As for death, do not the narratives provided by literature serve to soften the sting of anguish in the face of the unknown, of nothingness, by giving it in imagination the shape of this or that death, exemplary in one way or another? Thus fiction has a role to play in the apprenticeship of dying. The meditation on the Passion of Christ has accompanied in this way more than one believer to the last threshold.' Oneself as Another, p. 162
By 'fiction', Ricoeur isn't saying 'it's made up': rather, he is pointing to the literary features of the account.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Ricoeur on Literature & Ethics
A moment of clarity looms up through the fog:
There is no ethically neutral narrative. Literature is a vast laboratory in which we experiment with estimations, evaluations, and judgments of approval and condemnation through which narrativity serves as a propaedeutic to ethics. Oneself as Another, p. 115
[propaedeutic = 'a prelimary body of knowledge or rules necessary for the study of some art or science']
There is no ethically neutral narrative. Literature is a vast laboratory in which we experiment with estimations, evaluations, and judgments of approval and condemnation through which narrativity serves as a propaedeutic to ethics. Oneself as Another, p. 115
[propaedeutic = 'a prelimary body of knowledge or rules necessary for the study of some art or science']
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Philosophy and Theology
I have to say Paul Ricoeur's Gifford lectures published as Oneself as Another ranks among the most difficult books I have ever tried to read.
But I was interested to read in the first chapter to the book how Ricoeur sees his largely philosophical work in relation to theology. He had, he said, written a couple of more explicitly theological chapters, but does not include them in this book.
He is adamant that he doesn't want his philosophy of the self to be seen as a crypto-theology. It is certainly the case that he discovers all these conceptual difficulties and problems that seem to be suggestive of a theological resolution. Does not the philosophy of the self point us inevitably to the need for some kind of divinity? This is the move he wants to resist
And, what's more, he doesn't want to see it the other way around: theology as taking the place of philosophy. Theology doesn't give the 'ultimate foundation' (rationally speaking) that philosophy strives for but can never attain. That would be stretching theology to do work it isn't designed to do:
If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function which would most certainly be the case if one were to expect from it some definitive solution to aporias that philosophy produces in abundance... (p. 24)
No: theology does not answer the questions that philosophy has raised. The irretractable problems that a philosopher discovers are not susceptible to a theological answer. The problems remain, and remain to be addressed by philosophy. What he has instead from theology is assurance, which is to be taken by faith. This is how he puts it:
The dependence of the slef on a word that stripsit of its glory, all the while comforting its courage to be, delivers biblical faith from the temptation, which I am here calling cryptophilosophical, of taking over the henceforth vacnt role of ultimate foundation. In turn, a fiath that knows itself to be without guarantee...can help philosophical hermeneutics to protect itself from the hubris that would set it up as the heir to the philosophies of the cogito (ie Descartes) and as continuing their self-foundational claim. (p. 25)
But I was interested to read in the first chapter to the book how Ricoeur sees his largely philosophical work in relation to theology. He had, he said, written a couple of more explicitly theological chapters, but does not include them in this book.
He is adamant that he doesn't want his philosophy of the self to be seen as a crypto-theology. It is certainly the case that he discovers all these conceptual difficulties and problems that seem to be suggestive of a theological resolution. Does not the philosophy of the self point us inevitably to the need for some kind of divinity? This is the move he wants to resist
And, what's more, he doesn't want to see it the other way around: theology as taking the place of philosophy. Theology doesn't give the 'ultimate foundation' (rationally speaking) that philosophy strives for but can never attain. That would be stretching theology to do work it isn't designed to do:
If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function which would most certainly be the case if one were to expect from it some definitive solution to aporias that philosophy produces in abundance... (p. 24)
No: theology does not answer the questions that philosophy has raised. The irretractable problems that a philosopher discovers are not susceptible to a theological answer. The problems remain, and remain to be addressed by philosophy. What he has instead from theology is assurance, which is to be taken by faith. This is how he puts it:
The dependence of the slef on a word that stripsit of its glory, all the while comforting its courage to be, delivers biblical faith from the temptation, which I am here calling cryptophilosophical, of taking over the henceforth vacnt role of ultimate foundation. In turn, a fiath that knows itself to be without guarantee...can help philosophical hermeneutics to protect itself from the hubris that would set it up as the heir to the philosophies of the cogito (ie Descartes) and as continuing their self-foundational claim. (p. 25)
Friday, March 28, 2008
What is 'the self' anyway?
In his monumental work Oneself as Another Paul Ricoeur makes a distinction between the two major meanings of the word ‘identity’ in terms of the Latin words idem or ipse.[1] Idem-identity has the sense of ‘sameness’. Under this definition, a person’s identity can constituted from matrices or horizons that stem from comparison to others. So, I identify with those who are the same as me and over against those who are different. On the other hand, ipse-identity invites an understanding of identity in terms of ‘selfhood’. As an identity, the self ‘has to be reflexively made’.[2] Self-identity refers at the outset to the one I am speaking about when am able to speak self-consciously about myself. It is already an indication of self-awareness, a capacity for ‘seeing’ oneself. We might describe it as a mental gaze at one’s own reflection in a mirror. This self-awareness is not self-understanding as such, or an appreciation of the meaning of oneself; but it is a prompt to self-understanding. The very notion of oneself invites one on a quest to discover or make sense of who it is one is talking of when one refers to oneself.
If I am to make sense of myself, I need a point of reference or comparison. I must be able to trace in some way a coherence, a pattern in this entity I name ‘self’. Time offers that to me in two ways: firstly, by an act of remembering I can trace my own actions and experiences across time. I can begin to see patterns of cause and effect; to makes sense of motivations and intentions; to have feelings of nostalgia and regret; and so on. In other words, I begin to see my own narrative emerging, the story of my self. In turn, secondly, I can begin to exercise my other mental faculty relating to time, my imagination, and to project into the future the next stages in the emplotment of my life.
To persue this invitation to understand oneself, then, suggests that it is a narrative that is needs to be understood – in Ricoeur’s terms, the ‘hermeneutics of the self’. It is true to our experience of embodiment to think this way, too: that we are not selves known in abstract, as if we are static types, but rather that we are revealed, to others as well as to ourselves, as characters in a sequence of causally related events. We notice then of course that were are not, even in this moment of reflexivity, cut off from the phenomenal world – but rather, thoroughly situated within in it. In other words, this reflexive sense of identity finds its expression in the form of a narrative. That is what our memories do for us: they narrate the self into identity, interpreting the past for us and projecting out of that past a future, the open horizon to which our personal history is moving.[3] Story is a remarkable mnemonic device. In fact, personal identity takes this narrative form because of its inherently historical nature.
What we have in narrative is a binding together of word and event: the event is described and given coherence by the application of the shape and categories of narrative. Narrative applies a causal and teleological form to events as we experience them; though this is not altogether arbitrary. The sequentiality of events invites the search for causal links between them. This is something we recognize even in our own bodies: as they change over time, collecting scars and wrinkles, we experience in ourselves the results and effects of our experiences. This is not to say that our narrating of the events of our experience is the final truth about them; or, that every account that we give of events we have experienced is absolutely comprehensive. It is the tracing of a path through a forest as best we can: though we do no see every tree in the forest, and though at times the going is rough, and we lose our bearings, we still are able to make our way. Though there is difficulty, there is not incoherence, necessarily.
If ipse-identity requires narration, then it also draws the self into realm of the ethical. This is for two reasons. One the one hand, the realisation that we are actors and agents, who may participate and contribute to the chain of causality. As selves in time, we are immediately in the position of asking what it is we are going to act in a way that it is consistent and coherent with our conception of our self-identity. How are my actions going to make sense as coming from me, as being ‘mine’? Insanity is a way of describing someone whose actions do not emerge from some evident sense of self – a judgement even the insane person might make as they find themselves unable to answer the question ‘why did you do that?’
The second point is not unrelated: the notion of the self is also an invitation to pursue the ‘true’ or perhaps ‘authentic’ self. The corollory of this that individual must have, or develop, some conception of the good by which to judge the self that might emerge. Yet, with the turn of the self to the good does not come an automatic description of the good. So, if the chosen measure for self-realisation is ‘authenticity’, for example, then the concept must be given some relatively substantial account if the authentic self is to be recognised when it appears. Which is to say: the hermeneutics of the self orients the self to the pursuit of the good, without also giving thereby a definition of what the good is. That discovery remains to be made; or, that revelation remains to be given...
[1] Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 2.
[2] Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity : Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1991), p. 3.
[3] George W. Stroup, The Promise of Narrative Theology : Recovering the Gospel in the Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), p. 107.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Hans Frei on Typology or Figural reading
Hans Frei has done most in recent decades to rehabilitate figurative or typological reading as a necessary component of Biblical hermeneutics. Building on the work of literary scholar Eric Auerbach, Frei argued that the Bible points to its own unity and inner coherence by inviting figural interpretation. In Auerbach’s terms:Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or person in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while second involves or fulfills the first. The two poles of a figure are separated in time, but both, being real events or persons, are within temporality. The are both contained in the flowing stream which is historical life, and only the comprehension, the intellectus spiritualis, of their interdependence is a spiritual act.[1]
In other words: typology shows that two events or characters are part of the one connected stream of history in way that is not necessarily obvious from mere analysis of causality. The prefiguring of one by the other is discerned by (or, perhaps better, revealed to) the reader. In theologian Frei’s words:
In figural interpretation the figure itself is real in its own place, time, and right and without any detraction from that reality it prefigures the reality that will fulfill it. This figural relation not only brings into coherent relation events in bibical narration, but allows also the fitting of each present occurrence and experience into a real, narrative framework or world. Each person, each occurrence is a figure of that providential narrative in which it is also an ingredient.[2]
Unlike allegorical reading, typological interpretation points to the embeddedness of the events in a common narrative framework governed by providence.[3] These are ‘real’ or ‘historical’ at least in the sense that they gain their meaning from a relation to divine providence – the same providential narrative in which the reader of the text then in turn finds herself.[4]
This observation dovetails with Nicholas Lash’s proposal for a ‘performative’ reading of Scripture. There is a sort of double typology at work: the reader of Scripture is invited to see not only types of the Messiah in the OT narratives, but also then to model his own life (and death) after the pattern of the life of Christ. The structure of shadow and fulfilment is not repeated in the life of the believer (the believer’s life is not the reality prefigured in some way by Christ); but the typological similarity serves to bind the disciple into the same reality as the world of the text, within the frame of the same providential narrative. The text may serve not only as a type of Christ but also, in a secondary way, as a type of the follower of Christ.
[1] Erich Auerbach, Mimesis : The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 73.
[2] Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative : A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 153.
[3] The great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, for his part, wrote: ‘Typology points to future events that are often thought of as transcending time, so that they contain a vertical lift as well as a horizontal move forward.’ Is ‘transcending’ the right verb? Typology as it is used in the NT, and as observed by Hans Frei, reconfigures time certainly, but doesn’t overcome or dispense with it (if that is what is meant by ‘transcending’ here). Northrop Frye, The Great Code - the Bible in Literature (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1982), p. 82.
[4] This is what Frei argued had been ‘eclipsed’ in all the debates about what it was the texts refered to.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Nicholas Lash on Performing the Scriptures
This notion of ‘performing the Scriptures’ was highlighted in an influential essay by Nicholas Lash.[1] He begins from the rather obvious point that reading or interpretation of a text depends largely on the kind of text being used: ‘different kinds of text call for different kinds of reading’.[2] To read some texts – in particular, those texts which are ‘works of art’ – does require the assistance of experts; however, the role of experts in reading texts while indispensible, is subordinate. Their expert ‘reading’ is not the fundamental form of interpretation. Rather, ‘there are at least some texts that only begin to deliver their meaning in so far as they are ‘brought into play’ through interpretative performance’.[3]
Having used King Lear and a Beethoven score as examples, Lash now applies his insight to the New Testament, suggesting that ‘the fundamental form of the Christian interpretation of scripture is the life, activity and organization of the believing community’.[4] Christian practice can properly be described as ‘interpretative action’ – a performance of the texts, in other words. This performance, in its turn, is an enactment of the conviction that the best (‘best’ because most appropriate to the text in question) reading of these texts is as the story of Jesus, human beings and God. The performative interpretation of Scripture can also be called ‘Christian discipleship’. Lash allows that performances may differ over history, as circumstances change; but though the story may be told differently, it cannot be a different story if it is to be a performance of this text. The original meaning of the text gives an appropriate constraint to later performances of it.
This points to an important difference between Scripture and King Lear, which has to do with history. The New Testament self-conciously adheres to particular past events. Its original meaning was not merely that Jesus Christ was representative of certain fundamental human virtues, but that he was one man ‘in whom the mystery of divine action is seen to have been embodied and disclosed’.[5] So, for Lash, to suppose that we could render an authentic performance of the New Testament utterly disconnected from the historical would be to tell a different story from the one the New Testament itself tells. Lash goes on: ‘…for the practice of Christianity, the performacne of the biblical text, to be true…must not be not only ‘true to life’, but ‘true to his life’; and not only ‘true to his life’, but ‘true to God’.[6]
[1] Nicholas Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," in Theology on the Way to Emmaus (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005).
[2] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 38.
[3] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 41.
[4] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 42.
[5] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 45.
[6] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 45.
Having used King Lear and a Beethoven score as examples, Lash now applies his insight to the New Testament, suggesting that ‘the fundamental form of the Christian interpretation of scripture is the life, activity and organization of the believing community’.[4] Christian practice can properly be described as ‘interpretative action’ – a performance of the texts, in other words. This performance, in its turn, is an enactment of the conviction that the best (‘best’ because most appropriate to the text in question) reading of these texts is as the story of Jesus, human beings and God. The performative interpretation of Scripture can also be called ‘Christian discipleship’. Lash allows that performances may differ over history, as circumstances change; but though the story may be told differently, it cannot be a different story if it is to be a performance of this text. The original meaning of the text gives an appropriate constraint to later performances of it.
This points to an important difference between Scripture and King Lear, which has to do with history. The New Testament self-conciously adheres to particular past events. Its original meaning was not merely that Jesus Christ was representative of certain fundamental human virtues, but that he was one man ‘in whom the mystery of divine action is seen to have been embodied and disclosed’.[5] So, for Lash, to suppose that we could render an authentic performance of the New Testament utterly disconnected from the historical would be to tell a different story from the one the New Testament itself tells. Lash goes on: ‘…for the practice of Christianity, the performacne of the biblical text, to be true…must not be not only ‘true to life’, but ‘true to his life’; and not only ‘true to his life’, but ‘true to God’.[6]
[1] Nicholas Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," in Theology on the Way to Emmaus (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005).
[2] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 38.
[3] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 41.
[4] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 42.
[5] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 45.
[6] Lash, "Performing the Scriptures," p. 45.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Romance, by Christine Breillat - a review
I wrote this review of Christine Breillat's film 'Romance' in 2002. I was invited to see it by Anglican Media Sydney, and to participate in a panel organised by the Sydney Morning Herald. The film had been banned, and then the ban overturned. The panel included a feminist, a pornographer who had formerly been a censor (would you believe), a 'concerned parent', and me, the Christian.
Let me be direct: don’t go and see this movie. Romance is crude, pretentious, repugnant, sad and dull. I could not recommend this film to anyone, on either moral and artistic grounds. However, should this film have been banned (as it was momentarily by the Australian office of Film and Literature Classification)? Should Christians have campaigned against the public screening of this and similar pieces?
Having seen the film (participating in a panel run by the Sydney Morning Herald at the behest of Anglican Media), I think not. If you list the various sexual activities depicted in this film you would be likely to question my judgement: genital nudity, oral sex, sado-masochism, rape, and most controversially, scenes of actual (as opposed to simulated) sexual intercourse - the whole repertoire. However, there were certain features of the context of these depictions, as I will explain, that made them different in character even to some less technically revealing M and MA-rates films.
Romance is a deliberately ironic title. Director Catherine Breillat narrates the sexual odyssey of Marie, a young school teacher. Marie is in love with the narcissistic Paul, but he is sexually cold. As a result, she leaves his bed and seeks satisfaction in bold sexual experimentation with a variety of partners. None of the new experiences seem particularly satisfactory; some are even abusive. The men Marie meets are her biggest problem - though she desires them, they are almost all twisted in some way. Her sequence of experiences lead to a devastating rape at the hands of a casual lover. Eventually, her only liberation from her relationship is through a pregnancy and the murder of Paul. We are then treated to a technicolour childbirth scene - which drew the only gasp of shock from the audience!
This is a French film with all the surrealism and metaphysical ruminating, existentialism and feminism one could want for. It is not particularly erotic. In fact, the result of showing so much was rather comic at first, and then extremely dull. Having prayed “lead me not into temptation” as I entered the cinema, I found my prayer unexpectedly answered. It is a cold journey: the audience is not drawn to sympathise with any character in the traditional way. Marie’s sexual journey is a tragic, frustrating and disappointing one.
I would not call Romance pornographic. Pornography exploits desire in search of profit. It is about lust, quick, on-tap, sexual fantasy without the bother of a relationship. Romance was bad - even revolting - but it wasn’t porn. It was sexually cold. It was aimed at a cappuccino-drinking, art-house crowd and will only be shown in small inner-city cinemas. If it hadn’t been banned, it wouldn’t have made it to our screens at all, I daresay.
The experience of viewing Romance led me to several observations. The first is that the response of law - banning in this case - is almost always counter-productive, especially when the work involved has something to say, not just an intent to titillate. Advocating a ban is a simplistic reaction to something which asks for a more complex response, and inevitably brings more people in to see the film! Romance continues an ongoing exploration of female sexuality in our society which includes women’s magazines and televised inanities like Sex in the City and Ally McBeal. At least this film is honest, and doesn’t glamorise promiscuous sex, unlike Pretty Woman and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Here was a raw and open portrayal of the curse’s consequence for the female: “your desire will be for him, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16). For all her attempts at liberating herself, Marie repeatedly assumes attitudes of submission to men, even in her fantasies. While claiming feminist credentials, I felt that Breillat allowed us to see the degrading of Caroline Ducey, the actress playing Marie. I was interested that the representative feminist on the panel was quite disappointed with the film.
Secondly, even though I would not have others banned from seeing this film, I must discourage them. The cinema opens our souls like almost no other art form. Our eyes are the lamps of our whole bodies, as Jesus said (Matt 6:22); what we see effects us. In some way, human beings feel that to watch acts of whatever type is to participate in them in some way, to come dangerously close to committing the act itself. The veterans of war know this too well. Our memories capture images, and they may never fade away. Christians know the fragility and vulnerability of the inner human only too well. While allowing a choice for adults to view this film, we can also urge them to choose not to.
Thirdly, as was all too evident at this special preview screening, sixties-style liberalism is a hypocritical and condescending ideology. In an introductory lecture, we were told of the “principled” distributors and film reviewers who pushed for the review of the ban; and of the speaker’s fundamentalist father, who didn’t understand art. Liberalism pretends to appeal to “principles”, like “freedom of speech” and “the right for adults to choose what they watch”, all the while advocating nothing of the sort. Would the liberal press have argued so strongly for the right to see an anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi film? Or a gory anti-abortion film? Of course not - and neither should they. We are all absolutists, and we all believe in censorship, ultimately. But liberals try to conceal their absolutism with an appeal to these golden principles of the Enlightenment. It is about time their bluff was called!
Let me be direct: don’t go and see this movie. Romance is crude, pretentious, repugnant, sad and dull. I could not recommend this film to anyone, on either moral and artistic grounds. However, should this film have been banned (as it was momentarily by the Australian office of Film and Literature Classification)? Should Christians have campaigned against the public screening of this and similar pieces?
Having seen the film (participating in a panel run by the Sydney Morning Herald at the behest of Anglican Media), I think not. If you list the various sexual activities depicted in this film you would be likely to question my judgement: genital nudity, oral sex, sado-masochism, rape, and most controversially, scenes of actual (as opposed to simulated) sexual intercourse - the whole repertoire. However, there were certain features of the context of these depictions, as I will explain, that made them different in character even to some less technically revealing M and MA-rates films.
Romance is a deliberately ironic title. Director Catherine Breillat narrates the sexual odyssey of Marie, a young school teacher. Marie is in love with the narcissistic Paul, but he is sexually cold. As a result, she leaves his bed and seeks satisfaction in bold sexual experimentation with a variety of partners. None of the new experiences seem particularly satisfactory; some are even abusive. The men Marie meets are her biggest problem - though she desires them, they are almost all twisted in some way. Her sequence of experiences lead to a devastating rape at the hands of a casual lover. Eventually, her only liberation from her relationship is through a pregnancy and the murder of Paul. We are then treated to a technicolour childbirth scene - which drew the only gasp of shock from the audience!
This is a French film with all the surrealism and metaphysical ruminating, existentialism and feminism one could want for. It is not particularly erotic. In fact, the result of showing so much was rather comic at first, and then extremely dull. Having prayed “lead me not into temptation” as I entered the cinema, I found my prayer unexpectedly answered. It is a cold journey: the audience is not drawn to sympathise with any character in the traditional way. Marie’s sexual journey is a tragic, frustrating and disappointing one.
I would not call Romance pornographic. Pornography exploits desire in search of profit. It is about lust, quick, on-tap, sexual fantasy without the bother of a relationship. Romance was bad - even revolting - but it wasn’t porn. It was sexually cold. It was aimed at a cappuccino-drinking, art-house crowd and will only be shown in small inner-city cinemas. If it hadn’t been banned, it wouldn’t have made it to our screens at all, I daresay.
The experience of viewing Romance led me to several observations. The first is that the response of law - banning in this case - is almost always counter-productive, especially when the work involved has something to say, not just an intent to titillate. Advocating a ban is a simplistic reaction to something which asks for a more complex response, and inevitably brings more people in to see the film! Romance continues an ongoing exploration of female sexuality in our society which includes women’s magazines and televised inanities like Sex in the City and Ally McBeal. At least this film is honest, and doesn’t glamorise promiscuous sex, unlike Pretty Woman and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Here was a raw and open portrayal of the curse’s consequence for the female: “your desire will be for him, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16). For all her attempts at liberating herself, Marie repeatedly assumes attitudes of submission to men, even in her fantasies. While claiming feminist credentials, I felt that Breillat allowed us to see the degrading of Caroline Ducey, the actress playing Marie. I was interested that the representative feminist on the panel was quite disappointed with the film.
Secondly, even though I would not have others banned from seeing this film, I must discourage them. The cinema opens our souls like almost no other art form. Our eyes are the lamps of our whole bodies, as Jesus said (Matt 6:22); what we see effects us. In some way, human beings feel that to watch acts of whatever type is to participate in them in some way, to come dangerously close to committing the act itself. The veterans of war know this too well. Our memories capture images, and they may never fade away. Christians know the fragility and vulnerability of the inner human only too well. While allowing a choice for adults to view this film, we can also urge them to choose not to.
Thirdly, as was all too evident at this special preview screening, sixties-style liberalism is a hypocritical and condescending ideology. In an introductory lecture, we were told of the “principled” distributors and film reviewers who pushed for the review of the ban; and of the speaker’s fundamentalist father, who didn’t understand art. Liberalism pretends to appeal to “principles”, like “freedom of speech” and “the right for adults to choose what they watch”, all the while advocating nothing of the sort. Would the liberal press have argued so strongly for the right to see an anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi film? Or a gory anti-abortion film? Of course not - and neither should they. We are all absolutists, and we all believe in censorship, ultimately. But liberals try to conceal their absolutism with an appeal to these golden principles of the Enlightenment. It is about time their bluff was called!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Anzac Day in London
I am delighted to have been invited to speak at St Helen's in London for a lunchtime service on Anzac Day.
I guess it's our equivalent of Remembrance Day, though it is particular to our own antipodean experience.
Any suggestions of what to talk about - especially given that it is combined NZ and Australian service? Texts and topics greatly received.
I guess it's our equivalent of Remembrance Day, though it is particular to our own antipodean experience.
Any suggestions of what to talk about - especially given that it is combined NZ and Australian service? Texts and topics greatly received.
Emotions and ethics
Once, a while back, I mused about cuteness and its relevance for ethics. It seems to me that our affective reactions are by and large not part of the way we frame discussion of ethics, in the churches or in the West in general.
Charles Taylor writes this:
Modern enlightened culture is very theory-oriented. We tend to live in our heads, trusting our disengaged understandings: of experience, of beauty (we can't really accept that it's telling us anything, unless about our own feelings); even the ethical: we think that the only valid form of ethical self-directon is through rational mazims or understanding. We can't accept that part of being good is opening oursleves to certain feelings; either the horror at infacticide, or agape as a gut feeling. The Secular Age, p. 555
Of course, the picture is more complicated than this. In one sense, the West celebrates and even sacralises the expression of feelings.
Charles Taylor writes this:
Modern enlightened culture is very theory-oriented. We tend to live in our heads, trusting our disengaged understandings: of experience, of beauty (we can't really accept that it's telling us anything, unless about our own feelings); even the ethical: we think that the only valid form of ethical self-directon is through rational mazims or understanding. We can't accept that part of being good is opening oursleves to certain feelings; either the horror at infacticide, or agape as a gut feeling. The Secular Age, p. 555
Of course, the picture is more complicated than this. In one sense, the West celebrates and even sacralises the expression of feelings.
“That inscrutable object of adulation”
A lecture I once gave... [the title comes from an essay by RS White “Don Bradman: That Inscrutable Object of Adulation” Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region, ed. Bruce Bennett and Dennis Haskell (Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, Nedlands, 1992), pp. 193 - 200.]'Every culture throws up its heroes: figures that take on iconic status for the culture and in some way embody the dreams and aspirations of the culture. In Australia we have several: Ned Kelly, Simpson and his donkey, Breaker Morant, Gough Whitlam, Dawn Fraser and others. Study of these figures is a short-hand way of analysing a culture. But that doesn't mean it is a simple matter...
And so I have chosen to give an hour to thinking about Don Bradman: partly at least because of my own passion for cricket and the availability of resources about him; but mostly because he is a remarkable figure, a person so dominant in his field that his achievements seem almost superhuman.
And yet Bradman remains an enigmatic figure: an idol of Australians who yet remained somewhat aloof; a tall poppy who managed himself with modesty; a man who to the end replied to hundreds of fan letters and yet was almost reclusive. It striking that Australians should so revere a man in so many ways unlike them. Why, we dare to ask? And what does Bradman symbolise for Australians?
The history of Australia as a unified entity is comparatively brief. Though to us it seems as if states rights are a fairly insignificant matter, in the nineteenth century the states could not even agree on a common railway gauge. While the various football codes and other sports were regionally aligned, cricket evolved as a uniquely national sport in a federated Australia. To this day, no other national sport captures the imagination of the nation in quite the same way; no other sport is so central to our cultural self-identity. Only swimming perhaps is a rival.
Cricket was first played in Australia in December 1803 by the officers of the ship Calcutta. Australian natives quickly took to the sport and were aided in the spread and growth of the game by the waves of fresh immigrants arriving from cricketing England. Cricket was a suitable game for our climate; and it finds a place in both rural and urban settings quite comfortably.
The first test match was played in Melbourne between Australia and England, before Australia had even become a nation. Much to everybody’s surprise, Australia won by 45 runs. Finally, the young upstart nation had found a way to compete against the home country: a way to shine in international company and particularly to gain the notice of the Home Country.
The Boy from Bowral
Donald George Bradman was born in Cootamundra in August 1908. He was the son of carpenter. In 1911 the family moved to Bowral, where the young Don grew up in a cricketing environment. As a young boy he entertained himself at home by hitting a golf ball against a cylindrical corrugated iron water tank. With this tricky game he honed his hand-eye co-ordination. In 1950 he wrote “I can understand how it must have developed the co-ordination of brain, eye and muscle which was to serve me so well in important matches later on.”
He does not ever seem to have been particularly religious, though he sang as a youngster in the church choir at Bowral...
The Bodyline Series
...
Bodyline was a watershed: here was a genuine cause for indignation against the colonial power. Australians revered the English and felt very much part of the British Empire: and yet the values that they felt essential to that Empire, embodied in the game of cricket, were here being treated with cynicism and contempt by the honoured representatives of England herself. The myth of glorious mother England was exposed as a fallacy; just as it would more seriously in the Second World War. And secretly perhaps Australians felt proud: proud that our Don Bradman was so good that the English had to sell out their values to try and defeat him.
The Invincibles
We pass over the great swathe of Bradman’s career that ran from 1933 to 1947, including the war years when no cricket was played and when Bradman’s health took a turn for the worse. It was in 1948 that he returned to England for the fourth and last time as a player and now as captain.
The tour was long anticipated: though the clouds of war had lifted, the English were still suffering the deprivations of food rationing and the various other effects of an arduous struggle. Bradman led an all-star Australian line-up unsurpassed for sheer all-round talent and maturity until perhaps the present day. The team remains the only team of any nation to have gone through England without losing a single game. Against Essex they were able to score 721 in a single day. And they won the tests 4 to nil.
Bradman’s last test was to be at the Oval in London. As walked to the wicket he was not aware that if he scored just four more runs he would be able to boast a test average of 100 (the next nearest player in the low 60s). The Englishman gave him three cheers. Then he settled over the bat. The bowler was Eric Hollies, a leg spinner from Warwickshire. The first ball Bradman played carefully. The second ball turned the other way, deceived Bradman and crashed in to the stumps. He had been bowled for a duck, and so his average remained at an incredible 99.94. Though he was so extraordinarily dominant in the game over twenty years, his last innings was a reminder that even Bradman was mortal.
So what do we make of this amazing figure in Australian social history? Bradman was no larrikin, no show pony – unlike many of our other sporting heroes. The Bradman museum website offers this conclusion:
Don Bradman has offered all Australians the same silver-lined story. The hope to achieve great heights from humble beginnings.
This is too simplistic in my view. The Bradman myth is far more complex.
He was a private, modest and direct man who was undemonstrative and reserved. He was not a drinker and enjoyed playing the piano to relax. He was not a womaniser or a gambler. In fact, he caused some dissension in the ranks of his team-mates because he was not seen to relish carousing.
Perhaps his quite reservation was in fact a reminder of what a previous generation actually admired in a person: a steely resolve and a self-discipline, a resourcefulness and a dedication that was needed to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. He was not flashy or flighty: he was just very very good at batting.
Since his death in 2001, Bradman’s character has come under more scrutiny. Suggestions of some ruthlessness in his business dealings in South Australia as a stockbroker have been aired; also Bradman’s parsimony and conservatism as a cricket administrator has been criticised by a younger generation of players, now themselves esteemed commentators (Ian Chappell being chief among them).
Certainly it mattered as it always has that England be the vanquished. Bradman perhaps best represented our belief in ourselves as a new nation ready to throw off the shackles of colonial influence and go it alone with sheer resourcefulness, native talent and iron determination. The friendly environment of sport was a lot less awkward than a war of independence. But there was still something of the cheeky little brother in Australian's love of sticking it to the Poms. Perhaps, as Australia passes from adolesence into adulthood as a nation, figures like Bradman will seem less important.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Learning the biblical languages
Now, don't get me wrong here: in principle, I am in favour, strongly in favour, of trainees for pastoral and teaching ministry being made to learn Greek and Hebrew.
In practice, I have yet to see how this actually works. Learning a language to a proficient level is extremely time-consuming for most students - Hebrew especially so. My own experience of three years of studying Hebrew in the context of a busy theological degree was that, while I could pass the course well, I don't think I was ever able to get a 'feel' for the language such that I can use it. It was useful of course to learn something of the atmosphere and fluidity of the language, and to gain an insight into the Hebrew mind - but for all that effort I think the results were paltry. And the opportunity cost was high, too: I could have been reading more and more widely in theology and history. My bet is that hardly any pastors would use Hebrew on a regular basis. So, was the time well spent? I am not convinced.
Greek is easier and more containable, of course, but still: the hours that an average student spends on Greek will be far and above the value it grants. Mostly we do not reach a level of Greek that enables us to make independent translational and interpretational decisions. We turn out to be still reliant on lexicographical sources.
In addition: a little learning is a dangerous thing. Teaching some Greek and Hebrew to students can give them a false confidence as to their ability to read the text in the original in a sensible way and come to useful, interesting and sound theological conclusions. It can give them the sense that now the text has been decoded, there is no more work to do. The tendency to make lexicography into theology (to use Gordon C's phrase) is the fruit of this.
So: let's have a discussion about the Biblical languages and their value for theological training for most pastors! How can they be taught so that a level of proficiency can be reached? Is it worth persisting, and why? Convince me!
In practice, I have yet to see how this actually works. Learning a language to a proficient level is extremely time-consuming for most students - Hebrew especially so. My own experience of three years of studying Hebrew in the context of a busy theological degree was that, while I could pass the course well, I don't think I was ever able to get a 'feel' for the language such that I can use it. It was useful of course to learn something of the atmosphere and fluidity of the language, and to gain an insight into the Hebrew mind - but for all that effort I think the results were paltry. And the opportunity cost was high, too: I could have been reading more and more widely in theology and history. My bet is that hardly any pastors would use Hebrew on a regular basis. So, was the time well spent? I am not convinced.
Greek is easier and more containable, of course, but still: the hours that an average student spends on Greek will be far and above the value it grants. Mostly we do not reach a level of Greek that enables us to make independent translational and interpretational decisions. We turn out to be still reliant on lexicographical sources.
In addition: a little learning is a dangerous thing. Teaching some Greek and Hebrew to students can give them a false confidence as to their ability to read the text in the original in a sensible way and come to useful, interesting and sound theological conclusions. It can give them the sense that now the text has been decoded, there is no more work to do. The tendency to make lexicography into theology (to use Gordon C's phrase) is the fruit of this.
So: let's have a discussion about the Biblical languages and their value for theological training for most pastors! How can they be taught so that a level of proficiency can be reached? Is it worth persisting, and why? Convince me!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Take the hermeneutics quiz...
... and tell me what you scored.
I got 71, which, in author Scot McKnight's book makes me a 'progressive!' I thought I was more moderate than that...
I got 71, which, in author Scot McKnight's book makes me a 'progressive!' I thought I was more moderate than that...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
martyrdom and bellydancing...
We were talking about martyrdom and the act of relinquishment of self-hood that it models. And then my friend (whose identity I won't disclose) said:
it is kinda like doing the shimmy in belly dance... you gotta learn how to stand right, to position yourself, to hold it... and simultaneously let go so that your fat wobbles
Personally, I wouldn't know... but if she says so!
it is kinda like doing the shimmy in belly dance... you gotta learn how to stand right, to position yourself, to hold it... and simultaneously let go so that your fat wobbles
Personally, I wouldn't know... but if she says so!
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Reading the Bible in the old South Africa
Richard Burridge, who wrote a remarkable work on the genre of the gospels, has a new book called Imitating Jesus - An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics. While I have yet to discover what he means by 'inclusive' - a word that normally makes me reach for my gun, because it is a such a loaded term - I have been impressed by his determination to recover the role of the Bible, and of the Biblical Jesus, in ethics. He relates the problem to the apartheid era in South Africa, when genuine Christians prayerfully earnestly and intelligently reading their Bibles decided that it supported racism. Does this mean that the Bible ought to be rejected, because it is open to such uses? By no means: though merely appealing to the Bible does not guarantee good reading of it.
Interestingly, he quotes CESA Bishop Frank Retief's submission, made in 1997, to a hearing of 'Faith Communities'.
...when the government made legislation that accorded with our moral or biblical understanding, we supported them. However, on the great issue of justice for all, we were often insensitive. We had not made the connection between gospel and society...We were witnesses to how the Bible and its message can be misused to support an evil ideology. National government used the Bible to support its policies, to give the impression that they were a Christian government. But then so did some liberation theologians who finally supported violence as a means of continuing the struggle...Where we have been negligent, careless and insensitive to biblical injunctions and mandates as we have been, may the Lord graciously forgive us....The fact that the Bible was used in the past to condone injustice does not mean its true message may be ignored today...It is our belief that this day and hour calls for men and women of conviction and integrity to apply the message of the Bible more accurately and faithfully to our emerging society... p. 397-8
I have met Bishop Frank and heard him speak, and I find this an impressive and moving statement. But, Burridge asks, what gives him and others (and the rest of us) confidence that we aren't making similar mistakes now?
Burridge gives an analysis of how the South African churches got into this mess - and notes on the one hand a lack of self-criticism and on the other a theology which overlooked the central place of Jesus for all Christian ethics. Could a church that was actually prioritising Jesus - the Jesus of the gospels, but also the Jesus of Paul and the other authors of the NT - have allowed itself to lapse so badly? Make no mistake, there was some sophisticated theological and exegetical work done in the theological faculties of South Africa in the apartheid era... but, says Burridge, the voice of Jesus was strangely silent even so.
So, argues Burridge, if churches want to avoid falling into the group-think which has resulted in such terrible misusing the Bible, they need to practice self-reflection and self-criticism as a matter of course. And also, they ought to pay attention to Jesus.
[Note: to any South African readers - I am only here reporting from Burridge. I cannot know and do not pretend to know what it was to live in those times and to be a Christian in those times. Nor do I know what it is to live as a Christian with this as a legacy - though Australian Christians have made their own mistakes of course.]
Interestingly, he quotes CESA Bishop Frank Retief's submission, made in 1997, to a hearing of 'Faith Communities'.
...when the government made legislation that accorded with our moral or biblical understanding, we supported them. However, on the great issue of justice for all, we were often insensitive. We had not made the connection between gospel and society...We were witnesses to how the Bible and its message can be misused to support an evil ideology. National government used the Bible to support its policies, to give the impression that they were a Christian government. But then so did some liberation theologians who finally supported violence as a means of continuing the struggle...Where we have been negligent, careless and insensitive to biblical injunctions and mandates as we have been, may the Lord graciously forgive us....The fact that the Bible was used in the past to condone injustice does not mean its true message may be ignored today...It is our belief that this day and hour calls for men and women of conviction and integrity to apply the message of the Bible more accurately and faithfully to our emerging society... p. 397-8
I have met Bishop Frank and heard him speak, and I find this an impressive and moving statement. But, Burridge asks, what gives him and others (and the rest of us) confidence that we aren't making similar mistakes now?
Burridge gives an analysis of how the South African churches got into this mess - and notes on the one hand a lack of self-criticism and on the other a theology which overlooked the central place of Jesus for all Christian ethics. Could a church that was actually prioritising Jesus - the Jesus of the gospels, but also the Jesus of Paul and the other authors of the NT - have allowed itself to lapse so badly? Make no mistake, there was some sophisticated theological and exegetical work done in the theological faculties of South Africa in the apartheid era... but, says Burridge, the voice of Jesus was strangely silent even so.
So, argues Burridge, if churches want to avoid falling into the group-think which has resulted in such terrible misusing the Bible, they need to practice self-reflection and self-criticism as a matter of course. And also, they ought to pay attention to Jesus.
[Note: to any South African readers - I am only here reporting from Burridge. I cannot know and do not pretend to know what it was to live in those times and to be a Christian in those times. Nor do I know what it is to live as a Christian with this as a legacy - though Australian Christians have made their own mistakes of course.]
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Talal Asad explains why we find suicide bombing horrific
Asad's examination of this subject should cause the secular liberal west an uneasy conscience. It is a fierce account indeed.
Why is that suicide bombing produces this reaction of particular horror from westerners? He gives four reasons, each of which points to 'identity being destroyed'.
1- an unexpected suicide is always shocking - it disrupts the pattens of everyday life with an unregulated violence. War, by contrast, though even more horrible possibly, is legitimated and deemed necessary to defend our forms of life.
2 - we in the west depend on laws which make crime and punishment seperable. But in suicide bombing, there is no possibility of punishment or restitution.
3 - modern subjectivity is held together by the tensions between individual self-assertion and collective obedience to the law, reverence for human life and its legitimated destruction and so on. Suicide bombing pays no regard to this fragile balance of tensions on which the democratic state seems to depend.
4 - Asad suggests that the Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed to secular witnesses the thought that there ought to be redemption in death. The suicide bomber communicates only that there is death and only death...
How much of this loathing is ALSO felt at the thought of martyrdom? I think a great deal. Asad is right: it isn't the idea of a redemptive death that is abhorrent to the secular person. Despite WWI, we accept deaths in the cause of horizons of significance like 'democracy' not exactly readily, but certainly, we find them intelligible. And we don't overturn governments that sanction this kind of sacrifice. But public deaths for a religious cause are horrifying because religion is essentially private. That dividing line is brutally shattered in martyrdom, as it is in suicide bombing.
Why is that suicide bombing produces this reaction of particular horror from westerners? He gives four reasons, each of which points to 'identity being destroyed'.
1- an unexpected suicide is always shocking - it disrupts the pattens of everyday life with an unregulated violence. War, by contrast, though even more horrible possibly, is legitimated and deemed necessary to defend our forms of life.
2 - we in the west depend on laws which make crime and punishment seperable. But in suicide bombing, there is no possibility of punishment or restitution.
3 - modern subjectivity is held together by the tensions between individual self-assertion and collective obedience to the law, reverence for human life and its legitimated destruction and so on. Suicide bombing pays no regard to this fragile balance of tensions on which the democratic state seems to depend.
4 - Asad suggests that the Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed to secular witnesses the thought that there ought to be redemption in death. The suicide bomber communicates only that there is death and only death...
How much of this loathing is ALSO felt at the thought of martyrdom? I think a great deal. Asad is right: it isn't the idea of a redemptive death that is abhorrent to the secular person. Despite WWI, we accept deaths in the cause of horizons of significance like 'democracy' not exactly readily, but certainly, we find them intelligible. And we don't overturn governments that sanction this kind of sacrifice. But public deaths for a religious cause are horrifying because religion is essentially private. That dividing line is brutally shattered in martyrdom, as it is in suicide bombing.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Volf on 'soft difference'
Miroslav Volf's article entitled 'Soft Difference' from Ex Auditu in 1994 is one of those ones I come back to again and again. In it he tries to describe from 1 Peter the way in which the Christians are supposed to differ from their surrounding culture. It is, he says, a 'soft difference'...
It might be appropriate to call the missionary distance that 1 Peter stresses soft difference. I do not mean a weak difference, for in 1 Peter the difference is anything but weak. It is strong, but it is not hard. Fear for oneself and one's identity creates hardness. The difference that joins itself with hardness always presents the other with a choice: either submit or be rejected, either "become like me or get away from me." In the mission to the world, hard difference operates with open or hidden pressures, manipulation, and threats. A decision for a soft difference, on the other hand, presupposes a fearlessness which 1 Peter repeatedly encourages his readers to assume (3:14; 3:6). People who are secure in themselves—more accurately, who are secure in their God—are able to live the soft difference without fear. They have no need either to subordinate or damn others, but can allow others space to be themselves. For people who live the soft difference, mission fundamentally takes the form of witness and invitation. They seek to win others without pressure or manipulation, sometimes even "without a word" (3:1).
It might be appropriate to call the missionary distance that 1 Peter stresses soft difference. I do not mean a weak difference, for in 1 Peter the difference is anything but weak. It is strong, but it is not hard. Fear for oneself and one's identity creates hardness. The difference that joins itself with hardness always presents the other with a choice: either submit or be rejected, either "become like me or get away from me." In the mission to the world, hard difference operates with open or hidden pressures, manipulation, and threats. A decision for a soft difference, on the other hand, presupposes a fearlessness which 1 Peter repeatedly encourages his readers to assume (3:14; 3:6). People who are secure in themselves—more accurately, who are secure in their God—are able to live the soft difference without fear. They have no need either to subordinate or damn others, but can allow others space to be themselves. For people who live the soft difference, mission fundamentally takes the form of witness and invitation. They seek to win others without pressure or manipulation, sometimes even "without a word" (3:1).
Monday, March 03, 2008
Benny Hinn tours Australia
This is a fascinating article on the Hinn ministry. But the two journalists concerned practice an act of deception on him, by pretending that one of them was wheelchair bound...anyone else got a problem with that? Hmm.
Nevertheless, Hinn seems to be fair game.
The article finishes:
Could it be that my scepticism blinded me to the possibility that God was in that place? Were we mocking God's work and, despite the excesses, Hinn is an instrument of healing? It is possible that a very few were healed? But I say that is despite Hinn. I judge him by the measure of the one he claims to be following. Jesus never promised people wealth, or instant healing. He didn't promise his disciples houses on the coast. Pastor Benny has recast Jesus in his own image. He has forgotten that his Lord died, humiliated, tortured, alone and penniless. But how do you sell that?
Quite. Well said.
Nevertheless, Hinn seems to be fair game.
The article finishes:
Could it be that my scepticism blinded me to the possibility that God was in that place? Were we mocking God's work and, despite the excesses, Hinn is an instrument of healing? It is possible that a very few were healed? But I say that is despite Hinn. I judge him by the measure of the one he claims to be following. Jesus never promised people wealth, or instant healing. He didn't promise his disciples houses on the coast. Pastor Benny has recast Jesus in his own image. He has forgotten that his Lord died, humiliated, tortured, alone and penniless. But how do you sell that?
Quite. Well said.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Talal Asad - On Suicide Bombing
Talal Asad is a terrifically interesting writer on religion and secularism - though his views are certainly not incontestable. I picked up a copy of his book On Suicide Bombing.
In its opening pages he writes that:
...I draw on some aspects of Christian theology: the crucifixion is the most famous suicide in history, whose horror is transmuted into the project of redeeming universal humanity - again through a combination of cruelty and compassion. p. 3
I did a double-take of course. A suicide? Hmm... Turning to the later passages in his book he DOES have some very interesting things to say about the atonement (as Charles Taylor does in The Secular Age). But he takes as his guide Aulen's very dated Christus Victor...
In its opening pages he writes that:
...I draw on some aspects of Christian theology: the crucifixion is the most famous suicide in history, whose horror is transmuted into the project of redeeming universal humanity - again through a combination of cruelty and compassion. p. 3
I did a double-take of course. A suicide? Hmm... Turning to the later passages in his book he DOES have some very interesting things to say about the atonement (as Charles Taylor does in The Secular Age). But he takes as his guide Aulen's very dated Christus Victor...
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