Until Our Minds Rest in Thee

Open-Mindedness, Intellectual Diversity, and the Christian Life

John Rose

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781532662546, 9781532662553
• eBook ISBN: 9781532662560
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Open-mindedness is often celebrated in our modern world--yet the habit of open-mindedness remains under-defined, and may leave Christians with many questions. Is open-mindedness a virtue? What is the value of intellectual diversity, and how should Christians regard it? Is it a threat or an asset to the church and its tradition? Drawing on sources ancient and modern--from Aristotle to Augustine, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein--this book explores these questions from the perspectives of philosophy and the Christian faith.

7

Intellectual Diversity after Grace

From Nature to Grace

Part I of this book—the first six chapters—concerned the virtue of open-mindedness and the worth of intellectual diversity as viewed through a philosophical, non-theological lens. Part II—encompassing the next three chapters—takes up these same topics but with a new lens, that of grace or the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. With the infusion of grace, objects and actions of philosophical study look different, but not entirely so. Between nature and grace—between open-mindedness and intellectual diversity viewed first philosophically and then theologically—exists an organic relationship, a natural trajectory.

In the case of infused open-mindedness (chapter 8), the theological shift entails a view of beliefs as gifts not merely of the created order but of a personal God: awe, wonder, and intellectual gratitude—while remaining formally the same—occur in relationship with a God who enters history. The virtue of faith further restricts the range of propositions that Christians can fully consider or, put differently, enlarges the set of propositions that Christians regard as non-revisable. Theological hope, too, will change, for the better, the will and confidence with which the open-minded person engages in intellectual efforts.

As a reminder, “intellectual diversity” in this project does not mean the presence of a variety of academic disciplines or, say, different genres of literature; rather, it is an experienced state of affairs in which there is disagreement about questions, particularly questions regarded as being of great importance—conflicting beliefs, in other words. Such intellectual diversity takes on a new appearance when viewed through the lens of Christian grace, as I discuss in this chapter. Whereas open-mindedness concerns one’s personal mental life and thus beliefs (and, by extension, the possibility of orthodoxy and heresy), the topic of intellectual diversity concerns believers and their traditions (and, by extension, the possibility of heretics).

In Philippians 2:1–2, Paul writes, “Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” This command from Paul will serve as one of the guiding principles for the next two chapters.

Virtues practiced without grace are liable to fail, hard to sustain, and can, if led too far astray from their ultimate theological context, begin to be malformed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, writes about “reason, culture, humanity, and tolerance,” and says that Nazism (in his time) led to an alliance between Christian and non-Christian “defenders of these values.” He goes on to point out that the concepts of reason, culture, humanity, and tolerance “had [once] served as battle slogans against the Church, against Christianity”—something that is true of the concepts of open-mindedness and the value of intellectual diversity in the contemporary world as well. Nevertheless, in moments of extreme danger, these concepts or virtues, which had become “homeless” in their purely secular form, “now sought refuge in the Christian sphere, in the shadow of the Christian Church.”280 They returned to their origin. “The children of the Church, who had become independent and gone their own ways, now in the hour of danger returned to their mother. During the time of their estrangement, their appearance and their language had altered a great deal, and yet at the crucial moment the mother and the children once again recognized one another.”281 In our modern world, the same can be said of open-mindedness and intellectual diversity. “Reason, justice, culture, humanity, and all the kindred concepts”—such as open-mindedness and intellectual diversity—“sought and found a new purpose and a new power in their origin. This origin is Jesus Christ.”282

The previous chapter ended with Paul Griffiths’s remark about the “caress” of an interlocutor who agrees about much while disagreeing about something in particular, or what Griffiths calls the “gift of disagreement,” properly done. This is the best that intellectual friendship can be prior to grace. Still, it pales in comparison to intellectual friendship touched by the effects of grace. First, it must be said that grace is possible only because of God’s extension of friendship with humans. Aristotle, who understood well the dynamics of true friendship (though without the benefits of knowledge of special revelation), taught that real friendship was only possible among equals. Among virtuous and equal parties, friendship can survive hardship, “but when one party is removed to a great distance, as God is [to us mere mortals], the possibility of friendship ceases.”283 Kings cannot really be friends with their subjects, in other words. It could never have occurred to Aristotle that we humans could be friends with God—that he could be more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as Augustine said—or that we could close our eyes and fold our hands and speak to the Prime Mover himself. For this, revelation and theological virtues—unknown to Aristotle—were needed. As much as Aristotle knew about the life of virtue, he did not know the good news of John 15:15: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from my father I made known to you.” And because of this deficit, Aristotle was unaware of much of what the life of virtue entailed. Put differently, the following prayer (from the service of Evening Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer), which assumes a sort of active charity on the part of God towards his human subjects, would have been utterly alien to Aristotle: “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.”284

Intellectual friendships look different after grace, between fellow Christians, obviously, but also between Christians and non-Christians. Theological charity is now on the scene, causing those who possess it to view their possible union, not just in terms of agreement about truths and acquired virtues, but also to view their possible union in terms of union in God and his church. Christians are called to extend charity and friendship even towards those who are not (in the Aristotelian sense) of their same status or of equal virtue, and even to those who are unkind towards them. As Matthew 5:46–47 says, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• The Start of the Inquiry
• Corresponding Vices and Accompanying Intellectual Virtues
• Semblances
• The Semblance of Strong Fallibilism
• The Virtue of Open-Mindedness
• The Value of Intellectual Diversity
• Intellectual Diversity after Grace
• Infused Open-Mindedness
• Open-Mindedness and Intellectual Diversity after Death
• Bibliography