tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-115116732024-03-08T18:36:52.936-05:00in-fractionIs the work done? No, for still the Scars are open...tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.comBlogger266125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-83302108543324127442024-03-05T19:18:00.008-05:002024-03-08T18:36:20.005-05:00Excerpts from "Matigari ma Njirungi" (The Language of Languages)I ran across a beautiful book in a bookstore in Lexington, KY last summer. It was published by the University of Chicago and titled <i>The Language of Languages: Reflections on Translation</i>. It is a collection of lectures by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o. His insights leapt from the page that afternoon. Here are a few that spoke to me.
<p>
This excerpt is about translation as the emancipating antidote to heirarchies of domination.</p>
<p>
<center>********</center></p>
<p>
"If we think of culture as the eyes through which a people see the world, the implications of a people being denied their language and having to use the language of [a] dominating power becomes clear. The aim and the result are to make the dominated people look at themselves and their place in the world through the eyes of the dominant social forces. That's why language control has always been at the center of imperial, cultural, and psychological conquests. . . . The language of conquest becomes the language of being. A people so subjected may even come to see their own language as that of non-being. Therefore, for such peoples, language emancipation is a necessary component of psychological emancipation. For, in reality there is no language which is inherently more of a language than any other language; all languages, big and small, are equal in their potentialities.</p>
<p>
"If you know all the languages of the world and you don't know your mother tongue or the language of your culture, that is enslavement. But if you know your mother tongue or the language of your culture, and add all other languages to it, that is empowerment.</p>
<p>
"In reality it is impossible for any person to know all the languages in their own country, let alone in the world. This is where the art of translation comes in. Translation makes dialogue between languages and cultures and different histories easier and more enriching. I would like to see translation elevated to center stage in relations between languages and cultures. . . . Linguistic emancipation anywhere is central to the emancipation of the mind everywhere (60-61)."</p>
<p>
"Hierarchy as a conception of being is more clearly reflected in the relationship between languages. . . . All languages in the world, big and small, have a lot to contribute to the enrichment of our common human culture. . . . Languages and cultures can and should relate in terms of network, not heierarchy. And a network is really a system of give-and-take between equals. Translation is central to this entire system. . . . So I'd like to end by rephrasing Aime Césaire's maxim that cultural contact is the oxygen of civilization with a statement to the effect that language contact through translation is the real oxygen of civilization (70)."</p>
<p>
__________
<p>
This excerpt is about language as the cultivation and humanization of nature.</p>
<p><center>********</center></p>
<p>
"Humans translate the language and the laws of nature into those of nurture. Humans are of nature, like plants, animals, air, say ecology, and yet they stand outside it, as it were, act on it and reproduce themselves and give rise to processes which are clearly not identical with the nature of which they are a part. And yet, what humans have achieved is an extension of the various aspects of nature. The most wonderful technological tools are an extension of the human hand. The farthest-seeing telescope is an extention of the eye as are the speediest vehicles--rockets and spaceships for instance--extentions of the leg, the act of walking. And computers--don't they try to imitate the human brian? So the translation of the language of nature into their own tongues has enabled humans to create their nurture out of nature. The nurtural world of the human is an endless reproduction of what obtains in the <i>natural</i> nature and even the word 'cultivate' gives rise to the concept of culture as a social practice. Agriculture and social culture have a common root in the notion of cultivating nature, itself a process of translation from one environment to another.</p>
<p>
"In short, the humanization of nature is itself a process of translation and bespeaks of the centrality of translation in the make-up of our human community. Aristotle said that poetry was more universal than history since history dealt with the particulars while poetry dealt with what could be. But there is a way in which we can say that the subject of translation is the universals contained in the particulars of nature and social experience (35)."<p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-19984468215071423392023-08-04T18:06:00.007-04:002023-09-08T18:36:08.366-04:00The Dissolution of the SeminariesBetween 1536 and 1540, Henry VIII dissolved all monasteries, convents, priories, and other religious institutions--about fifteen thousand of them across England and Wales. The act unemployed one out of every fifty persons in the population, not to mention gutting the nation's centers of education (literacy and the arts) and charity (especially healthcare and the support of the poor). What had stood for centuries was pulled down in four years. I am tempted to think of it as a disaster--and especially where libraries were lost. But to peoples long fed up with the hoarded riches and power of the ecclesiastical estates, they had it coming. As Roman Catholic historian David Knowles said, "There were far too many religious houses in existence in view of the widespread decline of the fervent monastic vocation, and that . . . the monks possessed too much of wealth and of the sources of production both for their own well-being and for the material good of the economy." When I look at the news coming out of the seminaries and churches of the West, I wonder if what is going on today is a lot like dissolution. And I wonder, did we have it coming too?
<p>
<a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/245485/church-membership-among-americans/" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/245485/church-membership-among-americans.jpg" alt="Statistic: Do you happen to be a member of a church or a synagogue? | Statista" style="width: 100%; height: auto !important; max-width:1000px;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"/></a><br />Find more statistics at <a href="https://www.statista.com" rel="nofollow">Statista</a></p>
<p>
This graph has a tale to tell: the number of people who are members of a church is declining against a rising number of people who aren't members.[1] The loss of a tithing populace affects churches' abilities to support full-time clergy, which changes how the pastoral ministry is done. And that changes seminary enrollment and the seminary system. Fifty seven percent of schools in the Association for Theological Schools (ATS) report declining enrollment. And for those who do enroll, online work and shorter educational times are in demand. People do not want to take on educational debt and especially when they cannot expect to be supported in full-time in ministry. Therefore, the gold-standard three-year Master of Divinity degree is being replaced by one- or two-year Master of Arts degrees. Seminaries are intentionally dissolving themselves of expensive-to-maintain housing, dormitories, and land and embracing online education. I hardly know what to call it, but I can say that the quiet library stacks, the late-night stress in book-crowded carols, and the mental hum of people literally becoming scholars: all that is going. Maybe we did have it coming.</p>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
[1] In their book <i>The Great Dechurching</i> (Zondervan Academic, 2023) authors Michael Graham and Jim Davis say that America is seeing in real time “the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S. history,” with some 40 million people—1 in 6 Americans—having stopped going to church in the past thirty years. “That’s a lot of people who have changed their rhythms and habits,” Graham said. The losses in church going are greater in number than the people who came to faith during the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and all the Billy Graham crusades combined.</p>
<p>
[2] For a bit of extra credit, watch this <a href="https://youtu.be/B4PlO60Ocic?si=_D16if1PURMfuBUj">lecture about the dissolution of the monasteries</a> by Massolit. The name of the lecturer is unlisted.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-49875659957946983832023-03-17T00:41:00.005-04:002023-03-20T19:14:25.873-04:00The BDAG Flâneur: Setting OutA flâneur \FLAN-uhr\ is an urban stroller, lounger, saunterer, or loafer. The word initially carried the idea of wasting time. But with the rise of especially Parisian urban life, it skipped a step. A flâneur wandered through crowds and streets with a detached but aesthetically attuned observation.[1] Honoré de Balzac described <i>flânerie</i> \FLAN-er-ee\, the verbal form, as "the gastronomy of the eye." Victor Fournel, in <i>Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris</i> (What One Sees in the Streets of Paris, 1867), said there was nothing lazy in flânerie. It was a way of understanding the rich variety of the city landscape like "a mobile and passionate photograph" ("<i>un daguerréotype mobile et passioné</i>") of urban experience.
<p>
BDAG, unlike a flâneur, cannot walk or observe. It is a book--a lexicon. It is the standard lexicon for scholars interested in the literature of the New Testament. Its full title is <i>A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature</i>. It is based in the work of Walter Bauer, but its present revised edition is edited by Frederick William Danker. Put the initials of the two names together and you get BDAG.
<p>
If you are a student or scholar in Biblical studies or in the history of Christianity or Second Temple Judaism, you save your pennies to buy this one-thousand-page tome. And you are encouraged to use it. But, at least in my case, I forget to do so. The entries are dense, and I don't have it in electronic form so I have to be with it to use it--no click and it appears a la <i>Logos</i>. Yet, BDAG has been on my mind of late, and I have hit upon an idea.
<p>
What if I adopted the relaxed-yet-observant curiosity of the flâneur and go strolling among its pages? Entries would be like stands in a marketplace and shops along a boulevard. What curiosities and sidewalk insights are hidden among its citations? Time, then, to don my shoes, coat, and hat and walk out of doors and into the streets.
<p></p>
<center>*** ***</center>
<p>
<b>Α, α, τό first letter of the Gk. alphabet <i>alpha</i></b> Even at this, the very first entry, there are goods to be had. Already we discover letters used as numbers: α' = 1. β' = 2. Perhaps there was no separate system of counting, though mathematics was already well established in the world. The earliest mathematician is Thales of Miletus in fifth century BCE. But math itself goes much further back into time, to the Babylonians and Sumerians. And before them, to the hunter gatherers of the ancient world as evidence by the marks along the Ishango bone.</p>
<p>
Civilizations which use letters as numbers, such as the pre-modern Hebrews, limited themselves greatly, as such systems are not given to advanced arithmatic. What such a scheme is good for, however, is gematria where words mean numbers and numbers words. Gematria is a hot bed for kabbalistic mysticism. It is, therefore, no surprise to discover that alpha and omega signify the beginning and the end and everything in between. "The two came to designate the universe and every kind of divine and superhuman power." The alphabet became a secret bag of spells, a master incantation. To know the true name of anything is to know its secrets and its power, and isn't the alphabet the very storehouse of all true names. It is a metaphysical loom joining life, breath, and sound into a technology of infinite combination.</p>
<p>
The last gift of this entry is the first Christian use of alpha in the Sartor Square: a five-line palindrome, rendered in Latin, of five words:<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFmRe9nYpU2k5nErenIP_shmgxMHiLFStLKWpefGQJ_fG3CvQpfScJaQV1quAoK6Ewe5uf2xaBbkc9KXvwYonzey3PoLSb7Z8yZ9UQtitQxvPLskmq2EQMpwIVdNOzCKLpWQa_I_pDijJJqd9If85-vujkOcmg4x9q7qy1SrrFdHeNdWsRSFo/s153/Roman-Square-Text.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="200" data-original-height="153" data-original-width="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFmRe9nYpU2k5nErenIP_shmgxMHiLFStLKWpefGQJ_fG3CvQpfScJaQV1quAoK6Ewe5uf2xaBbkc9KXvwYonzey3PoLSb7Z8yZ9UQtitQxvPLskmq2EQMpwIVdNOzCKLpWQa_I_pDijJJqd9If85-vujkOcmg4x9q7qy1SrrFdHeNdWsRSFo/s200/Roman-Square-Text.jpg"/></a></div> When the five-letter Latin words are read in line order horizontally or vertically or backwards or forwards or bottom to top or top to bottom, they mean, The sower, Arepo, holds or works the wheels with care. Another translation is: He who works the plow sows the seed.</p>
<p>
Archaeologists and anthropologists have found Sartor squares all over Europe. The earliest example is from the house of Publius Paquius Proculus at Pompeii. And many have been found in overtly Christian locations. The square is found engraved on the facade of the door in the 752 CE Abbey of St.Peter Ad Oratorium near Capestrano, Italy. It is copied in an 822 Carolingian Bible. And in the 1100s, it was inscribed on the masonry of the Church of St. Laurent near Ardeche, France and in the Keep of the Castle of Loches, France. Locations like these had scholars believing that it was a kind of secret symbol for the Christian community, as its letters can be arranged to spell out Pater Noster. But scholars today believe the square comes from earlier in history and was assumed into Christian praxis. There is nothing distinctively Christian in the anagram itself after all. People have arranged its letters to form many other things, including prayers to Satan and formulas for exorcism.</p>
<p>
<b>Ἀβαδδών, ὀ</b> The name of the ruling angel in hell. The relevant material is from Revelation 9.11 "ἔχουσιν ἐπ’ αὐτῶν βασιλέα τὸν ἄγγελον τῆς ἀβύσσου· ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ἑβραϊστὶ Ἀβαδδών καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἑλληνικῇ ὄνομα ἔχει Ἀπολλύων." Abbadon is from the Hebrew, as it says, and Apollyon, the Greek, a derivation, says BDAG, from Apollo, source of plagues. One question I have is about the reference to Psalm 87:11. This presents a mystery to me, as Psalm 87 only has seven verses. Now, the Douay-Rheims (1899) has nineteen verses. So, there must be some kind of text critical thing going on. Yet, Calvin and Matthew Henry only comment on seven, and even Google does not know.</p>
<p>__________</p>
<p>
[1] Lots of stealing from Wikipedia going on in this paragraph.tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-39690584649529893132023-03-13T18:53:00.008-04:002023-03-21T18:29:13.899-04:00A quick-and-dirty bibliography on Satan"The Satan of popular imagination, God’s cosmic archenemy and the source of evil, has a long and complex history. Although scholars typically locate this history within the context of ancient Jewish and Christian imaginations, these origins are complicated by a number of factors. Among these are the various uses of the Hebrew noun satan to describe both earthly and cosmic figures and the multiple aliases referring to God’s cosmic opponent in Jewish and Christian literature, including Belial or Beliar, Mastema, Beelzebul, Lucifer, and the Devil, and others. The roots of the character Satan are typically discussed in relation to the Hebrew Bible, although the image of the cosmic opponent emerges most clearly within the writings of early Judaism, in the literature of the Second Temple period (c. 515 BCE–70 CE). Many scholars associate the emergence of this figure with ancient Near Eastern influence on early Judaism. Others highlight it as a response to the problem of evil; Satan and his retinue effectively distance God from acts difficult to reconcile with beliefs about God’s nature. Still others locate the emergence of Satan and satan figures within the context of social movements, arguing that the character of Satan serves as a tool for constructing communal identity and defining opposition.
<p>"Satan, or the Devil or Beelzebul, as a cosmic opponent also plays an important role within the literature of the emerging Christian movement, especially the New Testament texts. In the Gospels the cosmic battle between God and Satan imagined in early Judaism is interpreted in relation to Jesus, whose defeat of Satan is evidenced through exorcism, healing, and resurrection. Although some interpreters contend that the depiction of Jesus as exorcist reflects the historical Jesus’ understanding of his ministry as the eschatological defeat of Satan, others maintain that Jesus’ conflict with Satan should be viewed in terms of his opposition to the Roman Empire. The question of whether or to what extent references to Satan and evil powers should be read as describing political, social, and other human forces permeates scholarship on Paul and Revelation as well.</p>
<p>"Scholarship on Satan appears in a variety of forms, including wide-ranging treatments of the character of Satan across literary and historical contexts; exegetical examinations of specific texts using the terms satan, Belial, and so on; and discussions of Satan in relation to demons, the problem of evil, serpent imagery, and other elements. Many of the latter are intertwined explicitly with theological concerns and questions." ~ from the Oxford Bibliography</p>
<p>
<b>Old Testament Biblical Theology</b><br>
<p>John Walton on Baker Book House blog: <a href="https://bbhchurchconnection.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/who-is-satan-in-job/">view of the accuser</a> in Job.</p>
<p>John Walton on the “Exegetically Speaking” podcast discussing <a href="https://exegeticallyspeaking.libsyn.com/taunt-with-john-walton-isaiah-1412-15">Isaiah 14 and the fall of Satan</a>.</p>
<p>
Michael Heiser. <i>Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness</i>. Lexham Press. 2020.<br>
<ul>
<li>An <a href="https://apologeticscanada.com/2021/07/02/angels-and-demons-an-interview-with-dr-heiser/">interview w Heiser</a> on the Apologetics Canada podcast</li>
<li>A JETS <a href="chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https:/www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/59/59-2/JETS_59-2_361-424_Book_Reviews.pdf">review</a> of the book</li>
<li>Heiser is probably the author of this <a href="https://blog.lexhampress.com/2020/10/29/satan-the-devil-beelzebub-whats-in-a-name/">short article</a> on Bible names for Satan on the Lexham Press blog as well as <a href="https://drmsh.com/the-absence-of-satan-in-the-old-testament/">this one</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Archie T. Wright. <i>Satan and the Problem of Evil: From the Bible to the Early Church Fathers</i>. Fortress Press. 2022.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https:/nakedbiblepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/NB-285-Transcript.pdf">Transcript</a> of Heiser’s interview with Archie Wright</li>
<li><a href="https://newbooksnetwork.com/satan-and-the-problem-of-evil">Audio podcast</a> interview with "New Books in Biblical Studies" June 28, 2002 episode 91</li>
<li><a href="https://vimeo.com/434215822">Presentation</a> on June 27, 2020, as part of a Virtual Conference on the NT in Archaeology and Ancient Judaism</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CFQC1Zdom4&t=2s">Enoch Seminar video</a> discussion/review on Dr. Wright's book. Feb 9, 2023.</li>
</ul>
<p>Ryan E. Stokes. <i>The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy</i>. Eerdman's. 2019.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://readingreligion.org/9780802872500/the-satan/">Review in Reading Religion</a></li>
<li>"The Weird Christian Podcast" <a href="https://player.fm/series/the-weird-christian-podcast/ep-72-ryan-e-stokes-the-satan-how-gods-executioner-became-the-enemy">interview</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Dr. Miriam Brand on the <a href="https://understandingsin.com/2021/03/understanding-sin-origin-that-wasnt/">origin of sin and evil</a> in the Second Temple period</p>
<p>John Day writes on the <a href="https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2015/04/day398028">Serpent in the Garden of Eden</a> and Its Background for <i>The Bible and Interpretation</i></p>
<p>
<b>Political Theology</b><br>
Adam Kotsko. The Prince of This World. Stanford University Press. 2016.
<ul>
<li>An <a href="https://therevealer.org/the-prince-of-this-world-adam-kotsko-and-patrick-blanchfield-in-conversation/">interview</a> with Kotsko</li>
<li>An <a href="https://readingreligion.org/9781503600201/">academic review</a> of this book</li>
</ul>
<p>
<b>Bibliographies</b><br>
“<a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0056.xml">Satan</a>” in Oxford Bibliographies
<p>
A scholar’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1476993X10363030">bibliography</a> of the subject in the literature of the last few decades
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-44843406611395741872023-01-09T12:17:00.004-05:002023-02-13T18:12:25.636-05:00Comment on AI and TheologyThe entry "<a href="https://crookedtimber.org/2023/01/05/what-chatgpt-reveals-about-the-collapse-of-political-corporate-support-for-humanities-higher-education</a>">What CHATGPT Reveals about the Collapse of Political/Corporate Support for Humanities/Higher Education</a>" on the blog CrookedTimber.org caught my eye. The changes every field is going through as algorithms become more and more capable is fascinating, and I was reading the various comments. Then I came across this one from Alex SL:
<blockquote>
I am a scientist, but I do not to reject the humanities (or, as we would have said back in Germany, the social sciences) as empty nonsense. I believe they generate knowledge, and knowledge worth having.
<p>
However, there is clearly a bit of an issue in the way they are taught. I started getting that impression already in what would here be called high school, when it seemed that language teachers forced us to over-analyse novels and plays in a way that seemed rather implausible. But the real eye-opener was the big plagiarism scandal around German politicians in 2011, when it occurred to me that such a scandal would simply not be possible in the natural sciences full stop.</p>
<p>
These were by training all historians, economists, political scientists, etc, whose dissertation process consisted entirely of reading thirty books and then writing the thirty-first on the exact same topic. They took the short-cut of copying and pasting some text from their sources and then cosmetically changing a few words, and that was plagiarism. But if they had rearranged sentences more thoroughly, they would have fairly obtained their degrees, and there would not have been any scandal; and, crucially, the amount of new knowledge generated would have been exactly the same, i.e., zilch, nada, zero.</p>
<p>
In science, however, a graduate student would have been expected to generate new data. The problem to watch out for is not plagiarism, but manipulation of data to make them more “interesting”.</p>
<p>
To me, that points to the solution. What chatGPT cannot do, what no mind will ever be able to do without going out into the lab or into the field and run its own surveys, digs, and experiments, is generate new insights that aren’t in its training set. Surely that is a thing that is still possible to achieve in economics, archaeology, social sciences, anthropology, linguistics, etc.? And if a field cannot have that hope, then one would really have to have a conversation about whether it is something worth teaching. (Whispering: “theology”.)</p>
</blockquote>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-16718966079039216652022-12-01T13:58:00.013-05:002022-12-31T10:59:53.256-05:00Sollereder 3: The Philosophical ContextIn this fundamental chapter of <i>God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering</i>, Bethany Sollereder reviews the state of contemporary theodicy particularly as it addresses non-human suffering. She excludes arguments focused only on human suffering or theologies that evade the question altogether, meaning they argue that animals do not suffer or they reduce the power or goodness of God or they retreat into inscrutable agnosticism. What remains are contemporary theodicies that generally adopt arguments that make evil necessary to produce the kind of goods in creation which God desires. Such arguments are constructed from strategic options that can be grouped into three categories of good-harm analyses (GHA):</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Property-consequence GHAs:</b> a consequence of the existence of a good, as a property of a particular being or system, is the possibility that possession of this good leads to it causing harms.</li>
<li><b>Developmental GHAs:</b> the good is a goal which can only develop through a process which includes the possibility (or necessity) of harm. [These can be further divided into instrumental or by-product varieties of developmental GHAs.]</li>
<li><b>Constitutive GHAs:</b> The existence of a good is inherently, constitutively inseperable from the experience of harm or suffering.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<h3>Property-consequence GHAs</h3>
<p>
The main idea of this strategy is nomic regularity or the law-abiding nature of the universe. The goods of such a system include rationality and predictability, including the ability to make meaningful choices. Sure, if you are clumsy or unlucky, a rock will fall on your foot or a forest fire will kill dozens of birds in their nests. But a cosmic order also provides for natural systems that support and produce life and for moral and practical goodness.</p>
<p>
Sollereder is not buying it, though. Can those goods not be achieved in a manner that avoids suffering? Is listing such goods a way of avoiding listing their cost in uncountable deaths? The math so often is done without considering animal life. And consideration is made for groups but not for individuals (or between individuals: what about the suffering of this individual over that one?) Harms occur along an imbalance that cannot be righted. Nevertheless, Sollereder chooses a way forward. “I will [argue] later," she says, "that nomic regularity gives non-human animals the chance to develop skills and abilities, to ‘selve’ and form themselves in ways that would be unavailable to them without nomic regularity, even if the present order does cause suffering” (49).</p>
<p>
<i>More to come . . . </i></p>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
<b>Previous articles in this series</b></p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2022/08/sollereder-1-leaving-courtroom.html">Leaving the Courtroom</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2022/08/sollereder-2-bible-and-fall.html">The Bible and the Fall</a></li>
</ol>
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-23014246906601262722022-09-28T12:19:00.005-04:002022-12-02T17:53:10.730-05:00Mimesis: a short definitionMimesis \muh-MEE-sis\ (n.) Gk. μιμησις (imitation) from μιμεισθαι (to imitate) + μἰμος (an actor): In the history of aesthetic philosophy, mimesis is the human impulse to imitate and copy the world. Rather than obscure knowledge, mimesis allows aspects of the outer and inner world to be better observed and understood. Mimesis is an important theme in the work of René Girard. It is also a theme in the writings of Maximus the Confessor and Dionysius the Areopagite. Aesthetic philosophers such as Theodore Adorno and William Benjamin praised language as the chief mimetic instrument. By it better than any other media, human beings appropriate, interrogate, and re-interpret themselves vis-a-vis others and their worlds. Similarly, Gerard wrote, “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind.” We have instinctual responses to help us choose the objects that meet our most basic needs—when we’re hungry, we seek food; when we’re cold, we want warmth. But there is an entire universe of desires for which we have no instinctual basis for choosing one object or another. For these objects of desire, Girard saw that the most important factor in determining what we want are the desires of other people, or what he called our “models of desire.”
Fr. Stephen Freeman, blogging about Gerard's thoughts on mimetic desire, argued that the fundamental engine of mimesis is shame. To avoid shame, human beings imitate one another and blend in. Imitation feels safe. But, he continues, imitation can also be fueld by a desire to connect with others.
<blockquote>
Communion itself carries within it a desire to be “like” the other, to experience union in as complete a manner as possible. However, healthy communion does not entail the loss of identity or being swallowed by (or swallowing) the other. The ultimate model for communion is found in the Holy Trinity. We are able to confess that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, but we continue to confess that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, etc. Perfect communion can say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father,” and, “I only do those things that I see the Father doing.” And yet, the Son is not the Father.</blockquote> tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-60717839826324241902022-09-07T18:12:00.004-04:002022-09-08T18:41:39.638-04:00"I find little use for a deity who lets me decide my fate."I read the following excerpt from the book <i>Night Comes: Death, Imagination, and the Last Things</i> (Eerdman's 2016) by Dale C. Allison, Jr., Richard J. Dearborn professor of New Testament studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, on the blog "Eclectic Orthodoxy." As a young man, Dr. Allison almost died in a car accident. From living in that <i>momento mori</i> for several decades, he wrote this little book of honesty at 185 pages. It captures something of where my soul is right now. Here is the excerpt:
<p><center>***</center></p>
<p>
"But what about the now popular conceptualization of hell as radical freedom, as God letting us choose what we want, including a godless existence? It’s problematic, although it makes for effective apologetics. For if we hate hell, then learn that it’s simply the unavoidable consequence of individual liberty and self-actualization —things we prize so highly—then perhaps hell computes after all. We can think of our freedom to reject God as on a par with all those other freedoms that we can’t do without—academic freedom and economic freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of association, and so on.</p>
<p>
"Yet when human freedom is front and center, God moves to the wings. In the modern myth, our names are on the marquee, and our destiny is up to us. What we make of ourselves here determines what we are to become there.</p>
<p>
"Should we, however, desire starring roles and such Pelagian freedom? Although not an old-fashioned Calvinist, I think it’s obvious that all of us are broken creatures, that we’re selfish and self-deluded, and that we constantly abuse our freedom, which is so often illusory. Because of this, I find little use for a deity who lets me decide my fate. I don’t want to be my own God. Nor do I want the Supreme Being to respect my alleged autonomy no matter what, just as I don’t want the police to respect the autonomy of the despondent guy threatening to jump off the top of the high-rise. I rather desire, for myself and for everyone else, rescue. Our decisions need to be undone, not confirmed. We need to be saved despite ourselves. Even if we’re allowed, in our freedom, to kindle the fires of hell and to forge its chains, isn’t it God’s part to break our chains and put out the fire?</p>
<p>
"If the libertarian hell doesn’t give God enough to do, it’s also, perhaps, simplistic in its binary logic. It posits that people move either toward God and so toward heaven or away from God and so toward hell. But, as the Scarecrow says to Dorothy, “People do go both ways.”</p>
<p>
"Human beings aren’t unidirectional vectors but bundles of contradictions. Saints are sinners; sinners are saints. Everyone is Jekyll; everyone is Hyde. And everyone is in between. We advance toward God one moment and sound retreat the next, and most of the time we’re stuck in the middle.</p>
<p>
We’re confused and divided in ourselves, or rather fragmented. Our wills, our desires, our faith are always veering off course. We don’t just fail to do the good that we will; we just as often fail to do the bad that we will. Who travels the straight and narrow, whether up or down? The modern hell, however, posits that, in the world to come, we keep moving in the direction we’re already headed. Our momentum, so to speak, carries us up to heaven or down to hell. Yet what if, like me, you keep moving in circles?"</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-51445818558181631122022-08-24T13:28:00.005-04:002022-09-08T18:48:19.015-04:00Sollereder 2: The Bible and The FallBethany Sollereder is trying to make sense of God's goodness as creator in the light of natural selection. In the previous chapter, she explained her overall goal and defined some terms. In this chapter, she wants to dismantal cultural readings of the curse language in Genesis three. Why? Because such language has been used to support a cosmic or ontological fall. If such readings can be be upended, nature can be treated as unfallen. That would clear the way for a theodicy that includes natural selection.
<blockquote>
I want to argue against the reading that finds a justification for the theology of a cosmic fall . . . [so that] apart from human sin and its direct effects, the world remains God's "very good" creation. . . . [And therefore] the realities of death and suffering are not unambiguously condemned as irreconcilable with God's goodness. (13)</blockquote>
<h2>What is meant by fall?</h2>
<p>
What do Christians mean when they talk about a fall?[1] Turns out, several things. Sollereder groups them into event-based fall theories, such as a human or satanic fall, and mysterious fallenness theories, such as the cosmic fall. Event-based theories are relational; sin enters the word through willful disobedience. The cosmic fall is not a direct but indirect result; it is a punishment for disobedience. Because of it, the cosmos suffers natural evils. Dividing the types of fall into groups is necessary to peel off and, hopefully, disprove the cosmic fall while leaving the human and satanic falls intact.[2] "If it can be shown that the non-human creation is considered uncorrupted at any point in real history by [scripture], the primordial fall theories [read: mysterious fallenness] will face a serious challenge" (14).</p>
<p>
Before advancing further, let me reproduce her description of the human and satanic falls in order to highlight their antimony to the thick community of shalom called flourishing in the previous chapter.</p>
<blockquote>
The human fall, sometimes called the "relational fall," refers to the event that marks the entrance of sin into the world through human action. The effect of the human fall is the severing of harmonious relationship between human persons and God, between one person and other people, and between humans and the non-human creation. However, apart from the direct result of human sinful action in the world, such as pollution or exploitation of natural resources, the human fall does not independently affect the wider cosmos . . . In the same way, the satanic fall refers to the event of some of the heavenly host deciding to rebel against God and becoming fallen angels. The satanic fall was primordial, meaning that it was in effect from the very origin of physical creation. (Ibid)</blockquote>
<h2>Does the Curse of Genesis 3 Require a Cosmic Fall?</h2>
<p>
<i>The Curse on Childbearing.</i> Sollereder begins her examination of Genesis 3:14-19 by choosing one particular curse, the curse on childbearing. The idea is to show not only that tradition has read it incorrectly, but that a fresh examination yields better data. The traditional way of reading the curse on childbearing is that, because of Eve's sin, the act of childbirth would now be painful due to an actual physiological change. What may have been painful before is now severe. But we know today, she says, that the pain of childbirth is the result of physics, not an alteration to the poorer of a once-better design. Nevertheless, an examination of the Hebrew suggets a better reading than has been available in English translations. Nowhere else do the two words used refer to the pain of childbirth; there are other words for that. The kind of pain these words convey is emotional. Children born now will enter a world of difficulty, uncertainty, and, yes, pain. "Genesis 3 makes no claims at all about the origins of physical labor pains, but only of the sorrow-filled world into which children are born" (25). In this one part of the curse, (a) no physiological/ontological change is required and (b) the pain of the curse is disvalue created by social alienation and violence, not natural evil. And there is also hope: hope that birth and life will go on, fulfilling the creation mandate, and hope that sin itself will one day be dealt with as well.</p>
<p><i>The Curse on the Ground</i> Sollereder also addresses the curse of the ground. "And to the man [God] said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, "You shall not eat of it," cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life" (Gen. 3.17). The Hebrew here in God's address to Adam is paralleled in God's later address to Noah in Genesis 5.29. Noah is prophecied to bring a relief of this curse for humankind. And, after the flood, when Noah is offering a thanksgiving sacrifice to God, God says, "I will never again curse the ground because of humans." God is not here talking about the flood, but about the curse on the land. Adam's curse and Noah's relief form an inclusio. What Adam wrought, Noah relieved.</p>
<blockquote>The removal of the curse [on the ground] means that nature is fully alive once again, fully green and vibrant. Now there is no fallen creation, no dark side to nature because of human sin. Nature is free of the curse, liberated to become lush, green and plentiful."[3]</blockquote>
Sollereder's case is made that there is no cosmic or ontological fall in the curse texts of Genesis. There remains now only to address Paul's interpretation of the status of the ground in Romans chapter eight.
<h2>Romans 8</h2>
<p>
Romans 8.18-23 is often cited as a prooftext that joins the event-based fall of human beings and a cosmic or ontological fall of nature.</p>
<blockquote>I consider that the sufferings of this present time (τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ) are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility (τῇ ματαιότητι), not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor (πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις συστενάζει καὶ συνωδίνει ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν), and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.</blockquote>
<p>I have never heard this passage interpreted formally or casually where it did not cement a human and natural fall; this text exists and therefore nature is fallen and yet-unredeemed--an eschatological passage. Sollereder references a marginal (though Richard Bauckham and Gordon Moo are fans) reading of the text where συστενάζει and συνωδίνει, rather than being read together in a hendiadys, "groaning in labor," should be read separately, "groaning" and "trevailing." The tradition appealed to by this change is a Biblical motif of the earth going into mourning, a mourning based on suffering at the hands of sinful human beings. "The world is made subject (by God) to <i>matoites</i>, to a frustrated state where the world displays the 'ineffeciveness of that which fails to attain its goal.'"[4] Nature can suffer without a fall because human beings are fallen. In parallel, nature flourishes when human beings flourish. Paul's statement does not necessitate a cursed creation, only one continually traumatized and victimized.</p>
<h2>God and Nature's Violence</h2>
<p>There is another argument going on in this chapter about God and violence. Examining the primordial state before creation in Genesis 1, Sollereder interacts with the <i>Chaoskampf</i> tradition about whether Yahweh was in combat with or ruled over original chaos or the flood or Tiamat or satanic forces etc.[5] The argument is close, and her interlocutors come, oddly, not from ANE people but from Openness theologians, e.g. Gregory Boyd of <i>God at War</i>. In the argument is the entire point of the book: God can be good and natural selection be what it is. So although it does not take up majority of the chapter, it is no less an important part of the overall argument. Here's where she winds up:</p>
<blockquote>Chaos has [not] in any way inhibited God's creative endeavor. Instead, . . . even the waters and the darkness form a necessary part of creation. The (literally) dark and dangerous elements of creation were left precisely because they were good and useful--fit for the purposes of God's very good creation" (17).</blockquote>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
Previous Posts in this Series: <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2022/08/sollereder-1-leaving-courtroom.html">Sollereder 1: Leaving the Courtroom</a></p>
<p>
[1] Sollereder does not like this term "fall" because it presupposes a height to fall from, an Augustinian fall from moral perfection.</p>
<p>[2]] "The view that the fall of Satan had no effect on the goodness of the world was held by most Christian thinkers during the Patristic period" (37n8).</p>
<p>[3] Norman Habel, <i>The Birth, the Curse and the Greening of the Earth: An Ecological Reading of Genesis 1-11</i> (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011), 111.</p>
<p>[4] Quoting C. E. B. Cranfield.</p>
<p>[5] p. 39n53: The refusal to see chaos in the creation narratives is not . . . a recent phenomenon: it was characteristic of the Patristics (Clement and Hippolytus), and many post-enlightenment writers as well (Herder). [Rebecca] Watson [<i>Chaos Uncreated</i> (Walter de Gryter, 2005) also adds that "the association of the supposed 'Chaoskampf' theme with creation seems not to be original or central in the Hebrew Bible." (379).</p>
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-78226152256398441602022-08-23T14:56:00.006-04:002022-08-24T12:35:01.009-04:00Theology along Three AxesTheology is stretched across a frame of three sides. Let me illustrate, using election:
<ol>
<li>Theological ideas consist coordinately along three axes: a horizontal (neighbor, X, abscissa), a vertical (God, Y, ordinate), and a Z-axis (eschatology, Z, applicate).</li>
<li>The doctrine of creation gives pride of place to the vertical axis.</li>
<li>Soteriology, because it is a branch of theology, exists along these three coordinates.</li>
<li>Y: with the Reformed tradition, I assert the mystery of divine election under the lordship of the Spirit and the inability of human beings to savingly believe of themselves.</li>
<li>X: There is no salvation without ethics / faith without works is dead. A person's "heart, soul, mind, and strength" is necessary for saving faith to exist.</li>
<li>Z: The salvation of individuals and of all things may begin in history but it always on the move to its apotheosis in the next age.</li>
</ol>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-7718169955858745282022-08-18T19:29:00.004-04:002023-10-23T12:21:19.360-04:00faith is a creaturely knowingI am just finishing C. Stephen Evans <i>Philosophy of Religion: Thinking About Faith</i> (IVP, 1985) and, in a concluding chapter about faith and religious pluralism, I discovered something worth putting down. Evans is exploring how people believe. Hegel-like, he demarcates two opposing poles which he calls fideism and foundationalism, and then he bisects them with a solution which I call hermeneutical knowing. I have dealt with all of these topics before in this blog, but there is something clear about the way Evans puts it out there. I want to get down his definitions.
<p>
<i>foundationalism</i>. Earlier in the book, Evans called this option neutralism, which he said is a desire to be objective in everything--a desire that critiques religious faith, saying religion lacks objectivity. It is too involved. Foundationalists want every stone to be so certain as to be unassailable. This, they say, is reasonable, and faith, because it gets involved, is unreasonable. Evans says foundationalism can take various forms. What all of them share is a deep avoidance of risk.
<blockquote>
In [foundationalism's] <i>empiricist</i> form it demands that we rely solely on objective facts in determining our beliefs (Descartes). In its <i>rationalist</i> form it asks that we begin with basic premises which are self-evident to reason. In all its forms foundationalism is an attempt to eliminate subjectivity--and risk--from the knowing process. . . . It is a "quest for certainty" . . . [and] not merely certainty but objective certainty in which the individual makes no risky commitments.</blockquote>
<p>
The foundationalist can only engage in critical thinking if he feels it is impartial and unbiased. This is a high bar that, when it is critically examined, cannot support its own committments. Nevertheless, I like what he says a bit later about people liking foundationalism because it keeps out supersition and nonsense. And, frankly, that is me. Recall a <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2012/02/alan-lightman-sounds-alarm.html">two-post series</a> I did some years ago decrying the weakening of science's grip on the public square for the crazy that might force its way in. But I see now that this was reactionary. A weakened foundationalist grip doesn't mean the way is open to blind belief (in anything and everything). I hadn't thought about hermeneutical knowing. But, first, fideism.</p>
<p>
<i>fideism</i>. Fideism puts the all-or-nothing not in reason, like the foundationalist, but in belief itself. Only the believer can see the truth. Fideism makes faith a precondition of knowledge. Therefore, the believer herself cannot engage reason or argument to defend or evangelize for her faith because there is no common ground between outsider and insider.
<blockquote>The attitude of the fideist resembles . . . the attitude of some orthodox Marxists, who dismiss the criticisms of Marxism made by non-Marxist economists, political scientists, and philosophers. The Marxist reasons that these people are committed to the economic status quo and that their criticism are therefore merely an idological smokescreen which hides economic self-interest. If a Marxist holds to this position universally in a rigid a priori manner, he eliminates any true dialog between Marxists and non-Marxists. The orthodox Marxist loses the benefit of criticism which might enable him to improve his theories. He shuts himself up in a sterile "world of the committed" and thereby loses the chance to show non-Marxists that Marxism really does provide a superior framework for interpreting political and economic events. In the long run his party-line theories . . . are accepted only by those who find it expedient to do so, and by those who know no alternatives. (19,20)</blockquote>
<p>
Evans goes on to talk about how this hobbles any ability to negotiate between religious options. And he says that the fideist overestimates dogmatically the impact of unbelief. Because, to the fideist, reason is so twisted by unbelief, at least where religion and morals are concerned, there is no reason for an unbeliever to evaluate a religious claim. It must be believed first and only then may it be evaluated. (But what if God wanted people to think critically about religious and moral questions?)</p>
<p>
<i>hermeneutical knowing</i>. Evans says that there is a lot of space between fideism and foundationalism, space where reasonable judgments can and do come into play. Historians, for example, cannot retreat to either pole but must make their case based on careful observation and critical methodology. Qualified interpretation (such a peer review) provide an answer to my fear of the crazies, and it opens the door for moral and religious argument and to the evaluation of dogma and experiences claimed by religions and ideologies. Key to this, says Evans, is the willingness of faith to be self-critical. <i>An interpretive judgment is reasonable when it can survive the process of critical testing.</i> He suggests a basic criteria (169):
<ol>
<li><b>Logical consistency</b>. Does the system of beliefs contradict itself?</li>
<li><b>Coherence</b>. This is more than bare logical consistency, which is simply the absence of contradiction. Coherence is positive harmony, a fitting-together of beliefs into a coherent whole.</li>
<li><b>Factual adequacy</b>. Does the belief system account for all the facts?</li>
<li><b>Intellectual fertility</b>. Does a belief system give rise to new discoveries and insights, suggest new illuminating patterns, call one's attention to unnoticed dimensions of experience?</li>
</ol>
<p>
There is, then, a cumulative case, a building up of evidence born of the hermeneutical spiral, which achieves evaluative reasonableness. And as for the charge that because religions require full committment they usurp themselves, Evans points out that many things also do that: a program of exercise, a commitment to AAA or a model of therapy, a marriage vow. All of these require wholehearted commitment from the outset to achieve success. (I'm left to wonder where Anselm's <i>fides quaerens intellectum</i> "faith seeking understanding, fits into all of this.)</p>
<p>
__________</p>
<h2>Related Articles</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2021/05/hermeneutics-is-loves-desire-to-know.html">Hermeneutics is Love's Desire to Know</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2006/11/all-that-from-book-review.html">All That From a Book Review!</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2016/11/putting-doctrine-of-revelation-under.html">Putting the Doctrine of Revelation under Pneumatology</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2022/04/more-thinking-about-purity-circle.html">More Thinking About Purity Circles and Hermeneutics' Constant Bickering</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2005/10/complexity-necessity-necessitates.html">Complexity Necessitates Caution</a></li>
</ul>
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-29381861984245566312022-08-11T19:28:00.005-04:002022-08-15T17:06:20.007-04:00Lambeth's new model isn't pretty, but it's rightThe <a href="https://www.lambethconference.org/">Fifteenth Lambeth Conference</a> ended at Canterbury Cathedral just a few days ago from this writing. There was much to celebrate about the conference. Even having the conference is worth celebrating! Deep disagreements over human sexual identity and practice have torn at the unity of the Anglican Communion for years. And even now, delegates from several conservative African diocese did not attend. This conference tried very hard to bracket that disagreement. There is a lot for the worldwide church to do. And, to a large degree, the many delegates were able to do that. But not wholly. The sore points of division cannot just be ignored.
To his credit, Archbishop of Canterbury, the most reverend and right honored Justin Welby, understood this. And, in three addresses to the delegates, he admitted frankly that the communion was not whole. In his remarks on the Lambeth Call for Human Dignity, Welby said,
<blockquote>
For the large majority of the Anglican Communion the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted and without question, not only by Bishops but their entire Church, and the societies in which they live. For them, to question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For many churches to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.
<p>
For a minority, we can say almost the same. They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change. They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries is making the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For these churches not to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.</p>
<p>
So let us not treat each other lightly or carelessly. We are deeply divided. That will not end soon. We are called by Christ himself both to truth and unity.</p></blockquote>
<p>
Dr. Ian Paul, <a href="https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/lambeth-calls-lambeth-i-10-and-the-nature-of-the-anglican-communion-2-the-future/">writing</a> on not only Welby's remarks and on the state of discussion throughout the conference sees emerging two different models of unity. And it is these models that I want to highlight in this post. The first model of unity is the historic understanding of the Anglican communion, with its high degree of communion, a thick community, and its historic pattern of faith. This communion Catholicism talked about "living 'in communion with autonomy and accountability'" and being "enabled to be conformed together to the mind of Christ" as churches "bound together 'not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference' and of the other instruments of Communion." This was understood to entail a commitment on the part of each member church of the Communion "to have regard for the common good of the Communion in the exercise of its authority" (3.2.1) and "to act with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy, which by its intensity, substance or extent could threaten the unity of the Communion and the effectiveness or credibility of its mission." Welby's remarks, however, have turned the communion toward another definition of unity called autonomous inclusivism.</p>
<p>
In autonomous inclusivism each Province of the Anglican Communion is autonomous and called to live interdependently. It seeks "faithfulness to God in richly diverse cultures, distinct human experiences, and deep disagreements." Quoting Dr. Paul at length here:</p>
<blockquote>
The opening declaration [began] with the astonishing statement that "We believe in God who is both three and one, who holds difference and unity in the heart of God’s being, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit" and then connects this to ecclesiology by claiming "Our differences embodied in the Anglican Communion both challenge and deepen our experience of God in the other. As we join in God’s mission of reconciliation through Jesus and in the power of the Spirit, our differences are celebrated and redeemed, as we are made whole in the body of Christ. In that diverse whole, we more fully reflect the image of God". The theological statement represents a serious, arguably heretical, error in relation to the doctrine of God while the ecclesiological application of this seems to make difference and diversity central without drawing any distinction between types of difference, particularly the difference between truth and error. This may help explain the new "Many . . . Other" and "walking together . . . despite our deep disagreement” wordings in the Human Dignity call in relation to sexuality.
<p>
This call, if accepted by the Lambeth Conference presided over by Archbishop Justin six years later, effectively says "those who depart from Communion teaching will face no consequences". In fact, it goes further and effectively states "the consequence of their 'unilateral actions on a matter of doctrine without Catholic unity' is that they render the Communion as a whole lacking a teaching and they require all churches in the Communion to recognise a plurality of views which everyone has to accept within Communion life". It is, I think impossible to see this as anything other than a shift from "communion Catholicism" to "autonomous inclusivism".
<p>
The one defence of the new draft call that has some weight is that it is at least speaking honestly about our realities. The problem is that it does so in a paradigm diametrically opposed to that which the Communion has developed and worked with until now.</p></blockquote>
<p>
So, there you have it, the dissolving of communion Catholicism into an autonomous inclusivism. I wonder, as I think about this, whether I am looking at a judgment of my developing ideas around St. Augustine's church. Am I looking at the weakness of a church built apart from circle drawing? And does communion Catholicism equate to a giant circle? Can a church be a hospital for the sick, or does it have to require idealogical sameness?</p>
<p>
Just today I read an <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jesus-immorality/">article</a> by Joe Carter, a senior writer for the Gospel Coalition entitled "You can't love Jesus and Condone Immorality." In it he says, "The way God accepts us is 'just as I am, despite who I am, intending to change who I am.'" And he concludes, "We all have a choice to make: we can either choose to obey [Jesus] or admit we don't truly love him." It sure sounds like love, right?</p>
<p>
I guess I'm starting to see a process, perhaps a lifelong process, where Joe Carter sees a single event. I guess I'm starting to wonder if the thickness of the communion Catholicism model--and who doesn't feel the safety and togetherness of such a model?--is really just an agreement to lie in the appropriate places. As Ian Paul said about the Archbishop's autonomous inclusivism model: "it is at least speaking honestly." What does honest unity look like? Does Joe Carter's bouncer-at-the-church-door policy produce honesty? I think Carter's is an over-realized expectation. It is circle drawing. And what is needed is eschatological hope providing a common horizon point, a Celestial City, toward which we all move. Such hope has no purchase with power-unto-conformity but only for weakness and prayer and the bitter miracle of the cross of Jesus.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-17157028448544391892022-08-07T18:43:00.005-04:002022-08-11T18:22:19.255-04:00Stephen Evans on the Thomistic Doctrine of AnalogyThe following is listed straight off from pp. 154-156 of C. Stephen Evans. <i>Philosophy of Religion: Thinking About Faith.</i> Contours of Christian Theology. Downers Grove: Ill. Intervarsity Press. 1985. I'm copying it here because it adds data to my questions about the problem of religious language. It talks about analogy, which is the accepted solution. See previous posts on this topic:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2015/01/erich-przywara-analogical-deliverer.html">Erich Przywara, Analogical Deliverer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2015/10/notes-from-class-can-we-say-anything.html">A Note from Class: Can We Say Anything About God?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2015/10/pilgrimage-to-parnassus.html">A Note from Class: Pilgrimage to Parnassus</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-note-from-class-we-are-made-in-image.html">A Note from Class: We Are Made in God's Image</a></li>
<li><a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2007/12/karl-jaspers-on-creation.html">Karl Jaspers on Creation</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
According to [Thomas] Aquinas, when we speak about God we inevitably must use language originally developed for finite creatures. Such language cannot be used to apply to God precisly in its original sense.</p>
<p>
When we speak about God, we do not speak univocally, which is to use the same term in precisely the same sense; nor do we speak equivocally, which is to use the same term in two unrelated senses, as when one uses the term <i>race</i> to refer to an athletic contest on one occasion and an ethnically related group of human beings on another. Rather, talk about God is analogical, which is to use the same term in a similar or related sense.[1] One might, for example, call both a dog and a person faithful. In this case there is a resemblance between a faithful person and a faithful dog; the termis not being used equivocally. Nevertheless, faithfulness in a person is not identical with faithfulness in a dog.</p>
<p>
Aquinas defines two major types of analogy. The <i>analogy of attribution</i> uses a term originally employed for one thing for a second thing because of a causal relation between the two things. Thus, one calls a certain geographical location "healthy" because it causes the people who live there to be healthy, and one calls a rosy complexion "healthy" because it is the effect of a healthy body. Religious people use terms like "living" and "loving" to refer to God because he is the cause of life and love in his creation.</p>
<p>
The other type of analogy is the <i>analogy of proportionality</i>. Here a term is employed to refer to something proportionately to the kind of reality the thing possesses. A dog is brave in the way dogs can be brave, in proportion to its reality as a dog. A human being's bravery is proportionately richer because her nature is richer. God is loving, holy, and powerful, but he possesses all these qualities in proportion to his infinite nature; human love, holiness, and power resemble but fall short of these qualities in God.</p>
<p>
The analogy theory is often criticized on the grounds that one must be able to reformulate an analogy in literal, univocal language for the analogy to be meaningful. Unless we know precisely how God's love resembles human love, so the argument goes, we do not really know what it means to say God is loving. But to know how God's love resembles human love, we must know what that love is like and be able to describe it univocally.</p>
<p>
Whether this objection is sound is controversial. But it seems to me that all this objection really establishes, if one is inclined to accept it, is that it must be possible <i>in principle</i> to replace analogous language with univocal language, not that this replacement must be actually carried out for analogous language to have meaning. If an analogy is valid, then a person who has sufficient knowledge and has a language sufficiently rich should be able to describe the analogous relationship in a direct fashion. However, it is surely too strong to claim that analogous language is meaningless unless it can be "cashed in" with univocal language. If that were the case, what need would we have for analogous language? Analogies would be proper in that case only where they were unnecessary. Surely the uses of analogy, metaphor, and other nonunivocal discourse in poetry, and even scientific model-building, show that such language is useful and meaningful, even where we are not yet able to dispense with such language, and perhaps even if we are not able to do this at all.</p>
<p>
The objection may also presuppose an overly wooden view of "literal" language, and an overly sharp dichotomy between such language and the language of analogy. Many ordinary, literal terms began their careers as metaphors. It is hard to see how language could creatively develop and new concepts be originated if a nonliteral usage were always meaningless until it could be replaced by a more literal statement.</p>
<p>
It is true that Aquinas's analogy theory implies that we lack a clear and precise understanding of God and his characteristics. We only know God as the being who resembles though surpasses what we humans know as "love," "power," "holiness" and so on. However, it is quite in keeping with ordinary religious belief to claim that God is in some way essentially mysterious. Our knowledge of God is not supposed to be theoretically and scientifically precise; it has an essentially practical purpose. It may be sufficient for human beings if they have enough of an understanding of God to know how to relate to him properly. If it turns out that humans, in this life at least, lack any knowledge of God's essence, as Aquinas claims, this will not faze the believer, so long as she has enough of an idea of God to know how to worship and serve him properly.</p>
<p>
[1] Aquinas's theory is developed in <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1013.htm">part 1 question 13</a> of the <i>Summa Theologica</i>.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-70238616362276354472022-08-04T19:05:00.026-04:002022-08-16T00:41:26.379-04:00Sollereder 1: Leaving the CourtroomA few posts ago, I said that epicenter for questions about theodicy <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2022/02/science-erodes-biblical-origins.html">has moved</a> from human to animal suffering. In future posts, I will be working through the theodicy of Bethany A. Sollereder, who is a lecturer in science and religion at the University of Edinburgh. I am going to blog through her fascinating book <i>God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy Without a Fall</i> (Routledge 2019). I heard an <a href="https://onscript.study/podcast/bethany-sollereder-god-evolution-and-animal-suffering/">interview</a> with Dr. Sollereder on the excellent theology podcast "OnScript" in 2021, and her arguments caught my imagination. She made some profound Christological statements that excited me. I wanted to know more!
<p>The big idea here is: "I want to argue that evolution is the process by which God has created the world, and that the violence and suffering inherent in the process can be both contextualised and redeemed in light of the creative suffering of God" (2). There is a lot to unpack. But, first, she must do some intellectual floor clearing.</p>
<p>
<h2>Chapter 1: Leaving the courtroom</h2>
<p>
Sollereder is an experimental theologian. Though she does a lot of careful exegesis, she is not trying to do Biblical theology or construct a systematic. She operates at the line of dialogue between theology and science. Nevertheless, her instincts are evangelical. Her motivation is the fundamental fact that since life began living things suffer violence. God made the world with natural selection in it and called it good. So how can this be true? And waving it away with the fall, as theology has been wont to do, simply will not do.
<blockquote>
Traditional theology once drew a familiar map. It stated that God created a perfect and peaceable world. Then humans . . . ruined the whole scene . . . and now we live in a profoundly broken world characterised by the previously unknown elements of violence, death, and suffering. But using the fall as an explanation is . . . no longer a plausible way forward. Evolutionary evidence suggests that the world was only free from death and competition when it was also free from life. The complexity, interrelatedness, and beauty of life are directly related to the ever-present violence, death, and extinction of numberless creatures. . . . A new theological map is needed. (4)</blockquote>
<p>
As Dr. Gordon Heugenberger, my Old Testament professor in seminary, used to say, Animal death had to exist in the garden or Adam wouldn't have understood what God meant when he said, "On the day you eat of it, you will surely die." Heugenberger's point, ignoring the genre problem, is analogous to Sollereder's. The Bible assumes this evolutionary world and all that goes with it. How, then, can God call it good?</p>
<p>
So, step one: the doctrine of the fall is problematic. Sollereder argues that the Bible does not require it: "The biblical witness does not require the assumption that disvalues such as suffering and death entered the world due to human or Satanic sin," (8). A fall also requires some kind of point of original perfection. And, where the natural world is concerned, no amount of geology or physics can discover one. And finally, the term itself is not always clear. She will go on in later chapters to differentiate and examine the arguments for a cosmological (or mysterious) fall, a Satanic fall, and a human fall.</p>
<p>
Now step two: natural evil needs to go. Theology has taught that fallenness unleashed sin upon the world, producing moral and natural evil. But, setting moral evil aside, natural evil is a highly anthropocentric concept lacking evidentiary sophistication. Sollereder easily overturns it and, in its absence, suggests new vocabulary: harm and disvalue. Harm is suffering caused by natural things: tornadoes, flash flooding, ice storms, etc. That's the sort of thing Calvin said was produced by sin: but tornadoes are produced by weather. Calvin was thinking like a medieval man. Disvalue is the suffering produced by the violence of living things living. It has its origin not in some kind of supernatural evil but in the way that natural selection and the results of human fallenness (Sollereder believes in a human fall) combine to damage the cosmos, even though, she says, the natural world remains unfallen.</p>
<p>
On the positive side, disvalue is antinomous to two other terms: flourishing and selving. Flourishing, she says, means the overall well-being of an individual creature, which would include a 360-degree relational goodness analogous to the Hebrew shalom.</p>
<blockquote>A flourishing creature is in proper relationship to other members of its own species, to environmental conditions, to God, and to the stage of life it is in. This relational component might lead to some counterintuitive results, such as after a full life and in light of the new creation, a creature's best flourishing at a particular moment may be to die. (8)</blockquote>
<p>
Selving is subjective; it is concerned with the individual. Selving is a creature acting as itself in fulfillment of its God-given course. Here she follows the work of Christopher Southgate who said, "When a living creature 'selves' . . . it is conforming to the pattern offered by the divine Logos."[1] Sollereder is careful to avoid eugenic undertones here saying individual creatures have a common characteristic but also may innovate. "It would be better to speak of the gift of community and genetic inheritance that creatures are born into which confer regular ways of being rather than a sense of Platonic 'pattern' to which creatures are meant to conform" (Ibid.) I suspect these two terms, flourishing and selving, will play an important role as her argument moves forward.</p>
<p>
These states--disvalue, harm, flourishing and selving--each operate at every level at which living things exist. And there is a kind of order to them. The basic id-like desires that go along with natural selection, aggression and self-interest are like raw materials. And the disvalue and harm which are their result exhibit behaviors which result from a kind of moral immaturity. Above that is a higher rung of altruistic level of self-giving which can itself be transcended via divine action into love itself. Love is, she says, "a particular divine act in the person that transmutes the basic evolutionary desires into the desires of divine love." "Love is a transformation of the spectrum of desires entirely" (6).</p>
<p>
But how, then, does she understand love? Love is "non-controlling, particular, vulnerable to suffering, and responsive to the needs of the beloved." And, as in so much theology, freedom plays its part, for love requires radical freedom and divine interaction.
<blockquote>Traditional accounts of freewill have been heavily anthropocentric . . . I attempt to work out what freedom for the non-human world entails in light of the two desires of love: the desire for the good of the beloved and the desire for union with the beloved. God's love leaves room for creatures to develop towards their own good, the good of the ecosystem they participate in, and in the ultimate history of the world.</blockquote>
<p>
A final aside. Sollereder has positioned these two systems of transcending love and natural selection together in a way. First, there is the mechanism of natural selection, where fitness creates an ability to step above or transcend. Natural selection produces disvalue, but it also produces selving, as individuals can improve on their genetic and socially conditioned model of behavior. Second, there is a definition of love built from desire and freedom. Love is a result of developmental leaps from lower to higher, from self-interest to selflessness. Love seems to set the board on which natural selection plays. Or, is love more fundamental? I am not sure.</p>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
[1] Christopher Southgate. <i>The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Animal Suffering</i> (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 16. Note also: Arthur Peacocke, <i>Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming -- Natural, Divine, and Human</i> (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993) and Daryl Domning and Monika Hellwig. <i>Original Selfishness: Original Sin and Evil in Light of Evolution</i>. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006).</p>
<p>Note this interesting footnote about Southgate's understanding of selving: "[Selving] allows a unique view of fallenness: a creature is fallen when it does not embrace the divine invitation to transcendence and therefore remains what it is. In this notion of fallenness, it is potential that is lost rather than acquired characteristics" (12n29).</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-90584524204164589122022-08-02T16:58:00.016-04:002022-08-04T11:47:05.705-04:00Not the Guilt but the ConsequencesIt seems in keeping with the way Genesis works that human beings suffer the consequences of our parents' primordial sin but not their guilt. Putting aside the question of historicity, the point is the meaning now, and not some kind of historical meaning, but a cultic meaning more interested in helping me understand me (as a member of humanity today) than caring much about the details of the past. Adam and Eve are my story and the story of everyone else in my community. The fall, then, marred but did not eliminate the imago. Human beings cannot walk a straight line, morally speaking, but they have a sense of straightness. Innocence shatters against pitiless experience again and again. The story of the world is the long failure--but not without hope.
<p>
I do think this includes mortality because human beings are by nature mortal. It is the tree of life, the gift of God, that grants ongoing everlastingness to mortal flesh. This also means that I do not ascribe to the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul.[1]</p>
<p>
In saying this, I do not agree with Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin as it teaches the universal application of guilt. Historical theologians do not see it taught in the first few centuries of the church. Gerald Bray has said, "It is a virtual axiom of historical theology that the doctrine of original sin, as we recognize it today, cannot be traced back beyond Augustine." What the early church, Greek and Latin-speaking, affirmed was what I have said here--inherited consequences, not guilt. J. N. D Kelley said, "There is hardly a hint in the Greek fathers that mankind as a whole shares in Adam's guilt." The Latin fathers did teach sin as a corrupting force, but Adam's guilt, they said, "attaches to Adam himself, not to us." Had the apostles taught guilt, wouldn't it be evident? It is just as evident they did not.</p>
<p>
Damnation, then, is not a product of our being, but of the inevitable and irresistable selfward curvature of our hearts and the inevitable choices and consequences this creates. Damnation is just a recognition of the truth of things. Damnation is every day.</p>
<p>
Simultaneously, justification undoes damnation. Salvation promises and begins the restoration of the imago. In the words of the church: "I will with God's help."
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
See also "<a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2019/08/outlining-position-on-determinism-and.html">Penciling in a gesture toward providence, determinism, liberty</a>."</p>
<p>
[1] A careful reader will note a dialogue here with Plato's <i>Phaedo</i> 74-76. In that dialogue, Plato argues that even though we only see imperfect things, such as sticks of different length, we discern the underlying ideal form of Equality. We discern ideal forms, he said, because our souls see them in the state between reincarnated embodiment. Platonism teaches the immortality of the soul. And the discernment of ideal forms is a plank in Plato's argument for soul immortality. This scaffolding further informs the Platonic doctrine that education is reminding the embodied soul of what it already knows; education as recollection. In that case, knowledge is <i>a priori</i> and the seventeen-century Rationalists were correct. Marc Cohen provides a thorough <a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/phaedo.htm">analysis</a> of Plato's argument in the <i>Phaedo</i> and its context in the history of ideas.</p>
<p>
Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a direct influence on the Christian doctrine of eternal punishment. Because souls are immortal, punishment must be analagous. But if souls are not immortal, then eternal punishment is not a dogmatic necessity.</p>
<p>
The knowledge of the ideal forms is reworked in Christian theology from a knowledge obtained in some pre-bodied state of unmediated contemplation to a product of logos which, through creation, is available in the imago of every human being. The logos is the source of all ideal knowledge, which humans reflect imperfectly by means of participation in the imago Dei.</p> tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-12280289329446711452022-06-06T18:32:00.017-04:002022-06-07T12:25:34.034-04:00Occasional Theology Delivered at the Wedding of D and K Perry<h2>Homily at the Marriage of D___ and K___ Perry</h2>
<p><i>By the Reverends Robert and Caroline Osborne<br \>
Delivered June 4, 2022 at St. Joseph of Arimathea</i>
<p>Welcome to a moment that has been in the making for a long time. K__ shared with me that she has known D___ for her entire life. Their story began in Massachusetts when K___ was still in the womb, as both sets of parents became friends while studying in seminary.</p>
<p>For years their different but in many ways parallel paths crisscrossed at different events—until last year when they hit it off at a wedding of all places.</p>
<p>So it feels full circle in a wonderful way for us to be gathered here today to celebrate their marriage. Those two parallel but different paths are here and now merging into one path that they will walk together for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>The road may have had several twists and turns, but perhaps that is part of why the joy of today is so great. Facing the challenges of a long distance relationship, D___ then moving to Tennessee in the midst of a pandemic to be closer to K___, all these things make the joy of this day all the more beautiful.</p>
<p>Having been through so much this past year, it is no surprise to either of you that, as wonderful as today is, there will also be challenges ahead. And the vows you make today are meant both for when it is easy to love each other and for when it is hard.</p>
<p>That is why one of our readings for today, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=NRSVUE">1 Corinthians 13</a>, is such a good reading for a wedding – it talks about love not just as a joyful, sunshiney feeling of butterflies and beautiful wedding dresses and happy tears, but also as a choice and a commitment. </p>
<p>That love, which the Apostle Paul wrote about for the whole church, should also be lived out in your marriage, especially since God made marriage to be a representation of Jesus and his bride, the Church. When you pursue the sort of love described in that passage, you show the world a picture of the sort of love God has for us, and we, empowered by the Holy Spirit, have for him. That is a pretty high calling! If you don’t feel some awe for what you are about to step into, then you don’t understand it!</p>
<p>1 Corinthians tells us that this is a love that is unselfish: it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it does not boast. This is a considerate love. A love in which you each put the other person’s needs above your own. If only one of you did that, it would become an unbalanced and painful love. But when you both put each others’ needs first, it is an incredible, self-giving, generous, and refreshing love. A 1 Corinthians love is a longsuffering love. It always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. It is not easily angered.</p>
<p>In fairy tales, the hero and heroine get married and live happily ever after. They fail to tell you that one of them might forget to clean up their toenail clippings or is grouchy when they're hungry--not that I am saying K__ or D___ will do those things.</p>
<p>All I am saying is, a love like the one described in 1 Corinthians is longsuffering. It doesn’t get hung up on the small, though sometimes very irritating, things, and it persists through the big and difficult things. When you commit to a longsuffering love, you will both rest in the security of that committed love even in the most difficult times.</p>
<p>And finally, this love is a humble and forgiving love. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, and it delights in the truth. </p>
<p>K___ and D___, in planning a wedding and preparing for a marriage the two of you have learned a bit about forgiveness. The times you have forgiven each other--both big and small--over the course of your time dating are not an exception to the way relationships work. Forgiveness in marriage, as in all of the life of faith, is the rule. A forgiving love is a safe, joy-filled, and growing place for a sinner, and all of us here are sinners, bride and groom included.</p>
<p>A forgiving love is one that best exemplifies the love of Christ for the Church. A forgiving love is one that is a witness to the world of the greatest love, the love from which all other loves derive: that is, the love of God.</p>
<p>So, D___ and K___, as you enter into marriage today, as the two of you cease to be just two separate individuals and are joined into one union by God--my charge to you is to choose, commit to, and embrace a love like that described in 1 Corinthians: an unselfish, longsuffering, humble and forgiving love.</p>
<p>Just like today’s joy is made all the sweeter by the long road it took to get here, when you love with a 1 Corinthians love, all those wonderful good times will be even better.</p>
<p>As you pursue that life of loving witness, may God bless your marriage with joy, peace, and an overflow of love that, in turn, blesses the lives around you. <i>Amen</i>.</p>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
<h2>A Toast at the Marriage of D and K Perry</h2>
<p>by Thom Chittom</p>
<p>D___ and K___,</p>
<p>When I look at you now, I see nothing but blessing. The blessing you have been in your childhoods. The blessing you are to each other. The blessing of our families’ friendship made permanent today. And the river of blessing that is rolling into you and through you and on into your future together.</p>
<p>Today you take up, hand-in-hand, God’s original command for human beings to go out into the wild world together and cultivate it. What an adventure you have ahead!</p>
<p>Let me say a few words to take on your way:</p>
<p>Always cherish the truth. People are forever unfinished. Talk about it. Time brings new things. Meet them in the strength of a united transparency. God is a god of light and not darkness after all.</p>
<p>When you disagree, fight for each other and not for yourselves. You win when you, <i>plural</i>, win. Remember, our God is three persons in one loving and even erotic mutuality.</p>
<p>And finally, think on the mystery of marriage—there is not two of you, but three. Going with you today there is one who sticks closer than a brother, one like a son of man. He is wisdom itself. Listen to him! If you do that, you will be blessed. If you do that, he will make saints of you in time, and you will be a blessing.</p>
<p>Now, I join everyone here and celebrate your marriage today. We love you. We support you. We bless you.</p>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>D___'s father delivered a <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-friends-wedding-toast.html">wedding toast</a> during the wedding mentioned in the homily above. It is recorded on this blog as occasional theology and should be considered in parallel.</p>
<p>The liturgical material may be of interest to provide wider theological context. Gen. 2.4-9, 15-24; Ps. 127; 1 Cor. 13.1-13; Ps. 67.; Matt. 7.21, 24-29. Fr. Jody Howard also gave the longer nuptial blessing and concluding prayer from the BCP pp. 430-431.</p>
<p>A Facebook post I made on Trinity Sunday, June 7, 2020: "I can think of no better day in these circumstances than Trinity Sunday. For the unity of the three persons is to be one without monotony, to be unity without destroying plurality. And for that unity to be a forever bliss of giving and receiving love.
We human beings, then, may know that it is possible to fully love without destroying the uniqueness of others and to be loved without destroying ourselves. This is a unity that worldly power knows not of. All the powers can do is destroy the other or press chaotic difference into submission with brutal force. That is unity without freedom, which is no unity at all. It will never understand or be the freedom that love freely gives." I might also point out that the triune persons are not homo sapiens. We are analogy not equality.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-19901922023643037552022-04-14T16:58:00.016-04:002022-05-19T18:18:31.364-04:00more thinking about purity (circle drawing) and hermeneutics' constant bickering<blockquote>
If the theory of science sets itself the further task of investigating such conditions as are subject to our power, on which the realization of valid methods depends, and if it draws up rules for our procedure in the methodical tracking down of truth, in the valid demarcation and construction of the sciences, in the discovery and use, in particular, of the many methods that advance such sciences, and in the avoidance of errors in all of these concerns, then it has become a <i>technology of science</i>. ~ Edmund Husserl, <i>Logical Investigations</i>, 11.
</blockquote>
<p>
The more I pursue theological studies, the more I am challenged to give up my purity addiction and embrace the lordship of Jesus. Let me unpack this, beginning with evangelicalism.</p>
<p>
Evangelicalism came out of the fundamentalist movement. While confessing the authority of scripture, evangelicals did not want to disengage from cultural ideas and science. They wanted to stay in dialogue. Nevertheless, evangelicalism retained the purity culture of fundamentalism. And what is purity? Purity is an over-realized eschatology. It is "radical discipleship." It is what the Bible is really saying. Call it the first-century church, call it Christian America," call it the Christian home, xmarriage, xsingleness--it goes by many names. At the deep center of all of these purity moves is, I believe (and I'm still thinking about this), a baptized existentialism (or a spoon-cooked commercial ethic) which privileges individual action as the locus of truth. In that I see the Enlightenment plus the Great Bargain. Let me put these together.</p>
<p>
The Enlightenment was and is a profound eruption in the Western mind. It removed most accepted forms of knowledge in favor of experiment and demonstration. The invidivual was encouraged to doubt everything. Knowledge was <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2005/03/kant-fool-has-said-in-his-heart.html">democratized</a>. Its basis was experience rather than revelation.</p>
<p>
The Great Bargain is far older than the Enlightenment. It is in the DNA of human living. The Great Bargain is when a human being decides that if they perform an act or produce a thing then God (or whatever passes for God or the gods) will hand over whatever good it is that the human being wants: fertility, a cushy job, rain on the crops, victory over the enemies, get a girlfriend, be free of illness, whatever. This is the root of idolatry. It goes back into the deepest selfishness of the human heart. And people make this bargain without even realizing they are doing it.</p>
<p>
The Enlightenment makes the individual king of his own knowing. The Great Bargain makes the individual's actions or choices the king of their own success. Combine them in a religious context, and we get purity as control of knowing and control of acting where control and conformity produce the happy and highest form of life. Consider, as an example of this, the Bible.</p>
<p>
The Bible is so central to evangelicalism, examining its use in that movement should isolate a bias toward purity. Evangelicals properly profess the Bible to be God's prophetic word. I certainly do not deny that. Observe that <i>how</i> that is can be understood differently. From the purity side, it means embracing an obedience to the Bible in the form of <i>sola scriptura</i>, but it is an obedience of adherence. Understanding is cultivated in order to conform. Exegesis and other textual disciplines work to isolate and explain in order that the present may be brought into conformity with the past. Certain hermeneutical tools or methods will be favored over others as they aid in this task. Of understanding, there may never be exactness, but the pursuit of exactness can be even more useful than a clear arrival. Even as I write this, I struggle hard in my soul. These are my people and the tools I was trained on. This hermeneutic is my hermeneutic, and I am still convinced of their value and am a student of them. But if they are sound, they can be shaken without harm. Purity culture is a subtle beast. The question is worth asking; truth has a way of broadening into freedom. The cathedral of Christian orthodoxy is larger than any one historical movement or moment.</p>
<p>
Back to the Bible, then. Isn't it interesting that the Bible itself always defers to Jesus; Jesus is the revelation of God. It is hermeneutical about itself, certainly, but in the center is not an exegetical arrival but the person Jesus. It is as if we've decided the Pledge of Allegiance is about a flag and not about the country; we have switched out the sign and the signified (nodding toward Augustine's <i>On Christian Teaching</i> (<i>de doctrina Christiana</i>)).</p>
<p>
This does not discount the Bible or the careful study of the Bible. The Bible is the divinely sanctioned, apostolic, human witness to the visitation of Yahweh to his people. Yet, it is not what is worshiped; Jesus is worshiped. So we don't study the Bible to be right; we study it to better know its author. Nor do we expect perfection in the Bible, but we do expect it in the one about whom it witnesses. That is one step.</p>
<p>
The second step is the Walter Bruggemann step. Bruggemann is a well-respected Old Testament scholar. He points to Jewish ideas of belonging and says that to belong is not to agree in everything, but to join in and participate with others in the argument. The Bible, he says, is like an argument. Different perspectives crush up against one another and battle it out. And one is invited to take up the Bible and join the age-old community of arguers. Participation is community. Argument is being formed by and forming that community. And that community itself is being formed by its texts, which are the fundamental arguments of one's worldview.</p>
<p>
That is a much, much different way of thinking about reading and participating and approaching the Bible than the perfection model. The argument model does not guarantee resolution, but formation. Not arrival so as to be right, but struggling to understand and in the struggling becoming a kind of struggler (lex orandi; lex credendi).</p>
<p>
Let's say we adopt the Bruggemann model. Now we ask about the unity of the church. Before, in the purity model, we groaned about how far the church has fallen from Jesus's utopic plea that "they would be one as we are one." But now, in the argument model (that may not be the best word; I'm thinking out loud), the church in its struggle to embody the teaching of Jesus, in its centuries of debate and dialogue, looks different. Burning people at the stake is something purity models do (especially when they are wed to political purity); the argument model sees argument as engagement--as listening--as caring together with others.</p>
<p>
I'd be willing to bet purity model churches structure their liturgies (for even non-denoms have liturgies) around purity. I'd be willing to bet purity models adopt a purity model of outreach, of the use of church funds, of the education of their children, of the expectations of the faithful, of their dialogue with communities and individuals outside the church. Purity culture is a circle-drawing culture: agape is on the inside; judgment is on the outside.</p>
<p>
The Bible itself, in the argument model, models its resultant community in a different way. And its God is probably going to be a unity of plurality and not a monad (but that goes in a different direction). Consider grace. The scandal of grace is God’s operation to break a purity circle “while we were yet sinners.” The second are the many instances where Jesus breaks purity and yet, instead of being made unclean, he makes clean. When I talk about <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-response-to-c-s-lewiss-lecture-inner.html">circle drawing</a>, by the way, I'm talking about the creation of purity culture. The difference between purity and argumentation is the negation or acceptance of a <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2021/05/hermeneutics-is-loves-desire-to-know.html">hermeneutical</a> model of knowing.</p>
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-15620883336033871392022-03-10T18:49:00.011-05:002022-05-25T11:22:24.941-04:00Rhetorical Forms in the Bible: Parataxis / HypotaxisToday, I want to talk about parataxis. Parataxis (from Greek: παράταξις, "act of placing side by side"; from παρα "beside" + τάξις "arrangement") is a rhetorical technique that uses short, simple sentences, one after the other, without an explanation for how they connect. Some people compare it to the speech of children. Punctuation is allowed: commas, semi-colons, and periods. These force juxtaposition. But every element of punctuation can be replaced by “and”--coordinating conjunctions are allowed, but not subordinating conjunctions. The result is a string of pearls where every idea is as important as the next, a staccato text without consistent rhythm. In her article on parataxis, “There’s Parataxis, and Then There’s Hypotaxis,” published in the <i>Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, Constance Hale writes that “parataxis can also lead to a sense of things piling up, a rush of ideas, a fast-moving narrative.”
<p>
Parataxis is different from asyndeton, though they are easy to confuse. Both lack syntactical structure and therefore ask their audience to guess at the gaps. The difference between them is one of intent. Asyndeton is an intentional removal of conjunctions to tighten the pace and length of a text or speech. Parataxis is not intentional. Its quick waterfall never contained connective material in the first place. In a sense, then, asyndeton is a subset of parataxis by way of human intention.
<p>
Mark’s Gospel is an excellent example of parataxis in its ubiquitous use of καί between clauses. Bruce Metzger observed that 80 of 88 sections in Mark begin with καί. Sixty-four percent of the sentences in Mark begin with καί. Thirty-three of the thirty-eight sentences that make up its first chapter begin with καί. About this, Rodney Decker said:
<blockquote>
It appears that Mark’s usage of καί as an unmarked sentence (and clause) connective is very similar to narrative books that I have examined in the LXX. Adjusted for length, the frequency of sentence-initial καί in Mark is very close to 1 Maccabees and 1 Chronicles . . . with Genesis and Joshua close behind.[1]
</blockquote>
<p>
Mark’s frequent use of καί is therefore a result of exposure to the LXX (probably reflecting Hebrew’s eponymous vav). It was not intentional; not asyndeton.
<p>
Another example of parataxis (which also results from the Hebrew conjunction vav) is its restoration in the English translation of Robert Alter’s <i>Five Books of Moses</i>. Since the KJV, English translation committees working in Old Testament books have used subordinate clauses for easier reading without consistent demands on the reader to supply connection. But, as Alter says in his introduction, parataxis reflects the Bible’s context in which the reader was asked to “establish precise connection between actions.” Eliding it, he continued, also ruins the effect of the language and creates “a kind of narrative arrhythmia.” “The artfulness of biblical parataxis is precisely in its refusal to spell out causal connections, to interpret the reported narrative data for us.”
<blockquote>
“Parataxis is the ordering of words in parallel clauses linked by ‘and,’ with very little syntactic subordination or the accompanying subordinate conjunctions such as ‘because,’ ‘although’ or ‘since’ that specify the connection between clauses. It creates ‘one beautifully uncoiling rhythmic sequence’ that ‘marches us steadily from one point to the next in the narrative sequence.’ In the Hebrew, parataxis is very much an artful vehicle, generating imposing cadenced sequences of parallel clauses and often exploiting the lack of causal explanation of the relation between clauses to create thought-provoking ambiguities.”[2]
</blockquote>
For the purpose of illustration, let me give two more examples. One from Ernest Hemingway. As a young man in Paris in the early 1920s, Hemmingway was influenced by the work of Paul Cezanne and Ezra Pound. Placing images and colors next to each other without explanation achieved an emotional response that Hemingway adopted. He liked the way parataxis allowed him to build impressions that would ultimately suggest a meaning without saying it. He could provoke emotion without explanation. Here is an example from an early story, "Big Two-Hearted River":
<blockquote>
“Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.”
</blockquote>
The fictional Nick Adams takes the reader on a ride through his consciousness of clipped sentences. Each one sits equally with the rest. And none of them overtly tell the reader anything about Nick's overall mood. And now, an example from the Old Testament, NRSV + LXX.
<blockquote>
Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. (Deut. 6.1-3 NRSV)
</blockquote>
<p>
<center>***</center></p>
<blockquote>
Καὶ αὗται αἱ ἐντολαὶ καὶ τὰ δικαιώματα καὶ τὰ κρίματα, ὅσα ἐνετείλατο κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν διδάξαι ὑμᾶς ποιεῖν οὕτως ἐν τῇ γῇ, εἰς ἣν ὑμεῖς εἰσπορεύεσθε ἐκεῖ κληρονομῆσαι αὐτήν, ἵνα φοβῆσθε κύριον τὸν θεὸν ὑμῶν φυλάσσεσθαι πάντα τὰ δικαιώματα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ, ὅσας ἐγὼ ἐντέλλομαί σοι σήμερον, σὺ καὶ οἱ υἱοί σου καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ τῶν υἱῶν σου πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας τῆς ζωῆς σου, ἵνα μακροημερεύσητε. καὶ ἄκουσον, Ισραηλ, καὶ φύλαξαι ποιεῖν, ὅπως εὖ σοι ᾖ καὶ ἵνα πληθυνθῆτε σφόδρα, καθάπερ ἐλάλησεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων σου δοῦναί σοι γῆν ῥέουσαν γάλα καὶ μέλι.
</blockquote>
<p>
It is difficult to see it in the NRSV, but plain enough in the Septuagint underneath; the text is one short, breathless clause after the next. Moses's oration builds on and on about itself. The effect is hypnotic.</p>
<p>
Contrast parataxis with hypotaxis. In hypotaxis, grammatical information abounds as sentences lengthen in complexity with subordinate clauses. Syntactical structure is intentional and "the logical relationships among sentences are explicitly rendered" (John Burt).</p>
<blockquote>
The subordinating style orders its components in relationships of causality (one event or state is caused by another), temporality (events and states are prior or subsequent to one another), and precedence (events and states are arranged in hierarchies of importance). 'It was the books I read in high school rather than those I was assigned in college that influenced the choices I find myself making today' -- two actions, one of which is prior to the other and has more significant effects that continue into the present.[3]
</blockquote>
<p>
Good writing is an intentional combination of parataxis and hypotaxis.</p>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
[1] Rodney Decker “Parataxis in Mark’s Gospel” https://ntresources.com/blog/?p=672 accessed 3/20/2022.<br>
[2] Everett Fox, “Robert Alter and the Art of Bible Translation,” <i>Expositions</i> 2:2 (2008): 231-281. Princeton University Press quoting Alter in Twitter on April 24, 2019. I also recommend reading chapter 1 from Robert Alter’s the <i>Art of Bible Translation</i>: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691189253-002/pdf<br>
[3] Stanley Fish, "How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One", 2011.
</p>
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-50449313456533346912022-03-03T18:37:00.003-05:002022-03-10T18:50:42.047-05:00Rhetorical Forms in the Bible: AsyndetonToday, I am going to talk about asyndeton. A. T. Robertson will get us started--from his <i>Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research</i>:
<blockquote>
The Greeks, especially in the literary style, felt the propriety of indicating the inner relation of the various independent sentences that composed a paragraph. This was not merely an artistic device, but a logical expression of coherence of thought. Particles like καί, δἐ, ἀλλά, γάρ, οὖν, δή etc., were very common in this connection. Demonstrative pronouns, adverbs, and even relative pronouns were also used for this purpose.
</blockquote>
<p>
What Robertson is saying is that good Greek is overt about how sentences join up; they use connectives to tell the reader or hearer how to put it together. In English, we do not use explicit connectors, but educated Greeks did. These many connectors supplied the reader or hearer with info about the writer/speaker's intentions.</p>
<p>
When a Greek sentence does NOT have an explicit connector, that is called asyndeton. Asyndeton is an unmarked connection.</p>
<p>
There is a hermeneutical principle that says, "Choice implies meaning." And therefore, when an author employs asyndeton, when an author does not include connectors and the information they represent, it means something. As Steven Runge says in his <i>Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament</i>: "The use of asyndeton indicates that the writer chose not to make a relation explicit. The relation must be gleaned from the context" (22).</p>
<p>
Think of it like seeing a young man and a young woman walking together in a bridal store. A quick glance says that there are no rings on fingers. So, there is some asyndeton going on here; connectors aren't there to give you info about their relationship. Nevertheless, in communication anyway, the assumption is that consecutive sentences relate. So, you could make the assumption that even though there is no explicit relationship between these two people (rings), the context still implies a relationship.</p>
<p>
So, asyndeton doesn't mean there is not a connection. It just means that the connection is implicit, not explicit. And, going back to literary information, an author may have reasons to prefer subtlety. "Good argumentation is not always clear. Asyndeton may allow the movement of the argument to be realized only after more of the story is heard, and then with the benefit of gaining a better hearing." An author might even intentionally throw down asyndeton to disrupt the flow and call attention to the next thing coming in his argument.</p>
<p>
Going back to our young couple--there could be no connection at all. These two people may be in the same place for different reasons altogether. There is always that possibility. Now, let's talk about that lovely early Christian sermon, probably given in the Jerusalem church, James.</p>
<p>
James displays a significant use of asyndeton. As the speaker moves from idea to idea, the resulting text is thick with it. Scholars often made the mistake of assuming that such rampant asyndeton meant rampant discontinuity. But not so fast! Asyndeton can mean discontinuity--as with our couple who isn't a couple, but it can also mean implied cohesion or even such tight cohesion that there is no need for explicit connection. Interpreting asyndeton means interpreting along a continuum from tight connection to no connection. The exegete has to rely on contextual clues.</p>
<p>
Indeed, authors, such as those of the NT, may employ asyndeton differently according to their own style. Here is Stephen Levinson from <i>Discourse Features of New Testament Greek</i>:</p>
<blockquote>
The ways in which καὶ and δὲ are used in John’s Gospel do not correspond exactly with how they are employed in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts. This is because two other forms of linkage are employed in John’s Gospel in contexts in which καὶ and δὲ would have occurred had the material been written in the style of the Synoptics. One of them is asyndeton (the absence of a conjunction), which is John’s default means of conjoining sentences (Poythress 1984:331), instead of καὶ. John’s other common marker of linkage is ὅτι; he uses it as a low-level development marker in certain contexts in which the Synoptics and Acts use δὲ. (81-82)
</blockquote>
<p>
Therefore, as choice implies meaning, close reading and attention is always required of the exegete.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-86589669953697822382022-03-03T18:32:00.003-05:002022-03-17T17:14:59.991-04:00Rhetorical Forms in the Bible: Anaphora I'm going to be digging into this rhetorical term anaphora. Looking at the new testament through ancient rhetoric is all the rage these days, btw. Why? Because the study and practice of rhetoric was the Minecraft Redstone goodness of the ancient world. If you could understand language, much less read and write, you absorbed rhetorical forms. And those forms would shape you. So, for example, scholars can look at the structure of Galatians against rhetorical forms to see if the way material is being presented conforms to established structures, structures that would help us understand what he meant to highlight and how.
<p>
I dipped my (amateurish -- because this fad came in after my formal schooling) toe into this while doing the initial blogpost on an "example of how to do exegesis" series I have been writing using Mark 12, the story of the <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2019/09/exegeting-widows-mite-first-look-at.html">widow's mite</a>. That last bit that Jesus says "This widow has put in more than the others because while they gave of their plenty she gave all she has." That rhetorical device is called syncrisis, which is a subset of a rhetorical form called an encomium, which is a public praise used to praise (or shame) someone in order to invite public emulation (or avoidance). Syncrisis is when this is done in a comparative way. Syncrisis tweaks the encomium. Not only does it praise or shame, but it highlights a persons worth (or demerit) to society.</p>
<p>
So, what I am saying is that Jesus himself is employing rhetorical devices. He is using syncrisis to not only shame one group and to praise another, but to further comment upon their value to society. In this case, the widow is praised as someone not only to be emulated but also to be seen as far more valuable to her community despite her lack than those with means who gave from their plenty. It is a complete upset of even a pious understanding of who was valuable and who was not.</p>
<p>
How did you do this? Did you study ancient rhetoric? No. I saw Jesus using some kind of structure. I found a page of ancient rhetorical forms online. And I just read them until I found one that fit. Was it correct? Well, no one is testing me. Jesus is obviously employing some kind of rhetorical structure. Why not one well-understood in the entire ancient world?</p>
<p>
So, anyway, anaphora. This is a compound Greek noun composed of the prefix ανα (before) and φορειν (to carry). "Anaphora is a rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. By building toward a climax, anaphora can create a strong emotional effect." Here is a short article about it in reference to the rhetorical stylings of <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/anaphora-figure-of-speech-1689092">Martin Luther King Jr.</a> Here are entries about anaphora in the <a href="https://classic.net.bible.org/lexicon.php?word=anaphora">Net Bible</a> and in the <i><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Biblical_Criticism/ooGh9TTe0jUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=anaphora+in+biblical+greek&pg=PA7&printsec=frontcover">Handbook of Biblical Criticism</a></i>. I also like this <a href="https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-anaphora">definition and video</a> from Oregon State University.</p>
<p>
Anaphora is seen directly in Jesus's Beautitudes 'blessed are . . . blessed are . . . ." And, finally, George Kennedy in New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984) observes that the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a splendid example of anaphora, (“By faith…By faith…By faith…By faith…”). This is not only pleasing to the eye and ear, but results in a progressive building of rhetorical “tension” and at last culminates in a satisfying resolution (“because God has provided something better for us”).
<p>
There is also another use of anaphora. Here is the NET Bible:</p>
<blockquote>
2. the use of a substitute word, such as a pronoun, in reference to a something already mentioned in a discourse; also, the relation between the substitute word and its antecedent. It is contrasted with cataphora, the use of a pronoun for a word or topic not yet mentioned. Thus, in the sentence “John was tall but he was not very heavy,” the “he” is an anaphora for John, or an anaphoric reference to John.
</blockquote>
<p>
The<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_(linguistics)"> Wikipedia</a> entry on Anaphora in its linguistic use is quite detailed on this and worth a read. Lovers of the pronoun will already appreciate anaphora, because a preposition refers back to the previous proper noun as its antecedent. Thus, our pronoun is an anaphor and it is functioning anaphorically.</p>
tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-90607433823123446332022-02-15T14:36:00.019-05:002022-11-29T15:25:06.097-05:00Amy Beach's 10 Commandments for Young ComposersI am a sucker for lists, and especially for lists made by creative masters about how to approach their art. Such lists look beyond their subject into the deeper shape of human mastery itself.
This list was written by fin de siècle American composer Amy Beach. I am going to annotate it, however, placing her items in bold above my own glosses. As much as I love music, what I am really after is how theology should be done as a craft. Theologians, beholden as they are to the academy of today, no longer apprentice their work. The craft of theology is simply not done. And so, therefore, it has to be recovered from the arts that do.
<p>
<center>~~~</center>
<p>
<b>1. Spare neither time nor strength in the perfecting of the technique of composition, beginning with the simplest rudiments. Your musical material must be perfectly under control as is language in the case of a writer of literature. One must never be compelled to pause in the development of an idea through lack of knowledge of spelling or grammar.</b></p>
<p>
Be about the business of your craft. Don't start by writing a systematic theology. Start at the level of your control and work from there. Start at a place where your biography and curiosity meet at the edge of what you know. Jürgen Moltmann's <i>Doktorvater</i> advice to the young Miroslav Volf was to pick hard problems. Work from the top of your intelligence, but do not give up control.</p>
<p>
<b>2. Begin with small things--ideas that can be expressed in small form.</b></p>
<p>
I turn to Moltmann again, whose work first introduced me to this truth: theology is a biographical discipline. Your story is your approach and your goal. Do not deny your history anymore than you would deny the historicity of your sources or the tools of historiography itself. Discover the questions of your life. Find <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2005/12/scrap-of-notes-from-april-2005.html">your</a> <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2014/11/augustines-de-magistro-suggests-your.html">project</a> is how I've said this in the <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2005/09/chipping-out-personal-project-bare.html">past</a>. And, screw the academy, be honest about it. Doesn't Augustine do as much in the <i>Confessions</i>?</p>
<p>
A great deal of theology--most of it--has been occasional. The New Testament itself is so. So-called systematic theology is just a mirage. Origen wrote <i>First Principles</i> when one human mind might know everything. The systematics that came later are products of tradition--we can see that--and products of their time. Aquinas's summas are governed by a purpose. So be ok with your own. Whatever makes theology in you, that is enough.</p>
<p>
<b>3. Study how best to develop all the possibilites of a small form. A small gem may be just as brilliantly cut as one weighing many carats.</b></p>
<p>
Respect the theology that you have enough to be serious about it. Use the best grammar and rhetoric you have to speak clearly and memorably, even beautifully. You are not cutting a gemstone with tools. You are cutting (interrogating) your idea with criticism, with varied contexts, with curiosity and even skepticism until what is left is as true a form as you can make.</p>
<p>
<b>4. Learn to employ as much variety in form as possible. Above all things, avoid becoming stereotyped in the expression of melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic ideas.</b></p>
<p>In his book <i>The Intellectual Life</i>, A. G. Sertillanges talks about what to read before you begin writing. Consider your influences. Ask what it is about the theology you love to read that makes you want to write. What inspires you and what deflates you and why? Discover your lights. Karl Barth wrote under the gaze of John Calvin, Amadeus Mozart, and before Matthias Grünewald's central panel of the Isenheim altarpiece.</p>
<p>Consider too the straightjacket of form and syntax brought on by the academy. Writing no one reads. Speaking no one listens to. So much technical language and so little life. One may have to step to that meter, but there are other genres. Theology lives in the praise of many tongues. The unseen gravity here is money and the need to make a living or perhaps some idea that writing theology will make one famous. The former makes sense; the latter not so much. In my opinion, neither of those reasons should figure in to the occasion of reading and writing theology. What matters is the desire to do the work. What matters is the doing itself. Be like those cathedral artisans who drew in the highest ceilings hidden figures meant for the pleasure of God alone.</p>
<p>
<b>5. Subject yourself to endless labor in the analysis of works by the old masters, especially using, as illustration for the form upon which you are now engaged, a master's work in the same form. There is no better way to learn how to write a fugue than dissecting one by Bach, preferably one from "The Well-Tempered Clavichord."</b></p>
<p>To do theology is to participate in a confessional tradition. No question or problem is unique to you. There is a moment where a Christian realizes he or she stands in the dim center of a giant cathedral. The body feels the immensity of the house and the ears take in its labyrinth. The work is to explore and learn the house of your people. It is your house, not the house of a stranger. But you grow like a ward into maturity. To do theology is to grow into maturity. Theologians are explorers. What are libraries but maps of charted (or uncharted) territory?</p>
<p>
Find a <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2011/02/get-sensei-q.html">master</a> in the house and begin your acquaintance. A theologian I know devotes each year to a one contemporary and one classic theologian. If there is no better way to learn to write a fugue than to dissect one by Bach, then go and dissect Athanasius's <i>De Incarnatione</i> or Anselm's <i>Cur Deus Homo</i>. Dissect arguments. See how ideas move together. Choose theologians who are working on the problems you are working on.</p>
<p>
<b>6. Begin early to study the scores of stringed quartet music by Haydn and Mozart and the early Beethoven. It is well to select one work and subject it to the most careful analysis, studying it until it is learned by heart.</b></p>
<p>
Begin early. Do not get bogged down in secondary material. The best theology is held away from those who need it most. Don't read about Luther, read Luther. Don't read about Gustavo Gutiérrez, go read him. Begin early. "Stop throat clearing," as a friend would say. Don't wait until you can understand. Begin.</p>
<p>It is well to select one work. Every theologian is best known for a few works. Even Augustine may be limited to the <i>Civitas Dei</i>, the <i>Confessionis</i>, <i>De Trinitate</i>, and perhaps <i>De Doctrina Christiana</i>. Most do not have near that many, and all circle around a handful of ideas. Go read sermons. Sermons are a genre in which the author is trying to be as clear and concise and as interesting as possible. We do not read enough sermons.</p>
<p>
<b>7. Use every possible opportunity to hear a good stringed quartet, if possible at rehearsals, as well as at concerts. Take a score of the composition and study it while it is being played.</b></p>
<p>Luther famously said that a theologian is made by three things: <i>Oratio</i> (prayer), <i>Meditatio</i> (study and esp. of scripture), and <i>Tentatio</i> (failure, angst, distress, and suffering--what is called <i><a href="https://lutheranreformation.org/theology/tentatio/">Anfechtung</a></i>). With Luther, I believe that in order to theology as a craft, we must be intent about our pursuit of Jesus. The prayer closet is akin to the practice room; oratio as contemplatio. But let me turn this outward as well: I believe that craft requires some public demonstration of one's work, whether by preaching or publication or in some other method.[1] Next, study. Where as before there was the business of your cell, now get to your carroll. You are never too old to use a highlighter, a reference book, a lectionary, a whiteboard. These are the tools of the trade. I do not think temptatio needs explanation; theology is a fruit theodicy begets. But, also, we do theology in the play of the thing. We read and write in the middle of our life and within the lives of the people and communities around us. Pay attention to the play.</p>
<p>Karl Barth is rumored to have said, Pray with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Theology is made better by being well informed not only by sacred but by secular history and by the book of nature as a whole. Do not shun the sciences, the marketplace, or the judge's bench.</p>
<p>At rehearsals as well as concerts. If possible, join societies and attend conferences. Go to where theology is being done. And go to church; theology is done there every Sunday. If you can, participate. Share your work. If no one gives rehearsals and concerts, give one. "The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing matters except sitting down every day and trying."[2]</p>
<p>
<b>8. Hear as much choral music as possible. The study of voice writing, as illustrated in the master works. Is of the greatest importance.</b></p>
<p>
Know your confessional tradition. Do not be ignorant about the tradition in which you worship. Learn everything you can about it. And if you cannot abide what you learn, go where you can. Liturgy is theology's muse. Find a community where your voice can be lifted up, and where other voices lift yours up in praise to Jesus.</p>
<p>
<b>9. The crowning glory of music study is familiarity with the master works in symphony, played by a fine, modern symphony orchestra. Carry into the study of symphonic composition the same thoroughness with which you have analyzed works for the piano, stringed quartet and chorus, beginning with the simpler and earlier composers.</b></p>
<p>
As you grow in understanding and maturity, you will be able to take on more. Aquinas's Summa. Barth's <i>Kirche Dogmatik</i>. Hegel's <i>Phänomenologie des Geistes</i>. Mastery of the craft is firsthand knowledge of the greats. There is no shortcut.</p>
<p>
<b>
10. Remember that technique is valuable only as a means to an end. You must first have something to say--something which demands expression from the depths of your soul. If you feel deeply and know how to express what you feel, you make others feel.</b></p>
<p>Hans Urs von Balthasar said that his theology was a kneeling theology. Luther devoted himself to a theology of the cross. Those seeking to do theology should carefully weigh Paul's words of 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.That which is not worship is pride. And avoid avarice.</p>
<blockquote>
Sacred theology is not a word to be lightly taken upon our lips. Theology is a very human business, a craft, and sometimes an art. In the last analysis it is always ambivalent. It can be sacred theology or diabolical theology. That depends upon the hands and hearts which further it. But which of the two it is cannot necessarily be seen by the fact that in one case it is orthodox and in another heretical. I don't believe that God is a fussy faultfinder in dealing with theological ideas. He who provides forgiveness for a sinful life will also surely be a generous judge of theological reflections. Even an orthodox theologian can be spiritually dead, while perhaps a heretic crawls on forbidden bypaths to the sources of life. How all-important it is that a vigorous spiritual life, in close association with the Holy Scriptures and in the midst of the Christian community, be maintained as a background to theological work. ~ Helmut Theilicke</blockquote>
<p>
Also:</p>
<blockquote>
"For the young Orwell, the world as it was made no sense. His upbringing at Eton and work in the Imperial Burmese Police jarred so horribly with what he saw, and felt, that he spent the rest of his life in the gaps, trying to explain them. This led inexorably to a political philosophy. But, as an abnormally acute looker, he found he had to change his whole way of life to see what mattered and in order to write honestly about it.
<p>
"Decades later, John Berger went through the same kind of transformation. A keen young painter, he came to wonder what the point of art was, in an age facing nuclear annihilation. Growing up in the crucible of modern British patriotism, his father a war hero, learning his craft during the London Blitz, gifted and lettered, he found he had to change his life, to live with other kinds of people – Haute-Savoie peasants above all – in order to make sense of the world." ~ Andrew Marr for "New Statesmen"</p></blockquote>
<p>
__________</p>
<p>
[1] "The amateur . . . does not expose himself to judgment in the real world. If we show our poem to or friend and our friend says, 'It's wonderful, I love it,' that's not real-world feedback, that's our friend being nice to us. Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it's for failure." (Stephen Pressfield, <i>The War of Art</i> (New York: NY. Black Irish Entertainment, 2002), 71)</p>
<p>
[2] Ibid., 108.tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-59421066688191654602022-02-01T16:58:00.005-05:002022-02-01T16:59:46.536-05:00Science Pushes Back TheodicyGeology and the fossil record continue to push on our understanding of origins. In this case, it is the historicity or nature of the fall.
<p>
In a <a href="https://christianscholars.com/guest-post-evolutionary-theodicies-humility-and-hope/">post</a> on <i>Christian Scholars Review</i>, Ryan Bebe laid out the territory as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
Given that the fossil record demonstrates eons of animal death and predation before the advent of humanity, most authors recognized the difficulty of maintaining the classical cosmic Fall as an explanation for the presence of animal death in our world.<br>
<br>
Yet, some thinkers explored the possibility of retroactive or angelic Falls to account the life and death we see in nature. Others deemed that these aspects of the living world are necessary for the existence of some other good—pain being necessary for simple self-preservation, for example—or because a natural world with evolutionary pain and suffering might be the only way to bring about moral, sentient beings like humans. Some scholars attempted to reconsider specific attributes that have been ascribed to God—his love, power, and activity—in fairly radical ways, while others looked to kenosis as an explanation for why God might voluntarily limit himself in terms of how he interacts with the world.<br>
<br>
Still other thinkers focused on the value that suffering can have or the promise of eschatological redemption, while some even insisted that there really isn’t even a problem here, because animals may lack the neurological capacity to suffer, even if they can experience some form of pain.
</blockquote>
<p>
In other words, animal suffering has become the locus for discussion about the rightness or wrongness of suffering in general. It has become the locus of debates around theodicy, predating Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor by many hundreds of thousands of years.</p>
<p>
Works cited by Bebe are: Bethany Sollereder, <i>God, Suffering, and Animal Cruelty</i>; Christopher Southgate, <i>The Groaning of Creation</i>; Michael Murray, <i>Nature Red in Tooth and Claw</i>.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-84652535142783883882021-09-27T18:46:00.012-04:002022-05-09T18:14:17.541-04:00Methods I Use to Jumpstart Creative ThinkingOver the years, there are a couple of techniques I've used to kick my thinking over into different lanes, which is my definition of creativity. There is nothing new under the sun, so no one is truly creative in the novum sense. What we are creative about is mixing up what is already there. The demands of daily life, of limited resources, and of mediocre expectations combine to keep us thinking safely in the ruts that work. (They may not be optimal, but they work.) Creativity runs outside the lines. Here are a few ways of making that happen, in no particular order:
<p>
<strong><i>Adjust your abstraction.</i></strong> You can take anything and adjust between concreteness/quiddity and abstraction. These are called levels of construal, where concrete is low construal and metaphysics is high construal. Picking up crafts for your kid's Sunday School class is low construal. Carrying on the pedagogical tasks of instructing the young in the faith is high construal. The same act can be viewed along either, but high construal provides a motivation and an awareness of purpose that low construal does not, and low construal carries the energy of movement and activity in a way that high construal does not. So, adjust your abstraction.
<p>
<strong><i>You already know.</i></strong> (<i>Das weisst du doch!</i>) Ninety-nine percent of the time, we do not express or act or communicate or own-up-to what we already know. My wife calls this "working at the top of your intelligence." That is true, but it isn't all of it. We are always playing games like we don't know things when we do. We just do not want to be honest about whatever it is. Just today, for example, I was in a meeting and someone suggested we look into whether shorter marketing copy is better. We already know that. The paper we need to research. The repair we need to make. The question we need to ask so-and-so. Often, we already know. We can already write that paper, make that repair, and we already know what so-and-so would say. We just are afraid to act. You already know what to do. You already know what you want to do. You have it already mapped out, listed out, and sorted in your head. You are just afraid to admit it for some reason.
<p>
A friend of mine has another way of putting this. He says we need to learn to call experts. And by this he doesn't mean other people, but ourselves. He tells the story about a motorcycle repair he was doing, and he could not get something to work. So, he stepped back and imagined that he was a motorcycle repair expert who had been called in. He looked at the bike in front of him through the imaginary eyes of this expert, and he was able to make the repair. He already knew how to do it, but he needed to find a way to unlock that and act. I think of him sometimes and tell myself, "Ok, take the next hour and act like you are brilliant."
<p>
<strong><i>Trace the margins and find the best solution.</i></strong> Whatever a problem is, someone else in some other field of humanity (or nature itself) has already found an elegant solution. You think that because you are working in a new technology or because your problem is complex that this cannot be the case, but I assure you it is. There are only a handful of real problems. Like Plato's ideas, they infest nearly everything. Likewise, there are only twenty years worth of problems and these just get recycled over and over again in every field and endeavor. So, whatever it is that you are working on, abstract out the problem so that only the bones of the outline are there. Then, when you have simplified it so that it is almost a template or a shape, like a cut-out moon or octagon or star, look around and see if that pattern exists in other fields. I especially look to fields that have been around for thousands of years. Ask farmers and fishermen, ask weavers and cooks and storytellers and dancers. Ask the insects in the yard or the trees growing beside the walls. There is a good chance that if you will seek and wait, you'll find as elegant a solution as any you would have come up with after expensive trial-and-error.</p>
<p>
Incidentally, this inability to discover new problems is frustrating and sad. Most people think there are a lot of problems, but there aren't. When you investigate the coolest programming language or scientific discoveries, they are mostly moving pieces around on the same board but with different jargon. Most businesses talk like they want to be innovative--they don't. Most systems talk a good talk, but they like things the way they are. Real experimentation is alien to human homeostasis along every dimension. We kill prophets and ridicule artists in their lifetimes. Most of the time, I just let myself sleep in the ebb and flow. But sometimes, I wake up. I feel the infinite possibilities of things shimmering underneath every atom and second. And I hunger to get with others and tackle creative problems. But I do not know who these others are, and I do not know what those problems could be. And so, befuddled and unable to act practically from my temporary lucidity, I am sad for a bit, and then it passes. I suspect the problem is a class problem, and that were I not working-class (basically), I might know what to do or have the means to do or at least to stay in that place until I do know what to do. But I don't and it is best to get on with things.</p>
<p>
<strong><i>Get in front of a whiteboard (or whatever does the same).</i></strong> There is something about standing there with a marker in your hand and writing that opens up the mind. Wrestle in a different medium. Get your muscles involved. Muscles have memory. They can work problems out. The anecdotal and experimental data on walking and thinking is legion. Let your body help.</p>
<p>
<strong><i>Sit with it.</i></strong> People do not appreciate the value of simply sitting with a problem. Bundle it up in the front of your head, and then toss it to the back and let your subconcious masticate on it for a while. Get some good sleep. Go about your life. But, be ready. When your subconscious is done, it will throw back some kind of an answer, and you'd better be prepared to record it somehow. Pull the car over. Record it on your phone. Borrow a pen in a restaurant. Whatever. And get it all out because it will not make sense to you partially when you come back and look at it in the morning. You have to get it all out--every weird and funny idea about it, because only the whole thing has value. And then, honestly, it may only be ridiculous, but it may not be. It is the subconscious after all. What can you expect!</p>
<p>
<strong><i>Throw Out the Easy Stuff.</i></strong> When considering any real problem, the first few solutions you think of are probably junk. Where solutions are easy, there are no problems. You obviously have a problem, so distrust easy solutions.</p>
<p>
<strong><i>Get clear on details.</i></strong> Building from the last point, quick fixes that pop easily to mind or when you are tempted to wonder why people don't just solve using x because isn't it so obvious are signs you need to dig into the details. Creativity requires a clear grasp of the details. Creativity is not an escape from reality; it is a different way of framing what is there. Get curious about everything. The process of acquiring insight stirs up curiosity. Sometimes, though, you'll need to stir the pot with willpower. If your curiosity fails, come at it a new way. But ride that curiosity to clarity.</p>
<p>
<strong><i>Go Fish in the Desert.</i></strong> Try applying your hypothesis to an unrelated example. Have fun blowing it up and taking it apart. Take something away; discover what is necessary and what is not. Sometimes changing the color of the background makes things pop.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-77840109820001065982021-08-13T18:38:00.042-04:002022-05-09T18:24:44.873-04:00What is the Gospel?What is the gospel? I'm not sure I know. And though I ask as an individual, I but form my lips around the question of others before me. And their answers and insights are offered back again.
<p>
We pick out constellations in the stars and name them. But astronomy tells us those shapes represent no actual relations. The stars of Orion's belt are separated by light years of empty space. And a September moon to us is far bigger and brighter than the Andromeda galaxy behind it.</p>
<p>
When we decide to look beyond the constellations of the way we define the gospel and begin trying to see it as it is in the universe of scripture, the change is no less drastic. I expect we will end up knowing far more than we did. But the gospel we started with may look far, far different in the end. That is what is happening to me.[1]</p>
<p>
These were my astronomers. I took a course in the minor prophets from Walter Kaiser and was changed by the encounter. I studied Galatians under T. David Gordon. Gordon was the first professor I ever met who embraced the New Perspective on Paul. Greg Beale introduced me to the profound and intimate relationship between the New Testament and the Old. N. T. Wright helped those seeds grow, as did Michael Heiser and Carmen Imes. And Juergen Moltmann and Johannes Metz made me see that eschatology is fundamentally political and the gospel is fundamentally political theology. The gospel is a political theology if nothing else. And if it is not political theology, it is not the gospel. Political theology is thinking about scripture that begins, is shaped by, and is applied to communities of purpose. I specify purpose because these communities are working together to achieve real ends, and this means that there is a need for theology, there is a need for the gospel. Perhaps it is impossible to have a community without some sort of purpose. (I do not call crowds communities, but mobs rudely are.)</p>
<p>
<h2>It is not American Individualism</h2>
<p>
I used to understand the gospel as an appeal to the individual to "Save yourself from this corrupt generation" (Acts 2:40 NRSV). You confessed, believed, and were baptized. You got saved and belonged thereafter to God. This is not untrue, but it is uncontextual.</p>
<blockquote>
When a collection of beliefs is lifted out of actual human ways of being, they cannot be lived or practiced but only assented to. Such a cerebral anthropology has little of incarnational, communal Christianity in it.~ C. Humphry</blockquote>
<p>
<h2>It is not Classic Liberalism</h2>
<p>
Theologian Roger Olson defines classic liberal theology as "theology centered around symbolic realism-—Christianity mostly cut off from history except for transforming symbols such as the cross and resurrection and Parousia. . . Christianity is largely reduced to spiritual formation and social transformation."[2]
<p>
Note this bit from a recent piece about conservative psychologist Jordan Peterson in the <i>New Statesman</i>, "Peterson said to me that religion is a feeling or experience rather than a statement about the existence of God. Religion manifests in the deep sense of awe and the infinite one might experience when reading literature or gazing upon a sunset, he said. He thought that technically there was no difference between great literature and religious experience. If religion is about deep biological experience, couldn’t you say that sex is religious, too? 'It should be, but it depends on how well it’s done,' he said."[3]
<p>
<h2>So What is It?</h2>
<p>
<h4>The gospel is necessarily political faith, hope, and love</h4>
<p>
Amos 5 </p>
<p>
Part of the original Christian message was a radical revaluation of Israel’s legal and prophetic tradition and a thoroughgoing denunciation of the power of Rome and all other empires.
Flat things exist on two dimensions. And I, too, am learning to think differently in two ways. One is to fix New Testament language about salvation deeply into its Old Testament context. The other is to understand it in its ecclesial setting and not through the lense of American individualism. I started with a pseudo-Reformational framework sucked through the straw of a me-and-Jesus vertical whose horizontal was only transactional: save the lost. This cannot be correct. The New Testament does not alter so greatly that one cannot talk about an Old Testament church. If anything, the social ethics central to Old Testament piety are not erased by the New but highlighted with eschatological fire.</p>
<p>
It is necessary to understand New Testament things within their Old Testament wineskins. So, for example, baptism is circumcision. Missions is the regathering of the lost ten tribes back to the mountain of God. Good works is Torah keeping. Christians are renewed priests in Jesus's living temple. What is salvation, then? Is it an ethical change, like repentance; a change of direction toward the right way? Is it an ontological change from one kind of being into another kind of being? Or is it a covenant marker: one goes from being a pagan outside of the covenant community to which God has made promises to being a member in that community. That community has always been there. Its covenant markers have simply enlarged to include Gentiles. The promise to this community is the eternal, living Spirit. The fire of Sinai only descended on the mountain and on Moses. At Pentecost, each believer became a little Sinai upon whom the glory came to rest. The fire burned inside the living tree of the people of God, and they did not burn up.</p>
<p>
<h4>The gospel is necessarily good news for matter and our bodies</h4>
<p>
In an October 27, 2020, podcast of "OnScript," Dr. Esau McCaulley, being interviewed about his book <i>Reading While Black</i> (IVP Academic, 2020), concluded his interview with a discussion about the misshapen priorities which govern the fields of New Testament and Pauline Studies. The emphases of the Protestant Reformation dictate what is considered of primary importance in these fields. This means that a brilliant book on, say, Paul's pneumatology will not be considered a brilliant book on Paul in the same way that a book on grace will, such as John Barclay's <i>Paul and the Gift</i> (Eerdmans 2015). Similarly, the best book on Hebrews ever written will not be called the best New Testament book. The academy privileges certain topics and downplays others. Works on community, eschatology, the Trinity, etc. just cannot be valued in the same way by the academy as, say, a work on Galatians.[4] McCaulley continues:
<blockquote>
"Here's a question, Biblical scholars: How do we never talk about policing in our scholarship, when black people have been talking about policing for a hundred fifty years! Why don't we talk about it? What I'm saying is that we have to do better in the things that we center. And there's a reason why this is all masculine, right? It is all masculine in the sense that when you look at the kinds of things that our female scholars--and I'm not saying that female scholars do not write about grace--but look at their interests and look at the things that they write about, and do we consider those things worthy in their own right? . . . [Interviewer Dru Johnson: "You can argue infinitely about it in etheral space, and it never has to get grounded in a body. You can talk about how it comes down to a body--"] See. And this is the question . . . we are talking about New Testament scholarship more broadly. It is a manifestation of privilege to argue for over two hundred years about how we should think about something and not, while at the same time, ignoring so many issues in the Biblical text that touches on the lived experience of oppressed peoples. . . . [Is justification] the only thing?"[5]</blockquote>
<p>
<h4>The gospel is necessarily good news for the bodies of others, individually and corporately, human and otherwise.</h4>
<p>
I think of Howard Thurman's poem, "The Work of Christmas"--</p>
<p>
When the song of the angels is stilled,<br>
When the star in the sky is gone,<br>
When the kings and the princes are home,<br>
When the shepherds are back with their flock,<br>
The work of Christmas begins:<br>
To find the lost,<br>
To heal the broken,<br>
To feed the hungry,<br>
To release the prisoner,<br>
To rebuild the nations,<br>
To bring peace among brothers,<br>
To make music in the heart.</p>
<p>
Or consider the Christology of John Keble's hymn "Blessed Are the Pure in Heart"<br>
The Lord, who left the sky<br>
our life and peace to bring<br>
to dwell in lowliness with us,<br>
our pattern and our king.</p>
<p>
<h4>The gospel will simultaneously and necessarily include the horizontal and the vertical</h4>
<p>
<h4>The gospel is how Jesus is</h4>
<p>
<i>More later</i>
</p>
<p>
1. To see the extent of this change, let me copy here a note I made a few months ago in response to a question from one of my kids: "What is God doing now?" I told them, "God is holding the cosmos in being and directing it toward his desired purpose: to bring all things under the rule of Jesus. Therefore, having installed Jesus on the everlasting throne of David, the Father has sent the Spirit who, through the church, his priestly nation, is regathering the ten lost tribes from the nations (which is the mission work of the New Testament.) This regathering will reach its climax in the return of Jesus. Meanwhile, the preaching of the church is putting the Principalities and Powers on notice that their pagan tyranny is over. And the reborn people of the church are displaying the image of God to all creation. The Spirit sanctifies the church and gifts it for participation in the regathering and for displaying to all who God is. The church prays by the Spirit for God to hallow his name, bring in his kingdom, and enact his will in its worldwide situation, and it cooperates with him by grace in the doing of it.</p>
<p>
[2] Roger Olson, "What is 'Progressive Christianity" https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2021/11/what-is-progressive-christianity/ accessed 11/19/2021.</p>
<p>
[3] Freddie Hayward, "Why do students still want Jordan Peterson to tell them how to live?" The New Statesman. UK ed. 1 December 2021. https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2021/12/why-do-students-still-want-jordan-peterson-to-tell-them-how-to-live accessed 12/3/2021.</p>
<p>
[4] This is Thomas Kuhn's paradigmatic framework from the <i>Structure of Scientific Revolutions</i> applied in the humanities. Just as science operates within sets of beliefs called paradigms which are passively enforced by a system of social and financial rewards and punishments. Scientific research, then, is "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education" (UCP. 1962, 5).)
</p>
<p>
[5] OnScript podcast "Esau McCaulley -- Reading While Black" aired October 27, 2020. Accessed November 30, 2021. https://onscript.study/podcast/esau-mccaulley-reading-while-black/.</p>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11511673.post-46557278809182041002021-07-16T23:52:00.122-04:002021-10-22T18:17:43.704-04:00A letter to my children on datingJuly 30, 2019<br>
Dear K and C,
<p>
Sometimes there are topics which require time, order, and right circumstance. Because that so rarely happens, I have decided to give this format a try. The topic on my mind is courtship, dating. I want to give you the best foundation for doing this that I can. The reason why is not because I think either of you are making foolish choices in this area. It is because I want you to know that I have something to say about this very important part of your lives. Or, really, that God has good things to say about it which are far more useful and nuanced than the "don't have sex before marriage" monodrone that blares from the churches. Yes, we live in a sex-saturated culture; you know more about sex and sexuality than many adults did a generation ago. Where we stick to the science, we do well, but what we find mostly are consumer attitudes of self-indulgence. So many are adrift and hurt when it comes to love. Perhaps I can save you some trouble.</p>
<p>
<center><b>1.<br>
God is love, and in him we live and move and have our being.</b></center>
<p>
Just a guess, but most bits of advice on dating do not begin with the love of God. Odd, when you think about it. I'm not talking about the existence of God. If you wish to debate about the existence of God, we may as well debate the existence of the people you want to date in the first place. No. We begin together beholding the love of God. You see, everything we talk about--our hopes and questions, our bodies, our emotional and physical needs, the way that we turn from childhood and begin stepping forward into the future with others, the joy and satisfaction of being together with people in love--all of it is a love-gift of God. Not a distant, unknown God. Not an impersonal force. But a God who is involved with us. All the things I just listed, aren't they the topics we care most about? Our God, because he made us, made those things. And our God, because he lived as a human being among us with a family and friends and so on, knows all about them. And our God, because he has promised to renew the world, values those things. Love gets into the details. Love doesn't keep its distance, and anything that does is not love.</p>
<p>
This creating-knowing-promising love of God tells us that love is like a good conversation. It may begin in a lonely, scary place; the sexual chaos I mentioned earlier tells us we are a lonely people. The conversation may begin there. But as we give our attention and ourselves to another person, we get to know them. Should they become lifelong friends or a spouse, we will spend our lives enjoying that ever deepening talk. I am fortunate to have a handful of friends whom I have known for years--what a treasure! We see each other after a long absence, and we pick right up where we left off. Cultivate people like that in your life. Make the effort (love makes the effort). And I think you know that my wish when I was looking for a wife was to find someone I loved talking to and would enjoy talking to as much or more twenty years in as twenty minutes. God certainly blessed me there with your mom; talking with her is a highlight of every day. My point here is to say that love doesn't sit still, it moves toward what is beloved, and it doesn't stop at acquaintance but it numbers the hairs of one's head and plays the finest heartstring of the soul. We cannot talk about dating until we see it within the horizon of the love of God.
<p>
<center><b>2.<br>
Everyone is made in the image of God (the <i>imago Dei</i>) and worthy of respect.</b></center>
<p>
The relevant text is Genesis 1.27: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (NRSV). God is spirit, so this text does not mean that God made people to look like him. That is the way the Greek pagans thought--painting pictures of themselves on the sky and naming them gods and goddesses. The truth is the other way round. Our God communicates. He wants his creation to be ruled by regents who represent him, who speak as and for him, who govern and act as he does. Human beings are meant to represent him to creation. And creation, as it listens and looks to human beings, will know what its creator is like. Human beings are important and valuable, no matter their age, race, class, or sex because they--we--are made in the <a href="https://in-fraction.blogspot.com/2007/06/imago-dei-and-happy-life.html">image of God</a>.</p>
<p>
C. S. Lewis talked about the imago Dei when he said, "It is immortals whom we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit." Indeed, it is not immortality but image that should give us pause. It is God's very own.</p>
<p>
So, in our relationships with other human beings, we must recognize them as bearers of God's image and treat them accordingly--and they us.</p>
<p>
<center><b>3.<br>
God loves people, so love people</b></center>
<p>
A youth leader of mine once chimed, "You should never date anyone you wouldn't want to marry." All the adults within earshot agreed, and I did too, though I knew little about it. As I aged, I followed their advice, for I knew no better. Now I do. So let me amend this bit of folk wisdom because it is much too serious. It assumes that every date is a potential marriage invitation--which it is not. The world is full of funny, silly, thoughtful, shy, ecstatic, reserved, detailed, slovenly, color-coordinated, rustic, unusual, adorable people. How amazing is that! What riches are all around us. It is stupid to make every conversation ring with the overtones of choral matrimony, and people in real life do not make this mistake. When you begin working, you'll be around all kinds of people for hours and days at a time without the pressure of marriage. So do not be so serious or afraid. Get to know them! Learn how to value and appreciate all kinds of people. Youth is the time of exploration. Stoke your curiosity and meet all sorts of people, men and women. Be curious about them. Even go out with some of them. Your life will be far richer. And you will have an opportunity to practice loving your neighbors in ways small and great.</p>
<p>
<center><b>4.<br>
Practice hospitality.</b></center>
<p>
In 1981-82, a coworker of my dad's started a karate class in his home. His name was Bob, and he had two sons around my age. One was a band kid; the other was a greaser. My dad was at a time in his life where he was trying new things, and he decided he'd try karate. I came along too. We met in Bob's garage. It was filled with mats scattered everywhere on his smooth concrete floor. For the first year, we worked on how to stand properly and throw punches, and we did a lot of kicking. But eventually we started sparring--play fighting. "Today, we are going to begin with some sparring," someone would say. Next you know, you were blocking punches and trying to give as good as you got. Sparring was pretty handy. It proved why standing properly and other points of our training were necessary. There were also skills that could only be taught by sparring. Sparring prepared you for the real world. Think of it like practice.
<p>
People practice at anything they wish to do well. Even minor things like keeping good table manners at home, taking a few practice swings with a bat, or writing a rought draft before you start a final paper are forms of practice. Dating is also practice. You spend time with the person you are dating--taking walks, eating lunch, thinking about life, and so on. And, in so doing, you learn a great deal about yourself and them. This practice prepares you for acting well in the communities of your adulthood: in churches and businesses, in taking more of a role in your family, and, yes, for marriage and family life.</p>
<p>
Considering hospitality--most people hear the word hospitality and they think of hotels or dinner parties. Both do not equate to what Paul meant when he told the church in Rome to practice hospitality or what Peter meant when he taught Christians to be hospitable without complaining. Hospitality was an attitude of open service and sharing of what one had--even with strangers. It was a virtue highly prized all over the ancient world, Christian and pagan.</p>
<p>
The times I've seen it best practiced, it was done by those who planned before the need arose. A pastor in my youth opened his home on Sunday nights to grilled cheese sandwiches and talk. A couple at North Shore in MA always made enough food on Sunday and planned to invite visitors over for lunch. Hospitality is an intentional set of the heart. It puts coffee on and makes sure fresh sheets are on the bed. The people I think best of as I look back through my life are those who welcomed me.</p>
<p>
Dating is a form of hospitality. You spend your time and share your table with someone else. You receive them into your circles of friends and family as well as into the inner circles of your stories and hopes and ideas. You may even receive them into your heart. Whether you date the same person or different ones, the opportunity for setting the table is always there, and one should embrace it as a skill that can grow throughout life. Hospitality is a secret to deep and lifelong blessing.</p>
<p>
<center><b>5.<br>
Do not kill.</b></center>
<p>
The commandment not to kill, which sounds a note quite dissonant from hospitality, is ethical shorthand. Though it appears negative, like the other commandments, its meaning is largely positive. Consider a young mom who takes her children out to play at a local park. The sun shines in the blue sky. It is a warm day in late April. Green is the grass, and the kids like to run. "Don't go into the street!" she calls. And a little later, seeing her oldest is swinging very high in the air, she yells, "Do not go so high!" Is this young mom out to spoil their fun? Didn't she bring them to the park in the first place? No and yes: She wants her children to have a great time, but it would be exhausting for her to list everything they can do. More sensible is a short list of what they should not. A few quick boundaries and the rest is open to her kids' imaginations. So it is with the "shall nots" of the commandments. So, how does this help us read the sixth commandment in a way that gives us wisdom about human relationships?</p>
<p>
The commandment not to kill releases us to preserve, protect, and value the lives of others--not only with our bodies but with our words and our minds too. It is not enough to refrain from killing our neighbor. By neighbor I refer to Jesus's parable about being a good neighbor and to his summary of the Torah: to love God and to love your neighbor. Our friends are certainly our neighbors. Our enemies are too. We should take pains to keep them safe, valuing their lives as our own. This goes for our hearts as well. We must check our anger and bitterness because murder is but the outward fruit of an inward deed. "We are required faithfully to do what we can to defend the life of our neighbor; to promote whatever is good for him or her, to be vigilant in warding off harm, and should danger come, assist in removing it." (John Calvin)</p>
<p>
<center><b>6.<br>
Tell the truth.</b></center>
<p>
God tells the truth. "He is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). But our human hearts are shade and shadow. We spend a lifetime trying to understand others and ourselves. Part of the practice you take on with dating is learning how to live and tell the truth.</p>
<p>We tell small children that honesty is best, even if it means a little suffering. That is a good conclusion, but honesty can be hard to come by. What can be trusted? Emotions aren't always reliable. As Agatha Christie's great detective Miss Marple said, "One's feelings are not always reliable guides." Our inner selves rise and fall like the waves. C. S. Lewis has good things to say about the oscillating nature of the human inner life in <i>Mere Christianity</i> and <i>The Screwtape Letters</i>. Sometimes you will look hard for the truth but you cannot find it. In such cases, the search has to be enough. This is part of the practice, digging underneath hurt feelings or anger or whatever else to uncover what is really going on and learning how to communicate that clearly to your person, the imago you are with. You learn how to protect and value their life and not just your own. And when your compass gets spun--and it will--ask God for wisdom and go with the truth you have. As my dad used to say, "Live so you can look at yourself in the mirror."</p>
<p>
Because we were just talking about the commandment not to kill, I think now about the commandment not to bear false witness. The context of the commandment is the law court; don't lie on the stand and subvert justice. But think about it this way: without justice--without truth in law--society doesn't work. Community fails. People can't live together. It is the same in the microcosm of relationships. If people lie to each other and cannot trust each other, the community they make together is not going to work. On the other hand, if they speak honestly and come to trust each other, an intimacy can be forged that will not break beneath a lifetime's battering.</p>
<p><i>Be truthful with your time--and theirs</i></p>
<p>
Being in other's lives takes a significant amount of time. It is also hard to tell whether such time will be short or long. Do not overstay. Try not to waste people's time or your own from a refusal to accept the sweet and the bitter of living.</p>
<p><i>Be truthful with your words--and practice good listening skills</i></p>
<p>
Becoming a good listener might be one of the most important skills a human being can devote themselves to acquiring. I am a horrible listener, to my shame, and sometimes blame bad memory on what is lack of focus or care. But love calls us to attention. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in <i>Life Together</i>, "Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for [others] is learning to listen to them." So cherish friends and lovers who want to listen, and take time to listen to them. Good listening is part of hospitality.</p>
<p>
As with listening--both that I am terrible at it and that it is such an important part of human maturity, think about the words you use. Do not make promises lightly, if you can help it. And try to use the divine gift of language (λογος) for good and not evil.</p>
<p><i>Be truthful with your body--and theirs, contra gnosticism.</i></p>
<p>
Human beings have a bad habit of separating our bodies from our minds. Some of us give pride of place to our mental life and treat our body like a braying mule. Others let the body lead. We know we must value both, but the balance is difficult. Like handedness, all of us tend to one over the other, though they come as a pair.</p>
<p>
We love with our bodies and our minds. One does not happen without the other. The internet allows us to share our lives in real time with people all over the globe, but it is no substitute for really being there. Words and ideas are not enough. The body wants its part. We shake hands or hug friends. We kiss and caress close family and those we love. Even God who spoke the cosmos into existence, though he is more present everwhere than we are anywhere, became a human being for us. Love moves irresistably toward its beloved. We crave connection. We want to be with others.</p>
<p>
Therefore, in a lonely culture like ours, we should not be surprised that sex and sexuality blare from radio and screen. We should not be surprised that sex is used to sell everything, that cultures adopt all kinds of governing rituals around it, that the problems it creates make for the stories of literature and for whole disciplines of counseling and recovery. Sex is how we continue after death. And while we live, our loves move us to intimacy, and intimacy finds its apotheosis in sex. And we should not be surprised the our culture wants to possess the body and ignore the rest. And even the body it desires, and that we are told if not trained to desire, is a customized or idealized body, a body of marketing and advertising, not of life--a lie.
<p>
The body, with the mind, should be a keeper and expresser of truth. And what is sex but hospitality! What I am encouraging you to do is to own your whole self and be commited to living truthfully. Tell the truth. Look at the example God gives us. He tells us he loves us, yes, and we see his love most clearly expressed in the crucified body of the dying Jesus. Word and act together speak the same. This is what the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was talking about when he said, "Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed."</p>
<center><b>7.<br>
Forgiveness.</b></center>
<p>
Is it any surprise that forgiveness is such an important part of being with others? Poet and philosopher David Whyte wrote, "Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die." If this is true of friendship, it is certainly true of marriage. If our lives as disciples of Jesus are characterised by grace, should we expect our relationships to be perfect? Perhaps the story we are telling is a gospel.</p>
<center><b>8.<br>
Let it Shine.</b></center>
<p>
The gospel of Jesus informs all I have said. The summons of the gospel is the honest summons of the whole world to God's great feast. When we--when you--practice these truths, the light of God's character will shine out from you into the world. You might say that dating in this way is just a specific mode of living the Christian life. And if you say that, you are correct.</p>
<p>
I hope you will discover that the foundation sketched above will help you ask and answer particular questions in a wiser way. Wisdom is a small compass by which we can orienteer across wild and unknown landscapes. Perhaps my words will help you as you navigate to remember your creator in the days of your youth. And I hope they will bless you as well.</p>
<p>
----------</p>
<p>
<center><b>Epilogue: Diotima's Ladder</b></center>
<p>
In the <i>Symposium</i>, Socrates tells about a philosopher he met named Diotima. She was very wise, he said, and she described the quest of beautiful as rungs of a ladder. At the bottom are beautiful people and things all around us. But what calls us through bodies, things, and ideas, she said, is beauty itself. The philosopher must ascend in contemplation upward, rung by rung, to reach the real end of their desire for beauty, which is the form of beauty itself. Diotma's metaphor, though pagan, well describes God's summon to us as we age through friendship and courtship into marriage and parental maturity. Even as these things shape the steps of our outer lives, our inner life progresses through them inward toward the very origin of the beautiful, the true, and the good, which is the Triune God. Life will make saints of us if we choose. Love will lead us up the ladder by the ancient way of purgation, darkness, illumination, and union. Love will lead us through the veil of things into the joy of the living and ever-flowing love of the Triune persons. There is no gnosticism here, there are no secrets. But, like a secret garden, few care to see the door in the center of their daily living and go in even though every relationship they have points the way, though anyone may put their hand to the gate, though a welcome is posted right above for all to read,
<blockquote>
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”<br>
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”<br>
And let everyone who is thirsty come.<br>
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.</blockquote>tchittomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15603445266088083067noreply@blogger.com0