England Fans Don’t Believe, They Just Hope…: “When I see England line up, when I see our motley crew of Cockneys, Scousers, Essex boys, Teessiders, Yorkshiremen, the long, the short and the tall, from all different kinds of backgrounds, it makes me feel good. Call it pride or patriotism if you want. I think it says something about our mongrel, compilation album of a country. And I want to see them win. Really, really badly.”

This Essex boy (and his dog) agrees.

I’ve made use of the phrase ’emotional intelligence’ recently, and it would do to spell out a little more what I mean by the phrase. I use it because it has been popularised by Daniel Goleman, so that gives the concept a contemporary ‘purchase’. However, what I really have in mind is something Ancient, and is really captured by terms like ‘virtue’ and ‘wisdom’ and (perhaps most of all) “eudaimonia”; and the thinkers I am leaning on are first, Alasdair MacIntyre, and second, Martha Nussbaum (and behind them both lies Aristotle). Nussbaum writes this about “eudaimonia” (in ‘The Fragility of Goodness’):

“Some texts we shall discuss are rendered obscure on this point by the common translation of Greek ‘eudaimonia’ by English ‘happiness’. Especially given our Kantian and Utilitarian heritage in moral philosophy, in both parts of which ‘happiness’ is taken to be the name of a feeling of contentment or pleasure, and a view that makes happiness the supreme good is asumed to be, by definition, a view that gives supreme value to psychological states rather than to activities, this translation is badly misleading. To the Greeks, eudaimonia means something like ‘living a good life for a human being’; or as a recent writer, John Cooper, has suggested, ‘human flourishing’. Aristotle tells us that it is equivalent, in ordinary discourse, to ‘living well and doing well’. Most Greeks would understand eudaimonia to be something essentially active, of which praiseworthy activities are not just productive means, but actual constituent parts. It is possible for a Greek thinker to argue that eudaimonia is equivalent to a state of pleasure; to this extent activity is not a conceptual part of the notion. But even here we should be aware that many Greek thinkers conceive of pleasure as something active rather than stative; an equation of eudaimonia with pleasure might, then, not mean what we would expect it to mean in a Utilitarian writer. The view that eudaimonia is equivalent to a state of pleasure is an unconventional and prima facie counterintuitive position in the Greek tradition. A very common position would be Aristotle’s, that eudaimonia consists in activity according to excellence(s).”

Aristotle developed a system which had at its heart the notion of the virtues – those excellences which the human being could develop which would enable them to live a full human life. In particular, there was an emphasis on the necessity of risk – that some elements of the good life can only be achieved if you are prepared to take the risk of failure and loss. In the Aristotelean synthesis, the virtues have the central role, and the key virtue is phronesis, or judgement: ‘judgement has an indispensable role in the life of the virtuous man which it does not and could not have in, for example, the life of the merely law-abiding or rule-abiding man’ (MacIntyre). This emphasis upon judgement is where I see emotion playing the necessary role, and the contemporary language of ’emotional intelligence’ as making sense, and I link it in with Damasio’s ‘somatic marker hypothesis’, ie the necessity for emotions to be engaged in our reasoning capacities.

My argument is this: our reasoning capacity is dependent upon our emotions, and, clearly, emotional development is dependent upon the development of the virtues (eg forebearance, capacity for hard work, delayed gratification etc). So, logically, a functioning intellect is dependent on emotional maturity, not the other way around, and it is through the growth of our emotional maturity that we develop our understandings not principally through (Modern) intellectual development. Put simply, if our emotions are tangled, then our reason will be tangled; if our emotions are in order (well developed) then our rational investigations will thereby be improved. For Aristotle was clear that the ability to develop the virtues – and therefore to achieve eudaimonia, the good and flourishing life – depended upon education and effort. It required emotional maturity – wisdom. Instead of the Socratic contemplation of abstract universals, ‘Being mortal, let us think mortal thoughts’.

Another quotation from Nussbaum, this time from “Upheavals of Thought”, where she is discussing ‘the enormous educational importance of tragic drama’:

“Tragedy is not for the very young; and it is not just for the young. Mature people always need to expand their experience and to reinforce their grasp of central ethical truths. But to the young future citizen, tragedy has a special significance. For such a spectator is learning compassion in the process. Tragedies acquaint her with the bad things that may happen in a human life, long before life itself does so: it thus enables concern for others who are suffering what she has not suffered. And it does so in a way that makes the depth and significance of suffering, and the losses that inspire it, unmistakably plain – the poetic, visual, and musical resources of the drama thus have moral weight. By inviting the spectator to become intensely concerned for the fate of the tragic hero, and at the same time portraying the hero as a worthy person, whose distress does not stem from his own deliberate wickedness, the drama sets up compassion; an attentive spectator will, in apprehending it, have that emotion. The Greeks cultivated compassion primarily through drama…”

So I see ’emotional intelligence’ as being precisely that cultivation of compassion and insight which comes from a full and rounded education, what might be called ‘largeness of soul’. It is the ability to exercise discernment, to perceive the good and to act according to the good, and in doing so to foster a full human flourishing.

There is nothing original to me here – it is really just a contemporary rephrasing of Aristotle – but of course I would wish to link it to the insights of the Christian faith, as did Augustine and Aquinas and the great mainstream of Christian theology. For it would be possible to argue – given the time and resources(!) I would argue – that the determinative tragedy, which both reveals our human nature and at the same time gives the answer to tragedy, is the story of Christ. When Christ says that he has come that we might have life and have it in all its fullness, I think he is talking about eudaimonia.

Found it! I’ve often tried to explain to people that ‘supernatural’ has changed its sense over time (most recently – and most unsuccessfully! – in a Bible study group). But this gives the background. (HT: La nouvelle theologie)

Note to self: buy this book – Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

Fits in with other things I’ve been reading, not just Tom Wright, but also Dunn’s excellent ‘A new perspective on Jesus’, which I suspect made use of the same ‘recent developments in the understanding of oral traditions’.

Literally. Excellent and lucid precis of why Penal Substitution is Scripturally inadequate.

Daniel at Sibboleth has been commenting on my comments on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which I’d like to offer a few further thoughts about.

Firstly, I apparently take up a ‘wholesale adoption of the Barth-world’s: “Jesus, not the Bible, is the Word of God — John 1!”‘

This I find intriguing. I know very little about Barth, and in so far as Barth influences me it is second-hand, either through tutors or, possibly, through someone like Eugene Peterson, who I like a lot. Yet shifting the topic to one of contemporary theological debates is, I think, a red herring. Far more important than what Barth may or may not have said is, for me, the logic of Christian doctrine, supremely in terms of the Creed. Sven’s other test is probably more accurate in terms of where I am coming from. In other words, I see the emphasis upon Jesus as the Word of God – ie, the determinative interpretation of the phrase “word of God” – as simply an implication of Christian doctrine. As I understand it, this is mainstream Christianity as accepted throughout Christian history by the vast majority of Christian believers and thinkers. It is the idea that the written text is the determinative interpretation of the phrase ‘word of God’ which I think is a recent development, certainly post-Reformation, and one which has been corrupted by the influence of modern philosophy (principally Cartesianism).

To unpick that, and to comment on something else Daniel says (“I don’t think Mark or Paul thought Jesus was the logos of God; I don’t think Luke did either, tho his writing seems to hint at Jesus’ divinity more than Mark’s.”) I want to have a look at one of my favourite passages: Colossians 1.15-20

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

This rather philosophical language echoes the Johannine understandings (or vice-versa) and, crucially, it doesn’t refer to ‘word of God’ at all. Yet the implications for Christ’s status are – rather obviously – profound. In particular the phrase ‘all things were created by him and for him’ is key – for that means that all created things reflect him, and our written texts are created things. In other words, the importance of the text, or of anything else within our world, can only be discerned through their relation to Christ. (Sven wrote something about the 2 Tim passage related to this recently). In other words, Scripture gains its sense through being referred to Christ, not the other way round. And this principle applies to everything.

What makes this marvellous is that, in the Incarnation, we get to see the blueprint – the underlying purpose of the whole shebang is revealed. That is what I understand the claim in the Creed to be:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

This seems to me to render much more precisely the theological weight of such wonderful passages as Isaiah 55:

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Somehow it seems to make much more sense for a Christian to see this ‘accomplishment’ of the Word of God being a reference to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, rather than being a reference to the story about the life, death and resurrection. It is only in a culture which was dominated by the text, and by modernist presuppositions about the role of text in the shaping of a society’s norms and practices, that such a bizarre theology could take hold. That is not, of course, to undermine the importance of the story – telling the story is how we share in the work of the word (at least in large part), and it was how the church maintained itself – but the work of salvation was accomplished by the living Christ, not the description of the living Christ.

In other words, it is the Incarnation which is the hinge for all of Christian life and thought, and the life of the Christian is to reflect that Incarnation. Scripture gains its value precisely through being a reflection upon the Incarnation, but it is not the only reflection, or even, arguably, the most important (I would say that the Eucharist is that).

Daniel finishes with some rhetorical questions: “Is it anything other than bad theology and bad use of scripture to disclaim scripture as the word of God simply because two verses in John happen to say that Jesus is the word of God? Christians accept the OT and NT as the word of God, and this phrase is entirely appropriate. This, however, is the beginning of our difficulties, not the end: what does it mean to confess that precisely this kind of book—better, these kinds of books are the word of God?”

The first question rests upon a false dichotomy, it seems to me. I’m not wishing to deny any sense at all to referring to Scripture as the ‘word of God’ – I’m only wishing to deny the attribution of imperfection (inerrancy) to it. But the second question I think is more troubling. To reflect upon the Incarnation is, it seems to me, about changing our humanity, the whole of our lives, all that was assumed and that is now healed. Making the central focus Scripture seems too cerebral, and to leave some of that humanity behind – in just the same way that, so often, Jesus’ humanity seems to be left behind in fundamentalism.

The Incarnation is when the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. It is precisely the becoming flesh which is important for the Christian – without it, we are sucked into the varieties of gnosticism against which the Johannine writers warned (2 John 7-8)

My first post was this one on Tuesday May 31 2005. As I’ll be away on the exact anniversary, I thought I’d say Happy Birthday dear blog a little earlier.

The graph is quite exciting, even if the numbers are still rather small in an absolute sense.

John Milbank is one of the best contemporary British theologians. I came across this paper today, whilst looking for something else, and it’s great. I particularly liked this: “This ‘designing’ God is not the God of classical Catholic theology because his causality operates on the same plane as finite causes even though it is all powerful. One can trace the beginnings of such a way of conceiving of divine causality as far back as Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, but it displaced an older and essentially neoplatonic way of looking at things, still holding good for Aquinas, in which the divine cause was a higher ‘influence’ which ‘flowed into ’ finite levels of causation, entirely shaping them from within, but not ‘influencing’ them or conditioning them on the same plane of univocal being, as a less metaphorically-rooted meaning of ‘influence’ tends to imply. Put briefly, the ontological versus ontic difference between primary and secondary causality was lost sight of.”

It was the ‘put briefly’ bit that really made me smile…

(Just for the avoidance of ambiguity, I too find Milbank difficult to read. I was saying much the same thing here.)

It’s a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world’s most toxic retailer. (HT Energy Bulletin)

As it happens, Tesco are doing something similar.

I haven’t forgotten that I need to write up ‘Am I wrong about Tesco (part two)’ – but it’ll be after my holiday…

Why do the British get so hung up about nudity?