View From The Basement

Infallible human beings

"nuclear technology requires infallible human beings, because it reacts extremely disagreeably to human error" - Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God, p207

Who said the German's have no sense of humor?

Knox, Knox, who's there?

"Knox, Knox, who's there?"

Ah it's John Knox, standing in the quadrangle of New College. He used to stand proudly on the Royal Mile outside St Gilies cathedral, but he got moved, and while New College is perhaps as good a place as any for him to stand it does mean he's a little hidden away.

Perhaps this is a parable for Scotland's relationship to Christianity, the church or the bible. "We" don't mind it still being there so long as it's not out in the public sphere but his hidden away in the religious quadrangle.

Help I have children

Lynn over at Help I work with children had organised a conference for families called Families on Fire. We went along as a family - I didn't make it to it all due to other commitments.

It was good to take some time to think about our family and what God wants to do in and through us.

I think most people who went benefited from the weekend, so thank Lynn for all your hard work.

Is that Jim up there?

This picture hangs on the wall in Rainy Hall. The first time I saw it I took a double look and asked myself, "is that Jim up there?"

Uncanny or what!

MacIntyre on Moral Dilemmas

Last week I'd to do a five minute presentation on Alisdair MacIntyre and moral dilemmas. You can read his writing on this here.

What I said is as follows;

MacIntyre opens this essay by noting that moral dilemmas seem to be particularly prevalent in contemporary society and that the volume of writing on this issue in the last thirty years has exceeded the “entire preceding philosophical literature dealing with this topic”. He thus asks how instructive these contemporary writing are to those who find themselves in moral dilemmas. While not answering his own question directly, the fact that he ends with a consideration of Aquinas and how he can guide us in moral dilemmas suggests MacIntyre thinks there is little help to be sought from these contemporary writings.

MacIntyre sketches three situations which seem dilemmatic. The first involves the conflict in discharging competing responsibilities, the second in keeping a promise to confidentiality when this information could do good and the third over sacrificing either virtue for excellence in some activity or virtues required for being a good friend.

MacIntyre argues that these examples are different from mere choices as a genuine dilemma involves “genuine wrongdoing”. Thus the choice to save two drowning people when only one can be save is not a dilemma, we must save one and not none!

MacIntyre then moves to consider whether there are indeed moral dilemmas or wither these dilemmas merely arise from our lack of moral reasoning or lack of information. If we learned to reason better or had a better grasp of the facts there may indeed be no dilemma. As part of this discussion he cites apparent intractable contradictions which have arisen in the field of natural sciences. Approvingly he notes that contradictions produced by the conjunction of different discoveries accompanied, “a conviction that there was a right and consistent theory to be discovered”. Thus the scientist’s dilemma was a perplexity secundum quid (according to something). MacIntyre believes this theoretical perplexity among natural scientists to be analogous to moral agents in dilemmatic situations.

This allows MacIntyre to introduce the idea of penultimate and ultimate facts. Dilemmatic situations arise when we wrongly understand the relationship between penultimate and ultimate facts. To aid us in understanding this relationship MacIntyre introduces the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas. MacIntyre proposes that on Aquinas’s view “no one is ever genuinely perplexus simpliciter”. Aquinas in MacIntyre’s view teaches us that we may be perplexed “but only relative to some factor, identification of which will be key to resolving the dilemma”. Thus dilemmas are penultimate facts of moral life, but not ultimate facts of the moral life, thus by means of right reasoning, deontic logic (?), we can escape the dilemma.

Returning to his opening examples of dilemmas MacIntyre suggests how this Thomistic understanding illuminates the right action to perform.

Questions –

(1)    Does MacIntyre’s account of dilemmas and their resolution take sufficient account of the complexities of actual life, thus does his argument about theory and fact hold?

(2)    MacIntyre says nothing about how we learn to reason rightly only that we should. Is this a fatal flaw?

(3)    Given the reliance on deontic reasoning how does this proposal work for those with learning difficulties?

(4)    How does MacIntyre’s account of resolving moral dilemmas fit with what we know from our previous weeks reading of Augustine and Luther? Would Luther accuse him of a works righteousness approach to ethics?

Bretherton at New College

Went to hear Dr Luke Bretherton give a lecture to the post grad theology cohort in New College yesterday. Bretherton has not moved to Edinburgh, he's still at King's College London, but one of the privileges of being at New College is that once a fortnight there's a visiting lecturer who gives a post grad talk.

Brethertons talk was titled Political Consumerism and Pursuing the Peace of Babylon: A Case Study in the Politics of Ordinary Time.

In essence this was a theological reflection on fair trade. What Bretherton was probing for was a form of "political consumerism" as a turn to the economy as an area of effecting political change and a constructive form of engagement with the "earthly city".

Bretherton conceded that the term "political consumerism" is problematic given the widely held negative perception of the term consumerism. Yet he wants to retain it for to his mind there is polemical and pragmatic reasons to do so. Bertherton is not convinced by critiques of capitalism which see it as fundamentally at odds with Christianity, thus seeks to find "cracks" where dissatisfaction with injustices of the capitalist system can be cultivated.

Bretherton ties this idea of political consumerism to "ordinary time" as this is the in-between time (in-between feast and fast) of God's yes and no to the world. Thus but participating in political consumerism we are also saying yes and no to the world. As such fair trade is a modest form of "ordinary politics" in which we can participate in acts of vicarious representative action.

There was much more that he said, but given that at these things the pace of the talk is not conducive to talking great notes (is this a ploy as the presenter has in mind to publish the talk albeit as part of a larger work?), it's my recollection of what he was proposing.

The question time after the presentation was lively and I think it would be fair to say that most who spoke had major misgivings with Bretherton's proposal.

Northcott questioned whither rules, i.e. the legislation of fair trade, can carry the deep logic of Christian concern. As a founding trustee of Traidcraft, Northcott speaks with a great degree of knowledge on these matters. I think part of his concern is that now the big supermarkets have "got in on the act" and complied with the rules, this is done on a "what's the minimum we have to do to achieve Fair Trade status" rather than the wider relationally and long term commitment, which extends beyond the merely economic concerns, i.e. to issues of justice, education, health, poverty, which are part of the original Fair Trade vision.

Nevertheless, Bretherton's paper is an attempt to theologically reflect on the realities of the economic situation rather than construct an unrealisable ideal. This is perhaps it's strength, although we may want to react against it.

Write Regularly

Once a week I have to attend a course on Basic Research Methods. Yesterday's class was on  Effective Reading and was taken by Jolyon Mitchell. It was a good class with a mix of stimulating visuals, quotes and interaction.

The session ended with the thought that reading makes us better writers and writing makes us better readers, and with the challenge to write regularly. That is, don't just leave writing for essays, dissertations or other projects, but write regularly (daily?), even if it's only fifty words, for in doing so we can learn to become better writers, and thus better readers.

I had been thinking that given the new pressures on my time that this blog might slowly fade away, but Jolyon's encouragement to write regularly has strengthened my resolve to use the blog as a place to write regularly and try and improve my skills in this area. This ties in with some of Fernando's thoughts that blogs should be well written.

So hopefully over the coming weeks and months there will be less spelling mistakes, typo's and poor grammar from this particular blog.

All Change

I've stepped down from my position as Youth Pastor at QPBC to start a full time taught masters at New College (part of Edinburgh Uni) in Theological Ethics. My responsibilities for the Youth work formally end with the close of this month. My supervisor is Oliver O'Donovan, which is a great oppertunity to learn and be challenged from someone who is widely respected in his field.

I hope to take this onto PhD level but finding funding for this will be key if it is to happen.

We'll continue to stay in Glasgow which means that the days on which I travel through to Edinburgh are long, so prayer for energy and good nights sleep would be welcome.

My application to start this year we a little late and the uni admin offices have been very busy. All this means that getting matriculated and thus able into the libary etc., has been slow going, and I'm still not there with it yet! Transitions rarely go simply and we feel that there's a bit of a battle going on as I make this move.

That said God is good and I feel excited about this oppertunity to study more.

I hope to try and keep the blog going but things are pretty full on at the moment so time for blogging may be limited.