I sincerely wish you well. This is a tough nut to crack. At first it seemed doable to me, until the author mentioned wanting to move beyond the "Mere Christianity" flavor of most Evangelical intellectual efforts. I wasn't so sure after that. A huge hurdle to overcome with being specifically confessional is the fracturing of the Protestant community and lack of unity. A Lumen Christi Institute is possible not just because Catholics have a well defined, deep intellectual tradition to draw from, but because Catholics of diverse political affiliations and backgrounds can all coalesce around a need for such a center and support it. Another difficulty derives from Sola Scriptura, which hamstrings Protestants when it comes to building consensus around the morality of modern technological advances which are a massive part of the modern moral landscape.
To pick just one bioethics question that is heating up, how will Coverdale House approach discussions of transhumanism within their own intellectual tradition? Whose writings would they turn to? Given the Sola Scriptura perspective of Protestants, how do you ever build consensus around moral determinations on ethical questions that ancients didn't really conceive of and certainly didn't write directly on in unambiguous ways. For example, the SBC was formally pro-abortion in public statements in the 1970's, only coming out strongly against it in the 1980's. If it took them a decade to figure out something as simple as how to apply "Thou shalt not kill" to the unborn, a practice that was well documented among the ancients, what chance do Protestant denominations have of building consensus around controversial human enhancement surgeries? If you look at the Protestant embrace of contraception, the first widespread transhumanist technology, you see that they have almost no intellectual tradition to withstand the coming onslaught.
If your intellectual tradition can't address the difficult moral questions of the day, then it will have a hard time attracting and keeping elites. I honestly wish you well and hope your house succeeds, but I don't see how it can ever compete with places like the Lumen Christi Center intellectually. Protestant disunity and the prominence of sola scriptura make addressing the pressing questions of modern society extremely difficult, and they have a tendency to limit the relevance of groups like Coverdale House to fields like Biblical studies in order to keep the peace and maintain the numbers necessary for survival.
Right. I'd check out the "norma normans" vs. "norma normata" distinction in Protestant theology. I.e. Scripture is alone the "norming norm," but there are other things (creeds, confessions, even authorities like the Fathers) that are genuinely norms, but only insofar as they are themselves normed by Scripture.
Thanks for the reply. I get that theoretically there are ways to decide what the Christian theology is regarding transhumanist technologies (for instance), but at a practical level, how does one build consensus or settle differences of opinion? Who decides when a teaching is normed by Scripture and is a valid norma normata? The pressures are almost all on pastors and denominations to remain silent and ignore controversial moral issues.
Here is one practical example to illustrate my concern. Looking back at contraception, the Anglican Church was the first Christian denomination to formally approve artificial contraception for very limited circumstances, and that didn't happen until 1930. Luther, Calvin, and all the reformers strongly opposed it, often using extremely harsh terms. However, growing up I never once heard a Protestant theologian even address the topic as one which afforded differences of opinion. No attempt was made to build a theology which accepted and defended contraception, refuting the errors of Calvin, Luther, and every Christian denomination prior to 1930. Hardly anyone today even knows what the norma normata was 100 years ago regarding contraception, let alone why it changed: the past has almost been entirely erased from memory. "Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." I understand that *in theory* there are means of addressing questions of transhumanist technologies, but at a practical level, there is little means of building consensus and enormous pressures to ignore the questions entirely because of that.
It is my sincere hope that Coverdale House can avoid that problem. I don't know how you do it, but if you can pull it off, it would provide a much needed pattern for the wider Protestant community to deal seriously with the pressing moral questions of the day. It may even provide a an intellectual framework upon which denominations can base statements, which would be quite an achievement. The controversies of the first several centuries of Christianity mostly centered around the nature of God and the relation of the members of the Trinity to each other. Later the dominant questions revolved around the nature of the Church and authority. Today, while those questions are still relevant, the dominant questions facing Christians of every stripe concern the nature of what it means to be human. Christian groups who can answer those questions compellingly and with authority will attract elites looking for answers. There are few more pressing questions for young people today than what it means to found a strong, loving family and produce progeny in a moral, Christian manner. The nature of mankind and questions of how we should understand ourselves and relate to each other are the dominant cultural flashpoints tearing families and society apart.
I sincerely wish you well. This is a tough nut to crack. At first it seemed doable to me, until the author mentioned wanting to move beyond the "Mere Christianity" flavor of most Evangelical intellectual efforts. I wasn't so sure after that. A huge hurdle to overcome with being specifically confessional is the fracturing of the Protestant community and lack of unity. A Lumen Christi Institute is possible not just because Catholics have a well defined, deep intellectual tradition to draw from, but because Catholics of diverse political affiliations and backgrounds can all coalesce around a need for such a center and support it. Another difficulty derives from Sola Scriptura, which hamstrings Protestants when it comes to building consensus around the morality of modern technological advances which are a massive part of the modern moral landscape.
To pick just one bioethics question that is heating up, how will Coverdale House approach discussions of transhumanism within their own intellectual tradition? Whose writings would they turn to? Given the Sola Scriptura perspective of Protestants, how do you ever build consensus around moral determinations on ethical questions that ancients didn't really conceive of and certainly didn't write directly on in unambiguous ways. For example, the SBC was formally pro-abortion in public statements in the 1970's, only coming out strongly against it in the 1980's. If it took them a decade to figure out something as simple as how to apply "Thou shalt not kill" to the unborn, a practice that was well documented among the ancients, what chance do Protestant denominations have of building consensus around controversial human enhancement surgeries? If you look at the Protestant embrace of contraception, the first widespread transhumanist technology, you see that they have almost no intellectual tradition to withstand the coming onslaught.
If your intellectual tradition can't address the difficult moral questions of the day, then it will have a hard time attracting and keeping elites. I honestly wish you well and hope your house succeeds, but I don't see how it can ever compete with places like the Lumen Christi Center intellectually. Protestant disunity and the prominence of sola scriptura make addressing the pressing questions of modern society extremely difficult, and they have a tendency to limit the relevance of groups like Coverdale House to fields like Biblical studies in order to keep the peace and maintain the numbers necessary for survival.
Thanks. I don't think traditional Protestant thinking was sola scriptura in the "biblicist" sense used in today's evangelicalism.
Right. I'd check out the "norma normans" vs. "norma normata" distinction in Protestant theology. I.e. Scripture is alone the "norming norm," but there are other things (creeds, confessions, even authorities like the Fathers) that are genuinely norms, but only insofar as they are themselves normed by Scripture.
Thanks for the reply. I get that theoretically there are ways to decide what the Christian theology is regarding transhumanist technologies (for instance), but at a practical level, how does one build consensus or settle differences of opinion? Who decides when a teaching is normed by Scripture and is a valid norma normata? The pressures are almost all on pastors and denominations to remain silent and ignore controversial moral issues.
Here is one practical example to illustrate my concern. Looking back at contraception, the Anglican Church was the first Christian denomination to formally approve artificial contraception for very limited circumstances, and that didn't happen until 1930. Luther, Calvin, and all the reformers strongly opposed it, often using extremely harsh terms. However, growing up I never once heard a Protestant theologian even address the topic as one which afforded differences of opinion. No attempt was made to build a theology which accepted and defended contraception, refuting the errors of Calvin, Luther, and every Christian denomination prior to 1930. Hardly anyone today even knows what the norma normata was 100 years ago regarding contraception, let alone why it changed: the past has almost been entirely erased from memory. "Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." I understand that *in theory* there are means of addressing questions of transhumanist technologies, but at a practical level, there is little means of building consensus and enormous pressures to ignore the questions entirely because of that.
It is my sincere hope that Coverdale House can avoid that problem. I don't know how you do it, but if you can pull it off, it would provide a much needed pattern for the wider Protestant community to deal seriously with the pressing moral questions of the day. It may even provide a an intellectual framework upon which denominations can base statements, which would be quite an achievement. The controversies of the first several centuries of Christianity mostly centered around the nature of God and the relation of the members of the Trinity to each other. Later the dominant questions revolved around the nature of the Church and authority. Today, while those questions are still relevant, the dominant questions facing Christians of every stripe concern the nature of what it means to be human. Christian groups who can answer those questions compellingly and with authority will attract elites looking for answers. There are few more pressing questions for young people today than what it means to found a strong, loving family and produce progeny in a moral, Christian manner. The nature of mankind and questions of how we should understand ourselves and relate to each other are the dominant cultural flashpoints tearing families and society apart.