Upcoming Conferences

In addition to my ISBL paper, "Counting and Dreams" Jonathan Borofsky as Scribe," I've proposed several more.  My proposal for Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology (LEST) IX has been accepted, but I'm still waiting to hear back on my Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) proposals.  In the meantime, I thought I might post the abstracts for these papers to give you an idea of what I'm working on.

Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology IX: Mediating Mysteries, Understanding Liturgies, October 23-26, Leuven, Belgium

Broad Sacramentality, Broad and Generous Liturgies: David Brown and James K.A. Smith

• In the first two of three “Cultural Liturgies” volumes (2009, 2013), James K.A. Smith “employ[s] the term liturgy in a broad and generous sense.”(2009: 86)  The designation “broad,” in this context, calls to mind the work of David Brown, who, five years prior and over the course of three volumes (2004, 2007, 2008), has argued for a broad sacramentality.  Considering these works, as well as Brown and Smith’s larger corpora, I will summarize and compare their respective projects with special attention being given to their notions of revelation, interpretation and discipleship.  I will then argue that Brown might resource Smith’s project; more specifically, that Brown’s “hermeneutics of Pentecost and crib” might address Smith’s call for a “special hermeneutic” (i.e., a supplement to his more general creational hermeneutic), with Brown’s notion of revelation and change providing a more robust and theologically rich context for reading, and critiquing, Smith.  

Evangelical Theological Society, November 19-21, Baltimore, MD

Exploring the Possibility of an Imaginative Natural Theology: Considering Alister McGrath, Anthony Monti and T.J. Gorringe

• With the recent publication of The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, it is fair to say that there is a renewed interest in natural theology, and not just in the realm of analytical philosophy.  Several have called for an imaginative approach, Alister McGrath among them.  Following T.F. Torrance, McGrath has cast a new vision for natural theology, one that presupposes the Christian view of the world.  Along these same lines, Anthony Monti has argued that art has the potential to suggest, point to and reveal the Trinitarian God.  Others have followed suit, often implicitly and unwittingly.  I shall argue, however, that McGrath and Monti, misunderstand Barth, and fail to deliver a Barth-approved natural theology.  T.J. Gorringe’s recent efforts will then be considered as having espoused something more consistent with Barth’s theology.  That said, it is no natural theology.  I will suggest, then, that one must choose between Barth and natural theology, imaginative or otherwise, a position that begs the question: Is a non-Barthian imaginative natural theology possible, and if so, what form might it take?

Evangelical Philosophical Society, November 19-21, Baltimore, MD

What is Natural Theology?: Definitions, Alternate Designations and the Question of Clarity

• What is natural theology?  Definitions abound, and each definition relies upon one or more prior definitions, related concepts, and conceptual relationships, and this is to say nothing of those who advocate various alternate designations.  Over and against those who ignore or embrace a plurality of definitions, as well as those who propose various alternate designations, I shall argue that the designation “natural theology” should be retained, but not without an accompanying essentialist (i.e., sine qua non) definition, one that allows for a plurality of interdisciplinary efforts with their own discipline specific, supra definitions and methods.  Various approaches will be considered, compared and evaluated in an effort to answer the question with which we began.

ISBL – Counting and Dreams: Jonathan Borofsky as Scribe

Well, I submitted my first conference paper proposal this past week, for the 2013 International Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature, and I've just gotten word that it's been accepted for the Bible and Visual Culture program unit!

The paper is titled "Numbers and Dreams: Jonathan Borofsky as Scribe."

Here's the abstract:

Jonathan Borofsky (b.1942) is an American artist best known for his wall drawings, installations and public sculpture.  That said, his early work was primarily conceptual, including "Counting from 1 to Infinity" on paper and keeping a dream record.  Freudian analyses of Borofsky's dream record have won wide acceptance.  I shall argue, however, that more illuminating is the parallel with ancient Jewish scribal practices that could also have religious implications for our own day. 

I'll try to post the paper to my Academia Profile after I've presented it so that those of you who want to read it can access it.

Image Credit: Jonathan Borofsky, Self-Portrait, 1979

Literature and Apologetics

As a follow-up to Friday's post, Art and Apologetics, I thought I might say a few words about Literature and Apologetics, and this by way of an introduction to Holly Ordway.

Ordway is the Chair of the department of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University (learn more about their M.A. here), and the author of Not God's Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith (Moody, 2010).  She's working on a new book Literary Apologetics: An Introduction (Moody, 2014), and blogs regularly at Hieropraxis.

But what exactly is literary apologetics?  In a recent interview with Marcia Bosscher, Ordway explains:

Literary apologetics is a form of imaginative apologetics, which in turn is a form of cultural apologetics, which is to say it's engaging with culture and cultural products as opposed to purely being analytical.  In particular, imaginative apologetics recognizes the imagination as a mode of knowing.  It is possible to grasp truth by experience and by use of the imagination, as well as by the use of reason.  And that includes the visual arts, film, sculpture, dance, and music; literary apologetics would specifically be the literary component.  

And a bit further on:

Literary apologetics looks at how literature can present truth, how it can present meaning, and how we can engage with that meaning through literature.  It's actually a much bigger question than just, How do we present a particular Christian idea in literature?  Because literary apologetics involves understanding .... And works by non-Christians as well as Christians are really valuable for this.

Especially interesting with regard to Gospel through Shared Experience is that Ordway came to faith by way of literary apologetics.  She recollects:

I had been reading Christian authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien in particular.  To borrow Lewis's phrase, those authors were "baptizing my imagination" and getting me to think a little bit more, or to feel a little bit more that there was something real about their faith. 

I'd had very shallow stereotyped views of what Christians believed.  It was when I went back and reread the great Christian poets: John Donne, Gerald Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, etc., that I really came to grips with the fact that this beautiful poetry, written by very smart, thoughtful men, was about something that was totally outside my experience, the experience of faith.

And so Ordway might be added to the ever expanding list of Testimonies of Gospel through Shared Experience.

Along these lines, the following reading might be of interest:

Andrew Davison, ed., Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Imagination. See my review on Transpositions here.

James K.A. Smith, "Show Me the World"

Gregory Wolfe, "Whispers of Faith in a Postmodern World: The myth of secularism triumphant in the arts is just that – a myth;" cf. "Letters to the Editor."

For additional suggestions, see Hieropraxis: Recommended Reading – Literary Apologetics.

Art and Apologetics

Written when George Pattison, now Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford, was Rector of the Badwell Ash group of parishes, Suffolk, the article "Art and Apologetics" in Modern Churchman (now Modern Believing) called for an awakening.[1]  The awakening Pattison had in mind?  "The aim of this article is primarily to recommend the visual arts as a suitable case for ... apologetic treatment."[2]

A lot has changed since 1991, but I'm not sure that I've seen a better brief introduction to the conversation of art and apologetics.

Pattison begins:

"Serious apologetics can naturally never just be an attempt to reclothe the Christian message so as to make it more easily acceptable to a particular audience.  Serious apologetics depends on the theologian recognizing that the themes and concerns of his partner in dialogue are in some way also his own."[3]

This posture is particularly important, and goes to the core of gospel through shared experience.  Returning to Pattison, he summarizes his argument as follows:

"I should like to suggest four points, which, I realize, do little more than open up what must become a much more wide-ranging discussion and which are very personal, but then an element of subjectivity is inherent in the nature of the case.  These four points can be summed up in the words: particularity, integrity, wholeness and pluralism."[4]

Regarding particularity, Pattison points out that visual art "has an object quality, a 'thereness' or concreteness which requires of us a very particular kind of attention."[5]  He continues: "Art recalls us to the contingency of the earthly stuff in which and with which it works, and of which we too are made.  Both art and Christian theology makes us aware of our essential creatureliness."[6]

By "integrity," Pattison "mean[s] that the artist, and not just his or her medium, is bound by a very specific and very distinctive vision and way of working.  The integrity of the art is the way in which the artist's own individuality permeates and impresses itself upon the work."[7]

From there, Pattison moves quickly through the last two points.  Regarding wholeness, he notes: "But where art is true to its own particularity and where it shows real integrity it embodies something of the quest for wholeness in which the religious individual is also involved, no matter to what extent the artist may consciously define his art as an art of protest or negation.... Here art testifies to and keeps alive a will to a larger life than that encapsulated in any rational system of manipulation or explanation."[8]

Finally, and quite briefly, Pattison addresses pluralism.  He explains:

The artist's vision of wholeness does not pretend to exist outside the field of a particular perspective, and artists do not regard the simultaneous co-existence of a variety of styles as in any way wrong.  To put it crudely, no one is surprised if an art class produces as many different representations of a model as there are students.  Theologians, on the other hand, tend to feel that they must reach agreement, in this case perhaps that they must reach a common mind as to the nature and destiny of the girl who is sitting naked in the middle of the art studio.  Theology does not work easily or naturally with a perspectival view of truth but aims at a truth which lies beyond perspectivism.  But if theology is going to stay alive in a pluralistic future it could well start by sitting in on art class.[9]

Though brief, Pattison covers quite a bit of ground, and certainly "open[s] up what must become [and perhaps already has become] a much more wide-ranging discussion."[10]  In an effort to continue the conversation, I have listed several books and an article for further reading.

Frank Burch Brown, "Aesthetics and the Arts in Relation to Natural Theology," in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. Russell Re Manning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

T.J. Gorringe, Earthly Visions: Theology and the Challenges of Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 

Anthony Monti, “‘Types and Symbols of Eternity’: How Art Points to Divinity,” Theology 105, no.824 (March/April 2002). 

Anthony Monti, A Natural Theology of the Arts: Imprint of the Spirit (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).  

George Pattison, Art, Modernity and Faith: Restoring the Image (London: SCM, 1998). 

George Pattison, Crucifixions and Resurrections of the Image: Christian Reflections on Art and Modernity (London: SCM, 2009).

_____

[1] George Pattison, "Art and Apologetics," Modern Churchman, 32 no. 5 (1991): 24-30.
[2] Ibid., 24.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 26.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 27.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 28.
[9] Ibid., 28-29.
[10] Ibid., 26.

Emmanuel I-IV @ Cedarville University

When we found out that we were going to be moving to St Andrews, Scotland this past year I immediately began looking for a temporary home for our four large Borysewicz paintings: Emmanuel I-IV.  

It's tough to find someone willing to take four 69x69 inch paintings for a temporary, though extended, time!

Thankfully, my good friend Jim DeVries connected me with some folks at my alma mater that were keen to give the paintings a home for this season of our lives.

For the next two and a half years or so they'll be hanging in the Center for Biblical and Theological Studies at Cedarville University.  And I'm thrilled to know that the pieces are being seen.

These paintings have been around the block.  Before we purchased them, they were only shown together on one occasion.  I picked them up from the artist's studio in Brooklyn, drove them back to Grand Rapids, MI, and installed them for an Advent exhibition at Calvary Baptist Church. 

The following year I installed them for an evening at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary during the Art that Tells the Story Book Release.

And shortly thereafter we installed them for Art that Tells the Story at Art Prize 2011.

To read more about this exhibition see my three-part series on Transpositions:

Engaging Art Prize: An Introduction [Part One]
Engaging Art Prize: A Stories Theology of the Arts [Part Two]
Engaging Art Prize: Two Vignettes [Part Three]

That said, this three-year exhibition at Cedarville is only the fifth time these four pieces have been exhibited together.

To read more about Alfonse and these works as well as a video interview and additional links see here.

Borofsky and the Pythagoreans

Jonathan Borofsky (1942-) is an American conceptual artist best known for his wall drawings, installations and public sculpture. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University (BA), Ecole de Fontainebleau in Paris, and Yale University (MFA). After graduating from Yale in 1966, Borofsky moved to New York City, and, preferring “to think about art rather than to make it …. began writing––random thoughts about the universe, philosophical truisms, conceptual diagrams, and numerical notations––a process that for him was a regimented activity.”[1]

Borofsky bound these pages up into a “Thought Book,” but became dissatisfied with this exercise and began counting on paper. Borofsky describes the work, noting: 

The numbers were written on graph paper with a digit in each square for the first few thousand pages. Afterward I began to break off into other kinds of paper, because sometimes I had a notebook or some other kind of paper with me. The counting became less rigid even though it remained a linear activity. I have used ball-point pens, crayons or pencils, but for the first couple of years I stuck to graph paper and BIC pens. I counted either on one side of a piece of paper or on both sides. I also wanted to take my counting in both direction so I started writing – 1, – 2, – 3, and so on. I only got up to about – 10,000 and stopped, and then went back to the original forward counting. 

The counting piece was the culmination of a period of what was labeled conceptual work––just pen, pencil, and paper, and using the mind, more or less, as a device to exercise daily. It was the clearest, cleanest, most direct exercise that I could do that still had a mind-to-hand-to-pencil-to-paper event occurring. It was very linear and conceptual.  There was no intuition involved and everything was planned out ahead of time. All I had to do was get up the next day, pick up my pencil, see what number I was on, and continue counting from there. In 1971, after counting for a couple of years (and doing nothing else), I had the occasional need to scribble on the same sheet of paper as the counting. It was like taking a break. The counting had become a break from my thought process, and the scribbling now became a break from the counting.[2]

He later exhibited a 3-4’ stack of these pages as “Counting from 1 to Infinity” (of which the section in the above photo is a small part).

My recent research has been an exploration of Borofsky's work in relation to the Pythagoreans, Jewish scribal culture, and Medieval manuscripts. Not quite sure where this one is going to land, but I'm enjoying the process!

_____

[1] Marshall, “Jonathan Borofsky’s Installations: All Is One,” in Mark Rosenthal, ed., Jonathan Borofsky, 89.  
[2] Jonathan Borofsky, marginal comments, in Rosenthal, ed., Jonathan Borofsky, 33. 

Image Credit

Gifford Lectures 2012 – 3 & 4

Last night's lecture, the third in the series, was titled "Genetic Variation and Human Behaviour."  I have  nothing to say about this lecture as it was, to be quite honest, above my head.  I was glad to hear Alexander say that the concepts he discussed were slippery (see below).

Tonight's lecture, the fourth and final in the series is titled "Molecular Genetics, Determinism and the Imago Dei."  Most interesting, to my mind (not surprisingly), was the second half of the lecture when Alexander turned his attention to "Five strands in the idea of humankind made in the image of God."

1. The value and status of each human individual irrespective of their genetic status.
2. The physicality of the Genesis teaching about the image of God – humankind as the embodied self.
3. Diversity – male and female He created them.
4. The entailment of moral responsibilities and duties.
5. The command given to humankind to rule over and subdue the earth.

He then asked, "How do we apply this to human genomic care?"  And replied, "The allure of total control is a fantasy to be resisted."

His summary of the lectures was as follows:

1. The dichotomous language of nature and nurture emerged during the latter part of the 19th century to fragment the composition of human identity.
2. A reframing of the discussion about human identity by means of DICI.
3. The scope of quantitative behavioral genetics and the slippery notions of 'heritability.'
4. Molecular genetics – correlation should not be confused with causation.

And his conclusion:

• Humankind made in God's image resonates with the diversity, sociability, moral responsibility and experience of human freedom that biology involved in the DICI acronym guarantees.

He closed the Lectures with a prayer from Francis Bacon:

• "May God never allow us to publish a dream of our imagination as a model of the world, but rather graciously grant us the power to describe the true appearance and revelation of the prints and traces of the Creator in his creatures." (from The Great Instauration, 1620)