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).