Anthony Thiselton on Paul Ricoeur

Interesting introduction to Ricoeur from “Mr. Hermeneutics” (excuse the weird synth at the start):

Summertime Reading

By Choice • For Pleasure

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By Request • For Review

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The Poet Laureate vs. Politics (with a hint of Augustine)

Carol Ann Duffy, the new Poet Laureate, has chosen for her first royal composition to attack politics. The 14 line poem positively spits with disgust at the corrosive effect the political machine apparently has on individual politicians, making “of your face a stone… of your heart a fist”. It is a chaotic rant capturing very well the prevailing sense of public anger at the political system in the wake of the expenses scandal. Towards the end she invokes the Blarite mantra “education, education, education” and Gordon Brown’s “moral compass” with utter disdain. “The poem’s technique is that of someone almost speechless with rage – a great tumbling catalogue. No time for structure”, says John Sutherland, a professor at University College, London. The poem, entitled just Politics and published in The Guardian, suggests Duffy won’t be afraid to tackle the high profile topics during her 10 year tenure as Poet Laureate. Here’s it is:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

For me, the poem articulates the lingering suspicion, I think widely held, that even the most idealistic and hopeful of young visionaries, once they enter the murky waters of party politics, will inevitably become tainted and corrupted. That’s not a very optimistic picture, but I think it encapsulates the cynicism held by many of my generation especially, when it comes to such matters. The apathetic attitude to, and disengagement from, the political by many in British society are just symptoms of this deeper cynicism, which recent events will only ingrain further. In fact, perhaps there is a little Augustinianism in Duffy’s poem, which echoes his deep scepticism in the politics of the earthly city as essentially destructive and divisive; always bound to fall short of expectations, because of wrongly ordered and wrongly directed loves. A dose of this kind of realism can never be a bad thing, though neither should it necessitate a complete withdrawal from the political; indeed, from a Christian perspective it makes even more necessary our participation in earthly politics, as faithful advocates of the Good who are nevertheless free from bondage to this city and this system, because citizens of a different (heavenly) city founded on a different love.

There is a discussion of the poem here, at the Guardian, and here, at the BBC.

A Reading Binge

I’ve been on something of a reading binge for the last few weeks in the run up to two essays I have due in May. For the first time in my life I’ve actually got into a reading routine (which has a lot to do with the fact I am otherwise unoccupied throughout the day, as I continue to look for a job that fits round my studies in this stupid recession). Nevertheless, here is the fruit of my labours, both completed and ongoing, and some I will be starting imminently:

Books Completed:

Ivan Illich - Tools For Conviviality. A staple of Illich’s corpus which extends the thesis he set out in Deschooling Society, that the institutionalization of the West – in terms of education, healthcare, transport, technology etc. – has done far more damage than good, acting as dehumanizing forces which make us slaves to the very things that were supposed to help us. Illich was something of a phenomenon in the 70s, but his work was rather neglected from the mid-80s on. However, the theological foundations of his work – the argument that modern society is essentially a corruption of Christianity – has recently been retrieved by Charles Taylor.

John Ruskin – Unto This Last. A scathing critique of the political economy of 19th Century Victorian society from what might be called a ‘theo-aesthetic’ and romantic perspective. Ruskin has been of interest lately to the likes of John Milbank and Jamie Smith, and has been cited as inspiration for the (related) political sensibility known as ‘Red Toryism’, with which Philip Blond is identified. I found Ruskin had much to say to our current economic situation, even though he was addressing a social context quite different (in some ways, not others) from our own.

The Return of Theology – Times article

Just came across this excellent article over at The Times on the return of theology to academia and the public sphere, focussing on Radical Orthodoxy and featuring an interview with John Milbank - <CLICK HERE>

Speed, Noise and the Asceticism of Ivan Illich

Modern life for those of us in the West is lived at breathtaking speed, a speed which would have made little sense in previous epochs, and which still makes little sense to many other cultures around the world. Time is money, and as such Western society seeks to eradicate those portions of time which are not spent productively. Our society is built upon what Charles Taylor has called a principle of ’simultaneity’; society runs like a vast, time-tabled machine of extreme temporal and spatial co-ordination, where many different things (e.g. the turning on of streets lights, opening of shops, collection and delivery of post etc.), must happen simultaneously in many different places for society to function. The speed at which all this takes place has been and will continue to accelerate until we can squeeze the very most out of our 24 hour days. As a result of this, our lives are also lived amidst tremendous noise. As the speed of life increases – as more and more things happen, simultaneously, at faster and faster rates, in more and more places – the background noise which accompanies our lives rises to a deafening clamour. It is hard for us to conceive of life separate from the incessant speed and unyielding noise of modern life.

Ivan Illich, the Catholic social theorist and theologian, was a fierce critic of developments such as these. His work suggests that they are symptoms of the way in which we have become subject to the very tools, processes and institutions which were intended to serve us. For example,

“It has taken a century to pass from an era served by motorised vehicles to the era in which society has been reduced to virtual enslavement to the car.“

_{[Tools for Conviviality, 1973, p.7]}

Our tools and institutions have caused us to become domesticated. From school onwards, our society breeds individuals intended to fit like a cog into the clamourous mega-machine of modern society. And for most of us, we cannot even envision anything different. For Illich, we have been dehumanised, and the only way to rediscover what has been lost is through a process of selective asceticism and renunciation. Asceticism is something of a dirty word these days, but Illich did not mean it in the sense of the needless renunciation of good things (such as sex, certain foods and drinks etc.), of which Nietzsche (and Paul) were critical. Rather, he advocates an asceticism which does precisely the opposite, and enables us to experience and appreciate the good things more fully:

“We have to engage in the asceticism which makes it possible to savour now-ness and here-ness – here is a place, here is that which is between us, as the Kingdom is – in order to be able to save what remains in us of a sense of meaning, of metaphor, of flesh, of touch, of gaze.“

_{[1986 interview - to get the full weight listen HERE]}

Our modern way of living has caged us in a world of breathtaking speed and deafening noise. For Illich, in order to live with hope, meaning and depth in our age, we need to make certain renunciations. Renunciations which enable us to withdraw from the speed and noise and clamour of our modern lives to a place of solitude and quietness, within which the voice of God can be heard (and the voices of our neighbours and friends), and within which the beauty and goodness of life can be properly savoured and reflected upon – and lived.

Ivan Illich was a remarkable man who, though a high-profile academic, sought a simpler existence. He was a traveller who, in an era of jet-age transportation, preferred the measured speed and humbler energy efficiency of the bicycle. He never wore a watch, believing it needlessly forced an artificial structure on life. And towards the end of his life, he sought more traditional treatments for a serious facial tumour, so as not to become a cog in the medical machine. These kinds of renunciation may not be for everyone, but for those of us who sense that the modern ‘rat-race’ drains and degrades life, Illich offers a different way. I get the sense that there is a profound wisdom to Illich’s asceticism, that deliberate and occasional acts of renunciation can give us the space to rediscover and reflect on the ordinary goodness and beauty of life. 

Amidst the speed and the noise of modern life, in order to have hope, perhaps what we need is stillness, simplicity and silence.

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_{[Before reading Illich, I seem to have been echoing these sentiments in} this post _{on the value of Evensong.]}

Reflections on _A Secular Age_

I just finished working through Charles Taylor’s mammoth 800 page tome A Secular Age this week, for one of my classes. Not only is the book 800 pages, but they are pretty big pages and the print is rather small. If I had been Taylor’s publisher I would have told him he had gone over the word limit. The book is a remarkable piece of work, but I reckon the argument could have been summed up in around 150-2oo pages.

Taylor is essentially arguing against the mainstream ’subtraction story’ regarding secularisation, which says that as society has become more enlightened, civilised and rational, religion, with all its superstitious and unscientific belief in God, has naturally declined, and will continue to do so. In contrast, Taylor argues that this account is deeply reductionistic and historically inaccurate. In Taylor’s reading, the objectifying, disenchanting, ‘excarnating’ tendencies within modernity, themselves driven originally by forms of Protestant religion, eventually remove much of the depth and fullness in life. This objectifying drive characteristic of modernity has been accompanied almost from the outset by opposition, in the form of Romantic streams of counter-enlightenment which have sought to recover the lost depth in a whole host of ways, both religious and otherwise. This is no different today, when the spiritual void opened up by modernity is more deeply felt than ever, and is evident all around us. In this ‘waste land’, far from seeing a continued decline of religion, as the mainstream secularisation theorists suggest, Taylor argues for the continued importance of religion in contemporary life. The basic conditions of belief may have changed radically over the last 500 years, so that immanent options which could not have been conceived back then (exclusive humanism, atheism, materialism) are widely accepted today, but the fundamental draw of humans towards sources of meaning and fullness has not. For Taylor, we have an option in our secular age, to look for solutions to this need for fullness by looking ever more inward, or by looking outward to a transcendent source. As a Catholic, Taylor sees the latter as the ‘real thing’:

“Modes of fullness recognised by exclusive humanisms, and others that remain within the immanent frame, are … responding to a transcendent reality, but misrecognizing it” (p.768).

Whether looking inward or outward for fullness, however, the state of belief in a secular age will remain fragile.

An Existential Reflection on Evensong

I did something a little unusual last Sunday, for me at least, by going to the Choral Evensong service at St. Mary’s Church in Nottingham. It was by far the most traditional Christian service I’ve been to in some time, but I seem to have been tending that way recently. I arrived about two minutes before start time and was met by a greeter: a tall man, probably in his 60s, with thick grey hair and a friendly face. He looked a little puzzled to see me, and asked quizzically whether I was there for the service. I replied that I was. He looked even more puzzled and passed me a parish newsletter, asking whether I’d been before. I replied that I hadn’t and he directed me to the ‘choir’ (yes, where the choir usually sits, at the front of the church, near the altar) where the service was held, explaining where I should seat myself.

I wandered up the central aisle towards the ‘choir’, and was struck by how huge the church building was. I had been here two weeks before, out of curiosity, to watch the new minister-in-charge of the Nottingham diocese get set in by the local Bishop, in front of a packed house and some media. The scene was somewhat different this time, most of the church was dim lit, and completely empty. It was cavernous. There were around 15 people (at a generous estimate) sat up in the choir (seats) amidst the candle light, waiting for the minister and choir (singers) to arrive. 

Dust & Light blog

Nearly a year ago me and two friends of mine came up with the idea of starting a collaborative blog. After much procrastination, we have finally got around to starting the thing. ‘Dust and Light’ will provide a platform for theological interaction with philosophy, culture, politics, art, etc., and is intended to provoke conversation and discussion.

You can visit the blog here: http://dustandlight.wordpress.com

I made my first post on the blog today, entitled “On What It Means To Be Free”. In it I make the point – obvious to some, less so to others – that the dominant ‘liberal’ notion of freedom we have today is basically contrary to any Christian notion of freedom.

Chesterton: Cats, Madness and Reason

My main reading project right now is Charles Taylor’s _A Secular Age_, which has been set for my Theology and Postmodernism module with John Milbank. In addition to that, however, I’ve just started G.K. Chesterton’s classic book Orthodoxy, which I have been told by many is quite brilliant! I read a few chapters this morning and have thoroughly enjoyed it so far, so I thought I’d share a couple of quotes.

First, here is a little gem where Chesterton hammers the modern liberal theologians of his day for rejecting the notion of basic human sinfulness. This was written in the early 1900s, and while the contemporary theological climate has changed somewhat since then, the quote maintains its potency, and positively drips with irony:

“If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all the atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.”

This statement comes in the context of an argument Chesterton is making to try and show the absurdity of many of the principles underpinning the contemporary scholarship of his day. He goes on to make the point that it is not, as many might think, an excess of poetic and mystical imagination which can lead to insanity and madness, but a lack of it, combined with an excess of reason and logic. This is because the latter seeks to explain the world and reduce it to a set order, when according to Chesterton room must always be left for mystery. The poet is comfortable with and even embraces mystery, whereas the logician seeks to explain and remove it- an impossible task which risks sending him over the edge to madness:

“The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats on an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion… To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

Chesterton, by the way, is not simply railing against reason here, but is more specifically warning of the dangers of an unbalanced and reductionist emphasis on reason to the exclusion of the poetic imagination and the acknowledgment of mystery. It is this that can send the logician mad, and lead him to come out with all sorts of nonsense. In a very healthy way, Chesterton recognises the limitations of reason without discounting its usefulness.

Legend.

The Archbishop’s Christmas Message

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, will tomorrow give his Christmas sermon, and in it he says some excellent stuff about the frailty of human ‘kingdoms’, the importance of small gestures and the current economic crisis. Here are some snippets:

“The gospel tells us something hard to hear – that there is not going to be a single charismatic leader or a dedicated political campaign or a war to end all wars that will bring the golden age.

“It tells us that history will end when God decides, not when we think we have sorted all our problems out; that we cannot turn the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of God and his anointed; that we cannot reverse what has happened and restore a golden age.”

He goes on:

“What can be done to show [God's] glory? So often the answer to this lies in the small and local gestures, the unique difference made in some particular corner of the world.

“In the months ahead it will mean in our own country asking repeatedly what is asked of us locally to care for those who bear the heaviest burdens in the wake of our economic crisis – without waiting for the magical solution, let alone the return of the good times.”

I got this from the BBC website, here, but I expect the sermon will soon be published in full on the Archbishop’s website.

Merry Christmas!

Imagination and Theology

I was browsing around The Other Journal last night and came across a very interesting interview with Graham Ward, head of the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester. He discusses a whole range of topics related to academia, the interaction of theology with other disciplines and the church with culture. I particularly like one point he made, concerning the necessity of imagination for theological study. Discussing the problems with ‘analytical’ testing as a measure of educational ability, he said:

“I think it’s imprisoning, the way the GRE is used as a marker of one’s educational ability so students can get into the program they want. This is why I really like talking to people in English studies or theology, because the fields require imagination. If you have no imagination, you can have no theological vision. Theological thinking continually needs to go beyond analytical thought—it can be analytical, but it can’t be reduced to that. You can be as analytical as you like about the incarnation, but incarnation itself, grace itself, mystery itself; these are categories that only the imagination can really work with.”

Obama, RO and the State as Parody of the Church

Listening to Barack Obama’s victory speech the other night honestly gave me tingles down my spine. The man is a fantastic rhetorician, and the speech itself was beautifully crafted. Here’s a pertinent snippet from his final paragraph:

“This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.”

And yet I couldn’t help but feel somewhat uncomfortable about the whole thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I genuinely think Obama is a vast improvement on Bush, and I don’t deny that his election marks a truly historic moment in American (and global?) politics. But I was left uncomfortable nonetheless, and this evening, while sat in Starbucks, I think I may have found the reason why – but it first requires some context…

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Part of my reason for wanting to study in the theology department at Nottingham is my interest in Radical Orthodoxy (RO), which perhaps has it’s strongest base in the Centre of Theology and Philosophy, located here and headed up by John Milbank and Conor Cunningham (though not everyone in Nottingham’s theology dept is in the ‘RO camp’, of course). RO is a broad ‘movement’ which, since its inception, has created quite a splash on the British theological scene, and increasingly in the States as well. It has many supporters, but also many detractors (there is a surprising mix of both among the staff and students at the University of Nottingham). One of my aims whilst here is to ‘make up mind’, as it were, about RO; to see how far I can or would like to align myself with it.

One aspect of the RO critique of secular modernity (this critique may be RO’s central thesis) which got me thinking today, however, has to do with the assertion that the modern secular State, while portraying itself as areligious/neutral etc., is at its root a ‘parody’ of the church. While claiming to exist in a public, political realm beyond religious concerns, the RO authors contend that the secular State is actually quite the opposite, offering an alternative religious account to that of the church, and a deeply heterodox one at that. It is said that the state offers an alternative story to the Christian one, and an alternative path to salvation (albeit an earthly, immanent salvation):

“The modern state is best understood [...] as a source of an alternative soteriology to that of the church [...] The body of the state is a simulacrum, a false copy, of the Body of Christ” (Cavanaugh 1998:182).

Kierkegaard on the Double Movement to Faith

Those who’ve glanced at Meine Vorlesungsliste will know that part of my reading over the last few weeks has been a section from Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work Fear and Trembling, authored by one ‘Johannes de Silentio’. The book is centred on the story of Abraham’s testing in Genesis 22, when he is told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Anyone who knows the story will remember that God eventually spares Isaac, and that Abraham sacrifices a ram in his place. According to Johannes de Silentio, however, prior knowledge of this happy conclusion often drains the story of its true weight and difficulty when it is read or preached from the pulpit. It is quickly forgotten, he argues, that a father was seemingly ready to murder his son simply because God had told him to, and, even more, that this man is celebrated in the Bible as the supreme example of faith:

“We recite the whole story in clichés: ‘The great thing was that he loved God in such a way the he was willing to offer him the best’ … If a person lacks the courage to think his thought all the way through and say that Abraham was a murderer [at least by intention], then it is certainly better to attain this courage than to waste time on unmerited eulogies” (FT:29-30).

Much of the remainder of Fear and Trembling is concerned with a discussion of the nature of Abraham’s faith; that he would be prepared to step over the greatest ethical obligation he held as a father (to protect his son from harm) because of a divine command, all the while still believing that God’s promise (that he would through Isaac father a great nation) would be fulfilled. Probably the hardest question here concerns whether there is a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ (FT:54-67) i.e. whether one can argue for instances where it is valid to transcend ethical values for some religious reason (e.g. a divine command), or for some greater purpose (telos). This is far too heavy for a blog post, however, so instead we will have short look at what de Silentio describes as the ‘double movement’ to faith.