Integrating Missionally

The following is a two part series on the images of knowing. Today I look at the images that form the idea of truth.

The message education should convey is not identified by words like “fact,” “theory,” or “objective”. Instead, the message is called “truth.” The English word for “truth” comes from a Germanic root that also gives rise to the word “troth,” as in the ancient vow “I pledge thee my troth.” With this word, one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in a mutually accountable and transforming relationship. To know something or someone in truth is to enter troth with the known. To know truth is to become betrothed, to engage the known with one’s whole self. To know in truth is to allow one’s self to be known as well, to be vulnerable to the challenges and changes any true relationship brings. To know in truth is to enter into the life of that which we know and allow it to enter into ours. Truthful knowing weds the know and the known; even in separation, the two become part of each other’s life and fate.

Therefore, truth has nothing to do with manufacturing a world, keeping it at a distance, or manipulating it to suit our needs. Truth involves entering in to a relationship with someone or something genuinely other than us, but with whom we are intimately bound. Truth contains the image we are seeking – the image of community in which we were first created, the image of relatedness between knower and known.

Educating towards truth does not mean turning away from facts and theories and objective realities. If we devote ourselves to truth, the facts will not necessarily change. What will change is our relation to the facts. Truth requires the knower to become interdependent with the known.

The following was adapted from Parker Palmer’s book To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey

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The following is a two part series on the images of knowing. Today I look at the images that form the idea of objectivism.

The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living. Seeing people as thinkers requires that we acquire knowledge in a certain way, a way much different than seeing people as lovers. It also shapes the knowledge we trust and value.

If we are thinkers, we value worlds like “fact” and “theory” and “objective.” The images and metaphors developed from these words give us insight into not only on the knowledge we value, but also in how we understand our world and shape our lives.

The word “fact” is vital. Finding the “facts’ marks the turn from primitive superstition to modern science, from subjective knowledge based on feeling, intuition, and faith to objective knowledge that can be tested by our senses. Fact comes from the Lain facere, “to make.” This image of “making” suggests that a fact is something created by the human hand – meaning that is most clearly seen in our words manufacture and artifact. This tells us something interesting about our way of knowing: we are busily engaged in trying to construct a livable world with our facts.

Another key word is “theory”. Our facts do not arrange themselves automatically into structures we can inhabit. So we spin theories, webs of connective logic, to order and integrate our facts. Theory is the thread that weaves our factual world together.

“Theory” comes from the Greek theoros, or “spectator,” one of a complex of Greek words having to do with the sort of viewing and observing that characterize a theatre audience. This image suggests another feature of modern knowing: we regard what we know as “out there,” on a stage, and we relate to it from a distance. Our knowledge does not draw us into a relationship with the known, into participation in the drama. Instead, it holds us at arm’s length as detached analysts, commentators, evaluators of each other and the world. The Greeks regarded drama as integral to life, not a spectator sport but a soul-making force. We, however, made a rigid distinction between the observer and the observed for the sake of objectivity. Where Greek audiences were able to put themselves at the center of the play – literally allowing it to “play” upon them – we hold ourselves apart for fear of distorting the objective facts with our subjective needs. Read the rest of this entry »

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James Smith new book

I have been reading Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies)by James K.A. Smith. Smith sees Christian education as really spiritual formation. I wanted to note his ideas, of which I’ve interjected my own of what he calls philosophical anthropology.

How we think about education is linked to how we think about human persons. Too much of our thinking about education sees it as a matter of disseminating information precisely because it assumes that human beings are primarily thinking things. This understanding has moved into the Christian educational process. Christian education has adopted a picture of human beings that owes more to modernity and the Enlightenment than it does to the holistic, biblical vision of humans. In particular, Christian education has adopted a philosophical anthropology that sees humans as primarily thinking things. The result has been an understanding of education largely in terms of information; more specifically, the end of Christian education has been seen to be the dissemination and communication of Christian ideas rather than the formation of a peculiar people. This has been most articulated in terms of a Christian worldview.

A Christian worldview is primarily a set of doctrines or a system of beliefs or a set of implicit ideas. This construction creates a Christian faith that is dualistic and reductionistic. It reduces the Christian faith primarily to a set of ideas, principles, claims and propositions that are known and believed. The goal of this is to create “correct” thinking. This relies on the description of Descartes: thinking things that are containers for ideas. This generates a rationalistic view of self where we are not only reduced to thinking things but are seen as things whose bodies are nonessential containers for our minds. This also creates our dualistic approach: There is a distinction between our bodies and minds and neither affects the other.

Humans, however, are fundamentally desiring creatures. We are what we love, and our love is shaped, primed, and aimed by liturgical practices that take hold of our heart and aim it to certain ends. Humans are primarily lovers, not thinkers or believers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Today I am going to begin work on a series of articles on epistemology. Epistemology seeks to develop a general theory stating the conditions under which people have knowledge and rational beliefs. It is the study of knowledge. During this journey I will be relying on introductions to epistemology from two authors: Richard Feldman and his book Epistemology in the Foundations of Philosophy Series and Robert Audi’s second edition of Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy).

There are several sources of knowledge. What we know about our immediate environment comes from perception and sensation. This is our awareness of external things and comes through sight, hearing and the other senses. Yet it does not account for our knowledge of our own internal states. For instance, you know you feel sleepy. This is a result of introspection. Other times we know something through reasoning or inference. For instance, when we know some facts and see that those facts support some other fact, we can come to know that additional fact. Scientific knowledge seems to arise from inferences from observations. We know some things because we can “see” they are true. We have the ability to think about things and discern certain simple truths. Additionally, memory is crucial in the knowledge of our past and in certain facts. A person’s testimony can also be a source of knowledge. Testimony is not limited to statements made on a witness stand. It includes what other people tell you, including what they tell you about what they know from their environment. The complete list looks like this:

• Perception
• Memory
• Testimony
• Introspection
• Reasoning
• Rational insight

From these sources, epistemologists develop what is called The Standard View, which basically states that there are many sources of knowledge and they include those listed above. The subject matter of epistemology arises from The Standard View.
Obviously, for the christian, there is one primary source that are not included on this list. This is metaphysical knowledge or knowledge resulting from the interaction through religious practices and experiences.

The Standard View also holds that propositional knowledge is more fundamental than other types of knowledge. In epistemology in general, the kind of knowledge usually discussed is propositional knowledge, also known as “knowledge-that” as opposed to “knowledge-how.” For example: in mathematics, it is known that 2 + 2 = 4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers. Many (but not all) philosophers therefore think there is an important distinction between “knowing that” and “knowing how”, with epistemology primarily interested in the former. A third type of knowing is “knowing of”, or knowledge by acquaintance also exists.

In Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Michael Polanyi articulates a case for the epistemological relevance of two forms of knowledge (knowledge-that and knowledge-how) using the example of the act of balance involved in riding a bicycle, he suggests that the theoretical knowledge of the physics involved in maintaining a state of balance cannot substitute for the practical knowledge of how to ride, and that it is important to understand how both are established and grounded.

Philosophers admit that propositional knowledge cannot explain everything. However, it does hold a special status.

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There is a great need for creative, entrepreneurial ministers in USAmerica. The funds that will be afforded to churches and ministers has taken a hit during this economic downturn. It will continue to decline as USAmerica moves farther away from the cultural Christianity that has defined it for most of its history. Churches and ministries, and their leaders will need to be creative in their ministries and in how they acquire funds. What traits will power an entrepreneurial minister?

In a question-and-answer session with Harvard Business Review contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. The researchers conducted a six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study they found five “discovery skills” that distinguish them from other leaders.

The first skill is what the researchers called “associating.” It is a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. I have written and participated in a vodcast with Todd Littleton about the concept and book called “The Medici Effect”. This corresponds with what the researchers discovered. Creative, innovative leaders are able to integrate multiple disciplines. This would include, for instance, the integration of theology and emerging brain research, the integration of missions and business, and the integration of leadership and quantum physics. Interdisciplinary education appears to be the best way to not only develop innovative leaders, but creative problem solvers as well. These people read something other than their own discipline. The watch outside of their areas of expertise.

The second skill is questioning – an ability to ask “what if”, “why”, and “why not” questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture. The third is the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior. This third quality is greatly important. We all live and function in patterns. Most of us do not even know the patterns we act upon. In addition, most of us do not observe well. We do not have time to sit and watch and observe. But innovative people leaders are able to see patterns in people, events, and material. The are able to put together the details and are able to see the signs that radiate in culture and in people. They are semioticians.

Another skill is the ability to experiment – the people we studied are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds. And finally, they are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

The researchers were asked which skill was most important. That they found was that “questioning turbo-charges observing, experimenting, and networking, but questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others. Overall, associating is the key skill because new ideas aren’t created without connecting problems or ideas in ways that they haven’t been connected before. The other behaviors are inputs that trigger associating–so they are a means of getting to a creative end.”

If these are the qualities that will drive creative, innovative people in the future, we need to consider the de-innovative processes in our education. In particular for ministers and ministries, we need to consider the de-innovative processes of our theological education. Theological education needs to integrate multiple disciplines. It needs to include science, art, business and theology.

We have chosen not to teach people to be creative in our theological education but to break apart and try to put back together. This is modernity’s impact. Creativity is more taught than something you are born with.

Therefore, what differentiates creative, entrepreneurial ministers is their ability to grasp and integrate multiple disciplines to innovate, deal with problems, and lead. If they are to honored within our churches, they need be released, not restricted. They need to be trained to be creative. They need to be exposed to multiple disciplines in all areas of education.

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