I’d be interested to see you do a post — or series of posts — on empathy versus compassion. Frankly, I don’t like it that empathy often takes precedence over compassion. Paul Bloom, an evolutionary psychologist at Yale, has written an exceptional book on this: Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. In it, he outlines the ridiculous, and in many cases disastrous, consequences of basing social policy on empathy. I wonder if the same could be said in the church.
Ben, what I've read about Paul Bloom doesn't impress me because he makes one bad and one good and then what's good is compassion and what he doesn't like is empathy. That's not what those terms mean, I would argue. Anyway, I will base things on racham in the OT and splanchnizomai in the Gospels. To make one rational and the other less than (or anti) rational loads the game up front before it starts. Both are good and, in fact, one is a Latin derived term and the other a Greek derived term and probably both were more or less pointing to the same reality: seeing and entering into the situation of another for their good and for relief.
Since I can't edit my own comments here (that I know of) I would say Bloom's definitions and delineations lack foundations so he defines the terms as he wants, one is good, one is not.
I’d be interested to see you do a post — or series of posts — on empathy versus compassion. Frankly, I don’t like it that empathy often takes precedence over compassion. Paul Bloom, an evolutionary psychologist at Yale, has written an exceptional book on this: Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. In it, he outlines the ridiculous, and in many cases disastrous, consequences of basing social policy on empathy. I wonder if the same could be said in the church.
I look forward to reading your argument, Scot.
Ben, what I've read about Paul Bloom doesn't impress me because he makes one bad and one good and then what's good is compassion and what he doesn't like is empathy. That's not what those terms mean, I would argue. Anyway, I will base things on racham in the OT and splanchnizomai in the Gospels. To make one rational and the other less than (or anti) rational loads the game up front before it starts. Both are good and, in fact, one is a Latin derived term and the other a Greek derived term and probably both were more or less pointing to the same reality: seeing and entering into the situation of another for their good and for relief.
Since I can't edit my own comments here (that I know of) I would say Bloom's definitions and delineations lack foundations so he defines the terms as he wants, one is good, one is not.
You want to do a review of Bloom's book for this?