Not to condemn the world
An Augustinian is going to recognize that living in this world is a dirty business. An Augustinian is also going to invite the world to be better.
If we agree on that, how should we apply it?
Tagged: antithesis RSS
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D
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D
De-mystifying idols
Calvin on the appearance of truth among the profane:
Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver (Institutes, 2.2.15).
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D
Goat milk
Question for discussion:
Let’s all close our eyes and imagine a certain post-theonomist, VanTillian definition of the antithesis. Got it? Can you picture the black and white edges, the smooth categorical texture, the easy duality of ascribing a grand unity of instinct and action? (Readers of Dutch Reformed theology may notice that this philosophical concoction is an unfair exaggeration of Dooyeweerd and perhaps Van Til; but can we admit that we ourselves have all at some point used such a caricature of the antithesis?)
Okay. Now where does love of neighbor fit in? Where is our theology of creation? Where is our (Calvinistic) humanism? How do we not end up with a conversionistic piety which consumes us with doubt about whether our actions are pure enough?
I’m reading George Marsden’s biography of Jonathan Edwards (a really fun read, btw) and I think there’s a very strange connection between late Puritan piety (of the navel-gazing, half-way-covenant variety) and modern day exaggerations of the antithesis. Both are preoccupied with the possibility that an impure heart (perhaps undetected) might spoil seemingly “good” actions. Edwards’ father styled himself as a expert in discerning true conversion from false conversion. False conversion would result in seeming piety, only to sour and later reveal that nothing of true worth ever came out of the original “awakening.” Of course, for Jonathan and others, this led to a paralyzing doubt: what if their conversion was empty and all the good works were devoid of value?
All this to say, I’m not convinced that the antithesis, as sometimes used, is a helpful way of living the Christian life. Is there an ultimate dividing of sheep from goats? Of course. But goats make milk, too.
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F
It’s sad that your meditation here depends upon goat milk — does anyone like that stuff? At all?
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D
I’m sure some of Austin’s granola friends swear by it.
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A
Gotta agree – the goat’s milk analogy grossed me out. Otherwise I love this.
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F
Agreed. I have no argument with Davey, save for the fact that I believe that the word “antithesis” itself can be saved. That’s all.
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D
Fair enough. But words are tricky things — they have histories. I dare you to walk around Davie Village in downtown Vancouver trying to reclaim the original usage of “gay.”
Sometimes it’s just more helpful to use a different framework.
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Doug Jones
I’m sure I’m missing something in this discussion, but I’ll confess to still being being an advocate for “antithesis.” I’ve embraced Van Tilian notions of antithesis for decades, but I don’t recognize it in Davey’s descriptions. I’m sure he’s right, but I’m wondering if it might be a Dutch vs. presbyterian divide. In the Recon, Presby circles I’m familiar with, Edwardsian piety never entered into the discussion of it. Equally bad, though, we held it as a purely intellectual or gnostic division of ideas — Christian ideas vs. non-Christian ideas. That kind of antithesis seems misguided and anti-incarnational, but not antithesis itself. It seems we’re on much firmer ground to see the antithesis in Jesus’ explicit terms — Church vs. world and especially God/Christ vs. Mammon, which together seem synonymous in the end. That antithesis seems to answer Davey’s important worry about love directly; it’s right at the center. But I’ve probably misunderstood.
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D
Thanks very much for the thoughts! And yes, the confusion (which resulted in a freak-agreement between Austin and Frank) is entirely due to my scattershot, overly-theoretical thoughts. I’ll try not to muddle things further with a few more preliminary thoughts:
1) I think it’s fair to say that many Van Tilians in presbyterianism have avoided the late Puritan over-emphasis on conversion and heart religion; to some extent, that’s precisely what FV is all about. Even as we reject introspective heart-religion, I think we may fall prey to it in other ways. It’s struck me that the formulation of the antithesis (and not just my exaggeration of it above) follows directly from the whole system of early evangelicalism, which itself followed from the 17th century pietists of central Europe, who in turn are rather anabaptist. I don’t think it’s any accident that Van Tilians like Francis Schaeffer find their closest allies in Pentecostals like Pat Robertson and Wesleyans like James Dobson. The turn toward an inner authenticity is of course not unique, but it also strikingly modern. But that’s another post.
2) I’m somewhat uncomfortable with saying that part of our antithesis is God vs. the World, since so many people have so many different unspoken assumptions about what that means, exactly. I think there’s got to be something left of the Jewish idea that we’re here in part to “repair the world.” Or that Christ did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. Or that creation groans for redemption. I know that certain postmillennial clichés can sometimes swallow those ideas up in easy, abstract fantasies, but I do want to keep those ideas nonetheless. So if we’re going to talk about the antithesis, perhaps we can approach it with a healthy dose of eschatology. The Church’s mission is still to work toward the healing of the world — sometimes despite the world’s best efforts. Things, in se, can’t be absolutely evil. Their perversion from good turns to evil, in the old Augustinian sense. So in many ways, idolatry does violence both to the false worshipper and to the idol.
3) So, to put it more clearly (I hope): perhaps we should keep the antithesis, but that “antithesis” or distinction should be Creator vs. creature (as Van Til himself suggests). That’s a qualitative antithesis I’m entirely comfortable with. That’s why I’m still content to position myself alongside Barth. In a some sense, Christians have more in common with non-Christians than we do with God precisely because we’re creatures. (Of course there are several exceptions to this.) I think it’s equally true that on the other side of the eschaton and glorification, we will see God face to face. But until then, maybe it’s safer to proceed with a large dose of epistemic humility. None of this is to deny that we are still the unique people of God, a sacrament of His salvation. I’m just wondering out loud whether the “antithesis” as sometimes defined misdirects our mission. I hope I get this straight from Augustine, but I’m sure I’m corrupting it along the way somehow.
4) Practically, what does this mean? I’d love to get input from those who have more insight than I possibly could. A few questions keep getting raised for me: Why should we be so ambivalent (or protest, even) when non-Christians are providing the needy with aid? Does someone need to be a member of the Christian community in order to imitate virtue? I don’t think we can say that. The splendid vices are often quite splendid. As Christians, we should be very glad they exist. God may be more profligate with His grace than we are comfortable with. Or with food, a popular topic of debate: I know close friends who have told me how much trouble they have taking the advice of fellows like Michael Pollan on eating local food because he believes in evolution. I think this is something that happens, in part, because of the logical implications of the antithesis, as commonly applied.
I’ve gone on too long. I should say that I’d be all too happy to hear any critique, violent or pacifistic. I’m hoping to post some more on this throughout the term here at ND. Strangely, two of my classes keep directing me back to this question.
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Donny
First, I have to agree with Austin and Frank about the goat’s milk thing. You lost me there, Davey.
As for your actual points, Augustine is exactly who I turn to for a good understanding of antithesis. I think you should try to resolve some of your scattershot around that. If the antithesis is between rightly and wrongly ordered love, then it gets you all the idealogical antithesis you find in Van Til, and also all the practicality you can handle.
In this way, you can learn from pagans. They really do love, in some sense, what they’re pursuing, and so they learn quite a bit about it. Pagans can make a great lasagna.
But if the food is all we’re discussing, we’re missing the point. Sure, non-Christians can give money to the poor, make great food, build sturdy buildings. But what about the people? If we’re going Augustinian, it isn’t just about the objects, or the actions; it’s about how we approach those objects and actions. Why do we love them? What else do we love?
So, sure, we can mine things from non-Christians, or we can appreciate that they’re doing some good things, but that’s only surface level. If we’re talking about redeeming the world, we’re talking about redeeming people, and thus re-ordering their loves so they see their food, or their environmentalism, or their giving to the poor in the proper light. Does this make their food, environmentalism, or giving different? In the long run, it better. Otherwise, you’re saying a wrongly ordered love doesn’t work itself out in the world, and if you say that, we get to call you a Gnostic.
Of course, Augustine’s whole order of love concept can be replaced with Trinitarian self-love vs. self-sacrifice, or other biblical expressions (maybe God vs. Mammon?). The point for me, though, is this: yes, we can learn how to make a sandwich from a pagan, or eat a sandwich made from a pagan, or have smiling, fuzzy feelings about pagans who make good sandwiches, but if we’re redeeming the world, the issue isn’t the sandwich. The issue is the sandwich, the chef, the person eating, the entire community of relationships. And if that’s the case, the chef’s order of love, religion, worldview, whatever you want to call it, is huge. It doesn’t mean I won’t eat as his restaurant if I know he’s a pagan, but if Christianity is anything, I definitely hope eating at his restaurant would be a better experience if he did become a Christian. To say otherwise seems to cheapen Christianity. Or the sandwich.
Now I wonder if that made any sense, or I even really addressed what you were saying. We’ll see.
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D
Donny,
If that’s the antithesis, then I’ve got no problem whatsoever. I like the way you frame it. Heck, I’ll get it tattooed on my forearm. The thing is, I really don’t know if that’s how the antithesis is most often applied. Speaking only for myself, I know I never had such a well-nuanced idea of it. Rather than taking an Augustinian-eudaimonistic approach to the “antithesis” (as you seem to), I think we often tend to apply a sort of Edwardsian dualism, where it’s easy to dismiss the efforts (or “splendid vices”) of non-Christians because they lack true conversion. From an Augustinian perspective, of course, both non-Christians and Christians are not static individuals. We’re growing or regressing all the time. Sometimes, as with Augustine’s growth through neo-Platonism, non-Christians are moving through unbelief toward a (miraculous) revelation of divine truth. As creatures, we can’t see the end of the story, and I think that might give us good reason to be careful with our judgments.
But all that to say: Yes and amen. You put it extremely well.
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F
And the truth comes out! Davey just doesn’t like the word “antithesis.” I blame ND.
(And excellent words, Donny — you’ve said everything I wish I could say about antithesis.)
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Doug Jones
I also give three cheers for Donny. I’d just worry a smidge that even the language of “ordered love” could turn ethereal and intellectual too easily. Donny guards against this with talk of “work itself out in the world.” But modern Christians tend to assume love is an invisible mental state; Jesus emphasized visible actions. I can see a church clothing people.
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C
Forgive me if I’m retreading ground that has already well been trod, but I think I might have another helpful way of thinking about this.
Antithesis connotes an “is not” relationship between two things. A line – often a well-defined and encatechismed line – that is black on one side and white on the other. This type of distinction is important, and there is significant Biblical precedent for it. Holy and profane, abiding and burned branches, sheep and goats; our parables and customs burst at the seams with antithetical language.
But our wise men teach us otherwise. Peter eats meat, Timothy has unspeakable and irreversible operations, Christ dines with prostitutes and tax collectors. This trajectory is found in the poetic aspects of scripture as well. The curtain veiling the Holy of Holies was torn, the Tabernacle laver represents at once gentiles and baptism, and even Christ Himself became not only man but also sin for us. All of these things pet the antithesis cat the wrong way. These all define an “is” relationship. Meat is now clean, Timothy is now a Jew, Christ is man, Chris is sin for us.
There is a tension here between “is” and “is not,” but most of us are familiar with a classic way of resolving this issue: the Trinity.
Going all Trinitarian on an issue can tempt us to trade the intellectually tidy and abstract for any sort of practical resolution, but I still find this helpful. For instance, we are Christians, strangers in this world; we also once were sinners, and called in some ways to be like those sinners in order to bring the Gospel to them. We must at once recognize the line that has been drawn and be faithful to step over it.
Likewise, I find it interesting that antithesis draws a line in the sand, but we learn a much different impulse every Sunday at worship. The gospel does not build walls but instead sets tables. The gospel is indeed vertical with respect to God and his work in us, but his work through us is horizontal, covering the four corners of the earth in something impossible to construe as a wall.
So we must balance these things. Like many great Christian dogmas, you can only be sure that you’ve found it once you’ve lost it in paradox. Holiness and piety demand that we love the Good, but humility and obedience demand that we seek the lost. It is easy to sacrifice one for the other; I think it’s pretty obvious which way Davey thinks we have wobbled.
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C
Wow, that picture is huge. JUST LIKE THE TRINITY
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D
Thanks, Chris. I’m consoled by the fact that my incoherent foray into all this produced such quality stuff in the end. That’s what friends are for.
My only objection is to that horrendous clip art you imported from someone else’s server.
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Donny
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I also give three cheers for Donny. I’d just worry a smidge that even the language of “ordered love” could turn ethereal and intellectual too easily. Donny guards against this with talk of “work itself out in the world.” But modern Christians tend to assume love is an invisible mental state; Jesus emphasized visible actions. I can see a church clothing people.
—-Yeah, and that’s where actual wisdom and practice comes in to regulate where we draw lines. We can talk about, in some abstract way, how non-Christians don’t really love anything, and that only Christians, with our proper orientation, can love something. But that’s hard to say if we’re not the ones feeding the hungry. If talk about real actions, then we start looking like we’re the ones with disordered love, which just makes this whole antithesis thing far too messy. You can’t put that into giant, horribly colored clipart.
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A
@Donny – Oh snap!
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C
I think I managed to find clipart that represents disordered love, antithesis, and messiness.
Also, it’s giant, horribly colored, and has pigs; I see your 10, and raise you 20.
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Donny
Impressive. Throw in a copy of the Institutes and you’ve got me.
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G
Wow. See, this is why I am a stranger to HPN. I leave it alone for 2 days, and have 2 hours of catch-up reading and mental gymnastics to do just to be current. For this reason, I like the graphics. Thank you Chris. Also, Davey, you will need more forearm for that tattoo.
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F
Antithesis: An Example
Davey and I have been going back and forth on “antithesis”—hammering out what it means, trying to figure out if we agree or disagree (since we’re both prone to generalizing), and working towards a workable definition. Except that I hate definitions, so I keep protesting and asking for a story instead.
And now I have one.
It’s not by me, nor is it explicitly about antithesis. But I think it sheds some light on the topic and is worth the read. It’s titled “Dimensions,” and it’s in Alice Munro’s latest short story collection, Too Much Happiness. You can read the story here, on Google books.
If you’re interested in the topic, take a gander and see what you think. Does it shed any light? Or am I committing gross isogesis? You be the judge.
More on antithesis later. Stay tuned.
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D
I can’t access the story on Google books. And I don’t think Notre Dame’s library carries books by Canadians.
What’s your summary/extrapolation of Munro’s antithesis?
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A
Charles Darwin to receive apology from the Church of England for being “over-defensive” and “over-emotional” in rejecting his ideas. Good grief!
F is discussing. 
Donny, 
F 3:54 pm on January 27, 2010 Permalink
Love this, particularly the last sentence. Thanks. JE