Morality and ‘Sentiments’

Well I’m still wading through Sources of the Self.  Most of the time I feel like  it’s all I can do just to track with Taylor’s argument and somewhat repetitive style of writing but the story he’s telling is making some sense as I put the pieces together.

Near the middle of the book he describes eighteenth century Deism and its impact on our understanding of morality.  Deism has often been described as the ‘halfway house’ between Reformation religion and Enlightenment secularism, a stage where people did not yet have the courage to disbelieve but started to talk about their beliefs in exclusively rationalistic terms.  God still exists, in this view, but his function has been reduced to a kind of ‘first cause’ or ‘ultimate explanation’ and nothing more.

There is a growing conviction during this period of the orderliness of nature.  Science was producing a picture of a well-designed (if I can use this dangerous word) machine.  The Deist belief was that the ‘ parts’ of nature interlocked perfectly according to the providence of God.

The vision of the ‘good life’ is seen in terms of how human nature fits within this larger puzzle.  The view here  is very optimistic.  Human nature is designed to pursue happiness and avoid pain.  As we pursue happiness we will inevitably benefit the larger society.  Our ‘natures’ fit within the larger structure of Nature and the whole thing combines to form a harmonious whole.

What is fascinating about this period is the way in which our sentiments become moral authorities.  It becomes normal to appeal to our ‘nature’ when trying to describe what kind of lives we should be living.  This is obviously a significant shift from the previously dominant (and Christian) view that human nature is somehow conflicted and should be viewed with at least a little suspicion even as it is affirmed as bearing God’s image.

But the Deists came to see human nature as our link to what was truest about ourselves and that we gained access to that nature through our sentiments or moral intuitions.  Taylor summarizes,

“Sentiment is now important, because it is in a certain way the touchtone of the morally good.  Not because feeling that something is good makes it so… but rather because undistorted, normal feeling is my way of access into the design of things, which is the real constitutive good, determining good and bad.”

So sentiments aren’t good in and of themselves but they do give us a window onto our design and that design is the real and lasting Good.  We want and do the things that we do because we were designed by God to pursue our own happiness and this happiness will ultimately result in the ordered, rational Nature that God intended.   This ’subjectivization’ of morality becomes, for Taylor, a significant stage on the journey toward the modern self.

It seems to me that this appeal to sentiment has lingered on even as we have lost confidence in this harmonious view of nature.  I see it in this vague  but omnipresent cultural imperative to be ‘true to ourselves’.   I’ve always been left somewhat confused by the way this phrase assumes that personal authenticity is greatest good under which all others must find their place.

In reading Taylor it seems obvious to me that we have retained our confidence in our sentiments even as we have lost the confidence that they point to anything beyond themselves.

Looking In, Looking Up

I’m now in the middle of Taylor’s survey of how conceptions of the self have changed historically.  He observes a key shift between the writings of Plato and Augustine.

For Plato the fundamental problem of the soul was that it was facing in the wrong direction.  Meant to dwell on the eternal or the spiritual, we wallow instead in sensory pleasure and the cares of material existence.  The way to the higher life is to change directions, to turn around, to attend to things that are of ultiimate signficance and not be distracted by things that will pass away.

Augustine, by way of contrast, is the forerunner of Taylor describes as ‘inwardness’. He is the first one who saw the path ‘up’ as involving a journey ‘in’.  After Augustine people saw themselves as occupying a ‘first-person standpoint’ in a way that did not exist before.  This is where we start to see arguments about God’s existence that begin with ‘innate ideas’ like perfection or goodness (later expressions come from Anselm, Aquinas and ultimately Descartes).

The key to these kinds of arguments is the idea that God is both external (i.e. something ‘out there,’ and available to be known) as well as internal (he is himself the source of our rational thinking, our feeling, our longing).  Taylor puts it well I think,

God is behind the eye, as well as the One whose Ideas the eye strives to discern clearly before it.  He is found in the intimacy of my self-presence.  Indeed he is closer to me than I am myself, while being infinitely above me… as the soul animates the body, so God does the soul.

Taylor is not yet at the point of advocating this view (he is merely describing it) but it seems very helpful as I think about some of the confusions that persist regarding questions of God’s action and presence in the world.

The Modern Self and the Good Life

Taylor is quite interested in the question of how we talk about the moral life in the modern world.  Given the ‘disenchantment’  of the world and the rejection of transcendent sources, how do we decide on what to value and what to reject?  What is our vision of a ‘good’ or ‘full’ or ‘meaningful’ life?  Do these words even mean anything?  Can we ground these key definitions in anything beyond our own pragmatic or utilitarian concerns? What ought to motivate our behaviour?

Taylor finds an interesting angle here as he contrasts more traditional views with modern naturalism.  If theists (or even Platonists) find their vision of goodness and human dignity in a transcendent God (or Good), many naturalists see the good life in terms of a heroic determination to face a meaningless existence with courage.

“Man can be annhilated by the universe,” Tayor summarizes, “but his greatness consists in his going down knowingly.”  So the ‘good life’ might no longer consist in love of God and neighbour, instead it consists in the “ability to stand unconsoled and uncowed in the face of the indifferent immensity of the world.”

The motivation for action also changes given this view. Where a Christian perspective might take love as basic – our love in its own meagre ways imitating the love that we have been shown by God, the naturalist perspective sees respect as basic.  In its own way, observing someone who takes a despairing outlook on the ultimate ‘meaning of things’ and is not shaken by it can be inspiring.

What was interesting was how Taylor presented this ‘heroic’ attitude – this willingness to fearlessly face a meaningless universe – as a motivator for behaviour.  It can inspire those who seek to emulate it and the respect generated can further motivate the holder of this kind of a view.  And so respect becomes a critical ethical impulse and this becomes a source of meaning for those who hold to this view.

What was interesting for me was the way that Taylor sets these two visions of the good life side by side and points out how they both function as narratives within which the modern self seeks an orientation toward what is good.  The definition of what counts as a ‘good life’ clearly changes.  But what is unchanged is the insatiable appetite for meaning.  And this appetite is even evident within a perspective that normally denies it.

The Quest for Meaning

So I’m working my way through Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, an ambitious attempt to tell the story of how the distinctly ‘modern’ version of the self came to be.  At the heart of his argument is the claim that we all approach life as a ‘quest’ to find or orient ourselves toward what is ultimately good or true.

What makes this quest ‘modern’ is the fact that we make our choices in a context where there is no consensus.  The modern period saw the dethroning of Christianity as the single overarching narrative that explained and interpreted the world.  In the aftermath of this, we are all forced to decide for ourselves – even to define ourselves – in the absence of any commonly agreed upon norms.

This might seem excessively individualistic but Taylor is adamant that ’selves’ cannot exist in isolation – in fact a self cannot even exist outside of some kind of interaction with others.  More than this, each of us has become what we are because of our ongoing reactions to the communities, languages and worldviews which we have been ‘given’. When we articulate our views we have the voices of certain supporters or dissenters echoing in our ears, when we interact socially we do so with the imagined expectations of others in mind.

Even if we strike out on our own and reject  much of what we have been ‘given’ we are still, in a sense, defined by it.  Our objections and rebellions will not be to just any tradition or path but to precisely this one. What appears to be an act of independence is more evidence of how deeply emebedded we are in what Taylor calls ‘webs of interlocution’ (where our interlocutors are those whose ideas or perspectives we feel we must react to).

The classic example of this is the young person leaving home to ‘find themselves’ (usually in distinction from their parents or communities).  What appears to be an act of independence is really a carefully defined cultural tradition since this act is expected and in some cases promoted as a step toward self-definition.  And in many cases, these ‘acts of independence’ end up being fairly predictable and even (!) conformist.

So Taylor takes this ‘condition’ as basic to the human situation.  All of us are selves in this particular ‘moral space’ – a space where we feel the compulsion to define ourselves (a notion that would have been unthinkable in previous generations) and to define ourselves in an environment where there is no commonly accepted framework for what a good life looks like or whether it means anything.

This is making for interesting reading.  It certainly explains a lot of what I see among college students – namely the incredible pressure to make momentous decisions, not only about what occupation to pursue or where they should go to school but about what they will ultimately be. Taylor’s central argument is that the absence of a common cultural framework has tempted us to believe we can live without frameworks altogether.  The bulk of what is to come in the book is an effort to explain why this is an illusion.

I Think I Agree

A child is a revelation from God.  Prophets receive visions, mystics ponder the ineffable, great preachers deliver God’s word.  But the greatest revelation comes through flesh and blood.  Every child is a fresh, unheard-of image of God, and children keep coming and coming because the world has not yet conceived of all the fullness of God’s glory.

Mike Mason, The Mystery of Children

God is Back

Upon seeing the catchy title of the latest book to cross my desk, a colleague wryly asked me if it also answered the question of where he had been in the meantime.  All kidding aside, this looks like an interesting read.  The authors are both Oxford educated and employed by The Economist, a British weekly news and international affairs magazine.

Their subject is a familiar one (and one that I have long been interested in) – the sometimes peaceful, often stormy relationship between religion and modernity and the implications of that relationship for contemporary life.   The authors unpack the familiar modern narrative: religion was expected to die away as modernity took root and dispensed its blessings.  But it hasn’t exactly happened that way – God, so the numbers seem to suggest, is back.

If nothing else, the old argument that modernity and religion are incompatible is suffering greatly given the global resurgence of religion (and not only, the authors carefully note, among the poor and uneducated but among the professional classes as well).  The authors make this point well in contrasting the European and American reactions to modernity.

In Europe modernity was a revolt against an entire way of life in which the church, the monarchy and the aristocray were all in league with one another (and often against the suffering masses).   The church suffered under modernity because of its association with an unjust social hierarchy to which it had offered divine sanction.  Secularism was an inevitable consequence – rejection of the church went right along with the rejection of the divine right of kings.

America, however, has always been a different story.  It has been the bewildering exception for many sociologists of religion – the quintessentially modern nation that for some inexplicable reason has persisted with the whole religion thing.  The authors of God is Back make a good point in noting that while modernity was beginning of the end for religion in Europe (at least for a time), in America it was more like the beginning.

The analysis is not that complicated – it’s pretty much basic capitalism.  Because the architects of the American constitution refused to enshrine any one religion, they forced them all to compete with one another for adherents.  This led to both the vitality and enthusiasm of American religion as well as the amazing diversity.  At the heart of it all is the notion of the sovereign individual making a personal choice regarding which religion to follow.  In Europe religion had proved itself to be the enemy of individual autonomy, in America, it was its ally.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge don’t argue that modernity has had no negative impact on faith in America   To be sure modernity has left its mark – the secularization of the American intellegentsia and the enduring liberal/fundamentalist schism with Protestant Christianity are both cited as evidence of that fact.  But this book is a good reminder that the popular narrative that sees modernity as inevitably producing religious decline is overly simplistic and historically naive.  If the tangled relationship between religion and modernity is to be managed it will require more nuanced understanding of both.

The Gospel of Sin Management

One of the greatest benefits of owning books is reading them again.  In my life this has proved helpful because I  have often bought books and read them before I understood or even cared about the questions that animated the author.  One such book is Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy.  I’ve had this book for almost six years.  I think I’ve even read it once before.  But in rereading it I’m finding so much that resonates with what I’ve experienced in teaching theology over the past six years.

In particular, Willard has a memorable and often quoted chapter entitled ‘Gospels of Sin Management’.  The point here is relatively simple.  The majority of Christians, from across the theological spectrum, believe in a gospel that ‘manages’ sin but leaves their lives virtually untouched.

Christians on the right believe in a gospel that is basically concerned with sin as a barrier to entrance into heaven.  Willard quotes Charles Ryrie’s summary,

The issue is, How can my sins be forgiven?  What is it that bars me from heaven?  What is it that prevents my having eternal life?  The answer is sin.  Therefore I need some way to resolve that problem.  And God declares that the death of His son provides forgiveness of my sin… Through faith I receive Him and His forgiveness.  Then the sin problem is solved, and I can be fully assured of going to heaven.

The concern that animates Willard is that this kind of gospel is irrelevant to most of our lives.  It might deal with our present existential guilt and it might give us the assurance of heaven after we die, but it has virtually nothing to say to the long years in between.  In Willard’s words, “It is left unexplained how it is possible that one can rely on Christ for the next life without doing so for this one.”

This is the gospel I grew up with.  This is the gospel that many of the students I work with have believed or inherited.  And it’s not entirely wrong.  It’s just incomplete.  It’s too small.  It presents a God who “for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt, upon inspecting our mind and finding that we believe a particular theory of the atonement to be true – even if we trust everything but God in all other matters that concern us” (see here for more on the atonement issue).

This gospel ignores the central biblical theology of creation, that is, it ignores the question of why God made a world and why God made people.  At best it implies that this world is a temporary kind of ‘testing ground’ where we get a few years to make a really important decision about Jesus’ death, after which the real business of heaven and hell can take over.

And, according to my observation, this kind of gospel can produce a faith that is very easy to lose.  Because as human beings we have more problems than guilt and death.  We long for a sense of purpose and meaning in what we do and who we become.  We grieve over a world that seems to be at war with itself.  We experience moments of transcendence and beauty that cry out for a home, for a ‘location’ within which to understand them.  We long for reconciliation, both with God and within all the fractured communities around us.  And if the gospel has nothing to say to these realities of life, then it can easily be perceived as irrelevant and it can easily be ignored.

Does our sin need to be managed?  Of course it does.  But so do our lives.  Thank God that the gospel, in all its fullness, speak to both.

Wonder-ing

Visual Agnosia

No, this is not a vain effort to sound scientifically astute (I’m not), nor is it a an effort to come up with the most obscure and ridiculous post title in the history of the blogosphere.  So what on earth is visual agnosia?

The basic concept is that, when it comes to the biology of how we see the world, there is a difference between sight and perception.  When we see something there is apparently a process that takes place – first light falls on the receptor cells in the retina, then a series of electrical impulses pass through a variety of neural pathways and end up in the visual cortex of the brain.  As best I can discern, this is where ’sense’ is made of whatever it is that has been ’seen’.  Of course all of this happens instantaeously in the course of day-to-day life so it seems counter-intuitive even to think of perception as a process.

Visual agnosia is a condition where the ‘cerebral cortex’ (connected to the visual cortex) is damaged.  In this case a person’s eyes would be functioning perfectly as would the visual pathways that communicate sensory perception to the cerebral cortex.  What would not be functioning is the part of the brain that makes perception possible.

This person would be able to see objects but would not be able to link up those sights with any stored knowlege or memory of meaning. They might be able to identify and red, smooth circular object with a brown stick pointing out of the top but they wouldn’t recognize it as an apple. McGrath summarizes this phenomenon this way:

Visual agnosia is characterized by an ability to see individual aspects of an object, yet with an inability to make the connections needed to see the object as a whole.

So McGrath draws an analogy between visual agnosia and the dilemma of varying human interpretations of the meaning (or lack of meaning) of nature.  It is not enough just to observe nature and assume that its meaning is transparent.  It is possible to be able to see all the constituent parts of nature  and not perceive the larger reality that they are a part of  and this seems to me to be an accurate description of some of the more reductionist forms of scientific materialism.

For me this understanding of how perception works (and can fail to work) reinforces the idea that reality is always interpreted reality.  It also raises the possiblity that there might be something ‘extra’ needed in order for human beings to perceive reality correctly.  As a Christian I believe that that ’something’ is a faithful  response to the person of God – the God in whom all of reality ultimately coheres – and that a true perception of reality is best seen, not as a human achievement, but as a gift.

Parables and Nature

More on The Open Secret… McGrath’s first section basically establishes his case that nature is a fundamentally ambiguous reality which all of us are forced to interpret. This interpretation is essentially linked to the psychology of perception.  We perceive the things that we do for a number of reasons but it the basic argument is that we notice the things that we do (in this and all areas of life) because of who we are and what convictions we have come to hold.  So when it comes to interpreting nature, none of us approach the task objectively and all of us are accustomed to seeing in a certain way.

McGrath’s next section is oddly placed at first glance.  He moves on to a discussion of Jesus, particularly Jesus’ theological method.  He focuses on Jesus’ use of parables and slowly builds the case that Jesus’ parables were not just interesting stories that happened to feature examples from nature, rather, they are suggestions that nature, when it is seen in a particular way, can disclose the kingdom of God.

Parables are fundamentally ambiguous.  They take the hearer to a point of confusion, even crisis, and they admit more than one possible interpretation.  It is the responsibility of the hearer to discern the meaning (‘the one that has ears to hear, let them hear’) in what is at first glance paradoxical or unclear.

In addition to this, Jesus’ parables rarely appealed to any external authority like the Old Testament.  His normal method was a direct appeal to the way the world worked and the suggestion that certain things could be discerned about God based on that observation.  One example would be Jesus pointing to the flowers of the field and suggesting that the God who clothed the fields this way could surely be trusted to take care of his children (Mt 6:28).

While parables often use imagery that is easily grasped (a sower in a field, a tree and its fruit, the unpredictability of weather), their meaning is veiled in mystery.  The disciples often fail to grasp the meaning and we can only assume that many in the crowds were also left scratching their heads.  For McGrath, there is analogy between Jesus’ method here and the very ‘nature’ of nature.

McGrath concludes,

The parables of Jesus make it clear that the empirical world – the ordinary, unsanitized, everyday domain of human experience – can function as a channel for the good news of the kingdom of God, when appropriately interpreted.  That belief lies at the heart of a Christian natural theology.