Visit Outpatient Monk, he’s rad — he’s one of those crazy-smart, witty, sinfully enviable types of guys who calls me his friend. This was a FB post he posted. It took a couple words out of my mouth and added several paragraphs that I never would have thought of.
Doug Harrison is an ethicist, Benedictine oblate and fire spinner whose misadventures as a lousy joiner can be found at www.outpatientmonk.com
I don’t like to dive into presidential rants but when a public figure attacks another public figure’s theology, then that public figure has opened the door for a critique from a theologian.
Santorum: Obama’s theology is bad Christian theology because he posits man serving nature
—True, that would be bad Christian theology if that is what he posits (not my beef here) but it would coincide with certain forms of latter pagan theology, not the neo-platonic types but stuff from the late 19th century in Western Europe and in the states.
Santorum: “Non-phony Biblical theology” is where nature serves man.
— False, consistent in the rigors of Christian thought is that both humans and nature are created to serve God. That act of service, according to Genesis Chapter one, is to live in communion with each other rightly ordered so as to bear fruit. Your take is much closer to the writings of Aleister Crowely, the libertinist and occultist writer who posits a kind of crass Darwinian meritocracy, coupled with a magical and Thelema ethic that could lead one to believe that indeed, nature exists to serve ‘man’.
Now paganism and Thelema convictions and ‘theologies’ or religions are to be respected in their own right. In fact, it sounds to me like you have a lot in common with Aleister Crowley.
But it strikes me that your attempt to bring theological rhetoric into the public forum the way you have, especially so as to question the authenticity of another person’s faith, is really swinging for the bleachers…in a basketball game… or better yet a home economics class.
In other words: I am sick of people speaking for people to whom they are not even paying attention. The Christian tradition is a vast and complex tradition with many thinkers who are smarter than me and the five smartest people I know, all on Aderol. So when anyone goes slinging a cross-shaped-axe around, be aware that *he may have stolen that Axe from the Church without permission.
p.s. While you’re clicking over to Outpatient Monk, click on over to my FB page and “like” it dammit!
