It is about time I blogged a little about Spinoza.

Discovering Spinoza (and a little background on him):

Actually, dispite the blog appearance, I've only recently studied Spinoza. I grabbed his quote for the blog subtitle before I really studied him as a philosopher. I liked the quote because it captured so well themes in this blog. But about the time I used this quote, my good friend Paul Morris brought up Spinzoa in some on-campus discussions. I decided then to study Spinoza more intensively. I started with two good recent books, Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World and Rebecca Goldstein's Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. I then went on to read Steven Nadler's biography Spinoza: A Life . After all this, I felt ready to understand and read Spinoza's two great works, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and The Ethics.

The more I studied Spinoza the more transfixed I became. He's a compelling figure. Here, in no particular order, are things about him I find riveting:

1. He was considered to be one of the most dangerous heretics of his time. He was repeatedly denounced for being an atheist. And yet, this was the same man who is also known as the "God-intoxicated man."

2. In 1656, while in his twenties, Spinoza was issued a blistering writ of cherem (excommunication) from his Jewish community in Amsterdam (a picture of the cherem is above). The cherem stated that Spinoza was to be "banned, cut off, cursed, and anathematized" for his "evil opinions" and "abominable heresies." Such excommunications were powerful social tools to enforce social and religious order. Few people could both walk away from and exist without their lifelong network of family, friends, and work associations (Spinoza was a merchant at the time). But, amazingly, after the cherem Spinoza just walked away. With very little fuss or regret. And he never looked back. But neither did he rush to adopt the majority religion--Christianity--of his host country. He simply and boldly stood apart. And he maintained this independent stance for his entire life.

3. A handful of philosophers are not only considered to be great thinkers but also people who LIVED their philosophy. Socrates and Wittgenstein are in this group. And so is Spinoza. After his excommunication, everyone agreed that the "atheist Jew" lived like a saint: Simply, modestly, humbly (well, interpersonally humble, his ideas were bold and aggressive). To this day, Spinoza inspires those seeking a model for a "secular saint" or the route to virtue via the path of reason.

4. Spinoza's political writings, founding documents for the American and French Revolutions, were way ahead of their time. And, thus, very dangerous. Many of Spinoza's radical friends (supports of enlightened, liberal democracies) were killed during his lifetime. On one occasion, Spinoza's landlord had to physically lock him in his room so that he would not go out and confront angry mobs in the city. This life of danger caused Spinoza to adopt a seal on all his correspondence. It is the seal I display and describe in the sidebar.

Musings on Spinoza's God and Theocracy:

Spinoza is not for everyone. His view of God is startling. Simplifying his famous Deus sive Natura (God, or Nature) greatly, Spinoza believed that God is not a transcendent being over and above nature. Rather, God IS Nature. God is, simply, everything. As Spinoza says early in The Ethics: "Whatever is, is God."

What this means is that God isn't a person. Nor does God have a "personality." Thus, God doesn't have likes or dislikes as typically understood. It follows then that God doesn't judge or evaluate nature. Why? Well, because God is nature.

This leads to some startling statements in The Ethics. Two I've been musing over are:

Strictly speaking, God loves no one and hates no one.

He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return.

These are really interesting sentiments. Initially, I just thought that Spinoza was being descriptive about his view of God. I didn't see what he was driving at, the reason why he viewed God in these terms. But Matthew Stewart suggests that this view of God was being used by Spinoza to accomplish something moral and political that is lost us in our modern context. Specifically, in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza is attempting to dismantle theocracy: the use of God to support decrepit power structures or the use of God to socially control the polis by scare tactics ("You'll go to hell if you do that."). That is, according to Matthew Stewart, Spinoza created this view of God to accomplish something political and moral. Spinoza wanted to decisively disentangle God from the State. To quote Stewart:

In Spinoza's adamant rejection of the anthropomorphic conception of God we may glimpse a very deep link between his meta-physics and his politics. According to the political analysis first laid out in the Tractatus, the orthodox idea of God is one of the mainstays of tyranny. The [political] theologians, Spinoza suggests, promote the belief in a fearsome, judgmental, and punishing God in order to extract obedience from the superstitious masses. A people living under Spinoza's God, on the other hand, could easily dispense with theocratic oppression...

Spinoza's concept of divinity is so clearly drawn as the antithesis of the theocratic one, in fact, that the question naturally arises whether he invented his new God in order to save himself or in order to destroy the reigning political order. Inasmuch as Spinoza's God is easier to understand in the negative--that is, in terms of what it is not: a personal, providential, creator deity--than in the positive--what it is--then to that extent his political commitments would seem to be prior to his philosophy. That is, his metaphysics would be intelligible principally as the expression of his political project, to overthrow theocracy.

With this perspective in hand, I suddenly warmed to Spinoza's project if not his God. Given our current situation in America, Spinoza's concerns about theocracy seem remarkably relevant and timely. Further, I'm very, very tired of religious people telling me what God does or does not like. What God loves and what God hates. What God approves of or disapproves of. I'm not a Spinozist, but I can't tell you how many times a day I want to say to religious people, "You know, strictly speaking, God loves no one and hates no one." Further, I grow very tired of a religious life motivated by pleasing God. So much of religious life seems to be about managing the psychology of God. And again, although I'm not a Spinozist, I often want to say, "You know, if you really loved God you wouldn't spend so much time trying to get him to love you in return."

Because, when you think about it, those twin moves ("God hates X" and "I must do X so God will be pleased with me") sets up most of the religious dysfunction and violence in the world.

Dear Reader,
This short series is one of those theological experiments of mine.

Specifically, I ask can ecclesial discernment be compared to search through a fitness landscape? If so, what are the implications? As an example I bring up issues in the emerging church conversation.

You'll have to decide if you think the fitness landscape metaphor is useful. At the very least, you'll learn a little about contemporary thinking in evolutionary biology. Which is kind of cool on a Christian blog.

Best,
Richard

Part 1: Simple versus Rugged Landscapes
Part 2: Changing Landscapes and the Emerging Church
Part 3: Search Through Landscapes

Chapter 5:
Searching Fitness Landscapes

To this point we have mainly considered the structure of the fitness landscape. Today I want to talk about the organism and how the organism searches for the adaptive peaks within the landscape. (In what follows when I say "organism" I'm speaking of the entire gene pool of the species.)

The heart of evolutionary search is the simple Darwinian two-step: Mutation and Selection. Imagine an organism on the slope of an adaptive mountain. Via the genetic shuffling (and possible mutation) during reproduction this organism will create new organisms: Offspring/children. These offspring fan out from the parent organism on the landscape. That is, they are not identical to the parent, but they are close, they are genetically very similar. Imagine the offspring, these genetic trial balloons, surrounding the parent in a circle. Kind of like this:



Only you have to imagine this target on the side of sloping mountain. Thus, although the offspring in a given ring are equidistant from the parental stock, some will be higher up the slope (say, those on the North side) versus those on the opposite side who will be lower down the slope (those on the South side).

Note what this means. Simply through a random process some offspring are pushed higher on the fitness slope (e.g., through genetic recombination or mutation these children might be faster or smarter) while some are lower. By definition, those higher up the fitness slope will out-compete and out-produce their siblings. Thus, the mean location of the target moves upward, higher up the fitness landscape. This process keeps repeating itself, generation after generation, moving the genetic "bull's eye" higher and higher until, finally, the summit of the fitness landscape is reached. The organism has optimized itself.

Now imagine the bull's eye is situated directly on top of the fitness peak. Like a wet towel draped over a lamp shade. If the population mean is at the peak of the fitness landscape any mutation significantly different from the parental stock is, necessarily, down-slope. That is to say, less fit. Thus, if the landscape stays stable the population will stay exquisitely perched on the fitness peak with any deviation being selected against. This creates the "stability" of the species. The species is, genetically, quiescent.

But let's say the landscape begins to change out from under the organism. The organism, via reproduction, will keep sending out genetic "feelers" (i.e., those genetic scouts known as "children") into the surrounding environment. If any of those scouts encounter an up-slope the population will move in that direction, climbing the new fitness peak. If the organism's gene pool fails to find any up-slope and remains for a length of time in an adaptive valley, the species will go extinct. The imperative is simple: Find and climb the fitness peak or die.

The point I want to make is that, via reproduction and mutation, the genetic "eyesight" of a population is very myopic. Children tend to look like parents which implies that for each generation very little of the fitness landscape gets explored. Children are short range genetic scouts. Thus, if the fitness landscape changes radically and dramatically, it will place the fitness peak very far away from the gene pool. Given the myopia of the gene pool, the organism will not know "which way to go," adaptively speaking. Groping blindly through the adaptive landscape the organism quickly goes extinct.

If the adaptive peak is very far away from the organism random genetic drift via genetic reshuffling (i.e., having sex) is too myopic and short range (because kids tend to look like their parents) to be an effective search strategy. Only if there is a dramatic mutation can the organism get the range it needs. But most mutations tend to be catastrophic, morphogentically speaking. Plus, a mutation is a one shot chance to land on an adaptive peak. Rarely if you throw a dart blindfolded and at random will you hit the bull's eye. But if you throw enough darts and have enough time, sometimes you can hit the target. Sometimes a mutation survives and lands on a distant slope. If so, a new population begins and starts climbing the new adaptive peak.

A final point I want to make is this. Imagine that the landscape changes and the organism begins its myopic search for a new fitness peak. Two peaks exist in the vicinity. One is simply a small hill. The other is Mt. Everett. The only problem is that the hill is situated close to the organism and Mt. Everest is further away. Thus, as the organism reproduces it sends out genetic representatives in concentric circles in all directions. Some of these representatives fall on the lower slope of the little hill. That is, just by chance, they are slightly more fit than all their other siblings. Thus, they out-compete and out-produce their siblings drawing the "center" of the population toward them and up the hill. Later, some of their off-spring fall further up the slope. And, slowly, the entire population climbs the hill.

Once situated on top of this little hill the organism goes quiescent again. On top of the hill, even if its elevation is modest, the offspring of this population will fall down-slope. Thus, they will be selected against forcing the population back up the slope.

The problem with this outcome is that the organism is locked into a local optima when a better optima, the nearby Mt. Everest, is there for the taking. But the organism can't climb off the hill and migrate over to the Mt. Everest. That whole route (down-slope and across a valley) is less fit compared to where the organism currently sits. There is nothing to pull the organism through that journey. Thus, again due the myopia of the search strategies, organisms are at high risk to get stuck on sub-optimal solutions. Again, the only way to get this organism off the smaller peak is to send out a dramatically different mutation which can "jump" off the peak. With luck the mutation might just land on the slopes of Everest. More likely, the mutation will plummet into a valley and die. But given enough time...

To summarize:

1. Organisms climb adaptive peaks by sending out "scouts" into the locale terrain.

2. If higher terrain is encountered the gene pool moves uphill until it summits the adaptive peak.

3. Once it has summited, the organism stays on the peak until the landscape changes.

4. Generally, the "scouts" of the gene pool are myopic.

5. Given this myopia of the search strategies, gene pools cannot find distant adaptive peaks.

6. Further, the myopia of the search strategies means that organisms are at risk to get stranded on sub-optimal peaks (i.e., they cannot "see" the higher peaks in the distance).

7. The only way to find a distant peak or get off a sub-optimal peak is to "jump" across the landscape. This "jump" is a mutation. By definition, a mutation is a genetic expression very dissimilar from the parental stock (recall, distance in a fitness landscape = genetic similarity; thus a "jump" = genetic dissimilarity). However, mutations are, inherently, risky and prone to failure.

Chapter 6:
How the Emerging Church Should Search the Landscape

What could Chapter 5 possibly have to do with the emerging church?

Well, the parallel I want to draw is between myopic search strategies and mutations. Recall, I've suggested that the ecclesial fitness landscape is rugged and changing. What this means is that previously optimal church expressions are sinking, they are less fit than they once were. Thus, like an organism's gene pool, some churches (like the emergent movement) are setting out to search the fitness landscape. They suspect that there are newer optima out there. Somewhere.

So, the question is, how to search the landscape?

First, note that I'm assuming here that a search is necessary. That is, the emerging conversation is a conversation precisely because the direction of search isn't crystal clear. No consensus has been reached about where the new optima exist. There are a variety of proposals on the table and lot's of good ideas. But you get the feeling that we are searching. Talking and searching. On the lookout for those newer church expressions.

Because if we could clearly SEE where we need to go the entire metaphor of the fitness landscape breaks down. The fitness landscape explains how a blind search procedure might find a peak. That is, a fitness landscape provides us a metaphor for how a search could be effective WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHERE TO SEARCH.

If we KNOW where to search, well, we don't need dumb, myopic experimentation to find Mt. Everest. We just go to Mt. Everest directly. The search is direct because it is specific and goal-directed.

But what if we are not sure what the emerging ecclesial expressions should look like? What if the optimal church expression in the coming century is something we haven't even seen or thought of yet? What if it is so new and different we can't yet imagine it? If this is the case, and I'm guessing some people think there is something like this out there waiting to be discovered, then how should the search proceed?

Here, I think, the search through a fitness landscape provides some insight. Let me explain.

If the landscape is changing subtly around our churches, nothing drastic needs to be done. Myopic experimentation will find those newer optima. That is, the churches of today can spin out closely-related "children" and observe their performance. The fittest of these, known through the signs of God within that church, will be "selected" by us. That is to say, if the ecclesial fitness landscape is only slightly changing the new church optima are close at hand. Some low-risk experimentation should quickly sniff out these newer forms.

But what if the ecclesial landscape is changing radically and dramatically? There will be differences of opinion on this, but I think I hear some of the emergent leaders making this claim. That issues like post-modernity are radically reconfiguring the ecclesial landscape. If this is so, then the newer adaptive peaks may be very, very far from traditional church expressions. Given their distance, in addition to the fact that we don't yet see where these peaks are located, how can we find them? Well, the fitness landscape metaphor suggests an answer:

Mutation. You have to jump across the landscape.

Recall that to find a distant peak or to jump off a sub-optimal hill, myopic reproduction is too short range. The experimental off-shoots (the "children") of the existing church are going to look too similar to the "parental mold." Thus, a more dramatic experiment is needed. A mutation. A really different church expression.

But recall that these mutations are high risk. There is no guarantee that they will land on the far peak. Many will fail. But if we throw enough experiments out there some will find their mark. And when they do we'll discover that new way of doing church previously unimaginable.

So, if my metaphor holds, these questions face the emerging church:

1. How dramatic has the ecclesial landscape changed?

2. If it has not changed very dramatically, close-range ecclesial experiments should find the "emerging church" very easily and quickly. No big shakeups are needed.

3. If the landscape has changed dramatically, more radical and dramatic ecclesial experiments ("mutations") are called for. We have to "jump" across the landscape.

4. For this strategy to be successful we have to:

A. Tolerate a lot of crazy looking, mutant churches.

B. Expect a lot of failure.

C. Be willing to throw lots of these experiments out there. The more we thrown out, the quicker we find Mt. Everest.

Chapter 3:
Changing Landscapes

In my last post we assumed that the fitness landscape was static and unchanging. But rarely in biological ecosystems is this the case. Imagine an ecosystem in equilibrium. Predators, prey, environment, parasites are all merrily involved in their Darwinian dance. But let’s say a new predator is introduced, or a new plant species, or parasitical disease. Or, let’s say a predator goes extinct, leaving no predation pressure on the prey species. Or, let’s suppose the ecosystem is environmentally challenged by drought.

The point is that all kinds of things can affect the shape of a fitness landscape. Fitness landscapes are dynamic and changing. What this means is that prior adaptive “solutions” (a good organism/ecosystem fit) might quickly prove to be maladaptive given current changes in the ecosystem. The organism must either adapt to these changing demands (via natural selection upon the population gene pool) or go extinct.

Visually, what this means is that the fitness landscape is continually morphing. Prior adaptive optima, those Alps of fitness, are slowly sinking. Meanwhile, prior adaptive valleys are now growing into mountain ranges. That is, combinations of traits which were formerly fit are now becoming less fit and less fit combinations now find themselves thriving in the new ecosystem.

(If you find this idea interesting let me recommend Jonathan Weiner’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time for a real empirical story of organisms—Darwin’s Finches in the Galapagos—finding their way through changing fitness landscapes.)

Chapter 4:
The Emerging Church

Can we use this idea of dynamic fitness landscapes to understand trends in the church? I think so. Last post I spoke of various church optima, distinctive ecclesial expressions that might be equally pleasing to God. My hunch is that those optima are changing. Church expressions from prior generations, while optimal in their day, appear to be sinking. Not that God is displeased per se, but my hunch is that God is interested in transformative ecclesial expressions. And if an ecclesial expression is no longer transforming lives I expect that God has cooled toward that particular expression. If so, given our fitness landscape metaphor, these ecclesial Everests of prior generations are sinking to sea level.

Enter the Emerging Church. I don’t know a lot about the emerging movement. I’ve read a few books, but I’m generally uninformed. So, if I mischaracterize anything here I apologize. But it seems to me that the emerging conversation can be understood via this metaphor of a changing fitness landscape. That is, it seems that many church leaders are sensing this change of optima. Former ecclesial habits and structures don’t seem to be working. The ecosystem is changing, affecting what a “fit” church should look like. Traditional ecclesial expressions don’t seem like the fitness peaks they once were.

So, there is this sense that, somewhere out there in the ecclesial fitness landscape, there is a new Everest or even a few Everests rising. These Everests are the new ecclesial optima, the “peak” church expressions in the current “ecosystem” (our current world) that are the most transformative, Incarnational, and impactful. That is, from my outsider perspective at least, the emerging movement, as examined through the lens of a changing fitness landscape, is suggesting the following:

1. The ecclesial ecosystem is changing.

2. As a result, former ecclesial optima are dropping.

3. But new optima are rising.

4. Can we find these newer optima? If so, what will these ecclesial expressions look like?

#4 is interesting. It goes to issues of search through a fitness landscape. Searches through rugged fitness landscapes can be tricky. I’ll explain why in my next post.

In this series I want to throw out an analogy to see if it my yield some new theological insights.

I want to suggest that ecclesial discernment is like a fitness landscape.

This analogy popped into my head due to some recent eccelesial reflections I've had. See my post on the missional church and the J-curve and my post on the Yes, but... Church. Both posts suggest that seeking the will of God in today's world is difficult and demands a degree of flexibility and experimentation. That is, it is not always obvious what God's Call is in the World. Thus, churches often grope experimentally through the ecclesial landscape. This image of groping brought to mind the concept of a fitness landscape.

Chapter 1:
Fitness Landscapes 101

A fitness landscape is a tool in biology to visualize evolutionary optimization. Imagine a grid upon which we sprinkle possible genotypes, let's say A, B, and C. The "distance" between any two genotypes is a geometrical expression of their "difference." Let's say these genotypes code for foot-speed in some generic African mammal. A is faster than B and B is faster than C. And the degree to which they are "faster" is expressed as the distance between them on the gird (which in this example is just a line). Okay, let's say that this mammal is under predation from a fast predator. Thus, there is a selection pressure upon the A, B, and C genotypes resulting in differential fitness. That is, the faster the genotype is the fitter within this particular ecosystem. This fitness can be represented as altitude on the grid, with greater fitness as "higher" and worse fitness as "lower." Once we denote these ideas of "distance" (degree to which the genotypes differ) and "altitude" (differential fitness) we have the idea of a "landscape," a visualization of the adaptive situation facing a group of individuals or populations expressing different physical traits.

A two-dimensional representation of a fitness landscape looks like this:







A colorful, three-dimensional fitness landscape looks like this:


Now, both of these pictures depict what are known as "rugged" fitness landscapes. That is, there are multiple peaks of relative "fitness." One peak might be the "best," but there are also other relatively effective "solutions" to the adaptive challenge. For example, some combination of traits (only moderate foot-speed combined with good visual acuity and an instinctive wariness) might create a fairly "fit" organism (btw, every trait is a dimension in the landscape; higher order landscapes cannot be visualized but they can be mathematically modeled). This slower but keen-eyed and wary mammal might not, potentially speaking, be the "best" it could be (it could be faster), but it is "fit." It can survive, avoid predation, and reproduce.

Some landscapes are not rugged. These simple landscapes have only a single adaptive peak. In my example above, with genotypes A, B, and C coding for foot-speed, the adaptive landscape looked like this:



In this simple fitness landscape if we sprinkle the genotypes A, B, and C upon it we will see that A (the fastest genotype) will be higher up the slope than B (that is, A is more fit, visualized as A being "higher" on the landscape than B). Below B is C, the slowest genotype (or, more correctly, the genotype coding for the slowest phenotype).

Okay, to summarize:

1. A fitness landscape is a way of representing both the differences between and the fitness of different genotypes.

2. Distance in the landscape is simply "difference" or "distinctiveness." That is, if two genotypes are very similar they are "close" in the landscape. If very different they are farther away.

3. Altitude in the landscape represents fitness. That is, given the differences among the genotypes (those animals competing against each other in the ecosystem) some are more fit than others. This is expressed by their relative "heights" on the landscape.

4. Landscapes can be either simple or rugged. If simple, there is a single optimal design that defines "fitness." It is a landscape with a single peak. A rugged landscape has multiple peaks or optima. One of these genomes may be "best," but there are numerous other adaptive "peaks," difference clusters of genotypes that can thrive in the ecosystem. To simplify the distinction think of it this way. In a simple landscape there is only one "right" answer to the adaptive question. In a rugged landscape there are multiple "right" answers as well as there being, potentially, a "best" answer to the adaptive question.

Chapter 2:
Our first Question: Is the Ecclesial Landscape Simple or Rugged?

Okay, now that you have endured a little lecture on fitness landscapes, what is the point? Well, I'd like to use this idea of a fitness landscape to pose to you some theological questions based upon analogies with fitness landscapes. The analogies may be faulty, but if they hold a wee bit we might be able to come at some old problems in some fresh ways. This blog is all about "theological experimentation." So, let's experiment.

Here is the analogy I'd like for you to consider. Let's say there are various ecclesial "genotypes." That is, different churches have different ecclesial DNA. This DNA is how a church combines various theological and ecclesial "traits" which express themselves in the overt life of the church (the "phenotype" if you will). I think it is safe to say that this metaphor is somewhat accurate. That is, depending both on what you believe and what you do as a church you get a certain ecclesial "expression." If this holds we can express the similarity and distinctiveness of these expressions via the distance visualized in a fitness landscape. Churches with similar expressions are "close" and more dissimilar churches are father apart.

Okay, now the experimental part. Could we express God's pleasure, favor, or endorsement of a given ecclesial expression as "fitness"? If so, we can use the fitness landscape dimension of altitude to represent God's differential "pleasure" at a given church expression.

I think this idea is plausible. If the seven churches of Asia in Revelation are any indication, God expresses his pleasure differentially across church expressions.

Okay, if both "distance" and "altitude" are reconfigured we can express the entire ecclesial world in one simple diagram: An ecclesial fitness landscape. (Given the vast number of theological and ecclesial traits this landscape will be many orders of magnitude beyond our ability to visualize. So, we'll work with 2D and 3D diagrams not as accurate models but as useful tools for intuitive visualization. A "toy" landscape to intellectually play with.)

I think this is cool. One picture expressing all ecclesial expression along with a measure of God's relative pleasure (if we could know it) of that expression. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, this picture would surely fit the bill.

Okay, an A+ in coolness (I'm grading myself) is fine, but what about insight? Can this idea of a fitness landscape create new insights? I don't know. This series is devoted to trying to find out.

So, here is our first question posed by the fitness landscape idea: Is this ecclesial fitness landscape simple or rugged?

And a related question is: Is this issue interesting?

If the landscape is simple then there is a "best" church expression (God's ideal given human fallibility) relative to all other church expressions. Thus, all church expressions could be be ranked from "better" to "worse" on the landscape relative to the optimal design. I find this notion dubious. My guess is that the landscape is rugged. That is, although there may be an "ideal" expression (and there might not be one), there are probably multiple "peaks" of ecclesial optima. In short, particular expressions that might be very, very different might be equally pleasurable to God. This seems right to me. Do you agree? Is the landscape simple or rugged?

Okay, if the landscape is rugged why should we care?

Well, for lot's of reasons. If the landscape is rugged tons of very, very interesting issues arise. I'll get to these later. For today, however, I see one obvious implication.

If the landscape is rugged no single metric can be applied to churches. You can't rank the churches from best to worst. Further, very, very different churches might actually be equally favorable to God. I think this is important in that most of the church folk I know seem to be assuming that the landscape is simple. They, obviously, don't phrase it that way. Only you, dear reader, will now be able to frame it this way (e.g., "Sam, aren't you assuming the ecclesial fitness landscape is simple? Might it not be rugged? Have you considered that fact?). But many church folk tend to assume a "better-worse" metric when they evaluate church expressions. Further, this assumption is tied to the idea that church "differences" are strongly correlated with Divine favor. That is, if God favors us (I'm assuming you think God is somewhat favorable of the church expression you participate in) and another group is very, Very, VERY different from us, can God equally favor them as well? Many people assume not. They assume that location is strongly correlated with altitude. In church terms, God's favor is highly correlated with being like us.

What I'm suggesting is that a fitness landscape is a nice way to illustrate the implicit theology behind certain ecclesial conversations. One way of sorting those implicit assumptions is to note who assumes the landscape is simple and who assumes it is rugged. This difference seems important.

And that, to me at least, seems worth reflecting on.

Two weeks ago it was my turn to teach my adult bible class at church. We are going through 1 Corinthians and I was up to teach the famous Chapter 13: "Love is patient, love is kind..."

And I thought to myself, "Richard, what are you possibly going to say in class that hasn't been said before about 1 Corinthians 13?"

Then it hit me.

I started the class by doing a book review and reading selections from Dr. Robert Sutton's new book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.

Sutton is a Stanford business professor (he hosts a great blog). In 2004, Sutton proposed and wrote up the No Asshole Rule as a "Breakthrough Idea" in the annual edition on that topic for The Harvard Business Review. Basically, the No Asshole Rule states that a company would do well to become more intolerant of those mean, nasty, selfish, egomanical, rude, jerks we know as assholes in the workplace.

After publishing his idea Sutton received tons of feedback from people around the globe telling him stories of the toll assholes exact in the workplace. He also received confirmation that companies who had implemented a version of the No Asshole Rule did, in fact, experience not only a boost in their corporate culture but to their bottom line as well. All this inspired Sutton to write The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.

I enjoyed the The No Asshole Rule because there is so much gospel in it. I was also impressed with how much of the No Asshole Rule involved issues of hierarchy, issues I've blogged about before (see here and here and here).

For example, how do you identify an asshole? Sutton proposes two tests:

Test One:
After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two:
Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful? (p. 9)

Test Two I find really important. As does Sutton. Later in the book he says this:

The difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. (p. 25)

The problem is that humans are easily corrupted by hierarchy. Even small power differentials can begin transforming us into assholes.

Sutton cites research by Deborah Gruenfeld who has extensively studied the ruinous toll of hierarchy on human character. In one study Sutton discusses, Gruenfeld observed groups of three undergraduates asked to discuss a controversial topic. One of the three students was randomly appointed to evaluate the recommendations of the other two (placing them in a slightly higher power role). Later in the experiment the students were brought a plate of five cookies (intentionally an odd number!). Interestingly, the "high status" students were more likely to take a second cookie, chew with their mouths open, and get crumbs on their faces and the table! As Sutton reflects (p. 72):

This silly study scares me because it shows how having just a slight power edge causes regular people to grab the cookies for themselves and act like rude pigs. Just think about the effects in thousands of interactions every year...

Basically, as Sutton summarizes later: "Power breeds nastiness." (p. 72)

Thus, one application of the No Asshole Rule is to flatten hierarchies in companies and organizations. Sutton realizes that in the business world hierarchies are a necessary evil, they are efficient and effective. However, hierarchies should be downplayed to create a transparent, approachable, and civil workplaces. This tension Sutton calls the "power-performance paradox." Quoting Sutton:

[Companies] realize that their company has and should have a pecking order, but they do everything they can do to downplay and reduce status and power differences among members. (p. 78)

To start to implement the No Asshole Rule Sutton recommends (p. 88) connecting "big policies to small decencies." Sutton sums this up in a pithy way (p. 89): "the no asshole rule is meaningless unless you treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way."

Finally, how do we change if we think we may be assholes?

Late in the book Sutton suggests this (p. 118): "Admitting you're an asshole is the first step." That is: "to avoid acting like or becoming a known asshole, know thyself" (p. 119). Socrates would have been proud.

All in all, the The No Asshole Rule is a great book. And as I read it I pondered all the assholes I've had the pleasure to interact with over the years. And I also wondered about how I act like an asshole from time to time. At school, at church, and at home.

So, we reflected on all this in my Sunday School class. And after reflection on the No Asshole Rule, I read these famous words:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs...

Basically, don't be an asshole.

This is my final post reviewing Marilyn McCord Adams' book Christ and Horrors. In this last post we turn to the Big Question: Why?

Why would God make us so vulnerable to horrors?

To start, Adams makes a distinction between justifying reasons and explanatory reasons. Explanatory reasons offer explanations as to why God might, for one reason or another, make us vulnerable to horrors. Two common and traditional explanatory reasons include the following:

1. For love to exist there must exist, necessarily, the possibility of pain. (I think C.S. Lewis makes this argument in The Problem of Pain.)

2. God allows Creation a degree of autonomy so that true relationship between God and Creation can emerge.

Justifying reasons are different. Justifying reasons are explanations that justify God's choices to Man. For example, in the prelude to this series Jack Miles claimed that "the world is a great crime." Framed that way, was God justified in creating a world vulnerable to horrors? Should he have refused to create in the first place?

Justifying reasons are hard to find for God. But Adams is concerned with how they frame the conversation about God. That is, they are prone to set up and bias the conversation to smear God. Given that I tend to seek justifying explanations from God, this caution from Adams is well-taken. That is, we must take care not to conduct theodicy discussions in ways that set God up to play either the fool or a monster. (Personally, I often do this. Given my issues with God and general sense that people go way too easy on God in church, I tend to come out with both barrels blazing. I recognize this, and Adams' comments help make me more reflective about this tendency of mine.)

Adams summarizes all this (p. 43, emphases hers): "My own view is that talk of theodicy--of justifying the ways of God to humankind--is misleading, because God has no obligations to creatures and hence no need to justify Divine actions to us. Personal though God is, the metaphysical size-gap is too big for God to be drawn down into the network of rights and obligations that bind together merely human beings. Elsewhere, I have argued that horrors are so bad that no candidate reason-why that we can think of is remotely sufficient to exhibit the compatibility of horrors with Divine goodness-to created horror-participants, and that any attempt to construe one or more of them as sufficient underestimates how bad horrors are and caricatures God into something monstrous."

This, I think, is an interesting observation. That is, theodicy, simply by trying to offer an explanation for horror, may poison the well right from the start. That is, theodicy may always end in a very unsatisfactory way by either minimizing the horrors or turning God into a monster. It's a razor edge. (I believe this is the danger George has been pointing out in the comments to this series.)

So, where does this leave us? Ultimately, with no great answers. And, if what Adams says above is correct, that the whole theodicy project can't really produce good answers, we are left with a lot of mystery. But Adams does offer an interesting metaphor (p. 40-41): " My proposal is inspired by the following analogy. Soldiers who become fast friends in World War 1 foxholes might admit that they would never have prospectively willed the horrors of war as means to the end of friendship. Yet the value of the relationship thus occasioned is such that they would not retrospectively will away those wartime bonding moments from their lives. So also victims of horror from the vantage point heaven, when they recognize how God was with them in their worst experiences, will not wish to eliminate any moments of intimacy with God from their life histories."

I don't know if that holds up in the end. But it's progress. Christ and Horrors is progress. For these reasons. First, Adams makes theodicy the central work of Christ. And further, in her hands, theodicy and horror defeat is no longer a generic, abstract, cosmic project. Rather, horror defeat occurs in the very particular, unique, and personal lives of horror-participants. It's God and the Individual. Theodicy, salvation, and horror-defeat is worked out in that very intimate, relational space. For that focus, I owe Adams a warm debt of gratitude.

Still bringing you news from the frontlines of the post-Cartesian world!

Check out this March 11 article in the NY Times on the new issues facing moral responsibility posed by neurolaw: The Brain on the Stand.

I love the question posed toward the end of the article: In the future, can the police get a search warrant for someone's brian?

Or will your brain be protected under new "cognitive liberty" laws?

Continuing our review of Marilyn McCord Adams' Christ and Horrors. Again, in this series I'm picking and choosing aspects of Adams' work that are of particular interest for this blog. I'm leaving tons on the the table, much of which would be of interest to theologians. So, please get Christ and Horrors and read the book for yourself. This series is mainly intended to pique your curiosity.

In my first post we noted that Adams links horrors to our existential ability to create meaning out of our experiences. Horrors defeat this ability. That is, when exposed to ruinous abuse, disease, or pain we simply cannot find "the point." We cannot make "sense" of the horrific situation. The horror overwhelms our capacity to weave the experience into a coherent and positive narrative.

In my last post I outlined Adams' three stages of horror defeat. Recall, in Stage 1 God joins us in the midst of horror allowing for the possibility of meaning creation. However, if we are volitionally ruined this possibility is never actualized. Thus, in Stage 2 God works internally and externally to build our meaning-making capacities. Finally, in Stage 3 horrors are brought to an end.

As we examine this framework it has probably dawned on you that, although Stage 1 horror defeat has already occurred, Stages 2 and 3 are yet to be for most persons. That is, many people die in the grip of horror and fail to make horrors personally meaningful. This may be due to volitional ruin, but it can also be due to the fact that the horror involves a person's death. In short, Stage 2 horror defeat will not occur for every person prior to their mortal death. Thus, if horror defeat is on the agenda of God His efforts to defeat horror for every person implies universal salvation. As Adams' claims (p. 51): "I insist, God will be good-to each created person by weaving up any horror-participation into an unending relationship of beatific intimacy with God. In my judgment, grim realism is not inappropriately derogatory of human dignity, but rather serves to magnify the miracle of God's making good on God's cosmic project by benefiting each and every human being. (And, yes, my focus on horrors does drive me to a doctrine of universal salvation!)."

The "grim realism" is Adams' claim about volitional ruin noted in my last post: We must be realistic, grimly realistic, that human agency cannot overcome horrors by imbuing them with meaning. And if this is the case it necessarily implies that God must extend his salvific work post-mortem to bring horror defeat to every created person.

Stage 2 and Stage 3 horror defeat, for Adams, implies the union of subjective and objective horror defeat. That is, in Stage 3 horrors are objectively defeated: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

But for horrors to be completely defeated a subjective component must also be realized. That is, it is not good enough for horrors to be objectively defeated in the Eschaton. Horrors must be defeated subjectively, within the experience of each horror participant and victim. And it is this defeat of subjective horrors that demands God's post-mortem intervention.

Again, I think this is a critical insight from Adams. Too often in theodicy discussions only Stage 1 (Divine participation) and Stage 3 (objective horror defeat in the Eschaton) get discussed. And, to be frank, that just isn't good enough. Stage 2 defeat (the subjective defeat of horror for every horror victim) must be a part of the package. God owes it to those very particular individuals. And it is this particular debt that cannot, for many persons, be realized in this life.

This is not to say that many believers are not already experiencing Stage 2 horror defeat right here and right now. I see it every week in my church. People are undergoing horrific things in my church. Death of children, trauma, abuse, addictions, disease. And weekly we hear testimonies of God's faithfulness. These saints, via the grace of God, can find meaning in the horror. And many, although never wishing to go through the same experience again, would not trade in their horror for the union it created between them and God. These are amazing testimonies. Evidence that God is making good on his Stage 1 horror defeat as evidenced in the Incarnation. God is, truly, with us.

But, grimly we must remember, these testimonies are unique and rare. Most die struggling toward Stage 2 horror defeat. God might be glimpsed and sought for in those hospital rooms, therapy offices, or killing fields, but people are ruined by their experiences of horror. For them the work of God must continue after death so that horror defeat is brought to all. As Adams says (p. 207): "Nevertheless, for an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God, a future just society isn't good enough. What about the countless individuals sacrificed on the slaughter-bench of history? An omniscient and omnipotent God Who loved human beings would make it up to them, would guarantee that there was enough positive meaning in it to defeat their horror-participation and make their lives great goods to them on the whole and in the end!"

Obviously, this vision demands that we rethink traditional notions of hell. As readers of this blog know, I'm good with that. In one of my favorites passages from Christ and Horrors Adams says this (p. 229-230, emphases hers):

"Traditional doctrines of hell err again by supposing either that God does not get what God wants with every human being ("God wills all humans to be saved" by God's antecedent will) or that God deliberately creates some for ruin. To be sure, many human beings have conducted their ante-mortem lives in such a way as to become anti-social persons. Almost none of us dies with all the virtues needed to be fit for heaven. Traditional doctrines of hell suppose that God lacks the will or the patience or the resourcefulness to civilize each and all of us, to rear each and all of us up into the household of God. They conclude that God is left with the option of merely human penal systems--viz., liquidation or quarantine!

Traditional doctrines of hell go beyond failure to hatred and cruelty by imagining a God Who not only acquiesces in creaturely rebellion and dysfunction but either directly organizes or intentionally "outsources" a concentration camp (of which Auschwitz and Soviet gulags are pale imitations) to make sure some creatures' lives are permanently deprived of positive meaning.

My own view is that ante-mortem horror-participation is hell enough. Horrors constitute the prima facie destruction of the positive meaning of our lives; a destruction that we lack knowledge, power, or worth enough to defeat; a destruction that reasonably drives many to despair. For God to succeed, God has to defeat horrors for everyone. We have all been to hell by being tainted by horrors ante-mortem. We all meet the horror of death at the end. For some, life has been one horror after another between the dawn of personhood and the grave. In millions of cases, these horrors have been spawned by the systemic evils of human societies. To be good-to us, God will have to establish and fit us for wholesome society, not establish institutions to guarantee that horrors last forever in the world to come!"

Ante-mortem horror-participation is hell enough! Yet again let me just say how much I think Adams "get's it"!

Let me conclude with a brief comment on unviersalism. Most people think that universalism is a soteriological move. That people believe in the idea because universalists just want "everyone to get to go to heaven." But for me, and apparently for Adams, the universalist move is rather a theodicy move. That is, I believe in universalism not because I'm concerned about Me and You and Our Eternal Destination. Truly, I don't worry about that very much at all. No, I'm a universalist not because I'm concerned about Us but because I'm concerned about God. Specifically, I'm concerned about God's reputation. God made us radically vulnerable to horrors. He had his reasons for this. But whatever those reasons were, God's reputation for love and goodness demands that he defeat horrors. And, as Adams correctly and courageously notes, this implies newer, fresher notions of post-mortem ontology and existence.

Continuing our review of Marilyn McCord Adams' Christ and Horrors.

As a reading note, I'm not going to address the Big Question--Why did God make us so vulnerable to horrors?--until the last post in this series. Until that post, I'll be selecting aspects of her model that I find to be either interesting or important given the concerns of this blog.

We've already noted one important aspect of Adams' work: The union of soteriological and theodicy concerns. We now turn to a second aspect where I think Adams "gets it" better than some other theologians.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know I pound away on free will models in theology. It is not that I deny that in some ways we might be free, it is just that I see, as a psychologist, our will, our volition, as highly contingent. (I call this vision weak volitionalism as opposed to the strong volitionalism of free will models. For more, see my posts about Preparing for the Cartesian Storm.) In short, as finite, biological creatures we are not radically free. Our volitional range and scope is a humble and fragile affair. And I've argued that this realistic appraisal of human volitional capacity has important, if largely ignored, implications for theology and ministry.

Well, happily, Adams takes a weak volitional approach in Christ and Horrors. Thus, my admiration from last post continues as Adams adopts and works with a realistic model of human agency. As a psychologist I can pay a theologian no higher compliment.

Adams is weak volitional because she correctly notes that free will approaches crash on the rocks of horrors. As Adams writes (p. 49), "Radical vulnerability to horrors arises because human psycho-spiritual powers are not reliably great enough to achieve and sustain an appropriate functional coordination between [the] two dimensions [i.e., physical and spiritual] of human being in a material world such as this."

The reason is that our minds are physical organs and, as such, radically vulnerable (p. 38): "There is a metaphysical mismatch within human nature: tying psyche to biology and personality to a developmental life cycle exposes human personhood to dangers to which angels (as naturally incorruptible pure spirits) are immune...[this] makes our meaning-making capacities easy to twist, even ready to break, when inept caretakers and hostile surroundings force us to cope with problems off the syllabus and out of pedagogical order. Likewise, biology--by building both an instinct for life and the seeds of death into animal nature--makes human persons naturally biodegradable. Human psyche is so connected to biology that biochemistry can skew our mental states (as in schizophrenia and clinical depression) and cause mind-degenerating and personality-distorting diseases (such as Alzheimer's and some forms of Parkinson's), which make a mockery of Aristotelian ideals of building character and dying in a virtuous old age."

The conclusion: "Starting with the horrendous predicament of humankind, I have painted a more pessimistic picture of human agency than traditional free-fall approaches draw of Adam and Eve in Eden...I insist that human agency could not have enough stature to shift responsibility for the way things are off God's shoulders onto ours. I deny our competence to organize personal animality into functional harmony, much less to anticipate and steer our way clear of horrors" (p. 50).

One reason Adams takes such a dim view of human agency is that horrors can volitionally ruin us: “By definition, horrors stump our meaning-making capacities. Individual (as opposed to merely collective) horror-participation can break our capacity to make positive sense of our lives, can so fragment our sense of self and so damage our agency as to make authentic choice impossible" (p. 207).

I think this insight is critically important. Specifically, theologians need to recognize that horrors can so ravage and damage the human psyche that, as Adams says, the ability for authentic choice is destroyed. And if this is the case God has to pick up the slack. Think of a child traumatically abused by a "religious" parent or leader. This horror can wholly damage the child's (and later adult) ability to ever think positively about religion, God, and Jesus. The person is volitionally ruined.

This is not to say that people cannot transcend horrors and find positive meaning in their midst. Some people are able to accept horrors in a stoic fashion and overcome volitional ruin. But Adams is clear that to expect this outcome to be the norm is both silly and elitist. (p. 269-270): "I find these stoic paradigms deep and worthy of great respect, but elitist. Even if the martyrologies exaggerate, I have no wish to deny that some humans put in some truly impressive individual performances. But experience shows such perseverance to be out of psycho-spiritual reach for many (perhaps even most) human beings in sufficiently desperate circumstances. Wartime horrors expose deeply rooted ordinary-time virtues as ineffectual defenses against betraying one's deepest loyalties. Even if the Spirit of Christ indwells us, many-to-most of us have not learned to cooperate well enough to offer the sacrifice of heroic martyrdom either in this world's torture chambers and death camps or on the alter of our hearts."

I think this is right on target. It is simply ridiculous to expect heroic stoicism from the abuse victim or the death camp inmate. To expect this is simply to compound their horror. For not only are they victims of horror, we also accuse them of moral weakness for not being able to "get over it" and respond appropriately to the gospel during their mortal lives.

The implications for all this is that God has to carry the lion's share of the burden regarding horror defeat. Humans, volitionally speaking, are just not up to the task. Horrors ruin us. Thus, although parts of humanity can and do participate in horror defeat, the task is largely one of Divine initiative and competence.

How will horror defeat occur? Adams suggests that there are three stages of horror defeat:

Stage 1: Divine Solidarity
In Stage 1 God's presence and participation in horror allows for the possibility for moments of intimacy/unioin with God in the midst of horror whether we know it or not. Stage 1 horror defeat was accomplished in the Incarnation. That is, by entering into the horrors, God has built a route for personal horror defeat. That is, due to the Presence of God the ability to make meaning out of horrors becomes, theoretically, possible.

Stage 2: Healing and Mothering
Although Stage 1 implies that, post-Incarnation, it is possible to find meaning in the midst of horrors, many, due to volitional ruin, will not have the capacity to make that move. Thus, in Stage 2 God must work within the individuals developmental history creating meaning-making capacities from the inside out. This involves intensive Divine healing and coaching. Or, as Julian of Norwich says, mothering.

Stage 3: The End of Horrors
During the final Stage all the prior work in Stage 2 must be brought to fruition for every person and the entire cosmos must be reconfigured to allow for an existence that no longer is radically vulnerable to horrors.

As we look at these stages, we see the burden on the Divine Initiative. I'm particularly struck by the weak volitional themes of Stage 2. For example (p. 160, 161): "There is metaphysical mothering in that God is the ground for our being...There is also functional mothering. The Trinity/Jesus provides the loving personal environment in which we are always enfolded, before and whether we are actually aware of it or not. The Trinity/Jesus indwell us, make their home within us at the core of who we are. The Trinity/Jesus exercise that omnipresent influence, below as well as above the level of conscious awareness, without which our capacity to be spiritual persons could not be awakened and evolved...I agree with Julian of Norwich that the emergent capacities of human spirit are at every stage too meager to harmonize [our physical and spiritual natures], and that this power deficit would be a design deficit if human beings were intended--given Divine creation and conservation--to be always-or-for-the-most-part left to its own devices. My understanding of God's purpose in creation--focused by Divine desire to sanctify the material--motivates the hypothesis that God's design for human agency essentially involves functional collaboration with Divine agency, which has not only the wisdom, power, and resourcefulness to harmonize matter and spirit, but also the pedagogical imagination to rear us up into conscious and willing participation."

There are some big questions theological systems try to answer. Two of the biggest are:

1. What is our situation / condition / ailment / predicament / problem?

2. How are we rescued from our Condition?

Basically, What's broken? and How is it fixed?

These are the soteriological questions (i.e., How are we saved?) and, given that the Son is the aspect of the Trinity that acts as Savior, the answer to these questions defines the work of the Christ.

Modern Protestants tend to see our main problem as Sin, and all it entails (e.g., separation from God). Thus, in most Protestant churches Jesus overcomes the problem of Sin by laying down his life as an atonement sacrifice. (Along with the Sin-is-the-Problem formulation there is a secondary aspect of Christ's work: Jesus as Moral Teacher/Exemplar. That is, another way Jesus defeats sin is by showing us how to live morally virtuous lives. This is why Protestants emphasize Sunday School and bible study. However, the Moral Teacher/Exemplar model plays a second fiddle to the Atoning Sacrifice model in most churches.)

In contrast to these formulations, Marilyn McCord Adams begins Christ and Horrors with a refreshing soteriological move. That is, she sees horrors, and not sin, as our fundamental Problem/Condition. Thus, salvation is about the defeat of horrors. Christ is a horror-defeater.

Adams (p. 32) writes that she is "taking my cue from the book of Job rather than stories of Adam's fall. I want to explore what shape Christology takes if the Savior's job is to rescue us, not fundamentally from sin, but from horrors!"

What are horrors? Adams (p. 32) centers them upon existential concerns about meaning: "horrors as evils the participation in (the doing or suffering of) which constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) have positive meaning for him/her on the whole."

Just to be clear, Adams (p. 32-33) gives examples, "Paradigm horrors include the rape of a woman and axing off her arms, psychological torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, schizophrenia, severe clinical depression, cannibalizing one's own offspring, child abuse the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, parental incest, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas, being the accidental and/or unwitting agent in the disfigurement or death of those one loves best."

These events are horrors because they furnish "reason to doubt whether the participant's life can be worth living, because it engulfs the positive value of his/her life and penetrates into his/her meaning-making structures seemingly to defeat and degrade his/her value as a person" (p. 33). Adams summarizes (p. 34): "the heart of the horrendous, what makes horrors so pernicious, is their life-ruining potential."

Two further comments about horrors are in order. First, even if we do not participate in horrors (either as victim or perpetrator) we are all complicit in horror. Adams (p. 35-36, emphases hers) makes this clear: "Virtually every human being is complicit in actual horrors merely by living in his/her nation or society. Few individuals would deliberately starve a child into mental retardation. But this happens even in the United States, because of the economic and social systems we collectively allow to persist and from which most of us profit. Likewise complicit in actual horrors are all those who live in societies that defend the interests of warfare and so accept horror-perpetration as a chosen means to or a side effect of its military aims. Human being in this world is thus radically vulnerable to, or at least collectively an inevitable participant in, horrors."

A second point that Adams makes later in the book (p. 207) is that "death itself is a horror!" She continues (p. 208-209): "Death proves that there is not enough to us to maintain integrity, to hold body and soul together...It is in our nature and our calling as human beings to strive against the forces what would undo us, and it is in our nature surely to lose...Death mock our personal pretensions...If death is a horror, and death is natural to human being, then to be human is to be headed for horror. In cultic conceptuality, human being is a prima facie cursed kind of thing to be."

In sum, this is our Condition: God made a world where we are radically vulnerable to or complicit in horrors. The world is saturated in horror. Thus, the Work of Christ must be, fundamentally and foundationally, involved in horror defeat (p. 52): "If non-optimality is construed in terms of God's setting us up for horror-participation by creating us personal animals in a material world such as this, then the Savior's job is to be the horror-defeater. Our next question is: Who would Christ have to be, what relation to God and humankind would Christ have to have, to accomplish this saving work?"

I'll sketch Adams' answer to that question in coming posts. Today, I just want to reflect on the genius of Adams' focus on horrors.

In my last post I said that my first response to reading Christ and Horrors was "Finally, a theologian that gets it." What did I mean by this? What does Adams, in my opinion, get?

The genius of Christ and Horrors is that it links soteriology (i.e., salvation) with theodicy (i.e., the problem of evil or pain). The two become one. Salvation becomes about horror defeat! This union is a masterstroke.

Let me clarify. When soteriology and theodicy are decoupled, soteriology, in my opinion, becomes laughable. It becomes a silly, thin, ridiculous project. Let me give a personal example. In my church we work with the classic Protestant soteriological scheme: Our problem is sin and our separation from God. Thus, we accept Jesus as our Savior and become concerned about our moral lives. Sin and its management becomes paramount.

I find this focus appalling. Constantly in church I'm fighting the impulse to scream the following: "People, this world is a hellhole. The human predicament is monstrous. And we are sitting here arguing about if homosexuality is a sin or if a woman can be in a leadership role/clergy in the church? Are you kidding me? Are you FREAKING kidding me!?"

As Adams repeatedly points out, our situation is ruin; wreaked, horrifically painful lives. And that ruin, in my humble opinion, trivializes the common soteriological impulses of the church. Who really gives a damn about doctrines of justification, election, or atonement? God has got to fix this mess! And if your soteriological scheme doesn't address the massive ruin of Creation, doesn't speak directly to Rwanda, or Darfur, or the Nazi Death camps, or the child nursing a parent ravaged by Alzheimer's, then your soteriological scheme is simply ridiculous, given my sensibilities. I refuse to participate in a church life preoccupied with hand-wringing over our moral peccadilloes and the quest for assurances that we are, indeed, going to heaven. As I once said to a classroom of students, "Given your beliefs about salvation, God promptly sent those six million Jews, killed in Nazi Death camps, to hell. And, given that hell is both much worse and longer in duration than a death camp, I refuse to believe that God is worse than Hitler." That is to say, if we separate issues of salvation (e.g., Are Jews going to heaven?) from the issue of horror (e.g., the death camps) we get this appalling disjoint where God compounds the horror. Horror for horror. What kind of God is that?

So you can see my great relief upon reading Christ and Horrors. The linking of soteriology and theodicy makes our most important concern the central work of Christ. And that, to me, is an amazing theological insight.

Of all the things I struggle with in faith, the problem of gratuitous suffering is the biggest.

I few week ago I was having a difficult day. Not for me as much as for people I care about. In the middle of the day a student sent me an e-mail asking the question, "Is it okay to hate God?" And I said, "Sure. For a season it is okay to hate God."

All that reminded me of some e-mails I sent around a few years ago to some friend's espousing a vision of the cross I called, in half-jest, the advocatus diaboli heresy.

The Devil's Advocate--the advocatus diaboli--is the person appointed by the Catholic Church to argue against a person moving up the chain toward sainthood. The Devil's Advocate is to be, by appointment, a kind of curmudgeon. This mechanism is to ensure that the process is fair and that even the most unflattering evidence against the candidate gets full consideration. I recall a few years ago reading about the man appointed to be the Devil's Advocate against Mother Teresa (she was at the stage of "Blessed" at the time). Fun job, wouldn't you say, pointing out Mother Teresa's faults?

Given my issues with God I wondered, what if someone were appointed to be God's advocatus diaboli? What case would they bring against God? And, given that case, how would God respond?

In my mind, the Devil's Advocate would say something like this:

I am a Canaanite mother. I had my baby ripped from my breast and smashed to the ground by Israelites under Joshua's command. You, God, commanded the murder of my baby. And I witnessed it before I myself was brutally beaten to death. So, no, you cannot be the God for all people. You cannot ask for my love or loyalty. I am the advocatus diaboli against you.

I can imagine a long line of advocatus diaboli against God. The billions who have suffered horrors, some God-sanctioned, on this earth.

How could God defend himself against the Devil's Advocate? My answer for my friends followed the rhythm found in Jack Miles' book Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, which is the sequel to his Pulitzer-Prize winning God: A Biography. Following Miles, here is how God might answer the advocatus diaboli:

...If God had to suffer and die, then God had to inflict suffering and death upon himself. But why would God do this?

Every perpetrator was first a victim. Behind every crime stretches a millennial history of earlier crimes, each in its way an extenuating circumstance. But to whom does this infinite regression lead in the end if not to God? The guilt of God is certainly not a Christian dogma, and yet it is an emotionally inescapable implication of the Christian myth, visible and audible in countless works of Christian art. The pathos of those artistic enactments--those masses and oratorios, passion plays and memorial liturgies, and above all those paintings and sculptures in which unspeakable is left unspoken--is inseparable from the premise that God is inflicting this pain upon himself for a reason. "The real reason," as Albert Camus wrote in his haunting novel The Fall, "is that he himself knew he was not altogether innocent." (p. 5)

To use the language of the myth, who is to be blamed for our expulsion from Eden? It is the Lord himself who cursed what he created...Our offense was so mild, his punishment so ferocious. Can we avenge ourselves upon him?

No. we cannot; we cannot make him "bear the awful curse" that he has inflicted on his creatures. But he can make himself bear it. And when he does, all lesser offense can be caught up in one primal offense, his own...In the words of Paul (2 Cor. 5:19), he can "reconcile the world to himself" and himself to the world. As God, the Lord cannot cease to exist; but as Christ, he can taste death. Betrayed and abandoned, he can breathe his last breath in pain. The myth that he once did so has within it...the power to still that rage against the universe which any individual history can engender. (p. 9)

The world is a great crime, and someone must be made to pay for it...the New Testament is the story of how someone, the right someone, does pay for it. The ultimately responsible part accepts his responsibility. And once he has paid the price, who else need be blamed, who else need be punished? (p. 12)

In the end, then, I argued this: Jesus died, not for our sins. Jesus died for God's sins.

Needless to say, none of my friends liked this formulation in the least. But for me, the formulation was cathartic.

But although cathartic my pet advocatus diaboli heresy wasn't very constructive. Recently however, I've discovered the book Christ and Horrors by Marilyn McCord Adams. The book is amazing, a constructive response to the horrors in the world. My response to my wife after reading the first chapter was, "Finally, a theologian that gets it."

So, this week I'm going to blog a bit about Christ and Horrors.

The Sunday School class I help teach is working through 1 Corinthians. A few weeks ago I was preparing to teach chapter 10. If you don't recall/know, the latter half of chapter 10 picks up Paul's discussion of eating meat sacrificed to idols which he began in chapter 8.

Meat sacrificed to idols is not an issue we can readily relate to. But what struck me about Paul's discussion about this issue in chapters 8 and 10 is how exceedingly difficult it is to map the interface of church and culture. As we watch Paul try to guide this new church as she interfaces with the pagan Corinthian culture we see Paul spin out a dizzying array of situations and how to deal with each. Interfacing with culture, if these texts are any indication, is very difficult.

Here's the issue before Paul: Is it permissible to eat meat if it had been used/sacrificed in a pagan ritual?

I think both the Corinthians and the modern reader want Paul to simply say Yes or No. That would be very easy to both understand and to implement. But such hard and fast rules would attenuate the the ability of the Corinthians to "be all things to all people."

So, rather than getting a Yes/No response from Paul, we see a different refrain: Yes, but...

"Yes, but..." is much more flexible, but it is also complex and requires discernment. Is it permissible to eat meat if it had been used/sacrificed in a pagan ritual? Yes, Paul answers, but...

For example, if you read the chapters, Paul says the following:

Question:
Is it permissible to eat/buy meat if it had been used/sacrificed in a pagan ritual?

General Answer:
Yes, an idol is nothing.

But...
No, if it causes a believer to stumble.
Yes, you can buy this meat in the marketplace.
No, you cannot eat it as a part of a pagan ritual.
Yes, you can eat is as a guest, but, if a weaker brother is present, you should refrain.

In short, Paul is trying to guide the Corinthian church as she seeks to interface with and minister to the larger Corinthian culture. Paul could help the Corinthians by giving them some very simple rules to follow. He could turn them into a Yes or No Church, a church who reasons about issues in black and white categories. But Paul doesn't do this. He is trying to turn them into a Yes, but... Church. Which means a discerning church. But a Yes, but... Church is so much more difficult to manage. Discernment is hard and even error prone. Why doesn't Paul have them take the easy way out?

I think because only a Yes, but... Church can be responsive to the call of God in the world. Situational ethics are sticky business. But if you get out in the world situations are what you'll have to deal with. Rules do not guide. Only wisdom can help.

This is one reason I don't like Christians going on and on about the Ten Commandments. It's not that I have anything against the Ten Commandments. I just don't find them very helpful past a certain superficial point (e.g., I agree not to kill anyone or steal anything.). But the concern is that if we don't push the Ten Commandments into the larger American culture (because, presumably, non-Christians simply LOVE to kill and steal) that ethics will become relative and contextual.

My feeling? That is precisely the ethic we need.

"Yes, but..."

This was fun to find. Apparently, the class Networks (Information Science 204) at Cornell University hosts a support blog for the students in the class. The host of the blog picked up on my Connector post from my EcQ series.

What I like about the comments regarding the post is the description of how I'm trying to communicate network theory to an "unusual community."

As a church-going person, I totally agree with that assessment...

Dear Reader,
As a psychologist I spend a great deal of time in this blog trying to reconcile psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral genetics with theological systems. As I argue across these posts, scientific research is leading modern persons to question, for lack of a better description, the doctrine of the soul.

For many Christians, the doctrine of the soul embodies (no pun intended) some form of Cartesian dualism, the belief (often attributed in Philosophy 101 to the French philosopher Rene Descartes) that body and mind are composed of two different kinds of "substances." Bodystuff is physical material, the stuff that makes up our bones, blood, and brain. Bodystuff is the stuff of the physical/material universe. As such, Bodystuff is governed by the laws of cause and effect and, thus, is describable by science. In contrast, Mindstuff is the mental (for secular dualists) or the spiritual (for theistic dualists) stuff that cannot be reduced to matter and energy. As such, Mindstuff is not located in space or time (as Descartes put it, Mindstuff has no "extension"). For religious persons, due to this capacity to "transcend" the physical flux, Mindstuff grants the human person a source of free will and radical volitional range. That is, will and choice--aspects of Mindstuff--cannot be "reduced" to Bodystuff. Thus, Mindstuff is not governed by the clockwork, deterministic laws of Bodystuff.

The trouble is, due to the rise of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral genetics, scope for the soul--quintessential Mindstuff--is being greatly circumscribed if not eliminated from educated discourse altogether. That is, the doctrine of the "ghost in the machine," a pejorative way of describing the idea that you have a "soul" inhabiting or interacting with your body/brain, is growing increasingly untenable in the age of neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral genetics. We are living in what I call the post-Cartesian situation. Living in the aftermath of the demise of dualism.

And yet, theologians and contemporary Christians still refer the the "soul" and "spirit" as if nothing is amiss. As a Christian psychologist I live with this tension on a daily basis. This tension has forced me to think about theological categories and systems in a post-Cartesian fashion. The implications are huge and, for many, disturbing (for my single best post illustrating the problem read The Cartesian Race). Yet, I see no other option for us. We cannot go back and neuroscience will continue its reductionistic advance. In short, you think the Faith vs. Evolution debates are hot? Wait until the Christian community broadly wakes up to the post-Cartesian crisis! Johnny will not only learn in the classroom that he is descended from primates. He'll also learn in biology that he has no soul. Speaking of the soul will be like speaking of Santa Claus. How are Mom and Dad and the Preacher going to react to that?

For my part, I'd like to act preemptively. To do a little theological spadework from both sides (psychology and faith) to prepare us for the coming Cartesian storm.

Because the clouds they are forming.

Trust me. I live in West Texas and I know all about thunderstorms.

Best,
Richard

Miscellaneous Posts (in chronological order of posting)

Moral luck and its implications for salvation
Salvation in the post-Cartesian situation
Is free will required for salvation? Surprisingly, no.
Strong and weak volitionists
Ministering in the post-Cartesian situation
The moral implications of implicit cognition
Dispatches from the post-Cartesian world
The illusion of conscious will?
On the incompatibility between free will and moral character, Part 1
On the incompatibility between free will and moral character, Part 2
Want to be more like Jesus? Drink a Coke.

Toward a Post-Cartesian Theology Series (These posts need to be read in order to be understandable)

Eight Theses on Theology in the post-Cartesian Situation
Freedom for finite creatures
Love and normativity
Weak volition and moral responsibility
Volitional views and politics
Divine volitional unanimity
The Light Touch