very core of the Christian faith.  And it is not because the core of Christianity has a particular view about the intricacies of the afterlife or about the literalness of the first three chapters of Genesis.  It is because the core of Christianity says something about Jesus.  And that Jesus has strikingly set in motion an unprecedented path for human reconciliation, redemption, and healing.  Things that psychologists care a lot about.  As St. Paul says, death and corruption have been swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54).  How?  Because the sting of death is sin he says, and in the most unlikely of ways Jesus has defeated (though not yet eliminated) sin.  The cosmic defeat of the poison of sin is the centerpiece of Jesus' healing project.  For St. Paul, Jesus cuts out the very root and source of corruption and death.  Another way of saying it is, for the Christian faith the roots of brokenness, conflict, and death are not "value neutral aspects of life."  The roots of brokenness have to do with sin.  And sin is never "value neutral." (Note: I am not saying corruption and brokenness in one's life is because of specific sin in the same person, like some sort of karmic equation.  But I am saying in the big story of the Christian faith, brokenness and corruption did parasitically enter the world by sin; the same sin that has a grip on all of us).  And the guilt, shame, and fear that comes from it does destroy us, as Dr. Kunst observes.  But these are put to rest not by dismissing our fault and not by obscuring our role in the brokenness around us.  It is put to rest by rejoicing in the core Christian conviction of a victory that undercuts the power of fear, shame, and erases our guilt.

Dr. Kunst talks about the self-imposed limits and boundaries of her faith commitments that also give her freedom to search and explore important truth within her field.  I'm not entirely sure where her limits begin and where they end.  But I would commend to her that a world where human brokenness has no source and ultimate redemption is a fantasy is a world that misses the very core of the Christian faith.

A Few Observations on the Trinity Discussion

On Secundum Scripturas, Bruce Ware has given a very helpful defense of his position of "Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission" (ERAS).  Remember this is a view that God the Father and God the Son have had not just relations of authority and submission during the incarnation, but there are functional relations of authority that have been a part of the inner divine life even before creation.  A few interesting arguments and responses by Matthew Emerson and Luke Stamps are worth commenting on.

Singular Will

Emerson and Stamps had raised earlier the problem this view might have with the traditional creedal statements of a singular unified will within the Trinity.  Historically, the Trinity does not have 3 wills, one for each person.  There is only one singular volitional capacity.  And it is only in the sense of Christ's human nature that Christ's will and the Father's will can actually be two distinct realities (Luke 22:42).  Emerson and Stamps have concerns that if submission in the Trinity is a reality before the incarnation than it seems to imply two wills.  A will that possesses authority (the Father) and a will that submits (the Son).  How then can there be only one will in the Trinity?  Borrowing language from Anatolios, Bruce offers a unique response: 

"While each possesses the same volitional capacity, each also is able to activate that volitional capacity in exercising the one will in distinct yet unified ways according to their distinct hypostatic identities and modes of subsistence. So, while the Father may activate the common divine will to initiate, the Son may activate the divine will to carry out, e.g., “from” the Father, “through” the Son—as has often been affirmed in Trinitarian doctrine following the pattern in Scripture itself (e.g., 1 Cor 8:6). Given this, one might even speak of one unified will of God, as the volitional capacity common to all three, along with three “inflections” of the unified divine will (borrowing Anatolios’s wording), or three hypostatically distinct expressions of that one divine will."

Very interesting.  But Emerson and Stamps are not entirely convinced.  They have additional concerns that are also helpful questions that Bruce would probably need to clarify.  Nevertheless, I wonder what a purist position about the divine will (like Stamps and Emerson) would need to say with regard to the Father's "sending" and the Son's "going" before the incarnation.  Maybe there is no distinctive authority to read in here (which would seem to me a hard bullet to bite).  But even still there must be some sort of distinctive volitional choices happening here that Ware would have the ontological resources to explain.  Yet I'm unsure how the traditional position that denies these distinctives within the divine will would address this.

On Sonship and Eternal Generation (EG)

Emerson insightfully points out that one of the problems with the discussion is a hermenuetical one.  Many people settle for trying to find proof texts instead of using the entire pattern of scripture as the foundation for how we are to understand these distinctions.  As he outlines a defense for EG, he says: "...Even beyond these particular texts, they [the Nicene fathers] saw that the scriptural pattern of speaking about the relations of the first and second persons of the Trinity are inherently related to generation. “Father” and “Son” are relational terms. If it means anything to be a son, it means to come from one’s father.”

The fatherhood of God and the sonship of man is of course a prominent theme in scripture.  And while there are scriptures that talk about God's fatherhood over all creation (Acts 17:28), the more prominent and significant biblical concept of God's fatherhood over creation has nothing to do with origin or generation.  His children are adopted into God's family as sons and daughters (John 1:13, Eph 1:4, Gal 4:6-7).  It is one of the most beautiful and central truths in all of scripture.  And in fact the Galatians passage actually clarifies exactly what the significant characteristic is regarding us being sons:  It is that "sonship" means we are adopted heirs of Christ.  If the most significant and central biblical meaning behind God's "fatherhood" and our "sonship" has nothing to do with generation, then it is hard to know the biblical warrant for saying the biblical concepts "father" and "son" inherently relate to generation.

To be fair, in another article Matt does supplement his case by bringing in a discussion of Phil 2:5-11. This a very helpful passage, and it does emphasize the incarnational submission we see in Christ's life.  But I still find myself confused how it inherently precludes any other passage that could talk about pre-incarnational submission.

By the way, I've always enjoyed my conversations with Matt and I have the utmost respect for his scholarship and his sharp mind.  I hope my thoughts and questions contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

Eternal Functional Subordination and its Critics

In my circles the blogosphere is buzzing about the debate between Christ's submission to the Father within the Trinity and some of the historical views concerning Eternal Generation (EG).  Two evangelical giants, Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem have written about a way of understanding Christ's submission to the Father with a different picture than the way it has been talked about historically.  Historically, the Christian tradition has largely held to a position called Eternal Generation (EG) or Eternal Begottenness, where Christ is begotten, not created, and specifically begotten in an eternal sense.  There was never a time where Christ did not exist, but he does derive his "origin" eternally from the Father.  Ware and Grudem instead posit a position called Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS) that stands as an alternative to EG.  The main idea is that the authority of the Father and the submission of the Son is an eternal relation.  Meaning, the submission did not just begin at the incarnation, it has been a part of the inner Trinitarian relationship since before creation.  This relation does not have anything to do with generation or origin (even if its eternal), but the relation is instead a functional way the inner life of God has always existed.  The caveat of course is that this authority and submission is not ontologically rooted in their essence, but simply a functional reality of the inner life of the Trinity.  I won't restate all the arguments, the historical developments, and all the nuances here because others already have done that sufficiently well.  Darren Sumner has a good summary here.

However, while I was reading Sumner's summary, he offers two critiques of EFS that interest me but seem to me to leave Ware and Grudem's position unfazed:

Get ready.  Take a breath.  First is what he calls his theological critique.  He says since Ware presses functional subordination between the Father and Son into eternity, so to speak, it leaves it at odds with another theological doctrine: divine simplicity.  Divine simplicity argues among other things that God does not have a multiplicity of attributes.  And so if Ware's position says the Son for instance has something like the "attribute of submissiveness," and the Father has a different "attribute of superiority," than it leaves EFS standing in tension with divine simplicity.  But this is not a terribly substantive critique.  First, all Ware would need to highlight again is the qualities of submission and authority are functional not ontological.  They are not expressions of their internal essence, but more like a functional disposition.  If that's the case, EFS can get along with divine simplicity quite well.  Related to that, metaphysicians, and especially realists, often make a big deal about the distinction between an attribute and a relation.  Ware is arguing that functional subordination is a relation and does not need to be committed to the position that relations are reducible to attributes.  The ability to create an abstract noun (submissive-NESS) from the relational distinction, does not mean it is an "attribute" in an ontological sense.  And even if it is, then even EG would succumb to this critique.  Remember, eternal generation says the distinctions between the members of the Trinity are a relation of origin.  The relation of begotteness, unbegottenness, etc.  If the relation of divine submissiveness is reducible to a full-fledged attribute in Sumner's ontology such that it compromises divine simplicity than it would seem the traditional EG relations of begotteness and unbegotteness would suffer the same fate.

His second critique is methodological.  The method by which Ware defends his view of the relationship of the members of the Trinity and then compares it to the marriage relationship is self-referential.  It is circular.  The reason, he says, is because Ware uses natural theology to show that the relationship between the Father and the Son is analogous to the human father-son relationship concerning authority and then uses that understanding of the Father and the Son to make an analogy about authority in marriage.  Whatever Sumner makes of the analogies is one thing, but Sumner clearly mischaracterizes Ware's moves as "natural theology."  Natural theology uses other sources of knowledge besides revelation to build a theology.  Sumner admits that God as Father and Son comes from revelation.  And that the bible itself makes the analogy between sonship and Jesus, and fatherhood and God the Father.  Whether the authority structures of sonship and fatherhood are part of what the bible is communicating about God in this analogy is certainly debatable.  But to dismiss it as a "natural theology" move is just a misunderstanding of natural theology.  To call something "natural theology" does not mean it merely uses human observation or reasoning; every theology does that!  If that's what natural theology is, then every piece of literature ever written on theology is "natural theology."  Natural theology bases its knowledge of God exclusively on human observation or abstract reasoning.  Once you bring in revelation into your doctrine of God you have stopped using "natural theology."  Therefore, since Ware starts his argument with revelation about God as Father and Son, he was never even in the ballpark of natural theology.

If anyone is curious, I'm very sympathetic to EFS picture of God's internal relations although I would say there is something else that creates the distinction between the persons of the Trinity.  Even though EG is the traditional view, I have found many of the exegetical and philosophical arguments for it quite unconvincing.

Can Men Commit Adultery?

A local friend of mine who lives here mentioned how common it is for men to have “other women” besides their wives, especially when they travel for work, etc.  These other women are typically foreigners with a different background than the locals.  Of course I was shocked on many different levels.  But I was mostly unprepared for the reality that male infidelity could be so common particularly in this part of the world.  Simply because this is within a part of the world where female fidelity is taken with the utmost seriousness.  So what gives?  Why is the same act on one side of the gender line a betrayal and dishonor of the highest order, while on the other side it has so little consequence?  It was a difficult question to wrap my mind around until I read this article...

Kyle Harper writes that much of the ancient world thought with the same type of categories.  In a 2011 JBL article he examines the development and usage of the Greek word “moicheia” meaning adultery.  For the Greeks (and almost all ancient cultures) adultery did not mean simply having extra-marital relations.  Its meaning was fundamentally about the “violation of a respectable woman.”  And in fact, sleeping with another man's wife was actually construed to be “a crime against another man.”  A crime either against the husband of a respectable woman, or if unmarried a crime against her father (or brothers).  When this is the fundamental understanding of adultery in honor-based cultures, it becomes clearer why there are different ways of thinking about it for men and women.  If a husband in ancient Greece were to have extra-marital sex with his female slave for instance, it is not actually considered adultery.  The same was true for prostitution.  In fact, P. Leithart summarizing Harper says that in ancient Greece “prostitution was not merely tolerated but seen to fulfill a social good.  It allowed men to satisfy their sexual desires without violating honorable women, that is, without the danger of rivalry with another man.”

Harper goes on to argue that in the ancient world the Jews (particularly their prophets) were the first to reconstruct an understanding of adultery that ran across gender lines.  Such that by the second-temple era (and on into the New Testament period) the gulf between the sexual ethics of the Jews and their gentile neighbors was notoriously vast.   

It dawned on me that the contrast I noticed here was more nuanced than just a simple double standard.  There were new definitions and different categories being used than I was working with.  Protecting the honor of respectable women was held with the utmost esteem.  And it brings into focus the ethics that come with the shame and violation of such honor.  This explains the rigidity of their standards from this angle.  But at the same time this understanding theoretically leaves open the question of extra-marital affairs by men that don't affect “respectable” women. And at least in the observations of my friend here, they are not just “theoretical.”

De-debunking Trinitarian Analogies (cont)

A few months ago I argued here that the way modern evangelical scholars have debunked Trinitarian analogies actually misses what a real analogy is supposed to do.  And therefore with more limited goals for what actually counts as a decent analogy, what should we say about the historical and modern analogies of the Trinity?  Are they workable?  Would I ever use them?

If you see these potential analogies as illustrating one significant aspect of the Trinity, and not every aspect, then in fact these analogies are quite redeemable and very useful.  For example, most analogies regarding the Trinity are made to illustrate how God's threeness and his oneness can intersect simultaneously.  Again this is only one part of the doctrine.  But one that is difficult to wrap one's minds around which makes an analogy quite fitting.  Lets take the water analogy again.  A single component of water (H2O) exists in three different states (ice, liquid, vapor).  There is one substance and three ways it expresses itself.  I'll say that again, so it is clear what the analogy is doing:  The Trinity is like water in that (and only in that) it is one substance that expresses itself in three different ways.  I know many of you have an innate distrust in these analogies and you are already instinctively thinking of counterexamples.  Counterexamples like: God is a person and knows everything whereas water has no intelligence or personality.  God is not made of Hydrogen and Oxygen.  And further God is simultaneously three, not three at different times depending on temperature and pressure like water.  Yes, these are all true.  But if you read my first post on this, you already know what I'm going to say.  None of that matters as to whether it is decent analogy.  Because those counterexamples again miss the purpose of the analogy or any analogy for that matter.  In order to disprove the analogy, the counterexamples must show a disconnect of the precise aspect that is being compared, not any random disconnect you can show between the two.  Thus, only in the circumstance where either water or the Trinity fail to illustrate one substance being expressed in three ways, will there be room for showing a meaningful disconnect in the analogy.  I have not been convinced there is such a disconnect in this case.  And I'm also convinced that many other Trinitarian analogies are similarly useful when they are nuanced in this way and understood within the proper framework of what an analogy does.

St. Augustine's analogies of the mind, St. Patrick's botanical analogies, even the dreaded egg analogy can be equally redeemed in so far as they helpfully illustrate the one particular aspect of the Trinity that they actually intend to explain.  Some analogies of the Trinity don't focus on the threeness and oneness paradox.  Some analogies are used to explain the interpersonal relationship between the members of the Trinity.  For example, I have used many times the analogy of marriage as an illustration of how the Son is ontologically equal, but functionally subordinate to the Father in their relationship.  I am convinced the bible teaches these same values in the relationship between a wife and her husband.  Whether the bible teaches this and whether the analogy helpfully illustrates this point can be debated.  But to say the analogy would fail because for instance the Father is all-knowing while husbands are deeply limited in their knowledge, or because the analogy leaves out the Holy Spirit, etc. is to again misunderstand what an analogy is doing.  Debunking analogies does not mean showing that there are some random differences between the two things being compared.  In fact, if there weren't any differences, than the only thing you could compare with an analogy is identical things!  The only thing you could say the state of Arizona is like, for example, is wait for it... the state of Arizona –which of course is not an analogy, it is a meaningless tautology.  Debunking an analogy means showing they are different in the precise way something is being compared.  It would mean showing that marriages are not ontologically equal or functionally distinct like the Father and the Son or vice versa.

Not all analogies are created equal.  But their real function does need to be understood before we can starts offering specific and meaningful critiques.  Ultimately, absorbing the doctrine of the trinity requires more than precision with how you talk about various categories of being.  I might even suggest it requires a little wonder and imagination.  And of course the best place for that to begin is through power of a simple analogy.

“Do We Have Free Will?”, A Critical Review

Are we automatons?  Or are we self-determined agents?  In a Psychology Today article, Seth Schwartz outlines some of the arguments on both sides of the free-will debate and then suggests some pragmatic ways forward.  Here it is:  Just pretend like you have free will.

Schwartz wants us to feel the weight of the scientific pull toward determinism.  He spends nearly half his article summarizing the major developments of neuroscience and the difficulties it raises about free will.  For instance, after observing the brain with varieties of image scanning technology, many neuroscientists argue “we can see there is no agent there making choices.”  It is unclear what “an agent making choices” might have looked liked to them.  I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it was more sophisticated than the Arquillian alien at the controls of a human brain in Men in Black.  But it does leave one wondering how an invisible self-determining agent/mind/soul is supposed to be found by using an MRI.  It is like searching through all the microchips and literal hardware parts of a computer system in order to verify there is some particular software “inside.”  You don't find software like that.  Its like dissecting all the chambers and valves of a human heart to see if you can find love inside it.

Schwartz also mentions a series of experiements by other neurophysicists like Ben Libet and also geneticists who all work with the assumption that somehow physical correlations inherently force out explanations that consist of mental phenomena and free agency.  A rather dubious assumption in my estimation.  And notice it is a philosophical assumption, not a psychological or scientific one.  And when you continue to trace the second half of Schwartz's argument you realize the philosophical baggage gets even heavier toward the end of the article.

What is the pull against determinism for Schwartz?  Why would we want to believe there is a free will?  He points out (correctly) that denying free will would undermine our ethical and legal systems.  Why would we punish criminals if they genuinely had no choice to do the crimes they committed?  Spoiling children or failing exams cannot be truly blameworthy in any real sense.  In fact, any system of merit or demerit will be inherently undermined in a world where no one actually has a choice.  For Schwartz (and hopefully for most human beings) this is a bit unsettling.  So where does this leave him?

Schwartz references the research of psychologist Roy Baumeister who found that people who deny that we make free choices “are led to behave in socially irresponsible ways like cheating or refusing to help others.”  He continues by asking, “if Baumeister is correct, then does it really matter whether we actually have free will?  Or does it matter only whether we believe that we do?”  The answer to that question is whether social responsibility is more important than discovering and living by what is true and real.  The answer to which interestingly requires philosophical, not psychological reasons.  In the end, Schwartz finds himself saying all the determinants of behavior are not sufficiently explained by science yet.  Nor does it look like they will be very soon.  And since science has not yet given the final verdict, how should we go forward?  His answer: Be socially responsible.  And that means pretending that you really do have free will.  Whether or not this raw pragmatism is philosophically defensible, this is a very strange conclusion for an article that is purportedly about psychology. Schwartz does admit that psychology might tell us more what belief in free will does, than whether it exists.  But that is a very different discussion than the one the title of his article purports to discuss.  I probably should have assumed a psychologist asking a fundamentally philosophical question is only going to be able to gloss out a very thin and piecemeal philosophical answer.  Hopefully the readers of Psychology Today don't feel slighted by getting an amateur defense for philosophical pragmatism when they thought they were getting good science.

Some More Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens.  It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head.  And it is his head that splits.”

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

The Science of Applause

The patterns of an audience's applause is a strange thing if you start to think about it.  Have you noticed it usually just takes one inspired person to start an applause in a big group?  Some join the applause to equally express their agreement.  Some join in to make sure there isn't that really awkward "one-person clap" which makes you wish no one clapped at all.  Many others join in unconsciously just because everyone else is clapping.

But there are some applauses that begin not really because of inspired audience members, but literally because there is a part of the performance where the music stops or the passionate speaker pauses and an applause is actually expected.  Have you noticed this?  It is very interesting.  They will literally draw an applause out of an audience.  This isn't necessarily manipulating.  For example, in a school play an audience may genuinely want to give an applause throughout the performance, but for disruption purposes they are instead guided to specific points where applauses are then expected.  But for many other performances or speeches there are not such noble reasons.  In fact, if you pay attention you will notice it is often quite an artificial contrivance.  Think of some fiery political speeches or some impassioned preachers for example.  Many of these people know how to artificially draw out an applause at the right moments to solidify their wooing of an audience.  Or think of bands at a concert and the way they might end their songs quite dramatically with the expectation of applause.  Can the audience do anything but applaud?  In these situations many audiences often will clap out of necessity or habit, or not wanting to make the speaker or performer feel bad.  All this is quite intriguing to me.

In many contemporary worship services it is not infrequent to hear an applause at the end of a worship song.  I wonder sometimes, what is the congregation truly applauding in church?  There is not one answer.  Every church is different of course.  Many are carried away in worship and adoration of God.  And the applause is actually a collective expression of their sense of the magnificence of God.  But I would also say, for many churches there are not such noble reasons.  Some impassioned church bands will do the same thing many other bands do on the secular stage; and they artificially draw out an applause from the congregation for their performance, like was mentioned above.  Some are not as brazen, but congregations are still confused and find themselves clapping for reasons they probably would have difficulty explaining.  To what or to whom they are clapping is quite ambiguous.

Some congregations, no doubt, just want to be respectful to the church band for its hard work and performance in the worship.  But there again lies something of the true underlying values of many church members and its leaders.  Church is an experience, where the congregation is on the receiving/viewing end and the band and the pastor are the performers.  And the one thing a respectful audience always does toward performers is give them a respectful applause.  I wonder how much of our fellowships and the members thereof actually view church through this lens.  A lens of performance.  In fact, there are many churches who do not call the members gathered for worship the congregation, etc. but actually call them the "audience."  Audiences receive performances.  Audiences don't participate in performance.  Audiences are always meant to be doing something significantly different than those on stage.  Is that really how we are supposed to think about church?  Is the Pastor or the worship leader doing something fundamentally different than everybody else?  Are those in the pew experiencing the worship or producing the worship?  It's very telling what's actually happening often by just the language that is used.  I wonder what would change if in people's minds God was actually the audience (not themselves) and every church member is on display for Him on Sundays.  Or even better, if everyone is the audience of just one performer: God.  I wonder what would change in how music is lead or how sermons are preached.  I also wonder the ways it would challenge congregations to rethink the objects of its applause.

De-debunking Trinitarian Analogies

It is said St. Patrick once explained the Trinity to the pagan inhabitants of Ireland by using a three-leaf clover.  Augustine preferred the psychological analogies of the mind, the emotions, the will, etc. as three expressions of one being.  Other analogies such as a single component of water (H2O) existing in three different states (ice, liquid, vapor), or a man who exists with three distinct roles (husband, father, friend, etc.) have become popular.  But actually Trinitarian analogies have now fallen out of favor.

In his systematic theology, Wayne Grudem typifies the theological posture of standard evangelical scholarship toward these type of Trinitiarian analogies.  First, he debunks the adequacy of the more common analogies comparing them to ancient and modern heresies, and then summarizes: "It is best to conclude that no analogy adequately teaches about the Trinity and all are misleading in significant ways."  So how does he debunk them?

Take the water analogy for example.  Grudem outlines its inadequacy by showing that there are parts of the analogy that don't translate to the Trinity.  For example "...no quantity of water is ever [in these states] at the same time," or "the element of intelligent personality is lacking."  But this is just a misunderstanding of what an analogy does.  Grudem confuses an analogy for an allegory.  An allegory has lots of elements and parts that are meant to be translated and interpreted as a symbol for something else.  Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory because many of the parts of the story are meant to be interpreted as a symbol of our spiritual journey.  An analogy is similar, but differs in one important respect.  There only needs to be one element that is translatable for an analogy to be well formed.  For example, God is our rock, the bible says.  This is an analogy.  How is God like a rock?  God is firm and immovable and trustworthy for building our life upon.  But is God made of granite?  Do rocks have intelligent personality?  No.  But I hope you can see that this doesn't mean the analogy is inadequate or misleading!  That is because the true function of an analogy is more limited than what Grudem and so many others assume in this context.  I am sure you can think of hundreds of biblical analogies along these lines.  God is a shield.  Jesus is a lamb.  Paul is a drink offering.  All these analogies have non-translatable features.  God is not made of metal.  Jesus does not produce wool from his body.  Paul is not inanimate liquid.  But none of those possible features mean the analogy is misleading or inadequate.  No analogies, including Trinitarian ones, need to be translatable in every or even in most parts for it to be an accurate or decent analogy.  It only needs at least one part.

Grudem knows this.  But I'm not sure he has worked through the implications of this for Trinitarian analogies.  He even knows that there are biblical words that are meant to be an analogy of the members of the Trinity.  The bible says God is a Father.  It also says Jesus is the Son, and the Word of God.  He says they are "close to an analogy" of the Trinity.  It is true they are not analogies of the doctrine of the Trinity per se, but they undoubtedly are analogies of the members of the Trinity and the inter-Trinitarian relationships.  And they are faithful biblical analogies not because for instance everything that characterizes a son in a typical family is like Jesus.  They are faithful analogies because one (or maybe two) characteristics of sonship match perfectly to Jesus.  If we only demand this more limited role for analogies whenever we (or the bible!) use them, why then do we demand some entirely different standard from Trinitarian analogies?

Skin-n-Bone Trinitarianism

Peter Leithart in highlighting parts of the historical work of Philip Dixon (Nice and Hot Disputes), observes that beginning with the English Enlightenment critical writers began launching “moralistic and rationalistic attacks on the doctrine [of the Trinity].  It didn't make sense, and, besides, it made no difference.  A doctrine so rationally absurd couldn't be the cornerstone of religion; a doctrine so practically insignificant wasn't worth believing.”

“Dixon argues that the more fateful dynamic came not from outside the church but from within, not from detractors of Trinitarian theology, but from defenders.  In responding to attacks, orthodox Christians turned the Trinity into a polemical doctrine, and the rich speculations that characterized the earlier part of the seventeenth century dried up.  The Trinity becomes a sheer, irrational datum of revelation, to be believed and defended but not a source of intellectual and spiritual delight...”

Here I Stand: Disney's Frozen vs. Martin Luther

In the cresendo moment of the Oscar-winning best original song “Let it Go” in Disney's 2013 film Frozen the character and hero of the story repeats resoundingly “Here I stand!”

Martin Luther in his famous defense before the Holy Roman Emperor used the same phrase: “Here I stand.”

But as Tim Keller and others have pointed out, the meaning behind these two identical phrases are vastly different.  Right before making this pronouncement, the character Elsa in Frozen sings:  “It is time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through.  No right, no wrong, no rules for me.  I'm free.”  Right before making the same pronouncement, Martin Luther says “...my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”  Notice the difference.

Keller says, “Luther meant he was free from fear and from other authorities because he was bound by the Word of God and its norms.  Elsa speaks for contemporary culture by saying she can be free only if there are no boundaries at all.”

Jaded and Confused

A viral wedding video is now hitting mainstream news after getting almost 2 million views in less than a week.  It is a New Zealand video of family and friends performing a traditional Maori war dance called the Haka to honor the bride and groom.  The video is filled passion, zeal, tears, and joy to the point where the bride and groom themselves are overcome with the same feelings.

Here is the video

The response to the video is what interests me the most.  We're not too familiar with these powerful emotions in our culture.  Or at least the first two I mentioned.  And it was quite evident in the massive response to this video that our culture doesn't even have a category for this level of zeal and passion for anything really.  We grind through our day at the office, we try not to stir the pot too much at home, we chuckle a little watching our favorite TV show, and then we do it all again the next day.  Were also incredibly jaded.  Americans are the most entertained culture in human history. But also the most bored culture in human history.  Is there anything more ironic?  We've seen it all –usually in chunks of about 30 second sound bites (because we don't really have a much longer attention span).  And because we don't have a category for this level of pure passion, we shovel it off as craziness, backwardness, etc to make ourselves feel better.  

Do you have anything in your life worth getting this passionate about?  Is there an aspect to your life that would ever stir you like this?  I'm convinced that the popularity of this video is primarily because we are stunned by such a rare picture of passion and zeal.  It is the rarity that leaves us confused; and hopefully leaves us thinking there might be more to human passion and the objects worthy of such, than the self-induced numbness we often find ourselves under.

The Rise of Nationalism

“Among the ideas that the Middle East imported from the West, none has been more popular and durable than nationalism,” says Goldschmidt and Davidson in their Concise History of the Middle East.  “Often called the religion of the modern world... we define nationalism as the desire of a large group of people to create or maintain a common statehood, to have their own rulers, laws, and other governmental institutions.  This desired political community, or nation, is the object of that group's supreme loyalty.”

It might seem strange to American ears, but having a nation-state that governs according to the interests of its people is a relatively new phenomena in history.  It started in Europe and toward the end of the 19th century began to reverberate around the world and into the Middle East.  They go on to say: “[Middle Easterners] learned that bad governments did not have to be endured (indeed, many earlier Muslims had defied tyrannical rulers), that individuals had rights and freedoms that should be protected against official coercion, and that people could belong to political communities based on race, language, culture, and shared historical experience -in short they formed nations.”

But of course creating political borders of defined groups of people based on language, ethnicity, and culture can create a charged atmosphere that often tends toward uniformity and not diversity.  It can tend toward exclusion and monolithic communities, not inclusive ones.  So for example in South Asia, a place where Hindus and Muslims lived side by side for centuries, two new nations were created in 1947 (ostensibly to serve the unique interests of each people) and what happened?  Immediate population exchange.  Hindus left Pakistan.  Muslims left India.  The opposite of diversity, inclusion, and peaceful co-existence.  A natural segregation based on race and especially religion became the real product of nationalism and its nation-creating solutions.  The same happened at the creation of the modern nations of Greece and Turkey.  Population exchange.  There are dozens of similar cases, especially in Africa.  The fact is that unless checked nation-states naturally create an atmosphere that tends toward homogeneous communities of the same race, culture, religion, and language.

Nevertheless, western European and North American countries have historically and quite uniquely maintained checks built into the political system that have kept much of these trends at bay.  Of course America was created with these types of checks built right into the constitution (e.g. 1st and 15th amendments).  But for many reasons the collective feelings have begun to shift.  The migrant crisis for example has forced many in Europe to rethink why they should continue to allow influxes of diverse communities into their country.  America even has a politician publicly promoting the exclusion of people based solely on their religion.  And his popularity has not waned in its wake.  The checks put in place are beginning to erode and I wonder if the natural trend will carry the West along the same trajectory of so many others.

But there is more to reflect on here.  There is a value at the core of nationalism that is pulling these trends.  And these two historians have defined it perfectly: “This desired political community, or nation, is the object of that group's supreme loyalty.”  The key word is supreme.  Individuals are to subordinate any other loyalties underneath their supreme loyalty to the nation.  The trends mentioned above are simply symptoms of this underlying value.  It still surprises me that such a vast swath of Christendom continues to live under this vision of loyalty and allegiance.