The Reactive Politics of Evangelicalism

"All of this points to a fundamental problem with the evangelical ethos in the United States from which the emerging church movement springs. Evangelical identity, at least in the U.S. is so utterly determined by the American political imagination and the capitalist economy which grounds it, that it is unable to express or realize itself except through the political-economic architecture of America, regardless of what political subdivision it finds itself in. It is part of the fabric of evangelical identity to be beholden to a certain notion of what meaningful political existence means, namely good citizenship, responsible participation in the “public sphere” for the sake of ordering society towards the relative good. As such, any and all forms of evangelical religious practice must by definition take their bearings and derive their intelligibility from their participation in the American political apparatus which is constituted by late-capitalism."

Here.

Rowan Williams: "King Lear"

It does not keep you safe; it does not

give you the words you need, it does not

tell you how much to pay, how much

they owe you. It will not work, like egg-yolks,

to cool the numb heat of lost eyes and treacheries.

It does not surrender to the reasonable

case for not risking everything to keep

secrets and rivals, the white line in the tickling

membrane of freedom. It will not keep you dry: rain,

like crying, sinks down to the bone.

It will not stop: not when you sleep, not

when you wake, not when you want it to,

not when you want to settle with the mirror

of your shame. Never. It will not. Never.

Rowan Williams 
The Guardian, Saturday August 2 2008 

Wimbledon Final

The Wimbledon final that took place this past Sunday between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was an amazing event, and thrilling to watch. Indeed, the New York Times devoted an entire editorial to the match, saying:

This week, tennis players around the world are standing on the singles court — 78 feet long and 27 feet wide — and thinking one thought: Can this possibly be the same size as the court in Sunday’s Wimbledon match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal?

It’s a reasonable question. That men’s singles final, which Nadal won deep in the dusk in five tortuous sets, seemed to give tennis a new topography. The level of the court never changed in those nearly five hours of playing time, nor did its dimensions, yet the brilliance of the tennis being played seemed to warp it, point by point.

Partly it was the gusts of wind, which deformed a few points, as did the chewed-up turf at the baselines. And partly it was the exaggerated vertical dimension of the game — Nadal’s swooping, spinning shots — and the unnerving crosscourt vectors that both men found again and again. But this was also a match that could have been written by John Bunyan, a moral battle in which the sides — good versus evil — changed with every change of serve. Was that sheepishness on Nadal’s face when he double-faulted? How many times did Federer rescue himself from despondency? One minute Nadal was lost in the weeds. The next minute it was Federer’s turn. This wasn’t a tennis court. It was an ecosystem.

The mystery of a match like this is hard to fathom. Shot by shot it progresses, game by game. The level of play is high at first, but not higher than expected. Federer goes down two sets, and then, suddenly, we find ourselves entering new terrain.

You get to a point — the end of the fourth set, when Federer finds the will to carry us all into a final set with him — and you can’t quite make out how you got here. The light slips away, and though everyone feels the cumulative weight of what has come before, the players are still having to play in the present, still having to set aside the past in order to return another serve, while everyone in the crowd wonders how they do it — not just the imagination of the ball-striking, but the ability not to imagine, not to leap forward in their minds to winning or losing. Their desire is concealed in the play itself. But ours has gotten loose and is making it hard to breathe — hard even to watch.

Rushdie on the Writing Self

Salman Rushdie, in the New York Times:

Regardless of whether he is writing about politics, Mr. Rushdie said he finds writing both scary (“Are you going to be able to sustain it all the way to the end?”) and exhilarating.

“There’s a writing self which is not quite your ordinary social self and which you don’t really have access to except at the moment when you’re writing, and certainly in my view, I think of that as my best self,” he said. “To be able to be that person feels good; it feels better than anything else.”

Writers' Rooms

Check out this sweet site from The Guardian:

Writers' Rooms

Perfect for those of us who want to be writers, and who believe the best way to do it is not by spending time churning out the words, but searching for an obscure writing tool or odd habit to grant us mystic writing power. ¡Viva la fetishismo!

Benjamin, The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses
From One-Way Street

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea [No day without a line] -- but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea -- style -- writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.

Brooks Haxton, "Prospectus: In Lieu of the Mall Expansion"

To the Syracuse mayor, the County Executive, and Members of Common Council.

I propose a shrimp ramp,
so that the shrimp can fly
from my yard over the lilacs
into the tamarack next door,
the way infected crows
and chickadees do now.
Your scheme to make our mall
the biggest mall on earth
is boring. We could build
a shrimp ramp cheap. It’s true,
there may not be an ocean here
where shrimp could live,
but river shrimpers
in my hometown sold
fine shrimp, though they
were toxic, and pollution
killed them. It was sad,
but let’s not maunder.
No ramp on our scale needs
measly river shrimp.
Forget them! Let’s import
Malaysian prawns:
they’re bigger. What we need
is vision! Once the shrimp ramp
rears, magnificent!
against the darkness
of the civic mind, details,
like feasibility, will sort themselves.

(h/t more than 95 theses)

Strange Sorrow

"It's a strange sorrow that leaves you feeling hollow, like someone knocked the wind out of you."

Here

Books that Matter

R. R. Reno has a great post on "Books that Matter" at the First Things blog. Here are the last couple paragraphs, which I found wonderful:

Beware, then, reading solely for agreement. Few think their ideas to the end. Few write with the penetrating clarity necessary to see what is at stake in the beliefs we accept and reject. To see and know the full power and attraction of falsehood may be a necessary preparation for more fully accepting the truth. I do not deny that, in the end, beauty is one with truth and goodness. But in this life we are almost always a long way from the end.

Even the best books that convey the most reliable truths are not perfect. We cannot read our way to the Kingdom of Heaven. Golden books, whether great, semi-great, or unique to our strange intellectual and spiritual circumstances, are never pure. Only one book is without imperfection. But the Bible is not really a book at all. Golden books guide the mind and excite our desire for truth. The Bible does surgery on our soul. It shimmers with the living presence of the divine Word. We do not so much read as hear it. And in hearing, the sacred page does what no human book can do. It pierces our minds and hearts, cutting to the joints and marrow of our thoughts and intentions (Heb. 4:12).

Nietzsche Family Circus

Family Circus + Nietzsche = A great way to recover after reading too much theory.

Church and Theater (Church as Theater)

What belonged to the theater was brought into the church, and what belonged to the church into the theater. The better Christian feelings were held up in comedies to the sneer of the multitude. Everything was so changed into light jesting, that earnestness was stripped of its worth by wit, and that which is holy became a subject for banter and scoffing in the refined conversation of worldly people. Yet worse was it that the unbridled delight of these men in dissipating enjoyments threatened to turn the church into a theater, and the preacher into a play actor. If he would please the multitude, he must adapt himself to their taste, and entertain them amusingly in the church. They demanded also in the preaching something that should please the ear; and they clapped with the same pleasure the comedian in the holy place and him on the stage. And alas there were found at that period too many preachers who preferred the applause of men to their souls’ health.

[Gregory of Nazianzus, late 4th century]

(h/t: More than 95 Theses)

Vocab Fun with David Bentley Hart

From "When the Going was Bad," Hart's review (available at First Things) of Evelyn Waugh's collected travel writings:

a-cid-u-lous: adj. Slightly sour in taste or in manner.

at-ra-bil-ious: adj. 1. Inclined to melancholy. 2 Having a peevish disposition; surly.

Watch for more vocab fun in the future!

Shanks on the Intellectual Vocation

I just started reading Andrew Shanks's _The Other Calling: Theology, Intellectual Vocation and Truth_. It's excellent, so far! Shanks tries to work out what it would mean to see a "priesthood of all intellectuals" at work in the world. This may sound condescending or philosopher-kingish, but it's the opposite, as the paragraph below indicates:

As a priest, I am an intellectual forever seeking to relate intelligently, and so far as possible also intelligibly, to the very deepest concerns of a largely non-intellectual community. Or let us put it in more positive fashion: what term is there, untained, by condescension, for those who are not intellectuals? Although it is cumberson, let us perhaps say: 'the sal of the earth' - this at least has the merit of being biblical (Matthew 5:13). It is my responsibility to think not only on my own behalf - and not only on behalf of those to whom I am united by a shared education - but rather, in the most rooted and genuinely responsive way, as a representative of the whole prayer community to which I belong; and therefore in the most open, soul-searching communion with the salt of the earth. I am meant to help the members of that community, in the most all-inclusive fashion, poetically articulate their very deepest hopes, fears, regrets and resolutions for the future, in teh face of the highest truth we know, corporately reverenced as sacred. And so, in principle, my job is to be a solidarity builder, helping draw intellectuals and others, the salt of the earth, together into a real communion. That is to say: a communion bound together on the basis of an infinite aspiration to moral seriousness; an infinite demand for true self-questioning thoughtfulness, first of all in the sense of kindness; a maximally attentive liturgical appropriation of the corporate past.

This is no small task, but certainly worthwhile! I'd love to become more adept at the sort of "poetic articulation" Shanks describes, not least because I'd be able then to demonstrate that what I'm doing in attending grad school is actually important--not just to me, but to the church as well.

Haunted by the Angelic Doctor

Semester Two of my graduate school experience has begun, and I'm beginning to notice a curious trend: Everywhere I go (in everything I read), I find some reference to Thomas Aquinas, his fellow scholastics, or the neo-scholasticism of de Lubac's and Danielou's nouvelle theologie. First, in my course on Chaucer, the scholastics (along with Jacques Maritain) played a central role in Eco's Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, offering what Eco terms a "unifying vision" of beauty in relation to truth, goodness, and the One. Then comes Bruce Holsinger's The Premodern Condition, in which Holsinger seeks to situate the French literary theoretic tradition within its broadly medieval framework--a task impossible without noting, for instance, Bataille's engagement with Danielou over a cup of tea regarding an article of his on Nietzsche. (Of course, there's also the fact that de Certeau was taught by de Lubac, and that Lacan himself engaged with Teilhard de Chardin, facts noted by Marcus Pound in a recent interview: http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=293).

Next, in my seminar on historicity, Henry Adams finds that his search for the historical roots of the Virgin's force lead him back to the scholastics (in "The Dynamo and the Virgin" from _The Education of Henry Adams_). Not to mention I'm planning on writing a paper on MacIntyre's notion of tradition for the course.

Furthermore, in my Romantic Atlantics class on trans-atlantic literature, an engagement with Benedict Anderson's _Imagined Communities_ provoked a thorough discussion of his conception of the secular and how it related to other conceptions, such as Charles Taylor's. Anderson's "empty, homologous time" is meaningless without its contrast to the "Messianic time" of Benjamin, which, it was argued, reached its peak in the Middle Ages and the time of the Scholastics. For the same class, finally, we just finished Scott's excellent (and underappreciated) novel _Guy Mannering: Or, the Astrologer_. The comic figure Dominie Sampson (the name should tip you off) is a sort of Scholastic lost in the wrong century, and he appropriately quotes from Latin theological sources and spends his days researching in his library of obscure works inherited from a Scottish bishop.

In short, I'm pleasantly confused as to whether, at this supposedly "secular" university, I'm receiving a more thorough education in literary scholarship or Sacra Doctrina!

Hauerwas on Teaching

From Faith and Theology, an excellent quote from Stanley Hauerwas that grants some insight into his pedagogy:

“As a way to challenge such a [liberal] view of freedom, I start my classes by telling my students that I do not teach in a manner that is meant to help them make up their own minds. Instead, I tell them that I do not believe they have minds worth making up until they have been trained by me. I realize such a statement is deeply offensive to students since it exhibits a complete lack of pedagogic sensitivities. Yet I cannot imagine any teacher who is serious who would allow students to make up their own minds.”

—Stanley Hauerwas, “Christian Schooling or Making Students Dysfunctional,” in Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified

One day, I can only hope, that'll be me!

4 Guiding Questions

During my time at grad school, and especially while writing my dissertation, I imagine I'll investigate the confluence of the following four questions:

1. Biblical Scholarship: What is the biblical understanding of time? What is the Christian's eschatology?

2. Historical Theology: How did the Victorians read the Biblical texts in developing their eschatology?

3. Poetics: How do Victorian poets create expectations for a poem's ending, and how do they fulfill or deny those expectations?

4. Cognitive Science: What are the physical and mental aspects influence our experience of expectation and fulfillment, and how might these insights be applied to reading or hearing poetry?

The general goal will be to develop a faithful interdisciplinary project which seeks to understand human knowledge, expectations, and belief in light of the writing and reception of Victorian poetry. I'll examine the importance of the ending for human understanding in light of Christian eschatology.

Orhan Pamuk on being a Writer

"For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, own them, and make them a conscious part of our spirit and our writing."
~From his Nobel Lecture on Literature, "My Father's Suitcase"

Oakes on Pure Nature

Edward Oakes, writing on recent discussions within the Catholic Church on limbo, has a very helpful synopsis of the debate concerning human nature, in which Henri de Lubac was a chief participant. This synopsis came a little late for me, since I was introduced to the topic through John Milbank's The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural, which I hardly understood when I first read it last Christmas--an appropriate time to read a book on the relationship between grace and human nature. (I also picked up a copy of one of Lubac's key works on the subject, The Mystery of the Supernatural, at Loome a couple weeks ago.) So, here's Oakes:

"Parallel to this debate on limbo was another one concerning “pure nature.” If we grant that God created us all with a desire for union with him, does that not imply an “obligation” on his part to grant us the fulfillment of that desire, since he created us for union with him? But does that “obligation” on God’s part not in turn undermine the concept of the gratuity of grace, which says that God is under no obligation to grant what is freely his to give? Hence the concept of “pure nature,” which was, as everyone conceded, a purely theoretical distinction, made solely to guard the concept of gratuitous grace. But, as far as de facto creation went, Augustine himself says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” And does not Thomas Aquinas say that “every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance” (Summa Contra Gentiles III, 3)?

That of course is only one sentence from the vast sea of Thomas’ writings, and many other Thomists dispute the point, citing other texts. I cannot take a position on that debate here. All I want to say is that if Henri de Lubac is right in his book The Mystery of the Supernatural, then this conclusion inexorably follows:

It is said that a universe might have existed in which man, though without necessarily excluding any other desire, would have his rational ambitions limited to some lower, purely human, beatitude. Certainly I do not deny it. But having said that, one is obliged to admit—indeed one is automatically affirming—that in our world as it is this is not the case. . . . [Thus] the “desire to see God” cannot be permanently frustrated without an essential suffering. To deny this is to undermine my entire Credo. For is not this, in effect, the definition of the “pain of the damned”? And consequently—at least in appearance—a good and just God could hardly frustrate me, unless I, through my own fault, turn away from him by choice. The infinite importance of the desire implanted in me by my Creator is what constitutes the infinite importance of the drama of human existence.

This is hardly the place to resolve this extremely complex debate. I only wish to point out how many theological presuppositions come into play when theologians discuss the Eschaton in its relation to the sacraments, grace, free will, and sin (both original and personal)."

Ricoeur: Freud and Philosophy

To prepare for a possible class this fall on time and narration, I'm reading some Paul Ricoeur--someone I've heard a lot about but never read. The first part of _Freud and Philosophy_ is the "problematic." The "epistemological problem" he addresses in this first part is "What is interpretation in psychoanalysis, and how is the interpretation of the signs of man interrelated with the economic explanation that claims to get at the root of desire?" (p xii).

Here are a few definitions Ricouer offers early in part one:

Hermeneutics: The "theory of the rules presiding over an exegesis (the interpretation of a particular text)" (8).

Symbol: A "double or multiple meaning linguistic expression that requires an interpretation" (9).

Interpretation: A "work of understanding that aims at deciphering symbols" (9).

Sign (distinguished from "symbol"): A double duality consisting of the signifier-signified duality and the duality between the entire signifier-signified relationship and the thing or object designated by this relationship (12).

Symbols (again, in relation to "sign"): "Multiple-meaning expressions whose semantic texture is correlative to the work of interpretation that explicates their second or multiple meanings" (13).

Francis Bacon on Reading

Francis Bacon: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.” Wise words for those trying to engage responsibly and lovingly with the authors one is reading--the weighing and considering demands a deep reflection upon the work in question, before one writes or speaks in response.