The Contemporary Ethos of Congregational Life in North America: What to make of Science?

In a recent series of posts, I have been reflecting about congregational life in North America and have suggested that what happens in local congregations is quite extraordinary and anomalous with respect to other human activities and endeavors. Consider for a moment what it would be to come upon congregational life from the outside, as it were, with no pre-understanding of what congregational life is all about. What would one see? 

Bob walks into a building with people he does not know, and strangers come up to him exchanging greetings or engaging in conversation with him. He sits down on a chair or long bench and remains dutifully silent while a series of non-mundane events transpire. People speak from the front, sometimes in conversational voices and other times in a very solemn way. Sometimes they read from texts for long periods of time. Someone either in the front or elsewhere in the building starts singing and others join in. Finally, a person in the front addresses those listening for 15 minutes or longer speaking of events from long ago that he or she believes have significance for today. After this, an even stranger event occurs. After some serious words, people sitting on chairs or benches rise from their seats and walk forward, gathering at a rail in the front where they are given little wafers and a sip of wine and told that these things are the Body and Blood of Christ. At other times infants or adults are splashed with water with concomitant solemn pronouncements and prayers.  

After more singing, people finally leave their seats and congregate in the back where friendly discussion ensues about divers and sundry matters. Perhaps Bob is invited to go downstairs or into another part of the building to be part of a class, or maybe he is offered coffee and donuts. Bob's experience here might be like Rita's at another time or another place, or it could be quite different. Rita might be asked to help feed people who have limited funds, or to aid in cleaning the building itself, or to bring a dessert next week. Perhaps someone asks her as to what she thought of the address that someone had given.  

Christians have been meeting in communities like this from their earliest days in the catacombs. In those days men and women listened to readings from texts and speeches about those texts. They cared for each other and oftentimes pooled their resources to help each other. With people they knew and some they just met they worshipped Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfillment of God's messianic expectation. While contemporary church buildings do not look much like the early catacombs, there remain between those days and today common practices of congregational life. 

Congregational life happened then and happens now, and people involved in that life seem to know how to participate in that life. One might say that they have an unthematized pre-understanding of the possibilities and inevitabilities of their gathering together. Congregating to worship a God, hearing speeches, singing and murmuring prayers are all activities that are quite unlike what most people do in contemporary societies of the North Atlantic countries. It is so unlike what people generally do, that one naturally wonders whether these things would be done if there was no already operating social institution for doing these things. Already established is the practice of congregational activity and participation. Without this already established practice, would it ever happen that these activities would develop to be practiced again? In other words, if congregational life were not already occurring, would it happen that it would ever come to occur? Without the reality of an historical institutional of congregational practice and participation, would there be any cultural motivation to invent congregational life again? Is there something about us as social animals that would make the development of congregational life inevitable, or is the having of it fully contingent?

I fear that the answer to the question of inevitability is likely a resounding "no." The fact that there still exist Christian congregations goes against general cultural expectations. I believe that it is because of the unlikeliness of it developing again ars nova, that congregational life is so precious now. Speaking theologically, we might say that the utter contingency of congregational existence is entirely a matter of grace. The practices of congregational living are not something that can be facilely established upon the horizon of contemporary individual piety. One might say that Christian congregations have an ecstatic existence; they live not on their own but out of the life of the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ. They are creatures of grace first, and only secondarily of law.  

In the last post I began to explore facets of the intellectual and cultural ethos of those today participating in Christian congregational life. I spoke of the general cultural default of contemporary man and woman who judge God morally and find Him lacking. As pointed out then, I follow Charles Tylor in claiming that Christianity has not been slowed in its growth primarily because of the rise of science, but rather because the traditional God of Christianity appears arbitrary, capricious and decidedly old fashioned in His choices and judgments, and thus is either widely rejected or deemed irrelevant. Accordingly, it is God's putative morality that makes His existence suspect for millions of denizens of the North Atlantic countries in the early twenty-first century.  

While all of this is true, there is also little doubt that Christianity today is simply a non-starter for many because it appears to violate the very presuppositions of science itself. Many participating in contemporary congregational life carry with them both a sense that God is morally unreasonable or suspect and that the ultimate description of reality is physical, that what ultimately exists are those entities over which our fundamental theories of physics quantify. In other words, what ultimately exists are those entities to which our fundamental physical theories refer.  Accordingly, while people might enjoy participating in congregational life, there is a sense that they actually know better, that human existence is ultimately a physical matter and that congregational life is a living as if this were not the case.

It is unfortunately characteristic of our time that people generally know little about the practices and theories of science, particularly those of natural science. Most think that science simply deals with facts, not recognizing the deeply theoretical nature of scientific research. Accordingly, some review of what we claim when we make scientific claims is perhaps useful.

Every scientific claim is theoretical. To claim that the earth revolves around the sun is to have a theory in which the terms 'sun', 'earth', and 'revolves' occur. The meaning of a set of theoretical statements is found in the models which make these statements true. 'Sun' refers to a particular entity, 'earth' refers to a particular entity as well, while 'revolves' refers to a complex set of duples or ordered pairs. Theories, no matter how simple or complex, state the way the world might be. At the risk of gross oversimplification, true theories state how the world actually is -- or alternately what is reasonable to believe about how the world is -- and false theories how the world is not -- or what is reasonable not to believe about the world. 

Theoretical claims of how the world is are tentative and provisional because we are never certain that the theory we are assuming won't finally be shown to be false by how the world ultimately turns out to be. It could take hundreds of years to disconfirm statements of scientific theory. For instance, our theory of the early universe makes theoretical statements about states of the universe in its initial nanoseconds, and these statements are presently untestable because we don't have requisite energy to recreate conditions of the early universe to confirm or disconfirm the statements.  Maybe 500 years from now we would have the technology to accelerate particles to velocities characteristic of the very early universe, and we can then claim that the theory then regnant is consistent with observations or that it has been falsified by them. 

When we construct scientific theories, we bring certain values with us as to what a good scientific theory might be. We want our theories to be simple if possible. They should be applicable to our observational experiences and adequate to them. Adequacy means that the theories can deal in principle with all the kinds of experience we have. Theories should be internally consistent and coherent. Coherency means that we should not have in them arbitrarily disconnected assumptions or that we should not appeal to different kinds of entities if explanation is possible by appeal to only one kind of entity. Simple theories that appeal to one principle are often thought to be more beautiful than those making appeal to differing fundamental principles. While there is nothing necessarily in nature that would disallow it from operating upon many different ultimate principles rather than one, human theory-making always attempts to explain experience in terms of one rather than many. Theories doing this are simply assumed by most to be more beautiful than others. Another value we want theories to have is fecundity. Can a theory sustain a hearty research program? Is it properly relatable to other theories? Theories which do not sustain interest or research are simply irrelevant, and science in general does not develop its views of the world on the basis of irrelevant and/or isolated theories. 

Scientific theory formation happens by adopting likely stories of explanation, stories which fit our already theoretical views of the world. We establish theories that try to give natural explanations for natural events. Because we assume in the practice of science a methodological naturalism, God cannot be a theoretical entity within scientific theory. It is not that science ultimately excludes God from the universe, but it is rather that the humble practice of scientific theory-building limits itself to explanation in terms of natural processes, events and laws. By its very nature, science does not and cannot appeal to non-natural explanations for natural events. Despite the final metaphysical implausibility of a particular physicalist explanation, natural science must attempt to explain why something is the case by appealing to only those natural entities and processes that can be in principle referred to by standard scientific theory.  

One can see this clearly in the way that explanation often occurs in macro-evolutionary theory. Since 'natural adaptation' is a theoretical notion it can be appealed to in explaining why this particular life form developed in this way and not another. Oftentimes 'natural adaptation' is a notion that can't be profoundly specified. One appeals to it in a way that mimics perhaps the appeal that earlier generations made to God's will. Why did x develop in a P way and not in Q way? God willed it!  

But while all would agree that God willing nature to develop in a P way rather than a Q way is not a persuasive explanation in our time, many nonetheless believe that a simple appeal to natural adaptation can explain P development rather than Q development. But when it comes to the really big issues of macro-evolutionary theory, the devil is clearly in the details. Oftentimes, mechanisms by which putative natural adaptation selects for P development rather than Q development cannot yet be specified, and one is left with a direction and a trust that someday a mature theory will be able to explain this P development. While appealing to the general direction of "nature selects it" rather than "God wills it" has greater plausibility in our time, the logic of the argument remains the same. Unless particular natural explanations can be given that explain the particulars of macro-evolutionary development plausibly no true explanation has been given. Simply put, just because "natural adaptation" is a more popular explanation today than "God wills it," does not mean that the former explanation is, or ultimately will be, more successful. 

My point here is simply to say that natural science is a deeply theoretical human activity. In casting about for a natural theory to explain some set of natural events, one must select a theory that "fits in" with the theories that one already has, and that is supported by the observational data. Scientific theory, we now know, is always underdetermined by observation and the acceptance of other theories. It is always logically possible to explain events by appealing to other sets of natural events than those assumed in one's theory, or by explaining things in terms of non-natural events. The point is, that explanation in terms of non-natural events is not the way that the institution and practice of scientific theory formation and confirmation/disconfirmation proceeds. Moreover, there is no scientific decision procedure, no algorithm, on the basis of which "correct" scientific theory is selected and "incorrect" theory rejected. Natural science, like all human activity, is messy. 

All of this is simply to say that the best explanation for why the universe bears the marks of design can be the fact that God was at work designing the universe. One can reasonably hold this while still holding that such an explanation is not scientific, for it violates the rules by which scientific theory-formation proceeds. It is not a scientific explanation because it appeals to non-natural agency, something clearly disallowed in the doing of natural science. But why think that all rational explanation must be natural scientific explanation?  

My point is that few people participating in the life of Christian congregations in these days know how theoretical and rule-governed is the activity of scientific explanation. So again, how can it be that God was involved in creation when our natural scientific models show the universe to be a broken symmetry flowing out of an infinitely dense point without extension? 

The answer is not difficult because, in truth, in any explanation we cannot avoid metaphysical models. Ought we explain the universe by making no appeal to non-natural agency? If so, why? The point is that there is nothing in the observational data that disallows a metaphysics of divine action in creation. The choice is ours: Do we want to adopt a materialist/physicalistic metaphysics or not? If so, why, and if not, why not? 

But the horizon of most in congregations is that science does explain things, and that this explanation finally does not rest in human freedom as to the adoption of a metaphysics of physicalism or that of theism. However, just because we can give physicalist explanations of most physical events does not mean that we should always do so, or even that it is rational to do so.  

In summary, the horizon of many within congregations now is that the morality of God is problematic, and that there is something in the nature of the world or natural science itself that calls for natural scientific explanations for things. I acknowledge that the first problem has no easy and quick solution, but want to point out that it is a certain misunderstanding and ignorance of the scientific process itself which makes many simply assume that science is in conflict with religious faith.  Reinvigorating congregational life in North America must deal with the fundamental assumptions of people in the pews today. Of these, two are very important: Can the nature of God be deemed consistent with Christian congregational experience and practice, and can our understanding of the divine escape from the easy physicalisms that dominate much of popular culture today?  

Theology and the Philosophy of Science: The Syntactic and Semantic Views

The Received View in the [hilosophy of science is the syntactic view.  Accordingly, scientific theory is construed as a set of sentences with the laws of the scientific theory being its axioms. By inputting initial conditions and conjoining these conditions to the laws (axioms) of the theory, one deduces future states of the system as theorems.  This is the theory's predictions. The syntactic conception of scientific theory is clearly in the tradition of Euclid, Aristotle, Newton, Carnap and the Logical Positivists. But as we pointed out in the last post, there are problems with the account. 

One problem is that the syntactic view presupposes the so-called analytic/synthetic distinction, that is, the distinction between what is true by definition versus what is true because of the way that the world is. The distinction is rooted in the work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant famously claimed that an analytical statement or proposition is true because the meaning of the predicate is included in the meaning of the subject.  A synthetic statement, on the other hand is ampliative in that the meaning of the predicate is not included in the meaning of the subject.  The first effectively decomposes the meaning of the subject, finding that what makes the subject true also makes the predicate true. The second amplifies the meaning of the subject; it asserts of the subject that something is true that is not included within the very meaning of the subject. 

While this semantic distinction in Kant must be distinguished from the epistemological distinction between what is known "prior to" experience (the a priori) and what is known "after" or on the basis of experience (the a posteriori), we often today simply identify the a priori with analytical judgments and the a posteriori with synthetic judgments.  For instance, "a bachelor is unmarried" is a true analytic statement because one cannot think of married bachelors, but "a bachelor is happy," if it is true, would be a true synthetic statement.  We would know the second on the basis of experience, e.g., surveys, personal observations, controlled experiments, etc. 

W. V. O. Quine famously criticized the analytic-synthetic distinction about seven decades ago, calling it one of the "dogmas" of empiricism.  He claimed that the analytic-synthetic distinction is not a matter of meaning over and against experience, that it is not a matter of the necessary truth of the former over and against the contingent truth of the latter. The distinction is not absolute at all, he avers, but it is merely a matter of degree, of what statements we will give up last.  In our "webs of belief," we hold onto some statements longer than others.  We might say, "water is H20" and "water is odorless," and dutifully subject each statement to our "tribunal of experience."  It is clear that confronted with experience, we would hold onto the truth that water is H20 much longer than water is odorless.  In fact, I can imagine some experience which would compel us to claim that water is not in fact odorless.  Of course, the latter statement could be "saved" from repudiation by declaring that it is not water itself that is not being odorless, but something in the water that is smelling foul.  

Problems with the analytic/synthetic distinction were a profound challenge for the syntactic view of scientific theory because the "bridge rules" of the theory coordinating the theoretical and observational terms were supposed to be a matter of meaning alone.  This theoretical term just means this observational term. In fact, the higher level terms and propositions of the theory could be in principle reduced to phenomenal experience. The classic text of this approach is Carnap's The Logical Construction of the World.  Clearly, if analyticity does not hold by meaning alone, then the very notion of bridge rules is undermined. 

There were, of course, other difficulties with the syntactic approach. It turned out that rigorous axiomatic laws were too cumbersome to be used by actual scientists. Also, because scientific theory was construed in terms of sentences, endless debates in the philosophy of language ensued.  Finally, there were Goedel problems.  As it turns out, no axiom set and system of proof within a theory could prove all of the sentences regarded as true within the theory. The result was the overturning of the syntactic view of scientific theory.  The new approach was called the semantic view of scientific theory.

Emerging in the 1970s and 80s, the semantic view of scientific theory generally identified theories with classes of models or model-types along with hypotheses of how these models relate to nature. A theory thus could thus be cast as a "class of fully articulated mathematical structure-types" using set-theoretical predicates.  (See Demetris Portides, "Scientific Models and the Semantic View of Scientific Theories" in Philosophy of Science, December 2005, pp. 1287-98.)  

Models are thus included in the the theory structure, and are themselves constructed on the basis of data within a context of experimental design and auxiliary theories.  On the semantic view model A is equivalent to Model B if and only if there is a correspondence of the elements and relations of A and B.  (Some advocates claims there must be an isomorphism, some a partial isomorphism and some merely a similarity.) 

Advocates of the semantic view claim that a physical system is represented by a class of model types. Semantic theorists generally hold that data alone does not falsify a theory, but that  data, design and auxiliary theory are important in the construction of data structures. These data structures must be sharply distinguished from the theoretical model, in that the latter is a construction out of the data structure.  But the question arises: What exactly is a data structure? 

It seems that the models in question can be either more abstract, e.g., mathematical structures, or more concrete, e.g., visual models of molecules. Proponents of the semantic view often claims a superiority over the syntactic conception in that scientific theory now is understood as actually focussing on the actual things that scientists treat within their theories.  Moreover, they claim that the semantic view allows that scientific theories can be clearly seen as not simply related to actual chunks of the world, but rather to mathematical objects as idealizations that are connectable to the world. Such idealizations, they claim, are the true objects of science. Accordingly, abstract mathematical structures come to be understood as that which the theory is about. Thus, semantic theories privilege mathematics -- especially "set-theoretical" entities -- over first-order predicate logic.

Rasmus Groenfeldt Winther's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes two general strategies within the semantic view generally.  The state-state approach focuses upon the mathematical models of actual science such that the scientific theory just is a class of mathematical models. Alternatively, the set-model theoretic approach emphasizes that the axioms, theorems and laws of a theory are satisfied, or made true by, certain mathematical structures or models of the theory.  The second approach is often deemed the more fruitful. 

I find Michael McEwan's 2006 article "The Semantic View of Theories: Models and Misconceptions," helpful in understanding what the semantic view is and is not.  McEwan points to the following slogan of the semantic view: A theory is a collection of models (1).  On what he calls the naive semantic view, the "is" here is the "is" of identity. Tarski famously connects models to semantic concepts through the notion of satisfaction.  He uses model-theoretic models in accomplishing this. A model-theoretic model is an interpretation which satisfies a class of statements by specifying a domain of individuals and defining the predicate symbols, relations and functions on this set of individuals.  Accordingly, a theory is a collection of model-theoretic models (2).  

On the model-theoretic model the theory is a set of sentences and the models are interpretations in which the set of sentences turn out to be true. A model-theoretic theory is true for a given model just in case the sentences are true on that model. The class of model-theoretic models make true the model-theoretic theory.  McEwan calls the identification of the model-theoretic theory with the class of its models a naive semantic view.  If, however, the class of models satisfies the sentences of the model-theoretic theory, McEwan no longer dubs this a simple naive semantic view.  He specifies the naive semantic view as having the following conditions (3).

•  It is identified with M, the class of model-theoretic models,
• The models in M are directly defined, 
• The naive-theory is true for model n just in case n is an element in M. 

One problem with the naive theory is that it is difficult to see how any of it touches the world.  As it turns out, no n need represent the world at all! Another problem is that since the theory itself is just the class of models, it is what it is only when each model is true. This means that no model really instances the theory, for the theory would not be that theory if it had other instances!  As McEwan points out, the question of whether the solar system instances Newtonian mechanics is not a non-trivial one, but on the naive theory, it would be true just in case we stipulate that it is so (5).  Simply put, if the naive theory were true, then one could not axiomatize in model-theoretic theory without knowing in advance which interpretations would satisfy the model-theoretic theory.  But we do not always know in advance which interpretations satisfy our theory; there are sometimes unintended models. (Consider the non-trivial question of whether a newly discovered solar system obeys Newtonian laws.) Thus, by modus tollens, naive theory is not true.  McEwan puts the matter bluntly: "There is nothing above and beyond the models themselves to decide whether a theory is applicable to some model or not" (7). 

Fortunately, the semantic view is not identified with the naive theory.  Indeed, the semantic view realizes that the models of M must represent the world in some way.  Clearly, realists and many empiricists would want this to be so. Why not then simply identify n with a physical model?  But how can a physical system be an interpretation of a formal language?  This seems to have the matter backward.  

As it turns out, semantic views are plagued by the representation problem. Consider the claim that one of the models of M (say n) is the faithful representation of the physical world. But on what basis is n the representation? If the theory is the class of models, one of which is the real world, then why identify the theory with the class of models in the first place (8)?

It seems that the semantic view must somehow deal with the representation problem.  However, Bas von Fraasen a theory's models is identified with a class of structures.  He writes: 

The syntactic picture of a theory identifies it with a body of theorems, stated in one particular language chosen for the expression of that theory.  This should be contrasted with the alternative of presenting a theory in the first instance by identifying a class of structures as its models.  In this second, semantic, approach the language used to express the theory is neither basic nor unique; the same class of structures could well be described in radically different ways, each with its own limitations.  The models occupy center stage.  

So what of these model that occupy center stage? What becomes of realism on the semantic view?  If the models are mathematical structures, then are the objects in these models "real enough" for one to claim that one's scientific theory is true of the real world?  Is the wave function a mathematical object and thus real in the sense that a scientific realist wants?  What would distinguish a real physical object from other pretenders?  What about unobservables -- are they real?  What would distinguish an unobservable mathematical object from an on observable "real" one?  The representation problem is clearly a problem for realism. 

While one might claim that the semantic view is the new "received view" in the philosophy of science, there are very strong voices that have emerged which have pointed to the "extra-scientific" or "extra-rational" factors at work in science, factors that seem as almost as deadly to the semantic view as they are to the syntactic view. We shall attend to these in the next post. 

Recovering Play in Theology

I was a kid once and I enjoyed playing.  Early on I played with most anything, I suppose, though I can't remember much of it. Such playing is what kids do, after all.  After playing with the everyday objects of the house or barn, I remember playing with tinker toys, electrical wires and plugs, mechanical objects, train and erector sets, radios and other electronic items, and stereo equipment and speakers.  I also remember playing with numbers, working out batting, slugging and earned run averages, and speculating about big league home runs per time at bat as a function of parks parks and average yearly ERA.  (It was hard to get baseball information in those days.  There has only been a functional internet for less than half my life, and I lived over 100 miles away from a real library.)

I don't suppose my play was too much different than that of others who lived on Midwest farms in the fifties and sixties.  When not playing with toys or numbers, I played outside.  Like many of my classmates, I thought about such things as the differences between the drawbar and PTO horsepower of various tractors, horsepower as a function of RPMs, and fuel consumption as a function of power.  Anything useful on the farm could be thought about as having a set of measurable properties, and one could, in principle, do quantitative comparisons with machines that other kids' dads had.   (In those days there were no farms operated by women alone, though many women farmed with husbands and spent their days in toil both inside and outside the house.)  All of this thinking was just plainly fun. 

Some who reflect now on the nature of play like to point out that one of its essential qualities of is purposelessness.  By this they mean that a defining feature of play is that one does not play for some other end.  The play is not an instrument one employs to accomplish something else. Play has no extrinsic value to achieve another thing.  If by this they mean that 'purpose' cannot be predicated of something constituted as an end-in-itself -- play thus having intrinsic value -- I would concur, although I am chary flatly to say that on all occasions a thing must lack purpose if it fails to be a means to an end.

Indeed, what can have more purpose than a game?  Of course, it does not matter ultimately if the team wins or loses.  Whether the Vikings ever win the Super Bowl -- or even play in it again -- really does not effect anything in the grown-up world except possibly the micro economy around the park.  But, of course, Vikings fans of all ages find all kinds of meaning in Vikings wins and loses, and even at times seemingly derive some purpose for their own lives in the winning or losing of the team.  (One might reflect here more deeply about the nature of play in religion and sports, but this would take this post too far afield.)  

In the late spring, summer and autumn in the upper Midwest, people head out to pasture-like places on hot days to hit a little white ball around, hoping ultimately to get it in a small hole 300 yards away from where they first hit it.  The game has no extrinsic purpose for most, because very few ever can derive income and ultimately a living from it.  Yet people play golf, in fact they spend money to do so.  The game seems completely full of meaning and purpose, although the world is not changed in its playing.

Different people like different kind of games; they simply play differently.  Moreover, people play differently at different times in their lives. Looking back on my life, I now understand that what I always simply wanted to do as my playing changed is somehow to keep playing.  Erector sets were displaced by electronics, and then by something that still remains a passion for me: music.  While I liked sports, I must admit that I was not athletically gifted.  This was not true of music.  With music I could actually play, and even play better as the years went by.  Moreover, as the Pythagoreans knew, music is comprised of numbers! 

At one time in my life, in fact, I thought it might be possible to derive income from such music playing.  But it became apparent to me that the economics of this was not likely sustainable.  I did not want to teach high school music, and it was clear that playing music professionally was a very serious matter indeed.  In fact, while there does remain some play in musical endeavors when one does it seriously, much of the play simply has to be given up in perfecting one's craft.  It seemed clear to me then that as the gravity of one's playing increases. one gradually ceases playing.  This suggests that part of our the criterion for the application of the word 'play' is that one does not have to do the activity in question. I don't have to play Bud Powell jazz on the piano, and this not-having-to-play is an essential feature of that play.  

Play thus has no external compulsion.  When we begin to experience the pull of duty to the craft, our play soon becomes work.  After all, training for boxing matches and practicing to play a recital are very serious matters.  One has to work most of the time every day, if one is going to box professionally or play Bach's Goldberg Variations in concert.

I never really knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I knew somehow that I had to keep playing.  In college, I didn't play in my math or science courses -- there were many reasons for that including the Viet Nam War -- but I did play some music, and towards the end of my undergraduate days played by both reading, and reflecting upon, books.  Unfortunately, I did not seriously read until I was almost done with college. Following college there was, of course, serious work to do on the farm.  However, I found that I was able to continue to play by learning Latin, studying mathematics and physics, reading Schopenhauer, and, more frequently, reading theology.

I must admit to coming to theology somewhat late.  The German Lutheran pastor of my childhood church taught us in confirmation class how very serious this all was.  Maybe it is because I had thought that theology was work that I did not read it seriously until I was 24 years old.  My first two books were Elert's Structure of Lutheranism and Tillich's Systematic Theology.  Both captivated me, and the latter seemed to me to be true play.

Tillich had put everything together brilliantly.  It was like he had a giant erector set and he had fabricated an enormous building with pulleys, shafts and worm gears turning in beautiful ways.  Moreover, the subject matter seemed quite disconnected from making a living.  How better could one happily spend one's spare time?  Why not read theology?  How much fun could a human have?  Clearly, reading Tillich was more fun and more engaging than watching the Vikings.  And the subject matter was important because the building Tillich was constructing included the fabric of life itself.  What better way to spend one's time than to do read and write theology?  Here is something one could do that was important in itself without thereby having to scheme as to how to make a living through the doing of it.

But a funny thing happened to me on the way to finding meaning and purpose in the play of theology.  I wanted more time to read theology, but in order to put oneself in a position to be able to spend one's time in such theological activity, I found that I had to study theology seriously, and hence move into an occupation more closely aligned to theology than was farming.  And now came the fateful decision.  Why not do a Ph.D. and thereby get to read, write and teach theology the rest of one's life?

This seemed to make sense.  One could be a pretty good thinker, thought I, without becoming merely a professional thinker, without having to read and write 12 hours a day like the poor pianist memorizing the Goldberg Variations for recital.  (Of course, Glen Gould seemingly simply played them.)  One could, I thought, somehow still do theology playfully, one could do it in the cracks and fissures of the other professional activities of life, i.e., the teaching and research of the college or university campus.  Moreover, being on faculty to think the big questions of man and women might just help a few students think those questions as well.  (I was familiar with Wittgenstein's insight that good philosophical thinking allows us to get over the disease of philosophy, but I did not think it applied to theology.)  And so was hatched the idea to get an income that is connected to the play of theology. 

But life always interrupts play.  Life is serious, after all.  My life had veered into the play of business and capital formation, but the latter activities did not remain ultimately playful.  And there was very serious work to do with respect to Lutheran church bodies, particularly the then nascent Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  It was my experience in the latter that ultimately propelled me to give up play almost entirely, and to work to establish The Institute of Lutheran Theology (www.ilt.edu).

While there has been some play in the last years in envisioning and implementing structures, there has been mostly work.  One needed to be vigilant in budgeting, in developing constituencies, in marketing, in production, and in the building of a functional management structure.  We have worked hard, and we hope we have successfully founded an institution that can serve future generations of those wanting seriously to study the great texts of the western tradition from a Lutheran perspective.  We take the Bible and Lutheran Confessions extremely seriously, but we do not forget the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon, and we realize that meaning and truth in our time must be ultimately located in the playful fusion of horizons between our time and the time of these classic texts.   

Now that the Institute has been formed, and my businesses have been built, I find that I am at a new time in my life, a time that might be a time to play again, a time for bringing together the bits and pieces of a lifetime of thinkings and doings.  When I was young, all of the pieces of the erector set could conceivably be used to build most anything I wanted to construct.  It strikes me that there is much to be playful about now as I try to put what I have learned into some kind of coherent order. 

But there is great risk in being playful in theology. After all, theology is a profession and it has its guild that adjudicates the sense from the non-sense, the spurious from the relevant, the significant from the trivial.  One gets a good reputation in theology, a non-playful reputation, for doing work that is important, for doing that which has a significant end in something other than in itself.  Good theology, after all, is supposed to keep the Church moving rightly forward.  So perhaps being playful in theology is something one should keep to oneself.  

All this makes me think about the things that I have written.  Have they been expressions of something important in themselves?  I recall that the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor once said that art is a cry trying to get out.  Has anything that I have written ever been the result of such a playful dynamic?  Luther was passionate about what he wrote because salvation itself was at stake.  Has anything been at stake for me?

Here one must be brutally honest.  Perhaps over the years I might have said a couple of things in print that may have helped move an esoteric conversation in a particular way. Clearly, my academic work has been directed to a rather narrow audience, and my more popular writing has happened less frequently in recent years. What is the cause of this?  Have I nothing any longer to say, or have I simply not prioritized writing to general audiences in the way I should have?  Is it that I have worked so much, that I have no time for play? 

When one reaches a certain stage in one's career, there are no more mountains that need to be climbed, no more work that has to be done.  I finished out an academic career, founded a school, and built a number of businesses.  I am happily married with wonderful children.  So what is left?  Does one simply wander off the stage and prepare for the Night? 

I don't think so.  If one thinks about things clearly, one will fathom that the same thing is left at the end of life as was present in life's childhood: There are again days to spend that one no longer has to organize in ways to make a living.  One has time again, and time is the most precious of all things.  After all, with time comes the possibility of play. The older time of one's life is properly the time to play again, but no longer with the limited toys of youth, but with all the experiences of an entire lifetime!    

This blog is designed to be pure play.  I don't write anything here for any greater grave purpose whatsoever.  I write not to get a better position, to build fame, to reform the Church, or to establish another institution of higher learning.  I write not to accomplish anything at all.  I write now to play.  And what is the contour of this play?   

It is time to connect things together and try to build something new.  While my fundamental passion has always been theology, I have always thought that the more preparation in philosophy one has, the better one will be able to do theology.  Over the years, it has become obvious to me as well, that the best preparation for philosophy is likely not history, literature, or the study of a foreign language -- though all of these are helpful.  The best preparation for the doing of philosophy, I believe, is sustained study and reflection upon the tools of thinking in general, and there is no better way to do this than in the study of modern logic, the logic now assumed by many to constitute the foundations of mathematics.

While many will no doubt disagree, this inference is unmistakable:  To do theology well, one should know some logic, that is, one should know one's way around some of the basics in the foundations of mathematics.  As it turns out, the study of logic helps us get clear on the nature of semantic modeling, something which happens all the time in theology, but upon which there is seldom any explicit recognition or reflection.

Getting clear on the nature of theological models should allow us to remain humble when we advance viewpoints about the nature of the design and the relationship of the divine to the created order.  This involves us in mathematics as well, for when we deal with the divine, we must think the concept of infinity.  But as everybody since Plato and Aristotle have known, the concept of infinite is deeply related to mathematics.  It makes sense still, I think, to play by trying to relate the eternal realm of mathematics to the region of the divine. Playful theology should be more self-conscious, or maybe self-assured, about its mathematics.

But the relationship of theology to philosophy has another ramification as well.  Philosophy was the discipline from which the special sciences were derived.  This means that philosophy and the sciences are always related.  Since theology has a relationship to philosophy, it must as well have a relationship to the special sciences.  I have for a very long time believed that drawing the boundaries of theology in ways that they cannot in principle play on the same stage of truth is a really bad idea.  If theology is to retrieve any of its old vigor, it must again know something deeply about the world.  While theologians should understand some history, politics, literature, and critical theory, they should also know something about quantum theory, neuroscience, cosmology, and information theory.

When theological discourse is no longer available in the sciences, then the possibility of theological coordination and explanation is wholly occluded.  Theories of the multiverse become plausible because there no longer is a bound to the questions science asks and speculatively tries to answer.  What is, after all, more likely:  A creating God at the center of the universe, or the bald existence of a multiverse, an existence without explanation, an existence which itself is only hypothesized because one thinks one can now ask and answer questions beyond the bounds of possible experience in the spirit of the regnant naturalism of our day. 

It is time to play, and I intend to so.  This means I will speculate and make connections that perhaps ultimately cannot be sustained.  Theological play is like brainstorming.  We throw ideas against the wall, many of which we shall probably ultimately have to reject.  However, we shall try to ask some interesting questions.

Notice that the professionalism of the guild counts against such play.  One ought, after all, put into print only what one knows.  In the discipline of many hours of work devoted to one thing, one can learn a great deal about that thing and one might thereby become the expert voice when it comes to that thing.  The world deeply needs experts in many areas, but being an expert is no longer playing, and I intend to play. 

Anybody reading this is invited to join the conversation,  My experience has been that the number of readers of my blog posts diminishes proportionally to that which I regard as theologically important. So let me be clear: I am no longer interested in what the guild might regard as important.  Instead I want to play, and I would be deeply honored if some would want to read along and comment.  Theological conversation helps a theologian stay humble and informed.

But if there are not many readers for some of these blogs, I do understand.  Connecting theologically Bohmian mechanics to the Kantian supersensible substrate is perhaps too speculative for most.  (I do realize that when one looks to be too speculative, one can easily come across as simply being childish.)  Yet, I shall try to remain playful.  After all, I believe that our entire lives can be understood from the inside as being a type of game.  It is precisely in the intrinsicality of our existence, in its playful "purposiveness without a purpose" (Kant), that we find the leisure to ask what it has been about and what it means. Theology poses the most significant questions of human existence, and when these questions are no longer asked, then the game ends and we become other than homo ludens, we become other than who we are. 

So I likely won't run after little white balls this summer.  I will, however, try to think theologically and playfully about all manner of things.  Perhaps this theological thinking is at its deepest meditative.  Perhaps it thus can be linked to the "thinking which is a thanking" to which Heidegger alludes.  I am thankful to have this opportunity to do some playful theology.  Now its time to roll up the sleeves and have some fun!