I’m infrequently chipping away at John J. Ratey’s book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. What struck me immediately about this book is that, while majoring on science, it recognizes that its practical advice is perennial. The epigram that begins the book:

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, man can attain perfection. – Plato

He begins his book with the case of Naperville Central High School. This school begins its day with a fitness regiment for students, focused not on “sports”, but, as I said, on fitness. This is accomplished through simple running, with the goal of raising the heart rate of students, determined with monitors for each pupil. The science Ratey goes into in his book suggests there are many benefits to physical exercise on the brain and mental processes in specific. But the most memorable part of the first chapter for me was the following:

Those exams aren’t nearly as telling as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a test designed to compare students’ knowledge levels from different countries in two key subject areas. This is the exam cited by New York Times editorialist Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, when he laments that students in places like Singapore are “eating our lunch.” The education gap between the United States and Asia is widening, Friedman points out. Whereas in some Asian countries nearly half of the students score in the top tier, only 7 percent of U.S. students hit that mark.

TIMSS has been administered every four years since 1995. The 1999 edition included 230,000 students from thirty-eight countries, 59,000 of whom are from the United States. While New Tier and eighteen other schools along Chicago’s wealthy North Sore formed a consortium to take the TIMSS (thereby masking individual schools’ performance), Naperville 203 signed up on its own to get an international benchmark of its students’ performance. Some 97 percent of its eighth graders took the test–not merely the best and the brightest. How did they stack up? On the science section of the TIMSS, Naperville’s students finished first, just ahead of Singapore, and then the North Shore consortium. Number one in the world. On the math section, Naperville scored sixth, behind only Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. [13-14]

Ratey does acknowledge that Naperville resides in a demographically advantaged school district, in terms of race and income. Yet he argues that the coincidence of unusual phys-ed and exceptional science scores is too interesting to dismiss out of hand, especially in that Naperville is far from the only “wealthy suburb in the country with intelligent, educated parents. And in poor districts where Naperville-style PE has taken root, such as Titusville, Pennsylvania…, test scores have improved measurably.” (15)

Jamie K.A. Smith wrote on twitter the other day:

We’re told that social constructionism has no resources to stop injustices like racism. But how did moral realism fair in that regard?

I want to briefly discuss where I think this is wrong. Firstly, it is true that people merely professing to be moral realists has not created heaven on earth. This should not be a big surprise to Christians, who believe in original sin, total depravity, and the persistence of indwelling sin in the lives of even regenerated people. But at the same time, I don’t notice that social constructionists, people who believe that all value and meaning is the creation of communities, have become morally perfect either. Except, perhaps, in cases where they have redefined their sin to be righteousness “for their community”. But the rest of us, I think, may not be persuaded. And certainly, communities that believe there is no objective right and wrong could easily, and indeed have, been quite evil and unjust.

Secondly, if the question is: “which view, considered in the abstract, provides more motivation to be good?”, then I think it is moral realism, not social constructionism, that has more resources available towards reaching that end. This is for one main reason. The communities of moral realism and social constructionism can both discipline their communities toward achieving the good and stopping injustices, for moral realist communities are still communities. But only moral realists can offer a principled argument for why people outside of their own community also ought to stop committing injustices. Social constructionists can only offer bare commands or invitations to those on the outside, while moral realists can do both of these things, and provide reasons why others should stop being racists, etc.

Thirdly, social constructionism is, at bottom, a kind of cultural relativism. And when cultural relativism goes missionary, when it tries to recruit from the outside or shape the outside world in its image, it is essentially being Nietzschean. Since it can have no objective right to do this (since, in its own view, there are no such things), any attempt to condemn others for things it considers wrong, or to enforce rules against such behaviour, is an act of sheer will-to-power. There is no trans-communal standard of justice that could make such an act warranted, since there is no trans-communal standard of justice. So it is merely one community trying to impose its will on another, for no more fundamental reason than that the community wishes to do it. At base, it must reduce all moral outrage to socially constructed arbitrary value preferences, and so to wish or will.

Most of man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best of this or that material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things, which we thought our own, but were really due to good digestion, will fall of some of us; all sorts of complexities which were due to complexities or bad health, will fall off others. We shall then for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pg. 86

I'd been looking for this quote for quite some time and was delighted to see it in Ravi Zacharias' The Grand Weaver.

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Alastair Roberts comments on the distinction between the two:

It seems to me that there is a huge danger of confusing emotions with passions. One of the things that I so love about Reformed and Presbyterian traditions, and higher church liturgical tradition, for that matter, is that they teach us how to distinguish between the two. They teach us to distrust emotions, but to cultivate passions. Right now my emotions are shaped by a huge range of different factors: by the lack of sleep that I had last night, by the attractive woman who just smiled at me, by the sugar rush from the epic slab of banoffee pie I just ate, by the impending deadlines that I have to work towards, by the kind gift of a friend, etc., etc. However, by focusing on passions, I learn to strip away the ephemeral and shallow feelings of the moment, and learn to focus upon those most important and deep driving passions that inform my profoundest identity. Rather than being tossed to and fro by the emotions of the moment, I feed and draw upon my deeper passion for enjoying God in his love and goodness, my passion to glorify him in what I do, and to serve others in Christ’s name.

Many people who look at Reformed churches or more liturgical churches from the outside generally don’t get it. They think that passion is something that has to be fully seen on the surface and constantly on display in extroverted, bubbly, and emotionally demonstrative forms of church that many of us find so stifling, but which are de rigueur in many evangelical contexts. They judge emotionally undemonstrative churches to be cold, dead, or lifeless, when often nothing could be further from the truth. Many people also presume that outward emotional displays are proof of deep internal passion. While they often are expressions of such passion, shallow emotion really isn’t that hard to conjure up and such shallow emotion can occasionally serve as a veneer masking a deeper absence. Paradoxically, it can often be our most powerful passions that we are least inclined openly to express in an emotional form, as this can be felt to trivialize or cheapen them.

One of the things that I so love about the work of a theologian such as John Calvin is that one gets the clear sense of a deep-seated passion for Christ, a passion that, while undoubtedly there, is a signal that is hard to hear beneath the noise of fleeting emotions in many of the evangelical contexts in which I find myself, where the shrillness of the expected upbeat emotional expression tends to drown out the deep feelings and passions that one finds in the psalms and elsewhere.

Never trust a millionaire quoting from the sermon on the mount…

Just because ….

HT: David Frum

Ed Feser concludes his book Aquinas with the following comment about the relation between the Angelic Doctor and modernity:

In both its metaphysical and theological commitments, Aquinas’s system of ethics is, like the rest of his philosophy, obviously radically at odds with the assumptions typically made by contemporary moral philosophers. But the main difference may lie in something other than a disagreement over this or that particular ontological thesis or argument for God’s existence, in basic ethos rather than intellectual orientation. The spirit of modern moral philosophy is perhaps summed up best in Kant’s famous characterization of human beings as “ends in themselves” and “self-legislators.” This sort of talk would sound blasphemous and even mad to Aquinas, for whom God alone, as the “first cause and last end of all things,” could possibly be said to be the source of moral law and an end in himself. (ST I-II.62.1, as translated by Pegis in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas). For Aquinas, we are not here for ourselves, but for the glory of God, and precisely because this is the end set for us by nature, it is in him alone that we can find our true happiness. And it must be emphasized that, as with the other themes we’ve explored in this book, he takes this conclusion to be a matter, not of faith, but of reason itself.

Therein lies the sting of Aquinas’ challenge to modernity. [192]

A couple of my favourite blogs have addressed the gun control issue as of late. My friend Brad Littlejohn wrote today about how this issue relates to basic principles of jurisprudence, and deftly replied to some of the slogans repeated on the American right about the issue. One excerpt I found important:

Our task, then, is to determine, within the constraints provided by legal precedent, under what conditions the right to bear arms may most prudently be exercised today. This will require careful legal scholarship; it will require careful empirical investigation of the nature and causes of gun violence, of the effectiveness that various preventative measures have had in different times and places; it will require thoughtful political consideration of the unforeseen consequences of gun legislation, of the extent to which it will reduce civil liberties as a whole or encourage the growth of bureaucratic law enforcement behemoth. All of these considerations need to be weighed in the balance, and from different judgments regarding them, a variety of plausible proposals, some quite conservative, others more liberal, may be advanced. A careful debate needs to be had about these proposals, for a great deal may hinge on them.

Steve Hays at Triablogue wrote on a more specific aspect of the debate here and here. One of the arguments proffered by supporters of gun rights is that guns should be freely available to allow for restraint of tyranny. A common reply from control advocates is that even allowing private citizens to own assault rifles would not be an effective restraint against the American military. Steve tackles some of the assumptions implicit in this reply. One excerpt:

There’s also a distinction between the deterrent value of the 2nd amendment, and the effectiveness of an armed citizenry to actively repel gov’t tyranny– if that were to transpire. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that armed citizens would be no match for the US military if it came down to an all-out fight. That doesn’t mean the 2nd amendment would have no deterrent value in preventing the situation from escalating to that point. Gov’t officials who might be otherwise inclined to impose totalitarian gov’t on the masses would also have to consider whether that’s worth the risk of civil war. Even if, after the dust settles, the military won, that might be far too destructive to the physical and economic infrastructure of the country to justify the ruinous cost. If you take a city by destroying the city, you win by losing what made the city valuable in the first place.

Henri Nouwen has long been a bon vivant of the evangelical world, even before his death in 1996. Nouwen was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest who held prestigious posts at the University of Notre Dame and Yale Divinity School before giving up a promising academic career to work at a home for the mentally disadvantaged in Toronto, L'Arche Daybreak.

His writings are immensely popular, especially with evangelicals. JP Moreland, in his recent Kingdom Triangle has said that Nouwen's work has a different “texture” than many other writers on the spiritual life. It's as if Nouwen had just met with God. I would have to agree.

In my undergraduate days at Tyndale, Nouwen was all the rage. In fact, Tyndale has always had a special relationship with Nouwen, given his proximity to the campus. In Timothy Larsen's history of Tyndale Seminary, For Christ in Canada, Larsen tells the story of how Nouwen was the controversial guest speaker for Tyndale's (which at that time was known as Ontario Bible College) graduation in 1991:

The Academic Dean of Tyndale (OBC) at the time, Ian Rennie, recounts that at his last meeting with Nouwen before his death, Nouwen had requested that he have an office in the seminary after his retirement, saying that “the faculty and students comprised the only academic theological audicence in Toronto that responded wholeheartedly to his message.” OBC's relationship with Nouwen was seen as scandalous by many evangelicals in the early 1990s, but Rennie justified the relationship by saying by aligning himself with “such prominent evangelicals as Alexander Whyte and A.W. Tozer who valued the great Catholic saints in their knowledge of Christ, however we might disagree with some of their Tridentine theological formulations.

One “open secret” is that Henri Nouwen struggled with homosexuality. In fact, evangelicals are now using this fact as evidence to buttress their case that it's possible for a gay Christian to live a deep fulfilling life without having to satisfy those desires. You can see Ravi Zacharias do that in the clip I've posted above. It appears that he's internalized the Henri Nouwen story as a way of responding to questions about sexuality and the church.

I now question the wisdom of this.

In Michael Ford's biography of Nouwen, The Wounded Prophet, Ford tells of the charismatic priest's close relationship to the former Catholic priest, Maurice Monette and his partner, Jeff Jackson. Ford writes:

He (had) talked humorously about what seemed like a set of impossible options, which he discussed regularly with Maurice and Jeff: The first was for him to stay a celibate priest and “come out” as a gay man; the second was for him to leave the priesthood and be open to a loving noncelibate relationship; the third was for him to remain a publicly closeted gay priest and be open to developing a relationship – not really an option, they thought, for a man of such integrity.

Ford implies here that Nouwen actually considered the second as a live option.

Ford goes on to describe Nouwen's relationship with another gay couple. Here he affirmed their commitment ceremony as being “solemn and holy.”

In Toronto, Henri Nouwen became a close friend of a gay Roman Catholic couple, Joseph Stellpflug and David Martin, who offered him their home as a sanctuary from the public demands of his priesthood. “He recognized our relationship as life-giving and we became a safe haven for him where he could just be himself,” said David. When the couple's relationship was formalized at a Metropolitan Community Church ceremony, Henri sent them a Van Gogh print with “an incredibly beautiful letter” affirming that they were making a very solemn and holy commitment. From 1994, Nouwen visited the couple once a month.

The author concludes with what is perhaps his clearest views on Nouwen's personal opinions:

Because of his wounds he was able to be a prophet in his priesthood, his writing, his teaching, … his clear support of faithful gay relationships, especially among Roman Catholics. He said gay men and women had a 'unique vocation in the Christian community.'

Of course this doesn't render Ravi's use of Nouwen's testimony illegitimate. After all, regardless of what Nouwen personally believed on the topic, by all accounts he took his vow to celibacy seriously. And yet, if Ford is right, evangelicals should seriously reconsider using Nouwen as their poster boy, his work on prayer and spirituality, notwithstanding.

So, what do you think about this? In light of this new info, should evangelicals keep recommending Nouwen's work?

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Here are two incredible Desiring God interviews with John Piper on his view of the charismatic gifts. Much to John MacArthur’s chagrin, Piper ain’t no cessationist. What I found especially noteworthy was Piper’s earnest desire to speak in tongues and some of the personal experiences that he’s had with prophecy.

But, I guess you’ll just have to watch both videos. They’re only 10 minutes each. Don’t be a baby.

What is speaking in tongues? 

What is the gift of prophecy in the new covenant?

If these videos raise some objections, you might appreciate this post from 2011 as it might answer some of them: Defending Driscoll from Team Pyro.