Intellectual Humility and the Difficult Knowledge of Theology (original) (raw)
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY FOR THEOLOGIANS TODAY
This article seeks to highlight the significance of intellectual humility for theologians and ministers of God's word today. The argument is that intellectual humility must accompany the acquiring of theological knowledge. Many scholars have been accused of being 'too intellectual' or 'too complicated', perhaps out of an attempt to appear scholarly. Intellectual virtues like honesty, courage, humility and tolerance are diminishing. The paper introduces the study by showing ways intellectual pride is evident among scholars today. Secondly, intellectual humility is defined. Thirdly, because the pursuit of intellectual humility must be rooted in the teachings of the church, the paper will briefly highlight some historical truth gleaned from past Christian writers. Finally, the paper will attempt to establish the biblical teaching on the mind and noetic 2 sanctification. In a nutshell therefore, this paper seeks to emphasize the promotion of checks and balances to scholars' commitment to reason, rationality and evidence, and encourage the pursuit and attainment of intellectual humility.
Humility, Virtue Epistemology, and the New Atheism
Abstract: Most criticisms of the New Atheism are attempts at traditional apologetics. However, Christians who wish to defend the faith against the onslaughts of these critics might appeal to virtue epistemology by showing that the New Atheists do not possess the necessary habits of thought that a person would need to make a careful and thoughtful consideration of the evidence. In fact, the New Atheists fail to practice intellectual humility and this prevents them from genuine engagement with the strengths religion offers. Key words: new atheism, Dawkins, humility, pride, virtue epistemology
Most criticisms of the New Atheism are attempts at traditional apologetics. However, Christians who wish to defend the faith against the onslaughts of these critics might appeal to virtue epistemology by showing that the New Atheists do not possess the necessary habits of thought that a person would need to make a careful and thoughtful consideration of the evidence. In fact, the New Atheists fail to practice intellectual humility and this prevents them from genuine engagement with the strengths religion offers.
Difficult Knowledge(s) and the False Religion(s) of Schooling
The Journal of Educational Foundations, 2019
This analytic essay builds on recent work examining the ways religiosity in U.S. education is manifest in the particular discourses that come to shape popular understandings of the possible in and through schooling. The authors analyze the function of four concepts, in light of recent constructions of religions and their relative positioning as 'true' or 'false,' in order to make a larger point about the ways in which religious understandings of difficult knowledge (Pitt & Britzman, 2003), falsehood, truth, and risk underline that which is im/possible in the U.S. educational project. Building from an "exorbitant moment" (Gallop, 2002) in a Catholic school, and putting it in conversation with recent discourses about ISIS/ISIL, Christianity, and the possibility of a true (and thus, false) religion, the work argues that ultimately schooling, averse to the risk of falsehood, continues to posit a single road to what is true and who has access to truth. This orientation, the authors suggest, is especially manifest in the ongoing moment of educational reform.
Educating for Intellectual Humility
Jason Baehr (ed.), Intellectual Virtues and Education: Essays in Applied Virtue Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2015), 54-70.
Many contemporary philosophical virtue theorists have begun to restore the sense of an intimacy between virtue, character, and ‘the good life’, and, in turn, philosophers of education explore the ways that educational practice could contribute to the cultivation of virtuous character. Certainly many philosophers and educationalists will agree with Ben Kotzee that it is ‘obvious’ that education ought to ‘form good intellectual character’ (2013: p.163). I am sympathetic to this claim, but also sensitive to the worries of those sceptics who ask about the practical, pedagogical, and philosophical issues it raises.. My purpose in this chapter is to contribute to the revival of aretaic conceptions of education, but in a way sensitive to those sceptics’ concerns. Specifically, I offer an account of the specific virtue of intellectual humility, then show its integral role in a range of familiar educational practices and concerns, and finally describe how certain entrenched educational attitudes and conceptions marginalise or militate against the cultivation and exercise of this virtue.
Reengaging Theology in Educational Studies
Educational Studies, 2021
This work seeks to do two things. First to make an argument for a robust engagement with theology as a theoretical framework for critical educational research. And second, the piece draws upon contemporary queer and progressive Christian theology, in particular, theological interventions from Marcela Althaus Reid's Indecent Theology to think differently about how educational researchers might frame the way we say yes, as Jen Gilbert suggests, to the students who show up in the classroom. This intervention seeks to center theology as a way to think differently with LGBTQ issues in schooling by arguing with an epistemology that is often used to exclude rather than include marginalized populations. Indecent Theology is a theology which problematizes and undresses the mythical layers of multiple oppressions … a theology which, finding its point of departure at the crossroads of Liberation Theology and Queer Thinking, will reflect on economic and theological oppression with passion and imprudence (Althaus-Reid 2000, p. 2). Theology in educational research It is vital to note here, that there are, of course, a great many theologies that pervade both historically and of necessity, then, contemporaneously. My use of theology in the singular is to suggest that the field itself, though vastly heterogenous is one perpetually underconsidered in educational scholarship. Though we exist in something of a magpie's nest of pastiched traditions from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, law, feminisms, and increasingly, to ill effect often, economics, recent educational scholarship has tended to skirt around work with the theological-with happy exceptions (see: Pinar, 2019; Rocha & Burton 2017; Rocha & Sañudo, forthcoming)-for a number of reasons. This has much to do, one suspects, with the suspicious light in which religion is held, to the degree that it's considered at all in the field of educational research broadly: as a legal matter tied in with discourses around identity positions. There's much to say about the active position religion takes in continually shaping the educational (and research) experience, (see: Author, years) but in this case, while acknowledging the significant shading in the Venn diagram here, the paper works to disentangle, just a bit, the theos from religion. In this case, it's useful to think with Calasso who notes that theos "has
Does Epistemic Humility Threaten Religious Beliefs?
Journal of Psychology and Theology
In a fallen world fraught with evidence against religious beliefs, it is tempting to think that, on the assumption that those beliefs are true, the best way to protect them is to hold them dogmatically. Dogmatic belief, which is highly confident and resistant to counterevidence, may fail to exhibit epistemic virtues such as humility and may instead manifest epistemic vices such as arrogance or servility, but if this is the price of secure belief in religious truths, so be it. I argue, however, that even in a world full of misleading evidence against true religious beliefs, cultivating epistemic humility is the better way to achieve believers’ epistemic aims. The reason is that dogmatic belief courts certain epistemic dangers, including to the true religious beliefs themselves, whereas epistemic humility empowers believers to counter them.
'Knowledge is Power': Barriers to Intellectual Humility in the Classroom
Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility, 2020
How does the idea that knowledge is power play out in our schools and universities. How does it feature in our education systems and how does it impact upon the intellectual characters of students. Specifically, how does the pervasiveness of this idea in our schools and classrooms affect students’ willingness and ability to be intellectually humble. In this paper, I suggest that this idea presents itself in contemporary classrooms as a barrier to the development and exercise of intellectual humility. Simply put, when we equate knowledge with power, we make it harder to be intellectually humble. In its most prevalent manifestation, this barrier arises in the form of answer-oriented education. I spend the majority of the paper outlining the nature and impact of answer-oriented education and, towards the end, suggest one way to remove this barrier by shifting from answer-oriented to question-oriented education. The latter, I argue, warrants further attention in philosophical and educational research.