Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Kitchen Tools Gut Enlightenment
Okay, so this is old news. But how many of you have actually seen "Kitchen Stories," Bent Hamer's 2003 off-beat Norwegian comedy? That's what I thought. I, American Philistine that I am, saw it in Portland, OR, when it came out, and I just watched it again with my wife the other day. In my aspiringly cinephilic mind, there is no other film that so handily and winsomely eviscerates the inhuman Weltanshauung of the Enlightenment. And "Kitchen Stories" dismembers the Enlightenment precisely for its inhumanity, which is the aspect that I personally find most hateful.
As far as plot summary goes, the idea is that this 1950s Swedish home design outfit, after its success in mapping the traffic patterns of the Swedish housewife and developing an efficient kitchen, decides to send a team of observers to Norway to study bachelors. The bulk of the story dryly and wryly points up the ridiculousness and misanthropy of the self-described "positivism" of the company's approach to tabulating the movements of the Norwegians, and fleshes out the blooming humanity of the Swede and the Norwegian as they escape the chilly grip of scientific materialism, objective rationality, and deontological ethics.
Kitchen Stories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As far as plot summary goes, the idea is that this 1950s Swedish home design outfit, after its success in mapping the traffic patterns of the Swedish housewife and developing an efficient kitchen, decides to send a team of observers to Norway to study bachelors. The bulk of the story dryly and wryly points up the ridiculousness and misanthropy of the self-described "positivism" of the company's approach to tabulating the movements of the Norwegians, and fleshes out the blooming humanity of the Swede and the Norwegian as they escape the chilly grip of scientific materialism, objective rationality, and deontological ethics.
Kitchen Stories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monday, July 24, 2006
I'm Not in a Declarative Mood
I had an epiphany this morning. It's part of my monthly subscription to www.epiphany.com. Their prices are quite reasonable, for those of you who enjoy the occasional burst of enlightenment. Foolishness aside, it did occur to me today that "post-everythings," as my pastors call contemporary persons, or "posters," as I prefer to name them, are rather shy of the verbal stance known as the declarative mood.
I stumbled on this odd revelation while discussing G.K. Chesterton with a co-worker. I lent this person Orthodoxy a while back, just as a non-threatening introduction to some key Christian concepts. The person volunteered today that some progress had been made in the book, so I inquired as to the person's impression. The reply was,"It's okay. Chesterton seems a little arrogant." It seemed strange to me that someone would think that; I purposely chose Chesterton because he's just so jovial. But then it occurred to me that universal assertoric statements of any kind, unless they are either trivialities or based on a canon of contemporaneity (e.g. world peace), probably are quite threatening to posters. Significant universal assertoric statements probably sound, to them, like the distant footfalls of the dreaded Totalizing Narrative.
Part of the professed purpose of this blog is translating pre-modern Presbyterianism into poster parlance (the other part of this blog's purpose being to provide Stephen N. Clark with a continuing source of entertainment). As I considered the fear and hysteria inspired by the approach of metanarrative, I wondered if part of the ineffectiveness of the orthodox church in our day is attributable to its insistence on continually speaking, on topics of universal significance, in the declarative mood. Could it be that we are taking an inappropriate "illocutionary stance," as it has been called by certain analytic philosophers? Can we find another, perhaps intermediate, illocutionary stance that will better serve the cause of truth in our day?
My suggestions are as follows: We should begin using the conditional mood (or the interrogative mood) more frequently, until we reach the point where the threatening nature of the declarative mood has been somewhat tamed. Posters generally consider the declarative mood simply an expression of personal opinion; perhaps we can soften some of that suspicion by couching our universal truth claims in the form of hypothetical syllogisms, since posters generally like hypothesizing (if there is water on Mars, does that mean that there is life in outer space?). We can at least learn to speak more frequently in the third person in order to give the posters some personal space--they do adore descriptions of the Other, as long as the Other stays far away. Or, if all the above seem cowardly, we can resort to speaking in the first person plural. Nothing scares the poster more than saying something so terrorizing as "I believe in God, the Father Almighty."
Please note that I am not suggesting that we abandon the declarative mood. That illocutionary stance is absolutely essential to the proclamation of our faith. I am just raising the possibility that we might be more effective if we made the scary doggy wear a cutesy sweater so that the poster-child isn't as scared of him.
Minimizing one's usage of the declarative mood does not necessitate the abandonment of meaningful content, even universally applicable meaningful content. Socrates famously used the interrogative mood almost to the exclusion of all others, and no-one has confused him with the Sophists. Maybe we need to learn Erasmus' famous prayer: "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis."
Grammatical mood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I stumbled on this odd revelation while discussing G.K. Chesterton with a co-worker. I lent this person Orthodoxy a while back, just as a non-threatening introduction to some key Christian concepts. The person volunteered today that some progress had been made in the book, so I inquired as to the person's impression. The reply was,"It's okay. Chesterton seems a little arrogant." It seemed strange to me that someone would think that; I purposely chose Chesterton because he's just so jovial. But then it occurred to me that universal assertoric statements of any kind, unless they are either trivialities or based on a canon of contemporaneity (e.g. world peace), probably are quite threatening to posters. Significant universal assertoric statements probably sound, to them, like the distant footfalls of the dreaded Totalizing Narrative.
Part of the professed purpose of this blog is translating pre-modern Presbyterianism into poster parlance (the other part of this blog's purpose being to provide Stephen N. Clark with a continuing source of entertainment). As I considered the fear and hysteria inspired by the approach of metanarrative, I wondered if part of the ineffectiveness of the orthodox church in our day is attributable to its insistence on continually speaking, on topics of universal significance, in the declarative mood. Could it be that we are taking an inappropriate "illocutionary stance," as it has been called by certain analytic philosophers? Can we find another, perhaps intermediate, illocutionary stance that will better serve the cause of truth in our day?
My suggestions are as follows: We should begin using the conditional mood (or the interrogative mood) more frequently, until we reach the point where the threatening nature of the declarative mood has been somewhat tamed. Posters generally consider the declarative mood simply an expression of personal opinion; perhaps we can soften some of that suspicion by couching our universal truth claims in the form of hypothetical syllogisms, since posters generally like hypothesizing (if there is water on Mars, does that mean that there is life in outer space?). We can at least learn to speak more frequently in the third person in order to give the posters some personal space--they do adore descriptions of the Other, as long as the Other stays far away. Or, if all the above seem cowardly, we can resort to speaking in the first person plural. Nothing scares the poster more than saying something so terrorizing as "I believe in God, the Father Almighty."
Please note that I am not suggesting that we abandon the declarative mood. That illocutionary stance is absolutely essential to the proclamation of our faith. I am just raising the possibility that we might be more effective if we made the scary doggy wear a cutesy sweater so that the poster-child isn't as scared of him.
Minimizing one's usage of the declarative mood does not necessitate the abandonment of meaningful content, even universally applicable meaningful content. Socrates famously used the interrogative mood almost to the exclusion of all others, and no-one has confused him with the Sophists. Maybe we need to learn Erasmus' famous prayer: "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis."
Grammatical mood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friday, July 21, 2006
God's Preferential Option
I'm making headway in my Gustavo Gutierrez anthology; it's been an interesting journey so far. His concept of theology as reflection on praxis, as a "second step" following after action, seemed odd to me at first; how could a-theological praxis serve as a basis for theological reflection? I think maybe he means to say that pre-praxis theologizing should be as minimal as possible, with maximal theologizing following the minimally theologized praxis. I still don't know why that would be a desirable scenario, but at least it gives theologizing a theoretical possibility of being recognizably Christian. I also still don't know how theology could be primarily reflection on praxis in the first place; that seems incoherent. I suspect, utilizing the methods of Marxist analysis that Gutierrez so admires, that both theology and praxis would have to have been previously based on something other than the practice of the Church in order for his proposal to exude even the slightest whiff of plausibility (which it might lack anyway). That is, I'm Marxistly suspecting G. of constructing a parasitic system.
Well, I was harboring such a suspicion until I came across G's thesis of "God's preferential option for the oppressed." This is sometimes stated as "God's preferential option for the poor," but Gutierrez remarks that it holds true for all the oppressed: women, minorities, inhabitants of previously colonial territories. The notion that God intervenes in history primarily for the oppressed and, through them, for all men, seems a powerful concept to me. And this is why: it occurred to me last night that there are truly despised ones in the earth; they are an absolute under-class which even women, minoritities, post-colonials, and Gutierrez himself despise. These pariahs are rejected by both powerful and disenfranchised, both wealthy and unemployed; their way of life is continually mocked, their convictions maneuvered into the region of criminality. Their very presence in society is regarded as shameful. They are known as "orthodox Christians." It occurred to me that, using Gutierrez's reasoning, God could be seen as "exercising a preferential option" on behalf of orthodox Christians. And right then and there I decided that I love liberation theology.
Well, I was harboring such a suspicion until I came across G's thesis of "God's preferential option for the oppressed." This is sometimes stated as "God's preferential option for the poor," but Gutierrez remarks that it holds true for all the oppressed: women, minorities, inhabitants of previously colonial territories. The notion that God intervenes in history primarily for the oppressed and, through them, for all men, seems a powerful concept to me. And this is why: it occurred to me last night that there are truly despised ones in the earth; they are an absolute under-class which even women, minoritities, post-colonials, and Gutierrez himself despise. These pariahs are rejected by both powerful and disenfranchised, both wealthy and unemployed; their way of life is continually mocked, their convictions maneuvered into the region of criminality. Their very presence in society is regarded as shameful. They are known as "orthodox Christians." It occurred to me that, using Gutierrez's reasoning, God could be seen as "exercising a preferential option" on behalf of orthodox Christians. And right then and there I decided that I love liberation theology.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Courtesy of Comedy Central:
 | ||
| Hit TV Shows in Iraq "Husseinfeld" "Mad About Everything" "U.S. Military Secrets Revealed" "Suddenly Sanctions" "Children Are Forbidden From Saying Anything Darndest" "Matima Loves Chachi" "Buffy The Slayer of Yankee Imperialist Dogs" "Wheel of Fortune and Terror" "Iraq''s Wackiest Public Execution Bloopers" "Achmed''s Creek" "The Price is Right If Saddam Says It''s Right" "M*U*S*T*A*S*H" "Veronica''s Closet Full of Long, Black, Shapeless Dresses" "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Mosque" "When Kurds Attack" "Just Shoot Me" "My Two Baghdads" "Diagnosis Heresy" "Everybody Loves Saddam Or He''ll Have Them Shot" "Captured Iranian Soldiers Say the Darndest Things" "Burka Baywatch" | ||
"The Onion" Reports on Google
Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Executives at Google, the rapidly growing online-search company that promises to "organize the world's information," announced Monday the latest step in their expansion effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is unable to index.
CEO Eric Schmidt speaks at Google's California headquarters
"Our users want the world to be as simple, clean, and accessible as the Google home page itself," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a press conference held in their corporate offices. "Soon, it will be."
The new project, dubbed Google Purge, will join such popular services as Google Images, Google News, and Google Maps, which catalogs the entire surface of the Earth using high-resolution satellites.
As a part of Purge's first phase, executives will destroy all copyrighted materials that cannot be searched by Google.
"A year ago, Google offered to scan every book on the planet for its Google Print project. Now, they are promising to burn the rest," John Battelle wrote in his widely read "Searchblog." "Thanks to Google Purge, you'll never have to worry that your search has missed some obscure book, because that book will no longer exist. And the same goes for movies, art, and music."
"Book burning is just the beginning," said Google co-founder Larry Page. "This fall, we'll unveil Google Sound, which will record and index all the noise on Earth. Is your baby sleeping soundly? Does your high-school sweetheart still talk about you? Google will have the answers."
Page added: "And thanks to Google Purge, anything our global microphone network can't pick up will be silenced by noise-cancellation machines in low-Earth orbit."
As a part of Phase One operations, Google executives will permanently erase the hard drive of any computer that is not already indexed by the Google Desktop Search.
"We believe that Google Desktop Search is the best way to unlock the information hidden on your hard drive," Schmidt said. "If you haven't given it a try, now's the time. In one week, the deleting begins."
Although Google executives are keeping many details about Google Purge under wraps, some analysts speculate that the categories of information Google will eventually index or destroy include handwritten correspondence, buried fossils, and private thoughts and feelings.
The company's new directive may explain its recent acquisition of Celera Genomics, the company that mapped the human genome, and its buildup of a vast army of laser-equipped robots.
"Google finally has what it needs to catalog the DNA of every organism on Earth," said analyst Imran Kahn of J.P. Morgan Chase. "Of course, some people might not want their DNA indexed. Hence, the robot army. It's crazy, it's brilliant—typical Google."
Google's robot army is rumored to include some 4 million cybernetic search-and-destroy units, each capable of capturing and scanning up to 100 humans per day. Said co-founder Sergey Brin: "The scanning will be relatively painless. Hey, it's Google. It'll be fun to be scanned by a Googlebot. But in the event people resist, the robots are programmed to liquify the brain."
Markets responded favorably to the announcement of Google Purge, with traders bidding up Google's share price by $1.24, to $285.92, in late trading after the announcement. But some critics of the company have found cause for complaint.
"This announcement is a red flag," said Daniel Brandt, founder of Google-Watch.org. "I certainly don't want to accuse of them having bad intentions. But this campaign of destruction and genocide raises some potential privacy concerns."
Brandt also expressed reservations about the company's new motto. Until yesterday's news conference, the company's unofficial slogan had been "Don't be evil." The slogan has now been expanded to "Don't be evil, unless it's necessary for the greater good."
Co-founders Page and Brin dismiss their critics.
"A lot of companies are so worried about short-term reactions that they ignore the long view," Page said. "Not us. Our team is focused on something more than just making money. At Google, we're using technology to make dreams come true."
"Soon," Brin added, "we'll make dreams clickable, or destroy them forever."
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Rough Transition
I just finished Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks, which was quite good overall, although I had the same experience with this book that I have had with other Wolterstorff writings: the more specific he gets, the more disappointed I get. Wolterstorff is not what I would call a "first-order" mind; he is acute, incisive, provocative, but not earth-shaking. What I love about Wolterstorff is his minute precision, and also his insistence on the "messiness" of all conceptualizing, the way he explodes simplistic accounts of things, from epistemology to literary theory to theology. And I also appreciate the fact that he shies away from mathematical explanations. I don't have a mathematically wired brain, so Wolterstorff is easier for me to grasp than, say, his buddy Alvin Plantinga.
And so on my way into Manhattan this morning, I finished Divine Discourse and picked up an anthology of Gustavo Gutierrez's writings (the liberation theologian, for you fellow philistines). I read half the editor's introduction, then gave up, finding it unhelpful redundant adulation. I started the Gutierrez pieces with some anticipation: after all, this is the guy who has rocked the theological world in the last few decades. So far I am quite disappointed. After the calculating precision of Wolterstorff, Gutierrez seems an amateur. I couldn't help thinking of the poor marks this guy would get in any decent college: his definitions are confusing, contradictory, and sometimes utterly incomprehensible. (For example, theology and faith are interchangeable, they are prior to action, they are existential stances, and they are reflection on action, all in the same short paper.) So far, all I get is that Gutierrez is a South American Marxist who wanted to sprinkle his Communist revolution with holy water. And maybe he was into the hallucinogens of the counterculture too, because he sure seems confused.
And so on my way into Manhattan this morning, I finished Divine Discourse and picked up an anthology of Gustavo Gutierrez's writings (the liberation theologian, for you fellow philistines). I read half the editor's introduction, then gave up, finding it unhelpful redundant adulation. I started the Gutierrez pieces with some anticipation: after all, this is the guy who has rocked the theological world in the last few decades. So far I am quite disappointed. After the calculating precision of Wolterstorff, Gutierrez seems an amateur. I couldn't help thinking of the poor marks this guy would get in any decent college: his definitions are confusing, contradictory, and sometimes utterly incomprehensible. (For example, theology and faith are interchangeable, they are prior to action, they are existential stances, and they are reflection on action, all in the same short paper.) So far, all I get is that Gutierrez is a South American Marxist who wanted to sprinkle his Communist revolution with holy water. And maybe he was into the hallucinogens of the counterculture too, because he sure seems confused.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Lost Youth
It's a bromide that an important component of maturity is finding out how much you don't know. Profession of profound ignorance, nonetheless, has been admired by many in figures such as Socrates, to name the most famous. Admission of ignorance, with its attendant attitude of epistemological humility, is widely regarded as ushering one into the enlightenment of that wisdom which comes only with age. Those of us who have been so enlightened usually wait with a certain degree of impatience for the rest of humanity to join us; most particularly our impatience is reserved for those who are "old enough to know better."
We excuse youth, to an extent, for its sureness of itself. One must learn a fair bit about God, man, and the universe in order to truly comprehend the insignificance of one's knowledge. Usually it takes some living to get to that point.
I got to that point rather earlier than most, I think. Possibly because I was so exorbitantly sure that I had the cosmos in a noetic box; possibly because that box was unusually small; possibly because I suddenly had rather more of the world to cram into my box than many would have at 18.
I remember clearly when the box tore. It wasn't a moment, but 90 days in Chile that did it. I had started reading theology at the tender age of 12; soon after, listening to taped sermons was a favorite pastime of mine. I continued to read, but I became really serious about my studies around the age of 16. Calvin's Institutes, Luther's The Bondage of the Will, Jonathan Edwards' sermons; that type of thing. The expected rebelliousness of the teen years was in my case channeled into strict Protestant theology and radical right-wing politics of the American sort. I became a die-hard Covenanter by 17, had read a lot of the pertinent 16th- and 17th-century writings by 18, and I had the world figured out.
Until I went to Chile. My mother is Chilean; she did her utmost to become a devoted Midwestern stay-at-home mom, but her assimilation did nothing to erase the reality of friends and a whole lot of family in Southern South America. I went down there, not to discover my roots--too liberal a concept for my radical teenage self--but to put faces to my mother's stories. And it was then that I discovered that you can't really fit Chile into a Steelite Covenanter box. I tried, initially, but it was just too absurd a project, even for a perverse contrarian like me.
After that, I tried to slough off the brainiac act. I read Louis L'amour, collected guns, got a job doing carpentry work, learned to like country music, went hunting, drove a 4x4 pickup, and made a Herculean effort to learn to speak in the proletarian manner (the one thing I never could quite get down). But I still thought that I had a decent, if tenuous, grip on Total Reality.
Then I went to college, a very conservative Presbyterian one, of course, where I took an "Introduction to Philosophy" course. Now the torn remnants of my box were burning to ashes, and the original vision of my epistemic poverty had become the epiphany of nearly complete ignorance.
I've never fully recovered. Okay, it's only been 5 years, so maybe I'm over-dramatizing my personal narrative. I got past the temptations to theological liberalism, simply by presenting myself with the personal consequences of such a move. I would have missed God and heaven and hell too much, plus I couldn't do that to my folks. Anything other than orthodoxy seemed malleable to the point of laughability, and trendiness had always appeared despicable. So what to do with my framework of Presbyterian orthodoxy, since I was intent on keeping it?
I still don't know. I've toyed with various ideas, dabbled in metaphysics and epistemology. I once professed to be a semi-neo-Thomist, just to irk my Van Tilian peers. I've poked around in the Reformed Epistemology, which I like, but it's just too generic and spineless. I'd still like to intellectually ground the convictions to which I cling, to do the sort of thing that Anselm attempted in his Proslogion. I guess I find too much irrationalism in the leap that kept me an orthodox Presbyterian; I guess I got too much air on that particular jump. Maybe what I miss is just the certainty of youth.
We excuse youth, to an extent, for its sureness of itself. One must learn a fair bit about God, man, and the universe in order to truly comprehend the insignificance of one's knowledge. Usually it takes some living to get to that point.
I got to that point rather earlier than most, I think. Possibly because I was so exorbitantly sure that I had the cosmos in a noetic box; possibly because that box was unusually small; possibly because I suddenly had rather more of the world to cram into my box than many would have at 18.
I remember clearly when the box tore. It wasn't a moment, but 90 days in Chile that did it. I had started reading theology at the tender age of 12; soon after, listening to taped sermons was a favorite pastime of mine. I continued to read, but I became really serious about my studies around the age of 16. Calvin's Institutes, Luther's The Bondage of the Will, Jonathan Edwards' sermons; that type of thing. The expected rebelliousness of the teen years was in my case channeled into strict Protestant theology and radical right-wing politics of the American sort. I became a die-hard Covenanter by 17, had read a lot of the pertinent 16th- and 17th-century writings by 18, and I had the world figured out.
Until I went to Chile. My mother is Chilean; she did her utmost to become a devoted Midwestern stay-at-home mom, but her assimilation did nothing to erase the reality of friends and a whole lot of family in Southern South America. I went down there, not to discover my roots--too liberal a concept for my radical teenage self--but to put faces to my mother's stories. And it was then that I discovered that you can't really fit Chile into a Steelite Covenanter box. I tried, initially, but it was just too absurd a project, even for a perverse contrarian like me.
After that, I tried to slough off the brainiac act. I read Louis L'amour, collected guns, got a job doing carpentry work, learned to like country music, went hunting, drove a 4x4 pickup, and made a Herculean effort to learn to speak in the proletarian manner (the one thing I never could quite get down). But I still thought that I had a decent, if tenuous, grip on Total Reality.
Then I went to college, a very conservative Presbyterian one, of course, where I took an "Introduction to Philosophy" course. Now the torn remnants of my box were burning to ashes, and the original vision of my epistemic poverty had become the epiphany of nearly complete ignorance.
I've never fully recovered. Okay, it's only been 5 years, so maybe I'm over-dramatizing my personal narrative. I got past the temptations to theological liberalism, simply by presenting myself with the personal consequences of such a move. I would have missed God and heaven and hell too much, plus I couldn't do that to my folks. Anything other than orthodoxy seemed malleable to the point of laughability, and trendiness had always appeared despicable. So what to do with my framework of Presbyterian orthodoxy, since I was intent on keeping it?
I still don't know. I've toyed with various ideas, dabbled in metaphysics and epistemology. I once professed to be a semi-neo-Thomist, just to irk my Van Tilian peers. I've poked around in the Reformed Epistemology, which I like, but it's just too generic and spineless. I'd still like to intellectually ground the convictions to which I cling, to do the sort of thing that Anselm attempted in his Proslogion. I guess I find too much irrationalism in the leap that kept me an orthodox Presbyterian; I guess I got too much air on that particular jump. Maybe what I miss is just the certainty of youth.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Dr. Wolterstorff Weighs In
For those favored few who have been following the "St. Paul Goes to Berkeley" series, I will reveal this blog's perspective on the current topic under debate--the "death of the author"-- by quoting from Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks. Which, incidentally, is a wonderful tome for those of you who are interested in contemporary theology and hermeneutics. If a Yale philosopher's defense of interpreting for authorial discourse contra Derrida and Ricoueur is the kind of thing that gets you all hot and bothered, you need to read this. But I digress. Without further ado, here is Dr. Wolterstorff:
"...Derrida does not draw the conclusion that we ought to put authorial-discourse interpretation behind us and conduct our interpretation exclusively in accord with his alternative understanding. As we saw earlier, he doesn't tell us to put it behind us even when interpreting his own writings! Because we can't put it behind us. And we can't put it behind us because we can't put metaphysics behind us. Several times over Julia Kristeva, in her published interview with Derrida, invited him to discuss strategies for "escaping metaphysics" and to describe the workings of language after the escape. Each time Derrida's answer was the same: 'I do not believe, that someday it will be possible simply to escape metaphysics...'
This is one of the most persistent and striking themes in Derrida's writing: escape is not possible. It's not possible to conduct one's writing and one's interpreting, not much of it anyway, outside the language of ontotheology. Not possible for us, that is. One can speculatively imagine a human being escaping; but you and I cannot escape. For metaphysics is not a special language, found in the books of certain philosophers, which one can write and speak for a while and then return to our customary ways of writing and speaking. Our customary ways are all metaphysical ways. Metaphysics is not 'a regrettable and provisional accident of history,' 'a slip,' 'a mistake of thought occurring within history,' Metaphysics 'is the fall of thought into philosophy which gets history underway.'
The case against metaphysics was itself conducted, and could only have been conducted, in the language of metaphysics; we have no other language in which to conduct it....Engagement in the practice of discourse interpretation is indeed fated. Derrida is right about that--though the fate is to be located in the requirements of human community and of respect rather than in the fact that we can't escape the language of metaphysics."
"...Derrida does not draw the conclusion that we ought to put authorial-discourse interpretation behind us and conduct our interpretation exclusively in accord with his alternative understanding. As we saw earlier, he doesn't tell us to put it behind us even when interpreting his own writings! Because we can't put it behind us. And we can't put it behind us because we can't put metaphysics behind us. Several times over Julia Kristeva, in her published interview with Derrida, invited him to discuss strategies for "escaping metaphysics" and to describe the workings of language after the escape. Each time Derrida's answer was the same: 'I do not believe, that someday it will be possible simply to escape metaphysics...'
This is one of the most persistent and striking themes in Derrida's writing: escape is not possible. It's not possible to conduct one's writing and one's interpreting, not much of it anyway, outside the language of ontotheology. Not possible for us, that is. One can speculatively imagine a human being escaping; but you and I cannot escape. For metaphysics is not a special language, found in the books of certain philosophers, which one can write and speak for a while and then return to our customary ways of writing and speaking. Our customary ways are all metaphysical ways. Metaphysics is not 'a regrettable and provisional accident of history,' 'a slip,' 'a mistake of thought occurring within history,' Metaphysics 'is the fall of thought into philosophy which gets history underway.'
The case against metaphysics was itself conducted, and could only have been conducted, in the language of metaphysics; we have no other language in which to conduct it....Engagement in the practice of discourse interpretation is indeed fated. Derrida is right about that--though the fate is to be located in the requirements of human community and of respect rather than in the fact that we can't escape the language of metaphysics."
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Friday, July 14, 2006
The Judgment of God?
Check this out: some chick from Beliefnet trashes the mainline Episcopalians and Presbyterians in an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times, of all places.
Link:
Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins - Los Angeles Times
Link:
Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins - Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Thrownness Grabs a Frisbee: Part II
If my extensive audience will but grant me that I have established in my previous post that repristinating Presbyterianism is both feasible and desirable, I will proceed with with the what of Westminster-era Scottish Christianity. Hmmm....a quick scan of my crowded inbox not having revealed any dissenters, I shall proceed forthwith.
If there was a defining issue for Presbyterianism in the 17th century, it was worship. I do not mean to say that worship held a central place in their theological system; the Calvinistic revolt was always a battle with many fronts. Not until Abraham Kuyper reformulated (Dutch) Calvinism in the late 19th century was Calvinism really considered to have a central theme. [Kuyper indicated that the key concept of Reformed theology is the sovereignty of God (his Neo-Calvinist heirs have generally followed him in this). B.B. Warfield responded that the key concept is actually the glory of God. Warfield seems closer to the mark, but it appears to me that Calvinism was originally too organic an approach to be thought of as having a central concept.] The importance of worship to the Scots was the result of two distinct phenomena, closely related in the Scottish reality: one was the emphasis that they inherited from Calvin on the simplicity and spirituality of worship, the other was the recurring insistence of the English that the Church of Scotland accept the Episcopal liturgy.
Most of you will remember Jenny Geddes, who in 1638 at Greyfriars, Edinburgh, threw her stool at the priest, shouting, in response to the newly imposed reading of the Episcopal liturgy, "Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug?" [Most of you will simultaneously be loath to admit that pretty much every Presbyterian church you have ever attended voluntarily includes many, or most, of the then objectionable practices in its liturgy.] This was the beginning of the popular revolt that spawned the renewal of the National Covenant in 1638 at Greyfriars, the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640, and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643-the Solemn League and Covenant being the document that convened the Westminster Assembly.
Of all the Assembly's discussions, some of which were rancorous and long-lived, the discussion on worship was fairly short. This is because British Calvinists in the 1640s, whether Presbyterians or Independents, agreed on the structure and elements of worship. Worship consisted of a minister praying, reading from the Old and the New Testament, preaching, and blessing the people. The congregation was silent except in the singing, which was restricted to metrical Psalms unaccompanied by instruments. Sometimes a male member of the congregation acted as precentor in leading the singing. There was a rough order in the worship which was generally followed, but there was never a liturgy such as that found in The Book of Common Prayer-even the Westminster Assembly only produced a Directory for public worship, which was a recommended order instead of a prescribed format. In particular, British Calvinists, but especially the Scots, found kneeling, genuflecting, vestments, images, incense, hymns, and instruments troubling. These Calvinists believed that adding any element to worship that did not have express warrant in the Apostolic church of the canon involved committing the sin of Nadab and Abihu.
There are more idiosyncracies to 17th-century Calvinistic worship that a 21st-century Presbyterian would find odd: there was no passing of the plate for alms, and the Lord's Supper, when it took place (quarterly or yearly), was at a table with a common cup (of real wine) and a common loaf. The Lord's Supper was only open to members of the national church. Presbyterians, and Independents with them, did not celebrate any holidays, observing only the Lord's Day and occasional, spontaneous days of supplication or thanksgiving-which were often declared by the magistrate. In those churches that had seating, the congregation stood only for prayer and remained seated at all other times. Funerals were not allowed, as they were considered superstitious prayers for the dead. Congregational singing, utilizing the metrical psalter, was in unison, with no harmonies and no printed tunes (did I already mention that there were no instruments?).
Combined, these elements strike one with a quality of primitiveness. That was precisely the idea: to return to the severely simple worship of the Apostolic period. It was at the time of the Awakenings that Psalm paraphrases, then hymns, and then instruments were introduced, all for the purposes of creating a more emotive atmosphere in worship. British Calvinism became American Calvinism, a revivalistic evangelicalism that was more a product of the 18th and 19th centuries than of the 16th and 17th. And today, as conversionist evangelicalism is getting threadbare at its Victorian seams, contemporary Calvinism is diffusing into either postmodern evangelicalism or seeking roots in Anglican/Lutheran/Roman Catholic liturgical practices. Of course there is always a dogged minority that defends the Victorian status quo; this usually fails to inspire, since the sawdust of the tent revivals is by now giving off a rather rancid smell. Now that we are entering the era of the "emerging church" and the exploration of medieval liturgies, maybe the time for a return to Calvinism's own medieval anti-liturgy has come. If you're a dedicated Presyterian, the other options kinda suck.
If there was a defining issue for Presbyterianism in the 17th century, it was worship. I do not mean to say that worship held a central place in their theological system; the Calvinistic revolt was always a battle with many fronts. Not until Abraham Kuyper reformulated (Dutch) Calvinism in the late 19th century was Calvinism really considered to have a central theme. [Kuyper indicated that the key concept of Reformed theology is the sovereignty of God (his Neo-Calvinist heirs have generally followed him in this). B.B. Warfield responded that the key concept is actually the glory of God. Warfield seems closer to the mark, but it appears to me that Calvinism was originally too organic an approach to be thought of as having a central concept.] The importance of worship to the Scots was the result of two distinct phenomena, closely related in the Scottish reality: one was the emphasis that they inherited from Calvin on the simplicity and spirituality of worship, the other was the recurring insistence of the English that the Church of Scotland accept the Episcopal liturgy.
Most of you will remember Jenny Geddes, who in 1638 at Greyfriars, Edinburgh, threw her stool at the priest, shouting, in response to the newly imposed reading of the Episcopal liturgy, "Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug?" [Most of you will simultaneously be loath to admit that pretty much every Presbyterian church you have ever attended voluntarily includes many, or most, of the then objectionable practices in its liturgy.] This was the beginning of the popular revolt that spawned the renewal of the National Covenant in 1638 at Greyfriars, the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640, and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643-the Solemn League and Covenant being the document that convened the Westminster Assembly.
Of all the Assembly's discussions, some of which were rancorous and long-lived, the discussion on worship was fairly short. This is because British Calvinists in the 1640s, whether Presbyterians or Independents, agreed on the structure and elements of worship. Worship consisted of a minister praying, reading from the Old and the New Testament, preaching, and blessing the people. The congregation was silent except in the singing, which was restricted to metrical Psalms unaccompanied by instruments. Sometimes a male member of the congregation acted as precentor in leading the singing. There was a rough order in the worship which was generally followed, but there was never a liturgy such as that found in The Book of Common Prayer-even the Westminster Assembly only produced a Directory for public worship, which was a recommended order instead of a prescribed format. In particular, British Calvinists, but especially the Scots, found kneeling, genuflecting, vestments, images, incense, hymns, and instruments troubling. These Calvinists believed that adding any element to worship that did not have express warrant in the Apostolic church of the canon involved committing the sin of Nadab and Abihu.
There are more idiosyncracies to 17th-century Calvinistic worship that a 21st-century Presbyterian would find odd: there was no passing of the plate for alms, and the Lord's Supper, when it took place (quarterly or yearly), was at a table with a common cup (of real wine) and a common loaf. The Lord's Supper was only open to members of the national church. Presbyterians, and Independents with them, did not celebrate any holidays, observing only the Lord's Day and occasional, spontaneous days of supplication or thanksgiving-which were often declared by the magistrate. In those churches that had seating, the congregation stood only for prayer and remained seated at all other times. Funerals were not allowed, as they were considered superstitious prayers for the dead. Congregational singing, utilizing the metrical psalter, was in unison, with no harmonies and no printed tunes (did I already mention that there were no instruments?).
Combined, these elements strike one with a quality of primitiveness. That was precisely the idea: to return to the severely simple worship of the Apostolic period. It was at the time of the Awakenings that Psalm paraphrases, then hymns, and then instruments were introduced, all for the purposes of creating a more emotive atmosphere in worship. British Calvinism became American Calvinism, a revivalistic evangelicalism that was more a product of the 18th and 19th centuries than of the 16th and 17th. And today, as conversionist evangelicalism is getting threadbare at its Victorian seams, contemporary Calvinism is diffusing into either postmodern evangelicalism or seeking roots in Anglican/Lutheran/Roman Catholic liturgical practices. Of course there is always a dogged minority that defends the Victorian status quo; this usually fails to inspire, since the sawdust of the tent revivals is by now giving off a rather rancid smell. Now that we are entering the era of the "emerging church" and the exploration of medieval liturgies, maybe the time for a return to Calvinism's own medieval anti-liturgy has come. If you're a dedicated Presyterian, the other options kinda suck.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
St. Paul Goes to Berkeley, Part 3: Advocatus Diaboli Claims Reification for the Gauntlet
Dear Promotor Fidei,
I adore your predilection for the disputatio: it is a format which in its ceaseless alternation between argument and counterargument embodies that Heraclitean flux to which we are all so liberatingly bound. I fail to see how you have simulated the disputatio in your missive, but I am pleased nonetheless.
Metaphysical reality, then. I prize metaphysics almost as much as my collection of Neolithic artifacts, and in much the same way. I suppose that in your attempt to push our topic of "the death of the author" to a higher level of abstraction, you are taking the tack of that favorite Dutch theologian of yours, whose name I unfortunately cannot remember, but whose method generally consists in avoiding the question at hand. So, you would thwart my language games by an appeal to Platonic realism. Very well.
Regarding problem (a): I find it difficult to imagine how a text could "contain" metaphysical reality, and almost equally perplexing to conceive of a metaphysical reality to which it could "correspond." Surely you do not wish to revive either the Aristotelian essence or the Platonic form?
Regarding problem (b): of course the text exists externally to the reader; it is material. It is the significance claimed for the text which is created by the reader, not the text itself.
Regarding problem (c): I deny all metaphysical reality in the strict sense. I consider all attempts at metaphysics, at least in the classic Western tradition, to be pernicious avoidances of the human question(s).
Regarding problem (d): hmm, hermeneutical obligations. Consciously constructing interpretations of texts in such a way that marginalized persons/groups are "read back in" comes to mind.
Is the problem of the author truly a metaphysical one? I fail to see how it must be, although I understand how it could be made to appear so. It seems a more or less straightforwardly hermeneutical problem to me. As far as external reality is concerned, I don't think that we'll disagree much over the independent existence of the material universe. Of course there is a correlation between the external object and the noetic process; it is only the significance attached to the external object that is a construction.
Mirabile dictu or not, these questions are much older than the Enlightenment. Gorgias comes to mind.
I believe, my friend, that in your "counterstroke" you have conflated "meaning" with "univocity." My claim is not that there is no shared sphere in which language games can take place; my claim is that entrance into the language games entails the equivocity innate in the disparate natures of multiple minds. You seem to understand "meaning" as a hermetically sealed unit that can be shuttled back and forth between minds without contamination. Of course your words have meaning; there is a phonetic sequence that you have produced which signifies something. That particular something which is signified, though, is almost certainly different for both of us: not utterly different, for then we would have no communication, but substantially different, or otherwise we would have identical minds.
Take, for instance, your use of "Luddite." "Luddite" is at the present moment most commonly used as a pejorative against those who distrust technology. You seem to use the term to mean a person who avows archaic beliefs. So we share the term "Luddite," it has a referent for both of us, but that referent is substantially different in both cases-though this does not preclude discourse. It only precludes a univocal meaning for your term.
So I deny that I assume "meaning" in your sense when I write to you. I assume a shared exercise in arbitrariness, which we call "language," I assume that you are reading this as English prose and not as numerology, but I do not assume that these words will mean precisely to you what they do to me. My words, in your mind, will be different entities from what they are in mine. In particular, my dear Promotor, because you have no access to the intentionality which produced these words. You understand this text as it enters your mental matrix, not as it proceeds from mine. And this is not the death of meaning, as you claim. It is rather the birth of meaning. For the blood of univocity is the seed of infinite meanings.
I will pass by your Steiner quotation, as it seems rather far-fetched for recognition. I obviously deny the charge, as would most of your compatriots in orthodoxy. There are fideists, and there are those who have fallen off the edge of fideism. Your proposed ally appears to be one of the latter.
Promotor, you might better comprehend if you attempted to understand language, not as something inviolable which was dropped out of the sky by the gods on a particularly beneficent day, but as itself a construction of "humankind." Language is a game, its rules are arbitrary and constantly subject to change-except for the rule that there can be no teams.
Entertaining as all this has been, I repeat the untouched (by you) original pronouncement: the author is dead, and no amount of nostalgia for univocity is going to resuscitate him.
Kind regards,
Advocatus Diaboli
I adore your predilection for the disputatio: it is a format which in its ceaseless alternation between argument and counterargument embodies that Heraclitean flux to which we are all so liberatingly bound. I fail to see how you have simulated the disputatio in your missive, but I am pleased nonetheless.
Metaphysical reality, then. I prize metaphysics almost as much as my collection of Neolithic artifacts, and in much the same way. I suppose that in your attempt to push our topic of "the death of the author" to a higher level of abstraction, you are taking the tack of that favorite Dutch theologian of yours, whose name I unfortunately cannot remember, but whose method generally consists in avoiding the question at hand. So, you would thwart my language games by an appeal to Platonic realism. Very well.
Regarding problem (a): I find it difficult to imagine how a text could "contain" metaphysical reality, and almost equally perplexing to conceive of a metaphysical reality to which it could "correspond." Surely you do not wish to revive either the Aristotelian essence or the Platonic form?
Regarding problem (b): of course the text exists externally to the reader; it is material. It is the significance claimed for the text which is created by the reader, not the text itself.
Regarding problem (c): I deny all metaphysical reality in the strict sense. I consider all attempts at metaphysics, at least in the classic Western tradition, to be pernicious avoidances of the human question(s).
Regarding problem (d): hmm, hermeneutical obligations. Consciously constructing interpretations of texts in such a way that marginalized persons/groups are "read back in" comes to mind.
Is the problem of the author truly a metaphysical one? I fail to see how it must be, although I understand how it could be made to appear so. It seems a more or less straightforwardly hermeneutical problem to me. As far as external reality is concerned, I don't think that we'll disagree much over the independent existence of the material universe. Of course there is a correlation between the external object and the noetic process; it is only the significance attached to the external object that is a construction.
Mirabile dictu or not, these questions are much older than the Enlightenment. Gorgias comes to mind.
I believe, my friend, that in your "counterstroke" you have conflated "meaning" with "univocity." My claim is not that there is no shared sphere in which language games can take place; my claim is that entrance into the language games entails the equivocity innate in the disparate natures of multiple minds. You seem to understand "meaning" as a hermetically sealed unit that can be shuttled back and forth between minds without contamination. Of course your words have meaning; there is a phonetic sequence that you have produced which signifies something. That particular something which is signified, though, is almost certainly different for both of us: not utterly different, for then we would have no communication, but substantially different, or otherwise we would have identical minds.
Take, for instance, your use of "Luddite." "Luddite" is at the present moment most commonly used as a pejorative against those who distrust technology. You seem to use the term to mean a person who avows archaic beliefs. So we share the term "Luddite," it has a referent for both of us, but that referent is substantially different in both cases-though this does not preclude discourse. It only precludes a univocal meaning for your term.
So I deny that I assume "meaning" in your sense when I write to you. I assume a shared exercise in arbitrariness, which we call "language," I assume that you are reading this as English prose and not as numerology, but I do not assume that these words will mean precisely to you what they do to me. My words, in your mind, will be different entities from what they are in mine. In particular, my dear Promotor, because you have no access to the intentionality which produced these words. You understand this text as it enters your mental matrix, not as it proceeds from mine. And this is not the death of meaning, as you claim. It is rather the birth of meaning. For the blood of univocity is the seed of infinite meanings.
I will pass by your Steiner quotation, as it seems rather far-fetched for recognition. I obviously deny the charge, as would most of your compatriots in orthodoxy. There are fideists, and there are those who have fallen off the edge of fideism. Your proposed ally appears to be one of the latter.
Promotor, you might better comprehend if you attempted to understand language, not as something inviolable which was dropped out of the sky by the gods on a particularly beneficent day, but as itself a construction of "humankind." Language is a game, its rules are arbitrary and constantly subject to change-except for the rule that there can be no teams.
Entertaining as all this has been, I repeat the untouched (by you) original pronouncement: the author is dead, and no amount of nostalgia for univocity is going to resuscitate him.
Kind regards,
Advocatus Diaboli
Saturday, July 08, 2006
My Belly Button Is Really Deep
It's not often that I read a book written in the last half-century, and it's quite uncommon that I spend my precious commuting time on a new release. But, occasionally, I feel that I ought to have some contact with the present, so I read a book published in the calendar year in which I happen to be living. (Parenthetically, C.S. Lewis' advice about giving a volume at least 30 years from publication before deciding its worth seems wiser and wiser as I read more.)
I bought Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz for my wife after it got a good review in the New York Times. Supposedly it was a true crime story, written by the victim, which included reflections on her own experience and the phenomenon of violence in America. I hadn't intended to read it, but life in Bay Ridge started to get hectic, so I set aside Nick Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse for Strange Piece of Paradise, just to give my brain a break.
Terri Jentz was bicycling across the country with a friend from Yale in the summer of 1977 when, at a roadside park in Oregon where the girls had camped for the night, the two were run over in their tent by a pickup truck and subsequently axed-nearly to death. Their attacker was never apprehended, and the statute of limitations on attempted murder in Oregon at that time was 3 years. However, 15 years after the event, Jentz felt that she needed to solve the crime herself in order to experience closure, so the bulk of the book deals with her amateur detective work on her own attempted murder, and her psychological ordeal in trying to get past the event.
Paradise is at least twice as long as it needs to be. Not only that, but its author seems to think that the fact that she graduated from Yale means that anything that strikes her as profound actually is so. This is obsessive introspection paraded as insight on a 542-page scale. In addition to this, coincidence is invested with significance in ways that seem like caricature-except that there is no humor in this book. The book is driven by obsession and neediness in such a way that one is not likely to sympathize with the author; one rather sympathizes with the other girl, who was more seriously injured but learned to live past the crime. "Shayna Weiss," as she is named in Paradise, refuses insistently to play the game that Jentz is so keen on. "Weiss" fades out of Jentz's life, with an occasional admonition to Jentz to seek professional help.
The limpness of this book is increased by the fact that, although Jentz devotes 8 years to the investigation, she never confronts the suspect, and never amasses enough evidence to be damning (though she thinks she does). To me, Jentz's effort is intriguing only as a display of a phenomenon which Kierkegaard noted in The Book on Adler: absolutely anything can seem profound if one ruminates on it enough. Kierkegaard considered that Magister Adler's writings were quite banal; the only thing that kept Adler from noticing this is that he had repeated his thoughts to himself with such studiousness that they appeared impenetrably deep. Jentz, I think, is guilty of the same crime. Sustained navel-gazing can present one with the illusion that one's belly button is incredibly profound; poking a tape measure in there usually produces a different conclusion.
I bought Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz for my wife after it got a good review in the New York Times. Supposedly it was a true crime story, written by the victim, which included reflections on her own experience and the phenomenon of violence in America. I hadn't intended to read it, but life in Bay Ridge started to get hectic, so I set aside Nick Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse for Strange Piece of Paradise, just to give my brain a break.
Terri Jentz was bicycling across the country with a friend from Yale in the summer of 1977 when, at a roadside park in Oregon where the girls had camped for the night, the two were run over in their tent by a pickup truck and subsequently axed-nearly to death. Their attacker was never apprehended, and the statute of limitations on attempted murder in Oregon at that time was 3 years. However, 15 years after the event, Jentz felt that she needed to solve the crime herself in order to experience closure, so the bulk of the book deals with her amateur detective work on her own attempted murder, and her psychological ordeal in trying to get past the event.
Paradise is at least twice as long as it needs to be. Not only that, but its author seems to think that the fact that she graduated from Yale means that anything that strikes her as profound actually is so. This is obsessive introspection paraded as insight on a 542-page scale. In addition to this, coincidence is invested with significance in ways that seem like caricature-except that there is no humor in this book. The book is driven by obsession and neediness in such a way that one is not likely to sympathize with the author; one rather sympathizes with the other girl, who was more seriously injured but learned to live past the crime. "Shayna Weiss," as she is named in Paradise, refuses insistently to play the game that Jentz is so keen on. "Weiss" fades out of Jentz's life, with an occasional admonition to Jentz to seek professional help.
The limpness of this book is increased by the fact that, although Jentz devotes 8 years to the investigation, she never confronts the suspect, and never amasses enough evidence to be damning (though she thinks she does). To me, Jentz's effort is intriguing only as a display of a phenomenon which Kierkegaard noted in The Book on Adler: absolutely anything can seem profound if one ruminates on it enough. Kierkegaard considered that Magister Adler's writings were quite banal; the only thing that kept Adler from noticing this is that he had repeated his thoughts to himself with such studiousness that they appeared impenetrably deep. Jentz, I think, is guilty of the same crime. Sustained navel-gazing can present one with the illusion that one's belly button is incredibly profound; poking a tape measure in there usually produces a different conclusion.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Ignorance Is Bliss
"...Eve erred in not regulating the measure of her knowledge by the will of God. And we all daily suffer under the same disease, because we desire to know more than is right, and more than God allows; whereas the principal point of wisdom is a well-regulated sobriety in obedience to God."
-Calvin, Commentary on Genesis III.5
It's Thursday morning, I'm walking the regular route from Herald Square to 8th Avenue while indulging in a well-worn daydream: I'm wishing that I had the raw brainpower, not to mention the training, to solve at least one of the festering questions that has always plagued Christianity. (My innermost secret is that I would like to have developed a rigorous and completely new argument for the existence of God; but you didn't hear that from me.) I've thought for a while that I would like to generate a compelling solution to the problem of interaction; double agency would be okay, too. Theodicy is for amateurs.
But I'm a good Calvinist, and I'm familiar with Moses: I know that the secret things are private property, no trespassing allowed. But if we could just reframe the nagging issues...just put a new spin on an old concept...if there were only some crowbar we could stick in the door of academia, or at least of the mainstream media. Machen got a tip of the hat from Mencken; can you imagine Thomas Friedman doing that for R.C. Sproul? The theologian has gone the way of the poet-maybe never to return, in this culture. Slam goes the office door.
But then, on lunch, I break out the Hendrix Publishers copy of Calvin's Commentary on Genesis, which I keep in a drawer, ostensibly for the purposes of regular reading. And I remember, as I encounter one of Calvin's most characteristic sentiments, that the thorniness of the much-touted difficulties is evidence, not of the problematic nature of Christian theism, but of the wickedness of man's heart. The conundrums are man's problem, the problem of boundless pride, of rebellion against the "but" following "of every tree of the Garden thou mayest freely eat." So I let my best buddy Johnny remind me that ignorance is sometimes bliss, and, as I step outside on the last minutes of my break, feeling better, I wonder what a solution to the problem of interaction would even look like.
-Calvin, Commentary on Genesis III.5
It's Thursday morning, I'm walking the regular route from Herald Square to 8th Avenue while indulging in a well-worn daydream: I'm wishing that I had the raw brainpower, not to mention the training, to solve at least one of the festering questions that has always plagued Christianity. (My innermost secret is that I would like to have developed a rigorous and completely new argument for the existence of God; but you didn't hear that from me.) I've thought for a while that I would like to generate a compelling solution to the problem of interaction; double agency would be okay, too. Theodicy is for amateurs.
But I'm a good Calvinist, and I'm familiar with Moses: I know that the secret things are private property, no trespassing allowed. But if we could just reframe the nagging issues...just put a new spin on an old concept...if there were only some crowbar we could stick in the door of academia, or at least of the mainstream media. Machen got a tip of the hat from Mencken; can you imagine Thomas Friedman doing that for R.C. Sproul? The theologian has gone the way of the poet-maybe never to return, in this culture. Slam goes the office door.
But then, on lunch, I break out the Hendrix Publishers copy of Calvin's Commentary on Genesis, which I keep in a drawer, ostensibly for the purposes of regular reading. And I remember, as I encounter one of Calvin's most characteristic sentiments, that the thorniness of the much-touted difficulties is evidence, not of the problematic nature of Christian theism, but of the wickedness of man's heart. The conundrums are man's problem, the problem of boundless pride, of rebellion against the "but" following "of every tree of the Garden thou mayest freely eat." So I let my best buddy Johnny remind me that ignorance is sometimes bliss, and, as I step outside on the last minutes of my break, feeling better, I wonder what a solution to the problem of interaction would even look like.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
