Volume 15, Issue 2: Spring 2021

S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 , VO L U M E 1 5 , I S S U E 2

featuring: ‘

by Whitney Thomas 24

pg. 18 Dominion:

Imago Dei and Environmentalism

‘

pg. 4 Christianity and Climate Change

by Isaiah Menning 24

The DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA exists to articulate Christian perspectives in the academic community.

Front cover photo by Tony Perez

T H E DA RT M O U T H A P O L O G I A SPRING 2021 VO L U M E 1 5 I S S U E 2

Christianity and Climate Change

4

Whitney Thomas

Work as an Act of Worship

10

Will Bryant

Dominion

18

Isaiah Menning

Cloudy with a Chance of Theism

28

Tony Perez

Calling Out Call-Out Culture

36

Tulio Huggins

Proving the Resurrection

44

Paige Pattison

An Education in Belonging

52

Najma Zahira

What God’s Grace Tells Us About the Current Ecological Crisis

Recalibrating Rugged Individualism with the Christian Tradition

Imago Dei and Environmentalism

Apologetic Uses for Thomistic Divine Simplicity

Psalm 137 and a Better System of Rebuke, Forgiveness, and Justice with Gary Habermas’s Minimal Facts Method

A Review of Willie Jennings’ After Whiteness

C O N T R I B U TO R S Whitney Thomas D’24 (“Christianity and Climate Change,” p. 4) is from Oklahoma City, OK and plans to pursue a major in Biology along with a minor in Philosphy.

Tulio Huggins D’23 (“Calling Out CallOut Culture,” p. 36) is from Mechanicsburg, PA and is pursuing a major in History.

Will Bryant D’24 (“Work as an Act of Worship,” p. 10) is from Hingham, MA and plans to pursue a major in Quantitative Social Sciences with a minor in Public Policy.

Paige Pattison D’24 (“Proving the Resurrection,” p. 44) is from Sturgis, MI and plans to pursue majors in Economics and Hispanic Studies with a minor in Public Policy.

Isaiah Menning D’24 (“Dominion,” p.

19) is from Salt Lake City, UT and plans to pursue a major in Biology with a minor in Public Policy.

Najma Zahira D’24 (“An Education in Belonging,” p. 52) is from Fruitland Park, FL and plans to pursue a major in Government modified with Economics with minors in French and Public Policy.

Tony Perez D’23 (“Cloudy with a Chance of Theism,” p. 28) is from Boston, MA and is pursuing a major in Philosophy with a minor in Computer Science.

E X E C U T I V E B OA R D Christopher Candelora D’22, Editor-in-Chief Drew Whitley D’23, Editor-in-Chief-Elect Alice Little D’22, Managing Editor Blake Whitmer D’23, Managing Editor-Elect Michael Carlowicz D’22, Publisher Joseph Gyorda D’22, Programming Director Anthony Fosu D’24, Layout Designer E D I T O R I A L B OA R D Jacob Wesley Dell D’22 Sara Catherine Cook D’23 Zoe Marzi D’22 A DV I S O RY B OA R D Gregg Fairbrothers D’76 Eric Hansen, Thayer James Murphy, Professor of Government Lindsay Whaley, Professor of Classics & Linguistics SPECIAL THANKS Council on Student Organizations The Eleazar Wheelock Society

SUBSCRIPTIONS To subscribe to our journal, visit our website or use your phone’s camera to scan the QR code to the right. Subscriptions to the journal are free and subscribers get each new issue delivered right to their front door! For more information, visit our website or send us an email at the.dartmouth.apologia@dartmouth.edu.

SUBMISSIONS We welcome the submission of any article, essay, or artwork for publication in the Dartmouth Apologia that seeks to promote respectful, thoughtful discussion in the community. We will consider all submissions from any members of the community but reserve the right to publish only those that align with our mission statement and quality rubric. email: the.dartmouth.apologia@dartmouth.edu

L E T T E R S TO T H E E D I TO R We deeply value your opinions and encourage thoughtful words of support, dissent, or other views. We will gladly consider any letter that is consistent with our mission statement’s focus on promoting intellectual discourse in the Dartmouth community. email: the.dartmouth.apologia@dartmouth.edu

L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I TO R Dear Reader, Wherever you may be, I hope that this letter finds you healthy and well.

Though COVID-19 stunted the growth and development of a lot of things, it also presented opportunities. For the Dartmouth Apologia, it granted us the opportunity to reestablish and rebuild our roots. We have spent the last year reviving, remembering, and carrying out the mission of the Apologia in a multitude of ways. We revived a formal Editorial Board to hold our articles to a high level of academic rigor.

We revived the lecture series to gain apologetic perspectives from scholars across the academic community. We also revived the reader group, a program typically aimed at the incoming class, where we read works from great theologians and philosophers to work towards intellectual formation. It is for this reason that you see so many ‘24s writing in this issue.

The most important thing the Apologia has done in this past year has been the return to our mission statement. What does this look like? It is contemplating the metaphysics of God to determine whether it is rational to believe in a Being that we cannot see. It is contextualizing the environmental crisis in a framework that encourages hope and redemption for our maltreatment of the earth. It is recognizing the importance of reconciliation and forgiveness in a call-out culture that threatens to exile people for their mistakes. It is the clarification of a Christian work ethic that seems to have forgotten the preferential option for the poor and lost sight of Christian charity. Ultimately, it is analyzing Christian doctrine and philosophy, and contextualizing it within modern-day discourse to demonstrate the merits of Christianity.

We strive to begin our thinking about Christianity from places of doubt, skepticism, or uncertainty—for these are the cornerstones of honest intellectual discourse. Rather than treat the doubt as empirical evidence against Christianity, we turn it into curiosity. A curiosity to seek answers. Answers that demonstrate that Christianity is more than an hour of worship on a Sunday, but rather a powerful lens through which to view the world.

The seeds are planted, and I now turn it over to Drew Whitley to cultivate this mission for the Apologia, to let it grow and flourish.

Drew has been already doing great work fostering the vision of the Apologia, and he was instrumental in leading this issue through the final stages of production. The success of any organization could be measured by the quality of the successors, and I have no doubt that the Apologia will be very successful in the coming year.

I would like to close this final Letter from the Editor by addressing and wishing the next Editorial Board, the new leadership of the Apologia, all the best in the coming year. Each member of the Editorial Board filled out a rather rigorous application to earn a spot on the Board.

You all are therefore not selected but elected to your leadership on the Apologia. Be proud of the fact that you earned these positions, and let it instill within you a sense of confidence in the great work that you will be doing.

Yours truly,

Christopher Candelora D’22 13th Editor-in-Chief of the Dartmouth Apologia

The opinions expressed in The Dartmouth Apologia are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the journal, its editors, or Dartmouth College. Copyright © 2021 The Dartmouth Apologia.

Photo by Tony Perez

CHRISTIANITY And CLIMATE CHANGE

What God’s Grace Tells Us About the Current Ecological Crisis

WHITNEY THOMAS

A

s the earth continues to warm at alarming rates, climate change remains at the forefront of scientific and political discussion. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2020 was the second warmest year on record.1 There is scientific consensus that climate change is a real problem that warrants a substantial response. The challenge, however, is that the answer to solving our ecological process is extremely complex, and various responses disproportionately affect different social, ethnic, and economic groups. The direness of our ecological crisis calls for action, yet the mere size of the problem fosters hopelessness and defeats any motivation to act. Our inability to act is based upon a flawed secularist perspective of climate change that cultivates guilt without any indication of possible alleviation.

Since climate change falls within the realm of science, it seems natural to label it as a secular pursuit. By virtue of it being held in a secular light, however, there remains resistance and hindrance to pursuing meaningful action. This dilemma calls for a transformation in how we view climate change and human-environment interaction in general, namely through the adoption of a Christian lens. Though 4

THE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

religion and science are often viewed as incompatible, Christianity provides both guidance and motivation that secularism alone does not. We currently bear the guilt of years of environmental exploitation, and it seems that the restoration that is needed is beyond our capabilities. Due to the lack of direction and motivation provided by purely secularist thinking, a Christian perspective, particularly one cognizant of the nature of God’s grace, acts as an impetus for environmental stewardship that breaks an inhibiting cycle of guilt. Before the adoption of a Christian perspective on climate change is argued, the notion that Christianity supports an irresponsibly exploitative relationship between humankind and nature must first be addressed and rendered inaccurate.

ORIGINS OF INDIFFERENCE Historian Lynn White illustrates this stance of the exploitative Christian in his essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” arguing that Christianity’s dominance over pagan animism allowed for an indifference to the natural world.2 The biblical Creation Story is often used as the foundational biblical support of this perspective, spe-

Photo by Patrick Hendry from Unsplash.com

A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE ACTS AS AN IMPETUS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP THAT BREAKS AN INHIBITING CYCLE OF GUILT.

cifically regarding Adam’s centrality within the Genesis narrative, wherein God allows Adam to name and have dominion over the earth and other living things.3 White argues that the anthropocentrism in the Creation Story forms the foundational basis for Western technological progression and that our concept of science, wherein “scientific knowledge means technological power over nature,” has its roots in this particular Christian environmental perspective.4 Though environmental degradation spans across all contemporary cultures, both Christian and non-Christian alike, White is convinced that the primary blame should lay with this outlined exploitative Christian perspective, saying “we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”5 White’s take on how Christianity defines human-environment interaction, however, is a misconception that is scripturally unsound and simplistic.

STEWARDSHIP’S SCRIPTURAL BASIS Such scriptural misconceptions are resolved throughout the Bible, including within the Creation Story itself.

In response to White’s interpretation, Professor John Nagle argues that “several Biblical themes have been identified as significant for environmental thought, including that God created the world and pronounced His Creation to be good.”6 God understood the environment and wildlife to be good ab initio and thus independent of Adam and Eve. The implied intrinsic value that God imbues in Creation creates an an understanding of His love for nature in scriptural passages such as Luke 12:24 and Matthew 6:28. These attempt to convey God’s love through the understanding that if He cares about crows and lilies (animals and plants), then He will surely take care of humans.7 In addition to disregarding Creation’s intrinsic value, White fails to consider the conditions under which God bestowed the gift of Creation. In Deuteronomy 8:17, God warns the people of Israel against allowing hubris to guide their decisions and interactions with their gifted land: “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’”8 This passage is meant to serve as a warning against assuming godly authority and using the earth only for the sake of humanity; humans should instead embrace the planet and its resources as God intended.

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Hubris lies at the center of humanity’s environmentally destructive tendencies and ventures of irresponsible exploitation. Deuteronomy demonstrates how an egocentric worldview devoid of recognition of God’s will is corrupt and lends itself to catastrophes such as the current climate crisis.

Thus, White’s suggestion that the Bible actively promotes environmentally exploitative tendencies proves to be a confused and uninformed conclusion at best.

White is correct in his opinion that the exploitative misunderstanding of Christianity has contributed to the environmental irresponsibility that has plagued Western technology and industrialism. He is also correct in noting that the problem, and thus the solution, is inherently religious, because “human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny—that is, by religion.”9 Yet it would be damaging to abandon Christian thought completely as humankind attempts to formulate a response to our ecological crisis. The Christian tradition should instead be revisited. An accurate understanding of its relevance in human-environment interactions could prove that Christianity is not the root of the problem but the solution.

The shortcomings of secular environmentalism reveal this need for Christian thought in order to adequately pursue environmental restoration.

THE INEVITABLE GUILT The most damaging aspect of the secular perspective is its mishandling of an overwhelming guilt that prevents progress and demotivates action. The implementation of guilt as a driving moral force in the Western tradition has roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition but exists beyond the confines of Christianity.10 Historian Wilfred McClay presents guilt as an inexorable “psychological force in modern life” that is paradoxically “both a byproduct of and an obstacle to civilizational advance.”11 Guilt is a foundational part of the Christian experience to the extent that humans, by nature, are imperfect and thus susceptible to sin. The gift of Christ’s death serves as atonement for human imperfection, which creates an indebtedness to God that brings about guilt upon committing sin. The increasing secularization of society would therefore logically seem to suppress the social and intellectual power of debt and guilt. McClay notes that philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that, as religion becomes decentralized within society, there would be a “decline in the consciousness of human debt.”12 Though fervent practice of the Christian religion seems to be diminishing, the inherent guilt that it identifies within humankind lingers.

Not only is the guilt present, but the desire to alleviate it continues to act as a driving force behind decisions and as a foundation for moral standards on an individual and societal basis. Sigmund Freud labeled guilt as an “important problem in the development of civilization,” implying that guilt is a “byproduct of progress itself.”13 Thus, it seems that this feeling of indebtedness is a simple fact of the human condition and appears inescapable regardless of the prevalence of accepted religion. Consequently, any efforts to alleviate guilt could feel ineffectual.

McClay labels this inevitability of guilt as the “infinite extensibility of guilt” which acknowledges that the effects of human interaction on the physical world are so complex and widespread that an individual has an infinite connection to it and thus an infinite potential to be rendered guilty of its destruction. As the power of humans over the natural world increases, “the range of our potential moral responsibility, and therefore of our potential guilt, also steadily expands.”14 Human beings have a unique power compared to other living things in our ability to manipulate and alter the natural world dramatically, but with that responsibility comes inescapable guilt. In the same way that one could always give more to charity, one could never do enough to diminish their carbon footprint. McClay perfectly applies this dilemma of guilt in the sense of environmental responsibility, writing: Those who struggle most deeply with issues of environmental justice and stewardship are often led to wonder whether there can be any way of life that might allow one to escape being implicated in the cycles of exploitation and cruelty and privilege that mark, ineluctably, our relationship with our environment. They suffer from a hypertrophied sense of guilt, and desperately seek some path to an existence free of it.15

This guilt is not only overwhelming but debilitating to progress while addressing the ecological crisis. The choices made to alleviate this guilt, such as only using reusable water bottles or limiting red meat in our diets, realistically make little-to-no impact on our environmental crisis and primarily serve to alleviate only personal guilt. It is easy to go down a rabbit hole of what we are guilty of on an individual level when it comes to environmental damage, trapping us in this never-ending secular cycle of guilt.

This is a seemingly overwhelming and disheartening reality that leaves little room for hope. Such sentiments of hopelessness would be correctly held outside of a Christian context since secular guilt lacks a key component found within Christianity: the promise of redemption. As noted Photo by @ verteezy from Unsplash.com

THE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

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by McClay, we are in “an incoherent post-Christian moral economy that has not entirely abandoned the concept of sin but lacks the transactional power of absolution or expiation without which no moral system can be bearable.”16 What the Christian perspective provides is freedom from this cycle of guilt through the nature of God’s grace and the understanding of Christian forgiveness. The promise of undeserved ultimate redemption for humanity’s self-inflicted crises is a central premise throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition.

God’s relationship with the nation of Israel in the Bible accurately provides a holistic representation of guilt and exemplifies the nature of God’s grace in response to guilt. The relation of the Israelites to the Promised Land mirrors our relation to the earth, as writer Wendell Berry describes in

a warming planet. God does not alleviate the awareness of guilt despite the promise of its ultimate mitigation. In fact, He often lets humans justifiably suffer the consequences of their actions. Action is a key element of God’s plan for ultimate redemption for His people, just as action is a fundamental component of ecological salvation. The nature of the gift of Creation and the concept of ultimate restoration should encourage humanity to act in appreciation of that gift. Inaction is contradictory to the nature of God’s grace.

The secular understanding of guilt is crippling and leaves little room for hope. When there appears to be little hope, motivation to take meaningful action is greatly diminished. A Christian perspective provides a guide for how to act out of guilt appropriately, because it provides reason to perfect imperfect behavior beyond simply trying to alleviate the feeling of secularized guilt. Humanity is indebted to God, and with Scripture there is a framework as to how SECULAR GUILT LACKS A KEY humans should respond to moral guilt to use it as a catalyst COMPONENT FOUND WITHIN for further action. Thus, Christianity has relevance even in CHRISTIANITY: this area of scientific debate, which is thought to belong THE PROMISE OF REDEMPTION. only in the secular realm, and we would be remiss to dismiss its ideology as we consider solutions to our ecological “The Gift of Good Land.” Berry notes that “the Promised crisis and other issues of global concern.

Land [the land of Canaan] is a divine gift to a fallen people.”17 Similarly, humanity didn’t create the earth, therefore 1. “November and 2020 year to date rank 2nd hottest on record for globe,” it is a gift and, as demonstrated by the self-caused ecological National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Accessed December 28, 2020, crisis, humanity is a fallen people. This gift was given by https://www.noaa.gov/news/november-and-2020-year-to-date-rank-2nd-hottest-onrecord-for-globe.

God with the intention that His standards be upheld, but 2. Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155, no.

(1967): 1203, doi: 10.1126/science.155.3767.1203. human imperfection often makes hubris, rather than God, 3767 3. Genesis 2:19 (ESV). the drive behind action. As seen consistently throughout 4. White, 1203.

White, 1207. the Old Testament, the people of Israel repeatedly fail to 5.

6. John C. Nagle, “What Hath Lynn White Wrought?” 2 Fare Forward 44, no. live in accordance with God’s will and consequently deal 1333, (2012): 1, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2284961.

Luke 12:24; Matthew 6:28 (ESV). with foreign invasion. Despite the shortcomings of human- 7.

8. Deuteronomy 8:17 (ESV). ity, God still offers the promise of ultimate salvation. Envi- 9. White, 1205.

Wilfred M. McClay, “The Strange Persistence of Guilt,” The Hedgehog Review 19, ronmentally speaking, we might have some similar promise 10. no. 1 (2017): 2. of ecological salvation.

11. McClay, 2.

McClay, 2.

The concern may arise that this perspective will dis- 12.

13. McClay, 3. suade action insofar as promised salvation could be mis- 14. McClay, 5.

McClay, 5. appropriated into giving a free pass to future exploitative 15.

16. McClay, 13. practices. This concern is analogous to the critique ad- 17. Wendell Berry, “The Gift of Good Land,” in The Gift of Good Land: Further Cultural and Agricultural (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981), 269. dressed in James 2:17, which declares that “faith by itself, Essays 18. James 2:17 (ESV).

18 if it does not have works, is dead.” Christ’s assured atonement for humanity’s imperfections does not encourage one to lead an imperfect life, just as a promise of ecological restoration does not excuse environmental responsibility. Just as God allowed the people of Israel to face the consequences of their disobedience through conquest and exile, humanity will continue to grapple with the consequences of 8

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Photo by Theodore Vasile from Unsplash.com

WORK AS An Act OF WORSHIP

Recalibrating Rugged Individualism with the Christian Tradition

W I L L B R YA N T

F

irst coined by President Herbert Hoover in a 1928 campaign speech, the term “rugged individualism” describes the uniquely American philosophy of hard work, self-reliance, and just desserts.1 This ideology developed under Hoover’s presidency, where his policies responding to the Great Depression placed the onus on the individual’s ability to work hard and “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” as the saying goes. After the expansion of government influence under New Deal and Great Society programs, this ideology developed a distinctly uncharitable tone by emphasizing the laziness and dependence of people benefiting from government welfare.2 With the convergence of Christianity and political conservatism in 20th–century America, rugged individualism has begun to influence Christian social teaching on labor and charity.3 While rugged individualism and Christian social doctrine certainly share a common ground, the modern synthesis of rugged individualism and Christianity deviates from the Christian tradition in two primary ways. First, it adopts a harsh and unforgiving tone in its messaging concerning the poor, often with the political intention of critiquing welfare programs.4 Jerry Falwell, founder of the Christian activist

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group Moral Majority, once sermonized that “our giveaway programs, our welfarism at home and abroad, [are] developing a breed of bums and derelicts who wouldn’t work in a pie shop eating the holes out of doughnuts.”5 In the political world, Christian icon Ronald Reagan claimed in an interview that some homeless people choose to be so.6 While this rhetoric on poverty is by no means representative of all American Christians, its place at the cultural forefront of Christianity reveals the individualistic and uncharitable tendencies of some American Christian political leaders.

Second, the rugged individualist perspective ignores Biblical warnings against excess wealth, celebrating economic success for its own sake and advocating for policies that protect the interests of the wealthy. Through the adoption of an American Dream-esque emphasis on economic gain, Christian individualists often celebrate wealth for its own sake, using financial success as a signal of moral virtue.7 Furthermore, many Christian individualists take little issue with wealth inequality, arguing that hard work must be rewarded; they see financial success as a mark of competency. In both policy and messaging, Christian individualists emphasize the value of personal wealth.

Christ in the House of His Parents by John Everett Millais from Google Art Project Photo by Patrick Hendry from Unsplash.com

In this paper, I will first establish the conflict between rugged individualism and the Christian tradition in their messaging regarding poverty and wealth. Despite these conflicts, I will then support the aspects of rugged individualism that emphasize Christian doctrine on the value of work—rugged individualism only errs in its prioritization of economic gain. Lastly, I will apply this analysis of work to the contemporary problems of poverty and wealth, seeking to recalibrate modern rugged individualism with the Christian tradition.

ON POVERTY From the teachings of Christ to modern Christian leaders, the Christian tradition offers serious criticism against the rugged individualist’s degradation of the poor. When Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew, He lists the kindnesses that His subjects performed for Him: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”8 He continues by saying, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”9 In His paraRUGGED INDIVIDUALISM HAS BEGUN TO INFLUENCE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL TEACHING ON LABOR AND CHARITY.

tual reliance by rejecting the “domination system” of the Roman Empire that rewarded power and success with exorbitant wealth.11 Even the early Church’s contemporary critics note their generosity: Lucian of Samosata wrote that “the earnestness with which [they] help one another…is incredible… Apparently their first law-maker [Jesus] has put it into their heads that they all somehow ought to be regarded as brothers and sisters.”12 Regardless of an early Christian’s personal social standing or individual wealth, they all acted as members of a familial community. As the Church expanded in the following centuries, its leadership emphasized this teaching on mutual generosity. Augustine of Hippo paraphrases the teachings of Jesus when he writes, “Christ is needy when a poor person is in need.”13 He challenges Christians to abandon individual desires and give up material needs when a poor person is in need. Through their dedication to Biblical teaching, the early Church and its leaders emphasized the value of mutual reliance, rejecting the individualist tendencies of human greed.

In the modern era, Church leaders have adapted the doctrine on mutual generosity towards the specific type of industrial poverty common in many developed countries.

Responding to the Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIII wrote: “the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”14 While this analysis cannot extend perfectly into the 21st century, Pope Leo’s words certainly ring true in modern ears: wealth inequality, within America and globally, has never been more severe.15 By laying the blame for this yoke of labor on the wealthy elite, Pope Leo offers sincere compassion for those who have suffered at the hands of their greed; he soberly describes the unjust results of individualist economic practices. In chorus with the Catholic perspective, Reformed theologian John Piper writes in support of mutual generosity. In response to a question about giving money to beggars, Piper responds: “The default should be yes … [you should] risk being ripped off …”16 In risking being ripped off, Piper calls for Christians to be radically generous. Rather than holding onto wealth with a white-knuckled grip, Christians should give freely to those in need. In unison, the most influential Christian voices in the world speak towards care and generosity for the poor.

ble on the Judgement Day, Christ remarks how the people that are generous will enter the Kingdom where the greedy and indifferent will not, conflicting with the individualist’s claim that the needy should help themselves. Rather than shaming or ignoring “the least of these brothers and sisters,” Christ calls Christians to treat them with the same respect they would have for Him. The letters in the New Testament expound on the practical aspects of this teaching. For example, the Apostle Paul writes that, “....as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.”10 Reflecting Christ’s appeal against individualist pride, Paul speaks to the social value of mutual alleviation from poverty. Rather than self-righteously claiming what one deserves, Christians should share freely of their material possessions, relying on one another to supply each other’s needs.

ON WEALTH Moving beyond the Biblical era, the early Church exBeyond generosity for the poor, the Christian tradition emplified Christ’s commands towards generosity and mu- also explicitly warns against the dangers of excess individual 12

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wealth. Appearing in three of the four Gospels is the character of the rich young ruler. In response to this wealthy young man asking Him for advice, Christ dictates that, “If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”17 He continues to say that, “... it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”18 While Jesus does not give the young ruler an ultimatum on his wealth (e.g., “sell your possessions or you won’t go to Heaven”), He does name wealth as a ruinous obstacle to genuine faith. Christ shows the rich young ruler that the essence of faith is dependence on Him, not an individualist reliance on personal wealth. Translating these warnings into best practices, Augustine writes, “The extra possessions of rich persons are the necessities of poor persons. When you possess more than you need, you possess what belongs to others.”19 With a directness that borders on blunt, Augustine condemns extravagant individual ownership. Just as every person depends on God for their material wealth, those who lack material wealth depend on the wealthy. This web of dependence stemming from Christ denies the individualist’s tendencies towards self-preservation and greed.

In the modern era, Pope Leo XIII directly criticizes the individualistic tendencies of the industrial upper class, just as he expressly defended the industrial lower class. Before speaking to the larger culture, he first offers personal admonishment: “Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.”20 On the rampant greed in industrial culture, Pope Leo writes: “[Christian morality] powerfully restrains the greed of possession and the thirst for pleasure—twin plagues...teaching [man] to be content with frugal living.”21 When the individualist emphasizes self-sufficiency and celebrates the “greed of possession,” Pope Leo responds with an appeal to frugal contentedness and radical generosity that denies the importance of individual wealth. Echoing this Catholic position, Reformed pastor Tim Keller articulates that the Bible commands a rejection of one’s individual wealth: “It’s biblical that we owe the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away.”22 This vehement command of generosity directly opposes the rugged individualist idea of “just desserts,” wherein a wealthy person deserves their extravagant wealth. Rather, the wealthy are indebted to the poor; they must give as much as they can. Moving beyond simple exhortations towards generosity, both Catholic and Protestant doctrine explicitly command radical giving, em-

phasizing the inherent injustice in individual wealth for its own sake.

Taken together, the entirety of the Christian tradition rejects the rugged individualist’s beliefs that (1) those who lack wealth are responsible for their state of need and that (2) those with material wealth deserve their riches.

While the substance of the rugged individualist position conflicts with Christian tradition, the underlying foundation nonetheless correctly emphasizes Biblical teaching on the importance of labor. In the Christian tradition, work plays an essential role in the formation of human identity.

When God creates humanity in Genesis, He makes them “in [His] image, in [His] likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”23 God makes humanity to govern His Creation, in a reflection of His omnipotent, sovereign rule over everything. Just as He labored to create existence out of nothingness and became sovereign over His Creation, humans are called to work towards order and sovereignty. Further, humanity is not simply called to work, we are called to work well, just as God works perfectly. After completing Creation, “God saw all that He had made, and IN ALL THE WORK THAT PEOPLE DO, THEY ARE CALLED TO MIRROR THE EXCELLENCE OF GOD’S PERFECT CRAFTSMANSHIP.

it was very good.”24 As English writer and apologist Dorothy Sayers writes of Christ’s carpentry, “No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever...came out of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth”; God’s perfectly creative craftsmanship is an essential piece of His identity.25 Encouraging a reflection of this excellence, Paul exhorts Christians to “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”26 In all the work that people do, they are called to mirror the excellence of God’s perfect craftsmanship, faithfully laboring in His service. The Christian individualist position on poverty and wealth correctly emphasizes the value of this craftsmanship by placing the onus on the individual to work excellently in order to gain a reward.

More specifically, the Christian individualist perspective against the poor finds support in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, where he writes that “if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”27 When misinterpreted, THE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

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this Biblical sentiment certainly trends towards a distaste for those who are poorer and unemployed. The Christian individualist position on personal wealth draws on an anonymous Psalmist who writes that “you shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed and it shall be well with you.”28 When separated from the rest of Biblical tradition, this verse seems to justify those who are wealthy and extravagant, because they are only eating the fruit of their labor. Looking towards modern Church leadership, Catholic social doctrine stresses the “inviolability of private property” and the value of labor in “alleviat[ing] the condition of the masses.”29 Essentially, laborers unequivocally deserve reward for their work. Drawing from both Biblical and traditional sources, this emphasis on monetary reward for hard work only fails when it extends into a criticism of those who do not perform productive labor.

While the Protestant church lacks a similarly consolidated perspective, Protestant businessmen have used their faith as inspiration for hard work and financial success since the beginnings of modern commerce.30 In short, the rugged individualist position on labor stands on a strong foundation in the Christian tradition despite recent flaws in its treatment of poverty and wealth.

Having established both the faults and the merits of the Christian individualist position in the context of the Christian tradition, a conflict seems apparent. Generosity and mutual alleviation constitute the bedrock of Christian social doctrine, yet Christians are also called to work well and, it might seem, to receive a material reward for such work.

How can Christians be generous if productive work—and the lack thereof—justly determines material wealth?

The fundamental flaw in this question—and in rugged individualism—is that productive work does not justly determine material wealth. The Christian individualist confuses the transcendent importance of excellent work with material, earthly rewards. In sorting out this confusion, the Christian tradition first clarifies that the value of work arises exclusively from two places: its agent—the worker—and its heavenly purpose—God. The Christian tradition then offers an expansive diagnosis of the American obsession with material wealth. In this obsession, the true, divine purpose of work is replaced with the goal of earthly wealth, and the agent of work is summarily forgotten.

THE WORKER, IMAGO DEI Using God’s Creation as a primary guide, the Bible establishes that the value of work exists in its agent, not in its product. Through their work, every person, created ima14

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go Dei, is called to reflect on God’s divine creativity as expressed through His Creation. This analysis of work establishes that the “value of human work is not primarily [in] the kind of work being done but [in] the fact that the one who is doing it is a person.”31 Put another way, a four-yearold’s drawing of their family and an accountant’s balance sheet have equal value in God’s eyes. Both showcase, in very different ways, the human capacity for creation which reflects God’s perfect creativity. For the Christian individualist, this solves the uncharitable claim to “just desserts.”

Every person justly deserves adequate reward for their labor, regardless of the economic value their work produces.

The starving artist, the teacher, and the investment banker each perform equally valuable work in the eyes of God; it makes no divine sense that the banker receives a deeply unequal share of the earthly reward. Therefore, those who receive this reward have the urgent responsibility to give generously of their material wealth.

THE WORK, FOR GOD ALONE Beyond the agent of work, the heavenly purpose of work establishes its transcendent value as completely separate from any worldly measure of productivity. As Paul writes, “Work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”; the Christian should take pride in their work only insofar as they honor God with it.32 A painting, a lesson plan, an investment portfolio: all of these can be instruments of worship to the degree that the artist, the teacher, or the banker worships the Lord as they work. The Christian should not work with the goal of personal wealth, fame, or accolades. All of these ends desecrate the sacred, God-given purpose of work.

This Biblical grounding of work offers a strident criticism of the current system for determining productive value. The wage economy, which attaches a salary directly to the productivity of a person’s vocation, “[misuses] men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, [and] values them solely for their physical powers—[this] is truly shameful and inhuman.”33 Western work culture denies the transcendent value of work by replacing its heavenly goal with a financial one. As Sayers writes, “[Work] should be looked upon, not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God.”34 By assigning even the most exorbitant monetary value to a person’s labor, the economy reduces the transcendent, heavenly importance of work into a single number. In no small The Parable of the Talents by Rembrandt from pubhist.org

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way, this cheapening of labor offends God’s sovereignty by reducing an act of worship to an act of greed. It confuses cultural priorities by rejecting the two transcendent values of work, prioritizing money over both the worker and their divine purpose to work.

Specifically, in regard to money, the Christian tradition speaks loudly against the problem of greed. Money for its own sake is an idol, and a primary failing of American culture is its idolatry of money. As Paul writes to his disciple A FOUR-YEAR-OLD’S DRAWING OF THEIR FAMILY AND AN ACCOUNTANT’S BALANCE SHEET HAVE EQUAL VALUE IN GOD’S EYES. Timothy, “the love of money is the root of evil.”35 Certainly, money itself is not evil; it is a necessary tool for market exchange and can effectively provide for human needs. These, however, are the sum total of its benefits.36 When money takes on a cultural character larger than these essential purposes—when it becomes an object of love—it commits heresy against the divine purposes of work.

In sum, the modern American culture of labor and monetary ambition directly opposes Christian doctrine by attaching worldly, sinful incentives to the God-given task to work well. Imagine if, on Sunday mornings, church elders were to move among the pews while the congregation worships, handing out crisp $20 bills to the loudest singers.

The current system achieves a similar effect by associating a vapid, monetary reward to a transcendent and worshipful task.37 The Christian should not worship financial incentives; they should instead find their reward in work itself, just as a singer delights in their song.

The Christian tradition explicitly denounces the rugged individualist position on poverty and wealth. Despite these flaws, the Christian individualist justly emphasizes the divine value of work. This emphasis extends a critique against the individualist substructure of the West which unjustly attaches a worldly incentive to the transcendent gift of work. In posture and in practice, Christians must exemplify the principles of mutual reliance and generosity, and they must strive to perform selfless, worshipful work.

1. President Herbert Hoover, “Principles and Ideals of the US Government” (speech, the Hoover Campaign for 1928, Washington, DC, 1928), retrieved from https:// teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/rugged-individualism.

2. Juan Williams, “Homeless Choose to Be, Reagan Says,” Washington Post, February 1, 1984, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/02/01/homeless-

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choose-to-be-reagan-says/781996b6-ab3b-499b-96ea-38155d1c5127.

3. Clyde Haberman, “Religion and Right-Wing Politics: How Evangelicals Reshaped Elections,” The New York Times, October 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes. com/2018/10/28/us/religion-politics-evangelicals.html.

4. This first failing is primarily a problem of rhetoric: religiously-affiliated Americans still donate, on average, almost three times as much to charity as non-religious Americans.

5. Haberman, “Religion and Right-Wing Politics.”

6. Williams, “Homeless Choose to Be, Reagan Says.”

7. Please note that, in this paper, “Christian individualist ” refers to a Christian that supports rugged individualism. I do not intend to make it synonymous with “Christian Individualism.” On its own, “individualist” refers generically to supporters of rugged individualism. Also note that Protestantism and capitalism have matured together; sociologist Max Weber describes the “Protestant work ethic” as an innovative way to display one’s salvation in a religion that had abandoned the Catholic sacraments; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner, 19 h30), 98.

8. Matthew 25:35-36 (NIV).

9. Matthew 25:40 (NIV).

10. 2 Corinthians 8:13-15 (ESV).

11. Bruce Longenecker, “Do Good to All: Assets, Capital, and Benefaction in Early Christianity,” in Poverty In The Early Church And Today: a Conversation, ed. Walton and Swithinbank (Great Britain: Bloomsbury, 2019), 48. https://library.oapen.org/ viewer/web/viewer.html?file=/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/23772/1006371.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

12. “Lucian of Samosata: The Passing of Peregrinus,” The Tertullian Project, accessed March 24, 2021, http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/peregrinus.htm.

13. “2325 The Poor,” Augnet, accessed March 8, 2021, http://www.augnet.org/en/ works-of-augustine/his-ideas/2325-the-poor/.

14. Pope Leo XIII, “Rerum Novarum: Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Condition of Labor,” (Papal Encyclical, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 1891), 2.

15. Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Ruth Igielnik, and Rakesh Kochhar, “Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality,” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, January 9, 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/;WID.World, “Global Inequality Data - 2020 Update,” World Inequality Database, November 10, 2020, https://wid.world/news-article/2020-regional-updates/.

16. John Piper, “How to Handle Panhandlers,” Desiring God, March 8, 2021, https:// www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-to-handle-panhandlers.

17. Matthew 19:16-26 (NIV).

18. Matthew 19:24 (NIV).

19. Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 147, 12 http://www.augnet.org/en/ works-of-augustine/his-ideas/2325-the-poor/.

20. Pope Leo XIII, 8.

21. Pope Leo XIII, 9.

22. Tim Keller, “Tim Keller’s Generous Justice,” interviewed by Kristen Scharold, Christianity Today, December 6, 2010, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/ december/10.69.html.

23. Genesis 1:26 (NIV).

24. Genesis 1:31 (NIV).

25. Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work” in Letters from a Diminished Church (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 8.

26. Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV).

27. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (NIV).

28. Psalm 128:2 (NIV).

29. Pope Leo XIII, 5, 8.

30. Weber, 98.

31. Pope St John Paul II, “Laborem Exercens,” The Vatican, Accessed March 27, 2021.

32. Colossians 3:23 (NIV).

33. Pope Leo XIII, 6.

34. Sayers, 1.

35. 1 Timothy 6:10 (KJV).

36. Augustine of Hippo, 12.

37. Sayers, 6.

Photo by Leo Moko from Unsplash.com

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DOMINION Imago Dei and Environmentalism

ISAIAH MENNING

W

e live in an age of extinction. At 1,000 times the average historical rate, the current biological extinction crisis places the present moment on par with the event that killed the dinosaurs.1 With atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher than any point in the past 800,000 years and the world expected to warm by 3° C in the next eighty under current trends, it is clear that human-caused climate change is a real phenomenon with impacts beyond daily temperature.2 Warming, combined with rampant habitat destruction, is so dominant in fueling the sixth mass extinction that some have suggested renaming the present geologic epoch the “Anthropocene” after the human species’ utterly dominant impact on Earth.3 Our evolutionary history is one of ascension: from relative obscurity to widespread distribution in a few thousand years; from widespread distribution to dominance even in the atmosphere in only two centuries. To our honor or shame, the “Anthropocene” is a well-deserved title. For better or worse, humans are dominant, and how we conceptualize our place on the planet has profound implications for Earth’s future in our hands.

Some have suggested that the West’s devotion to human exceptionalism, the idea that humans are unique and superior 18

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to all other life, is in large part to blame for this crisis. Not entirely wrong in their diagnosis, many modern environmental thought leaders have argued that an abandonment of human exceptionalism is necessary for the ecological health of the planet. While recognizing the role that anthropocentrism has played in our present ecological crisis, I respectfully disagree; a bounded view of human exceptionalism that casts man as the responsible caretaker of Earth is in fact necessary to build an environmentalist ethic.

In this article, I argue that one must first view humans as exceptional and human actions as separate from nature to restrict ourselves in the name of environmentalism. Secondly, in order to build a robust environmental ethic, one must assert reasons for environmental restraint grounded in objective morality. As such, one cannot hold humanity morally accountable for its destruction of nature if humanity itself is seen as undistinguished from it. Beyond this, I argue that a religious worldview is necessary for environmental action and that the Christian brand of human exceptionalism, which demands people as those uniquely tasked to care for the global garden, offers the best keys to a flourishing future.

Korb River taken in Lake Superior National Forest, Minnesota by Joey Menning.

HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND MODERN ENVIRONMENTALISM Materialist environmentalism has emerged as a synthesis between atheistic materialism and the ethical calls of environmentalism. It attempts to build an environmental ethic while also maintaining that humans are not morally distinct from animals. A synthesis of these two common philosophies presents two premises: firstly, that humans should abandon any sense of our exceptionalism to better protect the natural world; secondly, that the universe is exclusively matter, with people being of no unique worth.

Firstly, modern environmentalism often claims that an emphasis on humanity has sown the seeds of the ecological crisis. In his 1967 essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Present Ecological Crisis,” Lynn White argues that the West’s historic belief, “that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man,” has laid the groundwork for vast environmental destruction.4 White effectively makes a pragmatic case against human exceptionalism, arguing that an abandonment of pagan animism—which views all of nature as divine—and an embrace of the Christian idea of imago Dei—which claims that people are made in the image of God—gave the West moral permission to use the natural world with impunity, leading to an ecological crisis.

Instead, White argues that the West should shed Christianity’s historic anthropocentrism and rather adopt a religious

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focus on humanity’s connectedness with nature to build an environmentalist ethic.5 Prominent atheist thinker Richard Dawkins extends White’s critique of human exceptionalism, saying that the “discontinuous gap between humans and ‘apes’ that we erect in our minds is regrettable,” and that this gap is “arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident.”6 According to Dawkins’ logic, it makes perfect sense that a culture built on the idea of its own superiority to the natural world would destroy it. Indeed, that is exactly what has been observed, especially in the last century. Both Dawkins and White suggest that an emphasis on our connectedness to nature, not superiority to it, would allow for better environmental conservation.

With a more materialist bent, in his 1995 book River Out of Eden, Dawkins extends the idea that not only are humans far from transcendent, but that morality itself is nonexistent, saying, “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”7 A valueless universe is, in fact, the logical conclusion of a completely materialist worldview, but it proves difficult to build any ethical system on the cosmos’ pitiless indifference. The claim that humans are no different from nature and that the universe, at its core, has no moral quality demands this consideration: if humans are as natural of a phenomenon as apes, then their world-threat-

Ensign Peak taken in Salt Lake City, Utah by Isaiah Menning.

BUT WHAT MORAL IMPERATIVE IS THERE IN SIMPLE CONNECTEDNESS? ening pollution would logically be another natural byproduct. Given this, climate change is of no more moral consequence than that of a natural extinction event like an asteroid. If humans are simply another force of nature, then why should people protect the natural world?

One answer to this objection lies in the biocentric environmental philosophy of Deep Ecology, which emphasizes the intrinsic value of all life and biological systems. The first of the philosophy’s eight tenets states that “The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves … These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes,” and that “Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.”8 While this line of thinking may be consistent with a type of nature-worship or other religious systems, including even Christianity, it is fundamentally incompatible with a Dawkins-style brute materialism. It assumes both transcendent values and humanity’s unique obligation to follow them. In order to hold this position, one must disagree with the first premise of a wholly materialist environmentalism—that the universe is devoid of any transcendent values. Deep Ecologists disagree with Dawkins on the point that there is no core purpose to the universe; rather, they simply find purpose in the intrinsic functioning of all life. In this way, Deep Ecology certainly rejects the moral-less universe of strict materialism.

By effectively equating human and nonhuman life, one cannot create an environmental ethic where humans are held uniquely responsible for environmental destruction. Ignoring the materialist position for a moment, Deep Ecology holds that humans, unlike other parts of the natural order, are still uniquely made responsible for enacting those values. For instance, an asteroid would not be held morally responsible for inducing a mass extinction, but if humans somehow directed that asteroid to hit Earth, all would agree where the blame would lie. Under Deep Ecology, humans are assumed to be non-natural actors, in

some sense uniquely responsible and therefore exceptional. While certainly not a Christian worldview of humanity, Deep Ecology depends on an absolute morality, which people are uniquely beholden to, unlike all other nature.

Even the traditionally anti-anthropocentric brand of Deep Ecology eventually appeals to human exceptionalism in a call for environmental action.

Another argument more faithful to the tenets of materialist environmentalism is that humans’ simple connection to the natural world demands environmental action.

In the Huffington Post article, “Green and Atheist,” David Horton argues that religion and environmentalism are fundamentally incompatible, and that atheism offers far better philosophical tools than those who believe the Earth is destined to burn anyways. Horton says that truly atheistic conservationists “really understand the proposition that all these species are in it together, that we are all cousins, that we all come from a common ancestor, and that all have either a complete right to exist or no right to exist, not some of one and some of another.”9 This proposition, just like Deep Ecology theory, offers a morality that cannot be justified by materialism; it is impossible to say that animals have transcendently objective rights in a universe that is exclusively non-transcendent. Even so, Horton tries to justify environmentalism by commonality—that all organisms, as parts of nature, are “in it together.” But what moral imperative is there in simple connectedness?

The connectedness of two things is only descriptive; it makes no moral statement about any duties or values between the objects. For example, common heritage binds families and cultures, but only because one assumes that duty to family and culture is morally right. This is not the case between arbitrarily connected objects, like two boards from the same tree, who have no moral obligation to each other. True, humans are deeply and biologically connected to other living things that have no moral duties, but it is in spite of this fact, not because of it, that we do have the moral obligation for their care. In order to possess that unique moral obligation that sets limits on our own non-natural THE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

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actions, we must be exceptional.

The philosophical tools of materialism are simply insufficient for an environmentalist ethic. Firstly, according to materialist environmentalism, natural processes should be preserved by limiting a humanity that is just as natural of a feature as the “nature” it is harming. Secondly, people are allegedly beholden to a morality in a universe void of morality. Better options exist. In order to build a robust environmental philosophy where humans are different from an extinction-inducing asteroid and truly responsible for environmental destruction, we must be distinguished from the rest of the natural world.

and according to the available evidence and Tattersall’s argument, is unique to people.

In a striking complement to the Christian imago Dei idea, Tattersall’s language hypothesis offers two steps to building a species that thinks itself to be morally bound.

First, by separating oneself from the environment, a sense of free will is created. To be independent of the world is to be an agent apart from it and therefore responsible for personal actions apart from natural forces. Second, abstraction via language allows individuals to think not only of the present, but also to imagine future realities, introducing intent. Ultimately, the introduction of both agency and intent creates a sense of morality that, if Tattersall’s concluLOGOS FROM THE BEGINNING sions are correct, is totally unique to humans.

But are we? Dawkins is correct to highlight the Humans, at least as a species, are exceptional. The scisimilarities between humans and great apes. Further, it entific evidence suggests that while people are undeniably seems that the distinctness of modern Homo sapiens be- the biological results of evolution, one aspect of humanity’s comes blurred the more we consider our human-like rel- uniqueness is each individual’s conviction that she is unique

WHILE SCIENCE CAN DESCRIBE THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY AND OUR PERCEIVED SELF-IDENTITIES, IT HARDLY PRESCRIBES ANYTHING ABOUT HUMAN CONDUCT. atives of the recent past. In his book, Masters of the Planet, American Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall paints a picture of an ancient planet shared by many hominids but argues that there is a singular trait that distinguishes Homo sapiens: the ability to think abstractly, particularly through language. Specifically, language allowed people not only to imagine the present world, but also those that could be. Using an example to envision the human mind before language, he shares the story of Jill Bolte Taylor, who lost her ability to speak at age 37 but later made a full recovery. He recalls Bolte Taylor’s testimony that her loss of language made her feel more connected to the environment, and that her lingual recovery “compelled her to distance herself from her surroundings.”10 Here, Tattersall finds the essence of the symbolic faculty: “the capacity to objectify oneself and remain apart from one’s universe.”11 The removal of oneself from the universe, accomplished by language, is remarkably close to our conceptions of consciousness and a marker of our perceived non-naturalness.

It is also absolutely key for building a sense of morality, 22

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from the surrounding world. While Tattersall himself falls short of coming to these explicit conclusions, this is in remarkable congruity with the Judeo-Christian framework which White argues against. But while science can describe the origin of morality and our perceived self-identities, it hardly prescribes anything about human conduct. The observer finds herself in the same conundrum of the nihilistic materialist environmentalist, albeit a bit inflated due to the thought of her exceptional self. After all, the sense of morality could simply be just that, a biological adaptation among unique animals unrelated to any transcendent law at all.

HUMAN: GARDENER OF EARTH But what if this internal sense of responsibility is both a biological adaptation and a moral reality? The basic Christian proposition both highly reflects the relevant science and solves for materialist environmentalism’s philosophical shortcomings: it claims that humans are both common in origin with all of life and divinely appointed to care for it.

The tools of the Christian story allow for objective moral realities which are denied under strict materialism.

The Genesis creation narrative opens with the creating God

forming chaos into habitable order through speech, culminating with the creation of humans uniquely made “in the image of God.” Now, I do not mean to discuss deeply the proper hermeneutics of the Genesis creation stories, but it is crucial to recognize these texts for what they are: a worldview statement about God and His relationship to the world in the context of Ancient Near East cosmology, to paraphrase biblical scholar and Bible Project cofounder Tim Mackie.12 Taken under this view, the student of the Hebrew Bible finds how being made “in the image of God” might relate to the Creator’s actions and authority. The story begins with God speaking order into the universe, creating three domains: light and dark, sky and water, and land.

He then adds greater amounts of order to each, forming the lights in the vaults of the sky, occupying sky and water with birds and fish, and finally ordering animals out of the land. Each of these are split into a respective day, and God progressively describes His work as “good,” adding moral values to reality. Throughout, the creating God uses speech to order the universe. On the sixth day, along with the animals, God makes people.13 Ultimately, they too will be All remaining photos in article: Lamar Valley taken in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming by Isaiah Menning.

tasked with the responsibility to use their unique abilities of speech to rule the creation.

Here the story pauses. In what is clearly the narrative’s climax, God distinguishes humanity from all other creation. He says, “‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image.”14 Scholars have debated the exact theological meaning of the image of God, or imago Dei, but as Tim Mackie points out, the text directly relates this trait to caring for Creation.

Humanity is made in the divine image “so that they may rule.”15 In the second creation story, God forms man from the same dust as the animals.16 This serves to emphasize both the earthly and spiritual natures of man. Humanity, the image of God on Earth, is where the two realms meet.

Calling His finished work “very good,” the Creator makes humanity—common in origin but unique in purpose from all other things.17 In this way, the Christian sees humans as the images of the creating God—connected to but distinct THE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

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THE GOOD CREATION PROCESS DEPENDS ON THE GARDENER LIMITING HER OWN AMBITIONS. from all other life and morally responsible for their care.

Ultimately, by establishing the possibility of moral reality and distinguishing humanity from the rest of Creation, Christianity introduces a global “garden ethic” which both esteems humans with dominion over Creation and holds them responsible to the Creator to maintain its goodness.

For all the esteeming of humanity that the Judeo-Christian position posits, it introduces an infinitely higher rung of being in the character of God. It is God who directs the purposes and responsibilities of people and also God to whom exceptional humanity is totally answerable. If one truly believes that humans are nothing more than space chimps that threaten biodiversity, environmentally friendly decisions like veganism may be grounded in a sense of vague connectedness to other animals, but this would be void of any objective morality. By contrast, if one truly believes that humanity is morally mandated to care for the divine garden, then food choices have a much deeper moral stake. Humans are both biological participants in the global garden and the global gardeners. Human actions are not natural, but humanity is also responsible to be an active participant in the natural world. Thus, as fundamentally separate from our surroundings, people can fail, fall short, and sin environmentally as—and only as—the rightful rulers of Earth. Christianity plainly holds what materialist environmentalism rests its case on but will not utter—that environmental sins are real, and that the human-induced mass extinction is one of them.

by humans’ vague mandate to work and care for the Earth is hardly a certain moral pathway to the Paris Climate Accords. After all, as Lynn White posits, the same arrogant Christian idea about human superiority caused the present crisis simply by using different definitions of good care.18 Assuming the Christian position that humans are morally bound to care for the Earth, multiple powerful principles for good care become apparent. Christians can recognize the act of conservation in global gardening as an act of worship. In 1536, John Calvin argued that “the most perfect way of seeking God,” is “for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he rendered himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself.”19 To Calvin, God’s creation naturally provokes Christian worship. Finding support in Psalm 19, which triumphantly states how “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork,” a natural conclusion is that the Christian should preserve manifestations of the God-exalting created order.20 Indeed, many of Calvin’s successors adopted his theology to be the “steward of God in all things,” and many of the Calvinist communities in New England and beyond codified forest preserves and common green spaces. Christians today would do well to sound from the pulpit as fervently as the early Calvinists the duty to preserve pieces of “his works” as an act of worship.21 Next, nature conservation is a necessary part of Christians’ practice of Sabbath. In his 1984 book God in Creation, Reformed theologian and Calvin successor Jurgen Moltmann wrote about how the principles found in the THE GLOBAL GARDEN ETHIC Genesis story itself can inform Christian environmenThe Christian idea has better footing to explain the talism.22 In reference to God’s rest on the seventh day of position of moral responsibility and the possibility of en- creation and the longstanding Judeo-Christian practice of vironmental sin––but does it offer any practical principles? Sabbath, Moltmann proclaims that “In the sabbath stillEven if one assumes the biblical Eden to be analogous to ness men and women no longer intervene in the environthe broader world, the simple idea of “dominion” bounded ment through their labour. They let it be entirely God’s cre26

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ation.”23 In this ideal, men and women made in the image of God limit their labor in Creation and simply let it be, exactly in the pattern of their Creator. This idea is deeply biblical, echoing the ideas not only of Genesis 1, but also all references to the Sabbath contained in the Bible. Possible approaches abound for what this may mean for Christian environmentalist action, whether by a commitment to preserve some seventh of land, reduce consumption on a patterned basis, or some other combination. Under the biblical worldview, cycles of work and production, including that which transforms natural resources, is good when limited by the good periods of rest. Finding our purpose as God’s Creation-caretakers in the Genesis story builds into the narrative that the good creation process depends on the gardener limiting her own ambitions.

The Christian story allows genuine environmental accountability far beyond what most forms of modern environmentalism can offer. Because it offers no possibility of objective morality and yet calls for human action, the materialist environmentalist vision of man as nothing more than a creature among animals internally collapses without human exceptionalism and morality. By contrast, a proper view of the Christian vision of people as Earth’s responsible rulers reinforces the goals of environmental stewardship.

The Christian perspective asserts human dominion along with a mandate to rule over the Earth. Biologically and spiritually, humans are of the Earth and its masters. It is no arrogance to say that humans are the most important creatures on Earth, but crucial under this framework is the bedrock reality that people, even as Earth’s rulers, are far and below the standard and authority of God. Undoubtedly, this duty involves gardening, both working the bounties of Earth and also promoting its preservation. Christians are called to adopt the standards of Moltmann, to take seriously the command of Sabbath, and respect the dignity of the whole of Creation, especially our fellow human beings. If the assertions of Christianity are true, and if humans are the representatives of the ultimate Ruler before His coming, the honorable work of tending our garden-Earth and preventing the sixth extinction is pressingly real and far from over. Through the fulfillment of Jesus, the true man, true God, and true gardener, the people of God must lead the way in restoring the global garden, fulfilling our task of dominion.

1. S.L. Pimm et al. “The Biodiversity of Species and Their Rates of Extinction, Distribution, and Protection,” Science 344, no. 6187 (2014): 1246752, doi: 10.1126/science.1246752.

2 . Rebecca Lindsay, “Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” News & Features, Climate.gov, August 14, 2020, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide; “UN Emissions Report: World on Course for More than 3 Degree Spike, Even If Climate Commitments Are Met,” United Nations, November 26, 2019, https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/11/1052171.

3 . Ilkka Hanski, “Habitat Loss, the Dynamics of Biodiversity, and a Perspective on Conservation,” AMBIO 40, no. 3 (2011): 248-255, doi: 10.1007/s13280-011-0147-3; Joseph Stromberg, “What is the Anthropocene and Are We in It?” Smithsonian Magazine, January, 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/.

4 . Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155, no. 3767 (1967): 1207, doi: 10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.

5 . White, 1207.

6 . Richard Dawkins, “Gaps in the Mind,” in The Great Ape Project, eds. Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1993), 81-87.

7 . Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.

8 . George Sessions and Arne Naess, “The Basic Principles of Deep Ecology,” University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, 1984, https://www.uwosh.edu/facstaff/barnhill/ES-243/pp%20 outline%20Deep%20Ecology.pdf.

9 . David Horton, “Green and Atheist: The Incompatibility of Religion and Environmentalism,” HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Inc., last modified July 8, 2015, https://www.huffpost. com/entry/green-and-atheist_b_582344.

10 . Ian Tattersall, Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (New York: St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2012), 219.

11 . Tattersall, 219.

12 . Tim Mackie, “Interpreting the Bible’s Creation Narratives” (lecture notes, Bridgetown Church Midweek Lectures, Portland, OR, January 20, 2016).

13 . Genesis 1:1-25 (NIV).

14 . Genesis 1:25 (NIV).

15 . Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, “Image of God,” BibleProject, March 21, 2016, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbipxLDtY8c&t=317s&ab_channel=BibleProject; Tim Mackie, “Lecture on the Early Church & Politics: Tim Mackie (The Bible Project),” Tim Mackie Archives, August 15, 2017, YouTube video, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXcSJVW8rg4&t=2s&ab_channel=TimMackieArchives.

16 . Genesis 2:7,19 (NIV).

17 . Genesis 1:31 (NIV).

18 . White, 1207.

19 . Mark Stoll, “The Environment Was a Moral Issue Long Before Pope Francis,” HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Inc., last modified July 2, 2016, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/theenvironment-was-a-mor_b_7716102.

20 . Psalm 19:1 (ESV).

21 . Mackie, “Lecture on the Early Church & Politics.”

22 . Ryan Patrick McLaughlin, “Anticipating a Maximally Inclusive Eschaton: Jürgen Moltmann’s Potential Contribution to Animal Theology,” Journal of Animal Ethics 4, no.

1 (2014): 18-36, doi: 10.5406/janimalethics.4.1.0018.

23 . Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 277.

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27

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF THEISM Apologetic Uses for Thomistic Divine Simplicity

TONY PEREZ

“G

od? Well, I think that there is a flying spaghetti monster and that is my god.”

The famous flying spaghetti monster is a fairly popular argument for non-theism that can be found in the comments section of any YouTube video whose title includes the words “God,” “atheist,” “rebutted,” “DESTROYED,” or “refuted.” It is understandable that, in an age focused on utilizing the scientific method to help understand the way the natural world works, a person would not learn about the nuanced conceptions of God to which some religions have adhered throughout history. Understanding such conceptions allows one to see the flaw in arguments like the flying spaghetti monster. In an apologetic context, learning about sophisticated conceptions of God makes theism more accessible to people who would otherwise dismiss “faith” as separate from reason.

In this article, I will be describing one of the components of the conception of God put forth in classical theism. Historically, many big names in the monotheistic tradition have adhered to classical theism including Anselm, Aquinas, and Maimonides.1 Describing classical theism in depth is beyond the scope of a singular Dartmouth Apologia 28

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article, so I will be focusing on a specific, and key, tenet of classical theism: divine simplicity. Divine simplicity, as Aquinas conceived it, is the idea that God could not be composed of physical or metaphysical parts. In the following sections I will 1) describe how Aquinas came to this conclusion, 2) describe the doctrine in more detail, 3) offer some potential objections or questions that might come up in a conversation with a non-theist, and finally, 4) demonstrate the apologetic power of divine simplicity by showing how arguments like the flying spaghetti monster miss the point when talking about God. ARISTOTELEAN BACKGROUND Saint Thomas Aquinas is a significant figure in Christian history because of his work to incorporate the retranslated pieces of Aristotle’s work that survived in Muslim countries into Christian doctrine. As such, it is no surprise that Aquinas’ conception of God is stated in Aristotelean terms. The doctrine of divine simplicity is not an invention or a brute fact that a theist must simply believe, but rather, in the Thomistic tradition, is a proposition that makes sense logically and is derivable from separate, Aristotelean premises.

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli

Photo by Patrick Hendry from Unsplash.com

In particular, divine simplicity can be most directly traced to Aquinas’ second way for God’s existence found in Part One, Question Two, Article Three of his Summa Theologiae. As its starting premise, the argument observes what a contemporary audience would call “change” (I will leave a more technical definition of “motion” in the following endnote for the interested reader, but this is not necessary to understand the argument that we will be exploring).2 The first two ways stand apart for our purposes; they begin with observations of the universe and trace some sort of causal chain which ends with an ultimate initiator of the chain. In the case of the first way, we begin with the observation that all things are in motion—which means in part that they have potential—and ends with an “unactualized

I AM NOT UP TO DATE WITH THE METAPHYSICS-OF-COWS LITERATURE. actualizer.” To actualize something is to make a potential form manifest. For example, when I buy a box of matches, none of the matches are on fire, but have the ability to be on fire. Therefore, they are potentially on fire. When I strike the match, igniting the phosphorus sulfide, the match has gone from being potentially on fire to being actually on fire. So, I have actualized the flammable potential of the match. So, “unactualized actualizer” means that the thing in question does not need to be (or cannot be) actualized.

So, it is pure actuality and contains no potential.3 The second way begins with the Aristotelean notion of efficient causality. (I’ve put a brief explanation of Aristotle’s Four Causes in the following endnote).4 An efficient cause is the producer or initiator of a thing. For example, the efficient cause of a house is the carpenter who built the house. Aquinas observes that no ‘thing’ can be its own efficient cause. This is because, in order for ‘a’ to cause ‘b’ in the way that a carpenter causes a house, ‘a’ must exist before ‘b.’ In other words, the carpenter cannot create the house if the carpenter does not exist first. Consider an arbitrary person, Timmy. Timmy can be the efficient cause of a son (admittedly simplifying the biological process of conception) by fathering said son. Despite having the causal power to be an efficient cause, however, Timmy cannot be his own efficient cause, because in order to father himself, he would need to exist before himself, which is absurd.5 If a thing cannot be its own efficient cause, Aquinas argues, then there must be one first efficient cause. In other words, 30

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an uncaused cause.

Aquinas’ first two ways in particular are relevant to divine simplicity as their conclusions, a purely actual mover and a first efficient cause, tell us important metaphysical information about God. While I will not be dedicating space in this article to a robust defense of Aquinas’ Five Ways, I have included some endnotes along the way that introduce some of the more technical aspects and I would direct the interested reader to Ed Feser’s work on Aquinas for a clear introduction to Thomistic philosophy.6 Anyhow, we are left with two descriptions of God, or rather, two roles that God plays—the unactualized actualizer and uncaused cause—so now we can move on to the second step in the apologist’s argument, considering the logical extensions of our starting point.

HOW DOES “CHANGELESS” IMPLY “SIMPLE”?

Starting with the first descriptor—the unactualized actualizer—what can we learn about God? Well, if God is pure actuality and therefore without potential, then He cannot be composed of parts. After all, the existence of parts “presupposes the combination of those parts, and thus a reduction of potentiality to actuality.”7 In other words, if an object is composed of parts, then there must be something separate from the composed object that puts the parts together. For example, a car is composed of many parts, an engine, wheels, a transmission, hopefully an air freshener, and so on. The parts exist apart from each other and have the potential to exist in an ordered combination, such as a car. When they are assembled, their potential to be part of a car is actualized. God, as the first way describes Him, cannot possibly be like this because if God is purely actual, then there is absolutely no potential in Him. Therefore, God cannot contain any parts because to contain parts would be to contain potentiality.

ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE A key idea in Divine Simplicity is the distinction between essence and existence. In fact, if there is no distinction between essence and existence, then everything is simple in the same way that God is simple, thus defeating the purpose of Divine Simplicity. This helps us understand that God is categorically and almost incomprehensibly different from His creation.

To demonstrate the difference between essence and existence, consider a unicorn and a cow. While I am not up to date with the metaphysics-of-cows literature, we can plausibly say that there is some cow-ness in the cow that

makes it a cow. It has certain attributes which classify it under the genus of cow. We can think of these attributes in our heads. This is the essence of cow. Similarly, we can also think of the attributes that a unicorn would have; probably unicorn-ness, possibly some magic, maybe something involving a horn. In any case, we can conceive of these attributes in our heads as well. Notice, however, that while cows most certainly exist, unicorns do not. In other words, just because we can think of something in our heads by describing its essence, does not mean that the thing exists. To put it simply, we can say that the essence of a thing is “what” exists. The existence of a thing is “that” it exists. Existence, in this sense, is more of a binary, yes or no property, while essence is more qualitative, describing the ‘nature’ or, for lack of a better word, “essence” of an object.

One might object that, while there seems to be an obvious distinction between essence and existence in something non-existent like a unicorn, there is no such distinction for things that actually exist. Consider the following scenario: “there is a dog in front of me named Skip; it seems like Skip’s existence is equal to his essence since I can see him right in front of me.” While this seems like a perfectly natural response, it is not obvious how Skip having both an

Photo by Tony Perez

essence and existence means that there is no distinction between them. We could point to the unicorn example again to re-iterate the distinction, but the objector has already conceded the distinction in that case. The problem may lie in what we mean by distinction. When we say that essence and existence are different, that does not mean that there is “Essence of Skip” and “Existence of Skip” and that we could find these in different places. Rather, we are saying that Skip is a combination (a “composite” to use a more technical term) of two different things. The physical instantiation of Skip before me must necessarily be a composite of “Essence of Skip” and “Existence of Skip.” If we had only his essence, then he would be a mere concept. If we had only his existence, well, that would be pure existence, esse (which would be God according to our metaphysics). Only when both are present do we have Skip the dog-right-in-front-of-me.

Is this a semantic difference? After all, one could also differentiate between Skip’s leg and Skip the dog, but this is just a conceptual difference which makes certain processes—like veterinary care—more convenient to humans. In response, we should think of the distinction more like a circle. In his book, Five Proofs for the Existence of God, Ed

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Feser quotes a passage by David Oderberg:

Consider a circle. It has both a radius and a circumference. There is obviously a real distinction between the properties of ‘having a radius’ and ‘having a circumference.’ This is not because, when confining ourselves to circles, ‘having a radius’ can ever exist apart from ‘having a circumference’… The radius of a circle is really distinct from its circumference, as proved by the fact that the latter is twice the former multiplied by ‘pi.’ Since the radius is ‘part’ of the property ‘having a radius’ and the circumference is part of the property ‘having a circumference’, the properties themselves are really distinct though inseparable.8

How does the idea that essence is different from existence relate to God as a purely actual being? Well, first we should stress that when we say that God is simple, we are really saying that God is metaphysically simple. While God is certainly not composed of physical parts, more importantly, He is also not composed of metaphysical parts. We, as humans are metaphysical composites in the sense that IF ALL OF GOD’S “PARTS” ARE NOT ACTUALLY PARTS BUT THE SAME THING, THEN GOD’S ESSENCE IS EXISTENCE.

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we “have” existence that is different from our essence as rational animals.9 God cannot be a complex in these ways if He is pure actuality. Therefore, when we speak of God’s existence, we are also speaking of His essence. When we speak of His essence, we speak of His existence. So, if all of God’s “parts” are not actually parts but the same thing, then God’s essence is existence. As the philosopher David Burrell put it, “To be God is to be to be.”

OBJECTIONS TO DIVINE SIMPLICITY An important objection might go as follows: the precise definition of God as described by Divine Simplicity (and classical theism more broadly) is not representative of what most theists believe. When the everyday churchgoer speaks of God, they do not speak of an ‘unactualized actualizer’ or ‘metaphysically simple being,’ but rather a loving father, a good shepherd, or a skilled potter. While these certainly contain elements of truth, this does not make it impossible to build a more rigorous, technical idea of God. Further, it is important to point out that whether or not a person understands the entirety of a given matter does not prevent her from being correct in assessing its truth value.

In other words, I do not need to understand everything about car transmissions to know how to make the car go forward. I just need to know enough to step on the gas.

Similarly, Divine Simplicity could be a necessary part of formulation might be re-created as follows: You propose that there is some God who the reason that Christianity is a metaphysical necessity, just is incredible in many ways (divine, good, as the innerworkings of a car is the reason that it runs, even all-knowing, and etc.), but He is physically though some Christians might not fully comprehend Diunobservable. Therefore, I cannot ever vine Simplicity. This means that even though some Chrisdefinitively prove that He does not exist.

However, since you are making the fantastical tians do not believe in Divine Simplicity, it is not necesclaim, the burden of proof lies upon you to sarily incorrect. It would be intellectually dishonest to say prove your hypothesis, not on me to disprove that a certain belief is wrong just because some significant your hypothesis. If the claimer does not carry percentage of its adherents have not had the fortune of the burden of proof, then I could propose that there is a flying spaghetti monster in the achieving an education that enables them to defend it at a world who is invisible and supreme amongst highly technical level.

DO WE BELIEVE IN SPAGHETTI? Now that we have put forth a specific conception of God, we can apply it to arguments like the flying spaghetti monster and see how this type of argument misses the point. There are two main ways that this argument can be used. The first is in its original context as a variant of Bertrand Russell’s teapot, and the second as a demonstration of the absurdity of believing in something like God. For context, the earliest mention of the flying spaghetti monster is in a satirical letter written by Bobby Henderson to the Kansas State Board of Education in 2005.10 Henderson opposed the decision to allow alternative accounts to evolution to be acknowledged in the classroom.11 His

Touched by His Noodly Appendage by Niklas Jansson from Wikimedia Commons

all things. We cannot detect it because it is invisible, but it is always there and is the most powerful being in existence. Now for me to say that you should believe this simply because you cannot disprove the existence of an invisible being is absurd.

In essence, this argument, like Russell’s teapot, raises the perfectly legitimate question regarding the unfalsifiable hypothesis: if God cannot be empirically observed, how can we ever conceptualize His essence? Aquinas (and classical theology as a whole) gives an answer to this with a robust metaphysical derivation of the nature of God. If one did not have a sophisticated conception of God, then it would likely be difficult to escape charges of arbitrariness and running away from science’s power to disprove things.

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However, if we begin with an informed metaphysical conception of God as a first efficient cause, then our path to belief is legitimately outside the bounds of the physical sciences because our claim is metaphysical (and so by definition outside the bounds of the natural sciences). We are not arbitrarily stating that God exists and is invisible, but rather, that the way in which we know that God exists is not through the scientific form of knowledge. That is to say, we have an account for a lack of empirical evidence for God; we do not arbitrarily rely on invisibility to save us.

So why is not God like the flying spaghetti monster or the flying teapot? Well, neither of those two are metaphysically significant in the way that the unactualized actualizer would be. The essence of God, as conceived by Aquinas, is derived from a very simple chain of reasoning. The essence of the flying spaghetti monster was arbitrarily chosen. Beyond this, the essence of God is a unique type of essence, being the only essence that requires existence. This is to THERE IS AN INFORMED, INTELLIGENT STANCE THAT DIFFERENTIATES PHRASES SUCH AS “I BELIEVE IN ZEUS” FROM “I BELIEVE IN GOD.”

say, the essence of the flying spaghetti monster does not require its existence. The essence of God—on classical theism—most certainly requires His existence, thus providing a non-arbitrary explanation for God’s existence. These two things set apart the nature of God, making the idea of God at least worth further consideration than the idea of the flying spaghetti monster, and at best demonstrable, metaphysical fact.

Simply by being composed of matter, the spaghetti could not be metaphysically supreme. While the question of invisibility seems to make it more difficult to know whether the being is composed of matter, it seems counterintuitive to claim that invisibility does not imply physical existence. When we conceive of invisible things, we do not deny that the thing has a corporeal substance, merely that the corporeal substance is imperceptible. Therefore, these beings, however imperceptible or unobservable, cannot be unactualized actualizers (since, as we discussed earlier, all matter is a composite of both potentiality and actuality).12 So, if the spaghetti and the teapot do not meet the high metaphysical standards, then why is it valuable to bring up the question? Well, it is helpful to acknowledge that unfalsifiable hypotheses are certainly problematic, but if we were not making a scientific claim in the first place, then it is 34

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tough to see how scientific standards would help us.

However, we can also be a bit less charitable with the argument and look at how the flying spaghetti monster seems to be interpreted today: “Well, I say that there is a flying spaghetti monster, and that is my god.”

Sadly, Bobby Henderson’s once somewhat decent point about burden of proof has been all but completely lost in favor of mocking organized religion. Nowadays, one is most likely to interact with the flying spaghetti monster through the so-called “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” or “Pastafarianism.” This group has “adopted” the flying spaghetti monster as its deity in order to mock members of organized religion as if to say, “you silly theists; belief in your God is as silly as belief in an invisible flying spaghetti monster.”

So why does this reasoning miss the point? Well, simply put, the pastafarians do not know (or choose to ignore) the informed metaphysical foundations of some of the groups that they mock. To suggest that belief in a purely necessary, unactualized actualizer is in any way comparable to belief in flying pasta is to disregard completely the serious thought and reasoning that has gone into God’s metaphysical composition. First off, the flying spaghetti monster is composed of pasta, meatballs, perhaps some marinara sauce, and possibly some basil. If God is simple—which is to say that He contains no physical or metaphysical parts— then how could He possibly be a combination of several different foods? This is a bit of a throwaway point though.

The fundamental problem with the flying spaghetti monster, aside from being metaphysically insignificant, is that it is unobservable because of unexplained invisibility. God, as described by divine simplicity, is scientifically unobservable because all matter contains potentiality and actuality, essence and existence (which is to say, metaphysical parts).

If God is simple, then He cannot be composed of matter.

So, God’s inability to be observed comes from a logically coherent source.

While it may be disheartening to see that some people think that when a believer says, “I believe in God,” it is tantamount to saying, “I believe in Zeus” or “I believe in a flying spaghetti monster,” it is important to note that there is an informed, intelligent stance that differentiates phrases such as “I believe in Zeus” from “I believe in God.” This stance builds upon a vast corpus of work produced by thinkers ranging from the Middle Ages to the contemporary academic tradition. While I would, at this point in time, most likely ally with the classical theists, the debate

is in no way settled, even amongst believers. The reason for exploring an aspect of classical theism, a historically significant conception of God, is to demonstrate that arguments which might seem convincing today are impotent when put against good, scholarly work, whether it be work of the past or different contemporary work. In any case, whether or not one ultimately arrives at belief in God, understanding Divine Simplicity will allow a person to know what she is claiming to believe or claiming to object to. In effect, by understanding what we mean by “God,” we can have a healthier, truer discourse and hopefully come to grasp faith in a more reasonable way.

1. Edward Feser, “Classical theism roundup,” Blogspot (blog), July 16, 2012, https:// www.edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/classical-theism-roundup.html.

2. Aristotle conceived of motion as the actualization of a potential. In other words, matter can be different in some way (nothing in the physical world is completely unchangeable). This is markedly broader than the contemporary scientific usage of the word “motion” which might relate to Newtonian physics. Let us consider an example. At the beginning of the week, I place an apple on my desk. I leave it alone for the rest of the week and come back to it later. No one has touched the apple at all. What state is the apple in? Well, it is rotten…obviously. In a contemporary scientific context, the apple has undergone absolutely no motion because no one has moved the apple. But in an Aristotelean context, the apple has absolutely undergone motion. When I place the apple on the desk at the beginning of the week, it is perfectly not-rotten, but has the potential to be rotten. Thus, as time passes and various chemical processes take place in the fruit, the potential to be rotten becomes actualized. The result is a rotten apple. This is what Aristotle would call “motion.”

3. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica First Complete American Edition Vol. 1, trans.

Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger, 1948), 13.

4.-----Aristotle conceives of four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final cause. Consider a case of a house: the material cause (or makeup or essence of the thing) might be bricks and drywall and such. The formal cause (or structure/form) of the house might be Tudor or colonial style. The efficient cause (or the creator and initiator of the thing) would be the builder who constructs the house. And the final cause (or sake for which the thing exists) would be to provide shelter. This is simply a brief overview of the categories.

It should also be noted that Aristotle did not hold that all things had all four causes.

5. It is worth pointing out that the father/son analogy is flawed as it pertains to God’s relation to creation because the father/son relationship is an accidentally ordered causal series, whereas God is the beginning of an essentially ordered causal series. This simply means that, when the father dies, as long as he has brought his son into existence at some point in time, his son no longer needs to be causally affected by his father in order to exist. In an essentially ordered series, however, if a member of the chain loses causal efficacy, then all of the subsequent members in the series cease to exist.

6. --See the following for a clear introduction to Thomistic philosophy: Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Oneworld, 2019).

7. Edward Feser, “Craig on Divine Simplicity and Theistic Personalism,” Blogspot (Blog), April 15, 2016, https://www.edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html.

8. David S. Oderberg, “The Non-Identity of the Categorical and the Dispositional,” Analysis 69, no. 4 (2009): 677, doi: 10.1093/analys/anp098, quoted in Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), 123.

9. --“Again, the traditional definition of a human being as a rational animal gives animal as the genus under which human beings fall and rationality as that which differentiates human beings as the species, they are within that genus… If the definition is correct it gives us the essence of a human being,” (Feser, Five Proofs, 141).

10.---Bobby Henderson, “Open Letter to Kansas School Board,” Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, March 24, 2021, https://www.spaghettimonster.org/about/ open-letter/.

11. William Lane Craig, “God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Reasonable Faith,” Reasonable Faith, December 3, 2007, https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/god-and-the-flying-spaghetti-monster/.

12.---Eleonore Stump, “The Nature of a Simple God,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 87 (2013): 33–42, doi: 10.5840/acpaproc20143252.

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CALLING OUT OUR CALL-OUT CULTURE Psalm 137 and a Better System of Rebuke, Forgiveness, and Justice

TULIO HUGGINS

A

n old sexist tweet resurfaces; a racist video from high school circulates; an old, homophobic comment returns. When an offensive statement or action from someone’s past is brought back to light—usually over social media—the mob response is quick and aggressive. Students lose scholarships to colleges, teachers lose jobs, and restaurants lose their businesses. Dozens— sometimes hundreds—of comments flood into the inboxes of the person at the center. While many may be justified, others only direct hatred back to the accused—creating a vicious and unhelpful cycle. Call-out culture has become a common occurrence thanks to the rise of social media. Of course, when an incident of egregiously offensive behavior surfaces, public attention on social media can be rightfully used to hold the offending party accountable. Yet today’s extreme form of call-out culture, especially on college campuses, faces considerable controversy. While it seems that most of society supports the idea of using social media as a tool for public accountability, they also feel uncomfortable about the power that a Twitter mob has to cancel any individual for any of their prior poor choices. What makes today’s call-out culture so extreme and people so uncomfort36

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able with it is its inconsistency with a healthy worldview of forgiveness and mercy, which focuses more on reconciling than on punishing the person at the center of the issue. If call-out culture were approached instead with a Christian view of forgiveness and mercy, taken in light of the imprecatory psalms, it would become a more productive tool for social justice.

AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN FORGIVENESS, CANCEL CULTURE, AND CALL-OUT CULTURE First, it is necessary to understand Christian forgiveness. For some, forgiveness and reconciliation in Christian life is simply “turning the other cheek” and “praying for those who persecute you,” as Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount.1 This would seem to imply that forgiving is simply forgetting and accepting the wrongdoer whether or not they will continue to commit the same wrong—like acting as if the sin never occurred. However, this presentation is too simplistic. If forgiving were excusing, “there would be nothing to forgive.”2 Christian forgiveness does not revolve around justifying the actions of others. It instead focuses on holding people accountable for their ac-

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler by Heinrich Hofmann from Wikimedia Commons Photo by Patrick Hendry from Unsplash.com

tions while hoping for repentance from the actor and rejoicing if it comes.3 The idea of reconciling with one who trespasses against you, while not dismissing the action or humiliating the transgressor, is an important aspect of Christian forgiveness.

This view of forgiveness differs from what is seen in callout culture. Call-out culture is often confused with “cancel culture,” and the two often get used interchangeably. However, there is an important distinction between the two which mostly regards who is at the center of controversy.

Cancel culture pertains to stopping one’s support for public figures and companies after an offensive incident.4 For example, when the CEO of Goya Foods voiced his support for former President Donald Trump, many critics decided to pull their support for the brand.5 Cancel culture applies to situations where some individual or group in a position of power gets criticized by average individuals through social media’s power to influence public opinion, resulting in a loss of profits or reputation. By grouping together, those who are not in positions of power can hold powerful people accountable. On the other hand, call-out culture pertains to the “interpersonal confrontations occurring between private individuals on social media.”6 This means the power of each party is equal, or substantially less disparate, compared to cases of cancel culture. Although the people involved in call-out culture can be a part of any group, this article focuses specifically on its existence on college campuses.

CALL-OUT CULTURE IN ACTION When looking at college campuses, call-out culture usually surrounds cases of sexist, racist, or other types of microaggressions. Take, for instance, a University of Southern California incident from September 2020. In one of his classes, Communications professor Greg Patton explained some filler words that are used around the world.7 The Chinese word he used in the class, “na-ge,” sounds like the N-word when spoken (though it is not the N-word).8 Black students in Patton’s class reportedly expressed their concern to him about his use of the word, though a university probe disputed that any attempt at direct communication was made.9 Some students later reported, on the authority of other Chinese speakers, that Patton’s pronunciation was not even accurate.10 Patton continued to use the word for a few other sections.11 A couple of days later, the dean of the graduate school reported to the students that another professor had taken Patton’s position in the course.12 Yet upon recognizing that his students were offended, which was the 38

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Photo by Camilo Jimenez from Unspalsh.com

morning after the lecture and before he was removed, Patton sent an apology to the class insisting that he did not intend to “distract or hurt [his] students.”13 Additionally, the dean’s decision stirred up controversy. Both Chinese students and residents of China criticized the decision, and a petition to have Patton reinstated reached 11,000 signatures.14 Call-out culture can also bring present-day controversy to incidents that happened years before the present. Take, for example, the Kyle Kashuv case. In 2019, Harvard University rescinded their offer to Kashuv—a survivor of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida—after the discovery of racist comments he posted when he was sixteen, months before the Parkland shooting. 15 In response to the public revelation of the racist comments, Kashuv apologized and stated that they were “idiotic” and “not indicative of who I am or who I’ve become in the years since.”16 He then tried, but failed, to have his admissions offer reinstated by contacting the Harvard College of Diversity Education and Support to see how he could “right this wrong and work with them once [Kashuv] was on campus.”17 IF CALL-OUT CULTURE WERE APPROACHED INSTEAD WITH A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF FORGIVENESS AND MERCY, IT WOULD BECOME A MORE PRODUCTIVE TOOL FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE.

CALLING OUT INJUSTICES IN THE IMPRECATORY PSALMS Despite the recent rise of call-out culture, the act of calling out injustices is ages old. The imprecatory psalms in the Bible, while also calling out injustices, do so in such a way that differs vastly from that of call-out culture. To imprecate is to “invoke evil on” someone or something; these psalms are therefore a set of poems and songs in the Old Testament book of Psalms in which the psalmists call “for God’s wrath and punishment to be executed upon the wicked.”18 Among them is Psalm 137, which will prove to be elucidatory when compared to call-out culture.19 Because of their intense language, the imprecatory psalms have been a source of confusion in the Christian community, with various denominations expressing concern over the use of these psalms during prayer in the modern age.20 For example, in the Catholic General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours, three other psalms and various verses are omitted from the Psalter because of the psalms’ “imprecatory character.”21 This harsh language in the Psalms is generally used when there is an ongoing injustice. WhethTHE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

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er or not the psalmist is justified in beseeching God for such extensive punishment or whether justice should be sought through prayer is not the point of interest here. Instead, Psalm 137 reveals the preconditions which made the psalmist justified to call out injustice.

The types of incidents that perpetuate call-out culture are less severe than the historical context that produced Psalm 137, which was written around the time of the ancient Israelites’ exile in Babylon; however, the theme of injustice and the need to respond carry over.22 The exile started in the late sixth century BCE after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and King Jehoiachin of Israel was deposed.23 It lasted for multiple decades and ultimately ended in 538 BCE when Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to their homeland.24 Although the exact time of Psalm 137’s composition is unknown, commentators like Matthew Henry put it at the latter end of their captivity, while other commentators like Charles Briggs point to a time closer to Jerusalem’s destruction in 587 BCE.25 Known for its “poetic power,” the Psalm invokes vivid imagery of violence and justice.26 The psalm is most infamously known for its last verse, in which the psalmists says, “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!”27 CALL-OUT CULTURE IN LIGHT OF PSALM 137 At first glance, college campus call-out culture and the imprecatory psalms do not seem to have much in common. However, the cries of the call-out culture seen at USC and Harvard, as well as other colleges—including Dartmouth—are similar to the cries for justice seen in Psalm 137. This said, present-day call-out culture falls short in many aspects when confronting the injustice. The main difference between incidents of call-out culture and Psalm 137 is that the former demonstrates an incident in which someone has already done something, whereas in the latter, the injustice is occurring as the psalmist writes.

In the USC and Kashuv incidents, something happened in the past, whether near or distant, and prompted those at the center of the controversy to later realize some sort of remorse. This does not mean that the person’s initial actions were justified. The problem is not about justification; the problem is that the person was never given a chance to repent, receive forgiveness, and reconcile for the wrong done. When an incident happens, especially in the past, the time in between could be formulative for the person in the middle of the controversy. Reflection, development, and intent are not considered by call-out culture.

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For example, Kashuv said that the Parkland shooting made him “see the world through different eyes and [he is] embarrassed by the petty, flippant kid represented [in his racist statements].”28 In a similar light, Patton had apologized before he was removed from the class, and he was unjustly removed for an incident that was over a cultural misunderstanding rather than a case of racist and malicious intent. In both instances, the accused were not given the opportunity to voice and demonstrate their development.

Unlike call-out culture, where the transgression is completed, the incident addressed in Psalms 137 is ongoing. Since scholars have dated this Psalm to the Exile, the psalmist and their people would have been experiencing injustice for an extended period. Not only that, but some scholars believe that the psalmist might have been one of the temple musicians who was forced to be an entertainer for the Babylonian captors—a cruel fate.29 This can be seen in the first section of the psalm, in which the psalmist says “[F]or there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’”30 Since the Psalmist had long been under the harsh rule of their unjust captors, with no end in sight, it can be readily inferred that the captors were not repentant.

The calls to God for justice and violent punishment come from the psalmist exactly because the one accused of injustice is so apparently unrepentant. This violence may seem brash and amoral in the light of a forgiving God, but from Psalm 137 it is seen that this extreme call only comes in the absence of repentance or guilt during an active case of injustice.

REFLECTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND INTENT ARE NOT CONSIDERED BY CALL-OUT CULTURE. Therein lies the failure of call-out culture. There is a clear difference in severity between the two scenarios—a racial controversy pales in scale to persecution in mass exile. The incident in call-out culture is not ongoing, and the person at the center could potentially be repentant, unlike the psalmist’s captors. Call-out culture deals with incidents in which the emphasis should be on pointing out wrongs and then looking to reconcile. Our communities should follow the words of Saint Augustine; when talking about those who repent in a church setting, he advises that we extend reconciliation.31 Instead, there are calls for punishment similar to those in the imprecatory psalms, whether in the form of losing one’s job, spot in education, or, in

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King David Playing the Harp by Gerard van Honthorst from Google Art Project

extreme cases, one’s life.32

the facts of the case and see if the person has changed and repented. If they have not, they should be held accountable THE UNIVERSAL VALUE OF FORGIVENESS without humiliation, and we should always push to reconOne of the main objections to this comparison of Psalm cile. It is crucial not only to properly move on from wrongs, 137 and call-out culture would likely stem from the use of but also to help the people in our communities become Psalm 137 as an example of what justice should and should better than they were before. not look like today. Psalm 137 and the rest of the imprecatory psalms call out for justice from God which, for a read- 1. Matthew 5:38-39 (NIV); Matthew 5:44 (NIV).

S. Lewis, “On Forgiveness,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, (Loner outside of the Judeo-Christian faith, produces an obvi- 2.don:C.Macmillan, 1975), 121-125. ous problem. How should those who do not believe in the 3. Lewis, 121-125.

“Where Did Cancel Culture Come From?” Dictionary.com, accessed December 15, Judeo-Christian God regard the justice of the imprecatory 4.2020, https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/cancel-culture/. psalms? The idea of pursuing justice is not simply a Jewish 5. Derrick Bryson Taylor, “Goya Foods Boycott Takes Off After Its President Praises The New York Times, July 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/ or Christian concept, and the argument here is not that one Trump,” business/goya-boycott.html. cannot pursue it through social media. In fact, social media 6. Melissa Flores, “Cancel /Call out Culture and Public Complaints About InappropriSocial Media Posts,” Maricopa Community Colleges, accessed February 15, 2021, is a useful tool when seeking social justice, as proven by ate https://district.maricopa.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Melissa%20Talks.Canthe role of social media in coordinating the popular revolu- cel%20Culture.061820.pdf.

Kerry Allen, “Investigation into US Professor Sparks Debate over Chinese tions of the Arab Spring.33 Regardless, forgiveness is essen- 7.---Word,” BBC News, September 10, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-chitial for all people because it is “an important corrective to na-54107329.

Allen, “Investigation into US Professor.” [our] proclivities toward avoidance and revenge—people’s 8.9.---Gwynedd Stuart, “How a Mild-Mannered USC Professor Accidentally Ignited AcWITHOUT FORGIVENESS AND THE RECONCILIATION THAT FOLLOWS, WE WOULD ALL BE SLAVES TO THE IRREVERSIBILITY OF OUR MISTAKES. typical negative response to interpersonal transgressions.”34 Without forgiveness and the reconciliation that follows, we would all be slaves to the irreversibility of our mistakes, “confined to one single deed from which we could never recover.”35 On a more societal frame, forgiveness provides a more “prosocial orientation,” meaning a larger focus on thinking of others more than oneself.36 Forgiving those who have made gross mistakes, whether from yesterday or years ago, is a necessary part of life regardless of religious affiliation. So, it must also be an essential part of the push for justice. If the Christian view of forgiveness presented here were adopted, it would provide one with a model for seeking justice that would hold offenses accountable without needing to make anyone into a scapegoat.

So where should call-out culture go from here? What should the reader learn from this critique in light of Psalm 137? Perhaps the place to start is to reflect on these words from the author of Ecclesiastes, in which “for everything there is a season.”37 There are times to call for justice, such as is shown in Psalm 137. When controversy arises and our communities lean towards vilifying the accused on social media before making any attempt to forgive and reconcile, we should pause and take a step back. We need to take in all 42

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ademia’s Latest Culture War,” Los Angeles Magazine, October 21, 2020, https://www. lamag.com/citythinkblog/usc-professor-slur.

10.--Colleen Flaherty, “Professor Suspended for Saying Chinese Word That Sounds like an English Slur,” Inside Higher Ed, December 29, 2020, https://www.insidehighered. com/news/2020/09/08/professor-suspended-saying-chinese-word-sounds-english-slur.

11. Flaherty, “Professor Suspended.”

12. Flaherty, “Professor Suspended.”

13. Stuart, “How a Mild-Mannered USC Professor.”

14. Allen, “Investigation into US Professor.”

15. Scott Jaschik, “Harvard Rescinds Admissions Offer over Applicant’s Past Racist Writings,” Inside Higher Ed, December 19, 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/06/24/harvard-rescinds-admissions-offer-over-applicants-past-racist-writings.

16. Kyle Kashuv (@kylekashuv), “2/ A Few Weeks Ago, I Was Made Aware of Egregious and Callous Comments Classmates and I Made Privately Years Ago - When I Was 16 Years Old, Months before the Shooting - in an Attempt to Be as Extreme and Shocking as Possible. I Immediately Apologized. Here Is My Apology:” Twitter, June 17, 2019, https://twitter.com/KyleKashuv/status/1140605144368898049/photo/1.

17. Kyle Kashuv (@kylekashuv), “6/ I Also Sent an Email to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to Seek Guidance on How to Right This Wrong and Work with Them Once I Was on Campus.” Twitter, June 17, 2019, https://twitter.com/KyleKashuv/status/1140605171644403712/photo/2.

18. “Imprecate,” Merriam Webster, February 4, 2021, https://www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/imprecate; “The Imprecatory psalms,” Christian Study Library, December 18, 2020, https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/imprecatory-psalms.

19. “The Imprecatory psalms.”

20. Gabriel Torretta O.P., “Rediscovering the Imprecatory psalms: A Thomistic Approach,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 80, no. 1 (2016): 23–48, doi: 10.1353/tho.2016.0001.

21. General Introduction on the Liturgy of the Hours, Liturgy Office England & Wales, accessed December 18, 2020, http://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Resources/Rites/GILH. pdf. See paragraph 131.

22. John Ahn, “Psalm 137: Complex Communal Laments,” Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 2 (2008): 267–289, doi: 10.2307/25610120.

23. “Babylonian Captivity | Definition, History, & Significance,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed January 2 2021, https://www.britannica.com/event/Babylonian-Captivity.

24. “Babylonian Captivity | Definition, History, & Significance.”

25. Matthew Henry, “Psalms 137 Commentary,” Salem Media Group, accessed December 19, 2020, https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/psalms/137.html; Ahn, 270.

26. Charles H. Spurgeon, “Psalm 137 Bible Commentary,” in The Treasury of David (London: Marshall Brothers, 1881), vol. 6, 226-242.

27. Psalm 137:9 (NIV).

28. Kashuv, “2/ A Few Weeks Ago.”

29.--Daniel

Simango, “A Comprehensive Reading of Psalm 137,” Old Testament Essays 31, no. 1 (2018): 217–242, doi: 10.17159/2312-3621/2018/v31n1a11.

30.---Psalm 137:3 (NIV).

31.---Augustine of Hippo, “The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, trans. J.F. Shaw, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), 64-66.

32. David Brooks, “The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture,” The New York Times, January 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/opinion/call-out-social-justice.html; Kyle Kashuv (@kylekashuv), “4/ After the Story Broke, Former Peers & Political Opponents Began Contacting Harvard Urging Them to Rescind Me. Harvard Then Sent This Letter Stating That Harvard ‘Reserves the Right to Withdraw an Offer of Admission’ and Requested a Written Explanation within 72 Hours.” Twitter, June 17, 2019, https:// twitter.com/KyleKashuv/status/1140605171644403712/photo/4.

33. Taylor Dewey, Juliana Kaden, Miriam Marks, Shun Matsushima, and Beijing Zhu, “The Impact of Social Media on Social Unrest in the Arab Spring,” Stanford Public Policy Program, accessed January 3, 2021, https://publicpolicy.stanford.edu/publications/ impact-social-media-social-unrest-arab-spring.

34. Michael E. McCullough and Charlotte Vanoyen Witvliet, “The Psychology of Forgiveness,” in Handbook of Positive Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 446–458.

35. Hannah Arendt, “Labor, Work, Action,” in The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (London: Penguin, 2003), 181.

36. Johan C. Karremans, Paul A. M. Van Lange, and Rob W. Holland, “Forgiveness and Its Associations With Prosocial Thinking, Feeling, and Doing Beyond the Relationship With the Offender,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 80, no. 10 (2005): 13151326, doi: 10.1177/0146167205274892.

37. Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV).

Photo by Alex Iby from Unsplash.com

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PROVING The RESURRECTION

with Gary Habermas’s Minimal Facts Method

PA I G E PAT T I S O N

T

he existence of Christianity is defined by one singular event: The Resurrection of Jesus. Without the assumption that Jesus rose from the dead, Christian belief rests on nothing.1 The centrality of the Resurrection has led skeptics to focus predominantly on disproving its validity in an attempt to invalidate Christianity as a whole.

Correctly, they reason that if the premise of an ideology is overturned, the conclusions which flow from it must also be rejected. This has led many Christian apologists to respond by concentrating on establishing the legitimacy of the Resurrection. To strengthen the Christian claim from a historical perspective, Dr. Gary Habermas developed what he has termed the Minimal Facts methodological approach.

Habermas argues that if even the most skeptical framework of limited Biblical historicity is adopted, the resurrection hypothesis is still the best explanation for the historical data surrounding the life and death of Jesus. The Minimal Facts method provides a framework for Christian and atheist scholars to examine the plausibility of the resurrection hypothesis and leading naturalist theories.

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THE MINIMAL FACTS METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH Habermas, a professor of philosophy and theology at Liberty University, is a New Testament scholar and Christian apologist. His choice to operate from the aforementioned framework stems from the idea that belief in Jesus can be derived strictly from facts considered historically indisputable. He asserts that “there is a significant body of data [surrounding the end of Jesus’ life] that scholars of almost every persuasion recognize as being historical.”2 To confirm this notion, Habermas spent five years researching and cataloging the current New Testament scholarship.

He identified 140 sub-issues related to the death of Jesus that his research set out to analyze.3 In an effort to obtain accurate, reliable data, Habermas surveyed scholars ranging from skeptical atheists to devout Christians. Surveyed scholars were required to have a terminal degree, be authors of peer-reviewed publications, and hold a position specializing in New Testament scholarship. To avoid accusations of bias, Habermas even “erred in the direction of cataloging the most radical [skeptic] positions, since this was the only classification where [he] included even those

Resurrection by Piero della Francesca from Wikimedia Commons

authors who did not have specialized scholarly credentials or peer-reviewed publications.”4 From this research, which yielded a 600-page manuscript of 3400 sources, Habermas developed what he has termed the Minimal Facts methodological approach.

BELIEF IN JESUS CAN BE DERIVED STRICTLY FROM FACTS CONSIDERED HISTORICALLY INDISPUTABLE. Put simply, the Minimal Facts method uses the smallest amount of historically reliable data to prove the Resurrection of Jesus. In gathering this data, Habermas found that virtually all scholars agree on the historical accuracy of Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon—seven books of the Bible written by the Apostle Paul.5 Lack of scholarly consensus surrounding the Gospels led to their exclusion since many skeptics consider the Gospel writers too biased to be historically credible. Paul, however, is distinguished from other New Testament writers by his previous standing as an enemy and persecutor of Christians. Thus, skeptical scholars uniquely affirm the historicity of the Pauline Epistles.6 Paul was a Pharisee. He had spent his life killing Christians, and he was well known and respected for doing so; he had much to lose by providing historical accounts to authenticate the Resurrection of Jesus. Paul would forever be documented as having murdered Christians—members of the very faith he came to profess—and would lose his prominent, wealthy status as a Pharisee. All evidence suggests he had little to gain by providing his historical account, leading scholars to accept Paul’s writings as authentic and credible.

In addition to Paul’s unique conversion to Christianity, his writings occurred around the time of Jesus’ life—thereby making his perception of who Jesus was highly reliable.

To give perspective on Paul’s historical reliability, Alexander the Great is estimated to have died in approximately 330 B.C. Historians first documented his death 300 to 450 years later, with the best sources, Aryina and Plutarch, writing at approximately 95 A.D. to 145 A.D. In contrast, most scholars date Paul’s writing of 1 Corinthians to 55 A.D., only 25 years after the death of Jesus in 30 A.D.7 His proximity to the events of Jesus’ death makes his writings an exceptional source by ancient world standards.

Thus, drawing purely from the critically ascertained Pauline letters, Habermas established a list of 12 facts the 46

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Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection by Ivanov from Wikimedia Commons

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majority of the New Testament scholars affirmed:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.

2. He was buried.

3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.

4. The tomb where Jesus was buried was found empty.

5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Christ.

6. The disciples were transformed because of their perceived encounters with Jesus.

7. The Resurrection was the disciples’ central message.

8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.

9. The church was born and grew.

10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.

11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus.

12. Paul experienced what he thought was a post-resurrection appearance of the risen Jesus and converted to Christianity.8

4. Paul experienced what he thought was a post-resurrection appearance of the risen Jesus and converted to Christianity.10

THE RESURRECTION HYPOTHESIS As established earlier, the facts above are agreed upon by almost all scholars of the New Testament, even the most skeptical atheists. Where discrepancies arise is in theories put forth to explain these facts. The resurrection hypothesis assumes the divinity of Jesus and provides the most straightforward explanation for the accepted data: The Disciples and Paul were telling the truth. This claim is not merely the result of legend or tradition but rather is contained in the very texts that New Testament scholarship affirms.

Christian scholars reason that Paul’s letters provide a reliable account of historical facts surrounding the life of Jesus, and alongside those facts exist their proposed explanation.

Skeptical scholars accept the historicity of these documents and the legitimacy of the facts therein, yet simultaneously reject their proposed explanation due to its supernatural nature. Therefore, we will explore the plausibility and exThis list of the above dozen facts is usually termed the planatory power of the leading naturalist theories, and then list of Known Historical Facts by Habermas. The list of address the Christian perspective.

Minimal Facts, from which Habermas’s methodology de- COMPARING THE RESURRECTION rives its name, adheres to even stricter criteria. In order for HYPOTHESIS TO NATURALIST THEORIES Alternative theories to the resurrection hypothesis have been recorded since the event’s origin. Among the earliest IF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE IS TRUE, is the theory that the Apostles stole Jesus’s body, which is GRASPING ITS TRUTH IS THE MOST even addressed in the Gospel of Matthew.11 Current scholCRITICAL RESPONSIBILITY WE HAVE arship, however, has since abandoned the theory for various DURING OUR TIME ON EARTH. reasons. Primarily, it seems implausible that many of the disciples and Paul would be willing to lose their life—and something to be considered a Minimal Fact, there are two eventually did so—for the message of Christ’s resurrection prerequisites: it must be established by sufficient scholarly if it were merely their own conspiracy. Habermas found evidence, consisting of critically ascertained evidence with that the majority of modern-day skeptical scholars believe various independent lines of argumentation, and each must the disciples and Paul acted based on subjective misperreceive near-unanimous consensus by relevant scholars, not ceptions of reality—rather than with deceitful intent.12 As simply the majority approval required for the Known His- such, the leading naturalist alternatives favor two psychotorical Facts.9 Habermas argues that these facts alone—the logically-based theories: the disciples experienced hallucidata that even the most skeptical scholars accept—provide nations and Paul had conversion disorder. sufficient evidence to prove the historical resurrection of JeTHEORIES SURROUNDING sus. Four facts meeting these criteria have been extrapolat- ALTERNATIVE THE DISCIPLES ed from the larger list of Known Historical Facts to compile The chief hallucinatory theory argues that the disciples the Minimal Facts: were experiencing grief-related hallucinations. This idea, 1. Jesus died by crucifixion.

2. The disciples had experiences which they believed were the appearance of the risen Christ.

3. The disciples were transformed because of their perceived encounters with Jesus.

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however, requires that Jesus’ post-crucifixion appearance to His disciples be a collective hallucination because the same event is separately recorded by each of the Gospel writers.13 Thus, the central question with this hypothesis is

whether multiple people can witness the same hallucination.14 It is nearly unanimous among the psychological community that hallucinations are individual experiences.15 Nevertheless, to assess a rare attempt at substantiating this claim, Habermas examined a study by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones.16 Zusne and Jones primarily examine supposed sightings of the Virgin Mary as evidence for the existence of group hallucinations, from which they concluded that prerequisites for such hallucinations are expectation and emotional excitement.17 Although Zusne and Jones do not apply their research to the resurrection of Christ, their study highlights the logical inconsistencies the grief-related hallucinations theory is overburdened with. Firstly, it contradicts general psychological consensus that hallucinations are private experiences. Additionally, it relies heavily on the assumption that claims relating to the Virgin Mary are false; without evidence, subjective perception is being assumed. A skeptic affirming this line of reasoning would then have to argue that sightings of Jesus are proved to be hallucinations by evidence from hallucinations of the Virgin Mary, without ever proving the Marian apparitions are hallucinations in themselves. This reasoning is incredibly circular. Lastly, Zusne and Jones’s research outlines “expectation” as a prerequisite for group hallucinations. The disciples, by even extra-biblical accounts, had just witnessed the brutal murder of their supposed Christ. They had begun to mourn and hide because they feared for their lives now that Jesus was dead.

By all accounts, the disciples exhibited behaviors polar to the “expectation” of Jesus’ resurrection.

Thus, the leading naturalist theory to explain the disciples’ perceived encounters with the risen Jesus Christ Crucified by Diego Velázquez from Wikimedia Commons

lacks plausibility and contradicts psychological consensus. It is then highly improbable that the disciples were hallucinating, which leaves one alternative: they were not. If we take this fact alongside the even skeptical scholarly consensus that the disciples did not act with deceitful intent, there is one logical conclusion—the disciples were telling the truth.

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES SURROUNDING THE APOSTLE PAUL We have clearly illustrated that the leading alternative theory surrounding the disciples fails to explain the Minimal Facts plausibly. New Testament scholarship overwhelmingly agrees the disciples were acting in good faith—rebutting the stolen body hypothesis—and hallucinatory theories appear unlikely and improbable.

But what about the Apostle Paul? The theories concerning him are arguably more significant as he authored the seven letters that scholars consider historically reliable. Due to his unique position as a former persecutor of Christians, the writings of Paul are more widely accepted than those of the disciples.

The leading naturalist theory suggested to explain Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus (Acts 9) is conversion disorder, an idea popularized by Jack Kent and Michael Goulder.

Conversion disorder is characterized by blindness, paralysis, or other neurological symptoms.18 Again, we must evaluate this theory on its psychological merits. Conversion disorder “most frequently occurs in women (up to five times more often), adolescents and young adults, less-educated persons, people with low I.Q.s or low socioecoTHE DARTMOUTH APOLOGIA | SPRING 2021

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nomic status, and combat personnel.”19 Paul is not classified by any of these profiles. Rather, he was a male, around 30 years of age at the time of his conversion, and a highly educated religious leader. Thus, it is statistically improbable that Paul would have suffered from conversion disorder.

Another major obstacle for the conversion disorder theory is that Paul was a persecutor of Christians whose previous skepticism and belief in the faultlessness of his actions are well-documented, even in his writings which receive scholarly consensus.20 WHEN ALL NATURALIST THEORIES FAIL TO MAKE SENSE OF HISTORICAL DATA, THE CHRISTIAN ANSWER REMAINS. Paul’s encounter with Christ in Acts 9 details four separate occurrences. Firstly, Paul is recorded to have seen a light from heaven flash around him. Next, he hears the voice of the Lord. Thirdly, Paul believes he is told to stop persecuting Christians and go to Damascus, where he begins preaching and becomes an apostle. Finally, he is blinded.

In order for Paul’s conversion to be explained by purely naturalistic causes, four things would have had to occur simultaneously. He would have had to experience a visual hallucination to explain the flash of light from heaven that surrounded him. He would have had to experience an auditory hallucination in order for him to believe he was hearing the voice of God. Additionally, Paul would also have to suffer a Messiah complex—the notion that an individual is destined to become a savior or rescuer in the near future—in order to explain his supposed command to stop persecuting Christians and his call to apostleship.

Lastly, he would have also had to undergo conversion disorder to account for his blindness. Even for one of these things to occur is highly unlikely. For naturalist theories to explain Paul’s Damascus road experience detailed in Acts 9 adequately, however, these four highly unlikely things had to all occur simultaneously. The is highly and scientifically improbable and fails to consider adequately the psychological states of the individuals to which it must be applied.

Again, we see the naturalist explanations fall short. Paul is an incredibly important witness to the resurrection. The historicity of his writings and the credibility of his psychological state are of the utmost importance for the Christian cause. Conversion disorder, the leading theory argued by skeptics to refute Paul’s post-resurrection encounter 50

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with the risen Jesus, is overburdened with improbabilities.

Therefore, with no sufficient alternatives for what Paul writes in Acts 9, the resurrection hypothesis alone remains.

The leading naturalist theories have substantial scientific and psychological inconsistencies that struggle to explain the Minimal Facts plausibly. Yet, it is not sufficient to examine the Minimal Facts and recognize their historicity but then fail to consider their implications. The claims of Paul’s letters are of such magnitude that they cannot be ignored. These letters have near-unanimous historical acceptance by New Testament scholarship. Extrapolated from these documents are historical facts accepted by even the most skeptical atheist scholars. Alongside these facts exist an explanation: The Resurrection of Jesus. Paul’s writings state that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, came down from heaven and was crucified for the sins of the world. After three days, He rose again from the dead, appeared to His disciples, and ascended to heaven. Claims of the supernatural should reasonably be held to a higher standard. Yet when all naturalist theories fail to make sense of historical data, the Christian answer remains. It is not as though the resurrection hypothesis is simply affirmed due to the lack of credible alternative theories. Rather, it is substantiated by its capacity to explain the accredited evidence.

This historical uniqueness and the scholarly consensus surrounding the Minimal Facts should not be taken lightly.

If we interpret the data in its simplest form, and if we take the claims of the disciples and Paul at face value, we arrive at the resurrection hypothesis. What does it mean if these claims are true? What did it mean for the disciples? And further, what does it mean for us? To understand what the resurrection might mean for us, it is most sensible to explore what it meant for the disciples. They clearly believed that Jesus is the Son of God and that faith in the cleansing power of His death and resurrection is the only path to eternal communion with God in heaven. If the Gospel message is true, grasping its truth is the most critical responsibility we have during our time on Earth. We should each individually feel a burden to explore these claims, even if merely for the historical weight they carry.

1 Corinthians 15:4 (NASB).

Gary R. Habermas, “The Minimal Facts Approach to the Resurrection of Jesus: The Role of Methodology as a Crucial Component of Establishing Historicity,” Southeastern Theological Review 3, no. 1 (2012): 15.

3. Habermas, “Minimal,” 17.

4. Habermas, “Minimal,” 18.

5. Gary R Habermas, Evidence for the Historical Jesus: Is the Jesus of History the Christ of Faith? (self-pub., GaryHabermas.com, 2015), 8.

6. Habermas, Evidence, 8.

7. Habermas, Evidence, 22.

1.

2.

8. Troy Brooks, “12 Historical Facts,” Biblocality (blog), accessed December 21, 2021, http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/garyhabermas.htm.

9. Habermas, “Minimal,” 16.

10. Habermas, “Minimal,” 21.

11. Matthew 28:13 (NASB).

12. Gary R. Habermas, “Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: the Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories,” Christian Research Journal 23, no. 4 (2001), 1.

13. Matt. 28:17 (NASB); Mark 16:12-14 (NASB); Luke 24:37-39 (NASB); John 20:19 (NASB).

14. Habermas, “Hallucinations,” 3.

15. Habermas, “Hallucinations,” 3.

16. Habermas, “Hallucinations,” 3.

17. Habermas, “Hallucinations,” 3.

18. Mayo Clinic Staff, “Functional Neurological Disorders/Conversion Disorder,” Mayo Clinic, accessed January 28, 2021, www.mayoclinic. org/diseases-conditions/conversion-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc20355197.

19. Habermas, “Hallucinations,” 4.

20. 1 Corinthians 15:9 (NASB); Philippians 3:4-6 (NASB).

Photo taken in Nazareth, Israel by Pisit Heng from Unplash.com

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AN EDUCATION In BELONGING A Review of Willie Jennings’ After Whiteness NAJMA ZAHIRA

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n the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests spurred on by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, America has been forced to contend with how deeply racism permeates this country. Following the national reckoning that many of the country’s institutions are systemically racist, one question remains: where do we go from here? In his book After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, author and Yale professor Willie James Jennings seeks an answer relating to Western and theological education. Throughout his book, Jennings envisions a theological education of the future where the objective is not purely to conform to an educational mold based in a white masculine image, but instead an education to cultivate belonging.

According to Jennings, the model for facilitating communion is seen in the way that Jesus preached. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus preached to a crowd of people that were so desperate to hear His teachings they were “pressing in on to him to see the word of God.”1 This crowd, composed of people who would never normally associate with each other in public, is where theological education must exist. When theological education exists in this heterogenous crowd 52

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where Jesus is the center of everything and He connects those who society would deem incompatible, there is no room for distorting narratives that can damage the purpose of what education should be. However, current theological education fails to facilitate this communion properly as they refuse to “release [themselves] to the crowd.”2 Jennings elaborates on four apprehensions that most theological institutions get wrong when cultivating belonging. Namely, these are: the fragments of education, the design of education, the process of building educational institutions, and the way in which one interacts in education.

The distortion in the theological and Western educational ethos is the presence of the white self-sufficient man as the “quintessential image of an educated person.”3 The white self-sufficient man refers not to a specific person or people but to a distorted ideal that is present in the current educational psyche that people strive, or are forced, to achieve. In order to move theological education toward a place that cultivates belonging, the current “educational imagination must [move away] from that self-sufficient man.”4 Maintaining this formation, propping up white self-sufficiency as the ideal, distracts from where the true

Photo by Robert Gill

work of education begins: “working in the fragments.”5 The fragments of theological education, which include faith and colonialism, are the pieces that “constitute the ground for educational work.”6 The fragments interact with each other in various ways and, to have a meaningful theological education, one must reconcile these fragments together while being cognizant of the fact that the picture they have created will never be complete. These fragments, according to Jennings, work and weave together in order to facilitate communion in educational institutions. When properly utilized, they serve as the ground from which a proper education can grow.

The fragment formed by faith, Jennings states, is only known in pieces—a reflection of the fragmented way that we experience the world. Because we are finite beings, we cannot comprehend an infinite reality; we have to work within our limited understanding to make sense of our faith. Despite this broken understanding, Jennings says that God works between these fragments to build relationships with us. Similar to how God builds relationships with

us by working between the fragments of faith, educational institutions must do the same. In recognizing the fragmentation of others, as well as ourselves, institutions can work to understand the fragments as they are, instead of forcing them into a contrived ideal. This moves away from the white-masculine aspiration and towards an understanding that can facilitate communion within theological institutions.

However, this idea of understanding the fragments as they are is disrupted by current theological education, which takes “the fragments of faith [and aligns] them with [a colonialist] aspiration.”7 This colonialist aspiration moves to place the white self-sufficient man as the ideal. Jennings defines this as the colonialist fragment, a fragment formed by “Christians who came not to learn anything from indigenous peoples but to instruct them.”8 Christianity has a colored history, with it being used to justify slavery and the decimation of indigenous populations in the Americas. The repercussions of those who have committed heinous acts under the guise of Christianity are still felt today. Theolog-

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Marchers with signs at the March on Washington, 1963 by Marion S. Trikosko from the Library of Congress

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PEOPLE LOOKING TO “REASSEMBLE WHAT HAS BEEN SHATTERED” ARE MET

BY ADMINISTRATIVE POWERS UNAWARE THAT ANYTHING HAS BEEN BROKEN.

ical institutions should recognize the trauma that Christianity has brought to certain populations and work forward from that shared understanding but, as Jennings goes on to say, that is not happening everywhere. People who come to some theological institutions looking to “reassemble what has been shattered” of their respective cultures are met by administrative powers unaware that anything has been broken.9 Unfortunately, as illustrated above, this ground is distorted and thus distorts everything that follows. Jennings continues on to describe the faults in educational design and what can be done to fix it.

Educational design is how educational institutions interact with and implement the fragments of education.

Current theological education exists within the ethos of colonial design, organizing itself around three qualities: attention, affection, and resistance.10 These qualities are not inherently distorted but have become so through a “distorting creativity … that presses us to perform a particular kind of man.”11 This type of creativity acts as a funnel with only one outcome but, as Jennings will argue, creativity can

be reclaimed through these three qualities to facilitate an education in belonging.

Attention is the first quality Jennings explores. He argues that the way that theological institutions pay attention to scholars is limited to what the colonialist aspiration deems worthy of attention. Giving attention to someone should be an all-encompassing act that “forms deeper habits of attending to one another.”12 Theological education should treat paying attention as a commitment to true understanding, to sympathize with scholars by widening their scope of understanding. By moving away from how colonialists conceptualized paying attention, educational institutions can become a place where communion is fostered. This change in paying attention is closely related to the quality of affection, a quality that educational institutions have distorted for years.

Affections in education are the things that one loves, whether it be a culture or a subject, but theological education has forced scholars to love what they do not. This “forced affection” maintained that the “white aesthetic regime” is the only thing worth loving.13 In theological education some exclusion is necessary, since Christianity is firmly based in specific values and traditions, but the exclusion that this distorted affection brings is isolating to students, hindering the goal of facilitating communion.

Intellectual affection should be designed in a way that performs a discerning love that knows how to exclude without isolating scholars.14 Jennings emphasizes the importance of resistance in education, stating “[resistance] is the seed from which may grow beautiful habitation.”15 This form of resistance is not a resistance against the essential tenets of theological education, namely those comprising the fragment of faith, but rather the way in which those tenets are disseminated to the educational community. Resistance can lead to new ways of delivering this same information in ways that move away from the ideal of white self-sufficiency towards a place that cultivates belonging. However, as Jennings will go on to state, theological educators are “failing miserably” at cultivating this form of resistance.16 Resistance, properly done, has the power to reshape modern theological education since it gives rise to new perspectives that can progress education.

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"#BlackLivesMatter protest in Stockholm Sweden" by Teemu Paananen from Unsplash.com

INTROSPECTION AND INTROVERSION ARE “PERMEATED BY THE ASPIRATION FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY” AS DEFINED BY THE WHITE MASCULINE FORM.

The design of theological education exists within what Jennings refers to as the building of theological education, a distorted foundation that evokes racial dynamics resembling those on plantations in the 1800s. He details what is called the “racial paterfamilia,” a social system where the father-master of the plantation/household is the basis for all social order. Jennings states that the current theological, and broader Western, educational institutions have “set [their] work inside a pedagogy of the plantation.”17 Expanding on the failures of theological education in this context, Jennings states that the echoing of this system is not due to a singular effort but rather “a practice energized by whiteness that enables practices that always bend towards the racial paterfamilias.”18 Here, Jennings is not referring to whiteness as it relates to people, but whiteness as an organization of life and institutions. The whiteness in educational institutions exists in what Jennings refers to as the “institutional unconscious,” a “nexus of feeling and thinking” that shapes the culture and organization of an institution, similar to the political unconscious.19 It is this unconsciousness that has been distorted to promote the racial paterfamilias in institutional life. Jennings illustrates this concept with a story about a young man named Sheldon, a teacher who rose through the ranks of his institution and, despite being unqualified for certain positions he held, was respected and liked by the majority of the white faculty at the school and was disliked by the faculty of color.20 This dislike did not stem from his race but because he occupied a space that he did not truly deserve, and no one stopped him. The racial paterfamilia structure takes those who have the “desirable” qualities, namely those that could regurgitate the philosophies and thoughts of the paterfamilia, and places them in positions of power. Even though they find themselves in this position, they may be unqualified in the sense that they lack any way to think critically outside this paterfamilias mold. This young man, despite being philosophically myopic and therefore unqualified for this position, was thrust into it with little contest because he fit the white masculinist mold. He inhabited a position that illustrated the racial paterfamilia structure that prioritizes the white masculine form above all else.

Jennings continues on, explaining how the racial paterfamilia dynamic forces people to “become masters,” mean-

ing they align themselves in accordance with the held idea of what a master should be, which aims towards white masculinity.21 He illustrates this conformity with a story about a preacher who was a “black woman known for being a brilliant preacher.”22 Despite her prowess, however, she preached “like a man, a very old man.”23 She was praised in her church for preaching in that manner, like a man.

This preacher, in order to be accepted in this church, had to make herself fit the mold of what a “correct” preacher should be, conforming to fit the white masculine idea attached to positions of power. Jennings furthermore states that existing in such a colonial-plantation-inspired institution forces one to “either move towards its vision of plantation-like efficiency … or live in institutional alienation.”24 Those who aspire to occupy a position of power, or to obtain institutional success, are forced to fit the paterfamilias mold, inwardly shaving off the qualities that would otherwise set them apart, while those who refuse to conform are institutionally ostracized. In order to reach a place that resolves the distortion of the institutional unconscious, Jennings proposes a discernment that can sense “motions” in institutions regarding how they conduct themselves. An examination of these motions and whether they move toward “captivity or freedom,” an education haunted by the racial paterfamilia or one breaking free of that mold, will move institutions closer to a place where cultivating belonging is at the forefront.25 In order to free theological education institutions from the “white master’s motions,” as outlined by the racial paterfamilia structure, Jennings states that the motions themselves must be changed.26 Jennings advocates for assimilation, meaning “to be placed in someone else’s way of life and to follow in that way.”27 Contrary to the colonialist educational assimilation in theological education, which turns people into “anticipations of an echo,” this assimilation that he presents calls on educators to turn “toward deeper involvement with the lifeworlds of their students.”28 To achieve this assimilation, Jennings concludes, there has to be a “formation of inwardness,” composed of introversion and introspection.29 Educational institutions must always be looking inward at the functions of their institutions and examining how they relate to those on the inside and outside.

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Regarding the current state of educational institutions, Jennings critiques the way institutions self-reflect. Jennings states that introspection and introversion are “permeated by the aspiration for self-sufficiency” as defined by the white masculine form.30 Theological education institutions are striving to emulate the image of the “finished man,” IN SPEAKING FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD, WESTERN EDUCATION, ESPECIALLY THEOLOGICAL, IS DEPRIVING ITSELF OF THE CHANCE TO GATHER.

the crowd.”38 To be in the crowd is to be near one another, to share ideas in a meaningful way that will garner connections. In speaking for the rest of the world, Western education, especially theological, is depriving itself of the chance to gather. It is only through this gathering that communion can happen and, as a result, meaningful education can arise that seeks to understand rather than to silence. A theological education should aim to cultivate this communion.

When reading Jennings’ effort to describe the hopeful future of theological education, it is important not to misunderstand the purpose of this book. This book is not a call for the superiority of any minority group over the existing system but is rather an unveiling of a pervasive problem that has stained all of theological and Western education.

When initially reading this book, I was conflicted about fully throwing support behind it as I was unsure of the underlying message it was sending. Yet, after an in-depth analysis of certain points, I realized that my initial assessment was wrong. Jennings is not casting blanket accusatory statements over one race while casting praise over another.

Rather, he is casting light on how the concept of whiteness distorts and limits Western education and on what these institutions can do to fix it.

as is defined in the racial paterfamilia structure.31 Jennings states that in doing so, these institutions are creating “inadequacies” in those who fall short of this finished man.32 Elaborating on this point, he goes on to say that “not knowing,” an inadequacy under this system, forces those in a state of “not knowing” to be constantly searching for what they do not know. But, “such a not-knowing was endless, so the searching would be endless.”33 Jennings states that too many institutions are lost in quantifying what the students should know instead of focusing on “the shape of the journey to know.”34 As both the motions that comprise theological institutions and their inability to look properly self-reflect, Jennings says theological education must un- 1 Luke 5:1 (ESV).

Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging dergo an overturning, a revolution. It is only after this rev- 2(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), 141. olution that education can get to a point where the journey 3 Jennings, 32.

4 Jennings, 30. is cherished and not simply finished.

5 Jennings, 32.

Jennings states that the revolutions are a part of West- 6 Jennings, 30.

34. ern education, as even the colonialist education came in 78 Jennings, Jennings, 37. the aftermath of a revolution, but the institutions built out 9 Jennings, 35.

47. of this overturning “maintain an order we have mistakenly 1011. Jennings, Jennings, 49. come to believe is good for us.”35 This current educational 12 Jennings, 59.

63; Jennings, 64. formation that we have is so distorted with racial and gen- 1314 Jennings, Jennings, 67. der inequities, and has been for so long, that we do not 15 Jennings, 72.

72. know anything else. In order to achieve an overturning that 1617 Jennings, Jennings, 82. breaks out of this mold, theological education institutions 18 Jennings, 85.

Jennings, 93. must “share what [they] have and … cultivate an education 19.

20 Jennings, 86. in sharing.”36 The sharing of knowledge, of experiences, 21 Jennings, 95.

95. and the recognition of the common goal that these insti- 2223 Jennings, Jennings, 95. tutions aim towards is the future of the education Jennings 24 Jennings, 104.

25 Jennings, 104. aspires toward.

26 Jennings, 106.

In the conclusion to his book, Jennings emphasizes 27 Jennings, 107.

110; Jennings, 112. how Western education “[exists] within the long history of 2829 Jennings, Jennings, 114. colonial convening, forming a shared practice of speaking 30 Jennings, 116.

116. to and for the rest of the world.”37 He refers back to the 3132 Jennings, Jennings, 116. crowd as an analogy for theological education. There is a 33 Jennings, 119.

Jennings, 120. persistent refusal in Western education to “release oneself to 34.

35. Jennings, 125. . .

. . . . . . .

.

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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36.

37.

38.

Jennings, 133.

Jennings, 139.

Jennings, 141.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm from Unsplash.com, Edited by Anthony Fosu

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A P R AY E R F O R DA RT M O U T H This prayer by professor of religion Lucius Waterman appears on a plaque hanging at the entrance of Parkhurst Hall.

O Lord God Almighty, well-spring of wisdom, master of power, guide of all growth, giver of all gain. We make our prayer to thee, this day, for Dartmouth College. Earnestly entreating thy favour for its people. For its work, and for all its life. Let thy hand be upon its officers of administration to make them strong and wise, and let thy word make known to them the hiding-place of power.

Give to its teachers the gift of teaching, and make them to be men right-minded and high-hearted. Give to its students the spirit of vision, and fill them with a just ambition to be strong and well-furnished, and to have understanding of the times in which they live.

Save the men of Dartmouth from the allurements of self-indulgence, from the assaults of evil foes, from pride of success, from false ambitions, from hardness, from shallowness, from laziness, from heedlessness, from carelessness of opportunity, and from ingratitude for sacrifices out of which their opportunity has grown. Make, we beseech thee, this society of scholars to be a fountain of true knowledge, a temple of sacred service, a fortress for the defense of things just and right, and fill the Dartmouth spirit with thy spirit, to make it a name and a praise that shall not fail, but stand before thee forever. We ask in the name in which alone is salvation, even through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

— The Reverend Lucius Waterman, D.D.

NICENE CREED We, the members of The Dartmouth Apologia, affirm the Nicene Creed, with the understanding that views may differ on baptism and the meaning of the word “catholic.”

We [I] believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

We [I] believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstanstial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.

We [I] believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the Prophets.

We [I] believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

G E T T I N G I N VO LV E D The Dartmouth Apologia exists to articulate Christian perspectives within an academic setting, and we do this through our biannual publications, lecture series, and weekly reader groups where we read and discuss the works of exemplary apologists such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.

We at The Dartmouth Apologia invite people from all intellectual, religious, and spiritual backgrounds to join us in our discussions as we search for truth and authenticity. If you would like to get involved, please feel free to email us at the.dartmouth.apologia@ dartmouth.edu or check out our Instagram or Facebook @dartmouthapologia. To subscribe to the journal or to check out past issues of the journal, visit our website at www.dartmouthapologia.org.

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Inside cover image by John Frederickson Arens

DA RT M O U T H A P O L O G I A . O R G Back cover photo by Tony Perez

[1 Peter 3:15]