Out of Commision

So I planned on posting something last night, but my plans got rearranged by a bit of a kitchen incident. I pulled a pan from the oven but decided it needed a few more minutes. This wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't removed my oven mitt. I grabbed a 350-degree pan with my bare hand, resulting in second degree burns all over my fingers. Needless to say, typing is a bit of a chore at the moment, so I won't be posting anything for a few days. Be back soon!

Scriptural Dissonance: Power and Freedom

I've been reading through The Silmarillion again of late; actually, I try to read each of Tolkien's major works at least once a year, and of them, I think this one is my favorite. It's certainly the most challenging - I confess that I tried to get through it three times before I was finally successful. But it rewards the careful reader, and I've found that its complexity is what creates its beauty and depth.

Tolkien is a fascinating author, not least because he deals with significant themes but does so indirectly. If you're familiar with Lord of the Rings, for example, think of the way in which the One Ring is described. What is most interesting is that Tolkien never comes out and states what it is that the Ring does. It's powerful, so much so that if the Enemy were to retrieve it his victory would be assured - but it also corrupts the wielder, so that any who attempt to use its power for good would result in themselves being twisted and tainted. But what does it do, exactly?

Tolkien gives us hints and suggestions, ones that the careful reader can note. And I think that evil, in Tolkien's world, is embodied by power used in domination. This is vaguely what the Ring does - it grants power according to one's stature, according to Gandalf, and the wielder must train his or her will in the domination of others. In the Silmarillion, Morgoth's evil was of similar character, only greater - and this is to be expected, for Morgoth was the one whom Sauron served.

This leads me to something on which I've been reflecting for some time. I've been wrestling with how to approach this topic; I believe again that here are two themes which stand in tension in the biblical text, but this particular dichotomy is easily the most controversial. I've titled this post Power and Freedom, but I'm not certain that captures the heart of the matter. Still, it serves as a beginning, perhaps. In short, the question that I have is this: does God always get what He wants?

The Christian tradition has always held to the view that God is sovereign, that He is all-powerful and that He rules the cosmos as its heavenly King. He is the creator, the One who gave the universe its beginning; He is the sustainer, the One that continues to give the universe its life; and He is the redeemer, the One who will eventually restore all things to their intended purpose and being. Isaiah, speaking in God's stead, has this to say: "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please." God has the power to accomplish what He chooses to accomplish - this, it would seem, settles the matter.

Or does it? Another theme, I think, winds its way through the narrative, one that perhaps brings an, "And yet..." to the telling. God, at the very beginning of the story, chooses to delegate his authority to humans, who use that authority in ways that seem at odds with God's own purposes. The authority graciously given is quickly turned to domination of others. The challenge that this presents is obvious: did God intend this use of His delegated authority? Does He get His way in this, or not?

On the one hand, we have the picture of a God who has the ability to see that His every whim is done. On the other, we see a God who does not act as though He is happy with what transpires. We see a God who grieves, a God who weeps, One who cries out for those He loves to be faithful and to stop chasing after others. We see a God who certainly acts as though something has gone awry. And most of all we see God revealed in the person of Christ - a King who loves His enemies, who rejects military might as His way, who welcomes all and sundry, who stands silently before His accusers and who suffers rejection and betrayal and torture and murder at the hands of an apostate religious aristocracy and a brutal dictator interested only in maintaining his own position and power.

Power is, after all, the problem here. Power God has - power enough to see His will accomplished. But His use of power is puzzling. Instead of keeping it, He seems to be most interested in giving it away. We see power wielded not in domination of others, but in selfless service and sacrifice. We see the greatest of all becoming the servant of all. We see power revealed, not in strength, but in weakness.

We dare not - dare not - resolve this tension. To waver towards a God who is all-powerful and uses that power to always get what He wants is to miss the self-giving One revealed in the person of Christ. It is to instead establish a deity who is little more than a cosmic overlord, who cannot be moved by compassion or by love. On the other hand, to resolve in favor of a God who abdicates that power reveals a God who is no longer God at all, who cannot redeem and who cannot establish justice and mercy and peace as He has promised to do. To live in that tension is to open, perhaps, a new way of thinking about power, about how we in turn should wield it who are formed in His image and carry still His delegated authority. That power remains His, and we shall one day have to give account for how we have served as its stewards.

Technorati Tags: power, scripture, freedom, theology

Pirate Talk and Speech-Acts

I've been thinking about a more or less random topic of late, and I'm hoping you'll indulge me with some musings about it. The topic? Cussing. It started with this bit about John Piper talking about how God "kicks our ass". (ht: Steve) Now, reflections on said theology aside, the fact that Piper felt the need to apologize for the whole thing has me thinking about cussing. (As an aside, read Scott's post as well, which is only marginally related but hysterical.) So here's my random question - what exactly is cussing, and why is it offensive?

I'm thinking about this in terms of speech-act theory. Now, I don't claim to have done any more than the smallest bit of reading on this, but what I've read thus far breaks down roughly this way. A speech act is more or less what a particular statement accomplishes. In other words, when we say something, we also do something. Wikipedia describes it this way:

Greeting (in saying "Hi John!", for instance), apologizing ("Sorry for that!"), describing something ("It is snowing"), asking a question ("Is it snowing?"), making a request and giving an order ("Could you pass the salt?", "Drop your weapon or I'll shoot you!"), or making a promise ("I promise I'll give it back") are typical examples of "speech acts" or "illocutionary acts".

Clear as mud? Great. In other words, a particular speech act is composed of several things:

• Locutionary acts: What is actually said. For example, the phrase, "It is raining," can simply be a statement of the weather.
• Illocutionary acts: What is intended by what is said. "It is raining" might, for example, have the intention of telling someone to dress appropriately, even if the sentence doesn't contain any such reference to a person's dress. This is fascinating if you really think about it - what we say and what we mean can be nearly completely unrelated at a strictly word-for-word level, and yet we do this sort of communication all the time without giving it any conscious thought. Wives, in particular, excel at this. ;)
• Perlocutionary acts: What is accomplished by what is said. In the previous example, the perlocutionary act of "It is raining" might be persuading the other person to carry an umbrella.

As I said before, I'm summarizing the barest of explorations into this subject, so it's quite possible that I'm not describing these with real precision. Still, I think that it's helpful to give a framework for thinking about cussing.

So here's my question - where does the act of cussing happen? In other words, what is it that makes a particular statement "cussing"? At its most basic level, I think the gut reaction for many folks is to list a series of words that are offensive, and from there state that any time those words are used, a person is cussing. In the context of this post, I think it's fair to say that such a definition defines it as a locutionary act: You've said a naughty word. But, on further reflection, does this really stand up to scrutiny? "Hell", for instance, might be construed as cussing, or it might not - depending on the context. Further, thinking about a statement like, "What the hell?" raises a new set of questions - I think it's quite possible that there isn't a locutionary act in saying it. In other words, on its own, "What the hell?" is a completely meaningless utterance. It doesn't actually refer to anything, and you'd be hard pressed to define it in terms of its individual words.

So what kind of an act is cussing? I think it's fair to say that it's either illocutionary or perlocutionary - in other words, it's either about intent to cuss, or about the hearer receiving it as cussing. But I'm not sure which of these is true. If it's about intent, then anything can potentially be cussing - which is sort of what you have happening with the use of words like "Darnit" (again, something that simply has no inherent meaning). If it's about the effect on the hearer, then we can define cussing at its most basic level simply as offensive speech. And, again, pretty much anything could then be construed as cussing, so long as someone is offended - but it leaves one in an awkward position of possibly cussing without intending to do so, and I'm not sure that's what is commonly intended by the word "cussing".

So at the end of the day, I'm not really sure. In truth, I think it's actually something more along the lines of breaking social norms for "acceptable speech", and cussing is simply defined by context. I suppose that would place my definition more in keeping with a perlocutionary act. But something about that isn't really satisfying to me.

I guess one could argue that I just think about this sort of thing too much. ;)

Technorati Tags: cussing, speech-acts

Good News

Radio Rebellion is back. Glad to see you blogging again, Chris!

Scriptural Dissonance: Image and Curse

I think there is a fine argument to be made that the problem of the human condition is the problem that occupies the central place in the narrative of scripture. N.T. Wright has this to say in his book Evil and the Justice of God:

In fact - and this is crucial, I think, for understanding the Old Testament as a whole - what the Bible gives us is both much less and much more than a "progressive revelation," a steady unfolding of who God is. The Old Testament isn't written in order simply to "tell us about God" in the abstract. It isn't designed primarily to provide information, to satisfy the inquiring mind. It's written to tell the story of what God has done, is doing, and will do about evil...we must grasp at the outset that the underlying narrative logic of the whole Old Testament assumes that this is what it's about. (p. 45-46)

I think there is something to be said for reading scripture through the logic of narrative. In other words, I think that while a lot of folks would agree with that statement in principle, we still read the text like it's either the New York Times or Aesop's Fables, depending on one's particular theological bent. Narrative - I make much of narrative in my thoughts here, primarily because I believe it's critical to understand narrative in order to understand scripture. Narrative is driven by conflict. Without conflict, there is no narrative, no story. And, similarly, unless one understands what, exactly, the conflict is all about, one will miss the point of the narrative. And the conflict in scripture is framed in terms of image and curse - miss this, and I think you miss the point of the whole tale.

Scripture is, after all, more than just the story of God - it's specifically the story of God and people. It's about how we were created with the purpose of representing God's authority but squandered that vocation, receiving instead the curse. Believe what you will about whether the Genesis account is mythic or historical or something else entirely - the bottom line is that without this particular underpinning, this conflict that sits at the heart of everything that comes after, nothing else in the book will make sense in quite the right way. You might be able to make sense of it, but it will be the wrong kind of sense, and will ultimately hinder your efforts to understand what it is that the text is really saying.

The conflict is this: human beings are created in the image of God, established as his representatives, gifted with his authority and tasked with completing his creative project of filling and ordering the earth that began in the very first chapter of the book. We, each of us, have dignity, honor, a creative calling, and a divine vocation to fulfill - we are, in short, Good. Human beings are also laboring under the curse, cast out of the garden, our divine vocation frustrated, our relationships fractured, and we are unable to do anything about it. We, each of us, are also Evil. As Wright states so eloquently, the line between good and evil runs through the center of each of us - it isn't that this one is good, while that one over there is evil; it is that we all, each of us, live in the tension between image and curse - a tension that cannot be resolved in this present age.

In fact, to resolve this tension is to destroy the story. It is to twist it and rearrange it until it is no longer recognizable. To resolve the tension in favor of curse over image - to say that the curse has utterly destroyed the imago dei or that there is no vestige of good left in humanity - is to leave one without a theology that can recognize human dignity. It is an understanding that is unable to explain any act of good on the part of those outside of one's theological tradition - in fact, such an approach is forced to call any act of generosity, of heroism, of selfless courage, of justice, of mercy, or of reconciliation that is done outside of that tradition an evil act done by evil people. I'd go so far as to suggest that it removes the element of tragedy from the story almost entirely. On the other hand, to resolve the tension in favor of image over curse - to deny the fallen condition in which we find ourselves - is to leave one without a theology that can explain human evil. It cannot, I think, explain such things as genocide or war or poverty or injustice or abuse or exploitation or any of a thousand ways that we routinely violate the sanctity and dignity of human life. I'd go so far as to suggest that it leaves the story, ultimately, without a point or a resolution.

This, then, is the first theme that I would like to suggest that plays in dissonance throughout the scriptures. In fact, this dissonance lies at the heart of the melody and is central to the score. And perhaps I telegraph a bit too much of my direction here, but let me share one last thought: the purpose of dissonance in music is to create the desire for and expectation of resolution. Perhaps something of what it means to live in this tension is to allow it to fuel such desire and expectation in us as well.

Technorati Tags: image of God, imago dei, narrative, scripture

Scriptural Dissonance

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that theological diversity plays a key role in how scripture functions; in other words, there are many themes about which different authors say different things. I've spent the better part of two weeks defending that assertion in the comments (at times better than others!) and I think I've reached the point where I need to start unpacking those thoughts in a different direction, because it's becoming obvious that what I wanted to say is getting lost in the examples that I chose in that post.

Let me say it a different way - and I continue to press for this, because I think it that significant - when one looks at the broad sweep of scripture, certain central themes emerge which are in tension with each other. These themes exist at the very heart of the narrative, and stubbornly refuse to resolve, no matter how one approaches the problems. In fact, in some instances the attempt to resolve these tensions has led to some of the significant heretical movements in our history, so there is at the least a sense for me that what is at stake in this discussion is quite significant. By themes, I'm thinking of those Big Picture ideas that make the Christian story what it is - things like God's sovereignty and human agency, like image and curse, like the humanity and deity of Christ, like the present and future nature of the Kingdom. Part of what it means to be a Christian is that we live in the space between these themes, as though we are experiencing a dissonant chord in a piece of music and are anxiously awaiting its resolution to harmony.

One of the books currently on my shelf is N.T. Wright's new work Evil and the Justice of God. Already I can tell that this is going to be one of the best books I'll read this year - I'm nearly halfway through it and I'm just amazed at the wisdom that's contained in this little book. To the point of this post, however, Wright picks up on this theme of unresolved tension in his discussion of the problem of evil:

In particular, there is a noble Christian tradition which takes evil so seriously that it warns against the temptation to "solve" it in any obvious way. If you offer an analysis of evil which leaves us saying, "Well, that's all right then, we now see how it happens and what to do about it," you have belittled the problem...We cannot and must not soften the blow; we cannot and must not pretend that evil isn't that bad after all...No, for the Christian, the problem is how to understand and celebrate the goodness and God-givenness of creation and, at the same time, understand and face up to the reality and seriousness of evil. It is easy to "solve" the problem by watering down one side or the other, saying either that the world isn't really God's good creation or that evil isn't really that bad after all. (p. 40-41)

If we are to do justice to the grand tradition to which we are heirs, I think it critical that we learn to recognize such tensions in the very heart of our Story and to attempt to live within them rather than "solve" them, as Wright says. Over the next few posts I want to work on unpacking some of those tensions and begin to think on how it is that we might allow ourselves to be shaped by them instead of attempting to shape them into a more manageable form.

Technorati Tags: hermeneutics, theology

State of the Blog 2007

It's sort of amusing to me that January elicits a flurry of activity around reflection, looking both backward and forward in a sense. It's amusing because a lot of us spend so little time doing this sort of thing throughout the year that I guess we believe we can do enough of it in a few weeks to make up for what we'll almost certainly begin to ignore by Groundhog Day.

Still, it's worth a look backwards now and again, and January is as fine a time as any to do so. It's been an interesting year here at the old blog, which by the way turns three this month, so I've definitely passed the honeymoon period. That in and of itself is something to think about, given that I'm still around and kicking, even though I break most of the cardinal rules of blogging: I write posts that are too long, I use language that's not always user-friendly, and I post irregularly. And, although I don't think I've ever posted about stats before, I'll say this - I have fewer daily visitors than I do rss subscribers, which I think is both amusing and wonderfully fitting. My hope is that you'll always find something stimulating, challenging, encouraging, or frustrating here to read, and I think I've done some of that this year, so I can't complain too much.

Still, my creative and reflective writing has tapered off dramatically, and I have to be honest and say that I feel the lack. I'd like to concentrate a bit more on bringing that style that I enjoy immensely to bear on my more theological and philosophical reflections, but I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet. I suspect that it might start with using fewer words like "hypercontextual".

I don't know what my best posts were this year - it's hard to separate them. They're like my kids; I love them all. Just kidding. Seriously, I've done very few isolated posts. This has been the year of the miniseries for me. My series on the suburbs has received the most hits, and I think it contained some of my best work, but I'm most proud of my bit on the imago dei - which means that it was the one that stretched me the most to write and represented something of a milestone for me, in the sense that it brings together a number of themes that I've wrestled with over the past few years into what I think is a pretty good synthesis.

But I'd also love to hear a bit from you - what brought you here? What posts do you remember from this year (or perhaps what do you wish you'd forget)? I'd love to hear what others think were the highs and lows of the blog for the past year - and I'd especially love to hear from folks who don't regularly comment. Any thoughts?