In September’s Christianity Today magazine I published a short article entitled, “What Galileo’s Telescope Can’t See” (now available online) which also gets at some of the core themes that concern us at The Colossian Forum on Faith, Science, and Culture.

The article pushes back on a tendency to immediately equate contemporary discussions at the intersection of Christian faith and science as “Galilean” moments–demanding that our reading of Scripture be revised in light of new scientific evidence.  While responsible theological interpretation certainly requires that we attend to “the book of nature,” in the article I suggest that this analogy with Galileo is often hasty and unhelpful.

Here’s an opening snippet:

Analogies have persuasive power, a suggestive force that operates on an almost unconscious level. To say that A is “like” B is to suggest that everything we associate with A should also be associated with B—whether good, bad, or ugly. 

So, for example, if I describe American soldiers as “crusaders,” I have just painted them with an analogical brush that colors them as religiously motivated warriors guilty of the worst bigotries of the West. The analogy is loaded with a moral depiction that exceeds what’s actually said. So all the disdain we have towards our (usually caricatured) understanding of the Crusades is now overlaid on our perception of military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Conversely, if I describe the proponents of my cause as “prophets” or “martyrs,” I have loaded the perceptual deck with images of heroism and purity. Just by the analogy, we get to don our white hats and claim the moral high ground. Or if we describe our regime as “Camelot,” we associate ourselves with romance and royal privilege. Never underestimate the power of an analogy. And never simply accept it. 

There is a particular analogy often invoked in current discussions about the relationship between Christian faith and science. Ours, we are told, is a “Galilean” moment: a critical time in history when new findings in the natural sciences threaten to topple fundamental Christian beliefs, just as Galileo’s proposed heliocentrism rocked the ecclesiastical establishment of his day. This parallel is usually invoked in the context of genetic, evolutionary, and archaeological evidence about human origins that challenges traditional Christian understandings. 

Historical analogies like this are often particularly loaded because our age is characterized by chronological snobbery and a self-congratulatory sense of our maturity and progress. Since we now tend to look at the church’s response to Galileo as misguided, reactionary, and backward, this “Galilean” framing of contemporary discussions does two things—before any “evidence” is ever put on the table.

Read the rest of “What Galileo’s Telescope Can’t See.”

The Protestant “sanctification of ordinary life” (as Charles Taylor often describes it) can generate a curious question: 

Following up on my earlier article, “Tradition for Innovation,” Faith and Leadership at Duke has just published my new article, “The Gift of Constraints.” The article is a take on the new Barnes Foundation building in downtown Philadelphia, reading it as a kind of material allegory or parable for leadership lessons.  As you’ll see from the article, the architects had to work with odd, stringent constraints; but rather than shutting down creativity, the constraints invited innovation.

Here’s an opening snippet:  

Let’s face it: all of us inhabit institutions that we would have built differently. We inherited policies and procedures and even physical plants with aspects that we’d happily do without. Sometimes we bristle under the constraints put upon us by founders and historical bodies that could know nothing of our contemporary challenges.

Many of us have probably daydreamed what it would be like to be free of such constraints — to “re-imagine” the institution from scratch. Then, we tell ourselves, we’d really be free to push forward our mission and vision. But now, in the real world, these constraints are like millstones, anchors dragging on the bottom as we try to steer the ship forward into new waters.

Could we ever imagine receiving such constraints as gifts? Indeed, is it possible that the constraints of handed-down traditions could be catalysts for creativity and imagination?

I was recently struck by something of a parable in this regard. In May, after a protracted — and very public — legal battle, the Barnes Foundation, a Philadelphia fine-arts institution, opened a new building on that city’s famous “museum row.” Called the Barnes Philadelphia, the new museum houses Albert Barnes’ world-class collection of modern art, moved there from its former suburban home in Lower Merion, Pa. The legal wrangling need not detain us here. It’s the result that yields an interesting case study of “traditioned innovation.”

Read the rest of “The Gift of Constraints” at Faith and Leadership.

We all know that children imitate their parents–for good or ill.  So, given my practice of annotating texts, it shouldn’t have surprised me that our then-toddler son Grayson thought an open book (in this case, Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another) was an invitation for inscription.  Notice that he has already mastered the “layering” principle, utilizing two different colors for his annotation.

Toddler annotation of Ricoeur, Oneself as Another

I knew exactly where to find this, since in some ways it is one of the most important inscriptions in my library–a tactile reminder of what really matters.

A friend of mine who is also a doctoral student recently asked if I had any sort of system for how I annotate books, particularly primary texts.  It was an interesting question, because annotating books is certainly one of the central practices of my scholarly life–and yet it’s not something I was ever explicitly taught, nor is it something I’ve attempted to teach to others.  I suppose I (mistakenly) thought it was somehow “natural,” or that annotation practices were so idiosyncratic that it would be presumptuous to even try.

On the other hand, the question got me wondering whether this isn’t one of the sorts of concrete aspects of study and scholarship that professors should spend more time talking about.  So, with just that notion in mind, I’ve here gathered a few random thoughts about how I approach the annotation of texts.  And I’ve included a few examples, not because I think my approach is exemplary, but only to give some concrete pictures to consider.  I’m sure others have both more elaborate and more efficient procedures.

I would preface this by noting that I think annotation is always determined by a telos: I mark up a book differently if I’m teaching it vs. writing a review; similarly, my annotation will look different if I’m reading the book as a primary resource for a writing project vs. professional development and trying to keep up in various fields.  (I also mark up novels, but won’t touch on that here.)

Without further adieu, some random thoughts for a friend that might be helpful to others:

1. Your notation should be a way for you to keep track of the thread of an argument. So on one level, you should be underlining and putting notes in the margin that help YOU keep a handle on the argument. Ideally, you want to do this in a way so that when you return to the book, you can quickly reorient yourself to the argument and the main moves of the text. This requires watching especially for transitions and turning points in the argument.  (I use the top of the page to note themes I’ll want to find quickly when I page through later.)

Husserl, Cartesian Meditations

2. You need to develop your own way of noting gradations of emphasis. This might be a simple as single underlining and double underlining. Or could be different colored pens, or ink vs highlighter. Whatever. I just find it helpful to have some layers. (This is especially important when you return to read a text again and again–look for ways to distinguish annotations in later readings–you might have to buy purple and green pens!  And sometimes you’ll find you need to later scratch out juvenalia.  My copy of Of Grammatology is filled with this because I first read it as an ardent undergrad who was clueless.)

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

3. Use numbers in the margin to track different parts of an argument as it unfolds.

4. Write marginal comments to try to encapsulate key points in your own language. If you’re reading a translation, at some points you might want to note key terms in the original language.

Augustine, Confessions

5. Put circled question marks in the margin where you just can’t figure out some point. Don’t get bogged down there, however. Note it, mush on, and it might become clear later.

6. Cross-reference. You know how some Bibles have those elaborate cross-reference systems?  Do something like that yourself: point back and forth with marginal notations like: “Cp. p. 17” and then go back to 17 and note the other page.

Heidegger, Being and Time

7. Argue with the author in the margins. Put big Xs (or “B.S.”!) beside passages that deserve critique. Perhaps briefly note your critical point.

8. Finally, and maybe most importantly treat the hors-texte blank pages at the back as space to create your own personal index, tailored to what’s at stake for you. You’re always reading a book with some interest, from some angle, so create an index that helps you come back to the book later and immediately get back up to speed. This might include tracking some specific themes and noting the page numbers where it appears, then drawing some lines of connection, etc. It’s also a space to perhaps summarize your taken particular issues, etc.

Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas

Derrida, The Gift of Death [annotated for writing an article]

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception [annotated for teaching, then writing]

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World [annotated for a review]

Ultimately, you need to craft a ‘system’ that works for you.  And be open to evolution and development on this score: I annotate books much differently now than I did in college or even grad school.  It’s never too late to start, and you can always change how you do it.

Next up: pics of “notes” that my toddlers inscribed in my books over the years!

[Apologies for the radio silence over here at Fors Clavigera. To be honest, a lot of my energy has gone to Twitter, which I have found to be a delightful experiment so far.  In fact, the essay I link to below grew directly out of a Twitter exchange with Andy Crouch!  (You can follow me by clicking the link on the right; if you’re not a Tweeter yourself, I’d encourage you to consider it.  And look for a future blog post with some reflections on my Twitter experience so far.)]

The phrase “earthly city” gets thrown around quite a bit, but with little precision, and not a little misapplication.   To try to clarify use of  the term–and its distinctly Augustinian heritage–I’ve just published a little essay, “How (Not) To Be Worldly: Tracing the Borders of the Earthly City” as part of Christianity Today’s “This Is Our City” initiative.  (You might think of this as a general audience summary of a key theme in my engagement with “two kingdoms” thought.)

Here’s the opening to the essay:

I often hope that my office is haunted. You see, I inhabit a humble corner of cinder-blocked space, with a tiny sliver of window, that was once home to one of my role models: Rich Mouw. Longtime president of Fuller Theological Seminary, Rich made his mark on evangelical social thought while teaching philosophy at Calvin College. It was during that time that he penned a series of small books that not only changed my mind; they redirected the shape of American evangelical cultural engagement. So you can see why I sort of hope that my office is—well, if not haunted, perhaps enchanted. I keep hoping that some of Rich’s passion and wisdom could seep into me as I inhabit the same space, an heir to his thought and indebted to his example. 

In books like Political Evangelism (1973) and When the Kings Come Marching In (1983), Mouw challenged the apolitical, otherworldliness of evangelicals by persistently pointing to two themes in Scripture: (1) God’s affirmation of the “very-goodness” of creation (Gen. 1:31), including the commissioning of human beings to undertake cultural labor in this world; and (2) the biblical vision of shalom as our true eschatological hope—a creation renewed and restored and flourishing in accord with God’s desires. From beginning to end, Mouw emphasized, the Bible enjoins us to join God’s mission of renewing all things (Col. 1:15-19). So, as he provocatively put it in his 1980 book, rather than looking for a divine escape hatch out of this world, we areCalled to Holy Worldliness. 

If that phrase gives you pause, you aren’t alone. Isn’t worldliness a bad thing? Aren’t we supposed to resist the world (per James 4:4-5)? Isn’t the “whole world” under the sway of the evil one (1 John 5:19)? Here we hit upon the multivalence of biblical language. Scripture can both loudly proclaim that “God so loved the world” and that we should “love not the world” (1 John 2:15). Context means everything here. As Mouw qualified it, what God delights in is a holy worldliness—a rightly ordered investment in God’s creation with a view to fostering its flourishing. It’s a “worldliness” in the sense that it is not “otherworldly”; it isholy insofar as it encourages mundane, domestic, cultural life lived under the lordship of Christ.

Read the rest of “How (Not) To Be Worldly: Tracing the Borders of the Earthly City“…

The inestimable Byron Borger pointed to a recent feature in The Guardian: “The 10 best…closing lines of books.”  All of them are a treat, but the closing line from Eliot’s Middlemarch (a book, incidentally, that I think is instructive for contemporary discussions about science and religion) deserves to be highlighted (and is too long to be tweeted!):

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” 

As someone who has written extensively about the formative power of “secular liturgies,” you might think I’d be primed to analyze the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics as an example of just such a “secular” liturgy.  In other words, you might think I’d be sympathetic to George Weigel’s critical analysis of the opening ceremonies as “The Liturgy of the World State.”

I’ve expanded my first ruminations on the NCAA’s sanctions against Penn State’s football program in an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press, now available online.