Week 10 – Response to Harmony’s Blog

Harmony wrote a very complete outline of her paper on her blog: http://harmonysblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/week-10-paper-outline/

I think it’s really interesting that your paper will discuss both an anthropological  model for evangelism as well as some methods to address racism.  I wonder if you see those two activities as related and, if so, how?  It seems that there is an implicit connection between the two in that both recognize the fundamental validity of both dominant and marginalized cultural communities.

Week 3 – Reponse to Michael H

I thought Michael’s comments regarding the predictive power of science were insightful:

Doesn’t high predictive power imply correspondence with reality, too, and suggest that it’s more than just a Wittegensteinian language game?

The issue does indeed deserve more attention than given in Barker’s book. In reflection, the topic that comes to mind is one of thermodynamics. We all learn in high school and college chemistry classes about basic principles of thermodynamic behaviors (i.e. the gas laws, principles of heat transfer, etc). Those governing laws are highly accurate and provide significant predictability. And in fact, those laws (in their more complex forms) were the limit of thermodynamic thought for some time. Statistical thermodynamics have now displaced these laws as far as causal understandings and yet, the basic laws continue to be valid descriptions of the behavior of a system. In essence, we know that the models are insufficient, but we continue to use them because the probability of a system varying from these norms is insignificantly small.   The situation is a paradigm for many others which demonstrate a predictability that is very distinct from truth/reality.

Week 2- Response to Darren S

I like what Darren had to say about the church in his response to this week’s reading in Cobb:

I think if we are to claim that there actually is a real referent behind the signs of our religion, we better have a good explanation in this age of skepticism and a proclivity for “fabrications.”

I agree.  My impression in reading Cobb is that a primary challenge in contemporary culture is the absence of a desire for any real referent.  In some sense, it seems that the tendency to value the “image” rather than any sense of reality would leave little room for any doctrine that makes a claim of “reality.”  In essence, “truth” seems to have become less relevant than “appeal.”  Thus, Christianity loses relevance not because it fails to answer crucial questions, but because its source of value (its claim to be truth) is no longer an attractive element.

Week 1 – Reponse to Emmet B

I enjoyed looking at Emmet’s blog posts for this week. He made some interesting remarks regarding both what we read this week and what we discussed in class. This comment, in particular, got me thinking: “It’s unfortunate that the the Church, in a culturally and personally relevant sense, had to stagnate in order for this transition to start taking place.” I think Emmet is right: the church has lost much of its relevance in our society. But at the same time, I was struck by the word “stagnate.” Yes, the church has of late become less relevant to certain subcultures of society. But I wonder if sometimes we (myself included) are so eager to attack this failure that we fail to fully appreciate the power of this thing we call “the church.” It is dynamic and diverse, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we discount the successes of the historical and present church. Particularly in the seminary setting, it is very easy to get caught up in dissecting what ought to change in the church (to the neglect of its successes) and thereby stumble into a cynical progressivism that disregards the validity of the traditions to which today’s church is indebted.