[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:34:42 -0700
John:
Leibniz to Wittgenstein isn't as "modern" as one needs to get, and I'm not
very familiar with Popper. Gadamer, deriving from Heidegger, R. G.
Collingwood, Hayden White, and Anthony C. Thiselton are the writers I'm
most familiar with on this subject - or as I understand what you are saying
- if I do. I have brought some of them up before in regard to political
opinion. We bring our own private assumptions, or as Collingwood would say,
our Constellations of presuppositions to any given subject. Thus, when we
view a text, including a sacred text, we view it through the filter of our
assumptions.
To counter this, the Judeo-Christian practices the dictum,"raise up a child
in the ways of the Lord, and when he is old, he will not depart from them."
As a child grows and voices his childish opinion, it is corrected by his
parent or teacher - no, no, son. Here's the way to understand that. And if
every child in a village is raised in this manner, the orthodoxy of
religious belief would almost certainly remain intact. This has always
remained a principle to be sought after with varying degrees of success in
Christianity. There have been the Catholic schools which Mike has commented
upon, but the famous Scotch/Irish that were credited by King George III with
the rebellion that became called the American Revolution, were taught by
their Presbyterian pastors in this same way. The pastors were the only
educated people these Scotch/Irish knew (until they began to move West and
became Baptists) and they taught them theology and the Bible.
Perhaps this is still the ideal in conservative Presbyterian denominations,
but it can never again be like that. Too many church members are educated.
There are too may assumptions, too many constellations of presuppositions.
The pastor may very well believe he has the truth of a given matter, but he
cannot exalt his particular view above the views of all of the members in
his congregation. Custom will not allow the members to disagree with him
while he preaches, but later on he may hear the alternate views, and there
is nothing, or very little, he can do about them.
There have been two strong positions in Conservative Presbyterian circles
that pertain to this subject. On the one hand you have Gordon Clark, a
professor of philosophy and Presbyterian theologian who argued that we can
know the Text, the Biblical Word, just as God knows it. This, to use John's
construction would mean that not only were true statements about the world
and spiritual life uttered, but we, if we are Christian, can understand them
precisely as God does.
On the other hand, there was another Conservative Presbyterian Theologian
named Cornelius Van Til who argued that while God uttered the word in such a
way that is was absolutely true, we could never understand the truth of it
in the same way that God did, because his ways are higher than our ways. In
other words, the Bible is absolutely true, and we can understand it in ways
that are true, but we can never understand it quite as God does. Van Til
more closely corresponds to the philosophers I site above. To some extent
this lack of perfect understanding is due to the imperfection of human
language. It is not capable of being self-authenticating. It can never
stand on its own and perfectly mean the same thing to everyone who
encounters it. Everyone brings his baggage of presuppositions and
understands it in a different way. Even if a pastor or theologian argues a
certain number of Christians into a particular theological position, there
will be others who take different views - who remain Christian.
There are Christian denominations which argue that the Bible means only one
thing and that we can learn what that is by listening to the pastor, but
that begs the question. Yes, if you accept a given person's arguments then
you can argue that there is but one meaning, but that is a position you
might hear from a Fundamentalist Preacher. I don't think such a thing is
being taught at any of the major Theological Seminaries.
Complicating, or perhaps simplifying all this for Christians is the teaching
that the Holy Spirit "will guide us into all truth." Actually, Jesus said
that about his disciples and not all believers, but we are to follow the
teachings of his disciples and the Holy Spirit is at work in us while this
happens, we are taught, transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ - not
that this ever happens absolutely, but it is the direction in which the Holy
Spirit moves us, we who are Christians, with varying degrees of
accomplishment.
So Christ, we who aren't Fundamentalists believe, was content with the
seemingly imprecise Word - even with the imprecise denominations that have
risen in his name. He could and does work with them. And if some believer
doesn't get it quite right, well that's okay as long as he is being moved in
the right direction - a direction we observers may not be able to ascertain
correctly - but in a rough way we know -- as Ann Coulter's critics seem to
know about her -- when a denomination goes "too far." Yes, the People's
Temple seemed Christian in its early stages, but then it went "too far." It
went beyond the realm of Christianity.
Motives are all important. Is our heart seeking after the perfection of
Jesus Christ? Or are we relying upon something else, perhaps ourselves as
the final arbiter of the meaning of the Word?
Thus, the text may always seem imprecise, but as we study we see the
direction. We get the idea, and are content.
Moving out of the realm of Theology, I have on many occasions argued with
people on Lit-Ideas about the meaning of some word or term. My
interlocutors treated these words and terms as though they had "ultimate"
meanings which they fully grasped. Furthermore, they insisted that everyone
encountering these words and terms ought to grasp them in the same way they
did. I have always opposed those views. If our goal is to understand the
"parole," that is, the language as spoken, then we must have a dialogue with
the person who has spoken in order to approach understanding. I say
"approach understanding," because while we may be closer to understanding
another person, say our spouse, than we do to understanding God, we shall
probably fall far short of absolute success.
In theory, we OUGHT in these discussions leave more time and use more
dialogue in seeking to understand each other. Of course we may believe that
even if we invest this time and engage in dialogue we will remain in
disagreement, but those are two different things: understanding is not the
same things as agreement, and, I submit. We rarely, if ever, understand
each other. Notice how quickly we jump to conclusions, conclusions that the
other person say utterly misses the mark. I think of an occasion recently
when I made such an assumption about something Mike said and he said I
missed his beliefs by a long way. He caused me to think more seriously
about the possibility that some seeming-Leftists might better be called
Liberal-Realists.
But, it seems, few are interested in a dialogue that promotes this
hypothetical greater understanding. "Transparency," isn't something
everyone seeks. Perhaps no one seeks it completely, but it might be sought
on particular points - maybe.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John McCreery
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 6:44 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
On 10/2/07, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Is this question not somewhat naively put?
Perhaps.
>
> 1) A religion or superstition may or may not claim that its 'rites',
> including linguistic 'rites', correspond to some "absolute Truth" - but
what
> kind of claim is this, or is its denial? It is surely a claim that is
highly
> metaphysical and indeed perhaps itself of a kind of religious or
> superstitious character.
Perhaps, again. But there is no denying that modern philosophers
ranging from Leibniz to the early Wittenstein took quite seriously the
notion that an ideal language could be constructed in which all and
only true statements about the world could be uttered. Historically
speaking, this effort seems rooted in quite common earlier beliefs
about primordial words that when uttered by deity, priest or magician
shape or reshape the world.
>
> 2) The idea of a performative utterance may be used here.
Indeed it can. The thesis that magical incantations are, in effect,
performatives was explored in the 1980s by Harvard anthropologist
Stanley Tambiah. This was one of three approaches my paper explored.
The others were James Fernandez's thesis that rituals are extended
metaphors and metaphors ways of moving pronouns around in cultural
manifolds and Maurice Bloch's proposition that the formalization of
ritual language is a way of asserting authority by limiting variation.
In the case of the exorcism whose language I examined, I discovered,
first, that most of what was said was, in fact, a protracted
negotiation designed to establish the conditions under which the the
final "Begone" would be performative. But this was clearly only part
of what was going on. Fernandez's thesis pointed to the ways in which
the patient afflicted by demons, the demons, the scapegoat, and the
Taoist magician performing the right changed places as the rite
proceeded. Bloch's argument about formality pointed to close analysis
of the range of registers involved in the rite: from highly informal
to rigidly formalized.
Cheers,
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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