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Radical faith answers radical doubt

This is the final in a four-part series on Christian epistemology titled “Radical faith meets radical doubt: a Christian epistemology for skeptics” by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

Do Christians need the kind of radical faith that Thomas Reid, in the Scottish Enlightenment, and Alvin Plantinga, in our own time, offer as the best response to the pervasive skepticism of modernity?

Christians traditionally aver that the Bible gives us infallible truth. But wise Christians also acknowledge that God never promises infallible interpretation to any Christian or group of Christians. The Bible is the Word of God, but any interpretation we render is, unavoidably, an interpretation we render. As such, it is limited by our limitations and flawed by our flaws.

What about the Holy Spirit, then? Doesn’t the very presence of God guarantee truth to the believer? Again, the indwelling of every believer by the Holy Spirit is a precious truth, and the assurance God gives us of his love and care and, yes, guidance thereby is a treasure indeed. But the gift of the Holy Spirit has never entailed that every Christian will score 100% on every math test—or on/in any other test in life, either. Wherever we go—even with the Spirit of God—there we inevitably are.

Apostle Paul by Rembrandt. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Apostle Paul comes to our aid at this point and reminds us that we walk by faith, not by sight (II Cor. 5:7), perhaps more profoundly than we knew. We walk, trusting our senses, trusting our memories, trusting our worldviews, and—in the face of all this doubt about all these good, but fallible, gifts of God—trusting God.

The fundamental truth here is that God called humanity to “fill the earth and subdue it, to have dominion” (Gen. 1:28) and to thereby work with him to make the world all it can be. It follows from the fact of this basic commandment that human beings can trust God to give us at least enough knowledge of the world to care for it properly, even as we try faithfully to keep learning more about it so we can care for it better.

Similarly, God called the Christian Church to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), and to thereby work with God to help humanity become all we can be. It likewise follows that we Christians can trust God to give us at least enough knowledge of ourselves and our fellow human beings to disciple each other properly, even as we try faithfully to learn more about ourselves and God so we can disciple each other better.

More particularly, God calls particular groups of people and particular individuals to particular ways of making shalom and making disciples. Modern societies feature such diverse elements as the various parts and forms of the state, the family, businesses, schools, health care facilities, churches, missionary agencies, mass entertainment and news media, and so on. These various instances of shalom-making and disciple-making have particular ways of knowing, and particular bodies of knowledge, that are best suited to the fulfillment of their mission. Again, then, God can be trusted to provide these institutions and individuals distinctively what they need, including what they need epistemically, to fulfill their callings.

So we can and should rejoice in the gracious providence of God, who always supplies our needs in order for us to fulfill God’s call upon our lives. God gives us, as we pray, “our daily bread”—in metaphorical terms of knowledge as well as in literal terms of nourishment.

At the same time, the Bible’s depiction of human limitations squares nicely with the history of skeptical philosophy, and prompts us to be humble enough to realize how little we know, how little we know about the accuracy and completeness of what we think we know, and how much we have to trust God to guide, correct, and increase what we know according to God’s good purposes.

Do we know enough to get to work and make shalom? Yes, we do.

Do we know enough to bear witness to the gospel and make disciples? Yes, we do.

Do we need to claim certainty in order to fulfill the mission of God in these days? No, we don’t.

Certainty isn’t on offer. But confidence—con fide (with faith)—is.

That should be enough for the Christian to get through today with joy and effectiveness. And that’s all that matters (Matt. 6:34).

John G. Stackhouse Jr. is the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology.

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Living in the shadows of health

By Brian L. Odlaug, Samuel R. Chamberlain, and Jon E. Grant

Surprisingly, many of the common mental health conditions in the world also happen to be the least well known. While Obsessive Compulsive Disorder garners attention from international media, with celebrities talking openly about their experiences with the condition, Obsessive Compulsive Related Disorders are far less recognized and receive scant attention.

Obsessive Compulsive Related Disorders include body dysmorphic disorder, tic disorders (including Tourette’s Syndrome), hair pulling disorder, excoriation (skin picking) disorder, hoarding disorder, and hypochondriasis. The clinical course and severity of these disorders varies from person to person yet can often be recognized by common symptoms. One might ask, what makes these “disorders” in need of treatment rather than everyday habits? A “bad habit” becomes a diagnosable disorder when the behavior becomes hard to control, and has a negative impact on an individual’s ability to function: at home, at work, or in the community. These often impairing conditions affect millions of people around the world, but are usually hidden. What can we do to help those suffering in silence?

Promoting screening for Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders is of the utmost importance. Society, the media, and healthcare professionals also need to work together to increase awareness of these conditions and provide timely and adequate treatment. The majority of people with these conditions have never sought treatment, and may not even be aware that they have a medically recognized condition that is potentially treatable. Left untreated, Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders frequently follow a chronic course, meaning that symptoms often do not improve with time, without intervention. In fact, many people have suffered with the condition for 10, 20, even 30 or more years without clinical recognition. Few other classes of disorders — mental health or otherwise — carry the overall lack of recognition and treatment as these disorders.

Individuals living with these conditions also should be aware of valuable advocacy and support groups that exist worldwide, including the Trichotillomania Learning Center and Tourette’s Syndrome Association in the United States, and OCD Action in the United Kingdom, to name a few.

Bringing these disorders out from the shadows and into the mainstream of mental health and community consciousness can only serve to improve the quality of life for our family members, neighbors and friends.

Five things that you can do to help people who suffer from OCD:

Clinicians should screen for Trichotillomania and Excoriation Disorder in all patients, but especially women. Most people will not acknowledge the behavior readily and may not even know that they have a diagnosable and treatable problem.
Clinicians should be aware that although anxiety may worsen some of these behaviors, that OCD and the Related Disorders are not simply versions of anxiety and therefore must be treated differently.
Due to the potential impairment of OCD, clinicians need to take it seriously and not view it simply as an oddity.
Family members should be supportive of someone with OCD and not shame or embarrass the person into stopping the behavior.
People with these conditions can help themselves and others as well. Print out articles or information on your condition and show them to family, friends, or even your doctor. They might not know a lot about these disorders either and you can help educate them.

Brian L. Odlaug is a Visiting Researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Public Health. Brian has authored or co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, specializing in the areas of addiction, impulse control and obsessive compulsive disorder. Samuel R. Chamberlain is a practicing psychiatrist and Clinical Lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles including first-authored papers in Science, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the British Journal of Psychiatry, and others. Jon E. Grant is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago where he directs the Addictive, Compulsive and Impulsive Disorders Research Program. They are co-authors of Clinical Guide to Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders.

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Image Credit: Person washing his hands. Photo by Lars Klintwall Malmqvist. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Cameron’s reshuffle

By Simon Usherwood

Tuesday’s Cabinet reshuffle by David Cameron has been trailed for some time now, but until the last moment it was not expected to be of the scale it has assumed. As a result, it sets up the government to present a rather different complexion in the run-up to the general election.

The key factor in the scope of the reshuffle looks to have been William Hague’s decision to step down as Foreign Secretary. For some, this was the result of he’s being broken/bored by the work, but to have seen him last week pushing hard on ending sexual violence in conflict should give the lie to that. The reasons remain rather unclear for now, but the consequence is that the Foreign Office is losing one of its staunchest defenders of recent decades: Philip Hammond might be an operator, but he doesn’t have the same personal attachment to diplomacy that Hague has shown over the past four years.

If Hague walked, then Michael Gove certainly didn’t. His removal from Education to become Chief Whip isn’t a vote of confidence in either the man or his project for school reform: very little is coming through the legislative process in the next nine months that will require much arm-twisting. Cameron’s decision is very odd, given the extent to which he has backed Gove until now, when he could have cut his losses much earlier. Here the judgement might have been that things have moved far enough down the line that they can’t be reversed and that Gove is better moved out now to start building a profile in another area while Nicky Morgan picks up the metaphorical pieces.

Alongside these two big changes, a third individual was also pushed into the limelight: Lord Hill of Oareford. Jonathan Hill’s name is one which has been on the lips of almost no-one until today, when he was nominated as the British member of the European Commission. A Tory party insider, Hill has been Leader of the Lords since last year, providing with the skills of political management and coalition-building that Cameron argues will be essential in Brussels. His nomination also has the propitious consequence that there will be no need for the by-election that use of an MP would have entailed.

Beyond these three big changes, the rest of the reshuffle is mainly one of filling in the gaps created and rewarding allies (see the Institute of Government’s very useful blog for more). Thus several of the 2010 intake get into the Cabinet, such as Liz Truss, Stephen Crabb, and Priti Patel.

But what is the intent behind all of this?

There are two possible readings of this, one more optimistic than the other.

The positive interpretation is that this is part two of Cameron’s strategy, building on the radical phase needed to pull the UK up from the depths of the recession and forming a new team to create a positive shine to that work in anticipation for the general election. This is certainly Cameron’s own spin, trying to create a narrative that the worst is behind us and the strength of the economic recovery means we can afford not to think too hard about the difficulty that has passed.

Part of that strategy is to make a Cabinet that is more resistant to Labour attacks. One of the more-remarked-upon aspects has been the promotion/retention of women, an obvious rejoinder to the recent months of criticism from the Opposition. Likewise, Gove’s removal has at least some aspect of depriving Labour of one of their favourite whipping boys.

However, if we are feeling less generous, then we might look at things rather differently. Hague’s departure might seem less surprising if we consider that he might expect to be out of the Foreign Office next May in any case, on the back of a Tory defeat.

This is really the unspoken sub-text: that we give party loyalists some time in the political sun because it’s unlikely to last very long. Despite the tightening of the opinion polls in recent months (see the excellent Polling Observatory posts), the Conservatives still look like being out of power in May, even as a coalition partner. That puts a big disincentive on laying long-term plans and refocuses attention on making the most of the remainder of this Parliament.

It’s easy to forget in all of this that the Tories are still in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and that whatever electoral nemesis they face next year, that still lies in the future. Hence Cameron still has to temper the desires and pressures of his party to fit the coalition agreement, not least in his allocation of government posts.

All of this has echoes of 1992, when John Major looked set to lose, only to scrap through for another five years. Back then, there was a distinct sense that the foot had come off the gas and that the long period of Tory government was coming to an end. It was to be the questions over the electability of Labour that finally proved more consequential in the vote.

Cameron might not have had the long period in power that Major did, but he does have an Opposition that has struggled to impress. Even with the more fractured arithmetic of a party political system with UKIP, Tory victory is not impossible. That raises the potential danger that Cameron might pull it all off next year and then have to follow through.

If that did happen, then Europe is going to be the big fight, which will take up almost all his energies until 2017. Whether Hammond in the Foreign Commonwealth Office and Hill in Brussels will still look like good choices then remains to be seen.

Simon Usherwood is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics at the University of Surrey. He tweets from @Usherwood.

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Image credit: Prime Minister visits Russia, by Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Flickr). Open Government License v1.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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On the anniversary of air conditioning

By Salvatore Basile

Those who love celebrations, take note — July 17 marks the birthday of air conditioning. To recap the story, it was 112 years ago today that young engineer Willis Carrier unveiled the plans for his “Apparatus for Treating Air,” a contraption that was designed to lower the humidity in a Brooklyn printing plant. There was a bonus; it could cool the air, too. So thank you, Mr. Carrier. Once again, with the thermometer climbing into the Yow! zone, it’s time to celebrate your invention.

In the 1830s, Virginia inventor (and US Naval Commodore) James Barron patented his mechanically powered punkah as a ‘‘machine for fanning bed chambers, dining rooms, halls, &c.’’ Public Domain via National Archives.

And to hear from everyone who wants it to vanish.

This is nothing new. There have always been people who found air conditioning controversial. In its earliest years they considered it mystifying, possibly evil, because summer heat was something sent from Heaven and the mere idea of a machine that could cool the air was “going against the will of nature.” In later decades, it was seen as a symbol of fat-cat indulgence; then it morphed into a symbol of the soulless, sterile big city. Now, more than a century after its invention, air conditioning has been recast once again — as an out-of-control monstrosity, seducing third-world countries with the sleazy lure of hot-weather comfort while draining the planet of energy resources, and destroying the atmosphere as well.

In response, a whole confederation has grown up around the idea that we should — either gradually, or instantly, depending on who’s talking — give it up. British economist Gwyn Prins scolded that “physical addiction to air-conditioned air is the most pervasive and least noticed epidemic in modern America.” And Stan Cox, author of the book Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About our Air-Conditioned World, went further with a Washington Post article in which he envisioned/recommended a future Washington, DC completely devoid of mechanical cooling. “In a world without air conditioning, a warmer, more flexible, more relaxed workplace helps make summer a time to slow down again. Three-digit temperatures prompt siestas. Code-orange days mean offices are closed. Shorter summer business hours and month-long closings — common in pre-air-conditioned America — return. . . . Saying goodbye to AC means saying hello to the world. With more people spending more time outdoors — particularly in the late afternoon and evening, when temperatures fall more quickly outside than they do inside — neighborhoods see a boom in spontaneous summertime socializing. Rather than cowering alone in chilly home-entertainment rooms, neighbors get to know one another. Because there are more people outside, streets in high-crime areas become safer.”

Interesting. But whether it takes place in Washington or anywhere else on earth, the attractiveness of this scenario doesn’t stop it from being nonsense of the highest order.

For one thing, it’s unrealistic. Our “physical addiction to air-conditioned air” comes from living in hot homes (many of them built with no consideration for thermal efficiency) and working in hot buildings (the great majority of them built as tightly-sealed greenhouses; short of throwing a chair through a glass wall, the HVAC system is the only ventilation). Trying to exist in these structures without air conditioning would be virtually impossible. And as to the idea that American businesses will considerately “slow down,” build siestas into their schedules, shorten summer business hours and cancel work outright on the hottest days — yeah, right.

The other problem with the non-air conditioning scenario is that there’s a lot of arrogance packed into it. Sneering at a “physical addiction” to conditioned air is more than a bit nervy; so is the implication that there’s something wrong with you if you can’t stand “three-digit temperatures.” (Some people become sickened by excessive heat. Others even die from it, whether or not they get siestas.) And the insistence that you will spend time outdoors, engaging in “spontaneous socializing,” that you and your neighbors will “get to know one another,” that your streets will “become safer” . . . rather presumptuous. Also naive.

After a century of providing heat relief, no one can seriously believe that air conditioning will vanish, any more than refrigerators or computers or any other power-gobbling devices will vanish. Actually, it’s spreading — Chinese citizens recently bought over 20 million air conditioners in a single year. Rather than demand that people live without air conditioning, better to find a new version of air conditioning. It’s true that the compressor-powered, refrigerant-cooled system of 1902 needs reworking to fit today’s needs. But there are alternatives waiting in the wings, some of them usable today and others in development: geothermal and cold-water and solar-powered cooling, green buildings that supervise their own natural ventilation, systems that cool entire buildings with cheaply manufactured ice, even a prototype machine called a DEVap that can achieve cool dry air without refrigerants and with 90% less energy. Demand will spur the perfection of a viable substitute, perhaps more than one. As with Carrier’s original system, it will probably make its first appearance in large-size commercial form, then will shrink in size and price for home use.

Mr. Carrier would quite probably approve of this plan. And I bet he’d be troubled that “air conditioning” has become a dirty word.

Salvatore Basile was educated at the Boston Conservatory and The Juilliard School and began his career as a professional musician. After penning various music-related articles, he entered the field of social commentary with his history Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Fordham). His new book, Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything (Fordham), will be published in September.

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Characters of the Odyssey in Ancient Art

Every Ancient Greek knew their names: Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachas, Nestor, Helen, Menelaos, Ajax, Kalypso, Nausicaä, Polyphemos, Ailos… The trials and tribulations of these characters occupied the Greek mind so much that they found their way into ancient art, whether mosaics or ceramics, mirrors or sculpture. From heroic nudity to small visual cues in clothing, we present a brief slideshow of characters that appear in Barry B. Powell’s new free verse translation of The Odyssey.




Head of Odysseus
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In the first century BC the Roman emperor Tiberius (42 BC-AD 37) built a villa at Sperlonga between Rome and Naples. There in a grotto sculptors from Rhodes created various scenes from Greek myth, including the blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemos. Fragments of the sculptural group survive, including this evocative head of Odysseus, bearded and wearing a traveler’s cap (pilos), as he plunges a stake into the giant’s eye. Marble, c. AD 20. Museo Archeologico, Sperlonga, Italy; Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY

Penelope
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Wearing a modest head cover (what Homer means by “veil”), she is seated on a stone wall, staring pensively at the ground, thinking of her husband. This is a typical posture in artistic representations of Penelope—legs crossed, looking downward, hand to her face (Figures 2.1, 19.1, 20.1). Roman copy (perhaps 1st century BC) of a lost Greek original, c. 460 BC. Museo Pio Clementino, Vatican Museums, Vatican State; Scala / Art Resource, NY

Telemachos and Nestor
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Telemachos, holding his helmet in his right hand and two spears in his left, a shield suspended from his arm, greets Nestor. The bent old man supports himself with a knobby staff, and his white hair is partially veiled. Behind him stands his youngest daughter (probably), Polykastê, holding a basket filled with food for the guest. South-Italian wine-mixing bowl, c. 350 BC. Staatliche Museen, Berlin 3289

Odysseus and Kalypso
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The goddess presents a box of provisions for the hero’s voyage. The box is tied with a sash. The bearded Odysseus sits on a rock on the shore holding a sword and looking pensive. Athenian red-figure vase, c. 450 BC. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy; Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY

Nausicaä and a frightened attendant
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ausicaa on the left holds her ground while one of her ladies runs away with laundry draped about her shoulders (this is the other side of the vase shown in Figure 6.1). Athenian red-figure water-jar from Vulci, Italy, c. 460 BC. Inv. 2322. Staatliche Antikensammlung, Munich, Germany; Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY

Polyphemos talks to his lead ram
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Blinded, holding his club, leaning against the cave wall, the giant reaches out to stroke his favorite ram under whom Odysseus clings. Athenian black-figure wine cup, c. 500 BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens 1085

Ailos, king of the winds
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Roman mosaic from the House of Dionysos and the Four Seasons, 3rd century AD, Roman city of Volubilis, capital of the Berber King Juba II (50 BC - 24 AD) in the province of Mauretania, Morocco. The Romans loved to decorate their floors with themes taken from Greek myth, and many have survived. Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

Helen and Menelaos
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Menelaos wears a helmet and breast-guard. His right hand is poised on top of a shield while his left, holding a spear, embraces Helen. She wears a cloth cap and a necklace with three pendants and a bangle around her arm. Her cloak slips down beneath her genital area, emphasizing her sexual attractiveness. Decoration on the back of an Etruscan mirror, c. 4th century BC. Townley Collection. Cat. 712. British Museum, London; Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY

The suicide of Ajax
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The naked hero has fixed his sword in a pile of sand and thrown himself on it. His shield and breastplate are stacked on the left, his club and the scabbard to his sword on the right. His name AIWA is written above him. Athenian red-figure wine-mixing bowl, from Vulci, Italy. British Museum, London, Great Britain; © The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY

Barry B. Powell is Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new free verse translation of The Odyssey was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. His translation of The Iliad was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. See previous blog posts from Barry B. Powell.

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Approaching peak skepticism

This is the third in a four-part series on Christian epistemology titled “Radical faith meets radical doubt: a Christian epistemology for skeptics” by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

We are near, it seems, “peak skepticism.” We all know that the sweetest character in the movie we’re watching will turn out to be the serial killer. We all know that the stranger in the good suit and the great hair is up to something sinister. We all know that the honey-voiced therapist or the soothing guru or the brave leader of the heroic little NGO will turn out to be a fraud, embezzling here or seducing there.

“I read it on the Internet” became a rueful joke as quickly as there was an Internet. Politicians are all liars, priests are all pedophiles, professors are all blowhards: you can’t trust anyone or anything.

Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga shrugs off the contemporary storm of frightening doubt, however, with the robust common sense of his Frisian forebears:

Such Christian thinkers as Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Kuyper…recognize that there aren’t any certain foundations of the sort Descartes sought—or, if there are, they are exceedingly slim, and there is no way to transfer their certainty to our important non-foundational beliefs about material objects, the past, other persons, and the like. This is a stance that requires a certain epistemic hardihood: there is, indeed, such a thing as truth; the stakes are, indeed, very high (it matters greatly whether you believe the truth); but there is no way to be sure that you have the truth; there is no sure and certain method of attaining truth by starting from beliefs about which you can’t be mistaken and moving infallibly to the rest of your beliefs. Furthermore, many others reject what seems to you to be most important. This is life under uncertainty, life under epistemic risk and fallibility. I believe a thousand things, and many of them are things others—others of great acuity and seriousness—do not believe. Indeed, many of the beliefs that mean the most to me are of that sort. I realize I can be seriously, dreadfully, fatally wrong, and wrong about what it is enormously important to be right. That is simply the human condition: my response must be finally, “Here I stand; this is the way the world looks to me.”

Thomas Reid. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In this attitude Plantinga follows in the cheerful train of Thomas Reid, the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher. In his several epistemological books, Reid devotes a great deal of energy to demolishing what he sees to be a misguided approach to knowledge, which he terms the “Way of Ideas.” Unfortunately for standard-brand modern philosophy, and even for most of the rest of us non-philosophers, the Way of Ideas is not merely some odd little branch but the main trunk of epistemology from Descartes and Locke forward to Kant.

The Way of Ideas, roughly speaking, is the basic scheme of perception by which the things “out there” somehow cause us to have ideas of them in our minds, and thus we form appropriate beliefs about them. Reid contends, startlingly, that this scheme fails to illuminate what is actually happening. In fact, Reid pulverizes this scheme as simply incoherent—an understanding so basic that most of us take it for granted, even if we could not actually explain it. The “problem of the external world” remains intractable. We just don’t know how we reliably get “in here” (in our minds) what is “out there” (in the world).

Having set aside the Way of Ideas, Reid then stuns the reader again with this declaration: “I do not attempt to substitute any other theory in [its] place.” Reid asserts instead that it is a “mystery” how we form beliefs about the world that actually do seem to correspond to the world as it is. (Our beliefs do seem to have the virtue of helping us negotiate that world pretty well.)

The philosopher who has followed Reid to this point now might well be aghast. “What?” she might sputter. “You have destroyed the main scheme of modern Western epistemology only to say that you don’t have anything better to offer in its place? What kind of philosopher are you?”

“A Christian one,” Reid might reply. For Reid takes great comfort in trusting God for creating the world such that human beings seem eminently well equipped to apprehend and live in it. Reid encourages readers therefore to thank God for this provision, this “bounty of heaven,” and to obey God in confidence that God continues to provide the means (including the epistemic means) to do so. Furthermore, Reid affirms, any other position than grateful acceptance of the fact that we believe the way we do just because that is the way we are is not just intellectually untenable, but (almost biblically) foolish.

Thus Thomas Reid dispenses with modern hubris on the one side and postmodern despair on the other. To those who would say, “I am certain I now sit upon this chair,” Reid would reply, “Good luck proving that.” To those who would say, “You just think you’re sitting in a chair now, but in fact you could be anyone, anywhere, just imagining you are you sitting in a chair,” he would simply snort and perhaps chastise them for their ingratitude for the knowledge they have gained so effortlessly by the grace of God.

Having acknowledged the foolishness of claiming certainty, Reid places the burden of proof, then, where it belongs: on the radical skeptic who has to show why we should doubt what seems so immediately evident, rather than on the believer who has to show why one ought to believe what seems effortless to believe. Darkness, Reid writes, is heavy upon all epistemological investigations. We know through our own action that we are efficient causes of things; we know God is, too. More than this, however, we cannot say, since we cannot peer into the essences of things. Reid commends to us all sorts of inquiries, including scientific ones, but we will always be stymied at some level by the four-year-old’s incessant question: “Yes, but why?” Such explanations always come back to questions of efficient causation, and human reason simply cannot lay bare the way things are in themselves so as to see how things do cause each other to be this or that way.

Reid’s contemporary and countryman David Hume therefore was right on this score, Reid allows. But unlike Hume—very much unlike Hume—Reid is cheerful about us carrying on anyway with the practically reliable beliefs we generally do form, as God wants us to do. Far from being paralyzed by epistemological doubt, therefore, Reid offers all of us a thankful epistemology of trust and obedience.

But do Christians need to resort to such a breathtakingly bold response to the deep skepticism of our times? My last post offers an answer.

John G. Stackhouse Jr. is the Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology.

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Frailty and creativity

By Cretien van Campen

Frail older people are more oftentimes considered a burden for society, than not. They are perceived to require intensive care that can be expensive while producing nothing contributory to society. The collective image is that frail older people are ‘useless’. In my opinion, we do not endeavor to ‘use’ them or know how to release productivity in them.

Around the age of 70, the extremely frail wheelchair bound musician Johnny Cash made the music video ‘Hurt’ with the help of film director Mark Romanek and producer Rick Rubin. The video was a tremendous success, receiving abundant critical acclaim and becoming a favorite with many for all time. The song was taken from a series of albums, the ‘American Recordings’, Cash created in his frailest period, selling millions of copies. The albums have been regarded as outstanding contributions to American culture and many people have found strength, joy and solace in his recordings.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cash was no exception. He was not the only frail older person who flourished in his last years. The painter Henri Matisse, the music conductor Herbert von Karajan, and others reached creative summits in the last seasons of their lives. Also non-artists like sawmill worker Lester Potts became a creative painter in his later years when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In other types of dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia, creativity can be released as well.

The case of Cash also is an example of what is needed to release creative productivity in a frail older person — and what has to be avoided. In his last years Cash suffered from several complex diseases and physical limitations, a long and sad process which biographer Robert Hilburn has described with compassion and in detail. Cash was successively diagnosed among others with Parkinson’s disease, Shy-Drager syndrome, and double pneumonia. These contributed to hospital admissions several times a year and receiving prescriptions in quantities that greatly impacted the long time Dexedrine (speed) addict. (Cash had been addicted during his career as a touring artist.)

By the end of the twentieth century Cash was in forlorn condition, exhausting himself in a mixture of drugs and over-extended tours. Of deeper emotional consequence, his records did not sell the numbers they once had. His musical career was considered by many to be over by the time he was approached by producer Rick Rubin. In retrospect Rubin gave Cash two ingredients that supported his creative productivity: mental reminiscences and physical exercises.

In elongated sessions at home Rubin and Cash played old and new music, evoking reminiscences with musical roots and connecting them with the music of younger generations, which created new flourish and renewed hunger for music in Cash. He transformed from an older musician playing golden oldies into an interpreter of contemporary songs with vision, re-honing his craft. Mentally, he returned from living in the past to living in the present and creating new interpretations, which revived a sense of direction to his life. He connected to younger generations and inspired them with his interpretations as he mutually was inspired by their music.

Not only in the mental and spiritual domains did he regain strength, but also in the physical domain. Rubin engaged a befriended physiotherapist. Physical exercises got Cash out of his wheelchair and walking independently again, while simultaneously bringing back feeling in his fingers to play the guitar with agility. By exercising his body, energy returned and he was able to sustain longer recording sessions, his most valued passion.

Rubin is an artist, not a doctor. He did not cure Cash. Instead he gave a man whose health was rapidly declining renewed opportunities and stimuli to thrive and find meaning in his life. Cash often said that all he wanted was to make music. The music gave him the will to survive, and to fight the diseases.

Although the medical records of Cash are confidential, reports from his family share indications that he was overmedicated. According to his son, his father would have lived longer and produced more songs and recordings if the medication had been decreased – something his physiotherapist pleaded for several times after another hospital admission.

Returning home after this hospital stay, every inch of his body appeared unduly medicated. As well meaning of his professional caregivers were in prescribing such pill-induced treatments, he actually lived in a medical cage, and his brilliant mind suffered. Fortunately some of his family members and friends understood he needed physical, mental, and spiritual space to flourish. They helped in opening that cage with recovered mental and physical strength and he eloquently delivered to us some of the most heart-provoking songs in the history of music.

Cretien van Campen is a Dutch author, scientific researcher and lecturer in social science and fine arts. He is the founder of Synesthetics Netherlands and is affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for Social Research and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. He is best known for his work on synesthesia in art, including historical reviews of how artists have used synesthetic perceptions to produce art, and studies of perceived quality of life, in particular of how older people with health problems perceive their living conditions in the context of health and social care services. He is the author of The Proust Effect: The Senses as Doorways to Lost Memories.

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Image credit: Johnny Cash 1969, Photograph by Joe Baldwin. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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So you think you know Jane Austen?

How much do you know about the works of one of our best-loved classic authors? What really motivates the characters, and what is going on beneath the surface of the story? Using So You Think You Know Jane Austen? A Literary Quizbook by John Sutherland and Deirdre La Faye, we’ve selected twelve questions covering all six of Austen’s major novels for you to pit your wits against. Whether you are an expert or an enthusiast, we hope you’ll learn a little extra than you already knew.

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Image credit: Jane Austen. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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What are the most important issues in international criminal justice today?

While human history is not without crime and slaughter, it is only in the twentieth century, especially following the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, that people sought justice in the name of all humanity. To mark the World Day for International Justice we invited our authors and editors to answer the question: What do you consider to be the most important issue in international criminal justice today?

“The impression that international justice is a tool of powerful States directed against smaller, weaker, poorer, and more isolated countries and peoples is the greatest challenge to international criminal justice today. Some of these large, powerful nations are themselves guilty of terrible abuses that go unpunished. For example, the United States enthusiastically joins in efforts to prosecute Hissène Habré in Senegal under the Torture Convention, yet its administration has promised impunity to American leaders and military officials responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Until international justice satisfactorily addresses this double standard, there will be little satisfaction in more trials of the likes of Taylor, Lubanga, and Mladić. For this reason, the most inspiring development of the past year was the decision of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to undertake a preliminary examination of the conduct of British forces in Iraq.”


— William Schabas, Professor of International Law, University of Middlesex, and author of Unimaginable Atrocities: Justice, Politics, and Rights at the War Crimes Tribunals (2014)

“In my view, it is time to begin to question whether the International Criminal Court will ever play a major role in the fight against impunity. This is not an issue of bad management, poor decision-making, or anything else epiphenomenal and potentially fixable. Instead, it’s a question of institutional design: it is simply unclear whether the Court, by aiming to keep watch over both the victors and the vanquished, will ever be able to muster the kind of international support – from states, and most importantly from the Security Council – that it needs to conduct credible investigations and prosecutions. There is reason for scepticism, given the Court’s inability to prosecute both rebels and government officials in even one conflict. Indeed, it’s difficult to avoid wondering: for all its flaws, is victor’s justice the only international criminal justice possible? Is selectivity an inherent part of an international criminal tribunal that works?”


— Kevin Jon Heller, Professor of Criminal Law, SOAS, University of London, and author of The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (2013)

International Criminal Court (ICC) Haagse Arc. Photo by ekenitr. CC BY-NC 2.0 via 46774986@N02 Flickr.

“States need to overcome their alienation from international criminal justice. After the euphoria that allowed for the ‘Pinochet Saga’ to happen and led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court, states’ priorities, unfortunately, seem to have shifted – hardly surprising in times of financial crisis or mass surveillance. However, states still are and will ever be the backbone of the international criminal justice system – and this explicitly includes the so-called ‘third’ or ‘bystander’ states acting on the basis of universal jurisdiction. It’s in particular their role within the international criminal justice system that needs to be redefined by determining the parameters for complementarity and subsidiarity.”


— Julia Geneuss, Dr. iur., LL.M. (NYU), Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Hamburg, and member of the Editorial Committee of the Journal of International Criminal Justice

“International criminal law has long chased the dream of permanence. Its foundations at Versailles and Nuremberg and its revival in the 1990s were acts of ad hockery, and in those contingent acts the failings of justice ad et post hoc were apparent; a permanent court, we though, might fix them. We have now had a decade and more of permanence, and with it a severe testing of that hope. Courts for Sierra Leone and Lebanon, and calls for more (like David Scheffer’s recent proposal for a third-party court for Syria), show that ad hoc, hybrid incentives did not disappear with the Rome Statute. The challenges to ICC jurisdiction in Kenya and Libya – and the increasingly assertive objections of African leaders – have exposed the illusion that we have devised a unitary, homogenous justice system suited to the varied needs of a notional international community. Global justice is ad hoc – permanently so.”


— Timothy William Waters, Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, and editor and co-author of The Milosevic Trial: An Autopsy (2014)

“Over past decades, international criminal justice has produced diverse political and social effects in the countries and communities where it intervened, either directly through investigations and trials or indirectly through the threat of investigations. But the international system is still at the beginning of a new era of interaction between domestic and international justice. International interventions remain contested because they are removed from broader socio-political concerns that are at the heart of societal priorities in conflict and post-conflict settings. Fundamental dimensions, such as the process of internalizing international concepts in the domestic realm, and most fundamentally, the ‘translation’ of justice into local concepts, language, or culture remain underdeveloped. There is need for a better nexus between three core dimensions in justice strategies: ‘institutional response’, ‘translation’, and domestic ‘reception’. Criticisms relating to selectivity, Western agendas or implicit biases of international justice are too easily discarded by quantitative justifications (e.g., gravity calculations), resource problems or formal notions of consent. This has created a push for new initiatives and responses at the domestic and regional level (e.g., criminal jurisdiction of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights). International justice remains vital but needs to be re-thought. Core challenges include: (i) the need to devise accountability goals and models more carefully in light of their impact on local interests and realities of conflict, (ii) greater care in assessing the practicability and possibility of burden-sharing with domestic institutions, (iii) greater sensitivity to the empowering and disempowering effects of ICC intervention in situation countries, and (iv) the need for a better nexus between justice intervention and development strategies.”


— Carsten Stahn, Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice, Leiden University, and Editor of The Law and Practice of the International Criminal Court (2015), and Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations (2014)

“The central issue confronting international criminal justice today is: at what level of governance should issues of global justice be decided? This question is confronted by the International Criminal Court but also more broadly as a global matter where there are evolving norms of universality which mean that serious crimes can be prosecuted in a number of jurisdictions, domestic, i.e. where the crime may have occurred but also in other countries where there are other ties, such as the nationality of victims, etc., or another nexus.

“The principle of ‘complementarity’ is appealing because it offers guidance in the general rule of the priority of the local, where the international plays a gap-filling role; namely in the language of the Rome treaty, contemplating international intervention only where the relevant state ‘is unwilling and unable’, i.e. where capacity to apply justice is unavailable and/or no will exists. In the words of the Rome Treaty Preamble, its aegis ‘shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions’, which is defined later on to mean that cases would be inadmissible internationally ‘unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution.’

“But the simplicity of the rule as stated belies the complexity of the normative question. Hence, recent illustrations raised by, for example, the referral of the Libya situation and case of Saif Quaddafi shows us that willingness without capacity for a fair trial can result in risking an international imprimatur on sham or show trials; and by contrast in the case of ICC prosecutions relating to Kenya’s post election violence, where capacity exists, without related willingness, in light of regime change, may well require dynamic evaluation of the timing of international judicial intervention. So long as there are no ongoing human rights violations.

“When it comes to global justice, what makes for institutional legitimacy may well be a relative matter, requiring a nuanced analysis in both law and politics.”


— Ruti G. Teitel, Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School, Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics, and author of Globalizing Transitional Justice: Contemporary Essays (2014), Humanity’s Law (Hardback 2011; Paperback 2013), and Transitional Justice (Hardback 2000; Paperback 2002)

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Living in a buzzworld

By Anatoly Liberman

A few weeks ago, I talked about euphemisms on Minnesota Public Radio. The comments were many and varied. Not unexpectedly, some callers also mentioned clichés, and I realized once again that in my resentment of unbridled political correctness, the overuse of buzzwords, and the ineradicable habit to suppress the truth by putting on it a coating of sugary euphemisms I am not alone.

The trouble with buzzwords and euphemisms is that they tend to lose their force and turn into inanities. A wonderful lady has been appointed president of a community college. This is the way she was characterized: “…an inclusive, transparent and collaborative leader with proven commitment to the success of all students.” I have no doubt she is, for she goes from one high post to another every two years, and such mobility needs a talent for collaboration and glass-like transparency. Yet I felt that something was missing in the recommender’s encomium, though I could not put my finger on it. Luckily, I read a review of his own performance and found that he is “a visionary leader who cares passionately for our students and works tirelessly on their behalf.” That’s it! The new president, I am sure, is also a visionary and cares passionately for the students at every college at which she was inclusive and transparent. How could those qualities be overlooked? (No one has plans any longer; we only “articulate visions”: a two-year vision, a five-year vision.) And the tireless leader, the author of the recommendation, is certainly a Renaissance man. Nowadays Leonardos are a dime a dozen.

A visionary. (Lenin making a speech in the Red Square at the unveiling of a temporary monument to Stepaz Razin in 1919. Photo by G.P.Goldshtein. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Stale, flat, and unprofitable are our official speeches. They have become like excerpts from reviews used as ads. Here are two quotations from central newspapers (both deal with ballets): “Riveting and exhausting, fascinating and relentless, brilliant and tedious… a mesmerizing exploration of…”; “tackling arduous roles…with degrees of energy, scale, detailed nuance, and musical sophistication seldom found anywhere.” (Are they paid per epithet?) I once read a review of a thoroughly mediocre performance of The Swan Lake. “The best performance I have seen,” the reviewer assured us. I suspect that it was the first he had ever seen, so he must have been telling the truth. It is with praise as with standing ovations; in our climate of rapturous overstatement to applaud sitting looks like an offence.

Some euphemisms the listeners remembered from their family tradition are truly mesmerizing and captivating, especially for their detailed nuance. One of them is gentleman cow for “bull.” Others are old and well-known but still funny, such as I have to see a man about a dog (horse), that is, “excuse me, I have to go to a toilet.” (Toilet itself has fallen victim to countless replacements, from restroom to john.)

Euphemisms and taboo words are perennial. People were afraid to pronounce the name of the bear; hence our word bear (its etymological meaning is “brown”; the Indo-European word for “bear” is hidden in Engl. Ursa, from Latin, and Arctic, from Greek). One of the listeners wrote: “I hate passed away/passed on/passed. What’s wrong with dead?” Euphemisms for death and dead may have the same origin as those for bear (fear); it is better not to call a terrible thing by its real name, for it will hear, understand, and come. But today we are not so superstitious, so that our passed and passed away are mere signs of sham gentility. On the other hand, the rude phrase death tax has almost supplanted estate tax in everyday speech. You never know!

Then, naturally, embarrassing actions need sweet names. This is true not only of urinating and defecating but also of begging and extorting money. No one says pay up or get lost; people ask for “donations.” Aren’t service fee, seat fee, and convenience fee among the most precious verbal treasures we have? Conversely, we despise the filthy rich, usually out of envy. But wealth also commands respect. This is how the neutral term job creator became a synonym of “rich”: sounds business-like, even laudatory in our “trickle-down economy.” Doctors are among the main perpetrators of euphemisms, and we are happy to follow their usage. “Can blindness be the result of the surgery?” Answer: “The surgery may affect your vision.” “During the procedure you will experience slight discomfort.” It intends to mean “sharp, stabbing pain.” Sex has produced two tendencies. Our wonderful liberation allows everyone from early age to use the F-word. On the other hand, in polite conversation have intercourse is the limit. Most will prefer to say she sleeps with X, they made love on their first date, and the like.

It is a joy to watch verbal dances around old age. There is of course no need to call a spade a bloody shovel and say that old geezers have a 10% discount, but we feel queasy even about pronouncing the adjective old. “When I was pregnant with my third child, the doctor kept saying ‘Because of your advanced age…’.” Of course: not blind (only suffering from impaired vision), not too old but only of advanced age. Then the noble word seniors came up, and it is certainly here to stay. Seniority plays an important role in our fight for survival.

As one of the listeners put it: “What’s fun about a euphemism is what it tells us about a culture and about a user.” Indeed, but it is sometimes moderate fun. We are obsessed with offending someone, especially when it comes to ethnicity and gender. As a lecturer, I constantly dread “creating a hostile environment.” My audience may miss the content of the entire talk but will notice a poisoned sting in the most innocent joke. Everybody is supersensitive. Jew’s harp—shouldn’t we change the name, considering that the instrument has nothing to do with Jews? Because of the late connotation of spade (an ethnic slur), why not abolish the phrase call a spade a spade? On the Internet, I found a long essay that answers someone’s question about the phrase. Fortunately, it explains that in this case we have nothing to be ashamed of. Yet when you come to think of it, isn’t bloody shovel safer after all? Most of us still remember the uproar caused by the use of the adjective niggardly (which, of course, has nothing to do with the slur). The noun niggard seems to be of Scandinavian origin, but some people may feel hurt by its use.

In Minnesota, Asian carp has been replaced with invasive carp. Very wise. Why offend people of Asian descent? Not that they have been offended (though I may have missed something), but what if someone explains to them that the term is an outrage on their heritage? Our barbarous past has burdened us with Dutch uncle, French kiss, and many other shocking idioms. And don’t forget French fries ~ freedom fries. One of the listeners called my attention to such horrors as English sole (I will add: what if someone takes it for English soul?), German measles, Irish setter, Japanese beetle, Spanish fly, French letter, and Russian roulette—all highly inappropriate. I agree.

Let us work together on improving our language, and many thanks to those who participated in my talk show.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of blog@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.” Subscribe to Anatoly Liberman’s weekly etymology articles via email or RSS.

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