My students nearly came to blows this week, arguing over the ethical implications of a serious reading of Revelation.
It doesn't get any better than that, does it?
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Books in Review
I don't recall whether or not I had a specific textbook on the Historical Jesus Problem in Intro to the New Testament. I remember the professor's lecture on it (very clearly), and I remember some books I read on the topic in subsequent years.
But I can't remember whether we had a book in NT 18 that explained the debate.
If not, that's likely because Mark Allan Powell's Jesus As a Figure in History wasn't published yet.
This is a surprisingly good textbook for introducing seminary students, religion majors, and beginning biblical students to the field of Historical Jesus research. Powell is detailed, clear, thorough, and--what was perhaps the most surprising--unfailingly generous in his descriptions of scholars and their methods. It would be a useful addition to any introductory New Testament syllabus.
But I can't remember whether we had a book in NT 18 that explained the debate.
If not, that's likely because Mark Allan Powell's Jesus As a Figure in History wasn't published yet.
This is a surprisingly good textbook for introducing seminary students, religion majors, and beginning biblical students to the field of Historical Jesus research. Powell is detailed, clear, thorough, and--what was perhaps the most surprising--unfailingly generous in his descriptions of scholars and their methods. It would be a useful addition to any introductory New Testament syllabus.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Books in Review
Joseph Amato's Victims and Values: A History and a Theory of Suffering has been a frustrating book to read.
It was frustrating primarily because I was desperately interested in an excellent treatment of his thesis: that the modern conception of and pursuit of justice is impoverished by its dependence on an inadequate understanding of the relationship between suffering and justice. Amato's treatment certainly raised issues, but without the sort of care and discretion that one must adopt when preparing to slaughter sacred cows.
Amato rightly (I believe) diagnoses certain problems with socio-political discourse in the US. The public discussion of justice, where it occurs, has become "a game of pick your victim," as Eugene Weber says in the intro to the book. Injustice and suffering--whether historical or actual, present or potential, rightly or wrongly perceived--are understood to create a debt which the public must honor. Indeed, virtually any kind of suffering is at least potentially the business of the state, whether as arbiter of competing claims to remediation (as in tort law), the administrator of whatever recompense is owed (as in welfare or medicaid), or the party ultimately responsible for inflicting suffering (as in our history of racial injustice).
Amato traces, with varying precision and insight, the historical development of this way of approaching the relationship between suffering and justice. At times, the story he is trying to tell gets lost in the details, but his point is primarily genealogical. It is not "natural" or inevitable to respond to reports of suffering the way we tend to do in the US today. We are the heirs of a philosophical sea-change that began, really, with Bacon, but since Amato is not particularly interested in medicine, he names other Enlightenment figures as the primary actors. Bentham is the obvious front-man: his articulation of utilitarian rationalism changed the way even non-utilitarians approach discussions of justice and suffering.
Unfortunately, when Amato moves from the historical to the contemporary, his argumentation fails. Or, rather, he fails to draw on the data in a way that would convince any that don't already agree with him. He relies on generalities and broadsides, abandoning his earlier practice of relying on texts.
(Reading society, as he purports to do in his final chapters, is both easier and more difficult than reading texts. One has fewer restraints on the interpretations one may advance; on the other hand, one's opponents are similarly unconstrained.)
Yet the questions he raises, particularly in chapter 8, are spot on. The relationship between suffering and recompense, dessert and justice, remuneration and retribution, is one that begs to be investigated. Public policy tends to act on too hazy an understanding of how suffering and justice are related generally and in a particular policy or law. How, for example, is Affirmative Action related to Jim Crow or slavery? More generally, what is the relationship between a people's historic suffering and an individual's demand for justice? What is justice, when the injustice has been so vast as to be irremediable and unforgivable?
These questions are urgent and immediate. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone given to rely on the modern understanding of suffering--that it gives me a claim to innocence, a moral vantage from which to demand something, a right to force others to attend to my perceived needs--is going to find Amato's book anything like persuasive.
It was frustrating primarily because I was desperately interested in an excellent treatment of his thesis: that the modern conception of and pursuit of justice is impoverished by its dependence on an inadequate understanding of the relationship between suffering and justice. Amato's treatment certainly raised issues, but without the sort of care and discretion that one must adopt when preparing to slaughter sacred cows.
Amato rightly (I believe) diagnoses certain problems with socio-political discourse in the US. The public discussion of justice, where it occurs, has become "a game of pick your victim," as Eugene Weber says in the intro to the book. Injustice and suffering--whether historical or actual, present or potential, rightly or wrongly perceived--are understood to create a debt which the public must honor. Indeed, virtually any kind of suffering is at least potentially the business of the state, whether as arbiter of competing claims to remediation (as in tort law), the administrator of whatever recompense is owed (as in welfare or medicaid), or the party ultimately responsible for inflicting suffering (as in our history of racial injustice).
Amato traces, with varying precision and insight, the historical development of this way of approaching the relationship between suffering and justice. At times, the story he is trying to tell gets lost in the details, but his point is primarily genealogical. It is not "natural" or inevitable to respond to reports of suffering the way we tend to do in the US today. We are the heirs of a philosophical sea-change that began, really, with Bacon, but since Amato is not particularly interested in medicine, he names other Enlightenment figures as the primary actors. Bentham is the obvious front-man: his articulation of utilitarian rationalism changed the way even non-utilitarians approach discussions of justice and suffering.
Unfortunately, when Amato moves from the historical to the contemporary, his argumentation fails. Or, rather, he fails to draw on the data in a way that would convince any that don't already agree with him. He relies on generalities and broadsides, abandoning his earlier practice of relying on texts.
(Reading society, as he purports to do in his final chapters, is both easier and more difficult than reading texts. One has fewer restraints on the interpretations one may advance; on the other hand, one's opponents are similarly unconstrained.)
Yet the questions he raises, particularly in chapter 8, are spot on. The relationship between suffering and recompense, dessert and justice, remuneration and retribution, is one that begs to be investigated. Public policy tends to act on too hazy an understanding of how suffering and justice are related generally and in a particular policy or law. How, for example, is Affirmative Action related to Jim Crow or slavery? More generally, what is the relationship between a people's historic suffering and an individual's demand for justice? What is justice, when the injustice has been so vast as to be irremediable and unforgivable?
These questions are urgent and immediate. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone given to rely on the modern understanding of suffering--that it gives me a claim to innocence, a moral vantage from which to demand something, a right to force others to attend to my perceived needs--is going to find Amato's book anything like persuasive.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
In the "It's a Nice Gesture, But . . ." Category
Our winner is: Trinket Round-up Day!
A Minnesota hospital system, eager to show how serious it is about containing drug costs and making prescription decisions based on science alone, has conducted a hospital-wide purge of notebooks, pens, post-it notes, and the like with drug ads on them.
This very admirable gesture netted over 18,000 items, all of which are now banned--that is, doctors are banned from accepting such items as gifts from drug company reps.
One hopes that lavish cruises, expensive dinners, and opulent parties are likewise banned, but such was not specified. In fact, one suspects that drug companies will find ways to "work with the system" (read: work around the system) in order to do what they've always done.
Predictably, a pharmaceutical industry spokesperson called the trinket sweep "Draconian."
But personally, I found the last two lines of the article to be the most telling:
Many of [the hospital's] items will be going to the health system of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon, which has three hospitals, and several rural health centers.
Irons said there shouldn't be a conflict of interest in Cameroon because the advertised drugs aren't available there.
A Minnesota hospital system, eager to show how serious it is about containing drug costs and making prescription decisions based on science alone, has conducted a hospital-wide purge of notebooks, pens, post-it notes, and the like with drug ads on them.
This very admirable gesture netted over 18,000 items, all of which are now banned--that is, doctors are banned from accepting such items as gifts from drug company reps.
One hopes that lavish cruises, expensive dinners, and opulent parties are likewise banned, but such was not specified. In fact, one suspects that drug companies will find ways to "work with the system" (read: work around the system) in order to do what they've always done.
Predictably, a pharmaceutical industry spokesperson called the trinket sweep "Draconian."
But personally, I found the last two lines of the article to be the most telling:
Many of [the hospital's] items will be going to the health system of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon, which has three hospitals, and several rural health centers.
Irons said there shouldn't be a conflict of interest in Cameroon because the advertised drugs aren't available there.
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