[Note: This site has been down for the last week or so due to some problems with my server, but all has been fixed and everything should be working again. However, this blog will be going through some changes in the next few months. More on this later.]

I’ve been reading James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, volume 1 in his cultural liturgy series. This book hass been a very interesting read so far. James has questioned and critiqued the basic idea of ‘world-view’ as valid way of learning. His basic argument, which I think has lots of validity, is that the current education paradigm focuses on the person-as-thinker or (particularly in reformed circles), the person-as-believer. Though this last category (reminiscient of Romans 1) has much truth to it, according to Smith, it suffers the same problem as the person-as-thinker model: they are both dualistic platonic approaches to education, not taking into account the holistic person. In other words, it assumes that we are basically minds encased in bodies, and that all education functions primarily at this thought level.

Smith counters that we are not merely minds with a body to drag them down, but a holistic being. We are not primarily people-as-thinkers, but people-as-lovers. This isn’t, as Smith points out, love as in pizza, or even love as in spouse, but love as religion. We are worshippers at our core, striving toward ultimate love. We are desiring a Kingdom which is a picture of human flourishing. We are created to desire the Kingdom of God, and human flourishing in the light of God’s shalom, but because of sin we often seek after many other kingdoms. This leads us to seek our kingdoms in other places, finding our worship in culture.

Smith’s view of ‘world-view’ says that it is reductionistic. I agree with this, to some degree. We are much more than intellect, and we interact with the world through more than our thoughts. However, it seems (so far) that even with the valid critiques that Smith brings, he ends up doing the same in the other direction. It seems that Smith’s view of person-as-lover is similarly reductionistic. The reality is that person-as-lover necessarily also contains person-as-thinker, and person-as-believer, but Smith’s rhetoric sometimes leads us away from that understanding.

All in all, however, the book has been absolutely fantastic. I really recommend it. The book is focused primarily on university education, but the contents are applicable to a general theory of knowledge, as well as understanding how we are affected and effected by our culture.