Sunday, November 23, 2003
Apparently I used my terms unwisely a few days ago in discussing open mindedness and fundamentalism and some people were confused. So I will attempt to explain here what I meant.
I am basically taking an Aristotelian angle to this whole argument. Courage is the mean as all virtues are between two vices--cowardice and brashness. To get at the virtue, we must aim at the vice that is most unlike us. Thus a coward, to be brave, must do things that seem to him foolhardy, while the naturally brash to be merely brave, must behave in ways that seem to him cowardly. To gain the virtue we must aim at the vice we are most unlike.
Now there is definitely a balance between narrow-mindedly (to borrow the colloquialism) clinging to the past and never checking things out and being so open-minded your brains have fallen out (another colloquialism) and we have to attain that balance without rushing to either extreme. The way to do this is identify which vice we are most like and act so far the other way that we are likely to hit the mean.
I don't think anyone in their right mind could deny that, on the whole American society and especially "Christian academics" (let's just put the whole thing in quotes) are in any danger of narrow-mindedness, anymore than they are in danger of actual racism or militarism. They are in far more danger of going completely the other way to cultural relativism. As someone trying to strike the balance, I believe the answer is to aim as far as we can towards the opposite extreme, and at least we'll be closer to the mean than to the dangerous extreme we are now hugging. Besides, a little firm authority in a chaotic world is always a good thing.
And for the record, I am not a KJV-Onlyist, a Separatist, a Wesleyan who believes they sit astride the Only True Theology, or a liberal.
I am basically taking an Aristotelian angle to this whole argument. Courage is the mean as all virtues are between two vices--cowardice and brashness. To get at the virtue, we must aim at the vice that is most unlike us. Thus a coward, to be brave, must do things that seem to him foolhardy, while the naturally brash to be merely brave, must behave in ways that seem to him cowardly. To gain the virtue we must aim at the vice we are most unlike.
Now there is definitely a balance between narrow-mindedly (to borrow the colloquialism) clinging to the past and never checking things out and being so open-minded your brains have fallen out (another colloquialism) and we have to attain that balance without rushing to either extreme. The way to do this is identify which vice we are most like and act so far the other way that we are likely to hit the mean.
I don't think anyone in their right mind could deny that, on the whole American society and especially "Christian academics" (let's just put the whole thing in quotes) are in any danger of narrow-mindedness, anymore than they are in danger of actual racism or militarism. They are in far more danger of going completely the other way to cultural relativism. As someone trying to strike the balance, I believe the answer is to aim as far as we can towards the opposite extreme, and at least we'll be closer to the mean than to the dangerous extreme we are now hugging. Besides, a little firm authority in a chaotic world is always a good thing.
And for the record, I am not a KJV-Onlyist, a Separatist, a Wesleyan who believes they sit astride the Only True Theology, or a liberal.
// posted by The Pendragon @ 11:21 PM 
