The Task of the Theologian

I had a great conversation yesterday with a dear friend about the task, the role, and the importance of “systematic theology” as a discipline in the coming age. We disagreed pretty significantly at points, but we fundamentally agreed on one point: theology as it has been done in the modern period (my terminology), marked by the isolated (white male) individual dropping tomes of knowledge on the world from his lonely office, should come to a swift end.

Of course, this doesn’t mean theology, even “systematic” theology, needs to or even should go away – only that its emphases and orientation must change, drastically – for my money, in such a way that will hopefully produce better theologies, better theologians, and better people who do theology. What should this new (old) orientation be? My buddy Jim McClendon is here to help us out:

Any existing human conviction can be located within a particular community of speech and (other) practice, in which what is said and believed can be assessed according to existing community standards. The theologian, for example, is occupied with fitting particular beliefs into the general web of discerned community beliefs, sometimes trimming, enlarging, or rearranging the particulars in order to achieve maximum correspondence and coherence. The attempt to find a viable, economical statement of the community’s narrative tradition is equivalent to seeking the irreducible current statement of its obligatory beliefs or dogmas. To express the matter in McClendon and Smith terms, doctrinal theology is the quest for those beliefs that deserve to be recognized as the convictions of the community. (Philosophers who fail to see this communal dimension of the theological task are in poor position to correct any of theology’s deliverances.) “‘Convictions’ After Twenty Years”

Put differently: theology should be, will be done from one’s position in a community of conviction. It is second-order. This in no way denigrates the task of systematic (perhaps “coherent” is a better descriptor?) theology, but it should be of a different character than many systematic theologies that have been done thus far. We can learn from them – we should learn from them – but for my money, theology done in this manner is more faithful, more risky, and potentially more interesting than the other.

Of course, all this should be taken with a grain of salt – I am an ethicist, after all.

Buddy the Elf, Christ Figure Extraordinaire

My wife and I recently had our annual Elf watching event of the Christmas season. There are several movies we watch every year around this time (only some of which are proper Christmas films, and others of which are totally ridiculous despite my love for them), and Elf has made the rotation. Congratulations Jon Favreau, you’re in our lives forever.

This go around, I noticed that if you were so inclined, Elf could be put in line with a great number of artistic masterpieces that have a Christ figure as its hero (Dostoevsky’s “Prince Myshkin,” William Golding’s “Simon,”… Favreau’s “Buddy the Elf”). Don’t believe me? I think these facts speak for themselves.

• Buddy is a child born of questionable parentage
• Buddy is a prodigal who descends from the north
• Buddy embodies a strange way of life that is misunderstood by his peers
• Nevertheless, he wins over a few people, gaining a few followers and lights up their world
• He descends into the ordinary world of the mail room, giving up his natural clothes to do so
• Buddy has a crisis of faith on a bridge (Eloi! Eloi!),
• is vindicated by Santa,
• and ascends into the heavens, leaving behind a message of Christmas cheer and a community of folks singing in his wake
• A book is written in his wake, preserving his story for generations to come

There you have it. Move over, Harry Potter; outta the way, Sydney Carton – Buddy the Elf is here. His law is niceness, and his gospel is smiles. (I just threw up in my mouth a little bit writing that last part).

Webster’s Dictionary Defines “Success” As…

Generally, this is the most boring sentence that can be uttered, and to start off a term paper, it’s an unforgivable sin. (For God’s sake [literally], use some creativity!) However, I recently heard an interesting use of Webster’s that actually seemed worth the quote. If you look up the definition of “success” in Webster’s today, it will say that it is “a degree or measure of succeeding” (always that first, totally useless definition), but then say that it is a “favorable or desirable outcome,” or “the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.” In earlier versions, say in 1937, success was defined as “that which comes after; hence, consequence, issue, or result, of an endeavor or undertaking, whether good or bad; the outcome of effort.”

No, that’s not Alfred Hitchcock.

As good ol’ Alasdair MacIntyre shows us in A Short History of Ethics (and continues to show us throughout the rest of his life, together constituting what he has called “an interminably long history of ethics”), words not only get their meaning from their use (Wittgenstein), but very obviously and radically change in meaning over time. What the pre-Homeric “Greeks” meant by virtue, for instance, is very different from what Homer meant by it, and then again, different from Plato, and so on.

So, way more interesting than a “what Webster says, goes” approach to dictionary use would be a comparative use – whenever an undergrad consults Webster’s to create a lazy introduction to their paper, perhaps they should have both a contemporary and century-old copy in front of them. Perhaps then we’d remember the contingent nature of our definitions, and how value-laden they actually are. After all (I’m no relativist – thanks, again, to MacIntyre), isn’t the definition currently given poll-position in Webster’s not only weak, but also telling of where our priorities today really lie?

Newtown

Augustine: “You, O Lord, turned me back upon myself. You took me from behind my own back, where I had placed myself because I did not wish to look upon myself.” Perhaps the day has come in which we no longer are able to avoid the violent reality of the world we’ve made for ourselves, and, seeing ourselves rightly for the first time, seek healing, seek peace – not “in our hearts,” but in the concrete ordinariness of a world that has chosen to “live by the gun,” and thus die by the gun. Here’s hoping.

Evil is Boring

I spent the better part of this summer translating parts of L’Enracinement by Simone Weil. It was tiring, to be sure, but it at least gave me a chance to become reacquainted with Simone Weil, that wonderfully enigmatic Catholic mystic-activist . In the course of translating her thoughts on the alienation inherent to the nation-state (the average person, particularly the average worker, is uprooted and alienated from his very self by means of the modern fascination with technology and disdain for wonder – a point reminiscent of some themes by Jacques Ellul), I found myself returning to her other works – particularly Gravity and Grace. In skimming this book, I rediscovered one of my favorite quotes:

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. Therefore ‘imaginative literature’ is either boring or immoral (or a mixture of both). It only escapes from this alternative if in some way it passes over to the side of reality through the power of art – and only genius can do that. (Gravity and Grace, 120)

Rock on

In the course of a conversation with a mentor who had recently travelled to Israel and seen the Palestine-Israeli conflict first hand, this exact sentiment was expressed: when you see The Dark Knight Rises, evil looks so interesting, so intriguing, so imitable; good seems altogether monotonous. In fiction-land, the life of the pre-fallen Harvey Dent looks much less appealing than the Joker. But in reality, the Joker is as dull as he is unappealing. When the Joker is on the big screen, he has a sort of morbid appeal; when someone imitates it him in a movie theatre in Colorado, it isn’t fascinating, although it certainly is horrible. This is why it is so hard to write about moral privation in a way that both captures the reader and also displays what it really looks like in the world. For my money, no one walks this line better than Dostoevsky.

In any case, Simone Weil is a (not so) hidden treasure worth a read. Check her out.

The Five Most Predictable Complaints One Hears While Learning a New Language

I have been quite busy this summer, working on an article, another project, doing a book review, and taking a course on Wittgenstein with Nancey Murphy (great stuff). On top of this, I have been taking French for Reading Knowledge. Having taken German, Greek, and Hebrew (as well as Spanish throughout high school and a false-start with Latin my senior year), this isn’t my first rodeo, and I think at this point I’ve learned what to expect when learning a language, and the things I need to remember every time I take up a new language (the main thing to remember: there is no one-to-one correspondence. Forget the need for that to happen, and for their language to go in an order you’re used to. The quicker you can jump into the language and let its rules control you, the better off you’ll be).

I also have come to expect the same complaints from the students in the class (including, I am not afraid to say, myself at certain times in my life). It must be exhausting to be a language teacher. So, without further adieu, my list of five trends I’ve noticed in each of my language courses.

1. The “overly-anxious, type double-a, always-bothering-the-professor-before-class (and after class, and during breaks)” student. This person comes to class every day armed with some extremely precise technical question, has a mountain of 1000 note cards on their desk by the second week, and takes it as his or her job to stress out the other students in the class by quizzing them seconds before the quiz is handed out. They’re the most anxious and most worried about their grade; they giggle at strange moments in class; and, they have the least reason to be anxious about their grade. (You know this because they show you their quizzes and want to talk with you about it.)

2. The “I’m-hoplessly-behind-even-though-it’s-syllabus-day” student. Somehow, this student has been in each of my language classes, in some form or fashion. Some of these folks have taken the language and failed it 2 or 3 times before, and still, by the end of the first class, seem completely behind. I guess they think can learn a language by showing up enough times to a classroom with a book sat in front of them? Usually they are passed through the class after the University has taken enough of their money to feel bad (or, so the professor doesn’t have to see their face ever again).

3. Complete inability to even attempt to speak the language in a coherent manner. This is my worst one. For certain languages, I pick up its sounds fairly quickly (German wasn’t too bad). For others (ahem: French!) I sound like a three-year-old with a mouth full of Skittles. My mouth doesn’t want to move in the way it should. C’mon, mouth – fall in!

3.1 Complete inability to keep various letters silent. As much as I do the above, I have avoided what other students fall into: a blindness to letters that should be silent, or aspirated vowels. “Bone-jore, mone amiss.” Shudder.

4. Complaints about the professor’s abilities, speed, teaching method, etc. Probably nothing would be more frustrating then to be a professor, and to watch students fall behind (mostly for failing to stay on top of the language), and then to hear rumblings of you being “mean,” or going too fast, or going too slow, or whatever else. This almost always happens, and almost never is warranted. (Well, in high school it was. And by the way, “Mrs. Coats,” you don’t translate your own name “Señora Abrigos.” Mi nombre no es Señor “Nuevo Hijo.” Grrr.)

5. Complaints about the language itself (most annoying). Once people start doing real translation of texts, complete with idioms and differing word order and all the rest, one inevitably hears something like, “What? This language doesn’t make any sense! Why would that phrase mean this in English? Crazy!! LOLOL.” This is closely related to the completely ubiquitous question, “But if this word means two or three different things, how will I ever be able to tell what it means?!” The catch-all, absolute answer to all of these questions is always, always: “context.” (And with Wittgenstein, let’s not forget that this isn’t only (or even mainly) literary context, but the “life context,” the “form of life” within which languages exist and make any sense at all. Complaints about languages being “crazy” or just “impossible” or “strange” are frustrating for their complete lack of self-awareness. What language is without these tricky aspects? From “there” and “their” and “they’re,” to all the various uses of the word “head” (careful!), to simple phrases like “Let’s take a look,” or “Want to grab a bite to eat?”, to go to another language and say, “What?! Weird!!” is… well… bizarre.

“Turn it again and again…”

One of my favorite quotes about Scripture is in the Pirke Avot, a collection of Rabbinic ethical sayings from the 1st and 2nd centuries, which reads, “Turn the Torah, turn it again and again, for everything you want to know is found within it” (Pirke Avot 2:25). This passage came to mind as I prepared for the sermon I gave this morning on Mark 5:21-43. One of the wonderful things about the stories in Scripture, as this Rabbinic saying says, is that there is a lot to be gleaned from their telling. Indeed, the more problematic a text may seem (to my particular ears), the more I may need not to run from it (which is my, and many other good post-modern folks’ tendency), but to turn it again and look at it from another angle; to wrestle it to the ground and refuse to leave it without a blessing (Genesis 32:26).

That’s all well and good when one is dealing with a problematic text; it’s harder when you’re preparing a sermon on a story which, to your mind, many things can be noticed and brought before a believing congregation. What is my focus to be when this is the case? Do I sell out and commit that sin of all sins, the delivery of a three-point sermon? By way of illustrating the truth of the “turn it again and again” hermeneutic, consider this story from Mark 5. Any one of these could be a worthwhile message in its own right, depending on one’s audience.

1. One could preach here on the nature of the “faith” that makes this woman well. After all, although Jesus is clear that it is her faith that has saved her, the expression of this faith looks a lot different from what many churches in the United States seem to think faith is required to look like. For instance, she doesn’t get all of her answers in a row, or say much of anything out loud about God or Jesus; her faith is a matter of embodied trust. In the same way, the faith that saves Jairus’ daughter is not the daughter’s faith at all; she is saved by someone else’s faith. In any case, in this passage, faith is a matter of embodied trust, the benefits of which extend well beyond one’s own personal experience.

2. One could preach on the fact that the love of God in Jesus seems to explode out of him in ways that even he does not control. To be sure, Jesus is the source of this loving, healing energy; but it’s striking as well that this healing happens, initially, without Jesus even knowing about it! Of course, it’s also quite telling, I think, that Jesus then seeks out and finds the results of his healing love, and reclaims it as his own. He makes sure that the woman (and the reader!) know that though the love of God flows out of him naturally, he also goes back and makes sure that all know to whom (and from whom) the healing has come.

3. If I were preaching to a room full of pastors or over-worked professionals, I may focus on the fact that both Jesus and this woman are quite in-tune with their bodies. Jesus knows himself well enough to know, immediately, that something has “gone out of him.” She knows, immediately, that she is well. A corollary to this point is that power “goes out” from Jesus, and thus even Jesus needs to be “refilled,” as it were, with the power that once resided within him. This is perhaps why Jesus is so careful about spending extended periods of rejuvenating time with God in prayer (what we might call in our context “self-care,” although I think the term is much too limp to describe what and how we are to be reenergized by the Spirit of God).

4. One could preach an entire sermon on the interesting fact that this woman’s healing is not at all complete once her physical malady is relieved, but that the real healing happens when she gets to tell her whole story, warts and all. Not only does she tell her story; she tells it to Jesus, in the context of the community gathered around her. Indeed, perhaps the first major, revolutionary step in knocking down the walls that divide us comes by listening to each other’s stories, and Jesus is so quick to do.

5. Finally (but not finally!), one could, as I did on this day, preach about the role of the community in this passage, and how with the bleeding woman we have an image of a community that is just in the way of another person’s healing, whereas with Jairus we have an image of a community that goes out of its way to bring wholeness to a painful, hopeless situation. On the one hand, as so many churches do, an immobile group of people preoccupied with catching a glimpse of Jesus boxes out a person in need of a loving touch; on the other, a group motivated by a father’s love for his child marches into hell, and bring heaven along with them.

What do you see, duck or rabbit?

Of course, these aren’t the only things to be gleaned from this passage: far from it! The challenge, and the fun, of preaching is getting people to read a story one way after having read it only in another way for many years. This is hard, good work, akin to what Ludwig Wittgenstein called instantiating a “Gestalt-shift” in one’s hearers, which he famously illustrated by utilizing the duck-rabbit picture. (How do I get you to see a duck where you once saw only a rabbit, or vice versa? You don’t just talk about it; you show! You don’t just ‘think’ about the differences; you look!). While this method does not mean that all interpretations of Scripture are equally good or equally valid (there are still interpretations that betray our moral grammar as Christians, and thus are really “nonsense”), I was nonetheless happily reminded again this week of the God-given multifaceted nature of Scripture. So, don’t read Scripture like you read a history book, as if you read it once and then “know” its story. No! Marinade in it; “turn it and turn it again.” There’s a reason people keep reading these stories, even after all these years.