Lovers more so than thinkings or believers

An interesting review by Eric Miller of a new book by James K.A. Smith, who wrote the book, “Whose afraid of Postmodernism,” that we are studying this summer at St. Paul’s. This new book deals with what Smith considers to be a misplaced dependence or allegiance to the concept of “worldview.” Smith’s “postmodern” mentality comes through, it seems, and I like it. I think he is onto something!
Book: ” Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation,” by James K.A. Smith, philosophy professor at Calvin College (a Dutch Reformed school).

For Smith, worldview-centered education reflects a continued understanding of human beings as primarily rational creatures, moved and animated mainly by ideas. From this assumption has come a particular form of education—very much in line with the secular academy—that elevates the classroom and privileges fact, argument, and belief. To those who espouse this view, Smith poses one fundamental question in the form of a thought experiment: “What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?”
If educating is indeed about properly ordering our loves, as Smith (following Augustine) believes, then formation rather than information should become the primary end of our institutions…
“Could it be the case that learning a Christian perspective doesn’t actually touch my desire, and that while I might be able to think about the world from a Christian perspective, at the end of the day I love not the kingdom of God but rather the kingdom of the market?”
The kingdom of God requires a better shape and end. So what kind of schooling must we have? Smith urges an elemental shift in form from the “Christian university” to the “ecclesial college,” the latter distinguished above all by an anthropology that understands that it’s not the cognitive processing of information that fundamentally shapes our identities, but rather what and whom we worship. We are homo liturgicus: “desiring, imaginative animals,” in Smith’s formulation. “Humans are not primarily or for the most part thinkers, or even believers,” he insists. “Instead, human persons —fundamentally and primordially—are lovers.”

When we are called to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves… well, that is being not so much “thinkers” or “believers,” but it is a call by God to be “lovers.” Interesting…