Life: New Blog in the Sphere

Into the crowded world of the blogosphere enters another blog - that of my good friend Josh Charles. You can find it over at wordpress. On it he'll be featuring his poetry, as well as essays, and hopefully soon a better background. I hope you enjoy.

Life: Thinking About... Pretty Much Just Graduate School

Last time I wrote on this blog, which I realize was some time ago, I was preparing for midterms and thinking about graduate school. Well, midterms are obviously behind me, as are finals. I'm still thinking about graduate school though, including preparing myself for the dreaded GRE. Still, now that it's summer I should be able to keep this blog busy for a while.

For starters, here's a link to an article over at the Front Porch Republic that I found very interesting.

Life: Midterms and Thinking About Graduate School

So, its been a while since I've posted up about my life, so I thought I'd give a little blurb. Mostly, I'm working away at the coming midterms, with an essay due in Philosophy of Mind, and a big midterm test in Ancient Greek Religion.

In addition, I've added a few schools onto my potential graduate schools list - namely the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and St. Johns University here in the Ol' US of A. Both have amazing programs, and St Andrews now has perhaps the greatest living theologian - N.T. Wright - teaching there. Have to say I'm excited about the possibilities.

Book Review: Giving Church Another Chance

Late last year I read my pastor and Bishop Todd Hunter’s first book, Christianity Beyond Belief in which he argued for the importance of entering into God’s story and living as Christians not merely for cleansing from sin, but further for the sake of touching the lives of others with Christ’s love. That is, being a people set apart by God for the sake of the rest of the world, just as Israel was intended to be.

Recently, he released his second book, Giving Church Another Chance: Finding New Meaning in Spiritual Practices and it is a book well worth picking up. There is a large group in our society, even within Christianity, who have become disenchanted with church. Todd was one of these, he went through a “de-churched” phase, experimenting with various alternative forms of Christian worship, but then, at the end of this journey, he found himself as an Anglican Bishop. For those of you who don’t know, Anglicanism, which has its roots in the Church of England, is a high liturgical church, with bishops, priests, and formal organized prayers. What happened? Well, you’ll have to read the book to get the full story, but in short Todd discovered the role of the liturgical church as a tool for spiritual formation. He came to realize that church is not “what it’s about” but rather a place of spiritual refreshment for Christians, a center for our lives from which we go forth to bless the world.

I still have some of the problems I had with Christianity Beyond Belief, namely the stylistic simplicity (especially the use of quotations from The Message paraphrase of the Bible) but as before, I feel these aesthetic complaints do not reflect on the importance of the content.

Ultimately, I don’t think this book is as important as Surprised by Hope but it’s a wonderful tool for understanding Todd’s vision and I truly believe that the “re-practicing” of church advocated by Todd in this book should at the very least be examined by all Christians (especially the section on the Eucharist), but especially those who would tear down centuries of tradition on the basis of their own limited experience and personal interpretations of scripture.

Theology: Transhumanism

Utopianism takes many forms, the vast majority of them are quite disturbing,and Transhumanism certainly takes its place as one of the more troubling. The following article is a very interesting theological critique of Transhumanism and it also has a lot of interesting stuff in it about the importance of the physical in Christianity.

The Anti-Theology of the Body

Politics: Democracy and Progressivism

Very good interview by Mars Hill Audio about the effects of Progressivism on Democracy. The intro is a little long, but the interview itself is fantastic and there's a lot of stuff in here that applies to Distributivism/Communitarianism.

Mars Hill Interview on Democracy and Progressivism 

Philosophy: To Strive and Flourish

Earlier, I wrote a blog post in which I advocated for decentralized government, in order to counter the dangers of fanatical Utopianism. However, even if the dangers of a centralized Utopia could be countered, it might still not be the ideal, for it remains possible that a necessary component of human flourishing includes a necessary component of achieving flourishing for oneself, which is what I believe the anti-Utopian is getting at when they claim that humans need striving. In the sphere of the virtues, for example, justice might demand that the rich man care for widows and orphans who cannot care for themselves, but it is important that this is a decision of his will. The law could force the rich man to take this action, and this might externally look the same as the case of the one who chooses to care for them, but this justice would be part of the system and not part of the rich man’s life. Thus, he would not be flourishing as an individual, and the law might actually be preventing him from becoming a just man.

Similarly, a man eating food he did not earn does not get the maximum good available from the meal. Certainly, he is nourished, his basic physical need being cared for, but the benefit of the satisfaction of having earned the meal is missing. Ultimately, a hungry man unable to work might need to be fed from the proceeds of another man’s labor, but if a centralized power gives every man food they have not worked for, they have the satisfaction taken from them by default. Instead, it seems better if help comes from those in immediate contact with the hungry man, who can give him only the help he needs and, if possible, help him to stand on his own that he might achieve the fully flourishing life [1]. Since, as mentioned before, a real Utopia would be the best environment for human flourishing, even if that included striving, the best a centralized power could do to create Utopia would be to do nothing, instead leaving it to individuals and local communities.

At this point, it may be asked why I have included local communities and not simply left everything to the individual. After all, if achieving something for oneself is part of flourishing, doesn’t local community interfere in this just as much as central government? However, this is not the case. First, the community is sensitive to the needs of the individual. The work put into a meal is not the only important part of it, other factors such as its satisfaction of hunger are also extremely important. It is better for a man who cannot work to eat a meal he has not worked for, than for him to starve. Ultimately, a local community is better suited to know when he needs charity, and when he needs rehabilitation. Also, in most cases an individual contributes to his community in ways he cannot necessarily contribute to a centralized system, and these are often intangible. The sickly widow may be unable to labor for her bread, but may provide an important area of emotional support in her community. The awareness of this in herself and her community creates a sense of reciprocity and this in turn provides the missing component of satisfaction. As a centralized body is necessarily detached from individuals, it cannot operate in terms of such intangible benefits and thus the component of reciprocity is removed.

[1] I originally considered this idea earlier in my blog, but it was recently brought to my attention that it is explored in the Thomistic principle of subsidiarity. I have not yet had the chance to study into this, so the arguments for it are essentially my own.

Note: As with my last post, this one was taken largely from an essay which I wrote for school (the same essay as the last one in fact)