The Interface between Religious Faith and Secular Philosophy:

Contrasts, Comparisons, and Comments occasioned by the Philosophy of John William Miller by Hugh Nevin

Precis A Prelude and Postlude provide information and points of view related to but external to the presentation of the subject matter. Section I identies the perspective from which the writer views religious faith. Section II presents an overview of key elements of Miller's thinking, displaying the uniqueness of his approach and noting contributions that result. Section III begins with an identication of the incompatibility of Miller's philosophy with religious faith, followed by examples of ways in which he addresses it. Next, three religious faith perspectives are presented, each of which "locates" God in a different way. Finally, the commitments of Miller's way of thinking are compared with those identied in Section I.

Prelude I became a philosophy major at Williams College in the early 1950s as a result of my exposure to Miller as the professor of the introductory course, Types of Philosophy. Subsequently I received a masters in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and, later, a doctorate in religion and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Throughout a professional career as a Presbyterian pastor serving campus ministries as well as local congregations in New York State, I was exposed to a variety of perspectives and experiences that also inform these pages (to say nothing of inuences from my upbringing). As a member of the John W. Miller Fellowship Fund Committee at the College, I have been gratied by the appearance of publications that have brought together many of Millers writings and, especially more recently, other publications that introduce him to those interested - whether for the rst time or anew. What follows here is, in a manner of speaking, a footnote to these more substantial efforts. J.W. Millers thinking ranged far and wide; it found expression in a trenchant use of language that could be in turn - even at the same time - simple, profound, and difcult. An appropriate grounding in that thought, sufcient to view Millers secular philosophy over against religious faith within the space of a paper, requires choices: what should be included; how is it best presented? This task is conditioned by two further questions: what can be assumed about the interests and knowledge of the reader; what should be said about the writers knowledge of the subject matter? Responses to these latter questions follow here; responses to the former ones rest with the reader: the degree to which the presentation makes sense; the degree to which it can be assessed in light of the readers own knowledge and experience. The initial paragraph above provides an impression of the settings and activities in which my knowledge and experience of religious faith developed. As to familiarity with Miller and his philosophy, the excitement I felt listening to him as an undergraduate has largely been replaced by a newer sense of appreciation developed through moderate reading across the range of his

publications and the archival holdings, strongly supplemented by what others have written about him. As to the interests and knowledge of the reader, I imagine someone who is looking for a fresh perspective on the main topic, something I believe Millers philosophy facilitates. To the extent possible, I have tried to be guided by the editors of the most recent collection of Millers writings, The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, and Community, when they say of their approach, We asked ourselves what sort of volume would best help the reader approaching 1 2 Miller for the rst time. While my intention is to offer something of similar usefulness here, my selective appropriation of key concepts in Millers thought, given its own end in view, hardly qualies as an introduction in the usual sense. I. To begin, it will help to look for a moment at the topic of religious faith in order to understand the perspective from which I view it as I approach Miller. Ivan Strenski, professor of religious studies at the Riverside campus of the University of California, has made the following distinction. In our discussion of the problems for religion thrown up by the critical study of the Bible and religious texts in general, I argue that one needs, for example, to distinguish between what Christians believe Jesus to be and what, as a matter of history, it is possible to say about Jesus life and works. We can thus distinguish between the claims made about Jesus by a particular Christian community from those it is possible to afrm in the broader public domain. This is not to say that one is true and the other is not - that, say, the Jesus of faith or of a particular Christian group is a myth and thus not true, while the Jesus of history or of the public domain necessarily tells the truth about Jesus. It is however to say that history and the demands of the public realm in diverse and pluralistic societies differ in certain key respects from 3 myth and the demands of a believing community. Tensions between these two perspectives are still very much with us as we have paid tribute to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. In recent months, for instance, the PBS program, NOVA, presented Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. A two-hour recreation of and commentary on the 2005 landmark federal court case, Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the website where its materials can be found offers an in-depth example of how these 4 tensions can play out. Here, I afrm Strenskis distinction as described. I also admire the fortitude and determination of those teachers in the Dover School District who went to trial to preserve the distinction as it was threatened in the particular challenge confronting them. Several of them appear to be as committed in their experience of the Christian faith as their Independent Design/ Creationist opponents are in theirs. Finally, the term religious faith is so broad - true in its own way of the term Christian faith, as the foregoing controversy suggests - that there is an additional set of descriptive markers that needs to be mentioned, aspects of the habit of mind of the Reformed tradition within the life of the broader Christian community. This is the framework out of which I work as engagement within a diverse and pluralistic public domain is undertaken. Its aspects have been given helpful expression by B. A. Gerrish, for many years a faculty member at the University of Chicago

Divinity School, where he is now John Nuveen Professor Emeritus (and one of the nest historical theologians of his day). Not included in what I want to quote from him here is attention to theological education, the context in which he is speaking, and the secondary foundation for his remarks, the commitment to certain habits of mind in university education. All too briey but in his own words, the rationale for and elements of this more particular framework are described as follows in an address titled: Tradition in the Modern World: The Reformed Habit of Mind The usual approach to discussing the Reformed tradition is to catalogue some distinctive beliefs or doctrines.... The difculty with all these checklists...is that they change. Or perhaps thats the good thing about them. Puritan Calvinism was not Calvins Calvinism, and the Westminster Divines were not fundamentalists. The reason why a separate Reformed church rst emerged from the Reformation conict was because no agreement could be reached between the Lutherans and the Reformed on the Lords Supper. But there wasnt perfect agreement among the Reformed either.... Whats the alternative, then, to a list of Reformed distinctives (as we sometimes say)?... It certainly does not follow that we do not need doctrines, or even lists of fundamental doctrines. It would be mere feeblemindedness to say: We must cleave to Christ. Lets leave it at that. What follows, rather, is rst that we try to write new confessions of faith for every generation, and second that we appeal to something more constant and even more fundamental than fundamental beliefs; namely, good habits of mind, all of which rest nally on the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ. Here, then, are what I myself would propose, not as the ve points of Calvinism, but as ve notes of the Reformed habit of mind, out of which we make our confession as the times require of us. The Reformed habit of mind...is rst of all deferential: a habit of deference to the past. I use the word deference in its dictionary sense to mean respect and esteem due to a superior or an elder. ...If there is to be a Reformed tradition at all, there must be a deference to the apostles and fathers of the church: This is not to suppress the energy and excitement that we must bring to each new cause. Second, however, the Reformed habit of mind is just as essentially criticaleven of the fathers. And how difcult it is to be both deferential and critical! ...Without criticism of tradition, there would have been no reformation of the church. Now there is a Reformed tradition, but it cannot be a Reformed tradition without continuing self-criticism. Thirdly, the Reformed habit of mind is open: open to wisdom and insight wherever they can be found, not simply among fellow Presbyterians [his audience for these remarks]. The original genius of the Reformed church, I believe, was that it borrowed gratefully from both the Lutherans and the Renaissance humanists, creating a Christian philosophy (as Calvin called it) that was at once faithful to the gospel and deeply committed to learning.... Perhaps the special responsibility of those who work in the seminaries [today] will be to ask their university colleagues how the scientic ideal is related to other human values. On the other side, I dont see how the seminaries can responsibly address social, economic, medical, legal, moral, or

ecological problems, as the church surely must, without the knowledge that comes chiey from the academy. And this brings me to my fourth note. The Reformed habit of mind has always been unabashedly practical. Truth, the old divines used to say, is in order to goodness. Im not sure I would be willing to admit that of all truth, but certainly of theological truth.... Calvin made it clear that he had no interest in any knowledge of God that did not have to do with piety,... The duty of a Theologian . . . is not to tickle the ear, but conrm the conscience, by teaching what is true, certain, and useful. But no one is likely to conclude that he was therefore shut up in a narrow world of private devotion! ...What we nd in Calvin, at the very source of the Reformed tradition, is a powerful sense of the duty to reform every department of public life, not just to preachmuch less (in a phrase of James Luther Adams) just to manicure our own souls. For my fth and last note of the Reformed habit of mind, I come back to the full historic title: the churches reformed according to the Word of God.... That is the very heart of the Reformed habit of mind, even if it is not peculiar to the Reformed. Lets call it the evangelical habit. And I mean evangelical in its good Reformation sense, as distinct from its misappropriation by the fundamentalists. The rst Protestants called themselves evangelicals because they put one thing only the gospel of the Word made esh at the 5 center. ...To be an evangelical is to think everything in relation to the Word of the gospel. As the focus now turns to a discussion of Millers philosophy, there are three points I want to emphasize in what has been laid out so far. First, by using a particular sub-community within the larger Christian community to stand for religious faith, a variety of other faith perspectives go unrepresented. Strenskis discussion recognizes this in its reference to religious texts other than the Bible. At the same time, he narrows Biblically-based faith to the example of what some Christians believe about Jesus, thereby also bypassing the range of beliefs about Jesus held by other Christians. This makes an unstated point: the expression of religious faith is always particular. True, there are characteristics shared more or less universally across the religious spectrum. However, it should become apparent below that such characteristics do not represent the best vehicle for exploring issues of compatibility with Millers way of thinking. His exploration of universals mines the accidentals of historic processes. Second, Christian faith, as an example of religious faith, provides a good t for discussing Millers views. In part this is because his thinking grows out of the western philosophical tradition with its admixture of Christian thinking, especially in the Middle Ages; for example, he discussed 6 the classic proofs for the existence of God in Types of Philosophy . Additionally, some brand of Christian faith was likely predominant among the afliations of his students. The Williams campus of the 1950s didnt seem especially diverse or pluralistic. For instance, compulsory attendance at Sunday chapel services, characteristically Protestant, was not ended until the 1960s - after Millers retirement. Finally, American culture was only beginning to come to grips with religious diversity as his career neared its end. Will Herbergs Protestant, Catholic, Jew was published in 1955.

Third, the extended quotation from the lecture by Brian Gerrish presents the thinking of a Christian intellectual with sufcient fullness to make this point: both the traditions of Christian theological discourse and its commitment to Jesus Christ provide a clear contrast to the terms and traditions of Millers work and his own most fundamental commitment. As he said of the latter in In Sum, I want the actual to shine and I want to feel the wonder of a yardstick, a poem, a word, a person. The here-and-now appears to me quite dreamlike unless it can declare the world. I am 7 glad that the dream is dispelled for me. II. To repeat, this presentation of aspects of Millers thought is intended to provide a grounding for a discussion of the interface between secular philosophy - with which I identify Miller - and religious faith. (Note in passing: I sometimes identify this interface by reference to a primary issue, compatibility.) The focus of the topic and the truncated treatment of Miller here leave much unsaid. First and foremost, what is it that prompts a person to engage in the type of thinking espoused by a philosopher? Millers answer, very much his own, is developed as follows. There has been a view, a mistaken view, that, whereas most persons act, the philosopher contemplates, that he contemplates the same scene that leads others to act or invites their acts. While others do, he contemplates. Actually what the philosopher observes is not a factual scene, but an active one. He notes what is being done. This is not the case in natural science, where one never notes an act but notes an appearance to which no action can be ascribed. Natural science makes a point of this exclusion of action from its own explanations. Only the act, in contrast, 8 furnishes the occasion of philosophy. Miller begins with a set of circumstances constituted by several actions. In this case he identies two: the stating of a cultural view of philosophy and the stance of natural science. Each, in a different way, excludes this philosophers interest in action. In response, Miller puts forth his view. An integral preliminary word: as a thinker, Miller always knows, or is trying to determine, where he is and with whom he is speaking. The intention is that his action, his speaking, be one of engagement of these prior actions. Regarding, for instance, those who walked in and sat down in his classroom, the following words apply: The teacher of philosophy is always futile when he develops his own ideas without rst assuring himself that his starting point, his questions, and his presumptions are those of the student. ...The cultivation of philosophy is the 9 cultivation of a deep respect for the questions and difculties of every man. (Note: Millers way of expressing himself preceded attention to the use of inclusive language; also, the student body at Williams was all-male during his teaching days.) Returning to Millers initial discussion above, In these prior activities [statements of the cultural view and the natural science view] there lies the presumption of a control. Indeed, the center and essence of an act is in that presumption.... Philosophy is the locus of the control that natural learning had merely assumed. 10 control better what comes naturally is the occasion of any philosophical study . ...To

In the fuller discussion of the points above, Miller illustrates, for example, with the experience of speaking to another person and being misunderstood, even unintentionally giving offense. The consequent need is to regain control of the interaction. Since, up to that point, the speaker was only doing what came naturally, talking, these experiences serve to reveal the earlier presumption that the situation had been under control. Much of the time we just dont have to think about it. Philosophical study, then, arises as a response to a situation in which control has broken down, is unclear, or can be improved. Stated another way, a philosophical response adequate to a situation either reestablishes control if it has been lost, claries control that is uncertain, or provides a positive expansion of existing control. The examination of human activity as an expression of control is at the center of Millers thinking. For instance, Arrowheads rate as artifacts; they are not found in nature. ...Man is an artisan; he makes artifacts. Find an artifact and you encounter a man; nd a stone and you do not. Observations such as these lead to the stating of one of Millers key concepts, local control. The anthropologist does not come upon man until he discovers the artifact, a revelation of local control, 11 that is, something done at a specic place and time . By way of examples consider: in France, in the city of Chartres, the construction in the 12th to 13th and 16th centuries, by many hands, of the Cathedral, Notre Dame de Chartres; in Austria, in Vienna, the composition in the 18th century, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, of the main vocal materials for his Requiem Mass in D Minor (during his last illness, from which he died at 1 a.m. on 5 December 1791). This cathedral and this Requiem are human artifacts. That each is, in a quite different way, the result of a complex task is also evident to anyone who has read about such enterprises or tried her own hand at building or composing. Even what appears to be quite simple can, with reection, be perceived as quite complex. A child singing a nursery rhyme generally does so effortlessly: Frere Jacque, Frere Jacque; 12 dormez vous, dormez vous?... Suppose, on the other hand, one decides to be a singer. Now one needs to attend to: physiological concerns - the production of sound and the training to master its range of expression; musical concerns - reading music, rudimentary harmony at least, accuracy of pitch, correct singing of intervals and changes in the dynamics of volume, tempo, and phrasing; communication concerns - the marrying of words or sound to pitches to produce melody, the use of different languages, the meaning of the text, the import of different styles of composition from different time periods, the development of a repetoire; engagement concerns - the characterization of audiences in terms of interest and ability to appropriate what is being heard, the expression of emotion that weds the creation of the composer with the capacities of the singer as, in the act of making music, the seamless combination of their contributions reaches into the auditory-cognitiveemotional universe of the audience member. This much, at least, is involved in the act of singing. The following statement raises this description to the level at which Miller intends it: Action has never been a category. ...Present active participles do not occur in traditional metaphysics. They do in mine. I start with speaking, counting, measuring, trying, failing, 13 singing, etc. The complexities of building, composing, or singing alert us to the role of will in the accomplishment of any such undertaking. Thus Miller also says, The will is

14 the actual, the equation of person and his act, that is to say, his control . As to the extent of that will in the considered act of singing, for instance, even nations can exhibit it. A contemporary example is captured in the lm, The Singing Revolution. It portrays the role of singing in Estonias successful struggle to rid itself of a fty-year occupation that ended as part of the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Briey but importantly, local control is an evolving activity. It learns from mistakes, operates on a continuum, and accepts limits. It represents a process in a persons development that emerges as childhoods spontaneity confronts constraint. ...Constraint in its simplest form but also in its systematic meaning is the price of spontaneity. It appears as the need of routine, as drill, and as habit. It has the avor of things needing to be done whether one wishes to do them or not. Chores must be performed, some facts or practices learned by heart, even when ones heart is not in them. Property must be kept in order. All this must be attended to, however alien it may appear to direct interest. I...propose to understand restraint as existential learning and as the occasion of control 15 over an actual but limited and precarious order. The constraints of daily life are easily associated with activities of home and family: routines such as those involved in arising each day; drills such as brushing teeth; habits like getting the morning news (though the specic habit of reading the morning paper in hand may be in some peril). However, to speak of exercising control over an actual but limited and precarious order involves a good deal more. For present purposes it is important to note that Miller identies the setting of our activities as one that is fateful. Michael McGandy provides a helpful summary statement. As employed by Miller, fate is the necessary complement to having a particular identity and 16 locale of action. Fate is, quite simply, nitude understood from a slightly different perspective. On the one hand, being a particular person in a particular place means that ones life and ones opportunities for action are enmeshed in much that has come to oneself from outside, originating elsewhere. In Colapietros words, ...human identity is itself a fabric woven of fateful alliances to historical practices (practices of inquiry no less than those of worship, of citizenship and 17 humane conduct no less than art and aesthetic perception). On the other hand, a strange thing happens when this enmeshment is examined with the individuals action in mind. As George Brockway notes, as self-assertion is considered, There is...no way of making a standing start; I am always in the midst of life. My life is mine; yet it is 18 presented to me and so is somehow not mine. Both my life and I exist.

Now, too briey, we need to grapple with matters that are most critical to Millers way of thinking. This involves the odd position of confronting oneself and ones life as separated, as a subject thinking about her life, the object of her thought. A fuller treatment of the issues involved here would engage us in a more thorough

consideration of what Miller counts as the fatalities of thought. His course on the Types of Philosophy examined such fatalities as they are expressed in different philosophical stances which arise in a necessary way in response to each other. For instance, Spiritualism, the rst philosophy, 19 begins with an experience of personal agency, without which no further development of philosophic thought is possible. Just so, it gives rise to Naturalism, the focus on a world of objects 20 and their ways. Each of these primary monisms excludes the other in its explanation of how things are. Thus there arises Dualism. Now both Spiritualism and Naturalism are seen as necessary, but the former is faulted for its failure to take the natural world into account while the latter is seen as lacking for its failure to take human agency (including its own) into account. Miller applies the impact of this development in thought: ...common sense is dualistic. This is the 21 point of view which most people who do any thinking at all hold. Skepticism, however, confronts dualism and common sense. Skepticism is a systematic mistrust of the reliability of human knowledge, says Miller. ...we are dissolved into disbelief 22 and lack of condence. At the bottom of Descartes[][dualism] is the feeling of failure. More recent philosophies, Pragmatism and Existentialism among them, have been attempts to deal with Skepticisms enduring legacy. Pragmatism is particularly noteworthy for its recognition that, as Miller says of it, Something in our nonintellectual nature - our temperament has some control over our philosophy. ...This is the skeleton in the philosophical closet - that philosophy is not 23 entirely intellectual. John Dewey speaks of this recognition in detailing the role of emotion in primary experience. In a thoroughly normal organism, ...feelings have an efciency of operation which it is impossible for thought to match. Even our most highly intellectualized operations depend on them as a fringe by which to guide our inferential movements. They give us our sense of what to select and emphasize and follow up, and what to drop, slur over and ignore, among the 24 multitude of inchoate meanings that are presenting themselves. Or, more succinctly, Dewey can say, Even the greatest philosopher exercises an animal-like preference to guide his thinking to its 25 conclusion. Millers focus on the primacy of action introduces a powerful response to Skepticisms challenge, incorporating the recognition of the pragmatists in a more thorough-going manner. 26 What dualism had done was to show that opposition is unavoidable when thought takes place. Descartes mistrust of sense as also involved had led, fatefully, to Skepticisms challenge. By contrast, Millers claim is that these oppositions, such as subject-object, self-world, real-ideal, are only given to thought as they are contained together in the actual where sense is operative - in the doings that take place. To speak of them only as a diad overlooks this triadic rootage in actuality. A childhood example: to count ones toes is at one and the same time to disclose the number of appendages that are really there on ones own feet and reveal a formal or ideal mathematical order that is universally applicable - both are whole together, even as the distinction between them is 27 enforced, in a world disclosed in the counting. The mechanisms by which such revelations take place Miller calls functioning objects (of which the human body is primary). The world - the human world - in 28 which such objects exercise control he calls the midworld. Joseph Fell says of the range of philosophical studies in which Miller engages to establish the roles of functioning objects and the midworld, These arguments comprise the most adequate resolution known to me of 29 the still-vexing problems posed by Cartesian dualism.

To this comment we need to add notice of the far-reaching signicance Miller sees for the implications of his thinking. An extended quotation identies it in this way. [History] is concerned...with nitude and its career. But in this respect, history seems to alienate itself from the traditional concerns of philosophy, which have tended to stress the timeless and the ahistoric, treating time as a derivative and secondary. The true heavenly city, we have supposed, is not build by hands, and the true forces of nature sweep man and his deeds into the invariance of their own laws. We have been trying to see all things under the aspect of eternity. It cannot be denied that such conditions of rising superior to time have their attractions. Yet many have felt that they must settle for something closer, nding a sharper and more self-possessed life within limitation. Limitation has not been accorded an equal place at the high table of philosophy. It sits well below the salt unless, indeed, it has been only a servant in the festivities of its betters. This is what the historian knows and so, metaphysically homeless, he has maintained a stubborn or even sardonic independence, occupied with the identication of individual moments. It would appear, and I would propose, that unless history be a category, there can be no philosophy of history. But if it be such, then the region of its concern, artifacts, or the midworld, must be accorded a place among 30 the constitutional elements of being. In an introduction to a later essay, Miller is quoted on this topic, saying, To lists of categories I have proposed two additions: (1) the accidental, and (2) the midworld of utterance 31 [utterance will be discussed in Section III]. Michael McGandy summarizes: ...Miller describes his own work as a historical idealism whose novelty resides in its uncompromising 32 insistence that the idealist tradition be revised so as to give history categorical status....

Insistence is a good word to use in describing Miller and his philosophy. The word carries the sense of his commitment to his arguments. It also points to important qualities in his communicating and teaching, inseparable from those arguments. He afrms this in the following comments. Philosophy is a school of sympathy and of understanding. problems of others is its goal. For those problems are always ones own. To sympathize with the

...In contrast with this geniality, sympathy, and impersonality is the fact of the persistence of the philosophic question and teacher. A philosophic conversation cannot be lax or casual. Since philosophy has to do with what is essential in us, it requires sternness of attitude as well as of thought. One must be held to the mood of self-understanding, and to the difcult progress of an idea. Nothing is done in philosophy until one is changed as a person. ...The answers of a philosophy are never indifferent to ones character. Hence philosophy often seems impolitely 33 pressing, insistent, and intrusive.

In Types of Philosophy, in the second semester lecture introducing Existentialism, Miller puts it this way. The factor of control, dened in the rst term and redened in the second term, is the factor we contribute. No contribution, no voice. You pays your nickel, you calls your tune. Ones contribution is systematic - and becomes more and more so as one proceeds through the second terms types. One does not turn up in a capricious way,... Were playing for keeps in Philosophy 1-2, you know. We want to put you in charge of 34 yourselves. This is deadly business. On this note we are ready to look at the interface between secular philosophy and religious faith. III.

A statement of Millers indicates his own approach to that interface. 35 hazard: The only word is the incarnate word.

To speak at great

In the context in which he is writing, a discussion of artifacts and actuality, the statement about an incarnate word is simply consistent with the point he is making. That he prefaces it with the warning suggests that he knows that his reader (to whom he was writing) was aware that this phrase is one also used to refer to Jesus Christ, with all the faith implications that usage implies - something he is not endorsing by his own use of the phrase. In what follows I will begin with examples of circumstances in which it is clear that Millers philosophy is incompatible with expressions of religious faith. Next, I will briey look at his treatment of the proofs for the existence of God, at several faith-laden terms he uses in his own way, and at some Biblical references he uses. Then, I will shift the focus to faith perspectives, beginning with aspects of the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Consideration of two other theological perspectives useful in a comparison with Millers thought will follow. A nal discussion will be preceded by a review of Brian Gerrishs ve notes of the Reformed habit of mind in light of the discussion to this point. In all of this there is much room for further exploration and development.

In his rst lecture on Spiritualism, Miller states In Spiritualism the act, agency, is the 36 reason for events, i.e., the explanation of events. He then instructs his students to read the rst chapter of the Gospel of John. These verses both make the point and ground a contrast to be elaborated. In the beginning was the Word, ...and the Word was God. All things came into being through him,... And the word became esh and lived among us [Jesus as the Christ, the Word 37 incarnate]. Spiritualism in historical perspective comes into view in the following comments. As an outlook on forces that are agents, Spiritualism leads to theism: to both polytheism and monotheism. Monotheism is a monopoly of force. In a genuine monopoly, you have a distinct ces [s]ation of will. A monopoly of force destroys local centers of force, local agents. If you carry Spiritualism to this limit, you destroy its validity [see, as an example, the 1978 Jonestown massacre

38 in all its complexity]. Millers own perspective on theism, which has a role in the majority of religious perspectives, is clear in this further statement: Monotheism and polytheism are specically super-naturalistic - derivative rather than original forms of spiritualism - and arise in the 39 last-ditch attempt to make a case for Spiritualism. Finally, institutional forms of spiritualism emerge, in Millers view, as follows. One attempts to have control over spiritual agencies. You can have relations with agencies that resemble you; they can be commanded through sacrices and prayers of petition. Thus spiritualism results in the practice of control. This is the function of 40 priests,... Michael McGandy provides further historical perspective, following a passage on the traditional pursuits of philosophy, when he says, In sum: The life of considering eternal objects has been considered to be superior to the life of words and deeds transacted in public life. This priority was appropriated by the Romans [from the Greeks] and, later, by the Christian Church which found it to jibe well with the spiritual interest that set eternal life and the world in 41 opposition. This statement, in turn, prompts a footnote observation: Paradoxically, the ahistoricism of Christianity is built on a single, exemplary historical being - Jesus. As Miller notes in numerous places, Jesus is a man of action and a maker of history; Jesus is the word incarnate (MS [The Midworld of Symbols and Functioning Objects] 152-153). The peculiarity of Christianity is that it concentrates historicity and action in the life of a single man and excludes the rest of humanity from the active life ([Hannah] Arendt, 1968 [Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political 42 Thought], p. 66.). McGandys footnote reference to Millers statement in The Midworld of Symbols and Functioning Objects introduces the latters assessment of his philosophy in relation to Christian faith at the end of an essay on matter. Here I precede it with an additional statement from an earlier section of that same essay. Christianity declared that the Word was made esh. It is the mystery of the incarnation. But it remained a mystery. Now, I am a Christian in so far as the incarnation is the actual. Up to a point Christianity gave authority to the actual. It did not universalize revelation. But I nd the steady power of Christianity in its claim that - at least once 43 the absolute was embodied and took on mortality. The complimentary statement from the end of the essay is: I marvel at the Christian idea of the incarnation. It is amazing. Yet it proved popular and has so continued. I am proposing that any utterance has that quality of revelation. A yardstick or a clock is a metaphysical actuality, an incarnate power. Until the word was made 44 esh, it had no actuality. Two conclusions and a further elucidation are useful at this point. First, expressions of religious faith that rely upon a theistic point of reference - especially, for instance, as they understand a supernatural deity to be an active force in history - are not

compatible with Millers philosophy. Second, Miller reinforces this conclusion that follows from his thinking about historic agency with an assessment of Christianitys specic claim about Jesus Christ. As indicated in the quotations above, he rst nds it lacking for its failure to universalize revelation. Stated again, but now in a positive expression of his own view, I am proposing that any utterance has that quality of revelation - that quality Christian faith invests in Christs incarnation, wherein Christianity gave authority to the actual. Before proceeding further, a few words need to be said about utterance, which has now appeared a second time. Generally, Miller uses the word utterance to refer to any articulation in one of the several media of disclosure whereby something becomes authoritatively present in 45 human experience as a revelation. Specically, he means by it a particular form of spoken or written discourse. It is a form not dissimilar to the one we have already encountered in the functioning object. In this case, the three-fold engagement involves the authoritative presence of the utterer in such a way that neither the objective validity of the utterance or the authoritative 46 presence of the auditor are undermined. Importantly, this means that The author as I addresses the reader as you by means of utterances not intended to seduce the reader to admire the author or to espouse some cause to which the author is devoted but intended to empower the reader 47 to come into deeper possession of the inheritance of his own discourse. Further, this means that the utterer afrms an alignment with a tradition of utterance in such a way that her unique personal 48 presence is afrmed even as shared humanity is acknowledged. As one then and now aligned with a community of religious discourse at variance with Millers philosophy over the role of theism, I have come to realize that what so excited me in what he was saying was his unbending commitment to and articulation of this particular form of utterance, in all three of its dimensions. There is a second set of circumstances in which the expression of religious faith is at odds with Millers philosophy. On the one hand, these circumstances follow from the situation discussed above; on the other hand, they encompass stances other than those of religious faith. They involve the role of dogma and dogmatic actions. In religious terms, dogma can be said to exist on a continuum as regards enforcement in belief and behavior. For instance, the practices of Roman Catholicism and Unitarianism are quite different in this matter; Presbyterianism (as an embodiment of the Reformed perspective) is somewhere in-between. To the point, however, here is how Miller identies the issue. Idealism is the answer to the opposition between skepticism and dogmatism.... Between dogmatism and skepticism there is no conciliation. Both are absolutisms, because both deny the sway of criticism. Dogmatism, by making unconditional assertions, entails an 49 unconditional denial of alternative assertions. As usual, there is a good deal more that Miller has to say on this topic. However, for present purposes, it will sufce to note the key assertion: because dogmatism is an absolutism, it sets itself beyond criticism. Thus Miller also says, Dogmas do not really conict. Would that they might! They merely negate each other. What cannot be reconciled in thought offers no conict of 50 thought.

To the extent that religious faith is subject to dogmatism, it sets itself beyond criticism, that is to say, beyond the purview of thought. Indeed, the constraints of dogma, strictly observed, stand over against the structures of thought. Of the latter, Miller says, All the categories represent codes for the restriction of the content of nite points of view. Every category describes at once an innite order and a nite content that seeks to enlarge itself. Categories are not transcendental, nor are they psychological and accidental. They are the structure of criticism, the dynamic of expanding meanings according to law. Thus idealism [meaning philosophy in this instance] asserts no Absolute, but rather denies the possibility of any assertion immune 51 from the order of contingency. It is that order which is absolute. Stephen Tyman captures the contrast for religious faith when he says, Even as the God of Genesis founds the world by being the separating principle parting the skies from the waters, Millers midworld founds the range of knowledge and informed experience by standing between the coeval 52 derivations of founder and founded, subject and object. What is at issue between Miller and religious faith is the status of thought, of criticism. Criticism has no background. It is underived. It is absolute. ...Criticism has no basis except itself. One may as well acknowledge at the outset that to go beyond this, to introduce a single specic fact into ones conception of reality, be that fact ones own self or scientic data or God, is to accept 53 dogmatism in principle. As the act of God is the creative force in religious faith, so the act of criticism is the creative force in Millers philosophy. Miller discusses the proofs for Gods existence in the context of his classroom lectures on Naturalisms denial of the supernatural. The rst two arguments, the cosmological and teleological, fail through lack of logical consistency. It is Millers summary comments that are noteworthy here. In the end we seem to resort to an act of faith, which we do not argue. These proofs show our 54 tendency to rest uneasy when faced with the incomplete, the unsure. The third, the ontological, relies neither on logic or dogma but posits a stance in which God is what you would get if you 55 could see all before you. With this statement Miller couples an unattributed quotation, There is none beside Thee. Given mandatory Sunday chapel attendance and the likelihood of exposure to the hymn elsewhere, Miller assumes his listeners will realize they have sung these words, though they may not be able to place them where they occur, in the third stanza of the third verse of Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty, (a primary trinitarian hymn in most Christian hymnals). To the point here, Miller has no argument with acts of faith since, as such, they are beyond reason. At the same time, he identies a need in the realm of faith that has its counterpart in the realm of criticism. By noting human uneasiness with the incomplete and the unsure, he lays the groundwork for the assertion that the actual involves the exercise of control. Turning from the proofs - expressions of faith in other words - to terms that have one meaning in the context of faith and another in Millers philosophy, incarnate word and revelation have already been noted above. Here I want to mention additional examples: grace

of God, saved, and sin. Grace of Godand saved come up in a quotation Michael McGandy uses from Millers posthumous book, The Philosophy of History with Reections and Aphorisms. History is the dimension in which we see ourselves, not as others see us, but as we are genetically identied. There, but for the grace of God, go I is not enough. One has to say, There, by the abounding grace of God I too nd myself. ...Nobody can, by the grace of God, feel himself saved from participation in the enormities of the past, any more than he can dissociate 56 his own heart and mind from its glories.... Here, again, Miller is using faith-laden terminology to make his own point, that we are, as humans, fated bearers of a heritage, both good and bad. Coincidentally, he introduces a usage of grace of God that makes better theological sense than the self-centered intent of the popular usage. At the same time, his negative use of the phrase saved from participation in the enormities of the past calls into question the religious emphasis on being saved from sin. Indeed, his direct usage of the concept of sin brings into view his judgment as to why religious faith - theology in the quote below - continues, impervious to thoughtful criticism. Man will not be a nobody. And hell fry in hell before hell lose his selfhood. A person who is too simple is not convincing. Adam and Eve knew a lot more about God after they were thrown out of the garden. The surest way to make man believe that hes something is to show him that hes the author of an evil deed. Man doesnt really dread sin. More 57 than sin he dreads the loss of his capacity to sin. The same assessment comes up in relation to theologys interpretation that Jesus died to atone for human sin. Theology still gains much acceptance, although it is intellectually in disrepute, because it gives vent to the common mans desire to be something. The Lord God has to go to all this trouble just to keep you in a minimum or a maximum of upset - this is very attering to man. That a man should have to die for us inates our personal importance. 58

When, nally, Miller makes direct Biblical references, results like the following occur. The reading from the Gospel of John, with its emphasis on incarnate word, provides both contrast and an opportunity to state his own views, as already noted. A discussion of causality, in which the rst two arguments for the existence of God are clearly in the background, leads to this use of Jobs encounter with the Almighty as an example of the problem. ...the well-known outcome of the appeal to divine management is complete resignation to the inscrutable. God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou

hast understanding [Job 38:4]! Ours not to reason why, but to ride blindly and without comprehension into the valley of death [a reference to Psalm 59 23?], trusting to a benecent plan, withheld from our penetration. On the other hand, having said that the scholar can only overcome fate by identifying with its laws, Miller shows an openness to something he nds in Pauls Epistle to the Romans (2:12-16). There Paul, with his characteristic intensity, wishes to avoid a life that is forever under the law and never in itself the generator of the law. 60 That is a bold idea indeed. Ultimately Paul comes up short in Millers reading. The point is, however, he does not dismiss this representative of religious faith out-of-hand, but listens seriously to him. Lastly, in discussing the alliance between an individual and the universal, Miller notes the likelihood that the demonic or fanatical may result. He concludes, What would you? Where the self is not dened in commitments, it has no actuality. It cannot be even wicked. [Examples from Kipling and Dante are cited, followed by:] ...And the apocalyptic writer declares [the Revelation of John], I know thy works, that thou art neither 61 cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot [Rev. 3:15]. Where Scripture can be referenced, Miller grasps the opportunity. In summary, the examples of utterances we have just been considering are subject to Millers insistence that the auditor must be granted authoritative presence. In this sense, Jobs chronicler, the Gospel writer, the apocalyptic writer, Paul - and those of Millers listeners and readers for whom they are authoritative - deserve and receive serious attention. Serious attention means, however, that critical reaction is not muted, should it, in Millers judgment, be warranted. More, however, is involved. Theology and Biblical literature, however viewed, have inuenced our culture and our civilization to the degree that to overlook them or dismiss them would be to misunderstand where we now are and who we are. At this point, Millers view of history is key, though a discussion is beyond the focus here. ...history is the revision of outlooks at the point of conict between them. It is the process of putting us in rapport with each other, and 62 with those monuments of expression that are the substance of civilization. Miller identies the approach of piety as essential in appreciating history. As Vincent Colapietro describes this approach, Reverence [piety] is a condition for comprehending the efforts of our ancestors for what these efforts are: endeavors giving status and authority to the immediate by composing, through their distinctive forms of utterance - their buildings and laws no less than 63 their books and speeches - a world of their own. On this note we turn, again, to considerations from the perspective of religious faith. This time, however, they are introduced in response to Millers statement of a secular philosophy.

The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, offers an interesting contrast to J. W. Miller. Eleven years his junior, he was a devout, yet highly cultured Lutheran pastor-theologian whose teaching and political activity brought him into increasing conict with the Nazi state. His involvement in the resistance movement responsible for the plot to take Hitlers life led to his own execution in the nal weeks of the war in Europe. As background for considering some specics in Bonhoeffers thought and life, it is useful to recall, insofar as religion is concerned, the rise of secularization that was beginning to be evident when both Miller and Bonhoeffer were in their prime. It became especially notable in theological education circles later, in the second half of the century. It was, perhaps, heralded for the general public in the Time magazine issue at Easter in 1966 with its cover question, Is God Dead? In any case, the public face of the God is Dead movement (so-called), Thomas J.J. Altizer, published that year his book titled, The Gospel of Christian Atheism. A responsible scholar, Altizer explored Biblical and Christian proclamations in a unique way. To oversimplify, he posited a development whereby the outpouring of Gods spirit, beginning with the creation of the world, reached a culmination in the death of Jesus, such that Gods presence took on a new form in the world. (Several years later, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught in the English department for close to thirty years, those of us providing chaplaincy services at the University received ofce space, in no small part due to his advocacy.) Interesting, then, that in 1944, writing from prison, Bonhoeffer authored several letters in which he began to develop a theme. Here are selected excerpts. ...God is being increasingly edged out of the world, now that it has come of age. Knowledge and life are thought to be perfectly possible without him. Ever since Kant, he has been relegated to the realm beyond experience. There is no longer any need for God as a working hypothesis, whether in morals, politics or science. Nor is there any need for such a God in religion or philosophy (Feuerbach). In the name of intellectual honesty these working hypotheses should be dropped or dispensed with as far as possible. I nd it very slow going trying to work out a non-religious interpretation of biblical terminology, ...a far bigger job than I can manage at the moment. 64

Four days after writing these words, the explosives intended to take Hitlers life missed their mark, and Bonhoeffers freedom to communicate was increasingly restricted before his life was eventually taken. As early as 1933 he had stated in a published article, the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society..., not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself. Such action would be direct political 65 action. Additionally, as Marilynne Robinson has noted, a year earlier he had written, [T]he primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed that interprets itself. An obedient act owes nothing to the logic or the expectations of the world as it is, but is afrmed in the fact of 66 revealing the redeemed world. Action is revelation. For Bonhoeffer, Christ is in the world, not as inuence or loyalty but as active presence, ...as the one source and principle of life for those who

constitute the church.

The mystery of the world for Bonhoeffer, says Robinson, comes with 68 the belief that [Gods] immanence is pervasive, no less so where it cannot be discovered. Bonhoeffers life was that of a churchman - preaching, teaching, and immersed in the practices of private and public worship and the administration of church affairs. Yet all of this was conditioned by the overriding impact of the Nazi state. He rejected the racial nationalism of the German Christian movement within the churches (a particular case of the root problem of humanly constructed religious concepts of God displacing the divine reality made present in revelation). At the same time he was a leader of the Confessing Churchs seminary at Finkenwalde where pastors were trained for resistance churches. Seeking the removal of Hitler and a supernatural concept of God were of a piece with all this. Had Bonhoeffer lived to develop his world-come-of-age Christianity, one wonders if the reception of Altizer would have been any different (because of his views, the latters position at Emory University became untenable and he received death threats). In any case, the point, as regards the compatibility of religious faith with Millers thought, is this: there were efforts within Millers lifetime on the part of theologians, Altizer and Bonhoeffer most prominently, to dispense with a traditional God hypothesis. If the possibility of a conversation on this topic was on Millers agenda, I am unaware of it. A second point is also noteworthy. In his own way, Bonhoeffer evidences a consistent commitment to action, to utterance in word and deed, that shares much with Millers. He, too, takes history with the utmost seriousness. In another letter from the spring of 1944 he wrote, The difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and a mythological hope [release from this 69 world] is that the Christian hope sends a man back to his life on earth in a wholly new way.... Finally, however, the difference with Miller is that (not unlike Altizer, though in a quite different way) Bonhoeffer is living and thinking out of a commitment to a divine presence in the world - no longer a supernatural deity acting in history but an immanent mystery in which the actions of the church nd their source. Revelation again, but not with Millers meaning of the term. Might Millers judgment be that this is Spiritualism of a non-transcendental type? In any case, no underived (p. 13) thought here; no argument to be joined. While noteworthy, Bonhoeffers religious faith is a far cry from the predominant religious perspectives and patterns with which Miller would have been familiar. Here, and only briey, mention should be made of one. In various denominational guises, it involved (and still does) an emphasis on sin and salvation. It has no better exemplar than the sixteenth century theologian, John Calvin. For our purposes, while the topic overall begins with Adams experience on leaving the 70 garden of Eden and extends to resolution much later on in the death of Jesus at Golgatha, two brief quotations from Calvin will serve to introduce what we need here, his views on the two facets of the soul, the understanding and the will. First, in mans perverted and degenerate nature some sparks still gleam. These show him to be a rational being, differing from brute beasts, because he is endowed with understanding. Yet, secondly, they show this

67

light choked with dense ignorance, so that it cannot come forth effectively. [As a result of arguments advanced], it will be indisputable that free will is not sufcient to enable man to do good works, unless he be helped by grace, indeed by special grace, which only the elect receive through 71 regeneration. James Goodloe, Executive Director of the Foundation for Reformed Theology, expands on the second statement in this way. Calvin realized that most ancient philosophers, too many of the theologians before him (all but Augustine), and even the common masses had presumed that human beings have free will. ...Of course, Calvin admitted, human beings have freedom of choice. The problem is that after the fall, we no longer have the freedom to choose between good and evil. 72 All that remains to us is the ability to choose among various evils. Calvins command of resources - philosophical, scriptural, theological - is both extensive and impressive. All too frequently, those today who claim his view of the human condition as their own have little if any sense of the degree to which it represented a conversation with the world of thought of his day and the role of criticism within it (constrained as that may have been from Millers perspective). What should be clear from even these brief statements is that expressions of religious faith guided by Calvin without revision (including its counterpart, a literal or near literal reading of Scripture) are inimical to Millers manner of thinking. (In his own day, Calvin warned against getting too close to the philosophers.) At the same time, it would be unfortunate if the press appeal of this brand of Christianity were misinterpreted to mean it is representative of the faith at either its intellectual best or in its range of expressions of faithfulness - and this apart from its lack of an accurate contemporary assessment of Calvins own thinking. Here, in any case, is a full-blown supernaturalism, with the divine actor controlling all within his purview. While, on the one hand, this produces some tortuous logic on Calvins part in describing the status of evil, on the other hand and over time, it has produced an impact on society that has been considerable - not a little of it positive.

A third perspective in Christian religious faith may be said to have regained interest in recent years. It distinguishes itself from traditional supernatural theism. At the same time, it is not the same as the pervasive immanence Marilynne Robinson identies in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer - which allowed him to contemplate the development of a nonreligious Christianity. This renewed perspective has an articulate spokesperson in Marcus Borg, for many years a professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University, with a scholarly specialty in historical Jesus studies. Borg starts from the assumption that, at a foundational level, there are two primary worldviews: religious and nonreligious. Using William James term, More, Borg characterizes the rst as including an additional dimension of reality beyond that of the visible world of everyday experience, By contrast the second worldview says there is no More to the world we experience.

At this point, non-compatibility with Millers thinking is already clear. However, the addition of this third perspective is helpful in imagining routes to possible revisions in philosophy and/or religious faith, as human experience continues to unfold. Referencing Karen Armstrongs A History of God, Borg notes that the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, not only have a tradition of supernatural theism going back to their beginnings but a tradition of panentheism, equally as ancient. Rather than imagining God as a person-like being out there, this concept imagines God as the encompassing Spirit in whom 73 everything that is, is. On this view, reality is pictured as more nearly a two-layered structure one, the material universe; the other, the Spirit. Panentheism, as a tradition, has a particular expression beginning in the Celtic countries of the British isles, dating from the 5th century C.E.. To this renewed interest it has contributed the concept of thin places. They are places where the boundary between the two levels [the visible and God] becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil 74 momentarily lifts,... While, traditionally, natural locations have been associated with the experiences thus evoked, other revelatory settings (music, literature, etc.) can function in the same way. Borg identies practices through which religious faith nds expressions indebted to thin places. In summary at this point, it is useful to take advantage of the human propensity for using location as a key in identication (a corollary of Millers point about local control). At the risk of overgeneralizing, supernatural theism identies God as a person situated outside our daily world who, nevertheless, acts among us. Panentheism sees God not as a supernatural person but as the name for a layer of reality beyond and surrounding the universe, with which/whom we are in contact in special boundary settings between the two layers. The God of Bonhoeffers immanence (not to be confused with its near relative, pantheism) is, mysteriously, present to us as we experience our world, the here and now. All of this, as I read it, is incompatible with Millers way of doing philosophy. Thought in such settings is not free to focus, unencumbered, on and out of the structures of its own integrity. At the same time, it seems to me that what Miller has done provides the occasion for asking some longstanding questions in a new way. Their consideration (but not here) is what I would offer as a possibility. For instance, since Miller has already examined structures of local control within the bounds of human action in the material world, might it be fruitful to attempt an extension of such studies to include attention to ways in which control operates in, for example, thin places? An outcome of interest would be: does control operate on a continuum across the range of all settings? If not, what are the features that distinguish fully material operations from those in thin places? Looked at from a different angle, other interests appear. The midworld represents a place. As regards the operation of thought there, how does it differ from operation in a thin place? What, for example, is the relationship, if any, between the not of an object of thought and the non-material side of the membrane in a thin place? (This refers to Millers demonstration, in the reference in footnote no. 26, that an existing object does not have a negative except as it becomes a focus of thought.)

Or again: since Millers day, we have, through the Internet, become inhabitants of a new location, virtual space. In what way, if any, does activity here illumine further the operation of functioning objects and the terrain of the midworld? Does it provide added perspective on the questions raised here?

One set of comparisons remains. Brian Gerrish identies the distinguishing features of a Reformed habit of mind - and, yes, they represent a history heavily indebted to none other than John Calvin. Do they have counterparts in what we might call a Miller habit of mind? Gerrishs rst note (p. 3) is that the Reformed habit of mind is deferential to the past, exhibiting respect and esteem for those whose thinking and utterance has nourished it. The counterpart in Millers thinking is clear, though the word used is not deferential, but piety (p. 16, but also p. 12 regarding the tradition of utterance). In Colapietros words - but in Millers spirit, to look for the conditions underlying our own utterances we must undertake a pious pilgrimage 75 to the ruined monuments of human utterance. More particularly, in the words of the editors of The Task of Criticism, Miller felt such deep respect for the monumental character of the great 76 works in Western philosophy that he did not hesitate to give this respect its proper name: piety. The second note follows directly. The Reformed habit of mind is critical. Without criticism of tradition, there would have been no reformation of the church. (p. 3) For Miller, criticism is of the essence (pp. 12-13). Colapietro immediately follows his statement above with another that indicates Millers connection of piety and criticism. Only then [ having taken the pious pilgrimage] can we solve the problem of how to nd an attachment which breeds criticism (JWM [the Miller papers at Williams College], 17:23) or, more fully, an alliance that generates, authorizes, 77 and sustains the possibility of criticism.... There is a second comparison that needs mentioning at this point, though, as noted (p. 15), it involves an area of discussion not explored. For Miller, revision is a key concept, a consequence of criticism. He sees his own philosophy, for instance, as a necessary revision of the idealist tradition. The counterpart in the Reformed tradition is the practice of writing new confessions of faith in response to the needs of particular historic circumstances. This, for Gerrish, was a point that actually preceded his appeal to good habits of mind (p. 3). The third note is that a Reformed habit of mind is open to wisdom and insight wherever they can be found. (p. 3) In its foundational period, this meant not only from the received tradition but from rival reformists, especially Lutherans, and from the Renaissance humanists; then and since, the traditions history in this respect has varied. That Miller was similarly open and saw this as essential to an effective presentation of his manner of thinking almost goes without saying. His view of the role of the auditor in utterance is fundamental (p. 12). In earlier discussions here there have been several remarks that indicate how this openness operated in relation to the Christian tradition. I can attest to his personal hospitality. Gerrishs fourth note is that the habit of mind he discerns in his studies of the Reformed tradition is also practical (p. 3). Here he uses the word piety, not in the sense that Miller does, but in the sense that truth is in order to [for the purpose of] goodness - pious behavior which subsumes Millers attitude toward the past. The practicality of Millers concerns is evident both in his teaching and the goal of his thinking. Regarding the rst he said, Nothing is done in

philosophy until one is changed as a person (p. 10). Of the second he noted, The here-and-now appears to me quite dreamlike unless it can declare the world. I am glad that the dream is dispelled for me (p. 4). The world declared is the midworld of functioning objects, a new thing in philosophy. Finally and most fundamentally, Gerrish posits an evangelical note, by which he means, he says, to think everything in relation to the Word of the gospel [the good news of Jesus as the Christ] (p. 4) In his own way, Miller is also an evangelist, a bringer of good news. Everything, for him, is to be thought in relation to the actual. In the quotation (p. 11) where he specically referenced Christianitys commitment to the Word made esh, he juxtaposed his own commitment: I am a Christian in so far as the incarnation is the actual.

I nd it interesting, to say the least, that two persons - Gerrish and Miller - so clearly distinguishable in their patterns of discourse and the commitments of their efforts should, nevertheless, exhibit such similar habits of mind. To what, then, is the difference attributable? The status given to nitude seems to me to be the key variable. A concluding discussion adds further consideration. For Miller, nitude is the category philosophy, in its journey over the centuries, has been unwilling to acknowledge. Millers commitment to the actual requires that history, the story of human control, be acknowledged. It is to this that thought addresses itself. In so doing, criticism itself is the only absolute (p. 13). There is no other if thought is to operate unimpeded by constraints other than its own. Gerrish posits a religious faith perspective, one in which this world is complimented by more. Earlier discussion has suggested some of the alternatives which religious faith has used to express its response to the fact of nitude. Here I want to add a nal focus that expands on something noted in a different context earlier. I do so because it will help to ground responses to nitude in actuality, a grounding without which a consideration of Miller is incomplete. Man will not be a nobody. And hell fry in hell before hell lose his selfhood. So Miller says at one point (p. 14). At another point he notes the common mans desire to be something. In the earlier quotation he goes on to say, A person who is too simple is not convincing. Adam and Eve knew a lot more about God after they were thrown out of the garden. ...More than sin [man] dreads the loss of his capacity to sin. In the garden myth, God tells Adam/Eve - the text at this point does not necessarily imply gender distinction, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day 78 that you eat of it you shall die. In The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker approaches the loss of the human capacity to act with an emphasis on its inevitability, saying, In other words, the nal terror of self-consciousness is the knowledge of ones own death, which is the peculiar sentence on man 79 alone in the animal kingdom. ...death is mans peculiar and greatest anxiety. More than sin, we dread the loss of our capacity to sin; death trumps all. Short of death there is the career of nitude, the history of self-consciousness and its control over its fate, an actual but limited and precarious order (p. 7). As we express that consciousness

in actual control, some responses are secular, some are religious, some seek to maintain the two in tension, some lose control. For each there is the same dread. Earlier Miller was quoted as saying to his students in that introductory course in philosophy that what they, together, were involved in was deadly business (p. 10). At rst glance this would appear to mean simply another way of saying serious business. But, nally, as Miller knew, the phrase was literal and actual. At Williams, a housemate in my class committed suicide. Today, in the community of some 60,000 in which I live, there have been, among teenagers, four suicides and six known suicide attempts in the last four months. These reections and others like them are not 80 trivial. Postlude

The most dening parameters of our nitude are our birth and our death. We cannot say anything about our attitude toward the former based on our own recall. Depending on our state of consciousness, we may be given the ability to indicate how it is we are approaching the latter. Bonhoeffer, as a religious man, and Miller, as a secular man, were given such opportunities. A British prisoner wrote of Bonhoeffer in his last days that he always seemed to me to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive. This same prisoner reported Bonhoeffers last words to him as he 81 was taken away to be hanged. This is the end, he said. For me, the beginning of life,... To speak in a comparable way, it is noteworthy that Millers philosophy had in mind the man on Elm Street and what could be known on the walk to the post ofce. Joseph Fell has described how it was with him at the end in the course of a tribute to the chief protagonist of Millers legacy, the publisher George Brockway (delivered in a public memorial service held shortly after Brockways death in 2001). Mainly through Georges devotion to philosophical discussion with Miller for over forty years and his dissemination of Millers works for a number of years after Millers death, the thought of a major philosopher is being saved for posterity, a tremendous achievement. ...George ended a tribute to Miller as teacher that he wrote for The American Scholar with powerful words written about Socrates by Plato: Of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest, and justest, and best. But there was a correspondingly moving tribute to George by Bill Miller that George only conded to me relatively recently. George went to see Miller in the hospital the day before Miller died. At the end of their last conversation, Bill grabbed Georges 82 hand and kissed it.... This was a last act by a man of great dignity, an act of profound gratitude on the occasion of a nal parting by one who had said, I want the actual to shine and I want to feel the wonder of a yardstick, a poem, a word, a person. Richard K. Fenn, editor of The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion (also published in 2001), provided a nal essay in the book titled, Epilogue: Toward a Secular View of the Individual. He closed the essay with this remark: The self remains the resevoir of

unimaginable possibility and irreducible mystery.

83

Religious or secular - utterer or auditor - may we appreciate these depths and their springs in each other.

Endnotes

John William Miller, The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, and Community; Edited, with an Introduction to Millers Philosophy, by Joseph P. Fell, Vincent Colapietro, and Michael J. McGandy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), p. 10. 2 At the risk of annoying some, in sections I and II I have put words in italics and underlined them as an aid to visual referencing for others. 3 4 Ivan Strenski, The New Durkheim (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006), p. 236.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. PBS. NOVA. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ nova/id/ about.html: Nov 13, 2007. See also: Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District. Article. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School _District. 5 Brian Gerrish, Tradition in the Modern World: The Reformed Habit of Mind, Lecture, Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Institute for Reformed Theology (http://reformedtheology.org/SiteFiles/ GerrishArticle.html), passim; emphases added. 6 John William Miller, Types of Philosophy (Philosophy 1-2) (Williams College, 1950-1951, copyright 1991 by Joseph P. Fell), pp. 16-20. For a contemporary treatment of arguments for the existence of God, see: Alex Byrne. God: Philosophers weigh in. Boston Review, January/February 2009. http:// bostonreview.met/BR34.1/byrne.php. 7 John William Miller, The Midworld of Symbols and Functioning Objects (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1982), pp. 191-192. 8 9 The Task of Criticism, p. 42; emphasis added. Ibid., p.38. Ibid., pp. 42-43; emphasis added. Ibid., p. 136; emphasis added.

10 11

12

Ibid., pp. 43-44. On this point, Miller uses the image of a speaker, noting that to dene oneself in such a way is the watershed. 13 Vincent Colapietro, Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom: John William Miller and the Crises of Modernity (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press), 2003, p. 17. 14 The Task of Criticism, p. 44; emphasis added. See also pp. 291-292 for remarks more tailored to an act of national will. 15 16 Ibid., p. 316. State

Michael J. McGandy, The Active Life: Millers Metaphysics of Democracy (Albany: University of New York Press, 2005), p. 119. 17 18 Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, p. 171.

George P. Brockway, Economics: What Went Wrong, and Why, and Some Things To Do About It (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1985), p. 37. 19 20 21 22 23 24 Types of Philosophy, p. 8. Ibid.., p. 10. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 47. Open Court, paperback edition,

John Dewey, Experience and Nature, 2nd ed. (LaSalle, Ill.: 1929), p. 244. 25 26

John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, Capricorn Books, 1958), p. 33.

Types of Philosophy, p. 27. For a fuller discussion of how distinctions arise, see The Midworld..., p. 70. 27 28 The Task of Criticism, p. 26. Ibid., p. 27; emphasis added.

29

Bucknell Review, The Philosophy of John William Miller, Joseph P. Fell, ed. (Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 1990), p. 29. 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 The Task of Criticism, p. 206; emphasis added. Ibid., p. 104. The Active Life, pp. 39-40. The Task of Criticism, pp. 38-39. Types of Philosophy, p. 67. The Task of Criticism, p. 137. Types of Philosophy, p. 5.

John 1:1,3,14, The New Oxford Annotated BIBLE with Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, Bruce M. Metzer, Roland E. Murphy, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 125 NT. 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Types of Philosophy, p. 7; typographical error. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 8. The Active Life, p. 6. Ibid., p. 194, no. 9. The Midworld..., p. 145. Ibid., p. 153. Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, p. 113. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 50.

48 49 50 51 52

Ibid., p. 56. The Task of Criticism, p. 60. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 68.

Stephen Tyman, Descrying the Ideal: The Philosophy of John William Miller (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993) p. 2. 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 The Task of Criticism, p. 55. Types of Philosophy, p. 19. Ibid., p. 20. The Active Life, p. 119. Types of Philosophy, p. 74. Ibid., p. 54. W. W. Norton &

John William Miller, The Paradox of Cause and Other Essays (New York: Company, 1978), p. 14. 60 61 62 63 64 The Task of Criticism, p. 324. Ibid., p. 190. Ibid., p. 219. Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, p.55.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1959), pp. 156, 163, 162. 65 Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (Boston: Houghton Mifin Company, 1998), p. 113. 66 Ibid., p. 111.

67 68 69 70

Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 122. Ibid., p. 154.

Miller actually incorporates something of the force of the concept of original sin into his own thinking. As quoted by Colapietro in Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, p. 155, Miller says, to be in History is to be an heir, but an heir to defect as well as to achievement. They go together. The doctrine of original sin reappears as a constitutional feature of heritage (PL [The Philosophy of History]). 71 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960; from the text temporarily available online by arrangement between Westminster John Knox Press and Princeton Theological Seminary, Calvin 2009, http://www2.ptsem.edu/ConEd/ Calvin/), 2.2.12, 2.2.6. (450 years ago, in 1559, Calvin published the nal version of the Institutes. 2009 was also the 500th anniversary of his year of birth. In honor of that occasion, staff and others associated with Princeton Theological Seminary implemented a project to read through the Institutes during the course of the year. The text, in rolling ve-day selections, was available online, accompanied by a commentary on the weeks readings plus a readers comment blog.) As evidence of Calvins careful delimiting of his views on free will, his summary comment is offered here. If anyone, then, can use this word [free will] without understanding it in a bad sense, I shall not trouble him on this account. But I hold that because it cannot be retained without great peril, it will, on the contrary, be a great boon for the church if it be abolished. I prefer not to use it myself, and I should like others, if they seek my advice, to avoid it. 2.2.8. 72 73 James C. Goodloe, IV, Reections for the week of March 2-7, Institutes 2.2.1-21, Ibid.

Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 66. 74 75 Ibid., pp. 155-156.

Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, p. 55. The editors of The Task of Criticism discuss piety and its implications on p. 146 there. 76 77 The Task of Criticism, p. 221. Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom, p. 55.

78 79

Genesis 2:17, The New Oxford Annotated BIBLE, p. 4 OT.

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973), p. 70. Later in the book p. 203, Becker offers this judgment, Finally, religion alone gives hope, because it holds open the dimension of the unknown and the unknowable, the fantastic mystery of creation that the human mind cannot even begin to approach, the possibility of a multidimensionality of spheres of existence, of heavens and possible embodiments that make a mockery of earthly logic - and in doing so, it relieves the absurdity of earthly life, all the impossible limitations and frustrations of living matter. 80 For another issue with roots in responses to nitude, see the role of gun violence in the United States, recently lifted up in: Bob Hebert. The American Way. Column. New York Times online edition (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/ opinion/ 14Hebert.html). 81 82 83 Prisoner for God, p. 12. Essays in honor of George P. Brockway, 1915-2001 (private printing by W. W. Norton), p. 32.

The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion, Richard K. Fenn, ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), p. 467.