“… Before we articulate a worldview, we worship. Before we put into words the lineament of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God’s healing and illumination. Before we theorize the nature of God, we sing His praises. Before we express moral principles, we receive forgiveness. Before we codify the doctrine of Christ’s two natures, we receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Before we think we pray. That’s the kind of animals we are, first and foremost: loving, desiring, affective, liturgical animals who, for the most part, don’t inhabit the world as thinker or cognitive machines.”

James K. A. Smith
Desiring the Kingdom; Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation — p. 34

What is being advocated by Smith is the idea that doxology precedes theology. Smith casts this as an approach that is contrary to what he styles as an enlightenment approach where humans are seen as biological idea containers. Smith prefers what he styles as an “embodied approach” where a person’s loves and desires serve as the foundation for subsequent acquirement of a knowledge base. He styles his approach as “pre-cognitive.” Smith’s interest is to move education from a collection of information in the interest of a proper world and life view to a pursuit of pre-cognitive character formation that will result in a proper world and  life view. Smith contends that we are hearts before we are minds and as such the Church should be more concerned with right worshiping practices that satisfy the desires of the heart. Consistent with this is Smith’s appeal that worship should go after the imagination before it goes after man’s rationality.

There could well be truth in this, especially as applied to children growing up in the Church. Certainly covenant children, immersed in Biblical Christianity from the tenderest of years, may well have caught Christianity before they were explicitly taught Christianity.  For covenant children I think that we would have to admit that there is an embrace of Christianity that is pre-cognitive in the sense that they are Christian before they are epistemologically self conscious Christians.

Also, I agree that there is much to be said for capturing the imagination of the saints as well as their rationality. I do agree that imagination is a powerful tool for shaping character formation.  Too often Reformed Christians have let their imaginations atrophy in favor of the syllogistic and the linear logic.

Having said that though I do have some observations concerning the quote above.

1.) Is it really the case that we worship before we have a worldview? Without a worldview how do we know who or what we are worshiping? How can one worship if they don’t know who or what they are worshiping?  Is it really the case that we sing the praises of a God we know not the nature of? If we do not know His nature then what kind of praises could we possibly be singing? If we do not have an ontology why would we pray at all, never mind praying for healing and illumination? If we do not have a Biblical epistemology why would we think that this ontologically unknown God could illumine us?

2.) Why would we think we have the need for forgiveness unless we first had some kind of structure that informed us of moral principles? Doesn’t the asking of forgiveness presuppose an already existing moral principle paradigm?

3.) Why would we even come to the Eucharist to take the body of Christ if we didn’t first have some kind of understanding that the body of Christ we are partaking in is distinct, in some sense, from the body of Christ in heaven? This sense of distinctness would imply some kind of nascent understanding of two natures.

4.) “Before we think we pray?” Really, I can’t even come close to making heads or tails of that statement.

I agree with Smith that men can not be reduced to thinking or cognitive machines. Man is a modified unichotomy so that his body and soul, imagination and rationality, his being part of what he is doing and yet observer of what he is doing, enters together into everything he does. But I do not agree with Dr. Smith when he suggests that, when it comes to knowing, our pre-cognitive self precedes our cognitive self. I do not agree that doxology precedes theology. This is to say too much. Neither would I agree with anyone who suggested that our embodiment is secondary to our thinking. Clearly that would be to say too much in the other direction since all our thinking happens as embodied beings.

I understand that Dr. Smith is warning us against a hyper-rationality that does not have the capacity to understand that an idea must be examined in its embodied context. I appreciate Dr. Smith’s, Polanyi like exhortation for us to dwell in our knowing pursuits. I am slow though to give this postmodern feel its head to quickly lest one loses one’s head to a irrational and un-examined experiential ooze.

We shall see where Dr. Smith goes with this idea in the rest of his book.