Seminarium

The Elements of Great Teaching

Reading Philosophy in Christian Communities: Part 2—On The Importance of Philosophy for Seminary Education

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In the first post in this series, buy cialis I argued that invitational dialogue is the most promising way for Christian communities (whether ecclesial or academic) to appropriate philosophical inquiry. In this post, find I will turn my attention to seminary education in particular and argue that reading philosophy should be an important aspect of such ministerial training.

Inviting Nietzsche to a Wedding, and into the Seminary Classroom

I wrote the entire script of my wedding ceremony. As one might expect of a postmodern philosopher of religion, I had quotes from Nietzsche as part of the service (and awesome songs by Led Zeppelin, but that is a topic for a different essay). I remember that my pastor told me that this would be the first time he had ever “approvingly” mentioned Nietzsche in a church service.

I thought then, and think even more so now, that this is unfortunate. If one considers the ways in which Nietzsche offers profound resources for thinking well about religious existence and the problematic temptations to which religious believers are so often given, perhaps Nietzsche should be someone that pastors encourage congregants to read and not simply a name sometimes heard in a litany of “atheist thinkers from whom we must guard our children”—yes, this is the way I once heard Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx referenced in a church service. Indeed, let me encourage all future or current ministers to read Merold Westphal’s (1998) excellent book, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism and Bruce Ellis Benson’s (2008) Pious Nietzsche.  But, I can hear the obvious objection from seminary students: “There are a lot of good books, but there is not a lot of time to read them.”

Not having the time to read everything that needs read might be the basic summary of the daily realities of all graduate and seminary students. I have never been to seminary. I did my graduate work in philosophy at Florida State and Vanderbilt. Nonetheless, my focus here is on seminary education, which I take to be similar to my own graduate work insofar as it expects more of students than can be reasonably accomplished in the time allowed. Amidst language requirements, developing specialties that can eventually yield an extended research project, exam preparation, and often internship assignments, surely it is a foolish thing to suggest that there should be more added to this already overfull schedule. And yet, in my brief comments here, I want to make a case for why reading philosophy should be seen as an important component of seminary training.

Philosophy and Democratic Existence

In general, the reasons for reading philosophy are well known. One often hears that philosophy allows for the development of analytic skills that are prized by all career fields. This is certainly true, but it is especially important for those going into ministry. The ability to read people and situations (we might call them “texts”) and understand the important claims, commitments, and reasons being given for those claims and commitments is a crucial component of engaging in interpersonal relationships of trust and respect. Indeed, recently Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse (2013) have compellingly argued in a book titled Why We Argue (And How We Should) that democratic society itself depends upon a commitment to arguing well. For Aikin and Talisse, importantly, arguing is not understood as combative attempts to get others to think like you do. Instead, argument is the dialogical situation in which we take each other seriously as neighbors engaged in shared social tasks. (Check out the blog associated with their book: http://www.whyweargue.com/)

In an American context, one often sees what seem to be argumentative engagements (Presidential debates, news programs offering contrasting viewpoints, and op/ed pages in newspapers), and  yet being able to understand when arguments go well and when they go poorly is crucial for protecting the very space of deliberative interaction that is the foundation of democratic society. Understanding and engaging in good argumentative practices contribute to what Aikin and Talisse term “cognitive health.” Fostering such health is something to which ministers should be deeply committed as a crucial part of their role as counselors and mentors to those wrestling with the difficulties of the life of faith and the experiential storms of existence. As I suggested in the previous post in this series, philosophy is not the only thing that can assist in becoming cognitively healthy, but it an important resource for such health.

Philosophical Resources for Seminary Education

Let me offer a few more places in which philosophical training in seminaries is a benefit for seminary students, their eventual ministry, and those who are affected by that ministry:

  • Historical Understanding

All seminaries expect students to gain an appreciation of the historical context in which theology unfolds. For these reasons, courses in church history and historical theology are crucial as part of seminary education. And yet, what can sometimes be missed is the conceptual framework according to which the church understands itself and in which historical theology has been conceived and developed. A background in the history of philosophy provides an appreciation of the ways in which concepts themselves have histories. Ideas are products of specific cultural contexts and those ideas give rise to new cultural situations. As just one example, important things are missed when one studies 19th century Protestant theology without understanding Kant’s critical philosophy and the Hegelian appropriation that served as a key frame for thinking about God in relation to society and history in the period. Alternatively, reading Augustine is valuable of itself, but it is made even more profound if one appreciates the varieties of neo-Platonism that were in play and the alternative metaphysical approaches on offer. As one final example, when trying to make sense of the important differences between Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, and Bultmann, say, understanding the way that Kierkegaard was appropriated by Heidegger underlies many of the different threads that are then picked up in various ways by individual theologians. Indeed, Bonhoeffer and Tillich might be understood as two different responses to Heidegger’s notion of “being-in-the-world” as concerns understanding and truth. Numerous other examples could be provided, but the simple point is that though philosophy is not necessary for understanding the historical progression of theology, it is certainly an important aid in such a task.

  • Theological Sophistication and Clarity

I am not of the opinion that philosophers make the best theologians. Yet, I do think that philosophy can help to facilitate sophistication and clarity in theological reflection and writing. As the defenders of “analytic theology” suggest (see Crisp and Rea 2009), the conceptual analysis, logical precision, and logical rigor of philosophical inquiry is an asset when thinking about such complicated issues as divine simplicity, immutability, or temporality, for example. Moreover, the notion of revelation itself is something that involves important questions that phenomenological philosophy is distinctly prepared to address. Finally, debates concerning the notion of faith as distinct from mere belief, or from knowledge, or from assent, etc., are conversations to which contemporary epistemologists and also historical figures such as Kierkegaard and Pascal have much to contribute. Theologians don’t necessarily need to be philosophers, but philosophical training is an asset to careful theological reflection. Similarly youth ministers don’t necessarily need to be theologians or philosophers, but when helping young women and men wrestle with complicated issues of religious and moral life, theological sophistication and philosophical clarity are resources upon which I would hope they would draw in order to help those young people think more effective and carefully about whatever it is that they are thinking about.

  • Linguistic Appreciation

Studying biblical languages is a crucial part of ministerial training. Such study is enriched by appreciating the ways in which language raises important metaphysical, epistemological, and conceptual questions. Philosophy of language is an important recourse here. Moreover, many scholars of religion are beginning to draw heavily upon contemporary work in cognitive linguistics, which depends heavily upon the ways in which, as J.L. Austin might say, humans “do things with words.” The way we speak about God reflects the sorts of bodies that we have and the sorts of experience that shape our understanding of reality. Many traditions in philosophy (e.g., existentialism, feminism, queer theory, race theory, etc.) facilitate such understanding.

  • Hermeneutic Flexibility

Although courses in biblical hermeneutics are frequent in seminary, philosophical hermeneutics more broadly is an important aspect of ministerial preparation. Indeed, the ability to appreciate the different background assumptions and beliefs that affect the way in which an individual or a community approaches an issue or a question is a crucial part of being a good listener and meeting people where they are. Whether it is the hermeneutics of H.G. Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, or Nicholas Wolterstorff, all help us to understand the ways in which, as Wolterstorff says in Reason within the Bounds of Religion, “we are all profoundly historical creatures” (1984, 97). The inescapability of hermeneutic decisions does not lead to some sort of naïve relativism about meaning or truth. Instead, it fosters sensitivity to the ways in which meaning and truth are not obvious, but instead importantly located within the communities in which we inherit that which is “obvious” from the decisions that form our own histories.

  • Epistemic Humility and Dialogical Hospitality

The final general benefit of studying philosophy in seminary is that, as already indicated above regarding democratic social engagement, philosophy challenges the group polarization and insularity that can occur if one’s world is too small. In other words, if everyone you interact with generally thinks like you do, then it is easy to begin to believe that what you think is the only rational option and that anyone who disagrees is immoral, ignorant, or irrational. Philosophy does a good job at complicating what can otherwise be considered easy. It helps us to understand that there are good reasons to believe what we would otherwise dismiss without a second thought. Being epistemically humble and dialogically hospitable is not something that leads to being wishy-washy about truth, but instead such traits are virtues of the cognitive health that makes truth-seeking possible. Moreover, such humility and hospitality are important aspects of Christian charity. Leaving the 99 to seek the 1 should be seen as a model of inquiry and not only a model of evangelism. As I suggested in my previous post on reading philosophy in Christian communities, this is by far the most important reason for ministers to read philosophy.

Multiple Styles and Methods

Notice that these various philosophical resources do not indicate that one particular tradition or style of philosophy is most important for seminary training. Indeed, even though I work primarily in the European or “continental” tradition of philosophy, nothing is gained by working exclusively in this tradition. Indeed, as I have suggested elsewhere, what is needed in philosophy of religion is a “mashup” approach that draws upon whatever tradition, figure, style, or text proves to be a resource for working through the questions at hand. The same is true for the inclusion of philosophical training in seminaries. Courses in philosophy should introduce students both to the analytic precision that is frequently on offer in Anglo-American philosophy and also to the existential and poetic dimensions of more continentally oriented approaches.

Cognitive Health and Christian Education

Again, though there are a lot of good books worth reading, I realize that there is not nearly enough time to read them all. Hopefully, though, all those going to seminary, and especially those eventually going into ministry, will find the time to read more philosophy. Being cognitively healthy is necessary if we are to help others become healthy as well. Again, just like exercise is not, by itself, enough to lead to physical health—surely eating right and getting enough sleep, etc., are important too—reading philosophy is not enough to ensure cognitive health, but it is an important aspect of working toward that goal. If more ministers appreciated the relationship between the life of the mind and the life of faith, it might make for a more robust performance of Christian life as enacted in a democratic society in which our neighbors are not simply fellow citizens, but also valuable interlocutors.

Not all pastors may find Nietzsche to be the resource for Christian existence that I do (for more on such resources, see http://theotherjournal.com/churchandpomo/). But, the conversation with my pastor about my wedding ceremony ended up leading to many more conversations about philosophical issues. Ironically, many of those conversations have been more influential on my own faith life than the thousands of church services I have attended. Perhaps it is worth exploring what church might look like if philosophical conversations were more frequently part of them. In order for such an experiment to be possible, more ministers need to read more philosophy. I hope I have given at least some reasons for why such an expenditure of time and energy (given an already packed schedule of educational and vocational training) is worth it.

Works Cited:

  • Aikin, Scott F. and Robert B. Talisse. 2013. Why We Argue (and How We Should). Routledge.
  • Benson, Bruce Ellis. 2008. Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith. Indiana.
  • Crisp, Oliver D. and Michael C. Rea, eds. 2009. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of
  • Theology. Oxford.
  • Westphal, Merold. 1998. Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism. Fordham.
  • Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1984. Reason within the Bounds of Religion. Eerdmans.

Photo Credit: “The point is to be uncomfortable” by quinn.anya – CC by 2.0

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J. Aaron Simmons is associate professor of philosophy at Furman University. Specializing in 19th and 20th century European philosophy and philosophy of religion, he is the author or editor of numerous books, including God and the Other and The New Phenomenology.

 

Comments

  1. Not being a philosopher outside of my shoddy armchair, I’m finding your series very thought provoking, Aaron. If I’m reading you correctly, or reading into you correctly, you are proposing teaching philosophy as a cure to the anti-intellectualism that is poisoning contemporary American Christianity.

    Now the anti-intellectualism I continually encounter drives me nuts. I’ve been fuming over the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham – Evolution vs. Creationism debate for weeks. (Is Nye still guilty of a straw man fallacy when Ham is the one presenting the straw man as his main argument?) That said, I can see what inspires the anti-intellectual movement. I assume that old anti-education chestnuts, like “seminary is best pronounced cemetery because it’s where faith gets buried”, became old chestnuts because there is some truth to them. This idea is generally bolstered with statistics of declining rates of Christian self-identification, e.g. this study (potential ecological fallacy noted), along with numerous anecdotal accounts of people losing their faith in seminar and college, e.g. this blog (cherry-picking data and no comparison group noted). Caveats granted, I can sympathize with the concern. When my wife saw me reading Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, she exclaimed “Are you trying to lose your faith?!” Such was the consequence for Ehrman himself.

    I take your argument to be that the problem facing the Church is not exposure to challenging ideas, but ineptitude at examining challenging ideas. The problem with the Nye-Ham debate wasn’t that Ham was arguing for an extreme, dubious position, but that they both were and no one called them out for it. Under critical examination, Naturalism is as much a straw man as Young Earth Creationism. But Christians are not being taught critical examination.

    In trying to insulate ourselves from the “dangerous” ideas of modern thinkers, the Church has intellectually fallen behind our society. I think the truly dangerous idea hidden in this approach is the notion that the old ways of thinking must be better, especially if they appear more Biblical. But it is hard for any movement, even a divinely inspired one, to be that much ahead of the culture that surrounds it. Paul commanded Philemon to love his slave Onesimus as a brother, but not to abolish the institution of slavery. Christian cultures can take much of the blame for the practice of western slavery and also take much of the credit for its abolition. The point is Christians figured it out and led the way once they did. The Church shines when it leads morally, even if it’s only incrementally ahead of the culture at large.

    Christianity is in trouble when it gives up not just the intellectual high ground, but the moral high ground as well. You subtly, but nicely, make the case that giving up the one has resulted in giving up the other; that insular thinking leads to prejudice. Personally, I think we’re seeing that today in the gay rights debate. The Church can be forgiven for having taken an immoral stand, especially when the society around it almost uniformly shared that stand. But when the culture at large realizes and refutes its prejudices before the Church does, the Church loses its moral credibility. I’m not saying gay rights is an easy issue. It forces serious questions about how we should read and interpret scripture. It’s a challenging and uncomfortable issue. I think it has exposed how ill-equipped the Church at large is at wrestling with such issues right now (not to downplay the vigorous, good faith debates that are occurring, e.g. within the Anglican Communion). I find your proposal for how to help equip the Church for such challenges compelling.

    The fatalist could quickly dismiss your proposal as the notion of a self-interested, highfalutin intellectual. An approach doomed to failure outside the genius range of the bell curve. But 150 years ago, who would have ever imagined literacy rates of 99% in the U.S.? Widespread philosophical literacy, especially a literacy tiered at various grade levels, may not be so implausible. It could be just what the Church needs to become an intellectual and moral leader once again.

    • Robert,

      You are exactly right.  It is like the saying on the old church sign: “You can think your way rigt out of heaven.” While I appreciate the importance of resisting overly intellectual accounts of the life of faith, when our faith and intellect fail to link up, we are in serious trouble. This doesnt mean that good thinking yields answers, but it might. More likely, though, is that it makes ones questions worth asking because the stakes of the answers are better understood.  So, although I am pretty sure that one cant think ones way into heaven, I dont remember thinking well being on the list of the seven deadly sins. Indeed, when we stop thinking well, or abandon a concern for our cognitive health, we invite bad thinking, and cognitive illness. ironically, perhaps that is where the truth of the church sign lies: you can think your way out of heaven when you stop thinking well about what “heaven” means as it concerns our existential investment. Good thinking may not require theology, but bad thinking does invite bad theology.

      Let me apologize for the typos in this comment, I am using my Ipad and cant get it to move the cursor where I want it. Sigh.

      Thanks for the comment, Robert. If we all thought as you do, we would all be closer to health.

      Aaron

      • Gentlemen,

        This is a very intriguing conversation.  Pardon the interruption by someone that does not attend seminary, and I am by no means trying to troll.  The photo caught my attention more than anything, as it says, “The point is to be uncomfortable.”

        I believe if we were to push this assumption to the extreme and begin a discussion of missiological endeavors, the most uncomfortable place for any Christian to be in would be the one where someone comes to them and says, “Hi.  My name is Adam, and I have been called to be a missionary to the Christians.  They are going to get themselves killed if they keep repeating these same story lines over and over again and do not allow themselves permission to question everything…including the character and behavioral examples set by God himself.”

        Why, for example, is it permissible for God to slaughter nearly all of humanity and then shortly thereafter hand down a commandment not to commit murder?  I was taught in church growing up that if you say one thing and do another, that is hypocrisy, and it seems that Christians have granted this deity full permission to live by a completely separate moral code than the one he supposedly tells us to live by.  Exemplification presents a very real problem.

        A larger problem is seen, though, when we begin to discuss the psychological damage that children endure when they grow up in emotionally abusive environments.  In particular, the environment that Moses grew up in would have been undoubtedly severe, and it appears from a distance that the personality of the biblical deity may in fact be a composite assembly of the earlier works of Job and the personality of Moses’ primary male role model, Pharaoh.  I say this because if Pharaoh did in fact drown dozens if not hundreds of Israelite children his same age, the story line of that trauma would have repeated endlessly in his mind growing up, as the mothers of these victims would have undoubtedly brought it to his attention, especially with his stature of growing up in the home of the perpetrator of this crime.  Moreover, the similarity between the traumatic event in question and the method of God punishing humanity by drowning them appears to be much less than coincidental.

        In order to validate the deity of Judaism completely along with the story line of the New Testament and all of Christianity, the Abrahamic faiths are going to have to go back and eliminate all other possibilities of it being a mere literary character created primarily by Moses, including a modern assessment by the professional psychological communities that his stories did NOT include a substantial portion of his Moses’ own childhood story line projected onto a religious stage.  One substantial allegation could be that the description of God’s words to Hagar about her unborn son Ishmael could have very well been a projection of Moses’ own childhood onto what was then a marginal and unthreatening alternate lineage.  It seems very probable that Moses would have been the one who felt like a “donkey of a man” and was at odds with everyone while everyone was at odds with him.

        If this is the case, then the structural integrity of all three Abrahamic faiths is now substantially in question, as every one of them platforms off of the assumption made by the works of Moses.

        What’s more concerning is that the children of God have been raised solely by a single dad trying to run the universe all on his own, which begs the question of using the Bible as a standard of heterosexual marriage.  Everyone knows that no child comes into this world without a mother, and to template a global religion that professes to be divinely inspired by an omniscient deity that willfully neglected to include an eternal mother for his children presents a developmental problem for this faith as well.

        It would have been incredibly easy to include a maternal character with a Hebrew name such as Jehovah Rechem, or “God of the Womb,” as their mother, and if it were at all important to nurture the emotional development of Adam and Eve, it would have made much more sense to script her as the caretaker of the children in the Garden of Eden, rather than dropping them off with no oversight, teacher, or help and then blaming them for disobedience when the Father comes home at the end of the day.

        The days of depending on archeological evidence and historical anecdotes to validate this religion are over.  It is now up to the church to explain to the world why the need for healthy role models, including that of God himself, was omitted from such a sacred text.

        This, gentlemen, is where the discomfort begins, and is what I have been trying to get to the bottom of for three years now.  Would you care to engage?

        Adam J. Read

  2. Hey Adam,

    Thanks for your comment. I think that you rightly ask questions about several aspects of Biblical texts. I am not a Biblical scholar and so take everything I say as a philosophical attempt to respond to your claims.

    Ok, so as I read you, you are basically making three claims and each then seems to be standing as an objection to contemporary Christian practice.

    First, there is what we might term the seeming inconsistency between God’s acts and the divine commands in Scripture. Let’s term this an epistemic objection since it deals primarily with the question of whether for one’s claims to be justified, your life stands as evidence for those claims’ truth.

    Second, as a result of this seeming inconsistency, there emerges a potential problem regarding how to understand God as an exemplar for living. Let’s term this an ethical objection because it asks whether the Bible presents God as of substantial moral worth, or of questionable moral character.

    Third, there seems to be a suggestion that the Hebrew Bible shows problematic signs of Moses’ own psychological views, rather than theological truth being presented for all.  Let’s term this a hermeneutic objection since it deals primarily with the question of how to interpret the texts in light of the epistemic and ethical objections.

    So, when cashed out this way, I think you are hitting on some very traditional questions that have been raised about the Biblical texts. For example, the philosopher, Bertrand Russell, has offered versions of the ethical objection. The epistemic objection is one that many have offered internal to arguments for supercessionism such that the Christian moral conception of God outstrips the Hebraic conception, etc. One often finds such claims in many evangelical communities that overlook the important and deep connections between Christianity and Judaism.  Finally, the hermeneutic objection can be found in the work of thinkers such as the “higher critics” and even such thinkers as Marx and Freud who find the texts to be mere reflections of personal psychologies and social ideologies.

    Because working through these various objections at length is something I am unable to do with any precision here. Let me simply raise some fairly standard responses to these traditional versions of your objections.

    Epistemic: Many philosophers of religion (skeptical theists, for instance) might stress the importance of the divine mystery. As such, God’s activities are unable to be judged according to the standards used to judge human activities. The idea here is that God would ultimately be the standard of rightness and so what would count as wrong for someone who is not God may not count as wrong for God. Though I have some deep problems with this line of response (which has been used in various ways as a potential reply to the problem of evil), I think that it is worth considering quite seriously. For example, I might reasonably and rightly forbid things for my 4 year old son that are not forbidden or wrong for me. Why would anything less than this be expected of God given what Kierkegaard would term the “infinite qualitative difference” between humanity and divinity? Again, I am not arguing that this response works, but simply that it is a classical reply to the sort of objection you are raising here.

    Ethical: Here, the same reply can be given as I offered above for the epistemic objection – the difference is simply a matter of emphasis. Rather than saying that God would potentially count as God’s own standard of evidential correctness, God would also count as God’s own standard of moral correctness.

    Hermeneutic: When it comes to the fact that the Biblical texts seem to show traces of the psychological and ideological contexts of their authors, that hardly seems surprising to me. People write, think, and speak from where they find themselves. Accordingly, without having to say anything about the specifics of Moses’ own psychology and cultural location, a challenge to the origin of a belief does not entail a challenge to the belief’s truth. So, even if the account of God offered in some of the Hebrew texts might plausibly have resulted largely from the personal experiences of the author, that does not count toward their falsity as accounts of God. This is what is sometimes referred to as a version of the “genetic fallacy.”

    Anyway, I hope that I have at least provided a few reasons to think that things are not immediately as problematic as you seem to suggest. This is not to say anything about the truth of scripture or contemporary Christian belief and practice. It is simply to say that the objections you raise (though reasonable in relation to classical objections that have been offered by others), are not sufficient for concluding much one way or another regarding the truth of some particular version of Christianity.

    I hope this is of some use as you keep thinking about such important topics.

    Best,

    Aaron

     

    • Hi Aaron,

      Thanks very much for your response.  I have been in the trades for twenty years, so I won’t use quite the adjectives you did in my response.  I will, however, try to address them according to your methodology.  Since you blended the first two in your response, I will do the same.

      So, for the Epistemic/Ethical concern, you are essentially telling me that God is permitted to live by what would be defined for us as hypocritical.  He is permitted to live by one moral code yet command us to live by another.  He can kill anyone he wants to, but gives us a commandment not to commit murder.  The simpler term for this issue might be called something like “Exemplification.”

      If an issue like this was brought up in a court of law, wouldn’t it be possible for the defense attorney of a murderer to simply say he was following the example of our nation’s highest authority?  This is one thing that gives me great concern.

      James 3:1 says that pastors are to be held more accountable for their deeds than their followers, but this doesn’t apply to a creature that defines himself as perfect.   This seems to be what you’re saying here, and unfortunately, history seems to be replete with examples just like this, including the king that we declared independence from a couple hundred years ago.  We hate leaders that “act like God” and try to control or manipulate us.

      It also seems to stand to reason that the more time we spend around our leaders, the more we tend to act like them.  I’m sorry, Aaron, but I don’t ever want to act anything like God, so why would I want to spend so much time focusing on him?  An omniscient deity should be able to see things from more than just his perspective, and if setting the example is such a focal point for these writers, I think they need someone else to model their lives after.

      I’ve written too much already…sorry.  I’ll stop here for now.

      Adam