In the last few days I have finally gotten around to reading Andy Crouch's award-winning book, Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling. Toward the end of the third chapter he addresses the topic of worldview, one I enjoy discussing, and points out that our calling as Christians in regards to culture goes beyond the abstract tendencies of worldview thinking:

The language of worldview tends to imply, to paraphrase the Catholic writer Richard Rohr, that we can think ourselves into new ways of behaving. But that is not the way culture works. Culture helps us behave ourselves into new ways of thinking. The risk in thinking 'worldviewishly' is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyze it. We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books. These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods. And they will subtly tend to produce philosophers rather than plumbers, abstract thinkers instead of artists and artisans. They can create a cultural niche in which 'worldview thinkers' are privileged while other kinds of culture makers are shunted aside.

But culture is not changed simply by thinking (64).

For someone like myself who has a tendency toward this kind of abstract thinking, this is a key point. It's not that worldview thinking is unimportant, but that it is only one part of our larger calling as Christians. Culture making requires action.

Labels: Andy Crouch, books, culture, worldview

Several years ago, I emailed Gideon Strauss—friend, former professor, and recently appointed director of the Center for Public Justice—asking for some advice on how to read better. Below, slightly edited and abridged, is his reply:

I have three 'secrets':

1. I am almost always reading. I'd guess I am busy with about five books at any given time. I always have a novel on the go, for two reasons: novels calm me and comfort me, and novels are like reading speed exercise equipment for me—when I read novels, my reading speed goes way up. This is true for the non-novel reading I am doing as well. I read whenever I can get an opportunity—other than movies on DVD, I watch no television. I scan a lot of magazines and web stuff, and I am always looking out for books on the many topics that interest me. I put an enormous amount of books on hold at the library via their internet catalogue.
2. I scan most books quickly, and I retain a lot of what I've scanned. So I'd look at the inside cover summary, the contents page, the introduction and the conclusion. Only if it really, really grips me will I read more than that.
3. If I am going to read a non-novel book thoroughly, then I make a real performance of it. I buy my own copy, I fold and mutilate the pages, I underline and annotate the book in pen, and then I write down the best bits (summaries, quotes, references, etc.) on 4x6 cards that I store in little boxes for future reference. Very few books get this treatment.

Over the last few years, I have found his suggestions very helpful, although I've employed them with varying degrees of success. And if I am going to get really involved in a book, I wouldn't fold pages or use pen to make notes (I prefer a 0.5mm pencil), but that is just personal preference.

What do you think? Are these helpful suggestions? Do you have any additional tips that you use when reading?

Labels: books

This evening after work, Robin and I leave for our summer road trip. To the left is a map of the route we'll be taking. First, we'll be spending a few days with my parents in Hamilton, Ontario. Following that, we'll drive to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to spend a few days with Robin's parents, after which we'll head to St. Louis, Missouri, to spend a day with some good friends of ours.

All in all, we're looking at about 3,000 miles round trip. It will be great to see our families again, and to enjoy a nice road trip together around the eastern half of the country. This time around we won't be seeing too many of our friends, as we are only taking ten days for the trip. However, we do plan on going back up again for Christmas this year. I will also be going back to Ontario for a wedding in October, and will use that opportunity to spend time with some friends.

A few posts are scheduled to publish while we're away, and I'll have plenty of internet access so that I will still be able to interact with your comments. We'll be back in Florida July 12, by late evening.

Labels: travel

One more time around with Kuyper, and to provide further context to an aforementioned quote:

As it would be the height of folly, on one's first arrival in Switzerland, to make it appear that he is the first to investigate the Berner Oberland, since common sense compels him on the contrary to begin his journey by making inquiry among the guides of the country, the same is true here. In its rich and many-sided life, extending across so many ages, the Church tells you at once what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, that the investigator of the Holy Scriptures shall take account of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning the general points of view, from which to start his investigation, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre.

...The investigator does not stand outside of the Church, but is himself a member of it. Hence into his own consciousness there is interwoven the historic consciousness of his Church. In this historic consciousness of his Church he finds not merely the tradition of theologians and the data by which to form an estimate of the results of their studies, but also the confessional utterances of the Church. And this implies more. These utterances of his Church do not consist of the interpretation of one or another theologian, but of the ripest fruit of a spiritual and dogmatic strife, battled through by a whole circle of confessors in violent combat, which enlightened their spiritual sense, sharpened their judgment, and stimulated their perception of the truth; which fruit, moreover, has been handed down to him by the Church through its divinely appointed organs. It will not do, therefore, to place these dogmatic utterances on the same plane with the opinions of individual theologians. In a much deeper sense, they provide a guarantee for freedom from error, and he who belongs to such a Church has himself been moulded in part by them. This gives rise to the demand, that every theologian shall, in his investigations, reckon with all those things that are taught him by the history of the churches concerning well and badly chosen paths in this territory to be investigated; and, also, in the second place, that he shall take the dogmas of his Church as his guide, and that he shall not diverge from them until he is compelled to do this by the Word of God. Hence, one should not begin by doubting everything, and by experimenting to see whether on the ground of his own investigation he arrives at the same point where the confession of his Church stands; but, on the contrary, he should start out from the assumption that his Church is right, while at the same time he should investigate it, and only oppose it when he finds himself compelled to do so by the Word of God (576-577).

And to that, I have nothing to add.

Labels: Abraham Kuyper, Church, confessionalism, Scripture, theology

Yesterday I briefly mentioned Abraham Kuyper, and wanted to post more from his discussion on the role of tradition and the Church's confessions. As I mentioned, in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles, he writes that in doing theology one should begin with the assumption that the Church is right (577). This idea is later drawn out further:

An objective condition lies in [the churchly confession]. It is a product of the life of the Church, as in the ever richer form it has revealed itself officially, i.e. in ecclesiastical assemblies, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Two things are contained in the confession. First, the self-consciousness of the Church, as it has developed itself historically, which, consequently, is the result of a spiritual experience and a spiritual struggle that fills in the gap between the present and the first appearance of the Christian Church. And in the second place, the result of the special leading of the Holy Spirit, vouchsafed in the course of ages to the Church, and to the knowledge of God that has developed itself within her pale. For this reason the theologian should not undervalue the confession of his Church, as if in it a mere opinion presented itself to him over against which, with equal if not with better right, he might place his opinion. The life of the Church, and the forming and reforming of her self-consciousness, is an action which is uninterupptedly continued...That life pursues its own course, the stream of that life creates a bed for itself. To the theologian, therefore, the confession of the Church does not merely possess the presumption of truth; it appears objectively before him clothed with authority; with that authority which the many wield over the individual, with the authority of the ages in the face of ephemeral excitements; with the authority of the office in distinction from personal life; and with the authority which is due to the churchly life by virtue of the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It is not lawful, therefore, for him simply to slight this confessional life of the Church in order, while drifting on his own oars, to construct in his own way a new system of knowledge of God. He who undertakes to do this is bound in the end to see his labor stricken with unfruitfulness, or he destroys the churchly life, whose welfare his study ought to further (591-592).

Kuyper offers, I think, a great deal of wisdom with this insight. It is certainly worth our time to consider these points. I have one more post with another excerpt from this chapter on the docket. Look for it in a day or two.

Labels: Abraham Kuyper, Church, confessionalism, quotes, theology