Lesson 4: Scripture I

AGENDA

• Review Case #2: The Notre Dame Paradox
• Scripture as a Source of Moral Discernment
• Discussion of Case #3: Parietals, Social Life and the End(s) of Sex

REVIEW FROM LAST TIME

1. We reviewed the structure of the case method, considering why it is important to consider moral problems in a multidimensional way and not to reduce them to any one or another dimension.
2. Examples from Case #2: The Notre Dame Paradox

   Descriptive Dimension: From each character’s perspective, the problem is different (depending on how important one thinks football is to the life of the school, whether or not one ought to be looking for connections with the community in this way, or whether we are looking at it from an institutional perspective [is there at least a mixed message being sent]). Similarly, we each have different views on how this problem strikes us (maybe not as problematic at all)

   Normative Dimension: Must the university recognize multiple goods as important if it is to carry on its mission? Is everyone faced at some level with this kind of conflict of goods in their career choices? Is the university or each of the characters we discussed using appropriate principles to sort out these conflicts (I must serve now; I will give to the University later if resources are available; we must balance the aims our alums and respect what each contributes)?

   Practical Dimension: By what standards should we evaluate the current policy? Is this as simple as WWJD? (Hint: You are not J, so consider other methods of evaluation). What would the good disciple do? Or in which ways is the situation more complicated than this?

   Fundamental Dimension: Whatever your career choice, do you get to a point in your life where the choices you made in the past make it very hard to make different choices (perhaps one’s you might later consider more virtuous) than the one’s you have developed a habit for making? Should the University aim directly at building character in its students (here, football ticket policies and parietals policies converge)? What kind of character?

   Sources for Discernment: Today we will focus on Scripture as a source of discernment.

SCRIPTURE AS SOURCE

What does it mean for scripture to function as a source?

1. As a source of descriptive knowledge about a community and its values (that is to say about some religion—where a religion is understood as a social reality, and not there equated with God or a vision of perfected humanity)
2. As a source of moral knowledge about human life as such (a diagnostic—slightly like the car's on-board computer—what is the basic human problem? Greed? Lust? The desire to be God and to reject one’s humanity?)
3. As a source of moral knowledge about what human beings can be (that is to say, what counts as the very best of what people can be individually or in their life together, that is the normative dimension of human life)
4. As a source of knowledge about God (in what sense is God good? What kinds of creatures did God make? What does God desire for them and for creation as a whole and what are the rules by which God intends to govern it? Is there are moral order at all? Such knowledge is always going to come to us in the form of an analogy—whatever we think of as God is more unlike than like God, even if Christians maintain that they can know something true about God through both natural reason and revelation—recognizing that scripture and revelation are not equivalent terms (in other words, scripture requires mental work and collective testimony of believers over the centuries of tradition if is to be interpreted well.

Ideally, we would have time to look at how the context and authorial intention sets the boundaries of interpretation (something that you should be familiar with from your Foundations course). But for now we are looking at how scripture functions as a source for moral knowledge.

Discuss Case #3: Parietals, Social Life and the End(s) of Sex

1. Guiding Question: let us assume that parietals regulations at this institution are about either preventing undergraduates from having sex (du Lac) or cultivating sociality and community in the service of character formation, or possibly both. Which do you think it is, or is it some combination of both?
2. Etymology—Latin (paries—wall), interestingly, also used in anatomical vocabulary to denote bones that form a wall (esp. in the skull, but also in other body cavities).
3. Du Lac and the Ad Hoc Comm. Report in comparison to scriptural readings below.
4. Discussion of Dimensions
1. Genesis 1-3:
2. Exodus 20:
3. Proverbs 3, 8, 13:
4. Matthew 5; 19:1-26; 25:14-46:
5. Luke 14:25-33, 18:18-30, 20:27-40:
6. 1 Corinthians 5:1-7:40, 13:1-13: