Relocating To Elfland

Whodathunk the ghost of Cornelius Van Til would ever haunt the New York Times Opinionator? Check this out from Stanley Fish, reviewing Steven Smith’s soon-to-be-released Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (which appears to be a must-read). A teaser from Fish: 

“While secular discourse, in the form of statistical analyses, controlled experiments and rational decision-trees, can yield banks of data that can then be subdivided and refined in more ways than we can count, it cannot tell us what that data means or what to do with it. No matter how much information you pile up and how sophisticated are the analytical operations you perform, you will never get one millimeter closer to the moment when you can move from the piled-up information to some lesson or imperative it points to; for it doesn’t point anywhere; it just sits there, inert and empty.” 

I was equally taken with Fish’s brief mention of “a form of intellectual/political apartheid known as the private/public distinction.” It reminded me what a mess dualism has made in the history of Western philosophy and theology. Think about it: 

In philosophy, the duality of idea and form, which we owe to the classical Greeks. We’re still trying to find a way to put these back together, especially post-Kant. 

In anthropology, the duality of soul (mind) and body. In the field of medicine alone, one wonders how different things might look if these were ever brought back into fruitful connection. Let us not even speak of the field of education. 

In social theory, the duality of religious (church) and secular (state, society). The one cares for all things “spiritual” (worship, and the fate of the soul); the other for all things social, tangible, and embodied (says Fish, “the business of everyday life – commerce, science, medicine, law, agriculture, education, foreign policy, etc.). The arrangement sits awkwardly, one must admit, with the biblical metaphors of salt, light, and leaven; but there are Christians who seem to believe God is happy with it.

Penetrating all of this, the eschatological duality of heaven (eternity) and earth (time). What doth earth matter? Of what value is the historical? We’re holding out for a harp, a cloud, and a crown. I could do without the cloud, myself, but my sanctification has proceeded only so far.