Kearney's View of Self's View of Other

On the notion of how we get to "know stuff" at a very basic level, Kearney has this to say, "Should the child be well-tended and protected by loving arms and tender care he/she may experience a minimum of pain; an awareness of well-being and security would likely then predominate... Conversely, if the baby experiences many deprivations and traumas, his/her general image of the Other would likely be one in which all that is not-Self is mainly a source of frustration and pain... [the former leading to an] image of Self as having an ability to affect the Other, and thus in turn affect its own condition. [The latter leading to an image of Self in which Self is] relatively powerless and incapable of affecting either its own state of being or aspects of the Other." One wonders how much hope and hopelessness/purpose and purposelessness (at a societal level) may have their roots in an early-gained "view of reality" - a view tacitly gained in the environment of Self's earliest and closest caregivers. Hmm, should this be true...

Michael Kearney, Worldviews (Novato: Chandler & Sharp Publishers, Inc., 1984) 73.

Self-defeating Hermeneutics

Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Thiselton, Osborne, and Vanhoozer - they have all helped us take seriously the role of preunderstandings (alias: worldview or metanarrative) in the process of interpretation and getting at meaning. Concerning these preunderstandings and the human framework of understanding, Moises Silva goes against the flow of many a theological hermeneutics professor when he writes in Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation, "These ideas (concerning preunderstandings) have immediate consequences for the way we interpret the Bible and do theology. The common insistence that we should approach the text without any prior ideas regarding its meaning becomes almost irrelevant. And the standard advice given to theological students to study the text before consulting commentaries, or to determine its meaning before considering its application, appears self-defeating." Hmm, not what I heard in seminary. Or the sanctuary.

Moises Silva, ed. Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996) 21. 

On Humility, Listening, and Knowing

As of late I've been contemplating the relationship between being humble, listening, and knowing. This trio is, I believe, huddled together. The three are closely related. They depend on each other. Where one is, you find the others near by. Where one is missing, the others get twisted. Look how the trio plays out in the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Pascal and the Ultimate Wager

I admit I've not been much of a reader of Pascal - too old, too dry, too... certainly his book, Pensees, never entered my head as a candidate for a book report in high school or university. But, I must be getting older (or, old). He's an interesting philosopher/theologian. One of his more curious arguments is known as the argument of the wager. God either is or isn't. and we we must therefore lay odds (wager) for or against Him.

• If I wager for and God is — infinite gain;
• If I wager for and God is not — no loss.
• If I wager against and God is — infinite loss;
• If I wager against and God is not — neither loss nor gain.