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).

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"

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.

Ancient Greece in the 19th Century

The great 19th century thinkers invoked the spirit of the Ancient Greeks just as the Greeks themselves invoked the muses. Cf Williams _Shadow of the Antichrist_ 30-33, also Butler _The Tyrrany of Greece over Germany_. What's the rhetorical effect of this invocation; how does it relate to the critique of Christianity and the rise of atheism in c19? How does this reflect a larger battle within that century between Ancient Greece and Christianity, Dionysus against the Crucified?