Plato and the Postmodern Problem

For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.                      --Plato, Symposium

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.                                                                    --Proverbs 14:12 (and 16:25)

I was reading this and was struck by how well this encapsulates the problem so many of us have in speaking to unbelievers today.  It seems that for centuries, we could take for granted the fact that everyone understood the "sin problem."  That is, that we have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that we do not meet the standard, that we have failed.  But the postmodern individual, gorged on relativism and constructivism, denies that there is any standard at all (at least one that exists outside of themselves, one that exists independently of human thought).  So at the very same time that we see such an increase in humanitarian and humanistic concern, we see the fundamental denial and erasure of the concepts of evil and sin.  The famous line is that we once had to present the sick man with the cure, and now we must not only present him with the cure but convince him that he is sick in the first place!  Or, in Plato's version, ignorant man is unaware of his ignorance.

But we must be careful here.  Romans 1 has the following to say:

¹⁸For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Paul goes on to speak of the self-proclaimed wisdom which is death, and three times (in verses 24, 26, and 28) tells us that because "they exchanged the truth about God for a lie" (Rom. 1:25) God "gave them up" to pursuing their own evil desires.  Is it any surprise that there is such a widespread sentiment of existential emptiness and despair?

God's word is true yesterday, today, and forever.  He did not speak it once, He continues to speak it to each of us, personally, every moment.  So we must remember that even though it seems as if the unbeliever today is "ignorant" of God and His perfect standard (and thus of his own failure to meet that standard), he in fact remains without excuse, having suppressed his own knowledge of God. 

We have two options here: 1) We can hold that God has in fact given them up to their own sin to such an extent that their inner sense of God and His law has in fact been suppressed to such an extent that it is for all extents and purposes erased.  Or, 2) we can hold that despite the declared ignorance of sin and the moral standard, the unbeliever still deep down realizes his own inadequacy.

Of the two options, I would lean more toward the second, but perhaps add that we may need to find a new way to talk about such things.  Though the concept remains the same, we may do well to speak about alienation, empty relationships, isolation, and a sense of futility than the more traditional sin, guilt, shame, etc.  

John Frame on Reason

There is no such thing as 'neutral' reasoning. There is only Christian-theistic reasoning and unbelieving reasoning: the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. When there is common ground between believer and unbeliever, that is a sign that either believer or unbeliever is inconsistent with his or her deepest commitments.
--John Frame, Five Views on Apologetics, p. 80, footnote 11


Further, agreements between believers and unbelievers indicate inconsistency in one or the other party. For example, when a Christian and an atheist agree on a scientific theory (assuming that the theory is true), the atheist is inconsistently relying on a worldview in which the universe is a rational order, matching the rational order of the human mind. At that point, the atheist is thinking as a theist. He is assuming a structure of rationality in the world that he has no right to assume.
--John Frame, Five Views on Apologetics, p. 136

John Dominic Crossan: Champion of Orthodoxy, Greatest Actor of Our Time

Joaquin Phoenix grew a crazy beard. He grew a crazy beard and appeared on David Letterman’s show totally out of sorts, acting strangely and declaring that he would abandon his acclaimed acting career to pursue his dream of becoming a rap artist. After his famous Letterman appearance, people debated whether Phoenix was serious. After much pleading on the part of the strange-looking Joaquin, and after news of a record being produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, the public largely accepted that Phoenix was not joking. “There's not a hoax,” Phoenix said in an article from USA Today. “Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that's possible, but that's certainly not my intention.”

So. That was that. Joaquin Phoenix was really becoming a rapper. But then, in 2010, the documentary I’m Still Here came out, directed by Phoenix’s brother-in-law Casey Affleck and revealing the drug-addled, prostitute-ridden new life of Joaquin Phoenix. It was sad. But then, to the relief of some and the ire of many, Phoenix and Affleck admitted that the whole thing was a hoax, and that I’m Still Here was a mockumentary, scripted from beginning to end. Joaquin shaved his beard and became normal again. And that was that. The ridiculous was accepted as real and then revealed to be ridiculous after all. But how does this relate to John Dominic Crossan?

I want to suggest that Crossan is in fact in full support of the traditional account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and that he also accepts the traditional dating and authorship of the New Testament documents. Crazy? Perhaps. But I want to do a little experiment in postmodern criticism here. Evidence is secondary. Interpretation is everything. And there is no authoritative interpretation. Of anything. So this is an intentionally postmodern reading of a postmodern reader.

Everything exists in context, and our interpretations are never objective. This is the truism of postmodern criticism if anything is. So what is Crossan’s context? He was born and raised in Ireland, and was at one point a Catholic priest. Eventually, however, he became famous as a radical scholar prominent in the quest for the historical Jesus. For someone with not just one but three Christian names (John, after the apostle; Dominic, from dominus, or Lord; Cross-an) there is precious little traditional Christianity left in Crossan’s corpus. Did his ideology truly undergo such an absolute turnaround, or is something happening under the surface, behind the text?

It is significant that Crossan is a writer, and as such his words are devoid of certain markers which serve to indicate meaning in other contexts. There is no method of determining intonation, inflection, tone of voice, facial expression, or bodily movement of the speaker in a written text. We have only the words. This can create problems. For example, the interjection, “Wonderful!” has a very different meaning when accompanied by an eye roll than when accompanied by a smile. In such a context, what is important is not what people say, but how they say it. Read with a tone of sarcasm or silliness, Crossan’s article could have a completely different meaning. But even at a stretch, this approach doesn’t sync well with the text.

This is where the Joaquin Phoenix theory comes in. What happens when we read Crossan through the eyes of a post-I’m Still Here audience? If John Dominic Crossan is Joaquin Phoenix, then he will deliberately put forward ridiculous and controversial interpretations and readings, totally going against evidence, common sense, and the majority of credible Biblical scholarship. Sounds good so far. But there’s more. He will not only publish ridiculous articles, but will cultivate a personality which he will “wear” in any and every public appearance, from book tours to PBS documentaries to SBL conferences. We may hold out hope that he will grow a crazy beard as well, but this does not tank the theory. When asked about his outrageous claims, he will assure questioners that he is indeed genuine, that this is his real position, that, more or less, he is not a hoax. He will disavow any ulterior motivation to his corpus of work. He will seem completely genuine, and, after a while, people will believe that he is in fact being serious. Some people may be “in on it,” and facilitate Crossan’s façade. This would be the optimistic explanation for why he keeps getting published.

The greatest actor of our time?

But what’s the point? As noted before, Crossan is an Irishman and a former Catholic priest and mendicant friar. Now he is one of the foremost radical Christian biblical scholars. I asked above whether Crossan could really undergo such a radical change. I want to suggest that we may view Crossan’s resignation from the priesthood and subsequent career as an elaborate and extensive hoax, intended to expose the true nature of contemporary biblical criticism as a bankrupt institution and urge readers back to the traditional Catholic doctrine. “Clearly,” he would say, “if scholarship allows for claims such as these, we must rethink what we call scholarship.”

Crossan can thus be seen as a lone voice amid postmodern criticism, crying out for a return to orthodoxy and biblical authority. It is certainly a possible explanation for his outrageous views. But what are the alternatives? Either Crossan is writing sarcastically, which does not seem to be the case, or he actually believes that a late second-century pseudonymous work such as the Gospel of Peter should be relied on more than Mark to give us a picture of the historical Jesus. Surely this strains credibility.

Did Crossan’s plan backfire? Either the publishing companies, etc. are “in on it,” or the discipline is more corrupt than even the conservative Crossan could imagine. Instead of exposing the fallacies of biblical criticism, he has popularized radical positions on Jesus, the Bible, and virtually every essential aspect of Christian faith, taken in by a gullible and unthinking mob because they were uttered by someone with a doctorate. Could Crossan be, even now, crying alone in his bed because he has invigorated the very thing he set out to destroy? It is possible.

But it is also possible that Crossan is simply biding his time, waiting for the mockumentary to reach its conclusion, when he will rise, Phoenix-like (note the wordplay, this is postmodern) from a now-disgraced liberalism and return in triumph to his Catholic home. Or perhaps he will even go to his grave with the secret of his conservatism. I can imagine a handwritten note, grasped in a cold hand, confessing everything, proclaiming the bodily resurrection of the Son of God. Pried away gently, it will be read, reread, and then published amid much media uproar and speculation, possibly several decades after its discovery. After a long time, people with degrees will conclude that the note must be a late forgery, certainly not written by the real John Dominic Crossan. It will be attributed, perhaps, to a well-meaning student using Crossan’s name to gain credibility for his or her ideological position, and the witnesses, having died long ago with Crossan himself, will be unable to shake scholarship from its bondage to the ridiculous. A few conservatives, not well respected, will argue for its authenticity, but will be largely ignored. One of them will get it into his mind to combat the radicals from inside, and the cycle will begin again. Maybe we’ll get someone with a beard this time.

Jonathan Edwards on Epistemology

Truth is the consistency and agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.
--Jonathan Edwards, Notes on the Mind