Sunday, February 24, 2013

My Philosophy of Card Writing


Work on my handwriting. Use a fountain pen.
Write friends, family, and also strangers who interest me: musicians, writers, artists. Try to plant a seed of truth.
Find the most interesting art cards available.
Use art stickers on the back as well. I just started doing this.
Pray over cards before sending them--and after.
Include my business cards, if writing to an academic. I just wrote one of that nature tonight.
Ponder by myself in my chair in the basement who I should write.
Use a dictionary, since there is no spell check!
Sometimes include a postcard within the card, if I like the photograph or painting.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

To Teachers

Teachers:
Teach as if what you said counted for Eternity. It does.
Teach as if your students were eternal. They are.
Teach as if God were your audience. He is.

Truth


About ten years ago, a prospective student recently wrote to Denver Seminary. He was alarmed by our vision statement, which speaks of defending “absolute truth” in our postmodern world. Being favorable to postmodernism (through reading Brian McClaren’s book, A New Kind of Christian), he was wary of believing in absolute truth. This view would stifle our witness to non-Christians and hinder Christian growth, since those who believe in absolute truth think they have it all figured out.
           
This reveals that postmodernism is seducing the church as well as the world. Christians authors tell us not to emphasize biblical truth as objective and absolute. Instead, we should underscore the life of our community and tell the Christian story. According to McLaren, it is wrongheaded modern view to try to prove other religions wrong. We should rather try to be good and not worry so much about being right. (However, McClaren is concerned throughout the book to prove supposedly “modern” Christian are wrong.)

McLaren’s thinking issues the death sentence for apologetics: God’s call to defend our faith as true, rational, and compelling in the face of intellectual objections (1 Peter 5:15-17; Jude 3). One leading challenge to Christian faith—and to the idea of truth itself—is postmodernism itself.
           
Postmodern philosophies claim that truth is constructed by communities and shaped by language and social structures of power. There really is no truth “out there” above us.  Richard Rorty claims that no “vocabulary” (or worldview) is any closer to reality than any other—although he presents his own view as an improvement over opposing views. Truth is merely what his colleagues let him get away with. Few Christians make such bald claims, but one Christian writer recently published a chapter called, “There is No Such Thing as Objective Truth and It’s a Good Thing, Too.” Other Christian leaders join the chorus and instruct us to leave a strong emphasis on truth and apologetics behind. 
           
Yet without a clear view of the nature of truth and a rational defense of Christianity as true our witness will be paralyzed. We should tell our stories and invite people to join our communities. But Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, New Agers and others in our pluralistic world will tell their stories and beckon souls into their communities, too. What makes us different? As apologist Francis Schaeffer often said, the purpose of Christian community is to serve the God of truth with all our being. Truth should constitute our identity as Christians, individually and corporately. Jesus prayed to the Father, “Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:17).
           
The Hebrew and Greek words for “truth” in Scripture have deep meanings, but they all center on the idea of factuality and accuracy. To put it more philosophically (but not unbiblically), a true statement corresponds with reality or fits the facts. Christian faith must fit the great facts of the Christian story or it is false and hopeless. Paul said that if we hope in Christ and his resurrection and Christ is not risen our faith is in pointless and misleading. It must be historical, factual, and reliable (1 Corinthians 15). Our confidence in the gospel is based on objective facts. We believe these them because they are true; our believing them does not make them true. Christians do find their faith to be subjectively compelling. However, these beliefs are existentially gripping only because they lay rightly claim to realities about our selves, our world, and our God.
           
But can we say that Christianity is absolutely true? Many professed Christians get philosophical cold feet at this point. Recent polls show that upwards of sixty percent of “Christians,” like our prospective student, deny the existence of absolute truth.

An absolute has no exemptions or qualifications. Jesus affirmed an absolute truth about himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6; see also Matthew 11:27). Paul echoes this when he claims that there is but one mediator between God and humanity, Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:4). Peter preached that salvation is found in Jesus alone (Acts 4:8-12). This absolute truth gives us a trustworthy point of reference, Jesus Christ, who is he same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).  It is no arbitrary pronouncement, but a claim based on good evidence from the incomparable life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and found in historically reliable documents (Luke 1:1-4; 2 Peter 1:16).
           
Defending and living in accord with this objective and absolute truth does not imply we have absolutely mastered all the truth or all biblical truth. We bear witness to the absolute truth, but we are not absolute! No church or denomination perfectly captures biblical truth, but that is the goal.  Nor does belief in absolute truth mean we can easily convince doubters of this truth, but we should try. Nevertheless, we must marshal truth-claims and humbly present the arguments and evidence given for the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ—as well as for all the defining doctrines of Christian faith. Otherwise, we fail to be true to the truth that sets the captives free.
           
--Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and the author of several books, including Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism (InterVarsity Press, 2000).



Friday, February 22, 2013

City Bark

I often take Sunny, my Golden Doodle, to City Bark, which is very near where I work at Denver Seminary. The care they give is excellent; everyone loves the dogs; and service is friendly and efficient. I am quite happy to leave Sunny there for half days or full days. Therefore, I highly recommend City Bark for both grooming and canine care.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Avoiding Serfdom


Daniel Hannan, The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter or Warning to America. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 200 pages, with index, $24.99. Reviewed by Douglas Groothuis.


          Should Christians study and be involved in politics? Some claim that politics is dirty; Christians should be pure; therefore, Christians should not seek to understand or contribute to the world of elections, legislation, and public policy. However, this is deeply unbiblical. Christ is the Lord of the whole of life and has summed his born-again and Spirit-filled people to “disciple the nations” (Matthew 28:18-20). We live in a fallen world. Christian involvement in that world—at every level—means associating with sinners, sinful ideas, and sinful institutions. But God’s mission as God is to draw people into his covenant, make them eternal citizens of his Kingdom, and empower them to reestablish the knowledge of God to the nations such that fallen mortals admit their state before God, appropriate his promises, and put them into action as they rely on the Spirit of Truth moment-by-moment. This cannot exclude the laws of nations—and neighborhoods.

          Since God is Lord, and not the state, every political order is under the judgment of a higher Sovereign. For example, the Psalms says to God and us:

Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—
    a throne that brings on misery by its decrees? (Psalm 94:20)

The Book of Acts reports God’s impeachment of arrogant Herod.
On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people.22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.”23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
But the word of God continued to spread and flourish (Acts 12:21-22).

Christians, as salt and light in society, should be deeply concerned about the moral and political direction of their nation (Matthew 5:13-16). Civil law substantially shapes the character and culture of a nation. Although no tyranny can ultimately stop the advancement of God’s Kingdom, it can displease God and abuse people made in God’s image and likeness. Isaiah knew this: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees” (Isaiah 10:1). Jesus himself was not coved by political pressure, nor did he endorse unjust authority:

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’  In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! (Luke 13:31-33).

 As Jeremiah said, God’s people should seek the welfare of the city to which they are exiled (Jeremiah 29:7; see also 1 Peter 1). Although we are “exiles” on earth before God restores all things (Revelation 21-22), we are still called to cultivate and develop the creation (Genesis 1:26) in these terms:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

Part of the Christian’s duty as both a citizen of heaven and of earth is to gain the best possible insights into the history, meaning, and possibilities for one’s own nation. That is, being a wise agent of God means not only knowing the Word, but knowing God’s world. This requires some knowledge of extra-biblical history, political philosophy, and economics. Christians ought not use the Bible as a shortcut to avoid these matters. In this endeavor, an Englishman, Daniel Hannan can help us immensely.
         
While on the floor of the European Parliament in 2009, Hannan eloquently denounced British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s policies. A video of his performance went viral on the Internet, thus acquainting millions of Americans to a principled, articulate, and courageous politically conservative voice from England. Although Hannan does not wax very theological in this short, crisp, clever, and insightful book, his warning to America is deeply rooted in the Judeo Christian tradition. Perhaps the most telling theological comments Hannan makes sums up the genius of this tradition: “it needs to be remembered that Man is fallen” (10). Knowledge of this truth protects civil governments from utopian aspirations and the superstition that human nature can be regenerated by political effort.  

Hannan’s thesis is that America has moved radically toward European political ideals and, therefore, away from its founding heritage of limited civil government. He does not want America to become a nation of serfs. Hence his title, which calls to mind Friedrich Hayek’s classic work, The Road to Serfdom.  Hannan warns that “The United States is Europeanizing its health care system, its tax rates, its day care, its welfare rules, its approach to global warming, its foreign policy, its federal structure, its unemployment rate” (xvi). As such, we are risking the integrity of our unique identity in the world. “Europeanization is incompatible with the vision of the founders and the spirit of the republic. Americans are embracing all the things their ancestors were so keen to get away from: high taxes, unelected bureaucrats, pettifogging rules” (118).

Hannan, though a loyal citizen of the nation that America opposed in the War of Independence, affirms American exceptionalism. This claim has taken many forms—some more merely nationalistic, others more nuanced and historically-informed. Basically stated, American exceptionalism does not deem America a new chosen nation, nor does it except America from transcendent moral standards.  As Jesus said:

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked (Luke 12:28)

Rather, it argues that the principles of America’s founding (articulated in The Federalist Papers, The Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) are exceptional in world history. America was deliberately founded by well-educated, deep-thinking and far-thinking, intellectuals who held a Judeo-Christian view of human nature as neither angelic nor demonic, but constrained by finitude and sin. Therefore, the power of the state should be limited and the federal government should be separated into three powers, each with its own jurisdiction: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. To many, this arrangement merely a social construction with no intrinsic and abiding value, as claims progressivism. On the contrary, it captures many essentials truths of the human condition and what it means to live under ordered liberty

Like many British writers, Hannan possesses an urbane wit and an astute sense for history. He convincingly argues that America’s founding ideals were largely borrowed England, the very nation America revolted against in 1776. Many Englishmen did not support the war against the colonies, and it was not fought with great determination. Further, England generally embraced America after the war. The United States and England have been strong military allies through many years, especially in World War II. For these reasons, Hannan feels a keen kinship with America, and desires that it stay true to its founding principles. He believes that America at its best is, in many ways and despite is foibles, a light to world. He does not want to see that light flicker and eventually go out. The darkness would extend beyond our shores and throughout God’s world. America’s greatness should matter to everyone, argues Hannan, since “the promise of the U.S. Constitution didn’t simply serve to make Americans free. It also drove your fathers to carry liberty to other continents” (118).

Hannan has in-depth experience with both British politics and that of the European Union, a multi-national bureaucracy that has little respect for the popular will of the citizens of its constitutive states. It favors a socialist welfare state over personal liberty, prosperity, and opportunity; it mandates “global governance” and supra-nationalism over the sovereignty of individual nations (see Genesis 11 for the original source of this error.) In a particularly profound chapter called, “Don’t Copy Europe,” Hannan cautions that we should not copy Europe’s model of a centralized, command (top-down) economy, given its excessive and debilitating regulations, inability to motivate workers and generate new jobs. Nor should we ape Europeanize health care. As an example, Hannan explains the abysmal record of England’s inefficient and bureaucratically sclerotic socialized system.

We should avoid the European model of welfare as well, since it makes no distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, undercuts individual responsibility, and engenders resentment between people. Our sense of society should not be inspired by Europe, because “as the state has expanded, society has dwindled” (100). Or, as talk radio host and author Dennis Prager says, “The larger the state, the smaller the citizen.” Social functions traditionally given to families—such as health, education, day care, and the provision for the elderly—are taken over by the state. “So, it is perhaps no surprise that the family itself, in Europe, in is decline” (101).  Hannan argues that Europe’s recent record on immigration and its abandonment of federalism is equally undeserving of our imitation.

Americans should aspire to something far better than serfdom. Daniel Hannan can help teach us how. I hope that Christians listen, learn, and act accordingly, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit of Truth.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Neil Postman

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another -- slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in _Brave New World Revisited_, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In _1984_, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In _Brave New World_, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.


-- Neil Postman, Foreword to _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ (1985)

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Here and Now


Here and Now: The Autobiography of Pat Martino

  • Pat Martino, Bill Milkowski
  • Feb 12, 2013
  • Series: Denver Journal Volume 16 - 2013
Pat Martino with Bill Milkowski, Here and Now: The Autobiography of Pat Martino.Monclair, NJ: Backbeat Books, 2011. 192 pages. ISBN-10: 1617130273; ISBN-13: 978-1617130274. Hardback.
Here&NowAutobiographies of jazz musicians are often a bit difficult to bring about in a suitable literary form. This is simply because most jazz musicians are gifted in the language of music, but not necessarily in written language. Some, like John Coltrane, are quite laconic (although one can read Coltrane on Coltrane, culled from interviews). Others, like Duke Ellington, were oratorically nimble and mellifluous in speaking (listen to his dazzling spoken introduction to “Afro-Eurasian Eclipse” on the recording of the same name), but a bit idiosyncratic (if not factually errant) in writing. Ellington’s autobiography, Music is My Mistress is wonderfully entertaining, but not the most thorough or literate account of the maestro’s life and music. (For that, see Harvey Cohen, Duke Ellington’s America [University of Chicago Press, 2010].) A fair number of jazz autobiographies are joint productions, as is Here and Now. Pat Martino, arguably—and I will argue it—the greatest living jazz guitarist, teams up with jazz writer Bill Milkowski (author of Jaco, the biography of jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius) to produce a brief but satisfying story of Martino’s life and music. Short interviews with other admiring musicians—such as guitarists Carlos Santana, Pete Townshend, and George Benson—are sprinkled throughout the book and make up Appendix I: Guitar Players Testimony.
Besides Martino’s long and distinguished career as a pioneering guitarist with a tremendous knowledge of musical theory is the remarkable story of his catastrophic brain injury and his slow but complete comeback, against the odds. After supporting various organ-saxophone groups in Philadelphia as a mere teenager (beginning his professional career at age sixteen), Martino established himself as a unique and virtuoso voice in jazz guitar, known for his laser-sharp precision, tasteful speed (no narcissistic shedding here), relentless swing, and pure fire. (He soon changed his name from Pat Azzara to Pat Martino.) Then, after various seizures and other mental difficulties, a congenital brain defect (arteriovenous malformation) caused Martino to lose nearly all of his memory, including his ability to play the guitar. When he awoke from his emergency surgery, he could not recognize his own parents. They were strangers, as was much of the world. His parents moved him back in with them and Martino slowly began to regain many—but not all—of his memory and, amazingly enough, relearned to play the guitar. Having listened to nearly all of his recordings before and after his brain injury, as well as having seen Martino perform four times in two days in Chicago in 2012, I can assure the reader that he regained all he lost—and added even more skill, soul, and musical intelligence. An appendix, “Martino Unstrung: A Brain Mystery,” by psychologist-journalist Victor L. Schermer explores in some depth the nature of Martinos’ injury and recovery—as does the fascinating and enjoyable DVD of the same name. Another appendix provides Martino’s voluminous discography.
This narrative is told rather sparsely, although we learn quite a bit about his parents and upbringing. One does not learn too much about his first marriage, for example. He writes more, not surprisingly, of his present wife, who he warmly credits as stabilizing and inspiring his life. However, Martino and Milkowski recount the basic outline of Martino’s life and especially musical development, which for Martino aficionados such as myself, is intrinsically interesting. The title, Here and Now, expresses something of Martino’s worldview.  While not elaborately articulated or described in metaphysical categories, Martino’s music and life centers on being “in the  present” fully, of finding a level of concentration that is pure and revealing. While deeply steeped in musical theory and possessing flawless execution, Martino believes that there is more to playing and music itself than human performance and acoustic expression. It is spiritual and may open one up to higher realities. However, he views this holistically. He surprisingly says,
I’m not a guitar player. I’m not a musician. Because I don’t really seem to find that of any interest in the long run. I’m more interested in what this whole phenomenon of life is really all about (ix).
Martino came of age professionally in the middle to later 1960s and was influenced by Eastern worldviews and the idealism of the early drug culture, which considered hallucinogenic drugs as, in fact, psychedelic. That is, these substances were taken to be potential portals to a spiritual state of some kind. But as Francis Schaeffer  (in The God Who is There [1968]) and Os Guinness (The Dust of Death [InterVarsity, 1973]) perceptively observed, these drug-induced or meditation- induced experiences lacked intellectual content and were not verifiable through reason and evidence. One gets a sense of this in Here and Now. Martino intimates here and there that reality is more than what normal sensory perception can capture, and that some music has a mystical affinity with this reality, but he is rather illusive about its nature or meaning. Although he was raised Catholic and mentions some short-lived involvement in a Catholic charismatic prayer group, his worldview seems eclectic and perhaps pantheistic. He is quoted as saying on the back cover:
I’ve often asked myself, ‘What am I?’…In fact the words I am are enough for me. They’re the words of God. And that to me is the essence of definition. The greatest truth comes right back down to the central part of what a person truly is—life itself. And when you reach such a conclusion, it’s so spiritual that it overcomes as well as transcends any of the crafts, like guitar playing. Maybe that’s what eventually leads us to discover, however long it takes.
This confession is a bit cryptic and elliptical, but the rest of the book intimates a spirituality and worldview more akin to Eastern mysticism than monotheism. God revealed himself to Moses as “I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:14). The language is that of a personal, self-reflective, and communicate being, who far transcends anything that Moses (or any human) can find within themselves. Christ himself harked back to this theophany when he affirmed of himself, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Yet Martino quotes (without attribution) the Gnostic-mystic psychiatrist Carl Jung on the page before the table of contents: “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.” For Jung, the deepest reality was that of the Self, not of a personal-infinite God outside the self. (See my essay, “The Hidden Dangers of Carl Jung,” Christian Counseling Today; this is available on line:http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/07/carl-jung-beware.html.) If we look only within, we will find the image and likeness of God, but a flawed and needy image, given the ravages of the fall (Mark 7:21-23; Genesis 3; Romans 3:9-26). As Francis Schaeffer put it, we fallen mortals, rebels against God at our core, need forgiveness and restoration through “the finished work of Christ.”  (See Schaeffer’s exposition of Romans 1-8, The Finished Work of Christ [Crossway, 1998]). This cannot be found within. But if we lift “the empty hands of faith,” in Jesus Christ, we are given a new life with God, and an “infinite reference point” through which to understand ourselves and our world. The knowledge of God is the key to all other knowledge, for “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7; see also 2:5). Further, in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2-3).
The musical ability and near-miraculous comeback of Pat Martino are, whether he fully understands this or not, gifts from a gracious God. Further, when I met him at the legendary Jazz Showcase in Chicago, I discovered that Mr. Martino is a humble, kind, and gracious man. There was no sign of egotism, despite his prodigious and, at times, breathtaking, talents. May he grow in the knowledge of the one true God and find eternal life “here and now,” and forever (see John 1:18; 3:16-18).
Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Denver Seminary
February 2013

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Losing our Letters


Amazing as it may seem to many of us now, human beings wrote letters to each other before the arrival of electronic mail. My mother did. Along with her letters (sometimes typed on a typewriter, sometimes in long hand), she sent me clippings from her local newspaper—another print medium that is in jeopardy—about my old high school friends, how the moose are taking over Anchorage, Alaska, and other items she finds noteworthy. She was a lifelong correspondent, and thus a dinosaur. God bless her for it. But there are a few far younger “dinosaurs” out there, including one of my students who hates email and cherishes letter-writing (“my correspondence,” she affectionately calls it).

What do we lose when we exchange email—or incessant cell phone chatter—for the writing and receiving of letters? We all know what we gain from email and cell phones—speed, transferability (ugly word, that), volume of data, and more. But what features of a good life do we forfeit in the process? As with all communicative technology, there is a trade-off between gains and losses.

For one thing, we tend to replace reflection with rapidity. Email is fast, very fast—and often, too fast. No intermediary object is required for an email. We type letters on a screen and launch them into cyberspace. With letters, we must inscribe symbols onto a page, a distinct physical object that takes up space and which has a marked history of its own. Writing by hand takes time, and is, therefore, inefficient given contemporary quantitative standards. However, the time and effort is takes to write a letter demands a slower pace and allows for more deliberation on what one is writing. In days of yore, many a letter was written only to be torn up and thrown out because one thought better of it. Or perhaps it was tucked away as memorabilia.

In an email age and texting age we may be losing a literary fixture: the collection of noteworthy people’s correspondence, as The New York Times recently noted in an essay by Rachel Donadio called, “Literary Letters, Lost in Cyberspace” (September 4, 2005). I have read entire books made up of the letters of C.S. Lewis (who was always in good form), Francis Schaeffer (the consummate thinking pastor), and others. It is not unusual to find the letters of literary figures or philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell, bound for posterity or included in biographies. “Men of letters” were almost invariably men (or women) of letters. Letters of note tended to be saved or duplicated. Emails, on the other hand, are so multitudinous and so disposable (click or “oops!”), that often they are not translated into a more permanent form. (Digital storage is less permanent and more fragile than paper, since it often decays, is fragmented, or becomes unreadable due to new software. I take this up in The Soul in Cyberspace.)

Letters carry the literal touch of the person who wrote them. Even a typed letter is signed. It is crowned by the signature: one’s own name in one’s own hand. If a letter is hand-written, the sign of the personal is made more manifest. In writing a letter recently (a rarity, I admit), I realized that I seldom write by hand more than a few sentences at a time, usually on my student’s papers. Besides that, I may make a list (for shopping items or articles due to editors), check boxes for various purposes, or fill out forms. My hand writing is poor; in fact, I do not write cursively, but print. It is slow and cumbersome. I must work at making my inscriptions intelligible, and any aesthetic features are out of reach. Nevertheless, our handwriting—heavenly or ghastly or somewhere in between—is our creation, the inscription of our identity placed on receptive material. We may choose the type of pen, color of ink (or inks), and make idiosyncratic notations. Yes, email gives us a plethora of choices, such as fonts, emoticons (now animated), text size, photograph-pasting, and so on, but these are pre-selected for us by others. They are not created by us specifically for another. The manner of writing itself—apart from its overt intellectual content—may be revealing. A good friend of mine told me that her mother discerned the disheveled state of her soul not by the content of her writing, but by the contours of her handwriting.

Simply because letters are irrepressibly personal, most of us still get a small (but not cheap) thrill from finding a letter in our mail box addressed to us in handwriting (and not machine produced)—a letter that often has a telltale thickness, indicating that it houses several pages, folded and written by human hands. Perhaps we should send and receive fewer emails, yell into the cell less often, and instead give and receive the small but tangible joy a letter can afford. Perhaps (to consider something quite radical for most) we should even work on our penmanship as a way of working on our relationships.

Douglas Groothuis is Professsor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and the author of On Jesus (Wadsworth, 2003).

Sunday, February 10, 2013


Douglas Groothuis, Metro State, 2013

Terms from Introduction to Philosophy

There are several terms or phrases that I have introduced in class that may not have been covered in your reading. Here are a few of them.
1.      Place-holder: Usually a letter to indicate an abstract concept. P means “any proposition.” S means “any subject,” understood to be a person. These are similar to variables in algebra. X and Y may mean anything. Let us use some place holders in an argument:

A.    If X, then Y.
B.    Not-Y.
C.    Therefore: not X (modus tolens).

2.      Proposition: what an indicative sentence affirms. The same proposition, “This is a cat,” can be spoken or written in many languages, and with the same meaning. Deconstructionists do not believe in propositions because they reject objective truth. Everything is reduced to relative language for Deconstructionists.

3.      Propositional attitude: One’s intellectual orientation toward truth claims. About claim P (any proposition) one may:


A.    Believe P to be true
B.    Not know if P is true
C.    Believe that P not true.
D.   Hope P is true.
E.     And more.


4.      Reference range: the extent of a truth claim; what a truth claims covers or contains. These come in several basic types:

A.    Universal affirmative statement: All X is Y: All humans (X) are mortal (Y)
B.    Universal negation statement: No X is Y: No humans (X) are immortal (Y).
C.    Particular affirmative statement: X is Y: Socrates (X) is mortal (Y).
D.   Particular negation statement: X is not-Y: Socrates (X) is not immortal (Y).

5.      The law of identity: A is A. It is that simple. The Student Success Building (A) is the Student Success Building (A). You (A) are you (A)!

6.      Perspectivism: This comes in two types: hard and soft.

A.    Hard perspectivism is the idea that all knowledge is limited to a perspective and that no perspective is closer to the truth than any other perspective. That is, it is perspective all the way down. This is a kind of relativism and is claimed by Deconstructionists.

B.    Soft perspectivism is the idea that the same state of affairs (or circumstance) can be understood from various complementary perspectives. For example, Christians claim that the four Gospels about Jesus’ life (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) give somewhat different perspectives on the life (although they all make many common claims) and teachings of Jesus, but these perspectives do not contradict each other. They are, rather, complementary and contribute to a larger harmonious whole. Or: my experience of John as angry and your experience of John as patient are not contradictory if we are referring to John at different times. The larger perspective is that John is sometimes angry and sometimes patient.

7.      Disjunctive proposition: a statement involving a choice between possibilities. “It is in either chapter three or chapter four.” This is true if it is in one of the two chapters stipulated. It false if it is in neither chapter or in both chapters.



Psalm 133

A song of ascents. Of David.

How good and pleasant it is
    when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
    running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
    down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
    were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
    even life forevermore.

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

The United States of Europe? No!


Daniel Hannan, The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter or Warning to America. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 200 pages, with index, $24.99. Reviewed by Douglas Groothuis.


            Christians, as salt and light in society, should be deeply concerned about the moral and political direction of their nation (Matthew 5:13-16). As Jeremiah said, God’s people should seek the welfare of the city to which they are exiled (Jeremiah 29:7; see also 1 Peter 1). Although we are “exiles” on earth before God restores all things (Revelation 21-22), we are still called to cultivate and develop the creation (Genesis 1:26) as well disciplining the nations according to Jesus Christ’s matchless teachings (Matthew 28:18-20). Part of the Christian’s duty as both a citizen of heaven and of earth is to gain the best possible insights into the history, meaning, and possibilities for one’s own nation. In this, Daniel Hannan can help us immensely.
            While on the floor of the European Parliament in 2009, Hannan eloquently denounced British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s liberal policies. A video of his performance went viral on the Internet, thus acquainting millions of Americans to a principled and courageous politically conservative voice from England. Although Hannan does not wax very theological in this short, crisp, and insightful book, his warning to America is deeply rooted in the Judea-Christian tradition. Perhaps the most telling theological comments Hannan makes sums up the genius of this tradition: “it needs to be remembered that Man is fallen” (10). Knowledge of this truth protects civil governments from utopian aspirations and the statist superstition that human nature can be regenerated by political effort.  
Hannan’s thesis is that with the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008, America has moved radically toward European political ideals and therefore away from its founding heritage. Hannan warns that “The United States is Europeanizing its health care system, its tax rates, its day care, its welfare rules, its approach to global warming, its foreign policy, its federal structure, its unemployment rate” (xvi). By so doing, we are risking the integrity of our unique identity in the world. “Europeanization is incompatible with the vision of the founders and the spirit of the republic. Americans are embracing all the things their ancestors were so keen to get away from: high taxes, unelected bureaucrats, pettifogging rules” (118).
Like many British writers, Hannan possesses an urban wit and an astute sense for history. He convincingly argues that America’s founding ideals were largely borrowed England, the very nation America revolted against in 1776. Many Englishmen did not support the war, and it was not fought with great determination. Further, England generally embraced America after the war, and the United States and England have been strong military allies through the years. For these reasons, Hannan feels a keen kinship with America, and desires that it stay true to its founding ideals.
The American difference rests in a brilliant and sturdy constitution which requires federalism (a limited federal government that gives freedom to the states and individual citizens), the separation of powers, and which ensures both rights and liberties to its citizens. America’s greatness should matter to everyone, argues Hannan, since “the promise of the U.S. Constitution didn’t simply serve to make Americans free. It also drove your fathers to carry liberty to other continents” (118). If America loses its exceptionalism, the whole world suffers.
Hannan has in-depth experience with both British politics and that of the European Union, a multi-national bureaucracy that has little respect for the popular will of the citizens of its constitutive states, which favors socialist welfare state over liberty, prosperity, and opportunity, and which mandates “global governance” and supra-nationalism over the sovereignty of individual nations. In a particularly profound chapter called, “Don’t Copy Europe,” Hannan warns that we should not copy Europe’s model of the centralized, command economy, given its excessive regulations, inability to motivate workers and produce new jobs. Nor should we Europeanize health care, given the abysmal record of England’s inefficient and bureaucratically sclerotic socialized system. We should shun the European model of welfare as well, since it makes no distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, undercuts responsibility, and generates resentment. Our sense of society should not be inspired by Europe either, because “as the state has expanded, society has dwindled” (100). Functions traditionally given to families—such as health, education, day care, and the provision for the elderly—are assumed by the state. “So, it is perhaps no surprise that the family itself, in Europe, in is decline” (101). Europe’s recent record on immigration and its abandonment of federalism is equally undeserving of imitation.
Americans should aspire to something far better than serfdom. Hannan can help teach us how. Let Christians listen and learn and act accordingly.



           


Monday, February 04, 2013

PowerPoint and Stupidity


Franck Frommer, translated by George Hollack. How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid: the Faulty Causality, Sloppy Logic, Decontextualized Data, and Seductive Showmanship that Have Taken Over Our Thinking. New York: The New Press, 2012. Hardback. $27.95. ISBN-10: 1595587020; ISBN-13: 978-1595587022.
bookcover: Powerpoint
          Despite its acerbic title and long subtitle, this book is not the product of an idiosyncratic Luddite, who is hotly airing his pet peeves. Rather, the French Frommer, a journalist and author, has meticulously researched the nature of PowerPoint and its application and results across various fields, particular business, the military, and education. In so doing, he brings what is increasingly becoming part of the background of contemporary life—as a “universal medium,” as he puts it—into the foreground. Although the author does not put it this way, he is exegeting the nature or form of PowerPoint against its cultural backdrop and in light of certain standards for knowledge and wisdom. Anyone who wants to acquire knowledge and avoid error will be well-served by his trenchant, well-documented, and in-depth analysis.
           PowerPoint began, innocently enough, as a multi-media device to present written and graphic material, particularly in the business world. But it quickly hypertrophied into a template for all manner of information presentation. When any medium of communication attains this much influence, the changes wrought in culture are not merely episodic or additive, but, rather, ecological.  That is, following Neil Postman, the widespread acceptance of and dependence upon any communication technology not only adds something to a culture (like as another piece of furniture in one’s home), but transforms culture at a deep (and usually unnoticed)epistemological level. It affects our habits of attending and thinking and feeling. It also subtly subtracts many previously valued aspects of life. Technology gives and takes away, usually under the cloak of ubiquity. For example, it gives the voice (or other sounds, such as music) a far greater reach into the ears of those far away. However, it eliminates the personal presence, as does the telephone.
The adoption of new a technology is usually seen as a novelty, and as such, stands out from the rest of accepted culture. For example, the first portable adding machines (now called calculators) were remarkable because of their miniaturized capacities (as were the first personal computers). At the beginning, calculators were rare and expensive. I bought one for about $70 in the early 1980s. Now (in 2013) they are everywhere and inexpensive. As such, they become part of the background of our culture. Few people consider them worthy of analysis or interpretation. So it now is with PowerPoint.
          Frommer understands the power of PowerPoint—and that its power is not always in service of the good, the true, or the beautiful. Under the cloak of ubiquity PowerPoint often robs us of knowledge by encouraging poor cognitive habits, given its very nature. As Marshall McLuhan said (and most people forgot), “the medium is the message.” This overstatement emphasizes the rhetorical nature of all communication. Every message is shaped by its medium. As Frommer says, “a medium is never neutral” (xv). A text message has a different form, and therefore a different effect, than a face-to-face conversation. A written card differs from an email message, even if the propositional content is identical. Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, not only applies to spoken and written language, but to the objects and systems of communications themselves. It is no wonder that the greatest technological analyst of the last century (quirky, though he was), Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), was, by training, a rhetorician and not a technology expert or sociologist. McLuhan did not live long enough to sniff out the significance of PowerPoint, but Frommer continues his great tradition of principled suspicion. (The book mentions McLuhan only once in passing, on page 226, but his spirit is everywhere.) Frommer writes that PowerPoint “has invented a comprehensive rhetorical apparatus in which all the classical techniques of argument have been cleverly absorbed or transformed” (xii).
          That is a strong claim, and one that Frommer amply defends in 261 pages. What, then, are the distinguishing features of PowerPoint as a medium now that it has installed itself everywhere? PowerPoint will always reflect the intensions of its individual presenters, but those users are constrained by the form of the medium, just as a painter is constrained by the kinds of brushed, knives, or paints that she uses. But this enterprise is far different from painting. Consider the idea of a “point,” as in the bullet points so prominent in PowerPoint. Arranging information in pointed lists tends to decontextualize that information. There need be no logical association between points, as in premises leading to a conclusion through some argument form (induction or deduction). A student once asked me in 2000 if she could write her quiz in bullet points. I said, “No. I am old school. Use sentences and paragraphs.” PowerPoint, then, favors lists over linear, logical progressions.  As Frommer says, “the logic of the list thus fits into a more general cognitive ecosystem. It has become so preeminent that it has replaced the traditional methods of organizing information” (65). The phrase “cognitive ecosystem,” is apt, since, as Postman noted, communication media quickly form tacit systems of cognition. Books like Frommers’s help us crack the hidden codes so that we can attain a wider perspective on ourselves and our culture (see 1 Chronicles 12:32).
          PowerPoint favors a style of presentation that is, of course, graphically engaging. That is the point of PowerPoint. Thus, it emphasizes special effects over intelligible intellectual content. The entertainment element easily overrides or nullifies the pedagogic value. But this entertainment is usually couched in the model of selling things. PowerPoint was developed for the business world. As such, it emphasizes one of the three genres of oratory: the epideictic, which targets the common person as a consumer. “It prefers to charm through description to induce action, create reaction, or incite the audience. It thus creates utterances [or images] that do not need to be established, argued, demonstrated” (67). In other words, it casts a cognitive spell. I read of one professor who did not adopt a certain text for a class simply because it could not be “powerpointed.” Perhaps that serves as a good reason to use the text. To cite a personal example, after taking over a course from another professor midway through a semester, I noticed that my questions regarding the textbooks were greeted with eerie silence and puzzled expressions. I soon learned that the students were not bringing their textbooks to class because the professor used PowerPoint. Bringing books was unnecessary. This omission was rectified very quickly under my tutelage.
          In discipline after discipline, with examples after example, Frommer makes his case against PowerPoint as “a universal medium.” He does not view it as evil in itself. But like any widespread tool, it does some things well and other things badly. Just as a screwdriver makes a poor hammer (and vice versa), PowerPoint cannot virtuously bear the weight of all it now carries.  Frommer sums up nicely some of the salient weakness of PowerPoint as a medium of meaning:
A presentation tool should in principle facilitate the exchange of information. Through its graphic prolixity, however, Power Point gives rise to obscurity, confusion and cognitive fatigue. Moreover, the worldwide use of unreliable or doctored graphs and diagrams engenders doubt and the validity of discourse that has been given a layout intended to ensure a form of legitimacy. Finally, the proliferation of images responding to an ‘esthetic’ demand pollutes the argument. Emotion takes primacy over reason, exhibition over speech, spectacle over logic (99).
Rather than relying on general observations, Frommer carefully analyzes influential PowerPoint presentations such as those of Steve Jobs in revealing new Apple epiphanies, of Colin Powell before the United Nations making a case for the US to invade Iraq, and of Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which was modeled on PowerPoint sensibilities. His close reading of these events adds great cogency to Frommers’s analysis of the structure and intrinsic limits, weakness, and deceptions of PowerPoint.
A few other points deserve mention. PowerPoint tends to eclipse the speaker as the center of attention, diverting it to the screen. It leaves the audience literally in the dark before the flickering screen, thus isolating people from one another. It also tends to diminish the need for note-taking, a highly intellectual skill of listening, analyzing, and recording important ideas taken from a lecture. One simply relies on “the slides” instead. The epidemic of PowerPoint also sets a rhetorical tone that resonates far beyond PowerPoint in our very language. People once lectured, now they present. But these two terms are not synonymous. A presentation involves far more than the speaker: electronic props are required. But in a lecture-discussion, there are no props (excluding the no-tech whiteboard or blackboard) and nothing to present to the audience beyond the speech of teacher and students. When teaching becomes presentation-oriented, the personality of the teacher is occluded by the technology.  The teacher qua technologist dwarfs the teacher qua learned speaker and intellectual provocateur.  Moreover, time spent preparing PowerPoint is time taken away from the rigors of actual study (Ecclesiastes 12:9-14). This ought not to be—if we care for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge.
I cannot do justice to the insightful analysis of this book. I was madly underlining and taking notes as I read it, particularly on the last hundred pages. It demands reading and pondering. It should not be put on PowerPoint slides.  If one agrees with Frommer’s theses, one will become a sign of contradiction to much of the contemporary world.. Near the end of this cogent work of social criticism, Frommer writes:
Although it may not makes us stupid, there is no doubt that PowerPoint, like many other media, helps to make the world illiterate and contributes to the abandonment of critical thinking, to blind acceptance, to a new form of voluntary servitude (228).
All those who seek to be literate, think critically, and have virtuous habits of knowing should pay heed to this book. Christians in particular should always ask what medium can best communicate knowledge about the things that matter most. We should not let the technological world automatically squeeze us into its mold (Romans 12:1-2). Frommer, who gives no indication of Christian conviction, gives a particularly egregious example of technological ignorance and abuse in the church. He cites a church service that used a PowerPoint presentation called, “The Death of Jesus Christ.” It consisted entirely of bullet points.
  • Jesus is brought before the court.
  • The soldiers clothe him in purple.
  • They crown him with thorns.
  • They put a reed in his hand.
  • They kneel mockingly before him. “And begin to salute him, Hail King of the Jews!” Mark 15:18.
  • They spit upon him.
  • They strike him on the head with a reed (59-60).
This “bullet point narrative,” as Frommer puts it, comes close to taking the Lord’s name in vain:
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name (Exodus 20:7).
Martin Luther exposited the meaning of this commandment this way:
We are to fear and love God so that we do not use His name superstitiously, or use it to curse, swear, lie, or deceive, but call on Him in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.
The “powerpointing” the death of Christ does not directly denigrate Christ or use God’s name in a curse. However, I submit that this “PowerPoint narrative” (which may be a contradiction in terms) does not honor the realities experienced by the Lord Jesus Christ through his passion. In fact, PowerPoint works in a sense to “deceive” (as Luther puts it) the congregation into thinking that the Lamb of God’s final hours before the Cross were comprised of pointillist moments, essentially unrelated to each other. If so, much meaning is mislaid—at the very least. When the public reading of Scripture—long an essential aspect of divine liturgy—is given over to bullet points, much has been lost—and for no good reason. Technology may deceive, even as it promises to serve (2 Corinthians 11:14).
          How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid will anger, even outrage, and flummox many who have become habituated to and saturated in a medium they may not comprehend. But the truth often hurts before it heals. This important book it will also confirm the suspicions and hesitations of those less than dazzled by PowerPoint and its ubiquitous “presentations.”