James K. A. Smith on culture.

[jwright82]

This is a very interesting video of James K. A. Smith talking about his new book. The talk basically has 3 points that I will summerize to interested parties.

1. That we are primaraly driven by our desires and not our thoughts. He doesn't down play thinking only a thinking saturated view of people. He says that humans are primaraly driven by what we want or love. This is what religion is, following Augustine, it is what we love most, either we love God most or some other idol most. This is why our liturgy is the way it is, it hits our bodies first and then our minds. We have music and the physical sighns of the sacraments. Plus there are rituals, like prayer, that encompass us in an embodied way.

2. That the seculer world has its own competing liturgies, to use a very broad meaning of the word. The mall has its own rituals revolving around the the vision of "the good life" that it peddles. All of the seculer culture is competing with the christian vision of "the good life" with its competing liturgies and such.

3. That the church is the place with its traditional forms of worship, not music he is a reformed pentechostal, are on one level a counter liturgy to the seculer world. This formation of the person through an active participation in the worship service forms us into being true lovers of God, and not some other idol.

It is very fascinating and not very technichal, so please enjoy and if you want discuss it with me because I am really influenced by this thinker.

James K.A. Smith - Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation on Vimeo.

 

[ChristianTrader]

I wholeheartedly disagreed with point 1. He does not address why we desire what we desire. It is because we think it is "the Good, the Beautiful, the best thing for us" etc. We are definitely primarily thinkers. Many however do not take the time to think clearly, which causes them to love that which is not good. Why do some love idols? Because they believe the false promises given by those idols.

CT

 

[jwright82]

I wholeheartedly disagreed with point 1. He does not address why we desire what we desire. It is because we think it is "the Good, the Beautiful, the best thing for us" etc. We are definitely primarily thinkers. Many however do not take the time to think clearly, which causes them to love that which is not good. Why do some love idols? Because they believe the false promises given by those idols.

CT

A valid point, I am not completly comfortable with divoricing the mind from the heart, which I believe he doesn't want to do. But he does expand rather nicley on what it means to be human doesn't he?

 

[CharlieJ]

He's taking a voluntarist rather than an intellectualist approach. That's consistent with the Augustinian and Reformed tradition. CT is taking the Platonic/Aristotelian/Thomistic line that views the will as under the hegemony of the intellect.

 

[jwright82]

He's taking a voluntarist rather than an intellectualist approach. That's consistent with the Augustinian and Reformed tradition. CT is taking the Platonic/Aristotelian/Thomistic line that views the will as under the hegemony of the intellect.

I see. Did you like the presentation?

 

[ChristianTrader]

I wholeheartedly disagreed with point 1. He does not address why we desire what we desire. It is because we think it is "the Good, the Beautiful, the best thing for us" etc. We are definitely primarily thinkers. Many however do not take the time to think clearly, which causes them to love that which is not good. Why do some love idols? Because they believe the false promises given by those idols.

CT

A valid point, I am not completly comfortable with divoricing the mind from the heart, which I believe he doesn't want to do. But he does expand rather nicley on what it means to be human doesn't he?

I didnt see the presentation, I am familiar with the author and his book from here:

Worldview Training Is Not Enough : Kingdom People

Spiritual Formation through Desire: An Interview with James K. A. Smith : Kingdom People

 

[Guido's Brother]

I have written a review of Smith's book. You can find it here.

 

[py3ak]

A little over a year ago, Mr. Winzer said this to me:

Christians acknowledge that body, emotions and mind are functioning with the same balance in all people. People who appear to be governed by their emotions are simply not telling you the thoughts that lie behind their emotivity.

From a psychological point of view we are functioning the same when our tempers are directed towards good or evil objects. The hasty temper does not come as a result of not thinking, but of thinking wrong thoughts. The person who is quick to listen has an opportunity to think the right thoughts because he can see things from another's point of view.

From that, the first point seems off.

 

[MW]

From that, the first point seems off.

I would say points one to three are all seeking to make valid conclusions but miss the mark of the biblical picture of man.

1. Desire is certainly a driving force in translating thought into action, but those desires are able to be restrained, trained, redirected, etc. It is "the good" which is the object of desire and it is knowledge of the good which directs desire towards some end. Goodwin expresses it well: "the will of any creature, whether sinning or otherwise, must still be pitched upon some good." Again: "The law of man's will is still to be determined by the understanding, so that the will of a man is the will of his counsel." This is that to which Augustine referred when he spoke of loving God and doing what we want. He was not suggesting that desire is primary.

2. It is undoubtedly true that man is by nature ritualistic, and what he habitually entertains shapes the values of his life. That is clear from the way the Bible describes the impact of idolatry as both an expression of, and influence upon, fallen human character. But it would be amiss to suggest that the thought processes are not primary in this activity. Psalm 14 and Romans 1 make it apparent that there is strong underlying current of thought which inspires man to express his corruption and suppress the truth of God.

3. Again, it is also obvious that there is a "form of godliness" which is fitted to shape the character and conduct of men who profess the truth of God. Hence the Scriptures exhort to physical actions such as hearing, praying, singing, etc., as religious exercises which serve a specific function in bringing the whole man, body and soul, into communion with God. But what is this form of godliness without "the power thereof?" If the act of hearing, praying, singing, etc., is terminated on the outward form of religion it misses the point of the exercise, which is to draw the soul into nearer communion with God as man's highest spiritual good.

 

[jwright82]

A little over a year ago, Mr. Winzer said this to me:

Christians acknowledge that body, emotions and mind are functioning with the same balance in all people. People who appear to be governed by their emotions are simply not telling you the thoughts that lie behind their emotivity.

From a psychological point of view we are functioning the same when our tempers are directed towards good or evil objects. The hasty temper does not come as a result of not thinking, but of thinking wrong thoughts. The person who is quick to listen has an opportunity to think the right thoughts because he can see things from another's point of view.

From that, the first point seems off.

Right but he is refering to a Descartian notion of people that was essentially Platonic, that viewed us a completly head over everything else that was bad. Like Dooyeweerd and Van Til he, Smith, tends to collapse principles of philosophy into historical developments in philosophy. I do not doubt that he might, I have not read the book though, say that he is not giving a detailed pschological description of the human person, Van Til didn't either. Seeing what he has to say about Dooyeweerd distinction between naive or pretheoretical experience and theoretical experience (and the human "heart" in Dooyeweerd), which I'll explain for anyone who doesn't understand below, I would say that he is not advocating thoughtlessness (which he says in the beggining of the talk, that he loves thinking and that it pays his bills). I would guess that that would be his defense, I think he is speaking in generalities. Take for instance his talk in the presentation of Victoria Secret bombarding his 17 year old son and how throwing info at him probably won't help the problem. That is all I think he was getting at. Although I am very biased here because I really like him so I may not be completly objective here. What do ya'll think about point 2, which is in my opinion the far more important one?

The pre-theoretical/theoretical distinction in Dooyeweerd is basically this. You go into a store to buy a bottle of wine, provided you are not an acholholic or underage, you are just going to pick out a bottle and go pay and go home and have a glass or give it to someone or whatever. You are experiencing the whole proccess in a unified experience, you just went and bought it, that is the pretheoretical mindset just plain experiencing of things. But you could go home and talk with your spouse over a glass of the wine about the chemical proccesses used to make it, the physics behind it all, the economic impact of your choice, the philosophical demension of it all, in short you could break down the experience into any of the theoretical aspects of the sciences that we learn about on a daily basis. So for Dooyeweerd these were the two aproechs that one could take in aproeching life. Frame has rightly pointed out that these two black and white distinctions don't adequitly explain reality as we experience it. They are more or less oppossite poles upon which anyone can placed at any particuler time.

For instance a botanist can go out and catelogue all the different species of flowers in a feild and clearly be engaging in theoretical thought. My 8 year old daughter can go running through said feild and picking different flowers with no thought of the theoretical aspects behind it all and probably be engaged in pretheoretical thought, although she loves science and learning (sorry I had to brag!!). But what about a 6th grader who is tasked to go out to the feild and write down the different colors they see in the flowers? Well he or she isn't doing hard core science but they are not just willy nilly experiencing the feild either. So Frame correctly points out that maybe these sharp distinctions should be explored and developed a little better than Dooyeweerd did.

Smith in a related idea criticized Dooyeweerd for claiming that the religous center of people was beyond human conceptualzation. Meaning in philosophical terms that basically we can't talk about it at all. My own critique of Dooyeweerd here would run like this. You are saying things about the religous center of people that claim that nothing can be said about this center, so how do reconcile saying things about this center with your claim that no one can say anything about it? Smith didn't like, for simaler reasons, how our religous ground-motive, basically presuposition without any thinking concepts attached to it, could be completly unthoughtful or incabable of forming concepts and sentences about? Basically my central critique of Dooyeweerd here, how can you talk about something you claim cannot be talked about? So based on that I would think that Smith would defend himself basically the way I defended him above.

---------- Post added at 08:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:02 PM ----------

From that, the first point seems off.

I would say points one to three are all seeking to make valid conclusions but miss the mark of the biblical picture of man.

1. Desire is certainly a driving force in translating thought into action, but those desires are able to be restrained, trained, redirected, etc. It is "the good" which is the object of desire and it is knowledge of the good which directs desire towards some end. Goodwin expresses it well: "the will of any creature, whether sinning or otherwise, must still be pitched upon some good." Again: "The law of man's will is still to be determined by the understanding, so that the will of a man is the will of his counsel." This is that to which Augustine referred when he spoke of loving God and doing what we want. He was not suggesting that desire is primary.

2. It is undoubtedly true that man is by nature ritualistic, and what he habitually entertains shapes the values of his life. That is clear from the way the Bible describes the impact of idolatry as both an expression of, and influence upon, fallen human character. But it would be amiss to suggest that the thought processes are not primary in this activity. Psalm 14 and Romans 1 make it apparent that there is strong underlying current of thought which inspires man to express his corruption and suppress the truth of God.

3. Again, it is also obvious that there is a "form of godliness" which is fitted to shape the character and conduct of men who profess the truth of God. Hence the Scriptures exhort to physical actions such as hearing, praying, singing, etc., as religious exercises which serve a specific function in bringing the whole man, body and soul, into communion with God. But what is this form of godliness without "the power thereof?" If the act of hearing, praying, singing, etc., is terminated on the outward form of religion it misses the point of the exercise, which is to draw the soul into nearer communion with God as man's highest spiritual good.

Nice points. On Point 3 he and I would agree with you on the deeper significance and spiritual dimension of Christian worship.