RSS
Living Together
- Civility & Rhetoric (42) : Discourse, Persuasion, Respect
- Activism (5) : Making Change
- Family (1) : The Family
- Government, Law, Politics (48)
- War & Peace (27) : War & Peacemaking
- Journalism (10) : All that's fit to print
- Education (13) : Scholarship and Pedagogy
- History (9) : History and Method
- In/Tolerance (18) : Living With Differences
- Church & State (16) : God & Country
Ralph Cudworth on Truth in Love said...
Cited by John Tulloch, in Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, Volume 2 (BiblioLife: 2010), pp. 231-2.
Let us endeavour to promote the Gospel of peace, the dovelike Gospel, with a dove-like spirit. This was the way by which the Gospel at first was propagated in the world; Christ did not cry, nor lift up His voice in the streets; a bruised reed He did not break, and the smoking flax He did not quench; and yet He brought forth judgment unto victory. He whispered the Gospel to us from Mount Zion in a still voice; and yet the sound thereof went out quickly throughout all the earth. The Gospel at first came down upon the world gently and softly, like the dew upon Gideon's fleece; and yet it quickly soaked quite through it; and doubtless this is the most effectual way to promote it further. Sweetness and ingenuity will more command men's minds than passion, sourness, and severity; as the soft pillow sooner breaks the flint than the hardest marble. Let us follow truth in love; and of the two, indeed, be contented rather to miss of the conveying of a speculative truth than to part with love. When we would convince men of any error by the strength of truth, let us withal pour the sweet balm of love upon their heads. Truth and love are the two most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together they cannot easily be withstood. The golden beams of truth and the silken cords of love twisted together will draw men on with a sweet violence, whether they will or no. Let us take heed we do not sometimes call that zeal for God and His Gospel which is nothing else but our own tempestuous and stormy passion. True zeal is a sweet, heavenly, and gentle flame, which maketh us active for God, but always within the sphere of love. It never calls for fire from heaven to consume those who differ a little from us in their apprehensions. It is like that kind of lightning (which the philosophers speak of) that melts the sword within, but singeth not the scabbard; it strives to save the soul, but hurteth not the body. True zeal is a loving thing, and makes us always active to edification, and not to destruction.
Os Guinness on American Ideals said...
The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends On It (HarperCollins: 2008), pp. 3-4.
As history's first new nation and the current lead society in the modern world, the United States is distinctive for the way it was founded by intention and by ideas. American ideals and institutions do not trail off into the mists of antiquity as do those of many nations. They were born in an unprecedented burst of brilliant thinking and political building, and from the very beginning they engaged constructively with many of the central challenges and characteristic features of the modern world. ¶ Freedom, equal opportunity, the rule of law, mutual responsibility, representative government, the separation of powers, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, justice grounded in due process and the presumption of innocence, universal public education — as words, these ideals trip off the tongue lightly; but as principles, they form the bedrock on which the greatness of America has been built.
The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends On It (HarperCollins: 2008), pp. 1-2.
It would be a safe but sad bet that someone, somewhere in the world, is killing someone else at this very moment in the name of religion or ideology. ¶ Currently, the world's newspapers give us each day our daily read of the Sunni Muslims ferociously slaughtering Shia Muslims in Baghdad, and of Shia Muslims ferociously slaughtering Sunni Muslims in revenge. Elsewhere it might be Muslims and Hindus killing each other in Kashmir, or Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka, or Muslims and animists in Sudan. Earlier it would have been Protestants and Catholics in Ulster, and Muslims, Orthodox, and Catholics in the Balkans. ... But before anyone drifts off into the well-rehearsed litany of blaming it all on religion, we should remember that modern "terror" began in France in 1789 in the name of secular Reason, killing several million in its wars and committing a near genocide in the Vendée on its first outing. Nearer our own time, close to a hundred million people were slaughtered in the twentieth century by secularist ideologies — far more than the deaths from all the religious persecutions and repression in Western history combined.
"Commencement Address at American University" (Washington D.C.: June 10, 1963).
So, let us not be blind to our differences — but let
us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by
which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our
differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all
inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish
our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April
16,1953.
In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples. To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent
moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of
1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of
all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace. The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and
almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across
the world. Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is
sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel
of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the
chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the
vain hope of 1945.
The Laws of Discursive Thought (R. Carter & Brothers: 1881), p. 180.
It is used by the courtier and the flatterer, who keep within the limits of truth in their statement, but intend that their words should suggest much more to those whom they address. It is employed by the calumniator when he does not bring a direct accusation — which might be met; but he hints and insinuates certain dark charges fitted to raise our worst suspicions. We see it exhibited by the guilty man when he puts on a look of injured innocence; or affects a virtuous indignation because such an offence could be charged against him. There are certain speakers guilty of it in every sentence, and certain writers exhibit it in every page, for they can say nothing clearly and plainly. It has been said of Hume, as a historian, that, "without asserting much more than can be proven, he gives prominence to all the circumstances which support his case, or glides lightly over those which are unfavorable to it."
David Brog (Encounter Books: July 2010), 376 pages.
Religious faith is under assault. In books and movies and on television, militant secular critics attack religion with a renewed vigor. These “new atheists” repeat a two-part mantra: that religious faith is hopelessly irrational and that those possessed of such faith are responsible for the hatred and bloodshed that has plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge us, and the world will at last live in peace. In Defense of Faith examines this proposition in the context of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition and asserts that, far from encouraging hatred and violence, the Judeo-Christian tradition has easily been the most effective curb upon the dark defects of human nature and our best tool in the struggle for humanity. From the Christian activists who fought to stop the genocide of Indians in South America and their ethnic cleansing in North America, to the abolition of African slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and on to modern human rights activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to the rock star Bono — In Defense of Faith rebuts the fashionable arguments against religion and presents the strong and lasting record of the Judeo-Christian idea. History has not been as kind to the atheist model: every time it is put to the test, we have reverted to the most base, violent instincts of our selfish genes. ~ Production Description
Tagline: Sex, atheism, politics, dreams, and whatever. Thinking out loud since 2005.
In Defence of the Imagination (Harvard University Press: 1982), pp. 2-4.
More disturbing than this wilful and self-indulgent use of language was the dismissal of the author as the creator of the work and the denial of objective status to the text. The author gave place to the reader, on the ground that the text has no existence as 'an object exterior to the psyche and history of the man who interprets it'. Since the reader may be any and every reader from now to the end of time, texts were to be regarded as susceptible of an infinite number of meanings, and, since no criteria were proposed by which any meaning could be rejected or accepted, were in fact meaningless. The critic, therefore, regarding it as impossible to fulfill what has always been regarded as his prime duty — to illuminate the author's meaning, now declared to be totally irrecoverable — created meanings within the void (le vide) of the text, or, to put it another way, imported meanings into a text that had no determinate meaning of its own.
Faith and Criticism: The Sarum Lectures 1992 (Oxford University Press: 1994), p.49.
I looked at the Gita and was deeply moved, as who could fail to be, but I was not convinced. When it came to the point I found myself quite unable to believe that what happened in the world as the result of my actions was not of ultimate importance. To be sure it mattered little what I, as a single individual, did as the German tanks rolled into France, but what thousands like me did might make a crucial difference to the course of human history. At that moment I discovered myself to be profoundly occidental. ¶ I do not suppose that even now I can render fully explicit what lay behind that conviction, but it had, I believe, something to do with the Christian pattern of Creation and Redemption and a consequent vision of the world as the theatre of irrevocable choices.
James Davison Hunter (Oxford University Press: April 2010), 368 pages.
The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive — and provocative — answers to these questions. Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christians eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles W. Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls "faithful presence" — an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of "faithful presence." Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be. Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world. ~ Product Description
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Macmillan: 1890), pp. 277-8.
To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience; and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these
opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work,
requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and
combining mind. ... But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
We interrupt this broadcast for a rare excursion into contemporary politics, but only to make a broader plea. Last night, here in the U.S.A., the Democratic controlled House of Representatives passed a very controversial health care reform bill. Apropos of our last article, the debate on the floor was intense, the differences irreconcilable. For the minority, John Boehner deplored the bill, characterizing it as striking at the heart of the American Dream. For the majority, Nancy Pelosi beamed that it was a final step toward ensuring the American promise of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". As bitter as the debate has been, it was to be expected that the conservatives who opposed the bill would be angry and frustrated. Sure enough, this morning I overheard radio talk show host Mike Gallagher mid-tirade, calling the Democrats "filthy", "vile", "bastards", "vermin", and "bastards" several more times for good measure. It recalled Rush Limbaugh's recent ascription of Democrats as "cockroaches". These despicable comments do not represent the best of conservative commentary, and I am very aware that such rhetoric is as bad and worse on the other side. What is ironic is that such voices bemoan the demise of the American republic even as they undermine the civil discourse that is vital to it. It is perfectly appropriate to offer withering critique of ideas and actions, but these ad hominems are themselves worthy of severe reproach. Many of the conservatives who are angry and frustrated this morning are Christians, and to you I make a special plea. May we exemplify Jesus' exhortation to "love our [ideological] enemies, to treat them as our friends". May we treat them as we would wish to be treated. May we speak what we consider the truth in love. May we chasten each other when incivility speaks. May we be exemplars of civil discourse. This is our mandate.
Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Eerdmans: 1995), p. 1.
The words "liberal" and "fundamentalist" are used today not so much to identify oneself as to label the enemy. From one side comes the accusation that the mind of the fundamentalist is closed, shuttered against the possibility of doubt and therefore against the recognition of hitherto unrecognized truth. From the other side comes the charge that liberals are so open to new ideas that they have no firm commitments at all, that every affirmation of faith must be held only tentatively, and that every dogma must, as a matter of principle, be challenged. There are terms of moral opprobrium that each side employs to attack the other: the fundamentalist is arrogant, blinkered, and culturally illiterate; the liberal is flabby, timid, and carried along by every new fashion of thought. From the point of view of the fundamentalist, doubt is sin; from the point of view of the liberal, the capacity for doubt is a measure of intellectual integrity and honesty.
The Innocents Abroad (Hippocrene Books: 1869), p. 650.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. ¶ The excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things that were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing, as we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight has not been in vain — for above the confusion of vague recollections, certain of its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still continue perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall have faded away.
Tim Muehlhoff and Todd V. Lewis (InterVarsity Press: March 2010), 219 pages.
Whether setting about to love our neighbor, to settle a dispute, to share in the suffering of others or to speak up on behalf of the marginalized, we inevitably must engage in communication. And what could be more natural, more human, than communication? But we all learn quickly enough that good communication is not always natural. There is much to learn from Scripture and from the academic study of human communication. Tim Muehlhoff and Todd Lewis are able guides, aiding us in understanding the broad field of human communication in Christian perspective. Here they offer readers a vital assessment of the power of words, perspective-taking, persuasion and conflict management — all in an effort to improve our abilities to communicate forgiveness and shape the world we live in for the good. Special attention is focused on the place of Christians as counterpublics — those who offer alternative perspectives to the dominant voices in society. ~ Product Description
Morality Without God? (Oxford University Press: 2009), 192 pages.
Atheists often claim that religion fuels aggressive wars, both because it exacerbates antagonisms between opponents and also because it gives aggressors confidence by making them feel as if they have God on their side. Lots of wars certainly looks as if they are motivated by religion. Just think about conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Asian subcontinent, Indonesia, and various parts of Africa. However, none of these wars is exclusively religious. They always involve political, economic, and ethnic disputes as well. That makes it hard to specify how much role, if any, religion itself had in causing any particular war. Defenders of religion argue that religious language is misused to justify what warmongers wanted to do independently of religion. This hypothesis might seem implausible to some, but it is hard to refute, partly because we do not have enough data points, and there is so much variation among wars. In any case, the high number of apparently religious wars at least suggests that secular societies are unlikely to be more prone to murder in war.
John Locke
in Letters Concerning Toleration, Latin orig. 1689 (J. Brook: 1796), pp. 29-66.
John Locke here sets a clear purpose: "to
distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of
religion, and to settle
the just bounds that lie between the one and the other". Specifically,
the concern of the state is the commonwealth, especially the protection
of property, and the just use of force to that end. The concern of the
church, on the other hand, is the care of souls, to which force is
ill-suited. What is essential is toleration: the state's toleration of
the church, and each sect's toleration of another. Indeed, Locke argues
that the mark of any truly Christian church will be toleration; this,
because of Christ's "Gospel of peace" and of the impossibility of
forced belief. "Whatever profession we make,
to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied
in our own mind that the one is true, ... such profession and such
practice, far from being any furtherance,
are indeed great obstacles to our salvation." Whenever a church or
minister reaches for powers of the state, the
power to dispossess others of freedom or property, their true ambition
is betrayed, "what they desire is temporal dominion". State authority
is also circumscribed, "The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate,
because his power consists only in outward force: but true
and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind..."
It is refreshing to see in Locke that the obvious incongruity of
Christian coercion is not a recent realization. For example, Locke
notes Jesus' prediction that Christians will suffer persecution, but
far be it that Christians become persecutors, to "force others by fire
and sword, to embrace her
faith and doctrine". One could object to Locke's claim that "the only
business of the
church is the salvation of souls", if that in effect precludes the
church working towards a just and civil society in the here and now.
Nonetheless, Locke's argument, rooted in Christian ideals and natural
law, is rightly credited for the delineation of church and state
authority that later emerged in America. ~ Afterall
"Are There Secular Reasons" at The New York Times (February 22, 2010).
Whether the argument appears in its softer or harder versions, behind it is a form of intellectual/political apartheid known as the private/public distinction: matters that pertain to the spirit and to salvation are the province of religion and are to be settled by religious reasons; matters that pertain to the good order and prosperity of civil society are the province of democratically elected representatives and are to be settled by secular reasons. As John Locke put it in 1689 (“A Letter Concerning Toleration”), the “care of men’s souls” is the responsibility of the church while to the civil magistrate belongs the care of “outward things such as money, land, houses, furniture and the like”; it is his responsibility to secure for everyone, of whatever denomination or belief, “the just possession of these things belonging to this life.” ¶
A neat division, to be sure, which has the effect (not, I think, intended by Locke) of honoring religion by kicking it upstairs and out of sight. If the business of everyday life — commerce, science, medicine, law, agriculture, education, foreign policy, etc. — can be assigned to secular institutions employing secular reasons to justify actions, what is left to religious institutions and religious reasons is a private area of contemplation and worship, an area that can be safely and properly ignored when there are “real” decisions to be made. Let those who remain captives of ancient superstitions and fairy tales have their churches, chapels, synagogues, mosques, rituals and liturgical mumbo-jumbo; just don’t confuse the (pseudo) knowledge they traffic in with the knowledge needed to solve the world’s problems.
"The Civilization of the Pluralist Society" in We Hold These Truths (Rowman & Littlefield: 2005), pp. 27-8.
The whole premise of the public argument, if it is to be civilized and civilizing, is that the consensus is real, that among the people everything is not in doubt, but that there is a core of agreement, accord, concurrence, acquiescence. We hold certain truths, therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. Mutatis mutandis, this is true of scientific, philosophical, and theological argument. It is no less true of political argument.
Popular in Books
- How People Poison Everything
- Boston College's MA Philosophy Reading List
- Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics
- Oxford Handbook of Skepticism
- The Persecuted Atheist?
- What's So Great About Christianity
- Faith of the Fatherless
- What Is a "Scientific Fact"? Won't Plain Ol' Facts Do?
- Rhetoric or Reason
- The Victory of Reason
Popular in Quotes
- Friedrich Nietzsche on Fighting Monsters
- Lt. Col. Mervin Willett Gonin DSO on the Holocaust
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (as Ivan Karamazov) on Evil
- Karl Marx on Religion
- J.P. Moreland on Postmodernism and Anger
- Mark Twain (as Huck Finn) on Ethics
- Angus Menuge on Inference to the Best Explanation
- J.P. Moreland on Rival Worldviews
- John Stuart Mill on Fallibility and Free Speech
- J.P. Moreland on Postmodernism
Popular in Papers
- The Euthanasia Debate: Understanding the Issues
- Aquinas versus Locke and Descartes on the Human Person and End-of-Life Ethics
- Utilitarianism and the Moral Life
- Philosophical Apologetics, the Church, and Contemporary Culture
- Scientific Creationism, Science, and Conceptual Problems
- Argument from Consciousness
- Is Science a Threat or Help to Faith?
- Complementarity, Agency Theory, and the God-of-the-Gaps
- The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality
- Naturalism and Libertarian Agency
Random
- R. Douglas Geivett on Design
- Scientific Naturalism and the Unfalsifiable Myth of Evolution
- Richard John Neuhaus on the Social Contract
- Principia Ethica
- Shelly Kagan on Morality vs. Law
- Emma Goldman on Love and Marriage
- W.H. Auden (King Herod) on a New Age
- C.S. Lewis on God is Love
- Paul Davies on Design
- Thomas Nagel on Rationalization