A sense of calling

Not too long ago a friend was questioning why I went to seminary. I was compelled to employ my unusually perceptive social and emotional intelligence in order to discern his subtle criticism: "I don't understand why you ruined your own life and your family's life in this way" he cautiously said. Well, for those wondering, wonder no more, this is why I am a seminarian.

Jesus loves the little children.

I recently purchased this book - The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name and I cannot recommend it highly enough. To date, it has been difficult to find an adequate children's bible that effectively communicates the unfolding biblical narrative to children. What you generally get, as you do in most Sunday School curricula, is a series of stories about admirable people with lessons attached - "so and so obeyed God and good things happened for him and you should obey God so good things will happen to you too." That is not how the Bible, in all its historically embedded intensity and strife, presents itself, nor how it is to be read. This book evocatively captures the unfolding drama of humanity's and, in fact, all creation's, God wrought redemption, all while pointing ahead and anticipating the Redeemer's arrival; and it does so for children. My recommendation is not only for children however. Because this book so well captures the simplicity and wonder of the gospel through the Bible, so that even a child can understand it, it would benefit anyone to read it. Here's what 8-year old Ashley had to say concerning its artwork: "I love the illustrations. They're really good." This is an exceptional work. Well done Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago.

Honey, you are such a great artist!

For those who have children, this article concerning the fallacies of "self-esteem" should not be suprising. Apparently, speaking the "truth in love" is preferable to false flattery. What a concept. Here's a couple of excerpts:

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise on performance held true for students of every socioeconomic class. It hit both boys and girls—the very brightest girls especially (they collapsed the most following failure). Even preschoolers weren’t immune to the inverse power of praise.

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Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in which Nathaniel Branden opined that self-esteem was the single most important facet of a person, the belief that one must do whatever he can to achieve positive self-esteem has become a movement with broad societal effects. Anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was axed. Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise.

Dweck and Blackwell’s work is part of a larger academic challenge to one of the self-esteem movement’s key tenets: that praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together. From 1970 to 2000, there were over 15,000 scholarly articles written on self-esteem and its relationship to everything—from sex to career advancement. But results were often contradictory or inconclusive. So in 2003 the Association for Psychological Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then a leading proponent of self-esteem, to review this literature. His team concluded that self-esteem was polluted with flawed science. Only 200 of those 15,000 studies met their rigorous standards.

After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.) At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”

Now he’s on Dweck’s side of the argument, and his work is going in a similar direction: He will soon publish an article showing that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves.”

Read the whole thing, even if you don't have kids.

What's a nice Catholic guy like you doing in a place like this?

As one might imagine, at a seminary such as Westminster, there are all sorts of internal discussions going on in the classroom, hallways, cafe and at various blogs. So far on this blog I have steered clear of such discussions, at least directly, though I've touched on and implicated them within the context of some broader remarks. My reason for doing so is not because I find the discussions uninteresting or irrelevant, even to those outside the Westminster community or the seminary setting. They are not merely matters of esoteric knowledge but bear directly on issues that affect all of us, even if not readily apparent on the surface. However vital, I do not see such debates as consistent with this blog's primary purpose, which is accessibility to a broad readership interested in thinking about the issues raised here, and I hope at least sometimes challenged. Besides, any such discussion assumes knowledge of background information, including names, vocabulary and theological distinctions.

All of this is to say that, in contrast to the above, this post was prodded by a lecture in one of my classes earlier today, though I think it should be of interest to at least some of you. Today in a Christology ("Salvation I" at WTS) lecture, the material focused on Karl Rahner's theology of the incarnation, comparing his underlying thinking to Schleirmacher, and also touched on Vatican II and its trajectory going forward.

In the January 2007 issue of First Things, Catholic theologian Edward Oakes briefly reviewed NT Wright's Simply Christian. As I imagine is the case at any Protestant (and maybe even Catholic) seminary that affirms historic Christianity, at Westminster, NT Wright is, for good reason, widely read and much discussed. In case any one thinks that I am somehow "Anti-Wright" or am taking sides here, to the extent I've read him, I think Wright is in many respects outstanding, having cited to him positively twice on this blog - here and here, including a recommendation of Simply Christian, which I continue to recommend. I look forward to reading much more of Wright.

As you will read in Oakes' review below, he is measured in his critique of Wright, being careful to give him the credit he is due and almost admitting that his difficulty arises out of an impression as much as anything else. He does not (and I certainly do not) claim that Wright's theology is that of Schleirmacher or Rahner. Interestingly, as a Catholic, his critique has to do with an approach to cultural engagement encouraged by Vatican II he finds in Wright.

The reasons I cite to the review are twofold: 1. It is a review of Wright's well-received book outside of the Protestant polemical context in which he is normally discussed; and 2. as much as I think Wright is an excellent and creative ambassador for historic Christianity, I don't want to be uncritical of him. While not necessarily endorsing the review in its entirety, I think Oakes' reflections are serious, sobering and worthy of consideration, more so for how they might challenge us than for what they say about Wright's approach in particular.

Here's the review:

Speaking very generally, Christian apologists can go down one of two roads: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s or Blaise Pascal’s. According to Schleiermacher, man’s inchoate sense of absolute dependence can best be assuaged by following Jesus, who, more than any other human being, conducted his life not just sensing his absolute dependence on God (which Schleiermacher claims we all do) but actually living it out. In other words, man is thirsty for God, and Christianity offers the most limpid and salubrious water for slaking that thirst. But for Pascal, Christianity is not so much pleasing water for a thirsty but otherwise healthy traveler; rather, it is harsh chemotherapy for a desperately ill cancer patient.

Because C.S. Lewis-the most famous and influential of all Christian apologists in the twentieth century-adopted the avuncular style of the fireside chat (indeed, his most famous books began as a radio addresses during World War II), superficial readers often consider him to be vaguely Schleiermacherian. But a careful reading of his works, especially Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man, puts him squarely in the Pascalian camp. His style might imitate the bedside manner of the kind physician, but his diagnosis is grim.

By his title alone, N. T. Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham, is clearly trying to provide a twenty-first-century reenactment of Lewis’ apologetics. But in contrast to Lewis, Wright uses an approach that is, in my judgment, too "apologetic"-in the ordinary-language sense of that term, which is to say, too Schleiermacherian ("Please don’t despise me"). Whether other readers will also consider that strategy to be unwise depends on what question they think Christianity is meant to answer.

In any event, one cannot help reading Wright’s noble effort in the context of the implosion of the contemporary Church of England (where he shines as Anglicanism’s best New Testament scholar since two earlier figures in the See of Durham, the nineteenth-century scholars J.B. Lightfoot and B.F. Westcott). Lest this juxtaposition sound too triumphalistic, Catholics, too, I think, need to reassess the Second Vatican Council-which also largely adopted the "we can answer your deepest needs" approach. Judging by its rhetoric alone, Vatican II seemed to adopt this strategy: You "cultured despisers" could really learn something from us Christians, really, if you would just sample our wares!

Despite the validation bestowed by that epochal council on this all-too "apologizing" approach, I think nearly every headline one reads today, from the rise of militant Islam to the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, has shown that approach to be a non-starter. Besides, one might also note, if only in passing, that it is always the most "pessimistic" Christian apologists (Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard) who continue to gain a hearing, while the "optimists" (Origen, Schleiermacher, Karl Rahner) go largely unread.

Much as one can respect Wright’s gentle approach in Simply Christian to win hearts and minds over to the Christian religion, his book, one can confidently predict, will never eclipse or replace Mere Christianity. I think people who reject the gospel have not the remotest idea how desperate their plight really is-and what the consequences of their rejection will prove to be.

Who you callin' a delusion?

For those unfamiliar with Richard Dawkins, his best-seller "The God Delusion" offers a self-explanatory title. It's been interesting to observe the extent to which Dawkins has been denounced by those who might be sympathetic to at least some of his conclusions, but decry his methods. A prime example would be this biology professor's review in the The New York Review of Books.

My favorite response to Dawkins of those I've come across is where else but at YouTube. The primary reason I like it is because it made me laugh, while provocatively engaging Dawkins. I'd be interested to find out what someone more inclined to agree with Dawkins, even absent the vitriol, thought.

A part of the audio is explained by its play on this quote from Dawkins' book re the "psychotic" God of the Bible: "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

While it might be easy to dismiss Dawkins as just a pretty angry, rhetorically sloppy and excessive guy, upset that not everyone else thinks as he does, the response he's elicited indicates that he's serving as an emotional outlet for the simmering resentment of a fair number of people.

For a patient Christian response that attempts to inhabit and engage Dawkins' views, on this page are the first three of ten posts entitled "The God Hypothesis" from New Testament professor Scot McKnight with comments from a university research scientist.

I think there's actually an irony concerning Dawkins and his ilk. Their vociferous denials are more attuned to the real God, who threatens and undermines our pretensions to autonomy, than many who are formally religious, have crafted their own "spirituality" or are apathetic, even if they claim to "believe" in God.

With respect to Dawkins' above-cited stream of invectives directed at God, we should be mindful of the fact that neither Dawkins nor anyone else in their efforts to shock, insult or otherwise can come close to approaching the actual offense of the cross where God in Christ was physically manhandled and abused while taking on himself every bit of our reproach. It is in and through our derision and denial that God calls us to himself, opening our eyes to the depth of our acrimony towards him (reflected in our treatment of one another, who are made in God's image, with Jesus - God and man - epitomizing both), even as he forgives us; so that we no longer deride and deny, but are those who confess and trust in the One whose abundant mercy and grace so defy our categories and expectations.

Alexander and friends

In other news....

On February 5, 2007, at 4:21 a.m., Alexander Mounir Hanna, was born to Nevine and I. For those keeping score, that makes two girls - Ashley and Gabbie - and two boys - David and Alexander. Nevine and Alexander are both healthy and seem to be getting along quite nicely. Apparently, there's something to this mother-child bonding thing.

He's English, so he must be smart

This from British New Testament scholar NT Wright from his interview with "Christianity Today," published in the January 2007 edition:

There's a certain kind of modernist would-be orthodoxy, which uses the word God in something like the old Deist sense. He's a distant, absentee landlord who suddenly decides to intervene in the world after all, and he looks like Jesus. But we already know who God is; now I want you to believe that this God became human in Jesus. The New Testament routinely puts it the other way around. We don't actually know who God is. We have some idea, the God of Israel, or of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Creator God. But until we look hard at Jesus, we really haven't understood who God is.

That's precisely what John says at the end of the prologue: No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has made him known. John's provided an exegesis for who God is. And in Colossians 1 as well, he is the image of the invisible God. In other words, don't assume that you've got God taped, and fit Jesus into that. Do it the other way. We all come with some ideas of God. Allow those ideas to be shaped around Jesus. That is the real challenge of New Testament Christology.

The whole interview is worth reading.