Great post. Every bit of it is really interesting.
What's your take on the penal-substitution theory? What is your preferred atonement theory or theories?
Your "Unclean" book looks really interesting. Even in the purely physical realm, given what we know about the microbiome these days, we know being completely clean is impossible in this world, nor would absolute cleanliness be a good thing.
My take on penal substitutionary atonement is that there are juridicial aspects to the atonement, that penal substitutionary atonement is communicating a Biblical truth about salvation dealing with human sin and guilt. As I will tell progressive audiences, let's not make mercy, grace, and forgiveness problematic.
The problems with PSA have to do with descriptions of God's wrath being appeased. But I think there are healthy ways to think about that imagery. My recent thoughts about God's impassivity is one way to do that.
This is such an insightful analysis, Richard, thank you!
I was hoping you would present an alternative. Sanctification has been a bugbear. I tried to write a book about it and still couldn’t come to the bottom of it. It boils down to expectations - what should I be expecting the Lord to be doing? If it’s making me morally better, I don’t really see that happening to a degree that I think really counts. If it’s about healing me (Eastern Orthodox etc.) I also see a lot of contradiction within me. If it’s empowerment (charismatic), I am not seeing the empowerment that I also expect.
One may accuse me of being a perfectionist - the trouble is, everyone seems to teach nothing less.
This gets especially contradictory when I think of the realm of addictions and mental illness.
Would love to hear your thoughts or if you could send me in the right direction.
Unclean was such an important book to me. I read it around the time that we had a family member identify publicly as LGBTQ, and my family’s reaction made sense when seen in light of purity psychology.
Though neither conservative or progressive, I left X because of the insane quantity of unwanted content flooding my feed. Including serious antisemitism and soft porn, which my algos shouldn't have been causing.
BTW, I appreciate all the atonement theories, but find the overemphasis on PST by fundamentalists just aggravating.
The idea that moral purity in progressive spaces is focused on casting off and creating distance from any complicity with oppressive structures resonates with me.
My question is, can this be aligned with moral foundations theory as presented by Jonathan Haidt? Here, Liberals are said to have a low priority for the sanctity(purity)/degradation foundation. When I heard this foundation illustrated with the "Hitler's sweater" exepriment, I immediately thought of the progressive Christian spaces I've inhabited.
Am I misaligning Progressive with Liberal? Or is something else going on?
Great question. I've seen some research showing how the moral foundation of Purity/Sanctity can explicitly show up in progressive moral thinking. I can't find the study right now, but it had progressives react to a scenario where mountain climbers drilled holes in a mountain that was sacred to Native Americans. When progressives read and reacted to that scenario, they applied the Purity/Sacred foundation to name that act as "wrong." The mountain climbers had desecrated a sacred/holy space.
But what I'm describing, to my eye, is a bit different.
What I'm suggesting is that any and all moral reasoning pulls in purity psychology, that we have an innate tendency to reason about the moral life in the idiom of dirt and pollution. Which means that any and all moral reasoning will display aspects of purity psychology. (If you believe in evolution I think this is due to an adaptive past where moral prohibitions get tightly linked to issues of hygiene, disease, and food. Purity thus becomes a universal and innate way of experiencing moral and social life.)
For example, to dig into this a bit. The particular contamination appraisal that drives purity behavior among progressives is "dose insensitivity," how even the tiniest bit of a pollutant has ruinous effects. The illustration in the literature is a drop of urine in a bottle of wine. One drop pollutes the whole. Contamination is insensitive to dose. A cup of urine or a small drop, doesn't matter. Both doses ruin the whole.
So, I will often ask progressive audiences: "How complicit can you be in oppression?" And the answer, obviously, is not at all. You're not allowed to be even "a little bit" involved in oppressive structures. And that sets into motion the progressive drive to extract yourself from even the tiniest bits of complicity which creates a sort of "social justice moral OCD."
My point in this is that progressives aren't explicitly deploying the Purity moral foundation. They are, rather, using their own foundations--Justice and Harm--but thinking and experiencing those foundations through the psychology of purity.
“(If you believe in evolution I think this is due to an adaptive past where moral prohibitions get tightly linked to issues of hygiene, disease, and food. Purity thus becomes a universal and innate way of experiencing moral and social life.)”
Well, that little footnote explains the hysteria that arose during the COVID panic. No one could be trusted to be pure so lock down and muzzle up and take the jab. Those who refused were immoral cretins deserving to be fired, locked up or worse.
Thank you for this, for calling out the progressive side as well as the conservative. You pinpoint what I have found troubling and exhausting. Your explanation of God rescuing us from sin and death that you explained in Slavery to Death makes so much simple sense to me.
Great post. Every bit of it is really interesting.
What's your take on the penal-substitution theory? What is your preferred atonement theory or theories?
Your "Unclean" book looks really interesting. Even in the purely physical realm, given what we know about the microbiome these days, we know being completely clean is impossible in this world, nor would absolute cleanliness be a good thing.
My take on penal substitutionary atonement is that there are juridicial aspects to the atonement, that penal substitutionary atonement is communicating a Biblical truth about salvation dealing with human sin and guilt. As I will tell progressive audiences, let's not make mercy, grace, and forgiveness problematic.
The problems with PSA have to do with descriptions of God's wrath being appeased. But I think there are healthy ways to think about that imagery. My recent thoughts about God's impassivity is one way to do that.
This is such an insightful analysis, Richard, thank you!
I was hoping you would present an alternative. Sanctification has been a bugbear. I tried to write a book about it and still couldn’t come to the bottom of it. It boils down to expectations - what should I be expecting the Lord to be doing? If it’s making me morally better, I don’t really see that happening to a degree that I think really counts. If it’s about healing me (Eastern Orthodox etc.) I also see a lot of contradiction within me. If it’s empowerment (charismatic), I am not seeing the empowerment that I also expect.
One may accuse me of being a perfectionist - the trouble is, everyone seems to teach nothing less.
This gets especially contradictory when I think of the realm of addictions and mental illness.
Would love to hear your thoughts or if you could send me in the right direction.
Unclean was such an important book to me. I read it around the time that we had a family member identify publicly as LGBTQ, and my family’s reaction made sense when seen in light of purity psychology.
Though neither conservative or progressive, I left X because of the insane quantity of unwanted content flooding my feed. Including serious antisemitism and soft porn, which my algos shouldn't have been causing.
BTW, I appreciate all the atonement theories, but find the overemphasis on PST by fundamentalists just aggravating.
The idea that moral purity in progressive spaces is focused on casting off and creating distance from any complicity with oppressive structures resonates with me.
My question is, can this be aligned with moral foundations theory as presented by Jonathan Haidt? Here, Liberals are said to have a low priority for the sanctity(purity)/degradation foundation. When I heard this foundation illustrated with the "Hitler's sweater" exepriment, I immediately thought of the progressive Christian spaces I've inhabited.
Am I misaligning Progressive with Liberal? Or is something else going on?
Great question. I've seen some research showing how the moral foundation of Purity/Sanctity can explicitly show up in progressive moral thinking. I can't find the study right now, but it had progressives react to a scenario where mountain climbers drilled holes in a mountain that was sacred to Native Americans. When progressives read and reacted to that scenario, they applied the Purity/Sacred foundation to name that act as "wrong." The mountain climbers had desecrated a sacred/holy space.
But what I'm describing, to my eye, is a bit different.
What I'm suggesting is that any and all moral reasoning pulls in purity psychology, that we have an innate tendency to reason about the moral life in the idiom of dirt and pollution. Which means that any and all moral reasoning will display aspects of purity psychology. (If you believe in evolution I think this is due to an adaptive past where moral prohibitions get tightly linked to issues of hygiene, disease, and food. Purity thus becomes a universal and innate way of experiencing moral and social life.)
For example, to dig into this a bit. The particular contamination appraisal that drives purity behavior among progressives is "dose insensitivity," how even the tiniest bit of a pollutant has ruinous effects. The illustration in the literature is a drop of urine in a bottle of wine. One drop pollutes the whole. Contamination is insensitive to dose. A cup of urine or a small drop, doesn't matter. Both doses ruin the whole.
So, I will often ask progressive audiences: "How complicit can you be in oppression?" And the answer, obviously, is not at all. You're not allowed to be even "a little bit" involved in oppressive structures. And that sets into motion the progressive drive to extract yourself from even the tiniest bits of complicity which creates a sort of "social justice moral OCD."
My point in this is that progressives aren't explicitly deploying the Purity moral foundation. They are, rather, using their own foundations--Justice and Harm--but thinking and experiencing those foundations through the psychology of purity.
“(If you believe in evolution I think this is due to an adaptive past where moral prohibitions get tightly linked to issues of hygiene, disease, and food. Purity thus becomes a universal and innate way of experiencing moral and social life.)”
Well, that little footnote explains the hysteria that arose during the COVID panic. No one could be trusted to be pure so lock down and muzzle up and take the jab. Those who refused were immoral cretins deserving to be fired, locked up or worse.
Thanks - this makes sense and it's easy to see how any of the moral foundations can be weilded toward "purity."
Thank you for this, for calling out the progressive side as well as the conservative. You pinpoint what I have found troubling and exhausting. Your explanation of God rescuing us from sin and death that you explained in Slavery to Death makes so much simple sense to me.