Pardon me while I rant: Clouser, Kierkegaard, and the Cappadocians

A few weeks ago I wrote a post complaining that people misunderstand Kierkegaard. This past week I received verification that my complaint is correct, from a very unlikely source.

This session I’m taking a philosophy class; our focus is to examine the role religious belief plays in theory-making, and to that end we are reading Roy A. Clouser’s book The Myth of Religious Neutrality, Revised Edition. Clouser is professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at The College of New Jersey, Trenton, and is a Reformed Christian—or he is, at least, firmly in the Dooyeweerdian philosophical camp. In Chapter 5, Clouser gives his synopsis “of the [3] major positions which have been taken in the history of western thought concerning the general relation” of religious belief to theory-making: religious irrationalism, religious rationalism, and the biblical. I fully expected him to lump Kierkegaard with the first grouping and I was not disappointed. Rather than trying to explain the complexities of Kierkegaard’s thought, he gives three quotations from Kierkegaard’s writing that seem to prove his irrationalism, and moves on.

What was surprising, however, is that Clouser footnotes his Kierkegaard quotations with this revealing note: “Several Kierkegaard scholars have informed me that the position expressed in these quotes is actually misleading, and that his real position is more like my own [the biblical, of course]. They admit, however, that statements such as those I’ve quoted here certainly seem to indicate his position is as I describe it, and also that this (mis)understanding of him has long constituted his intellectual legacy. Since that is the case, I will leave the quotes as examples of the position being described, with the acknowledgement that they may not be accurate as to what Kierkegaard himself intended” (p. 344).

Read that again, because what Clouser is saying is mind-boggling. Clouser’s main argument in the book appears sound, but how am I supposed to take him seriously when he intentionally perpetuates a misunderstanding of another thinker, just because this misunderstanding is widely accepted??!! Clouser’s treatment of Kierkegaard’s thought in the first edition of the book is excusable, since he evidently didn’t know better. But after being informed by people who do know better, instead re-writing this section for the revised edition to more accurately portray Kierkegaard he buries a lame explanation in an endnote. Shame, shame, shame on him.

. . .

The following will probably only be of interest to any Orthodox readers of this blog, but read on if you wish. I have gone a little bit ahead of the class, and I find this isn’t the end of Clouser’s misreading and misrepresentation of other thinkers. Later in the book, while arguing that one’s view of the nature of God forms a presupposition that regulates one’s theory-making, Clouser defends what he calls an “alternative” view of the nature of God—“the view of God that was elaborated by the Cappadocian Fathers of the Greek Orthodox tradition, rediscovered in the west by Luther and Calvin in the sixteenth century, and championed by Karl Barth in the twentieth century. (I’ll call this Cappadocian and Reformed position the C/R view for short)” (p. 203).

Hmmm, I see a problem with historical accuracy here, but if Clouser actually takes the Cappadocian position I’ll overlook this inaccuracy. Clouser opposes his position to the view of Divine Simplicity as taught by Aquinas and most (if not all) of western Christianity, by adopting the essence/energies distinction found in the Cappadocians. (He more frequently uses the word “attribute” in place of energy, but he means the same thing.) So far so good.

However, as I read him, Clouser represents the Cappadocian postion (even quoting Lossky and St. Gregory Palamas!) as teaching that God’s attributes or energies are the created means by which God communicates himself to humankind, so that only God’s essence is uncreated. The whole point of Cappadocian theology, especially as represented by St. Gregory and the “Greek Orthodox tradition,” is that God’s energies are uncreated! Needless to say, I have cleared my final research paper topic with my professor, in which I hope to clarify the real Cappadocian/Palamite position against Clouser’s serious misunderstanding.

I suspect this will be an exasperating eight weeks for me.

An excuse for my lazy posting, And--A PRIZE!

Classes resume this Monday, so I'm not likely to have time to do much here. I'll try to do what I can, though, since I am dead serious about my fiddlefarting around.

I did want to mention--after reading and entering some online debates (most of which started as simple discussions), I have decided to award all participants with this, the universal Grand Prize for online debating. Congratulations to all!

Pixy Stix

Important information to remember: Pixy Stix powder burns like the devil when you get it in your eyes.

Tonight my son Symeon wanted to have a couple of Pixy Stix after supper, and brought them to me to have them opened. I distinctly remember, from my childhood, pinching the tops of the tubes and vigorously shaking the powder to the bottom in order have more room to tear the tube open without spilling anything. Evidently my ability to vigorously shake has increased with age, because after the tube whacked each side of my hand a few times the dad-gum thing exploded in my face, getting Pixy powder in my eye, ear, my keyboard, all over the couch. My oldest son, who was innocently sitting next to me on the couch, got it in the eyes as well. (He whined more than I did, big baby.) I have pretty long facial hair, so I had to use the vacuum attachment to suck out all the dust. Why doesn’t Willy Wonka put a warning label on these things!?!

More Thomas Wolfe

Whatever one may think about Thomas Wolfe's overall quality as a writer, his descriptive ability is extraordinary. This depiction of the wicked Judge Rumford Bland from his novel You Can't Go Home Again is chilling, vivid--a word painting if I've ever seen one. I give the passage here in its versified form, as found in A Stone, A Leaf, A Door.

Judge Bland
by Thomas Wolfe

But he was stained with evil.
There was something genuinely old and corrupt
At the sources of his life and spirit.
It had got into his blood,
His bone, his flesh.
It was palpable in the touch
Of his thin, frail hand when he greeted you,
It was present in the deadly weariness
Of his tone of voice,
In the dead-white texture
Of his emaciated face,
In his lank and lusterless auburn hair,
And, most of all,
In his sunken mouth,
Around which there hovered constantly
The ghost of a smile.
It could only be called the ghost of a smile,
And yet, really, it was no smile at all.
It was, if anything, only a shadow
At the corners of the mouth.
When one looked closely,
It was gone.
But one knew
That it was always there--
Lewd, evil, mocking,
Horribly corrupt,
And suggesting a limitless vitality
Akin to the humor of death,
Which welled up from some secret spring
In his dark soul.

Opening ceremonies

Last night my wife and youngest daughter wanted to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies. Here's what I noticed: President Bush, with his watch-checking, seat-shifting, and general lack of attention to the proceedings, looked every bit as bored as I was. One could almost see him thinking, "How many freakin' countries are there, anyway?!"

Ecclesial Being

I just finished the book Ecclesial Being: Contributions to Theological Dialogue by Constantine Scouteris. Professor Christopher Veniamin has done a wonderful job in collecting and editing some of Professor Scouteris’ finest work, both old and new, concerning the nature and purpose of the Church. Prof. Scouteris has a remarkable ability to define Orthodox ecclesiology not only as it is in itself, but also as it is in relation to other Christian faith-groups, with wisdom and graciousness. In the chapter “The Church, ‘Filled with the Holy Trinity,’” Prof. Scouteris writes:

. . . the Church is not some closed religious corporation, a closed isolated religious community, but rather an open embrace, since God is the “Saviour of all men” (1 Tim. 4:10) and “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Often, in Christian circles there seems to be a sense of caution and introversion. Perhaps this is from the suddenness of rapid social transformation, maybe even today from some inclination towards self-defence in the face of the manifold provocations brought about by secularization and globalization on a material basis. It is an unjustifiable feeling of self-complacency, and a contraction and lessening of the Church. Thus, an insurmountable wall is raised, which isolates the Church and alienates it from its universal dimension. (30)

Whether he is writing about the ground of unity in the Church, the necessity of theological language based on worship rather than speculation, the role of the Church in justification, the importance of the priesthood, the significance of icons as a witness to the reality of the Incarnation, or more touchy subjects like the Orthodox approach to the World Council of Churches or common prayer, Professor Scouteris’ words are worth reading.

Like the First Day of the World

by Thomas Wolfe, from A Stone, a Leaf, a Door

And he cried, "Glory! Glory!"
And we rode all through the night,
And round and round the park,
And then dawn came,
And all of the birds began to sing.

And now the bird-song broke in the first light,
And suddenly I heard each sound the bird-song made.
It came to me like music I had always heard,
It came to me like music I had always known,
The sounds of which I never yet had spoken,
And now I heard the music of each sound
As clear and bright as gold,
And the music of each sound was this:

At first it rose above me like a flight of shot,
And then I heard the sharp, fast skaps of sound the bird-song made.
And now with chittering bicker and fast-fluttering skirrs of sound
The palmy, honied bird-cries came.
And now the bird-tree sang,
All filled with lutings in bright air;
The thrum, the lark's wing, and tongue-trilling chirrs arose.
With liquorous, liquefied lutings,
WIth lirruping chirp, plumbellied smoothness, sweet lucidity.
And now I heard the rapid
Kweet-kweet-kweet-kweet-kweet of homely birds,
And then their pwee-pwee-pwee:
Others had thin metallic tongues,
A sharp cricketing stitch, and high shrews' caws,
With eery rasp, with harsh, far calls--
These were the sounds the bird-cries made.

All the birds that are
Awoke in the park's woodland tangles;
And above them passed the whirr of hidden wings,
The strange lost cry of the unknown birds
In full light now in the park,
The sweet confusion of their cries was mingled.

"Sweet is the breath of morn,
Her rising sweet with charm of earliest birds,"
And it was just like that.
And the sun came up,
And it was like the first day of the world.