While catching up on my book review reading, I came upon a review by Dr.John Habgood(Lord Habgood, formerly Archbishop of York and one of the outstanding theologians of the Anglican tradition, in my opinion), who brings together science and religion, among many other important convergences. In reviewing the work of an evangelical, Richard Turnbull, (Anglican and Evangelical? Continuum, 2008)in the TLS of March 21, 2008 (subscription required), he makes two excellent points. One is commonly held by many non-evangelicals, like myself, namely a rejection of the belief that "Scripture alone" provides the basis for the Christian faith, and he cites not only the conferring of authority on these documents by the church itself (and by implication their attribution to the church as author) but also biblical criticism and scholarship, which is the hermeneutical and textual approach I've been exploring as central to my own intellectual life.
The second important point is one that has come up often in my discussions with skeptics: the theory of what he calls "penal substitution," which he defines as the suffering and death of Jesus as the penalty for our sins, taking all of God's wrath and "making it possible for God to forgive us.) (TLS 3.21.08 at 8).Fortunatey, I was never taught this, so I take it on his (unfootnoted) word that some evangelicals believe this. He acknowledges the echoing of language from Isaiah and St. Paul, though surely this is within the tradition of prefigural language that characterized the early Jewish attempts at understanding what Jesus' death was about. In a very articulate way, he expresses it as I believe it should be expressed, as the ultimate revelation of God's love in the face of human wrath, the rejection of Jesus and his message of love. We are the wrathful ones, not God, and the cross brought forgiveness of the ultimate result of human hatreds, not a sacrifice as of old to propitiate the imagined god of the people, who had not yet built his temple in their hearts, as we are all called to do.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
The Courtier and the Heretic
subtitled "...Leibniz, Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World," this double philosophical biography (Norton,2006) by Matthew Stewart was an interesting review for me of aspects of both philosophers' works, and I have to confess that I have not read Spinoza's Tractatus or Leibniz' Monadology (both in translation) with any slow, deep reflection since college. But this was a stimulating, if somewhat superficial, refresher of some issues I am still grappling with as I look at systematic theologies as well as newer process theologies.
Relevant to some of the legal and social ramifications of metaphysics is the different tack Stewart takes in comparing the responses to modernity of these two thinkers; it is one which he believes, as stated in his "Note on Sources" at the back, is one of his more original contributions. That is, he looks at Spinoza and Leibniz as moral and political philosophers, too. They were reacting to the rise of modern science, and as Lawrence Principe and others remind students, science and religion were forced apart only gradually. These two philosophers seem to have seen it coming, as it were, and anticipated the consequences but ironically also contributed to them.
Spinoza's seeming "God intoxication" but actual near pantheism and alleged atheism certainly remind one to regard immanence with caution and begins the challenge: materialism or radical infusion of the Divine? And how can this one Substance, be it Mind, energy, even Love, be regarded still as personal? Spinoza certainly seems to have rejected that.
Enter Leibniz- lacking the (ahistorically for the West) "zen" attitude of Spinoza (although I was surprised to learn of his interest in China as just then encountered by the Portuguese Jesuits)but committed to a new view of transcendence. We are still trying to figure out what the monads (and the Monad) are and if they help at all. Certainly the wave/particle and water/wave attributes that we can now accept as co-existing in matter (or rather, in matter/energy) thanks to the quantum perspective may be somewhat like the missing link that Leibniz sought to find. But even after Kant it still comes down to Plato and Aristotle with the former getting it right grammatically and the latter closer to a truth we can take more literally as to the complex of matter and form that every thing seems to be.
But I am still stuck with the God problem and the personal nature of Love. Whether Spinoza was motivated to eliminate God as a model for the monarchs he wanted to overthrow in favor of personal freedom of conscience and a nascent awareness of human rights, and whether Leibniz was motivated by a need to preserve the moral status quo from the anarchy of individual liberty- I leave that to Stewart to go on pondering. I am still in the theological and metaphysical woods, looking for the answer to the disappointment we feel about the seeming lack of immortality of our consciousness in any real, felt way. Even if the ashes are windowless monads, why do we want them to continue to be aware of the Love that Moves us (Dante)?
Relevant to some of the legal and social ramifications of metaphysics is the different tack Stewart takes in comparing the responses to modernity of these two thinkers; it is one which he believes, as stated in his "Note on Sources" at the back, is one of his more original contributions. That is, he looks at Spinoza and Leibniz as moral and political philosophers, too. They were reacting to the rise of modern science, and as Lawrence Principe and others remind students, science and religion were forced apart only gradually. These two philosophers seem to have seen it coming, as it were, and anticipated the consequences but ironically also contributed to them.
Spinoza's seeming "God intoxication" but actual near pantheism and alleged atheism certainly remind one to regard immanence with caution and begins the challenge: materialism or radical infusion of the Divine? And how can this one Substance, be it Mind, energy, even Love, be regarded still as personal? Spinoza certainly seems to have rejected that.
Enter Leibniz- lacking the (ahistorically for the West) "zen" attitude of Spinoza (although I was surprised to learn of his interest in China as just then encountered by the Portuguese Jesuits)but committed to a new view of transcendence. We are still trying to figure out what the monads (and the Monad) are and if they help at all. Certainly the wave/particle and water/wave attributes that we can now accept as co-existing in matter (or rather, in matter/energy) thanks to the quantum perspective may be somewhat like the missing link that Leibniz sought to find. But even after Kant it still comes down to Plato and Aristotle with the former getting it right grammatically and the latter closer to a truth we can take more literally as to the complex of matter and form that every thing seems to be.
But I am still stuck with the God problem and the personal nature of Love. Whether Spinoza was motivated to eliminate God as a model for the monarchs he wanted to overthrow in favor of personal freedom of conscience and a nascent awareness of human rights, and whether Leibniz was motivated by a need to preserve the moral status quo from the anarchy of individual liberty- I leave that to Stewart to go on pondering. I am still in the theological and metaphysical woods, looking for the answer to the disappointment we feel about the seeming lack of immortality of our consciousness in any real, felt way. Even if the ashes are windowless monads, why do we want them to continue to be aware of the Love that Moves us (Dante)?
Friday, February 01, 2008
Codes and Hypertext: The Intertextuality of International and Comparative Law
The Syracuse Journal of International Law invited essays suggesting areas of further research and the creation of tools and resources for information studies related to international and comparative law. My contribution, now with the editors, suggests ways to explore literary and information theory that connect these to continuities between the print and electronic media experiences. The first paragraph is posted below:
Codes and Hypertext: The Intertextuality of International and Comparative Law
Marylin J. Raisch
Introduction
Recent discussion of scholarly communication in the emerging internet landscape of hypertext has brought the study of law into an interdisciplinary , intertextual framework . International and comparative legal research, as a major area of special inquiry for practice and scholarship, must be brought into this discussion along with the texts- primarily codes and treaties as well as constitutions and judicial opinions- which form its body of meaning. The language of its norms, whether they be of private law, contract, human rights, or religious law, resonate across cultural contexts, making comparative law and transnational understanding twin means to important ends such as peace and trade. Critical to this discussion and necessary to close this gap in international and comparative law in the global information society will be aspects of communication theory and the philosophy of technology.
Codes and Hypertext: The Intertextuality of International and Comparative Law
Marylin J. Raisch
Introduction
Recent discussion of scholarly communication in the emerging internet landscape of hypertext has brought the study of law into an interdisciplinary , intertextual framework . International and comparative legal research, as a major area of special inquiry for practice and scholarship, must be brought into this discussion along with the texts- primarily codes and treaties as well as constitutions and judicial opinions- which form its body of meaning. The language of its norms, whether they be of private law, contract, human rights, or religious law, resonate across cultural contexts, making comparative law and transnational understanding twin means to important ends such as peace and trade. Critical to this discussion and necessary to close this gap in international and comparative law in the global information society will be aspects of communication theory and the philosophy of technology.
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