posted
I realize that, my indirect point was that with a bunch of law students in the audience you would have thought they might have had a passing acquaintance with the legal concept. Which makes me wonder about the state of law schools in this country...
posted
I knew it was a transaction. As in a bottle or in slavery. I just didn't know what was being returned for what. That's kind of important, given the context. He asked what was the sense of "Christian redemption," and I'm thinking to myself, "All right, Jesus died for our sins," but that answer is vague. I'm sure other people were thinking the same thing. I knew the words, I just didn't know what the words refered to, which again was his point about our lack of history, appreciation for language, and inability for reverence.
posted
lol, that's what 11 years of competitive Bible Quizzing (in King James) does for someone. I knew it off of the top of my head. And I'm sure I was raised as one of those, "vulgar American Christians".
posted
No, you weren't. I thought you were homeschooled precisely to keep away from those vulgar Christians. Look, we can keep boxing and you can go out of your way to show that the guy was a fool, but I don't know. He made clear, cogent arguments, drawing my attention to assumptions I didn't even know I held.
Jeni's experience sounds like reverence to me, and Nowen's experience sounds like one who gained moral wisdom through great Art.
He said lesser art is pornographic because it doesn't share wisdom, as much as it provokes some sort of emotion. I imagine it's the difference between having sex and making love.
posted
lol, I wasn't saying that the guy was entirely a fool. Most pompous people are pretty intelligent because they get everyone else to believe them. I was making a comment about the state of U.S. Law Schools, that no one knew in an audience of law students knew the definition of the term. The comment was somewhat facetious, and you totally missed the tounge-in-cheek.
FYI, I was homeschooled partially because my parents *were* fundamentalist Christians though their initial reasons were primarily academic. I would no longer classify myself as fundamentalist, though if it came down to it I'd still define myself as "Christian". However According to my parents I'm a complete heathen and helfire is licking at my feet. They view themselves as parental failures because they are worried about my eternal salvation, though I have tried to point out several times that in theory it is between me and God and no one else.
posted
Though the dichotomy he makes between "wisdom" and "emotion" is interesting. I'm not sure my American Gothic experience could be described as "wisdom", though there was definitely intangible emotion.
posted
I think the state of schools would be worse if students graduated without knowing the sense of the word. Isn't that the measure of an institution? How people come out, not how they go in?
posted
How many other schools won't have a lecture that includes the legal definition of redemption? Sounds like these law students wouldn't necessarily have known it, had they not had a guest lecuturer in to listen to. What's the guarantee that he's going to lecture to every class that goes through?
AJ (but as I said, it was a tounge in cheek point, basically agreeing with dkw. Just about any good in depth study of Christian theology of any stripe will include focus on the meaning and history of the word "redemption" in the Hebrew, Greek and English iterations because the word is central to many concepts of Christianity.)
posted
It wasn't the legal definition of redemption that we didn't know. Anyone in California who has read a the label on a bottle of soda knows that redemption is getting something back for giving something, we just didn't know what it meant with respect to Christian metaphysics, that is, exactly what we were getting back for what gift.
quote:but as I said, it was a tounge in cheek point, basically agreeing with dkw. Just about any good in depth study of Christian theology of any stripe will include focus on the meaning and history of the word "redemption" in the Hebrew, Greek and English iterations because the word is central to many concepts of Christianity.
I agree. The thing is, I don't think it's something that should be reserved for a deep study of Christian theology. His argument was that everyone living in the west and speaking this language needs to understand Christian metaphysics, even if we don't have faith. If we don't understand that much, we are living some sort of rootless life because we use these words, and the words are rooted in some phenomena, and if we use these words without a clear understanding of the phenomena they refer to, our essence becomes some sort of joke.
I don't know if I would go that far, but there is something there.
posted
Well the gift is free to us. It's Jesus that's doing the buying back, paying for the debt of our sins, but you already know this now. There are various theological interpretations of the "Attonement", limited attonement (is the gift of salvation only truly offered to those who accept it) Unlimited attonenement (the gift of salvation buys back and restores the whole world even those who don't actually accept the gift) and various stripes in between. And that's just in the conservative Christian theology which I learned. I believe dkw learned a whole different variety of Attonement Theory.
posted
Hmm, I don't know how much a non believer would actually get out of discussing the intracies of Attonement, other than the intellectual excercise. So are you saying that he feels that the intellectual excercise improves one's moral base so as to be profitable to spend the time on it, even if one is an unbeliever?
I guess it would be harmless, but I don't know that it would do a lot of overarching good. And it would piss off a lot of athiests and agnostics.
quote:I don't know how much a non believer would actually get out of discussing the intracies of Attonement, other than the intellectual excercise.
I got the feeling that he doesn't believe that Christian attonement is insular. The idea bleeds into the way we understand everything. I sat in on another lecture where he spoke about how we understand facts, that is, from the Latin facare, which is to make or to do. And facts, as we understand them today, are that which is made or done by God.
He took this through an argument that I still don't quite understand about how since the world is a product of the thought of God, and facts are makings or doings by God, facts, that is, the workings of the world, are assumed to be, at base, intelligible, opening the way for science to gain credence as true knowledge about the world from a God's eye perspective.
Once again, I couldn't follow the argument all the way through. I'm sure I missed some nuance. But he definitely believes that how we understand Christianity allows us to elevate the role and information science provides, by some how giving us to think that science provides some sort of window into the world.
______
Admittedly, he doesn't think that science can tell you anything about anything that matters, and our pre-occupation with it is a bit shameful. Instead, of course, we should be learning the Wisdom that is radiating from great art, but that learning is only possible once we grow our sense of self-contempt and reverence, as the distance between those two is where morality resides.
quote:Your guy has completely missed the point of science. If science is dry and boring and not beauty and awe, there's something wrong. It has nothing to do, necessarily with understanding interpersonal interactions, it has everything to do with realizing you *are* just a speck in the universe which is what the dude was going for. Somone who can't stand in awe at the beauty and intricacy of the structure that is DNA, is equally as morally deficient as someone who can't appreciate Great Art.
Thanks, Banna. You said it much better than I could have. To me, science is all about admiring Great Art--it's just that the artist is nature, or God, depending on your beliefs.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the speaker's idea of contempt, but I don't think that self-contempt is better than humility. In my mind, humility is about understanding your place in the world, and having an accurate picture of yourself. Self-contempt is placing yourself lower than is correct. It is as much a sin to deny the good in yourself as it is to think that you are better than you are. I do, however, think that we need to be aware of our faults. Since no one is perfect, we all should be working to be better people. If that is the speaker's view of self-contempt, then I am all for it. But complete self-hatred is just as unhealthy as complete arrogance.
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posted
I just think the guys a freak! Not much to argue about; he should be proud someone loaths him since that is what he seems to want.
By the way, from a former self-contemptor, what he says in theory doesn't work in practice. All that such a personal "hatred" does is make you want to kill yourelf and others. He should have learned that from the real world of Columbine. I knew those guys, for I was them in high school (black trenchcoat and all), and therefore understood exactly what they did and why. The diffference was that I found self-worth and faith in God.
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posted
Irami, you are really into this Christian/Kantian guilt thing, aren't you? Have you ever read B. Williams' Shame and Necessity? If not, I recommend it as a good counterpoint to the guilt and atonement approach to moral value.
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