Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering by Ronald E. Osborn

Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering by Ronald E. Osborn

Author:Ronald E. Osborn [Osborn, Ronald E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830895373
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2014-01-16T16:00:00+00:00


9

If Not Foundationalism, What Then?

From Tower Building to Net Mending

“Much philosophical confusion,” Nancey Murphy writes (with reference to Wittgenstein), “comes from being captivated by a picture.”1 The simplifying stories, images, analogies, metaphors and allusions we use to represent our ideas to others can easily come to substitute for clear thinking and serve to insulate our ideas from scrutiny, even by ourselves. For example, I have heard not one but several creationists speak of the moral responsibilities of Christian educators in terms of a dubious mental picture drawn straight from the world of corporate America. If you work for Nike but spend your office hours promoting Reebok as the better shoemaker, these individuals declare, you are in fact stealing from your employer. Hence, professors who teach evolutionary concepts at Christian colleges and universities whose sponsoring denominations officially adhere to creationism are not merely theologically mistaken but are morally despicable. They are, in the words of a televangelist I once watched, breaking the eighth commandment (“Thou shalt not steal”) and so are “falling under the condemnation of God.” (The speaker, I later learned, had in fact dropped out of college, such was the depth of his commitment to Christian education; as Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”2)

But why, we must ask, did this individual assume to begin with that the body of Christ is best thought of in terms of the picture of a multinational corporation aimed at maximizing profits for investors, with the search for truth evidently conceived as brand loyalty in a zero-sum competition for people’s souls or minds as currency or capital? What sorts of hidden values, priorities and assumptions are at work when the rules of corporate capitalism provide the controlling metaphors for preachers explaining to their flocks the meaning of church unity, intellectual integrity, moral decision making and Christian discipleship?

When very poor pictures such as this are deployed as substitutes for careful thought, the best response one can give is to suggest an alternative picture (metaphor or analogy) that might help to reorient our horizons. For example, what if Christian universities and Christian classrooms are best thought of not as shoe factories (with teachers in the role of wage-laborers paid to assemble “products” with maximum efficiency according to the specifications laid down by CEOs), but instead as courts—that is, as deliberative or judicial assemblies charged with wrestling with difficult questions of truth and justice for the good of the community as a whole?

Unanimous Supreme Court decisions are rare. Practically every US Supreme Court ruling on every major issue includes one or more dissenting opinion(s). These dissenting opinions are clearly and publicly articulated and might in the future influence the overturning of an earlier decision. The health of a democratic polity that is oriented toward questions of truth and justice, the framers of the American legal system understood, depends not only on consensus but also on dissent. And a dissenting judge is not being “unpatriotic” or defying the law by disagreeing with the majority opinion.



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