Christianorum

Confession: Why This is Not an Apologetics Website (Part Five)

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As I noted in the previous post, this series begins with Part 1, which outlined my main reasons for rejecting apologetics because at best it merely uses what is public for factional ends (it also shuts down conversations and does a host of other awful things). It also carries forward from Part 2, which adds some autobiographical notes to the themes brought out in Part 1.

Part 3 recalled several things said to me by a professor I had concerning the nature of Christian identity. Part 4 covered a conference held regarding the prospects of an Orthodox Great Books school (and the conflict involved in the tension between a Great Books education and a decidedly religious one), and further covered problems with what I’ve heard some call the “postmodern” approach to theology found in figures such as Fr. John Behr.

Here, I summarize my own view — or, at least, the view that I have for now, and why it is incompatible with selling other people a religious identity (and so, with apologetics). After a brief explanation of one small feature of classical “ontology” (the “philosophy of being”) of the ancient world in VI, I’ll start with the relatively short answer in VII.

Finally, for those with any interest, the next post shall move into a more detailed explanation about what exegetical considerations lie at the backend of the short answer of section VII. After the next post, I don’t expect I’ll be writing any more on this topic, except historical work, likely a year or more down the road, to show the relationship between the pagan Classical tradition of philosophy and the early Christological formulae and literature. 

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Confession: Why This is Not an Apologetics Website (Part Four)

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This post carries forward from Part 1, which outlined my main reasons for rejecting apologetics because at best it merely uses (rather than fosters) what is public for factional ends, shuts down conversations, absorbs political modes of engagement that are inherently divisive and immune to inquiry, adopts psychological stances that are poisonous, and absorbs metaphysical elements from the 20th century that ought to be rejected. It also carries forward from Part 2, which adds some autobiographical notes to the themes brought out in Part 1.

In some ways, it takes up some few themes of Part 3, which was a rather long reminiscence about several things that a professor I had –a former St. John’s student– told me about what the person of Christ meant, with some final remarks from me about the need for public language of value and worth, within which we articulate the merits of any and all of our commitments — religious or non-religious, Christian or otherwise.

Here, I recall a conference I attended in the John G. Rangos Family Building (photo in the banner, above) at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in NY that brainstormed, quite often, about creating an Orthodox Great Books College, and note the important objections to such a project that were raised at the conference, concerns relevant to my rejection of, and grave concerns about, the whole enterprise of apologetics. I also examine the approach taken by the Dean of that Seminary to theology, and compare it unfavorably with my apprehensions about apologetics from the first post. 

I should say at the outset that I value the mission and work that St. Vladimir’s does in producing good priests and in raising the bar of scholarship in the English-speaking Orthodox world. I’d never have heard the concerns about religious education if I’d not attended the conference that St. Vladimir’s hosted. I should also say that I like Fr. John Behr as a person very much, and respect much of the work that he does, administratively and academically. I do, however, think that Fr. John is wrong on his position about what theology is (and I take this to be central to his project); this ties into why I have no interest in apologetics, why I have chosen to focus on what is held in common, and how neglect of what is held in common leads down some awful roads. 

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Confession: Why This is Not an Apologetics Website (Part Three)

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Continued from Part 1, where most of my position is outlined, and Part 2, which clarifies some of the points of Part 1. Here, in Part 3, I give some autobiographical and anecdotal exchanges that lay a decade in the background of the coming three posts. 

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Confession: Why This is Not an Apologetics Website (Part Two)

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Continued from Part I. This largely follows up with some autobiographical clarifications of some of the things brought up last week.  Continue reading →

Confession: Why This is Not an Apologetics Website (Part One)

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The mission of this website was (and is) to write about secularity as our common situation, and other topics related to it (with a few poems and other related issues thrown in). It aims at treating what is public, and common. When I include Christian historical elements –and as they are heavy in many of the roots and in the trunk of much of the West’s history, they have been prominent in many recent posts on Christianization— these elements are, or aim to be, (1) historical in character (this is the most common), or (2) they aim to clarify certain kinds of religious configurations that appear in our contemporary situation (often critically), or else (3) they aim to trace the shape of viable commitments in the modern age. Christianity is part of everyone’s heritage in the West, because of where we come from, but in nearly every Western country, there is no communal commitment to Christian identity. A heritage is not an obligation or a commitment (at least, I’m not currently so persuaded), but it is public. The manner in which, and the degree to which, Christian commitments either are or are not possible, and the shape of the options that people take within the current time, reveal something about the peculiarities of our age. That is to say, despite the depth of feeling I may bring to anything I write, my primary aim is to exposit, rather than to exhort. (There are and shall be plenty of hortatory moments here, but they are not of that sort, and I don’t expect they shall be.) I shall bring such feeling to Nietzsche and Plato alike, so my enthusiasm is not partisan. I’m not interested in selling anyone anything.

Readers who have no (or no explicit) religious practice are often uncomfortable with my (Orthodox) Christian one, and readers who are self-consciously Christian are often uncomfortable with my insistence on the ubiquity and inescapability of secularity (though these almost always radically mis-diagnose what secularity and secularism are) — indeed, some of the more zealous Christians I meet seem to expect that my writing here on Into the Clarities must be to denounce secularity and to promote Christian practice and identity. It is to these two groups that these posts are addressed.

Neither evangelism nor apologetics is my goal here –indeed, apologetics is not something that is compatible with my beliefs and outlook– and I’d like to take the opportunity to explain why.

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