Polanyi's Finalism

Although Michael Polanyi's model of science and his construal of the nature of the real are usually thought to be congenial to religion and although Polanyi himself says that "the stage on which we thus resume our full intellectual powers is borrowed from the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption" (Polanyi 1958, 324), theologians have given little attention to the model of God he presents. The metaphysical and theological vision unfolded in part 4 of Personal Knowledge is a thoughtful alternative to materialist versions of neo-Darwinism and provides a platform for revisiting four long-standing controversies at the interface of science and religion: whether life and mind can be completely specified in terms of physical analysis, whether nature can be adequately understood without appeal to final causes, whether natural selection adequately explains life's diverse forms, and whether knowledge can be fully objectified. Through an exploration of Polanyi's contribution to these discussions, we undertake to show not only that his treatment of God as a cosmic field is strikingly original but also that in reinstating activity as a metaphysical category, he reconstructs our understanding of our creaturely hope and calling.     

Coming out stories framed as faith narratives, or stories of spiritual growth

The tension between religion and sexuality is particularly pronounced for gay and lesbian people who are often “caught in the middle” between a constitutional sexual orientation and a religious body that rejects it. This paper demonstrates how gay men can be helped in trying to integrate these deeply human and intrinsic parts of themselves, using a developmental approach first articulated by Robert Kegan. It argues that such development is often reflected later in theological language: in this case, in these men's coming out narratives, which are often framed as stories of spiritual growth.     

Confusion of Tongues: Christian Discipleship and the Problem of Patriotism

This article addresses the dynamics of faith manifested in Christian discipleship and patriotism. Exploration of the dynamics of faith, whether in Christian or patriotic discipleship, involves identifying the nature of the object of devotion and concomitant expectations of one’s relationship vis-à-vis the object. From this exploration, various contradictions between Christian and patriotic discipleship are identified. To resolve cognitive dissonance or smooth over contradictions, Christian patriots employ several psychosocial strategies, namely, merger, weak dissociation, rationalization, and denial.

STUDENT LABOR AND EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION

The evolution of teaching is examined in three stages: apprenticeship, classical schooling, and mass schooling. All three stages use different social technologies to operate. The mass schooling is analyzed from the point of view of economic anthropology developed by Karl Polanyi, as a non-market economic system. Mass schooling uses the forms of motivation found in archaic, tribal economies: students do their homework and attend school out of considerations of reciprocity. Schools must be treated differently with respect to their improvement. School improvement should be based on perfecting existing non-market economic mechanisms, not on plunging schools into market economy.     

On Misrepresenting the Thomistic Five Ways

A number of recent discussions of atheism allude to cosmological arguments in support of theism. The five ways of Aquinas are classic instances, offered as rational justification for theistic belief. However, the five ways receive short shrift. They are curtly dismissed as vacuous, arbitrary, and even insulting to reason. I contend that the atheistic critique of the Thomistic five ways, and similarly formulated cosmological arguments, argues at cross purposes because it misrepresents them. I first lay out the context, intent and structure of Aquinas’ arguments, then show in what way recent discussions misrepresent them, and finally conclude with a comment on metaphysical orientation, which I take to be central, not only to a proper understanding of the Thomistic five ways but generally to the debate between atheism and theism on the existence of God.

Interview

Much of the opposition to faith sector education revolves around a number of accusations (as set out in Roger Marples' article in Part A). To confront these accusations openly, this interview is presented as an unmediated voice of a young person who is a former pupil of a faith school. He discusses selection, his reasons for going to a faith school and the religious exposure that he experienced there. He goes to talk about his unhampered role as a devil's advocate in a faith school, whether or not he felt he was being indoctrinated, the issue of fundamentalism and his own questioning stance.     

PERSONAL PARTICIPATION: Michael Polanyi, Eric Voegelin, and the Indispensability of Faith

In this paper I focus on the central role faith plays in the thought of Polanyi and Voegelin. I begin by indicating how both find the modern conception of scientific knowing seriously wanting. What Polanyi terms “objectivism” and Voegelin calls “scientism” is the modern tendency to reduce knowledge to only that which can be scientifically demonstrated. This errant view of knowledge does not occur in a vacuum, though, and both men draw a connection between this and the political pathologies of the twentieth century. I then show the complementary ways in which these two thinkers believe recovery is possible: an epistemological solution encompassed in Polanyi's personal knowledge and an ontological reorientation that is the core of Voegelin's insistence that we must recover an awareness of human participation in transcendent reality.     

Faith Organizations and Ethnically Diverse Elders: A Community Action Model

SUMMARY

In this article we argue that faith organizations should become involved in developing social service programs for older adults in the community. In the current political climate, the government is providing fewer social service programs, and future prospects for services are bleak. The literature provides evidence that religion and faith-based organizations are important in the lives of Americans, particularly the current cohort of ethnically diverse elders. Our earlier Korean church study found that Korean older people benefit from church-based services and church-involved, older Koreans had higher rates of well-being. Churches remain untapped resources and we believe they should be extensively involved in provision of community programs. We offer a twelve-step model for the development of community programs under the auspices of faith organizations: The Faith-Based Community Action Model (FBCAM).     

Selfhood and Fiduciary Community: A Smithian Reading of Tu Weiming’s Confucian Humanism

Tu Weiming, as a leading spokesman for contemporary New Confucianism, has been reinterpreting the Confucian tradition in the face of the challenges of modernity. Tu takes selfhood as his starting point, emphasizing the importance of cultivating the human mind-and-heart as a deepening and broadening process to realize the anthropocosmic dao. He highlights the concept of a “fiduciary community” and advocates that, because of it, Confucianism remains a dynamic “inclusive humanism.” Tu’s mode of thinking tallies well with Wilfred C. Smith’s vision of religion, specifically the latter’s exposition of faith as a universal human quality and proposal of “corporate critical self-consciousness.” This article details the theories of both scholars, highlights their similarities, and contrasts their differences. It argues that Smith’s world theology provides a heuristic framework through which one understands how Tu has advanced his Confucian humanism from a Chinese philosophical or cultural tradition to the midst of world religions.     

Christian God‐Talk While Listening to Atheists,Pluralists, and Muslims

In the global conversation over religious ideas, a de facto debate is raging between atheism, pluralism, and Islam. Pluralism respects the claim of every religion. Atheism respects the claim of no religion. Islam respects the claim of its own religion. How should a Christian theologian construct a doctrine of God that benefits from listening to this conversation yet stresses what is important in the gospel, namely, that the God of Jesus Christ is gracious in character? What is recommended here is to (1) investigate the truth question; (2) avoid putting God in the equations; (3) affirm what is essential; and (4) practice charity.     

Religious Ethics and Economic Inequality

This essay serves as an introduction to five papers on economic inequality in this issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics. In addition to introducing the articles individually, the essay also gives a brief overview of recent economic developments that have led religious ethicists to call attention to the issue of inequality.     

The English public space: developing spirituality in English Muslim schools

Developing a language and a context for a spirituality that can speak to children and young people in a post‐modern, secular English society is a challenge for anyone, parent or teacher, who wishes to raise the vision beyond the purely material and the everyday. The challenge is both epistemological and pedagogical. How young people see, know and describe the world in which they find themselves is central to any school curriculum. For English Muslim schools the epistemological and pedagogical interfaces with the cultural and theological in a search for a language and spirituality that is a reflection of a contemporary English Islam.     

Whose Evolution? Which Theology?

The importance of scientific conflicts for theology andphilosophy is difficult to judge. In many disputes of significance, prominent scientists can be found on both sides. Profound philosophical and religious implications are sometimes said to be implied by the new theory as well. This article examines the dispute over natural selection between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould as a contemporary instance of such a conflict. While both claim that profound philosophical conclusions flow from their own alternativeaccount of evolution, I suggest that the implication is not as great as is claimed and that the alleged implications have as much to do with their own perceptions of theology as with the actual theories themselves. Nevertheless, evolutionary theory is not irrelevant for theology. Theologians should be aware of the possible implications of evolutionary theory and at the same time theextent and limits of such implications.     

Faith,Fact, and Behaviorism

David Hume argued that ought cannot be derived from is. That is, no set of facts, no amount of scientific knowledge, is by itself sufficient to urge us to action. Yet generations of well-meaning scientists (more and more as secular influences grow in the West) seem to have forgotten Hume''s words of wisdom. All motivated action depends ultimately on beliefs that cannot be proved by the methods of science, that is, on faith.