[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" hundred_percent_height="no" hundred_percent_height_scroll="no" hundred_percent_height_center_content="yes" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" status="published" publish_date="" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" enable_mobile="no" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" spacing="" center_content="no" link="" target="_self" min_height="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_image_id="" background_position="left top" background_repeat="no-repeat" hover_type="none" border_size="0" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" border_radius="" box_shadow="no" dimension_box_shadow="" box_shadow_blur="0" box_shadow_spread="0" box_shadow_color="" box_shadow_style="" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="" margin_bottom="" animation_type="" animation_direction="left" animation_speed="0.3" animation_offset="" last="no"][fusion_text columns="" column_min_width="" column_spacing="" rule_style="default" rule_size="" rule_color="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id=""] At Gutenberg we sometimes refer to Romanticism as the Enlightenment’s “evil twin”—somewhat facetiously, of course, but a certain amount of opprobrium does attach to the term in the annals of intellectual history. Romanticism has been characterized as the refuge of irrationalists, obscurantists, even solipsists who would downplay or even deny the reality of the phenomenal world. The English poet Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) epitomizes the Romantic temperament when he reacts to controversial scientific ideas like Robert Chambers’s “transmutation of the species” (a precursor to Darwinian evolution) and their tendency to view human beings as unexceptional: “Let Science prove we are, and then / What matters Science unto men, / At least to me?” (“In Memoriam,” Canto 120.) If science, history, and representational art are windows through which we see the world outside, then surely Romantic art and philosophy are mirrors in which, like Narcissus, the gazer is lost in an imaginary dream. But what, after all, is the difference between a window and a mirror apart from the fact that the former shows what is behind it and the latter what is before? Indeed, one could argue that the window—corresponding here to scientific observation with its supposed objectivity—presents the greater obstacle to true knowledge because of its very transparency. Its presence, and thus its effects on the observer and the observed, is easily forgotten. The mirror, on the other hand, which obviously presents nothing more than an image of reality, never lets one lose sight of the fact that one’s perspective is limited. Even for the Apostle Paul, the mirror is a more appropriate metaphor for the medium of earthly knowledge: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Romanticism, then, might be understood as a reaction to the epistemological pretensions of Enlightenment thinking. But that is not all. By framing their artistic and philosophical productions as so many mirrors—most are loosely if not strictly autobiographical—the Romantics restored to our picture of reality what the Enlightenment and its heirs tended to erase: the human being, instinct with the breath divine. This human being is not, in Tennyson’s words, “wholly brain”; not merely a pair of hands to pull a lever or crank a machine; not—notwithstanding the reductions of the Darwinist—nothing but that part of the body for which the modesty of a former age sewed an apron of fig leaves. In contrast with all such analyses, all such breakings-down of the human being, the Romantics saw the goal of philosophy to be a synthesis , a putting-back-together-again. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who of all the Romantics offers the fullest exposition of their thought, writes thus of the imagination, a faculty more important to them than any other: It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. (Biographia Literaria) The idealized, unified, synthesized image of the human being that we glimpse in the mirror of Romantic poetry and prose is beautiful and maybe even flattering, combining as it does many of the features that we would sooner associate with God: “For Mercy has a human heart, / Pity a human face, / And Love, the human form divine, / And Peace, the human dress.” 1 The effect of the picture as a whole, however, is a melancholy one, for in a corner of the frame, small but conspicuous, crouches a hideous creature: Death. If the prey for whom it lies fiendishly in wait, the human being, were merely an animal or a machine—as some of the Romantics’ contemporaries averred—the picture would lose its sadness along with its beauty. American Romantic Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49) makes the connection between sadness and beauty explicit in his comments on a kind of self-elegy written by another Romantic, William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet’s cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul … Let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of beauty. (“The Poetic Principle”) Here Poe professes not to know the reason why great beauty should grieve us, but I believe the foregoing discussion provides an answer. The more beautiful we find something—that is, the more we recognize in it the imprint of the divine—the sadder we are tempted to become, understanding or remembering or only vaguely sensing that it, too, must pass. Or perhaps, observing beauty that seems perpetually renewed, like winter blooming into spring, we are saddened at the thought of our own continuous decline. “Beauty,” as the English Romantic John Keats (1795-1821) famously wrote, “is truth” (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”). Poe puts his finger on this idea in a later essay when he writes: “[T]he death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world” (“The Philosophy of Composition”). Many of his poems and stories, and all of the more beautiful ones, have just this as their theme. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, In her sepulcher there by the sea— In her tomb by the side of the sea. This is not the affectation of a poet who has simply realized that sorrow sells. Poe wrote “Annabel Lee” after the death of his consumptive wife at the age of twenty-three. We may also confidently trace the origins of “The Raven,” “Ligeia,” and “Berenice” to her long illness—and to Poe’s memory of his young mother’s death from the same disease when he was still a child. Poe is not the only Romantic to sound this note of sadness. Just as some have detected in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) the first signs of the Romantic sensibility, the elegy may be the genre in which the Romantics did their more characteristic and beautiful work. In “Adonais,” the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) writes: I weep for Adonais—he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! Again, this is no lachrymose little number performed by a hired mourner at the head of a Roman funeral procession. Shelley wrote it less than six months after Keats’s death from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five, seeing in his friend’s fate not only the tragedy of the beautiful Grecian youth beloved of Aphrodite but also a foreshadowing of his own demise. (Shelley was to die six years later, young himself and, like Keats, relatively obscure.) Shelley’s grief, like Poe’s for his wife Virginia, was real. Real too is the grief in the sonnet beginning with the words “Surprised by joy” by the English Romantic William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the last of the sad, beautiful poems that I shall adduce for you here. Its first words, of course, were later used by C. S. Lewis as the title for his 1955 autobiography, testifying to the poem’s importance for him. In this sonnet, Wordsworth recounts the pain he felt when, turning unconsciously to share a moment of happiness with his three-year-old daughter Catherine, he remembers that she is dead. —That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. C. S. Lewis, remembering the time when he was still seeking a philosophy of life that would do justice to his experience of it, writes: “The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics” (Surprised by Joy). Like the Romantics, he rejected the latest instance of Enlightenment thinking, the psychological “realism” of the day according to which even our highest aspirations are sublimations of sexual desire—a simplistic and even sophomoric account of the human condition. For Lewis, such a theory failed to account for what he calls “Joy.” Joy is to be distinguished from pleasure and even happiness, he writes; in fact, one might almost call it a kind of grief. Most interesting for our purposes is the genre of the literary work to which Lewis traces his first encounter with Joy: the elegy. “I heard a voice that cried, / Balder the beautiful / Is dead, is dead…” 2 The death of the beloved, the beloved’s beauty: this might be a poem by Poe, Shelley, or Wordsworth. Lewis found in Romanticism a view of the human being that better accounted for the reality of Joy, for that strange mixture of elation and dejection we feel when love reveals to us man’s beauty with the toll of a passing bell. But this is not the end. Joy—grief—is not the end, as Lewis came to realize, but a signpost directing us thither. It may be an inseparable part of all the higher manifestations of beauty, as Poe observed, but it can have no share in the highest. As any Christian could have told them, and as Lewis discovered, the highest manifestation of beauty (and the end of sadness) is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Once a Romantic myself, I believed that our Lord had forever sanctified human sorrow with his tears. “Weep with those who weep,” Paul tells us in Romans 12:15, and this is just what we see Jesus do in John 11:35, where he weeps with those who mourn the death of his friend Lazarus. But whom, we may ask, is Jesus weeping for? Is he, as the Romantics would have done, weeping for Lazarus? Scholars disagree on the answer. The text, however, shows Jesus greeting the news of Lazarus’s sickness and death with equanimity because he knows he will raise Lazarus from the dead. It thus suggests that Jesus weeps not for the dead man, who has only “fallen asleep in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:18), but sympathetically for the living. Today I search the New Testament in vain for the sadness I found so beautiful in the Romantics. “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Matthew 9:14). And he is with us always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). For a long time, our writing has either drily painted the world without us (like the Enlightenment writers) or run with the tears of self-reflection (like the Romantics). What would our writing look like if it were to crystallize into a vision of the world to come? What if we, beholding our visage in the center of the mirror, were to sit ourselves down and see above us the image of the one who stands at our back, the one true man and express image of the Father, rising victorious over the grave, and ourselves raised with him? Perhaps such writing might look like the Hyperion of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) at the height of its passion: Auch wir, auch wir sind nicht geschieden, Diotima, und die Tränen um dich verstehen es nicht! [We too, we too are not parted, Diotima, and the tears for you understand it not!] Perhaps it would resemble the “Dream-Fugue” of Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) in the splendor of its final throes: A thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, has God shown thee to me, standing before the golden dawn, and ready to enter its gates—with the dreadful Word going before thee—with the armies of the grave behind thee; shown thee to me, sinking, rising, fluttering, fainting, but then suddenly reconciled, adoring; a thousand times has he followed thee in the worlds of sleep—through storms; through desert seas; through the darkness of quicksands; through fugues and the persecution of fugues; through dreams, and the dreadful resurrections that are in dreams—only that at the last, with one motion of his victorious arm, he might record and emblazon the endless resurrections of his love! Or perhaps we would see in it something of “Crossing the Bar,” that lofty valediction from the poet with whom this essay began, Alfred Tennyson: Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho’ from out our borne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. Whatever the case may be, we may appreciate the work of the Romantics for what it is—a fairer, sadder, higher view of the human being than the Enlightenment thinkers gave us. But let us move beyond their view of “the higher manifestations of beauty,” entangled as it is in death and grief, and instead thank God for that highest beauty that holds no sting. __________ Notes: 1 “The Divine Image,” William Blake (1757-1827). Back to text 2 “Drapa” (Death Song or Dirge) by Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér (1782-1846) as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 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If you are like me, some miracles in the Bible are hard to believe. On the one hand, ample evidence shows the Bible is true and inspired. On the other hand, making sense of some miracles in the context of our understanding of the physical world is not easy. Miracles create a tension in our belief system that is not easy to resolve in many cases. For instance, figuring out what it means in Joshua 10:13 for the sun to have stopped in its course is a bit mind-boggling. One approach to addressing the tension is to pursue the well trodden paths of assessing the two sides of the tension through careful analysis of both the Bible and our scientific understanding. This requires a sensitive reading of the Bible, an exploration of the reliability of the text, an understanding of the person of Jesus (who believed in the truth of the Scriptures), and an understanding of the intention of the authors. It also requires a nuanced understanding of science, the nature of scientific claims, and the limits of scientific knowledge. Over the years, talented people have produced an enormous amount of work regarding these questions, some of which is extremely cogent and clear. Ultimately, the best resolution and understanding come from these sorts of analyses and pursuits. But such pursuits are difficult and time consuming. Few have the ability, inclination, or skills to thoroughly explore the ins and outs of the questions. The sheer number of questions is daunting, and for many people, they are not burning issues. Most people will decide based on other sources. In this article, I want to explore some of the non-analytical factors that direct most people’s thinking about miracles. To do so, I want to look at one of the primary historical arguments against miracles and how it fared in Western culture. But first we need some background. Prior to the Renaissance, there was little if any question about miracles. It was not difficult to believe in miracles; everybody did. The disciple Thomas may have doubted that Christ rose from the dead, but I do not think the reason was because he had a hard time believing miracles were possible. After all, he had spent years witnessing Jesus perform miracles. In the medieval period, miracles and the supernatural permeated life in Western society. Lewis writes in the Discarded Image that the model people accepted of the world was full of supernatural beings and activity. Ghosts, angels, and demons walked and worked in the world. The motions of the heavenly bodies influenced our fates and characters. Further, people accepted that relics, pilgrimages, and papal bulls could affect one’s soul and spiritual condition. Bread and wine turned into the blood and body of Christ every day. Thus, when a medieval person heard that Moses parted the Red Sea or that the sun stood still, there was little cause to doubt. There was no reason to question the possibility that such things could and did happen. Background presuppositions supported a view in which supernatural activity was accepted, even expected. The medieval response to the sun standing still was WOW, not how. Our culture no longer holds these assumptions. Why is that, and how did it happen? The common explanation goes something like this: As modern science began to develop, people began to see that previously held beliefs were no longer supportable. The earth is not the center of the solar system. The planets move according to impersonal Newtonian principles. Magic does not work. The body acts in many ways like a complex machine without a “vital source.” When society had no scientific explanations, many things were explained by supernatural or non-mechanical causes. But since we now have science—so the story goes—we no longer accept the supernatural. While this explanation does give part of the picture, it does not fully account for the shift from a world where miracles were expected to a world where miracles are hard to swallow. To see why this is the case, it will be helpful to look now at a specific argument against miracles put forward during the period of the Enlightenment by Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). Hume made a strong and influential argument against the likelihood of miracles, which he published in 1748 as part of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding . The essence of his argument was that we should assign probabilities to events in accordance with the amount of empirical evidence that supports them. He reasoned that there was an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence for the existence of natural laws; we see such evidence every day. The evidence for miracles, on the other hand, was minimal and relied not on empirical observation but on testimony. He expanded on his theme at some length, but the core of the argument relied on an appeal to the experience of our senses—that is, cold hard data. The argument is a good one if, and only if, you accept his premises—namely, that we must judge based purely on the amount of empirical evidence. Miracles are believable only if we have a large quantity of miracle observations. He presupposes that other sorts of judgments, analyses, and sources of evidence are invalid. For instance, Hume attacks the validity of apostolic testimony and disregards the internal coherence of biblical and historical evidence. If one assumes that all that exists is what we observe, then that which we cannot observe cannot exist. Hume’s argument, then, is flawed because it assumes what was to be shown. Nevertheless, the argument took hold in the culture’s imagination. It was, and still is, persuasive to many and continues to be discussed and widely debated. If this argument had been written a hundred years earlier, however, it would have been either ignored or (perhaps more likely) censored. What was the appeal of Hume’s argument? Why did it gain traction? Was it the cogency of the argument or something else? I would argue that people saw Hume’s argument against miracles in a favorable light because of their desire for morality. On the face of it, such a claim seems like an outright contradiction. If people were interested in morality, why turn from the truth of the Bible? Why reject the goodness of God and the resurrection of Jesus for the sake of morality? The answer lies in the cultural context of Hume’s time. When Hume published his treatise on miracles in 1748, Scotland had experienced two Jacobite rebellions in 1715 and 1745. The Jacobites, whose name came from a Latin form of “James,” sought to restore the Roman Catholic Stuart King James VII of Scotland (James II of England and Ireland) and his heirs to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The famous battle of Culloden in 1746 resulted in a final loss for the Jacobites at the hands of the British. It signaled the end of the attempts to put James’s son Charles Stuart, a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Charlie, on the British throne. These uprisings were, in a sense, the culmination of over a century of civil war and religious persecution in the British Isles. In the early 1600s, several non-Anglican protestant churches were growing: Puritans, Quakers, and Congregationalists. Catholicism, on the other hand, was severely repressed and restricted. Catholics could not hold any positions of power and were often persecuted. The animosity between Protestant England and Catholic France tended to make those tensions worse. In the 1640s and 1650s, Cromwell, a Puritan, successfully led a civil war against King Charles I who was perceived to be too friendly to Catholics. Cromwell was successful for a time, but eventually the monarchy was restored. After the restoration in 1660, the new king, Charles II, took steps to outlaw all religions except the Anglican Church. Later in 1685, after the death of Charles II, James II (Bonnie Prince Charlie’s father) ascended to the British throne. He was, as it turns out, a Catholic. He began to overturn all the statutes against Catholics and appoint Catholics to positions of power. For many this was anathema, and he was deposed three years later in the so-called “Glorious Revolution.” He avoided the usurpers and made his escape to France. The Jacobite rebellions of the 1700s were the trailing edge of these struggles. Although these wars, rebellions, and uprisings were political in nature, they also had a strong religious aspect. One’s fortunes as a Puritan, Catholic, or Anglican depended a great deal on who was in power. Persecution was common. Catholic priests could be tortured. Religious intolerance was often extreme. The result of all these struggles was not primarily the growth of religious tolerance, although that did begin to grow. Instead, the late 1700s saw the growth of religious indifference. People were no longer zealous for their perspective. Dogmatism was out. I certainly cannot claim to know the hearts of those living in the late 1700s, but I cannot help but make some guesses about their frame of mind. The people of the British Isles must have looked back on the sins of the previous generations in disgust. They called for a new and different way, a moral way without all the animosity. They desired to distance themselves from the bloody feuds and intolerance of the past. Each generation rejects the moral failures of the past, and Enlightenment rationality must have seemed like a powerful alternative. According to Enlightenment thinkers, a just society could be established by using reason and science. Appeals to the Bible and to God were potentially divisive. For instance, John Locke proffered Reason as a solution to political differences. Newton used Reason to understand the solar system. Francis Bacon claimed scientific induction held the key to understanding the natural world. Immanuel Kant, in his essay “What is Enlightenment,” claimed, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”—that immaturity being to appeal to authority rather than to think for oneself. He aimed squarely at leaders who promoted a religious, authoritative intolerance. This was the context of Hume’s argument against miracles. He did not need to have a flawless and elegant argument to sway the men of Reason. He needed simply to appeal to the sensibility of the culture. He needed to appeal to the possibility for a better way, a more “moral” approach to solving differences. History shows that any attempt to take Hume’s argument seriously and show its failures was a pointless exercise. During Hume’s life, Thomas Reid did exactly that. He clearly and cogently exposed the vacuousness of Hume’s whole philosophy. And for a while Reid was widely adopted. But in the end, he fell into disrepute and obscurity. According to most philosophers and authors, Reid was backward looking; he stood for the past, for Aristotle, and for Christianity. Hume’s argument against miracles still exists in various forms in the psyche of our culture. The amount of scholarship, even recently, on Hume’s argument is enormous. For many, Hume’s argument has overwhelming persuasive power. The power of the argument and its many forms, however, resides not in the elegance of the logic or the obviousness of the premises. I believe its power resides in a perception that conformity to the Bible will lead to bad things. To a lesser extent, the same scenario that played out in Hume’s day is being repeated today. Our cultural elite are attempting to paint a picture that associates immorality and injustice with strong religious conviction. Of course, the “sins” of such convictions are fantastically tame in comparison to the religious intolerance and wars of the 1600s. Nevertheless, those “sins” are broadcast widely and loudly. Religious confidence and conviction, we are told, lead to intolerance and bigotry and dogmatism and oppression. For those who accept this story, who wouldn’t want to find a better, more moral way? We all want something better than intolerance and bigotry. Most want a path in which morality can flourish. In such a cultural context, people give credence to any argument that questions perspectives seen as dogmatic or unscientific. In the end, the supernatural view of the world has passed us by. We are in a secular world where anything that smacks of the supernatural starts on the back foot, taking a defensive posture. Clearly, part of that secularist view derives from the materialistic perspective on nature that has grown out of Enlightenment and scientific thinking. But I suggest that a significant source of that secular materialist view comes not from science but from a desire for a better cultural path, as did Hume’s case against miracles. I realize I have not addressed the issues I first raised about miracles. I did not intend to delve into an argument for or against miracles. What I hope to have done instead is to step back and examine beliefs and how they are formed. As much as I would love for it to not be true, it seems as if many of our cherished beliefs (and I include my own) are held based on our desires and assumptions, not based on careful and thoughtful examination. Naturally, some of those desires are selfish, related to our baser instincts. We try to fight those. Other desires, though, are noble. Many people desire some sort of morality. Because those desires are good, we feel justified and satisfied in pursuing them. To the extent that our culture wants morality (although I think many probably are not interested in such things), it should be applauded. There is a common ground upon which to dialog. However, simply wanting morality is not enough. The desire needs to be coupled with a sober-minded examination of what constitutes morality. We should look at the source of intolerance and what it looks like in all its different forms. Without careful examination, a desire for a better way, as honorable as it may seem, can lead us down dark paths. The Enlightenment may have delivered us from religious wars, but it also led directly to the bloody French Revolution. Good intentions, indeed, pave roads, but not all are good.

A recent historian observed that, since Augustine’s death (430 AD), no culture in the Western world has been so similar to ours as ancient Rome. Many Christians share the sense that we are becoming like Rome. Unfortunately, a gloomy inference usually follows: Because we are like Rome, they say, our fate is sealed. Our children will sink in the moral morass as the ruling class suppresses the truth. Best to huddle up and await our inevitable demise. Thankfully, Jesus’ first followers did not share that outlook. If they did, the way of Christ would have expired before ever leaving Judea. There is no denying that Rome scorned, oppressed, and persecuted Christ’s followers. But there is another part to the story. From within the domineering Roman Empire, the Christian movement exploded with incredible vitality. How did it happen? Why did the Christian movement thrive in such hostile surroundings? Martyrdom is the customary answer. Roman emperors abused the Christians until the Roman public felt compassion enough to spare them. But this routine answer only solves part of the puzzle. It does not explain how or why the Christian church grew large enough to warrant persecution. This essay fills in pieces of that puzzle, beginning with some notable similarities between modern America and first-century Rome. Urban Eras Both the Roman Empire and contemporary America are urban. Large cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles dominate the ideas, commerce, and power of today. Likewise, bustling cosmopolitan cities like Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch shaped the early Roman Empire. Early Christianity thrived because it was an urban movement. Based on the Gospels, one might get the opposite impression. After all, Jesus’ parables are populated by farmers, vineyards, and olive trees. But first-century Christians were overwhelmingly city-dwellers. Historian Wayne Meeks writes that “within a decade of the crucifixion of Jesus, the village culture of Palestine had been left far behind, and the Greco-Roman city became the dominant environment of the Christian movement” (Meeks, 11). Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora prepared the way for Christianity’s urban growth. These Jews, scattered from Judea during previous centuries, established synagogues in major Mediterranean cities. Recent scholarship indicates that Christianity took root more quickly where Jewish communities already existed (Stark, 135-140). Indeed, Jewish synagogues “formed the most important presupposition for the rise and growth of Christian communities throughout the empire” (Harnack, Chapter 1). Upon arriving in a city, Christian teachers (most notably, the Apostle Paul) would visit a synagogue. From these urban synagogues, Christianity found a culture prepared for learning about the Jewish Messiah. Paul himself was an urban man. He planted churches in the largest cities around the Mediterranean and described himself as a Jew from Tarsus, “a citizen of no mean city” (Acts 21:39). Even if we did not know Paul’s origin, we could assume he was urban. Whereas Jesus talked of sowers and crops, Paul snatches his metaphors from city classrooms, Greek rhetoricians, and urban workshops. There is another reason why early Christianity probably took root in cities. During the first century, Christianity would have been considered a deviant religious movement. Only major cities could conceal a faith at odds with conventional religion. In other words, early Christianity was weird, and cities provided a cover for weirdness. Christianity did not remain weird for long. But before explaining how Christians spread the message, let me explain what the early Christian message was and why it spread so rapidly. Historians, who have offered many answers about why first-century Christianity attracted so many followers, generally agree upon the following: 1. The promise of eternal life. Christianity was not the only religion that promised eternal life, but it rapidly became the most popular. Unlike the Roman mystery cults that promised eternal life, Christians asserted that their savior was no myth. The mystery cults worshiped mythological savior-gods like Isis and Mithra. But, unlike the mythological Isis and Mithra, Jesus’ followers believed he was a real historical person who ate broiled fish, walked cobblestones, and suffered pain. His promise of eternal life seemed, unlike the mythological Isis, to have deeper roots in reality. 2. Equality and significant roles for women . A remarkably high number of females converted to Christianity in the first century. The reason seems to be the Christian teaching on the equality of the sexes (unheard of at the time). Moreover, the teaching was reinforced within Christian communities that gave women significant roles within the church. The New Testament mentions some of these female ministers and church leaders: Phoebe of Corinth; Priscilla, a Jewish convert who lived near Rome; and Lydia, who hosted a house church in Thyatira. These women probably enjoyed a far higher status than women in the Roman world. This changed as men took positions of leadership in the second century, compelling women to accept secondary roles. 3. A merciful God who instructed his followers to practice mercy. How strange Christian teachings about mercy must have sounded in the Roman Empire! Pity and mercy were considered character defects, pathological emotions, within classical culture. The Romans admired Plato, who tossed beggars outside the borders of his ideal state ( The Republic , 8:552). Romans believed that humans should “curb the impulse” toward pity and that “the cry of the undeserving for mercy” must go “unanswered” (Judge, 107). In the classical world, rationality demanded justice—not mercy. Christian mercy would have sounded bizarre and unreasonable to an elite Roman. Yet a God of mercy was surely welcome in the urban trenches. Unlike romanticized accounts of Roman cities drawn by earlier historians, recent historians have revealed that Roman cities were crowded and dangerous. The population density of Antioch was roughly 117 per acre; compare that to Chicago (21 per acre) or Manhattan (37 per acre). Moreover, city buildings were hardly stable. Historian Jérôme Carcopino reports that Rome “was constantly filled with the noise of buildings collapsing or being torn town to prevent it; and the tenants of an insula [apartment] lived in constant expectation of its coming down on their heads” (Carcopino, 31-32). And not only were buildings dangerous, so were the streets. Carcopino describes nighttime in a typical city: Night fell over the city like the shadow of a great danger, diffused, sinister, and menacing. Everyone fled to his home, shut himself in, and barricaded the entrance. The shops fell silent, safety chains were drawn behind the leaves of the doors.… If the rich had to sally forth, they were accompanied by slaves who carried torches to light and protect them on their way.… Juvenal [a Roman poet] sighs that to go out to supper without having made your will was to expose yourself to reproach of carelessness. (Carcopino, 47) Given these conditions, it is no surprise that the Christian message of a merciful God spread rapidly. Moreover, Christian communities dedicated to the practice of mercy must have been profoundly attractive. Global Eras The Christian message also spread quickly for a very practical reason: The Roman Empire was global. Roman roads stretched from England to India and were unified by a common language. Open borders permitted travel freely between countries. While Roman travel was not so speedy as it is today, when a traveler can buy a ticket in San Francisco and deplane hours later in Tokyo, it was certainly extensive. Meeks writes that Romans “traveled more extensively and more easily than anyone before them did or would again until the nineteenth century” (Meeks, 16). Based on estimates from the book of Acts, Paul traveled nearly ten thousand miles during his career. His travels put him on roads busy with traders, pilgrims, government officers, letter-carriers, tourists, the sick, runaway slaves, fugitives, artisans, athletes, teachers, and students (Hock, 27). And he probably shared a common language with his fellow travelers: Koiné Greek. Koiné was spoken across Rome thanks to Alexander the Great who, three hundred years earlier, hoped the world would share Greek culture, science, and language. Even after Alexander’s empire dissolved, Greek continued to be spoken across the Mediterranean. Romans spoke Latin but used Greek for commerce, diplomacy, and some scholarship. Early Christians used Koiné Greek to spread Jesus Christ’s message. Even though Jesus spoke Aramaic, the writers of the New Testament wrote in Greek, presumably to ease the spread of the Gospel. Most of the early church fathers wrote in Koiné. English today functions as Koiné Greek did in Rome. Just as Greek became prevalent through Alexander’s empire-building, so did English became prevalent because of empire-building. The British Empire, at its height in 1922, was the largest in history. Although Mandarin Chinese has more native speakers, English is spoken by more people around the world, often as a second or third language; it is the common language for diplomacy, software development, international diplomacy, and business relations. Like the early Christians, today’s translators use a common language to spread Jesus’ message. When translating the Bible into tribal languages, Bible translators find a native speaker who also speaks a common language (often English) and then collaborate on translating the New Testament into a new language. So then, with relative ease of travel and a common language, the gospel spread throughout the Mediterranean world. And as it did, Christians developed shorthand statements (creeds) of “global” or basic Christianity. The earliest creed was probably the simplest: “Jesus is Lord.” But other more extensive creeds developed during the first century. Some biblical scholars believe that Paul is quoting an early creed in I Timothy 3:16 when he wrote, God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory. Later Christians would formulate longer statements like the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. These creeds not only articulated a common Christianity but also defined orthodox doctrine from unorthodox. Ethnic and Religious Pluralism Ethnic and religious pluralism is widespread in the United States as it was in ancient Rome. Just as national or geographic boundaries did not separate ethnic groups in Rome, neither do they today in America, where ethnicities mix together in the big melting pot of American democracy. In the ancient world, Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Gauls all blended together under the Roman banner. Historian Ramsay MacMullen describes the incredible “diversity of tongues, cults, traditions, and levels of education” encompassed within the Roman Empire (Ramsey, xi). The early church embraced ethnic pluralism. In fact, the racial diversity of the early church was so remarkable that some Romans called Christians “the third race.” This remarkable diversity centered on the worship of Jesus: And [you] have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all” (Colossians 3:10-11). Today most Americans commend cultural diversity and its fruits. But while the United States, at its best, offers civil rights to all ethnicities and welcomes the resultant smorgasbord of tastes and custom, ancient Rome offered no such civil rights. Nor did it welcome the fruits of ethnic diversity. Rome had created an economic and political empire but had also created cultural chaos. Historian Rodney Stark observes that the Roman Empire was a “crazy quilt of ethnic diversity and…blazing hatreds” and that “people of many cultures, speaking many languages, worshipping all manner of Gods, had been dumped together helter-skelter” (Stark, 213). Christian churches provided a peaceful alternative to the cultural chaos outside church walls. Stark writes, “In my judgment, a major way in which Christianity served as a revitalization movement within the empire was in offering a coherent culture that was entirely stripped of ethnicity . All were welcome without need to dispense with ethnicities” (Stark, 213). Not only was the Roman Empire ethnically pluralistic, it was also religiously pluralistic. Rome absorbed foreign people and foreign gods. In theory, Roman authorities did not esteem one god or religion above others and rarely banned particular religions. While the early Christians embraced ethnic pluralism, they emphatically rejected religious pluralism. They did not participate in public festivals honoring popular deities and rejected Caesar’s self-appointed place among the gods. The church’s earliest creed (“Jesus is Lord”) affirmed Jesus’ spiritual rule in individual lives while rejecting Caesar’s claim to divinity, which eventually resulted in the Christians being persecuted. Roman emperors tolerated almost anything except threats to their power. Those Christians who would not sacrifice to Caesar were eventually scapegoated and killed. Sympathy was never a Roman virtue, but the mistreatment of the Christians eventually roused a Roman compassion. Having witnessed plenty of bloodshed, Tertullian (an early Church Father, 160–225 AD) appealed for the legal toleration of Christians. From his writings ( Apologeticus , Chapter 50) comes the famous phrase, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Like Rome, the United States is committed (in principle) to religious pluralism. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the establishment of a national religion and encourages “the free exercise” of religion. But American pluralism differs substantially from Rome’s. Unlike the Romans, early Americans did not absorb household gods; nor did American presidents erect an imperial cult. Most of the American founders practiced some form of Protestant Christianity; even the Deism of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin shared much more with Christian conceptions of God than with Roman conceptions. Even though the United States was deeply influenced by the monotheism of the Christian religion, the United States is changing rapidly. Like the early Christians of Rome, we live in an urban, global, pluralistic world. In these ways and many more, we are drifting closer toward that place where the gospel emerged. We would do well to listen to those who preceded us. Bibliography Carcopino, Jérôme . Daily Life in Ancient Rome. (Yale University Press, 1940.) Harnack, Adolf. The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (First published 1908 . Reprint: Harper Torchbooks, 1962). Hock, Ronald . The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry. (Fortress Press, 1980.) Judge, E. A. “The Quest for Mercy in Late Antiquity.” In God Who is Rich in Mercy, edited by P. T. O’Brien and D. G. Peterson. (Baker Book House, 1986.) MacMullen, Ramsay. Paganism in the Roman Empire. (Yale University, 1981.) Meeks, Wayne. The First Urban Christians . (Yale University, 1983.) Stark, Rodney . The Rise of Christianity. (Princeton University Press, 1996.)

I recently had the privilege to lead discussions on two vastly different works. The first was the Federalist Papers , a series of articles written in the 1780s by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay designed to convince the voters of New York to approve the proposed Constitution of the United States. The second work, “ A World Split Apart ,” is the transcript of a 1978 commencement address given at Harvard University by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was famous for writing about the abuses in Soviet Russia during the Stalinist era, but this address did not critique Eastern failings; it critiqued the failings of the West. Read together, the two works give an interesting perspective on how our culture has changed over the last two centuries. The meaning and intention of some of the most noble sentiments of the Constitution have been reinterpreted in a way that they have become dangerous to our faith. These ideas are freedom of speech, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, and the pursuit of happiness. My intention in this series of four posts is not to write about politics. I am not offering political solutions or critiquing political problems. I am discussing social and cultural beliefs, beliefs that have become so ingrained in our cultural psyche that we cannot see them for what they are. This subtle infiltration into our consciousness is what makes them dangerous to our faith. Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech In the first amendment to the Constitution, we are guaranteed the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The intention of this amendment was to prevent the government from clamping down on political dissention and criticism. It was assumed that the press, for instance, would act as a watchdog on corrupt or bad behavior on the part of the government. The press was also to be a source of information through which the electorate could make informed decisions. But the goal of maintaining an informed electorate by insuring a free press has not been accomplished. Instead the press reports only on what is fashionable. This change has occurred largely due to the economic nature of public discourse. The press and the entertainment industry are subject to the economic pressure of financial success. Thus they do not write or show anything that their base subscribers or viewers dislike. If they alienate those subscribers, then the subscribers will stop watching, and revenues will go down. Thus public discourse is subject to fashion. It can inform the electorate only of what the electorate wants to hear. Unfashionable scandals are not scandals at all. An example of the impact of fashion can be found in the news items selected by NPR. Most of the stories, except those dealing with breaking news, fall into an “oppressor vs. oppressed” narrative: some powerful, bad person or organization is causing harm to some powerless, good person or organization. We like to hear these stories because we feel for the underdog and the oppressed. These stories stir our moral outrage and draw us into action. But the world is not like that. Sure, there are powerful entities in the world that abuse their status and should be exposed. But are there not many more of the powerless and disenfranchised who do horrible things? We all know Walmart is supposed to be evil, but how many stories do you hear about people who shoplift from Walmart? I believe that such a story would not be well received. No one wants to hear about that. A powerful man who is racist is news. But a poor person who cheats on his taxes is not. Why do we care about the racist remark but not the tax evasion? I would suggest it is due to the fashion of the times. The censorship provided by such a scheme is much more complete and pervasive than any governmental restriction of speech could ever create. It works on our ideas from the bottom up, not on our words from the top down. Granted, there are voices that can and do offer critiques and alternative views. The impact of these voices on the culture at large, however, is minimal. On the one hand, if the views offered are completely out of fashion, then only a very small sector of the population can or will be willing to listen. Thus the effect will be marginal on society as a whole. On the other hand, some alternative views may be embraced by a large segment of the population, but these represent only a competing fashion. They will only offer debate and dissent on issues over which there is competition, which is of course healthy, but it masks the underlying similarity of opinion on other issues. We feel as if there is free discourse because of the difference of opinion, but we forget that much more is not being discussed because it is not a subject of ideological competition. The left and the right are at each other’s throats, but they both seduce their supporters into accepting ideas on which they agree. How often, for instance, does the press report on the bias of its own economic orientation? How often do you see stories questioning whether higher education is primarily for job preparation? Where are the in-depth stories examining whether high tech helps or hurts society? There is little to no debate on these issues between the left and the right. The development of a fashion in the media blinds us into thinking that we are bravely taking on the most important issues of our times. But instead, our horizons are narrowed to the most fashionable issues of our times. Our ability as a culture to interact in successful ways is limited to those sorts of solutions fashion allows. More importantly, the fashion of our media envelopes us as individuals to such an extent that it is far more difficult to discern God’s view of good and evil. An issue related to the freedom of the press is freedom of speech. Here the danger is even greater since the impact is more pervasive. As with freedom of the press, freedom of speech was designed to ensure political freedom. But the types of speech now included under the rubric of free speech has expanded well beyond freedom of political speech on issues of public concern. Freedom of speech has been reinterpreted as a ticket to spew abuse and verbally manipulate any statement without repercussion. Freedom of speech is now freedom from just about any and all restraint in speech. As a result of our “free for all” speech, modern publications, radio, and video cater to many of our basest human desires in order to continue to titillate and excite the emotions. The strategy is to have the widest possible appeal and to keep the maximum number of readers and watchers engaged. All sorts of damaging ideas and images are thus thrust mercilessly on us, especially on our youth who are least able to resist. But if anyone tries to restrict this onslaught, “freedom of speech” is invoked to silence the naysayers. Not only does free speech degrade our moral sensibilities, it also promotes a base form of legalism. The media, in recognizing the economic advantage of engaging our passions, constantly pushes the limits of the law in that direction. It has substituted internal restraints of goodness with external restraints of legality. Our culture now believes that it is morally acceptable to engage in character assassination, spreading of rumor, distortion of meaning, damaging innuendo, sexual exploitation, and misrepresentation—so long as it does not exceed the legal limits of such behavior. And if those people damaged by such behavior push back, the media reverts to the sacred dictum of the freedom of the press. The danger here comes from the way the culture has demeaned kindness and decency. In the name of political freedom, we have allowed ourselves to believe that evil is OK. We have normalized unkindness in our speech. To the extent that we adopt these perspectives, we have debased ourselves and lost our way. Separation of Church and State The separation of church and state is also established in the first amendment to the Constitution. It grew out of the colonists’ experience with state-run churches. In Europe, the political rulers had authority over the church. Only one church organization was allowed, and people who dissented were subject to legal persecution. Thus the Constitution included the separation-of-church-and-state clause to avoid this sort of heavy handed political repression of religious freedom. Since that time, however, the separation of church and state has been reinterpreted as a separation of religion and state. This has since devolved into a prohibition against any acknowledgement of the spiritual in any governmental entity. Clearly this was not the intention of the original founders. If that were the case, then there would be no mention of God in the founding documents. Appeals to God were, in fact, common in the founding of this country. This change is primarily a response to the growth of a politically powerful atheistic segment in society. The growth of this segment is the result of the slow but steady increase in materialistic and naturalistic philosophy in the West—basically a denial of spiritual realities. Many of the touch points where this battle is being fought are, for the most part, not particularly significant: for example, debates on who can pray in school and when; debates on what sorts of documents can be publicly displayed; and so on. How these particular issues play out do not seem to be too significant for our cultural life, but the general trend and the drive behind the battles are very damaging. Effectively, separation of church and state has restricted the kinds of issues that can be raised in public discourse. Only issues that deal with worldly material needs are allowed. We constantly harangue over taxes and budgets. We debate about fair labor laws and immigration. National security is contrasted with civil liberties. All of these aspects of our public life deal with our mundane interests and needs. Missing is any discussion of the fact that man is not just a material being. Instead, that man is purely material is assumed without debate in the public sphere. The assumption tacitly implies that the things of importance are material: the types of problems that we have are purely material; solutions to problems are to be accomplished through purely material means. The idea that our deepest and most profound problems are spiritual is not even on the table. I am not suggesting that material needs are not in the purview of public life. Nor am I advocating a “Christian political agenda” as a solution to our problems. Instead, I am pointing out how the trends in our culture have devalued and marginalized many of the most important aspects of public discourse. This is perhaps dangerous to our society. But more importantly, to our great loss, it encourages us to devalue the significance of our spiritual nature. One of the main ways that this reinterpretation of church and state has affected our culture is in education. Our goal in education is to pass on the ideas, values, and skills that will help our children live the best lives they can. Spiritual questions—such as right and wrong, what it means to be a human, and whether there is a supreme being—are central to this task. But in the current system, to raise these questions is, in fact, illegal! This sort of restriction on education surely never darkened the worst nightmares of the writers of the Constitution. Another important consequence of this reinterpretation of church and state has to do with how society approaches social services. Federal and state social services can only consider the material well being of those in need. All analyses and researches into our social problems are purposely blind to our most important problems, spiritual problems. Such an approach is bound to lessen the success of these services. The need for the spiritual in social services can be seen in Alcoholics Anonymous. My understanding is that AA promotes the idea of a higher being in its treatment. If AA were restricted from encouraging the attendees to consider a higher power, the program would be significantly less effective, both socially and individually. Man is a spiritual being, and everyone recognizes this whether or not they admit to it. All feel the need for purpose. All feel the need for connection and love. All feel the call to the transcendent. The idea that we should eliminate this aspect of our lives from the public sphere is self-defeating at best and malicious at worst. Rule of Law The United States was founded on a written Constitution. The fact that this document was designed to be the highest law of the land was extremely significant. It put into place the rules by which the country was to be governed, and it restricted the means by which those with power could abuse that power. What the people were responding to was the nature of law in Europe. In most European countries, the decree of the monarch was the law. Granted, the monarchs were severely limited by traditions, representative bodies, and social structures; but in principle, no law could hold the King responsible for his actions. In the United States, it was important to have the laws clearly spelled out and inviolable. No one was above the law. Everyone was subject to it. The system of checks and balances was included specifically to prescribe the laws for the people at the top. But every set of laws, no matter how well written, is incomplete. It cannot take into consideration every method by which people can take advantage of others. For every new law enacted to clamp down on damaging or deceitful activity, other new ways can be invented. The laws of the United States relied heavily on the character of the people. The laws specified the minimum standards of behavior, not the expectations of how people will behave outside of the law. Over the last two centuries, the internal constraints on bad behavior have eroded. Social pressure and expectations had been the primary means to maintain decency. But we have slowly freed ourselves from those norms, and in their stead has come an increasingly bloated set of laws. What has developed is a kind of Phariseeism. We have come to think more and more that whatever is legal is right. The rule of law then becomes a game. Instead of a fixture designed to prevent the injustice of the crown or the aristocracy, the rule of law has become a game in which winners and losers are chosen not according to justice but according to cleverness and availability of resources. Clearly, there have always been those who will manipulate and steer the law to their will. But the prevalence of that attitude has increased. This trend can easily be seen in the business world. As an example, there was a practice in Wall Street in which traders had figured out how to intercept “buy and sell” orders milliseconds prior to an exchange. Because of their physical proximity and the superior speed of their internet connection, traders could place an order microseconds prior to the intercepted transaction. By this means, they were able to legally skim profits off all transactions they intercepted. This was clearly a fraudulent activity. However, since the practice was new and undetected, it was not yet illegal and thus considered fair game. Another obvious example of legalism is in the press, as I mentioned in a part one of this series. The press has a great deal of freedom to publish as it desires. Because of the nature of the laws, outrageous injustices can and are perpetrated by the press, all within a strictly legal framework. Individuals lacking internal constraints feel justified in their actions, especially if it brings greater income or prestige. The legal system itself is a perfect example of the legalism that has developed. I am not directly involved with the law system, so my observations are perhaps not the most accurate. However, it sure seems as if justice takes second place to technical considerations. For instance, if a suspect confesses without the Miranda rights being first administered, the suspect can be acquitted of the charge. The cumulative effect of legalism is to discourage internal moral constraint. To the extent that the law is seen as the criterion for right and wrong, immoral but legal behavior becomes normalized, accepted. This sort of cultural attitude is toxic to our souls. We need to encourage each other to take morality seriously. We need to have standards other than just the law. The rule of law is good, so long as it does not replace a morality based on a transcendent reality. Pursuit of Happiness In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson writes that we are endowed by our Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Of these three, the last one may seem out of place as being rather less high minded. We might see life and liberty as unalienable, but the pursuit of happiness seems a little self absorbed. However, the word happiness when Jefferson used it did not have the same connotations that it has today. The idea of happiness has had a long history. Aristotle, for instance, thought of happiness as the fulfillment of a human being’s goal in life. He distinguished man from all other creatures in the world by man’s rationality and social life. Since these qualities make man unique, then his goal or purpose must be wrapped up in these qualities. Aristotle equated happiness with outstanding moral and intellectual activity in the affairs of the city state. Thomas Aquinas took a similar view, except that for him the goal of human life differed. Aquinas saw the ultimate goal of existence in eternal life. Life on earth, then, could never bring complete happiness (i.e., completion of one’s goal as a human), only partial. These ideas framed the concepts of John Locke. He wrote, The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action… (Essay Concerning Human Understanding) Here Locke seems to relate happiness with the “highest perfection of the intellectual nature” and “our greatest good.” This idea is clearly reminiscent of Aristotle and Aquinas. What Locke does not mean is that the pursuit of happiness is the license to please our worldly desires. Jefferson, who immortalized the words “pursuit of happiness,” was drawing directly from Locke. In this context, then, it is obvious that the pursuit of happiness belongs with life and liberty in significance. Today the pursuit of happiness has been reinterpreted to mean the right to go after worldly benefits. We have demeaned the original intent so much that it has become diabolical. The idea that God has somehow granted us the inalienable right to obtain worldly goods is about as antithetical to the biblical picture as you can get. One cannot serve both God and mammon. And yet if a person, organization, or government places restrictions on our ability to pursue our base desires, we feel our rights have been trampled on. How dare anyone prevent us from polluting our minds with pornography! This demeaned view of happiness is fraught with danger. We live in a culture that has imbibed this view; it is all around us, and it is difficult not to conform to it. This view of happiness is particularly heinous in that it invites us to see that which is evil as noble. We are taught that rights are good and that infringements of rights are bad. Then we are taught that we have the right to follow our base desires. It is not stated in such stark terms because we would reject it. But it is subtly implied in all that we do and hear and see. An example of this is the battle over sex and nudity in broadcast television. The perception is that the TV censors are infringing on our rights to watch what we want. The freedom to take mind-altering drugs is also becoming a right; it makes us happy . We have a right to health care because health is a part of our pursuit of happiness. The list could go on and on. The pursuit of happiness as it was originally conceived is noble. We should strive to become the best human beings that we can. What makes us human is bound up with our moral and intellectual gifts. To debase this excellent sentiment by making it a pursuit of money, fame, and physical gratification is a tragedy—and dangerous to our souls. Series Conclusion Culture is a powerful force. I think we all recognize that at some level. But knowing we are affected and recognizing how we are affected are very different things. I think the juxtaposition of cultures side by side can sometimes help to open our eyes. It is instructive to have an insightful outsider like Solzhenitsyn look into our failings as a society. It is instructive to compare the thinking of the writers of the Federalist Papers with current thought. Even so, we can never escape the danger of an intensely seductive culture. We live in it; we breath it. We conform to this world despite the warnings of Paul. And it is at this exact spot where the danger lies. We are frogs in a pot of water in need of a thermometer. Ultimately, it is the juxtaposition of our culture with God’s values expressed in the Bible that provides the thermometer. But unlike frogs, we cannot jump out of the pot. We must find a path in the midst of the hot water. We must pray, as Jesus did, that God will sanctify us in the truth of His word (John 17:17)

As Gutenberg’s rhetoric teacher, I listen closely to political campaigns. I do not listen expecting to be edified but to remind myself how far rhetoric has fallen and what happens when reasonable debate falters. Rhetoric, traditionally, is the study and practice of reasoned persuasion. In the ancient world, the study of rhetoric was a cornerstone of the intellectual life, but it has been neglected, and the effects are beginning to show. When a democracy cannot settle disputes through reasoned debate, disputes are settled through power. American political campaigns are no longer arenas for reasoned debate, but a façade for the accumulation of power. Upon her election in 2008, Nancy Pelosi announced her goal as Speaker of the House: elect more Democrats. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, after the 2010 Republican victories, announced his goal: prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. This is what we have come to: Absent the ability or desire to persuade others through reason, politicians persuade with money, advertising, and glamour. Is it any wonder young people prefer their political news from comedians? A recent survey showed that the top news sources for young people are The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report . Given the absurdity of the climate, what can they do but laugh? The situation is intolerable, and, thankfully, prominent people are proposing solutions that encourage politicians to quit bickering. For example, Lieutenant General Russel Honoré proposed sending congress to boot camp for a lesson in shared sacrifice. Another proposal recommends forcing congress to sequester on gridlocked legislation until they learn to compromise. I am skeptical, however, that these solutions will solve the problem. Dogmatism is not the primary problem, and cooperation—though sorely lacking—is not often the best solution. Legislators propose thousands of bills every year, and many are (how do I say this gently?)—inane. While working as a congressional intern in Washington D.C., I remember a bill proposing to combat violent crime by taxing bullets . It was difficult to imagine a gang member saying, “Fellas, I can’t do the drive-by; my accountant would kill me.” The solution to the Taxing Bullets for America Bill is not compromise, but dogmatic opposition. Our problem is not that we argue too much. A healthy democracy ought to argue vigorously and frequently. Indeed, the American Founders constructed a government driven by reasoned debate; they intended reasoned argument to steer every committee meeting, congressional assembly, and judicial hearing. Yet the Founders were also convinced that men’s hearts were wicked. Thus they planted the legislative process thick with restraints like filibusters, procedural rules, checks and balances. Law-making proceeds at a glacial pace to (hopefully) cool the passions that so often derail reasoned debate. The problem is not too much ideology or too much argument. Rather, the problem is that our arguments do not result in persuasion. Our arguments offer, in the words of Shakespeare, “more light than heat, extinct in both.” Last year, for example, every newscast seemed to cover some new punch in the global warming debate. Did one side convince the other? No, both sides simply gave up from exhaustion. Why are our arguments so fruitless? I could offer a multitude of reasons, such as the modern media’s preference for sound-bites, Americans’ shorter attention spans, and advertising’s wearying effect on our sense of judgment. But rather than retread beaten ground, let me offer three less discussed reasons for why our arguments go nowhere. Then I will suggest a solution. The first reason: A culture war has been clanging since the late sixties. Democrats and Republicans are not merely rival political platforms; they are rival worldviews. Balanced budgets, education models, and gay marriage are surface arguments about a deeper debate over deeper questions: What is a human being? Is there an Ultimate Judge? What can government accomplish? Our political debates are really worldview debates with each worldview holding tightly to its own beliefs, vocabularies, and goals. No wonder persuasion seems impossible. A second reason our arguments go nowhere: “We” do not know “them.” A few years ago a friend confessed that she didn’t know anyone who voted for George Bush a second time. When Bush was reelected she thought, “Maybe my friend-pool is a bit homogenous.” She is not alone. The Washington Post recently reported: Americans say they enjoy living in diverse communities. But research shows that they increasingly cluster among those who are just like themselves, especially on the one attribute that ties the others together: political affiliation. Our grouping according to political affiliation is a testament to the power and pervasiveness of the culture war. Nearly every aspect of contemporary life—from education to automobiles—is divided into political categories. You homeschool your children? You are a conservative. You drive a Prius? You are a liberal. Who wants to justify everyday convictions to unsympathetic neighbors? Life is easier when we dwell with neighbors, churches, and friends that share our convictions. This tendency not to know “them” is perfectly understandable, but it also contributes to our dysfunction. A third reason (and the focus of this essay) why our arguments lack fruit: We simply do not know how to persuade or be persuaded. I am not suggesting we are a grossly illogical culture, yet we view persuasion with great suspicion. We are skeptical that we can persuade. More importantly, we are skeptical of allowing ourselves to be persuaded. This skepticism seems especially prevalent among young people, in part because persuasion is an undeveloped skill. In one sense, persuasion is like market-haggling. Imagine a woman, untrained, who steps for the first time into an open-air bazaar. She is bombarded with appeals for carpets, pearls, earrings, bracelets, tableware, and silks. She hears prices, offers, promises, and bargains. Being untrained, these appeals sound like a senseless commotion. She cannot tell the difference between a bargain and a bluster. Skepticism, given this situation, seems quite sensible. This is a central challenge for many younger people: Given the commotion of the market—and a lack of skill—skepticism is sensible and safe. But anyone hoping to find value cannot merely retreat from the market. She must be willing to listen, argue, persuade, and be persuaded. Reintroducing classical rhetoric into schools would help lessen skepticism. Classic Rhetoric What exactly is classical rhetoric? In the ancient and medieval worlds, she was a queen of the arts. Rhetoric asked, “What is a good argument and why?” Her domain was all of life because we construct and consider dozens of arguments every day about everyday life. Rhetoric was queen, but she fell from grace. The measure of her fall is reflected in today’s use of the word “rhetoric.” To be “rhetorical” means roughly “to blow hot air.” A man who is “speaking rhetorically” is a man who is “lying.” In the words of prominent twentieth-century literary critic I. A. Richards, the study of rhetoric is “sales-talk selling sales-talk.” How did rhetoric go from queen of the arts to a banished stepsister? Her ouster began in the seventeenth century when many of the arts adopted analytical science (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.) as their model. For example, governance quit being the art of managing the affairs of state and became political science . By adopting the sciences as a model, the art of everyday argument suffered. Why? Because the analytical sciences traffic in precise words with precise definitions. For example, the words ‘mammal’, ‘cell’, and ‘protoplasm’ have very specific definitions for a biologist. But everyday words are less precise and more dynamic. The word ‘freedom’, for example, has a broad, malleable definition even among political scientists. The strict methodology of the analytical sciences requires specific definitions that are too restricting for everyday debate. Aristotle, the father of both analytical logic and rhetoric, recognized a profound difference between analytical sciences and everyday rhetoric. He described the differences between the two: Analytics focus on syllogisms within specialized disciplines like biology. Conclusions are produced from premises. For example: Premise A: All mammals are warm-blooded. Premise B: All dogs are mammals. Conclusion: All dogs are warm-blooded. Rhetoric also uses syllogisms leading toward a conclusion, but its terms are less precise and likewise its conclusions. Analytics’ conclusions are believed true regardless of audience consent. Rhetoric’s goal is the persuasion of an audience. Analytics’ conclusions are assumed to be certain. 1 Rhetoric’s conclusions are assumed to be probable. Both the analytical sciences and rhetoric rely on logic. But because rhetoric’s domain (everyday life) is more dynamic and messy, it cannot achieve the certainty of more formalized disciplines. Thus, instead of certainty, rhetoric aims for probability. Example: Can you prove a free society needs a free press to remain free? No. Can you show that to be probable ? Yes. Can you prove bureaucracy stifles creativity? No. Can you show it to be likely? Yes. Aristotle warned against making rhetoric a science, but it happened anyway. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Renaissance philosopher Peter Ramus asserted that analytical science was the only method that “presides over mathematics, philosophy, opinions, and human conduct” (Ramus, Dialectique , p.50, 25). During the Enlightenment, more and more of the human arts sought to follow the methods of the analytical sciences. By the twentieth century, rhetoric was a scorned discipline. The grand art of rationally persuading and being persuaded, became a dirty discipline. The queen had been dethroned and locked from the castle. Until recently. Rhetoric is experiencing a renewal in schools across the country. Dozens of rhetoric journals are now being published by colleges and universities. And a classical education movement—which places rhetoric as a pedagogical centerpiece—is gaining momentum among private and home schools. But anyone interested in rehabbing rhetoric need not look at trends to be inspired. The best inspiration comes from great rhetoricians in our past. Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King were both classical rhetoricians. Both men inherited a country split in violent disagreement and, through rhetoric, both persuaded some men to change their minds. How? Both Lincoln and King followed a pattern described by Aristotle. 1) Both began with what they shared with their opponents. Lincoln and King knew something today’s politicians do not—their opponents. Neither man preached merely to the converted; both understood their opponents and could appeal to them. Lincoln’s first inaugural address, a masterpiece, was offered on the brink of the Civil War. He began, not by recounting the points of disagreement between the Union and the Confederacy, but with a point of agreement—namely, that he did not intend to …interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963) was written to white pastors from Alabama. These pastors shared with King a respect for the Christian Scriptures. Thus, King’s letter opens with citations from the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul. After beginning with points of agreement, Lincoln and King proceeded to their argument. 2) Both focused on the primary problem, not the periphery. Lincoln and King both honed their arguments on the central issue of contention. For Lincoln, the central issue was simple: One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. King likewise directly names the central contention: His fellow pastors rejected him because they considered his demonstrations “unwise and untimely,” the work of an “outside agitator.” 3) Both used a variety of arguments to support his thesis. Lincoln’s objective in his first inaugural address was to convince his hearers to preserve the union. He first cites the first principles of American government. The United States is not really a “government,” he says, but a contract between states that ought not be broken unless all states agree. To support his argument, Lincoln appeals to authorities shared by all the states: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Second, Lincoln urges his hearers to preserve the Union for practical reasons. To break the union in half is simply not feasible because of the close proximity of the two halves. A husband and wife “may be divorced and [leave] the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.” King also uses a variety of arguments to support his thesis. His detractors wanted him to “just stay home” rather than cause problems in Birmingham. To counter their argument, King points to the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul who left their hometowns to carry their messages. Likewise must King carry his message beyond his hometown. Then King rebuts his detractors using logic. He accuses them of “confirmation bias”; they deplore his demonstrations but “fail to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.” In other words, they cite evidence that supports their belief (that King caused bad conditions for Birmingham) while ignoring evidence that refutes their beliefs (that Birmingham caused bad conditions for black Americans). The bulk of both Lincoln’s inaugural address and King’s letter consist of argumentation. Their arguments employ the full gamut of rhetorical tools—first principles, logic, analogies, and appeals to common authorities. 4) Each called for specific action. Lincoln urges the South to “think calmly and well upon this whole subject” and to cause no bloodshed or violence. King asks for the white pastors to preach to their congregations that “integration is morally right” and “the Negro is your brother.” 5) Each reminded his audience about what they hope to be. Lincoln’s inaugural address is peppered with beautiful phrases that appeal to what every American longed for: “a more perfect Union”; “fraternal sympathies and affections”; “bonds of affection”; “not enemies, but friends”; “the better angels of our nature.” King also appeals to his fellow pastors to be like the believers in the early church: In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” Rhetoric as a Moral Task Lincoln and King are reminders of the power of argument—that convincing is not the same as advertising, that persuasion is not the same as indoctrination. They also remind us that persuasion is not merely a skill but a moral task. A speaker’s character, Aristotle emphasizes, shapes his hearer’s inclination to trust. Lincoln’s reputation—even among enemies—was as a man of integrity (thus the nickname, “Honest Abe”). King’s reputation was also well-known. His reply to fire-hose oppression was peaceful non-violence. Lincoln and King can inspire us to remember the power of persuasion. But they also come with a warning. Despite the power of their words, the rightness of their causes, and their profound impact on this country, both Lincoln and King failed to achieve their specific goals. The Civil War erupted six weeks after Lincoln’s address, and King’s cause was never aided by Alabama’s white pastors. Their failure confirms a central tenet of the Scriptures: Men are deceitful beyond reason. Even the most persuasive words cannot cure this deceit. We suppress the truth in wickedness (Romans 1:18); our ears are dull of hearing (Matthew 13:15); the hearts of men are deceitful above all measure (Jeremiah 17:9). Christ often prefaced his arguments with admonitions like “Let him who has ears, hear,” “Let him who has eyes, see.” Only God can supply ears to hear and eyes to see truth, and we do not know to whom God has given them. Our task is simply to seek and to speak the truth through words, to be persuaded and to try to persuade others of the truth. Lincoln and King did just this. Despite speaking to crooked men, they continued to argue and remained undaunted because, as King said, “right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.” --------- Endnote: 1 Taken from Chaim Perelman’s The Realm of Reason ; Aristotle’s discussion of the differences are found in his Topics and Rhetoric .

Just before Thanksgiving I received an email from a mother whose daughter had been disturbed by her teacher’s negative comments about the way the Puritans had related to the Native Americans. The teacher had recently become aware of information that prompted his comments. The mother voiced her concerns to the teacher, and the teacher cited a couple of websites to justify his statements. American history is not my field. I have no familiarity with the primary source materials pertinent to Puritan/Native American relations, but I am not entirely uninformed on the topic. I have long had an interest in the history of Native Americans. When I was in grade school, I read every book in the school and city library about Native Americans. I remember being shocked and ashamed when reading about the numerable injustices that whites inflicted on the Native Americans. I was particularly outraged by the treatment of the Nez Pierce at the hands of the white settlers. I was also struck by the nobility of Chief Joseph in the face of a whole series of wrongs done by white settlers and government officials. My interest in Native Americans continued into my college years. As a freshman I took a course about Puritan society in New England. When I read the mother’s email, I consulted the only course book I had saved from my freshman year in college— New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675 by Alden T. Vaughan. I read the information that the teacher had consulted and compared the websites’ perspectives with those expressed in my book. The websites contained information by multiple authors, but the views of the Puritans’ relations with the Native Americans ranged from extremely critical to moderately critical. My course book, while making clear that the record was not pristine, generally approved the Puritans’ dealings with the Native Americans. How can historical assessments differ so dramatically? Historians often disagree with one another in the reconstruction and evaluation of past events. This should not surprise us. Human affairs are complex. They are so complex that different people will inevitably assess them differently. We have probably all seen this same phenomenon in our everyday life. Take, for example, a marriage that degenerates into a divorce. Predictably, observers will locate blame for the dissolution of the marriage differently. Some might place the blame primarily on the husband; others might place the blame primarily on the wife. Even in those rare instances where all observers agree that one person is primarily to blame, observers will differ in the amount of blame they assign. It should not surprise us, then, if historians would disagree as to who was responsible for the tensions between the Puritans and the Native Americans. To assess an event that takes place right before our eyes is difficult; to assess historical events is even more difficult. Continuing with the example of a divorce that occurs in our circle of acquaintances, we can be in a position to know both the husband and the wife personally. We may know a lot about their traits and characteristics. But still there will be facts of the situation about which we are not certain. In all likelihood, there will even be facts relevant to the dissolution of the relationship about which the husband and wife themselves are not certain. If this is true of events that are happening in and around us, think about the difficulty of gathering facts about events in the past. And the more distant the event, the harder it is to establish the facts. Once we have all the relevant facts, the task does not become easier. Facts alone are not very interesting. As human beings we want to make sense of the world in which we live. This leads us to want to make generalizations and identify causes because if we can learn from history patterns of behavior or causes of certain effects, then we have the possibility of learning something that can help us navigate the challenges of the present. But, returning to the divorce analogy, even observers who have all relevant facts are bound to disagree as to the exact causes of the dissolution of the relationship. Accurately identifying causes is an art. Establishing causes with respect to history is just one kind of abstraction that makes the study of history rewarding. Accurate abstractions are hard to make, however. Let me use another example. Let us say we want to determine whether the city where I live, Eugene, is a racist city. For the sake of our example, let us assume we can identify racism when we see it. (Please note that this is no small assumption.) We could interview hundreds, even thousands of people. We would get all kinds of responses to our questions. But how would we assess those responses, and how representative would those responses be? And surely we would want to examine more than people’s responses to our questions. We would want to get some kind of sampling of their behavior. How would we interpret that behavior, and how would we determine how representative it is? Clearly this is a difficult task, even when dealing with an issue right in our midst about which we have abundant information. The task is even more difficult when the issue is in the distant past. We must also keep in mind that when it comes to generalizations, a piece of counter-evidence is not necessarily significant. If, on the basis of our research, we decide that Eugene is not racist, someone could parade two dozen card-carrying Eugenean racists in front of us without shaking our conclusion one bit because the evidence on which we originally based our conclusion was so compelling that two dozen counterexamples are not enough to alter our generalization. The one who brought us the counterexamples may very well be exasperated at our intransigence and accuse us of not basing our conclusion on the evidence, but such a charge is not necessarily warranted. It is simply the nature of generalizations about human affairs that there will be aberrations. The generalizations we reach as we look at the world around us, including historical data, are largely based on what we think likely. And what we think likely depends largely on our worldview. For example, any historian will embark on a study of the Puritans with some preconceived notion of what the Puritans are like and what kinds of things they are likely to do and why they are likely to do them. A lot goes into creating that picture: an understanding of Puritans as people, an understanding of the time period in which the Puritans lived, an understanding of Puritan theology, an understanding of human beings in general, and so forth. The more accurate one’s understanding of these things, the better one’s sense of what is likely. This creates an obvious problem. Any historian has a sense of what is likely before he examines his first piece of evidence. And given that much of the work of a historian is the formation of generalizations, any piece of evidence contrary to the historian’s preconceived sense of the likely can be dismissed as exception. It would seem that any preconceived sense of the likely would be impervious to change no matter how much contrary evidence comes to light. This is a danger. It can happen, but it need not. As the historian unearths more information, the historian will interpret that information in accord with his preconception. Nothing is wrong with this. The historian should try to make sense of the information in light of his preconception. As the historian uncovers information that challenges his preconceptions, he will probably hold to his preconceptions and dismiss the challenging data as aberrational. This, too, is as it should be. But as counter-information mounts, the historian needs to be willing to abandon his preconceptions and make the necessary adjustments in his thinking. If he has an emotional or psychological attachment to his preconceptions, he will hold on to them longer than is warranted. A willingness to give up even our treasured preconceptions, if the data warrants it, is the hallmark of integrity. In order to have integrity, one must have humility (a willingness to change perspectives when called for) and one must know oneself, including one’s inner drives. If a historian has this kind of humility and integrity, the historian’s preconceptions will not be impervious to change. His views will slowly change as the evidence dictates. A historian needs special skills and special knowledge to do his craft, but the way a historian comes to know the past is fundamentally the same as the way we come to know anything. And the same qualities of integrity and humility are necessary for any person to come to know reality accurately. It is important to recognize, however, that coming to know what is true—whether in the realm of history, science, or any other field of knowledge—is not a matter of mechanical computation; rather, it is a matter of making sound judgments. The process of coming to know what is true is an art, not a method. Some historians have played fast and loose with the facts. But in general, historians make a genuine attempt to base their accounts on facts. I rarely find grounds for questioning the facts that a historian presents. I am much more likely to question the picture of the past that a historian paints with those facts. Using only facts, it is possible to depict past events in a way that does a gross injustice to reality. I liken this to the difference between a painting of a person that has all of the appropriate features in correct proportion and a painting that has the appropriate features, but they are out of proportion. We call the first a portrait. We call the latter a caricature. Historical accounts can be caricatures of the past. And caricatures are most misleading when they are passed off as portraits. In our time, it is not uncommon to find historical accounts written in advocacy of an agenda. These are instances where the historian is so intent on furthering his agenda that he ceases to be evenhanded in his assessment of the historical data. The critical accounts of the Puritans’ relationship with the Native Americans that I read on the websites had all the earmarks of being agenda-driven. Certainly, the Puritans were not faultless in their dealings with Native Americans, but my reading has lead me to conclude that in comparison with the way the whites related to Native Americans in other places and in other times, the Puritans were remarkably humane.

Great thinkers are often great by being gadflies to their culture. They see deeply into the problems of the time. Of course, a large number of not-so-great thinkers are also busy identifying problems. Come to think of it, young children are problem spotters too, as any parent who has pronounced an inconsistent judgment can attest. It seems as if the skill of finding problems is not limited to the great thinkers at all; we are all aware at some level or other when things are not "right." While some of the many problems of humanity may be said to be solved, many others continue to plague us. For every proposed solution, later thinkers uncover some aspect of the solution that has been overlooked or misrepresented. One intractable problem that many of the great thinkers of the past have addressed is this: What role should rational analysis play in our lives? While the topic of rational analysis may not be in the forefront of most people's thoughts, the age-old debate over it has profoundly affected all our lives. And the debate rages on. Before describing the debate, however, let me define the term. By "rational analysis," I mean the process of using rational and logical means to break down questions into their parts, to find the causes or underlying structure. As often as not, rational analysis attempts to find principles that serve as the basis for a systematic treatment of some discipline. Rational analysis is often associated with philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians. It has been used with great success to discover truths about ourselves and the world in which we live. One of the most celebrated uses of rational analysis was that of Isaac Newton. Newton examined a variety of natural phenomena, both terrestrial and astronomical. He examined the conclusions of previous scientists, both the good and the bad. His great contribution was to select from a myriad of concepts, rules, and phenomena the foundational principles of motion. From those basic principles, he was able to reason in a direct mathematical way to a fairly complete solution to an age-old problem. His solution, the law of gravity, has been one of the most significant findings in the history of science. If rational analysis has been used with such great success, what then fuels the debate over its use? One side argues that rational analysis is the most reliable tool we have for gaining knowledge and that without it we become gullible. But the other side argues back that rational analysis is empty of any meaning ; it may answer "how" but not "why," and, therefore, it is a useless tool. Consider some examples. The Enlightenment of the 1700s was a period of optimism. Rational analysis, such as Newton used, promised great things. New vistas of knowledge were opening up, and scientific achievement was praised. The intellectual heritage of the Middle Ages was seen as flawed, authoritarian, and limited. The Enlightenment movement was an attempt to overcome the intellectual errors of the past. But the success of the Enlightenment was not without costs. In medicine, for instance, researchers were gaining new understanding of how the human body functions, but man was seen as a machine. In economics, the structure and processes of modern economy were being worked out, but a man was "labor" rather than a person. In physics, the secrets of the solar system came to light, but the system was seen as a mechanical clock rather than the creation of an involved, loving God. One response to the sterility of the Enlightenment was Romanticism, which emphasized the individual, expressions of feeling, the beauty of nature, and the imagination. The Romantics of the 1800s explored these themes in their artmaking, trying to capture the natural side of humanity. They saw science not as a solution to our problems but as a potential danger. Another response to Enlightenment thinking can be seen in the clash between Christianity and science in early twentieth-century America. A growing rejection of religion pervaded the universities; religion was "unbelievable" to rational modern sensibilities. One school of thought even believed that empirical evidence was the only reliable source of knowledge, thus denying all so-called metaphysical conclusions. Any non-scientific academic pursuit was discouraged, and thus the social "sciences" emerged during this period. Some religious leaders, rightly recognizing the problem with Enlightenment thinking, responded by retreating into cultural isolation. Rather than engaging academia on its terms, they took refuge in faith over reason. They rejected university learning and affirmed certain fundamentals of Christianity, thus giving rise to Christian fundamentalism. Both those who reject and those who embrace rational analysis recognize legitimate problems with the opposite position. Both sides of the debate make good arguments for their position. On the one hand, those who distrust the rational analytical stream of thought have good reasons to distrust it. It promises solutions to our problems and fails to deliver; technology creates cars, but it also creates bombs. Rational analysis is often complex and convoluted, hidden in technical jargon. Thus its conclusions are not easily accessible or easily judged. Furthermore, some of those who use rational analysis seem more interested in impressing men than finding truth. They wow us with their subtle thinking and impressive arguments that claim to prove preposterous sounding things. Their goal is to make a splash, not understand truth. For them, rational analysis is a game. Take "string theory" as an example. It purports that the universe is made up of some ten or more dimensions. If this is true, then it is beyond our ability to imagine and, for that matter, beyond our ability to verify experimentally. According to one well respected critic in the physics community (Lee Smolin author of The Trouble with Physics ), string theory's popularity is largely based on the many careers tied to its success. He claims that string theory has been a detriment to progress in fundamental theory. And lastly and most importantly, rational analysis tends to ignore meaning. For instance, rational analysis of astronomical data may provide conclusive evidence that other stars have planetary systems. But what does this mean? Why is it important? What does it say about life in the universe and about God's activity there? The answers to these questions depend mostly on our philosophical presuppositions. Technology, political science, and economic analysis presuppose rather than propose answers about what is valuable and meaningful; they do not, and in a sense cannot, address questions of meaning, which are philosophical. On the other hand, those who embrace rational analysis and distrust the romantic stream of thought have good reasons to distrust it. Without rational analysis, how are we to protect ourselves from "false prophets," savvy advertisers, and propagandists? How are we to live in a world that we do not understand? We may pursue an economic policy because it seems fair and just when, in the end, it simply exacerbates injustice. We may believe passionately in a particular doctrine that ends up being antithetical to the biblical message. We may trust the words of an earnest and sincere friend that seem good but are not. When open, rational inquiry is discouraged, our tools for discernment are impaired. So then, where do we now stand in this age-old debate? Is rational analysis so flawed as to be untrustworthy? In many ways, our culture has answered that question with a resounding "yes" and abandoned rational analysis. For instance, our culture has largely abandoned rational dialog in American public life; instead, rhetorical techniques more effectively persuade people and achieve a specific goal. Further, our culture no longer sees finding the truth as an attainable end; rather, all "truths" are the shared, but arbitrary, choices of the culture. Distrust and pessimism have encroached upon our collective consciousness, so that even the most hallowed disciplines are called into question. Philosophy, for example, once seen as the pinnacle of human thought, is today commonly ridiculed or scorned. Lastly, the rational scientific program begun early in the twentieth century has failed; suffering and injustice are rampant. Science and rational analysis have failed to deliver, and for this reason rational analysis has been found wanting. The court of culture has not judiciously weighed each side of the debate over rational analysis, but instead has just proclaimed rational analysis defunct. Consequently, our culture—in keeping with the Romantics who rejected Enlightenment thinking—has elevated the role of personal experience and "connection" in decision making. The younger generation, in particular, trusts what they themselves have seen, heard, or felt. Some people may still pursue rational analysis, but it no longer has the authority in our culture that it once had. The obvious problem with abandoning rational analysis, however, is this: an unexamined experience is subject to powerful new techniques of persuasion. For example, some people believe that the Apollo missions to the moon were faked for political reasons. These sorts of beliefs are born in communities where word-of-mouth and "sincerity" are powerful influences, but where careful analyses of the implications of such beliefs is lacking. We always view personal experience through the "filters" of our beliefs and desires, yet these filters are affected by many subtle cultural messages, messages that tend to discourage rational inquiry. Carefully examining our filters, our beliefs, through the process of rational analysis can help us sort out what is and is not true. We must, of course, recognize the limitations of rational analysis. Not every belief can be proven. For a variety of reasons—some obvious, others not—we cannot restrict our conclusions to those that have been scientifically verified or mathematically deduced. First, we are finite. The sheer volume of our beliefs and conclusions precludes our examining and testing every idea we have. And many of these beliefs are so obviously true that analyzing them would be a foolish and pointless use of time. Why, for instance, should we join those who doubt that our senses are reliable or that Jesus existed? Second, we are prone to error. The best and most trained minds make mistakes in their thinking all of the time. While effort and reflection can often weed out mistakes, mistakes are always potentially present. Lastly and most importantly, rational analysis is necessarily founded upon a set of assumptions. A person never begins from a blank slate, even in logic or mathematics. Yet, we rarely recognize or critically question our assumptions; often, we just absorb them from the culture in which we grow up and live, and consequently, our assumptions are subject to the beliefs and prejudices of that culture. Some of the greatest, most logical thinkers of the past have been the least critical of their culturally adopted foundational assumptions. Einstein, for example, made radical new proposals in physics, but philosophically he adopted many of the prevailing views of his contemporaries. We all desire to align ourselves with what is true about reality. We do not seek to live a life of delusion. But God has placed us in a condition of uncertainty. He has called us to choose our course without being able to prove unassailably that we are right. We do not have the luxury of choosing whether we will or will not "believe"; we can only choose whether we will believe well or poorly. How, then, should we think about rational analysis? What role, if any, should it play in our lives? Can it aid us in forming our beliefs and understanding our experience? Is there value in sorting out why we believe what we believe and putting those beliefs on a firmer footing? And is rational analysis only for more "scientific" questions and pursuits? Perhaps I am tipping my hand, but I end with an invitation: I invite you to analyze the question further for yourself.

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