So some of my friends read my earlier post regarding how the Christopher West controversy may be a prime case of a personality conflict.
In that post I mostly focused on iNtuitor (N) - sensor (S) differences. One of my friends pointed out that some of the critisims of West's work were very valid from a theological point of view. Of this I do not argue. I am sure there probably are some fundamental problems with what West is saying. It was pointed out to me that David Schindler was one of West's most staunch critics. Supposedly he wrote a blog post of some kind of his criticisms. I could not find the whole thing, but I did find some excerpts. At first I did not think Schindler's criticisms would be personality-based, but as I looked at it more I changed my mind. There may very well be a personality-based conflict here. Below is my reasoning why. I also want to point out. Even if my personality analysis is off, which it probably is, and even if distinct personality types do not exist, it does not matter from a practical point of view. There are complementary ways of thinking. In some ways that is what the different personality types are capturing. Depending on which philosophy you tend to bias towards you will value different things. These values are often morally neutral, but they can lead to different plans of action or different results. Anyways here is my thoughts concerning the David Schindler-Christopher West conflict. (The style may seem odd but that is because I took it from a post I sent to a friend.)
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I could not find the David Schindler post either, but I did find snippets of it. I would say many of the comments Schindler makes are not of the nature of what I am talking about. Schindler may even be right about alot of the things he is speaking of, but most average people do not consciously think of the things he is talking about. He uses very technical language most people would not understand nor care to understand.
Actually even in the Schindler case their may be a
personality conflict between West and Schindler. Let me explain. I am willing to bet that West is an
extrovert. Schindler on the other hand
is an academic. I would not be surprised
if he is an introvert. Let us suppose
for the sake of argument he is an intravert. Actually I would not be surprised
if West is ENTJ and Schindler is INTJ.
Let's pretend this is the case for the sake of argument because I am
familiar how these types of arguments play out and I can see some similarities
with what I have read from Schindler.
INTJs (Shindler?) love being intellectual, focusing on details and
precision. They are good at studying
individual topics in depth. They are
natural perfectionists in their thought.
They also have great skill at criticizing things. It is almost their favorite thing to do from
what I can tell. The problem is they are
often not good working outside of frameworks.
They need structure to operate.
They often seem uncomfortable dealing with poorly defined problems. They also tend not to like to take action
unless everything is planned out in detail.
They also like to think things through in detail before speaking. ENTJs (West?) on the other hand are also
intellectual, but in a different way.
ENTJs tend to know a modest amount about many different things. ENTJs are generalists. He finds totally new connections people have not
seen before. He has a very big-picture
view of the world. The big picture comes
at the expense of precision and perfection in thought however. West is totally unafraid to throw out
half-baked ideas and see what people think of them. ENTJs tend to think out loud alot and this
drives INTJs crazy. It is just how ENTJs
think to work out problems but INTJs think they are speaking without
thinking. There are are pros and cons to
both techniques. He is also out with the
people pushing his ideas in the hopes that it will make things better. He uses new analogies to make things easier
for people to understand why they should follow sexual teachings. West is a doer and a man of the world. He wants results. At the same time though he does want
precision, but if he focuses too much on precision and perfection he will never
get any results. He may very well
welcome Schindler's input but not be totally sure how to implement it. Sometimes too people with a big picture
recognize problems that people focused on details totally miss and vice
versa.
At the end of the day TOB is the wild west of Catholic
thinking (No pun intended J
). This kind of field needs pioneers
like West (ENTJ) to set down some framework for people to work with. West will make mistakes but he will correct them
as time goes on. I would not necessarily
count on academics to pull this off. At
least not at first. The people need
someone like West to put this stuff in a language the common person can
understand. At the same time, as West
puts a rough structure in place there will be problems and it will need to be
changed. His original ideas will
certainly have problems and will need to be refined. That is where people like Schindler come
in. We need people like Schinder (INTJ?)
to refine the ideas and techniques. At
the end of the day we really need both people.
Depending on how you look at it one or the other is right. In a way I would argue they are both
right. It may sound relativistic but I
do not think it is. Here is why. Consistently whenever someone has a vision of
hell we hear that the number one reason people are in hell is because of
"sins of the flesh." Clearly this is a big problem. People accuse West of thinking about sex too
much, but at the end of the day maybe that is appropriate. If most people who are in hell are there
because of sex then maybe we need to think about dealing with this problem alot
so people do not end up there. In a
pragmatic sense the theology does not need to be perfect to get across the
point that they should follow the Church's teaching on sex so they do not end
up in hell. Besides most people will not
remember the details of the theology anyways.
They will only remember the gist of it.
Actually alot of people will not be swayed to the teaching using
rational theologic logic at all. Another
accusation is that West makes TOB too romantic.
Guess what, Feeler personality types will almost certainly respond to
romantic emotional appeals than rational logic.
Remember the Maya Angelou saying, “People will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did, But people will never forget how you made them
feel.” At the end of the day all the
matters is that people obtain salvation.
If romantic appeals are what does it then so be it. Now at the same time small theological
problems can cause problems in the long term and can lead to poor intellectual
foundation. As time goes on this will be
more vital. In the long term we need
people like Schindler to fix these problems to keep the whole intellectual
framework sound. I would not count on
West to do this. At the same time I
would not count on Schindler to get the message out to the people in a manner
they understand. We really need both of
them, and it could very well be the case that the reason they do things the way
they do is because of their personalities.
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