The absence of finality
of total certainty
of confirmation of one's findings
being baptized without the dove
the dove being invisible
a flutter on the skin
a homelessness in the world
gold horns riding on holy
holy wholely holy
unconfirmed
undeniable
undecidable?
When I first accepted the theory of evolution, albeit loosely, I understood right away that it created a hemeneutical crisis for me (and Christianity). I think I was in third year, conversing with my roommate Mark, an Atlantic Baptist who held to evolution. Mark didn't see the crisis that I did, and I suspected this was because Mark was more cultured then I was. What I saw was that original sin was predicated on a temporal event that caused a condition. We have the condition as evidence of a temporal event in the past, which is accounted for in scripture. If then I tried to splice the evolutionary story together with the Eden lapse, the later morphed from a historico-mythical foundation into a psychological-existential etiology. This converted the Eden narrative form the historiography and linear temporality of the Hebrews to the functional psychology of the Greeks. Theologians had always been reading the Eden narrative as the Greeks might, but they had recourse to the Hebraic foundation (at least until the 19th century). What occurred to me was that if the Greek hermeneutic won out the post-lapsarian curse which results in the condition of sin was unfounded (in history at least). Where and when did the rebellion occur? Were some animals, the earlier version of humanity, immune from the curse? This seemed unlikely, as they were likely more limited then we are. How then is the Eden narrative to be understood? Do we have to opt for the progressivist reading of history and say that the Eden narrative is a mistaken document of lesser worth? In short, accepting evolution pushed me into a afoundational reading of sin. This bothered me for a while, as I could not reconcile the problem of original sin with the condition of sin. The itch, however, had been forgotten until I began to do more reading on Augustine for the first chapter of my dissertation.
While I do not have a solution, here is how I cope with the problem. Since we are trapped in afoundational narratives wherever we look, this includes evolution, evolution has no more essential believability then Eden. I now hold belief in the ability to reconcile variations of the two narratives. Furthermore, I find the ethic that Eden gives me, and the livability in this narrative framework, of much more value then what evolution provides. Eden explains much more about my soul, mind and body, then evolution has been able to. Evolution, for instance, would explain guilt as a function of sociability - in that if I didn't have a strong sense of guilt when I harmed the social I wouldn't have recourse to the goods of the social. Augustine has a much richer analysis of guilt in that his version can include the political realism of the evolutionary narrative while also accounting for the metaphysical aspect of guilt that is, for me (and countless others), the most penetrating element, the idea that I have sinned against God, and also wronged my community. This for me is the only suitable explanation for the otherworldly power that sometimes sits on my chest and humbles me to the point of confession. But what a blessing it is. Thus, I still give primacy to the Eden narrative, even while I think about the purely physical temporality of creation through the lens of evolution (albeit evolution with a primary cause and continued sustenance in the not-God of God - to use David Hart's formula).
By the way, this is my 100th posting.
Yes folks, she's a determined woman, descendant of a farm girl. 
And boy can she hustle
A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bone-digger, bone-digger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly, beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don’t find this stuff
Amusing anymore
It's always good to see that the boys in NB are keeping up their end of the bargain, while I toil and sweat to rhetorically express that NB spirit:
Thieves carried off 22 pigs in compact car, say police
Last Updated: Thursday, August 23, 2007 | 3:27 PM AT
CBC News
RCMP have arrested a pair suspected of stealing 22 pigs from a barn near Sussex, N.B., in a getaway that police say was likely a very tight squeeze.
Thieves took the pigs earlier this month after smashing the locks on a barn in Knightville, rented by Moffett's Farms.
The two from Petitcodiac, aged 19 and 20, are suspected to have used one small car to haul the 22 pigs, weighing 23-27 kilograms each, from the farm to the house in Havelock where police tracked them.
RCMP picked up the trail after one of the men forgot his ID at the scene of a break-in.
Const. Jim Gass said the stench from the pigs was immediately apparent to investigators, who found a small car, filled with pig droppings, as well as sacks used to transport the pigs.
"This little car they transported them in once had like 22 pigs," Gass said. "Man, it wasn't a lot of room in the car. She would have been a noisy affair, I would imagine, and quite a wild ride. Something you see in the movies, I would guess."
Police couldn't recover all of the pigs, worth about $75 each. The suspects allegedly ate one the night of the theft, Gass said. Most of the others, police said, were sold to unknowing customers.
RCMP won't release names of the suspects because the men have yet to be charged.
Both suspects are to appear in court Sept. 24 on unrelated charges.
I haven't posted for some time, but a recent newspaper article needed comment. During the second world war, Japan was a devastating colonial force. In fact, their colonial period began in 1910 and continued until the US forced Japan into submission with unprecedented military action - two infamous nuclear warheads that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Korea was one of the colonies most devastated by the Japanese. You can also find out more about the Japanese devastation of Asia by reading on the rape of Nanjing. One despicable thing Japan did as a colonial power was to enslave young Korean women (teens) beat them into submission, and use them as sex slaves for the Japanese forces. Korea estimates that Japan enslaved 200, 000 Korean women between 1930 and 1945. Unlike atrocities committed by forces in Europe (thinking primarily of the Holocaust here), Japan has never apologized for the treatment of these women. Moreover, they deny that they ever participated in this systematic rape and torture of a significant portion of Korean women at that time. They still teach a version of Japanese history that whitewashes their activities in Asia, portraying their colonization of Korea as humane.
The article just published by the Korean Times comments on the US support of the comfort women, urging Japan for a public apology and financial remuneration. Korea, China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore are no longer singing an Asia-only lament. I believe that Canada, if it hasn't already, should put significant pressure on the Japanese to apologize for their treatment of Korean Comfort Women.
Ex-Sex Slaves Welcome US Resolution
Comfort women who were forced to serve for the Japanese army as a sexual slave during World War II are consoled by protesters during a press conference welcoming the passage of a resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Japan to formally apologize to the victims and accept historical responsibility in front of Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Tuesday. / AP-Yonhap
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Former Korean sex slaves used by Japanese soldiers during World War II hailed Tuesday the passage of a resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives, urging Japan to officially apologize to the victims and acknowledge its historical responsibility.
``The United States’ approval of the resolution gives us hope for the restoration of honor, the realization of justice for victims of comfort women in the Asia Pacific region, and women’s human rights activists who have spent tens of years for supporting victims of comfort women,’’ said the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.
``The Japanese government should officially apologize to the elderly victims as soon as possible and make legal compensations as well as teach the younger generations correct history and promise a peaceful future,’’ it said.
Kil Won-ok and Lee Soon-duk, two of the victims of comfort women, expressed their delight.
``My delight is beyond words. The Japanese government should now sincerely apologize to the victims in order not to become the mockery of the world,’’ said Kil.
Lee, 91, demanded activists to continue their efforts for rights of the victims.
``I have no single spot in my body which is well as I was beaten so hard when I was hauled away at the age of 17. Please help us live decent lives for the rest of our lives,’’ she said.
Lawmakers, including Lee Mi-kyung of the Uri Party, also hailed the U.S. House Resolution as a wise decision and called on the Japanese government to immediately give legal compensation to victims and to educate future generations about comfort women without distorting history.
The non-binding House resolution is symbolic, but it demands Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for the coercion of young women into sexual slavery in military brothels in the 1930s and 40s.
While estimates are varying, hundreds of thousands of women, mostly from Korea and other Asian countries, are believed to have been sexually enslaved by Japan, which colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
U.S. Democratic Rep. Mike Honda, the resolution's chief sponsor, said Lee Yong-soo, who testified before Congress in February on her rape and torture at the hands of Japanese soldiers, watched Monday's proceedings. ``All she could do was weep and say thank you,’’ Honda said. ``It vindicated her past.’’
In 1993, Japan issued a carefully worded official apology, but it was never approved by its parliament. Japan has rejected compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties.
michelle@koreatimes.co.kr
This is a poem by Gord Downey of The Tragically Hip. He recited this as he accepted the hips induction into the Canadian Rock of Fame (or whatever it is called). I guess it stirred up some controversy. At anyrate, Gord is a good lyricist, and this is not a bad poem persay, it has it 's moments. I liked his foray into theology half way through.
WE ARE THE NEXT US
(The time occupied by the action is an afternoon and one night.)
I don't know who comes up with this
but, I wish they'd stop saying;
'it's not the band I hate, it's their fans'
You can't hate "fans".
You must narrow your hate
You can't hate huge, hate sprawling, hate the wild,
unfocussed hate hates itself,
pick your victims. specialize
find the good n' unaffiliated, the heir-not apparent, the everyday outcast,
the weirdo with the heart of gold, infiltrate the hoser elite.
Find the ribs-showingest rock n roll stray dog
That ever pushed melodious air
howling against vivisection in the uncompartmentalizeable
night.
and, then hate
or go to a show - look down your row.
the lights are on - find people you know.
There's AnthemSinger standing with his arm
around DarklyNurturedDream.
and Ol'Quintessential listening to HigherThanACBCGuest say;
"I haven't read them, but I understand them."
And there's BrainOfAToaster (he knows when things are done)
next to that girl, CradlingHerKeyCard, whispering,
"this might be my last show, come."
Check it out! There's HoldStill and Gently - together again for the very first time.
and MyDoctrineHasFailedMeButMyMusicHasn't
next to ColderValues, next to FeaturelessButFree.
Hey, even TheEmperorHasNoHook is here and IDon'tWannaTalkAboutItHowYouBrokeMyHeart, she's here too.
Go to a show. Look down your row
While the lights are on
find people you know:
MindOfFame's yelling
to GoesWithoutSaying and
OverTheRadar points out
WinWinWinWin to
GulpIndeed
Go to a show.
Music Lovers under a full moon in trust
It's not the band you like it's their sea of hate you don't trust
you're in the right place
Author a killing.
employ carelessness, greed
wait til the hate's flowing
then hate like the wind
take hate's hate and do it better
make hate retire - go soft
catch bats til you feel better
try and catch them aloft
don't hate fans it makes ya sound like a fuckin fascist, or worse -
undiscerning.
No one likes indiscriminate.
you won't get laid with those politics
that said. Lets go backstage! See what's hateable there.
C'mon!
C'mon
C'mon
The band is preparing - lost in thought,
relearning, "How To Get Lost" and
"Where To Appear, Where to Never Appear"
hoping to return to the birthplace of the word
where winning sentences hang from trees
where no one is too cool to move
or too slow to get out of their own way.
The crew is moving on water
Tributarily spring-run-off fed rapids they're paddling
deliberately, quietly, fur-traders not missionaries
they run God's Instrument through the Devil's Amp for chrissakes
they bring the Peace If Peace
is any good at all
it's because of them,
and if it isn't, well, it was working before.
a shadowy figure stands alone with a notebook
writes then underlines;
'Glowing Disses'
- I fucked Paul McCartney
- Put teen ennui back in 'tsunami fatigue'
- Penned Relentlessly Apt…
- Forgot DarklyNurturedDream
look,
deep in conversation,
It's Picasso (Canadian) and Matisse (Canadian)
- 'Giving is where the pleasure is in this business.'
- 'That's when can you see what this business can do'
- 'When everyone in this business is together- whoa - I'd like to be you'
they organize relief in a heartbeat
they can stand in a canoe
lets move UN to the Halifax move Superior to the moon.
Hey there's Andrea, the dancer
and a poet named Ken.
Their nametags say, 'Muse'
they are Somebody's Someone Somewhere then
waving to the Canadian Arc
they're gonna do something
together one day
A thing about a country that
found itself in its
art found its way
It's getting time - it's getting close (go to your seats)
a part in the night where's the love of my life?
kiss me, 'thank you for this'
kiss me 'I won't be myself without you'
kiss me, It's time, to reach you the way you reach me
it's time.
Out in the emptying lobby, a lonely Waterkeeper is late setting up his booth.
A kid, who is interested, says, 'here, let me help you.'
Here's an explosion
an explosion inside
the just before music sound (the sound of just before music)
kindnesses, sweetnesses shoot up
and shower back down
The listeners have spoken, and it's,
WeAreTheNextUs.
We all have our moments
get the success we deserve
We must look at each other
(it's failure that takes nerve)
make eye contact, shake hands
silently vow;
Like the greats before us
let us cry into the curtains
and then go on stage
Now
The band's plugging in (they intend to stay)
The singer strides to the microphone
Yells (rock voice) 'Thank you!' as if to say
'For giving us our start!'
and 'This one's for Neil!'
and 'Have a great Augusta, Craig!'
And then we start
It's revealed
now you can hate
To take it figuratively we must take it literally. This is a maxim that I want to try to think around in this post. For a while now, I have found tiresome the polemic against fundamentalists that condemns readers for interpreting the bible literally and then lectures on the virtues of reading the bible figuratively (for an example of this read the first chapter of Chris Hedge's American Fascists). The dichotomy of literal and figurative seems wrong headed for some reason.
Genesis
When I read the creation stories of Genesis I do not think that the world was actually created according to the 7 day scheme. I tend more toward the evolutionist frame work with a divine driver. However, there is a part of me that will not allow myself to junk the first three chapters of Genesis because I no longer think that they represent "reality", because, on some level I do think that they represent reality much better then say Darwin's On the Origin of Species. I don't think of the original composers of the text, and the later editors, as people who thought to themselves "I'm going to write a figurative story about creation for my children". I think that such authors said, I'm going to tell "our" perspective on the world. This is to say that I don't think of the first authors to be hung up with the enlightenment problems of empiricism. These authors were much more poetic, much more Heideggerian, if you will, meaning that they thought of themselves as living in a "house of language", a world contained by their theological convictions. This world was distinct because it was sustained by a God who was both singular and plural. Both in the world and beyond. Both evident and mysterious. To understand this God you must enter into figuration, while reading figurative statements as if they were literal. This is me is the essence behind the ontological argument proposed by Anselm of Cantebury: Imagine the greatest "thing"; now imagine that "thing" as real; isn't that better? (Anselm"And certainly that than which a greater cannot be imagined cannot be in the understanding alone. For if it is at least in the understanding alone, it can be imagined to be in reality too, which is greater."). With contemporary readers, I do not think that Anselm was trying to prove the a priori existence of God, but to help Christian, people of a particular faith, to understand what it is that they have hope in. To me the spirit of Anselm thus expressed, is extremely important to reading the tales of Genesis (one of my all time favourite pieces of literature - one I grow to value more and more on formal and aesthetic and anthropological grounds). To read Genesis according to a limp concept of figurative language, on that is not attached to a realist theology, is to undermine faith in God. This is what thinkers like Chris Hedges do while they imagine themselves to be correcting the blindness of hardly literate readers.
The Body of Christ:
In several places in the new testament Christians are referred to as the body of Christ. If we think of this with a limp concept of figuration we say that the man Jesus wanted to express how close the followers of his ethical ideology were to him to such extent that he used hyperbole, claiming that followers were actually him. This should be read as a concept of ideological tradition, whereby Jesus' thoughts are carried on by those who think and act likewise. To read Christ likewise, is to read him as though he were merely finite. We must actually enrich this finite reading, which is wrong only in that it limit's Jesus to the category of man, without ever approaching the infinity of Christ. Christians cannot think of themselves as only being part of an ideological body/tradition of teaching, they must flesh out this ideology by then understanding the mystical nature of this comment. Spiritually, Christians are the body of Christ. This means that our finite capacity as human beings is united with Christ's infinite capacity as the resurrected, un-end-able, God that he is. To be the body of Christ is to participate in God himself, the most real of the real. To think thus, we must entertain the figurative element in the statement, but read it literally. The finite nature of the language does not totally capture the mysterious reality, yet, it is one of the most useful doors through which we imagine this reality. It is not the only door, because Christ himself (as narrated in the Gospels) used other expressions to describe this mysterious event - the imagine of the vine and the branches. My brother in law speculates that this analogy has a natural referent - the vine - that was especially developed for the purpose of expressing Christ's message to believers. I do not permit myself such speculation, as it overshoots the mark from my perspective, but it is an interesting comment that may be aimed at getting folks to meditate on God's eternal foresight for the world. At any rate, Christians cannot afford not to think of themselves as literally embodying Christ on some level.
The End
I am not a careful poet. In fact I find caring to much about punctuation during the writing freezes me up and I lose the vision. Today I was inspired by listening to Ryan Adams talk about the 15 albums he's written in the last 7 years. He defended his output and called everyone else lazy and afraid of their imagination. He claimed that we live in an era of art criticism that has forgotten how to create art. He claims that the critic kills art. There was something about what he said that resonated with the (almost forgotten) poet in me. I think I wrestle with two selves, the poet and the critic. The critic would not have me write, the poet lives only to write. Michael Winter wrote once about an artist who found the critic in him outgrew the poet. Yes. I know what you speak of young warrior. It is a tough thing to listen to the soul. To hear the rhythm of the cosmos in the solitude of your gray matter. So today, I turned the critic down low, and rolled a few of my favourite things around in my head - a song by Ryan Adams called Dancing Till the Stars go Blue, a Yoga pose called Dancing Shiva, the Eucharist, and Gregory of Nyssa's ontology.
Without Further Ado, Ladies and Gentlemen - To Taste
Amid cheerleaders and doomsayers
I stand, sand on my toes,
Warmed by the fire, waiting for the dance.
The great balance
Cupped hand before me,
Leg stretched out behind
Back arched
The muscles of my spirit invigorate
Suddenly my body begins to transform
Eternally transform, perpetually turning
Into the solar wind of time,
Perpetually reaching forward to the mosaic
Experience of the back side
The tail wind of
Nyssa would call this the pursuit of perfection
But what else do we have?
I’ve no taste for evil,
It just comes in cravings.
In weakness these holes spiral back through my
Substance and spew out my core
On the yellow road, I take steps
On the dolorosa, and move one foot
After another towards what?
I can not say,
Towards whom?
I shall never fully know,
But I will always have the promise of taste.
Take and eat,
These words haunt my Baptist
She cowers in the corner remembering all that is
And not knowing where to go, who to flee to…
Is it a question of groups, of feasting or pretending to feast?
Remembering a future time of great enjoyment.
There is an inescapable aspect to remembering
But,
We must eat to live, and I must eat more then symbols.
I’m hungry
hoc est corpus meum
Is me
Whoa, like Isaiah of old I feel trapped in lips unclean
Hopes with ends unforeseen
Not knowing where to step
Who to go to with time
Plans
Charity
Not knowing what charity I might have to give
What order lies in me to expel
Express
But a word lingers on my tongue
My mouth salivates for this word
The poetry of my life has been in neglect,
I have not found my epic, or perhaps I have been too involved in my epic, in my preparation for flight
That I have not found my myth.
Where do I go when I’m lonely?
Who do I call when I’m lost;
How can I lie right beside you peacefully, and
Watch the stars flow on and on,
Across a sky, some say has soured,
Some say will bust?
These are my questions,
My mystery at heart
That I worry myself about,
That I fear critics will take up,
This is my wordlessness that leaves me silent
As I tear through the fabric of time
Waiting for the dance.
I was mowing the lawn today thinking about my upcoming dissertation proposal presentation, and the thought occurred to me: who writes a novel? I'm working on Atlantic Canadian literature and the theme of religion though and in it, and what is coming to the fore is that Catholics are writing novels like they are going out of style. When you look back into the history of Can lit and At-can lit, you find that this is somewhat of a new thing. So I've been wondering why now? What makes one want to write a novel? What political and economic forces must be in place to make writing a novel something you might do? What follows is a conversation over gmail between me and my colleague, Holly (who works on Jews is film), about what gave rise to the novel:
1:22 PM me: who writes a novel?
1:23 PM Holly: a-a-an authour?
well, in biblical lit, we have the debate - "a person creates a document, not a community"
me: this is the big question that hit me while mowing the lawn....
Holly: but then again I don't know if that is true
1:24 PM a text is created FOR a community
me: that seems to be a debate with german romantic ancestry...and a novel isn't really any old document
Holly: no published authour creates just for him or herself
1:25 PM me: no author creates ex nihlo
Holly: yes - that is my take with film
I like Berger's theory of internalization, externalization
1:26 PM me: you know that is Berger's retelling of Marx's dialectic of production - worker makes product and becomes alienated from it though the process of production
1:27 PM Holly: yes
me: but back to the novel. it seems to me that the novel has a particular place in history
Holly: but the idea that a person consumes the product - that is important
1:28 PM novels both document and create history
me: it's kind of like the car... you don't have it until the 20th century...with the novel you don't really have it in full force until the 19th century
Holly: yes - but you had things that led up to it
1:29 PM the stage led to the novel, as well as the essay, the sermon, the poem and the song
me: yes, certainly biblical literature, as well as greek and roman epics lead up to it
1:30 PM The stage...the play
uh huh... is a novel a private 5 act play?
Holly: it is the frustration
poem are too short, sermons too dusty, and plays not internal enough
1:31 PM and, yes, too corporate
me: the european epic to clunky
Holly: the novel is a drawing room intrigue laid bare
a false memoir
me: yes the novel comes to rise after europe is tired of trying to organize communities to act their ideas
Holly: yes
1:32 PM I think I see what you mean
me: the novel also needs the printing press, where the play doesn't
Holly: it is the individual, not the chorus
yes
but with the enlightenment, the emphasis placed on internal reason...
you can't just show after that
you have to let the reader into the mind
1:33 PM since that is what "really matters"
me: wow, this is the question, or the impulse that lead to the unconscious
1:34 PM since the novel is the presentation of one's own imagination, housed in the mind, plus one's own theory of external organization - say Jane Austen's communities and the play of marriage
1:35 PM Holly: yes
1:36 PM me: it can't be wholly about the social, or the community, it has to also be about the depth and complexity of ones internal realm. it has to be exibihitionist
Holly: it is the digesting of what is around you - not the Truth, but the digested matter
people cannot get away from their showing roots
they still must show
but the mode of shoing is different
me: this is why scatological tropes are so common
1:37 PM Holly: through the novel, you can create a play, but you get more than action to do it with
that is why film bridges the gap - it is a play, but with tighter angles so you can show the internal, as well
1:38 PM me: well shakespeare certainly had more then action. Hamlets whole to be or not to be is internal reasoning at its finest
Holly: yes, but it is still rare and short
with a novel, there is more room to develope
and you don't have to rely on artificail things like silloquies
1:39 PM Shakespeare is to the novel as musicals are to personal films
me: so beyond the psychological and the formal, what has to be happening in your state to create a novel?
1:40 PM Holly: a need to express
me: I'm thinking that the novel is tied to the rise of nationalism in europe
Holly: a need to reflect what you see
a need to find others who feel the same
perhaps a need to pursuade
me: perhaps reflect is the wrong word, maybe dominate would do better?
1:41 PM yes, a need to persuade one to your way of thinking... this must come after everyone's unified, catholic way of thinking has been ruptured
1:42 PM Holly: well, that is the function of the nation state
me: The novel is a protestant apolegetic invention
Holly: to unifiy individuals
me: it is made to create communities
audiences (here the parallel with film is strong, yet different)
1:44 PM so we started by saying that a novel was created by an individual who was not interested in organizing and persuading other individuals to take the time to act out their particular imaginative thing. Now we see that the novel does still have a communal impulse - it longs to draw people together under it in affirmation of the author's individual mastery of the known world and the interior drama of self.
1:45 PM It is the drive to political leadership internalized, privatized...
1:46 PM when margaret atwood travels around canada to audiences that gawk at her she is actual demonstrating her leadership of a certain community within a nation. She has created a party
1:48 PM Have you read mrs. Dalloway or seen the film the hours?
1:49 PM Holly: read
me: you know how she bustles around all day trying to create a party, which happens at the end...I think this is an analogy for the novel and its function in society
1:51 PM VW was trying to create an audience of readers, a party in both the upper class and political sense.
do you think this is the same with film?
1:52 PM Holly: maybe
Re-reading Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World.
While I think that Asad has done a sufficient job of poking holes in Casanova's argument about secularization, I find myself going back to Casanova's book. I'm back here because I think that C's argument covers a lot of ground and I find myself continually playing with the dichotomy of public and private. On this topic, Casanova quotes Seyla Benhabib:
"SB has shown that the liberal model of "public dialogue" and its "neutrality" rule impose certain "conversational restraint," which tend to function as a "gag rule," excluding from public deliberation the entire range of matters declared to be "private" - from the private economy to the private domestic sphere to private norm formation." (65)
I think SB is right on here. I've been trying to track down her essay, rather then read it second hand. I wonder where an electronic version might be hiding out?
Amanda and I returned from our trip to find out that her uncle Kurt, who stayed back from the wedding because he had just started a new job, passed away last Sunday. Yes, it was the Sunday of the wedding, for which his wife, Cathy, organized the flowers. She didn't find out that Kurt had died until Tuesday night when she came home to a policeman and her pastor waiting for her. Kurt was 55 and had recently begun jogging again. He had been jogging when he took a massive heart attack and passed away, alone, out by an old scout camp. The family was with us in Colorado, that is accept for his daughter Amber, who was teaching ESL in Nepal, and his other daughter Victoria, who, I believe, was in summer classes. None of the four children were there to say goodbye to their father, nor should they have expected that he would not be there when they returned. His death has been a giant shock to all of the family. Kurt will be missed.
It is the missing that I find most moving now, and I am not around his home, where his touch, presence, and intentions effected everything. It is this his lack that changes their world. I am off to the airport to pick up Amber and visit with the family.
In a presentation at the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Gadamer once said that the thing-in-itself is only fully known when it is gone from the environment in which it was known. Loss gives a thing a sense of completeness. Kurt was not a thing. He was a human being, but I think that I do perceive the form of Kurt more vibrantly now then at any point in his life.
One thing I will remember about Kurt was when he took me under his wing during a footwashing ceremony at his local SDA church. It was quite touching, and i was glad to enter into such a humble ritual with the man. I am proud to say my feet were washed by Kurt.
So I'm back from Colorado. I took over 700 pictures there and had a great time doing it. We did a lot - hiked (in Rocky Mountain National Park during a snowstorm, up a arid canyon outside Gateway, all over Denver), went white water rafting (royal gorge on the Arkansa river), wedded (Rachel and JEB), went to a Hold Steady concert (at the Ogden theater in Denver), ate Fondue with Mark (high school bud) and Kristin, sipped world famous Martinis with Rach and Pete (friends from Acadia), swam across a fast running river, frolicked in poison ivy (me - no reaction), teased mom-in-law (me - quite a reaction), and watched Rach get the biggest speeding ticket known to man ($393 for doing 45 mph in a 25 mph school zone while descending the rockies in the Mustang Pete rented). Go here to look at some pics.
I'm relaxed. Perhaps, way too relaxed. I've got my proposal presentation next Friday before the faculties of religious studies at WLU and UW. Peter and I are going to plan this thing out tomorrow. I've got to kick the brain back into gear. But I must say, it's funn running down low on the mental rpms for a week or two.
Well, I've been maxing and relaxing in Colorado for about five days now. I'm not reading all that much, (though I did finish the future of religion by Rorty and Vattimo just before I left). I wrote my last comp exam on May 11 and I've been letting the brain heal since then. I hooked up with an old buddy from highschool in Colorado Springs. We had a great time. Attended New Life Church at his request. It was quite moving for me, though my wife was skeptical about the performance element in the worship. It was very interesting to see what they were doing post-Ted Haggart. I wonder if NLC doesn't know more about the future of religion then Rorty and Vattimo (still thinking about this one). We did some white water rafting later that day. We're now in Denver, and I've got a new SLR - the Nikon D80 - so I'll have lots of pics to post when I return. I haven't really taken a lot of joy from photography since I returned from Korea and found out film was so expensive to use in Canada. But the Nikon D80 fixes all that. I think this will prove to be a nice pass time - get me out of the books, but still flexing my creative and analytical muscles. Plus I love what the practice of photography makes me notice about the world around me. The phenomenology of a photographer is quite interesting. I'm sure I'll post more on this in the future. We head to Grand Junction tomorrow for a family wedding. Snappy dappy do. Until next time!
David Bentley Hart published The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth in 2003. Hart, an American Greek Orthodox himself [I suspect he is a convert], draws on the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, who was a contemporary of Augustine, the younger brother of Basil the Great, and a good friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. It seems that Gregory of Nyssa was (one of) the first theologian(s) to argue that God was infinite. Before this thinkers like Origen had argued, as consistent with Platonism, that God was limited. I suspect this has something to do with the "form" of the Good in the Platonic system. At any rate, Nyssa pushed towards negative theology, claiming that God was unknowable. The idea that is at the centre of Hart's text, which I suspect comes form Nyssa, is that God is an abyss in which beauty subsists. All the beautiful particulars of creation are not subsumed into unity with God, but given to the beauty of their very particularity in the infinite distance of God himself. For the first third of the book, Hart critiques the "postmodernists" - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas, Lyotard, Nancy, as well as their intellectual fathers, Heidegger and Nietzsche. Following in Milbank's footsteps, he argues that these thinkers theorize an ontology of violence, a Hobbsian war of all against all, which is based on the Cartesian separation of soul and body, God and creation - that leaves us with skepticism about reality - an inner violence of self consciousness. This is to say that the postmodernists, following Nietzsche, claim that the will to power precedes any peace. For Christians this in unacceptable as the peace of God, b(r)ought through the lamb of God, was spoken before time as the Word of God, and is the primary principle of creation. Any violence that ensues, ensues through deviance from the beautiful order of God in the Garden. We see the violence of lying and disobedience in Adam and Eve, which leads to the brother against brother violence, when Cain kills Abel. The chaos of the Cannanite myth of the Leviathan is placed after the order, peace, goodness and beauty of God's creation (Hart 257-8; this is the best Christian answer to Zizek's chaotic "night of the world" which is his primary principal of the imagination - The Ticklish Subject 29-32 and throughout).
The chaos of culture obscures the objectivity of beauty that was so central to Hellenistic and the Church Fathers. But Hart claims that beauty must not be relegated to a subjective effect, but exalted as an on objective presence (I'm lost for a word here, as Hart critique metaphysics heavily). However, he would be the first to claim that empirical methodologies will not be able to capture of isolate beauty as it is a transcendental, embodying divine distance, which always has a beyond, even while it is present. Like the transcendentals, Hart's thesis pervades his work and yet is not fully understable until you have read the whole.
Not being able to get into the myriad arguments that he puts forth, I will list off notable comments about the beautiful that he makes in the introduction, and which are elaborated throughout.
I should mention that Hart is in Balthasar's camp - arguing for beauty through the analogy of beauty. He critiques Barth quite heavily on this topic.
1. Beauty is objective: "in the beautiful God's glory is revealed as something communicable and intrinsically delightful, as including the creature in its ends, and as completely worthy of love...beauty calls not only for awe and penitence, but also for rejoicing" (17-8).
2. Beauty is the true form of distance: Hart has his eye on Derrida here, who claims that "meaning" [for lack of a better word] cannot traverse distance, and falls to differance. "This presence of distance within the beautiful, as primordially the effect of beauty, provides the essential logic of theological aesthetics: one that does not interpret all distance as an original absence, or as the difference of differentiation's heterogeneous and violent forces, but that sees in distance, and in all the series and intervals that dwell in it, the possibility of peaceful analogies and representations that neither falsify nor constrain the object of regard"(18). "The first thought ... is the thought of the distance that opens up all differences, the interval between their terms, the event of their emergence; and in asserting that distance is originally the gift of the beautiful - rather then the featureless sublimity of will, or force, or differance, or the ontological Nothing - theology interprets the nature and possibility of every interval within being" (19). Hart latter evokes Augustine's analogy of music to describe how created differences can be brought together beautifully and peacefully, under God's orchestration - perhaps the most important point of the book.
3. Beauty evokes desire. Contra Luther and Kierkegaard, who separate ethics and aesthetics, Hart sides with Dante and sees eros and agape united in desire of the particular.
4. Beauty crosses boundaries. Goodness, truth and beauty are convertable..."that God is good may be seen and tasted; and this means that a theology of beauty should not scruple to express itself at times as an ontology, an epistemology, or an ethics...theology should ponder how beauty can compel morally by its excess" (21).
5. Beauty's authority, within theology, guards against any tendency towards gnosticism. Beauty is the incarnate logos, Christ. He came as God and man, spirit and body, united. Creation is good.
6. Beauty resists reduction to the "symbolic". "beauty lies in the immediacy of a certain splendor, radiance, mystery, or allure; it plays upon the continuous insisture of a plastic, or lyric, or organic, or metaphoric surface" (24). He, here, is denying the bad symbolic of fixity (Lacan's law of the father)"the symbolic occurs as that which stabilizes the individual aesthetic moment as a fixed property, a meaning, a kind of exchangeable capital or currency that stands in lieu of substantial wealth" (25). This invites the Cartesian gnosticism, where real and symbolic are parsed from each other, causing the real or the meaning to be an abstracted extra, a supplementarity. For Hart, beauty is on the surface, not in the depths (gnostic truth). "But the beautiful is prior to all schemes of isolable meanings: it is excess but never formlessness, a spilling over, jubilant, proclaming glory without "explaining" it. For just this reason it fixes reflection upon the irreducibly particular, the momentary, fragile, and fortuitous. In the beautiful, when it is liberated from the "symbolic," a purely serial infinity is implied - such as Hegel dreaded - and the circular infinity of synthesis and transcendental reconciliation - such as Hegel heralded - is resisted"(25).
Hart concludes by arguing that beauty is in the particulars: "In the end, that within Christianity which draws persons to itself is a concrete and particular beauty, because a concrete and particular beauty is its deepest truth" (28). Here Hart is trying to side step the onto-theological critique of Heidegger and Derrida.
As you can see, Hart has given Christian thinkers much to mull over. I am not done with Hart. And I'm sure the exercise isn't in vain.
Serious business - theological anatomy. We have orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthoanatomy?
Ladies and gentlemen: wake the kids, call this neighbours, this is an extravaganza you won't want to miss - Theological Aesthetics Part Three.
I have an image in my mind of Karl Barth and Hans Urs Von Balthasar sitting in a dusty European room with a phonograph. Light pours through the window, refracting off the ancient particles floating through the air. Barth is sitting back in a leather chair with stained wooden arms, and Von Balthasar is leaning forward on a piano bench. There are books surrounding them. Towers on the end tables, tomes in the corners, piled high like miniature babels, or conversely, paper altars. What has these two great theologians enraptured? Mozart. His music enchants the still air of their dim room. Both listen for hours, allowing the music to take hold of their bodies, not to dance, but to cause shivers and great sensuous pleasures. But we must not forget the soul. The soul climbs on braided strands of the music, floating on the drafts of sonorous emanations, lifting the mind higher, perhaps contemplating even the lower stratum of the third heaven. Perhaps…
This image is not one I have read of in a book, but one that I have stored in my mind from a course on Charles Taylor by Peter Erb. I have added to it, but it expresses something eminently European, something North American Christians have lost sight of. If this certain “je ne sais qua” was simply European there would be no need for its recovery, but the truth of the matter is that this European element is an important aspect of Christian tradition – the enjoyment of God’s beauty.
Today I want to look at Barth’s thoughts on beauty. There is a difficulty here for Barth. As a protestant who leans on the pillars of Catholicism, Barth saw a danger in raising mater up so high that it might refract God’s glory. Barth thinks Balthasar and his church does this. Balthasar picks up Erich Prytzwara’s notion of the analogy of being, which expresses the idea that the ontic substance of humanity, being, shares a similarity with God’s being, that is separated by a humanly unbridgeable distance between God’s being and Humanity’s. Barth stresses that such an analogy is only to be made through eyes that have been graced by faith. The term often used for Barth’s position is called the analogy of faith. While Barth’s expression of the analogy of faith is to be seen as the door to the contemplation of any further theological analogies, Balthasar sees the analogy of being and the analogy of faith as overlapping analogies. This is to say that the beauty of God can be seen in nature without faith (Rom: 1:20), but that faith perfects this analogy. Where Paul writes: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom 1:20), Balthasarian scholar Stephen Fields claims, “If loving self-sacrifice exerts a universal aesthetic appeal, then worldly beauty is an analogy of proper proportionality. In other words, beauty inheres in the Grand Canyon, a Mozart sonata and the Parthenon, even as it does in Mother Theresa and her work. As a result, anyone, even without the analogy of faith, can begin to understand how Christ’s crucifixion can be perceived as beautiful, although only the conviction of faith can ground a firm certitude of this beauty” (“The Beauty of the Ugly” 181).
Barth has problems with this view because it is tied in, traditionally, with a merit mediating interpretation of the sacraments, and leads, in his eyes to the idolatry of nature. I have not read Barth on Rom 1:20, so I cannot speak to what he says about natural theology. But let it be known that the relationship between, in the first case, natural theology and its parallel, “intramundane aesthetics” (Fields’ term for philosophical aesthetics), and revelation, in the second case, is what is at stake here. Is revelation so strange that we are fools before the world? Or is there a kernel of “natural” reason within Christian revelation, which makes us only seem the fool? I’m drawn to the parables and Christ’s concept of hiddenness on this front, but I’ll not advance that idea here.
But what does Barth think about beauty? I’ll let the horse speak (from the horse’s mouth…):
“in answering this as all other questions in the doctrine of God, we must be careful not to start from any preconceived ideas, especially in this case a preconceived idea of the beautiful…. God is not beautiful in the sense that He shares in an idea of beauty superior to Him, so that to know it is to know Him as God. On the contrary, it is as He is God that He is also beautiful, so that He is the basis and standard of everything that is beautiful and of all ideas of the beautiful….” (Gesa Theissen’s Theological Aesthetics: a Reader 318). That said, Barth does not think that beauty is “a leading concept” of God (316). He thinks that both Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine have mis-stepped here (Balthasar does not share Barth’s opinion). But if we are going to talk about beauty we must see it as an aspect of God’s glory, which includes what we call beauty. “The objective meaning of God’s glory is His active grace and mercy and patience, His love” (317). His glory gives pleasure, awakens desire, but above all “creat[es] enjoyment” (317). Here Barth recovers Augustine, who claimed that there are two categories all “things” can fall into usi (use) and frui (enjoyment). God is the only “thing” that can be enjoyed, where as all other things are to be used for the enjoyment of God; yes, this includes other people, a concept which is repugnant to modern ears. But let us put it this way, if God is the summon bonum, the supreme good, it is likely that his desire for one’s use of other people will not contradict his goodness, and will instead lead to mutual enjoyment in God (for more on this see Paul Griffith’s Lying 52-3). So when Barth claims that God’s glory is to be enjoyed, he is tying theological conceptions of beauty to the source of enjoyment. What is then the sensation of beauty? Joy. “…[T]he glory of God is not only great and sublime [read Kant here] or holy [Otto] and gracious [Luther]…[God’s glory] awakens joy, and is itself joyful. It is not merely a glory which is solemn and good and true, and which, in its perfection and sublimity, might be gloomy or at least joyless…The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologians at all” (319). As we can see, Barth is serious about joy, and rightly so. What is it about God that makes him this source of enjoyment and beauty? Barth claims that God is the perfect unity of form and content, “in this form the perfect content, God Himself, shines out” (319). I find this argument to be a bit circular, but I suppose it is the best we can do for now. God is what makes God beautiful. I would point to aspects of wholeness, as Barth does, symmetry, unity, proportionality, spoken-ness and absolute reception in love. But much of this is tied to the imminent trinity and not the economic trinity, which I think is the most tangible aspect of God’s beauty, his discipline. Odd that I’m saying this, but his discipline gives form to his beauty in us, which we are to respond to in obedience. Ultimately we fail, but we fail into grace, which is a beautiful thought.
I’m going to try and tackle David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite, tomorrow – Part 4. I find his conception of beauty very compelling, and theoretically potent. You might notice that you’ve been getting Balthasar throughout. I wonder if I’ll dedicate a day to him, or if he just floats through this whole investigation like a spirit…time will tell.
Kill the fatted calf, the prodigal has come home. Last night at around this time (7:00)I heard a little peep at the door. I'd been bothered all day, worried that she had gotten into some rat poison or something. But at 7:00 I heard he cry and ran for the door. Sure enough, she pranced in crying quite a bit, and running crazily for her food bowl. I couldn't extract a story from her, but I was glad to have her. About 15 mins later, Amanda came home. I ran out side in my bare feet (I had just come home from a run) with Kitster. Gene our old spinster next door, was on her deck. She asked me if I missed our cat? She said that some how Kitster got stuck in her garage overnight.
I had actually thought of this possibility, but I figured that she would be let out in the morning. It was 7:00 pm when she came home. Gene uses a car port, but some how Kitster has snuck into her closed portion. When Gene came home, she heard the cry, and loosed the lost.
And I'm very grateful.
Kitster is missing. We went out last night to a meeting, came back around 10 and expected the cat to meet us at the door. But there was no cat. I walked around the block until about 12:30 looking for her, but she was no where to be found. This morning I got up and called to her - she's never spend a night outdoors by herself since we've had her - no Kitster. I then drove around town looking for traces of her on the road. No traces. As I mentioned yesterday, she has been hunting more lately. Perhaps she is on the prowl. Amanda and I biked around the paths in St. Jacobs looking for her but she was nowhere to be seen. I just came home from lunch, no Kitster.
So, I sit here, working on my paper, waiting for Catot. I do hope she shows soon.
Well Well Well Well Well.
I'm all written out today because I was working on a paper this morning. As I am going to be doing the same activity tomorrow, I thought, hey, why not screw around a little bit this afternoon... read a little of the onion, read some of the comp exam books, watch the rest of Russian Ark - a film tour through the Hermitage - that I thought was particularly important last night at about, well, bedtime.
You know the second option - to read some of the comp books, is quite interesting. Now that I'm supposed to be writing my paper, the comp books are again enticing. When I was supposed to be reading the comp books, the paper was all I wanted to do. There is the law desire problematic again eh! I have to do this, so I desire that. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Here is one of my favourite quotes from the novel I am working with - Strange Heaven:
They let her and the priest, a none-too-thinner version of Father Boyle, go into the kitchen and talk because the kitchen was usually locked when it wasn't meal time. Everyone knew this, so no one would disturb them by walking in.
When the priest saw that she had nothing to say, he began telling a story about working in the Philippines. He said there was this beautiful little girl there and everybody in the village loved her, but she had leukemia and was going to die. Everybody knew it and did everything they could to keep it from her. And the priest said that every day the little girl used to walk out to a cliff and stand looking out on the ocean for a while, and then she'd come back to the village. The priest said this struck him as very sad, so one day he followed her out to the cliff and he said to her " Well, you know, dear, everything is going to be all right, now." And the priest said she just looked at him and smiled. "She knew better," the priest said, finishing. "She knew better."
The priest sat with his fingers entwined and actually twiddled his thumbs for a few moment, smiling. "Ah dear, dear, dear, dear, dear," he said, looking around. (15).
It's that last line that does it for me. So human, so real. I find it tugs on my heart strings.
In other news, my wife and I have been suspecting that our little piglet, Kitster, has been eating something outside - been going after a little diet supplement, shall we say. So today, I walked outdoors, down the driveway to get the mail, and what to my wondrous eyes should appear, but a small, mangled mole. A little blind rodent, the only kind she can catch. Bloody and slain all over my driveway, - my dooryard - as they would say in the most upriver parts of Miramichi. So my suspicions were confirmed. I had to call my wife at noon and tell her this. I think she's writing up the report as we speak. We'll have Kitster a subpoena by tomorrow at the latest. When the authorities do come to get her, and they will, I sure hope they grow their nails long, sneak up on her about a half an hour before she plans to get up, claw on the bedspread for 15 minutes. Then top it all of with wining noises like someone's passing a kidney stone in the next room, only right in her ear. Perhaps they could purr a bit too. None of this calm purring, but some lawn mower style, no holds barred type stuff.
And before I go, I found a funny little parody of religion (Wicca and Christianity to be exact) in the onion today:
I'm still going to write the third section of theological aesthetics on Barth's view of beauty, but I've come across some of his though in an article included in the Wayne Meeks and John Fitzgerald reader, The Writings of St. Paul. The article is called "The New Man" (1952).
"Much in true human nature is unrelated to "religion," but nothing in true human nature is unrelated to the Christian faith. That means that we can understand true human nature only in the light of the Christian gospel that we believe. For Christ stands above and is first, and Adam stands below and is second. So it is Christ that reveals the true nature of man. Man's nature in Adam is not, as is usually assumed, his true and original nature; it is only truly human at all in so far as it reflects and corresponds to essential human nature as it is found in Christ. True human nature, therefore, can only be understood by Christians who look to Christ to discover the essential nature of man. [Romans]Vv. 5:12-21 are revolutionary in their insistence that what is true of Christians must also be true of all men. That is a principle that has an incalculable significance for all our action and thought. To reject this passage as empty speculation is tantamount to denying that the human nature of Christ is the final revelation of the true nature of man." (391-2)
In my last post I outlined some scriptural support for theological beauty and I highlighted the necessity of adopting a specifically Christian conception of beauty that can reconcile “the father of lights” and the transfiguration with the ugliness of the cross and the humility of Christ. In Part Two I want to consider Allen Tate’s incarnational poetics.
Who was Allen Tate?
Allen Tate (1899-1979) was a poet and literary critic from Kentucky. He went to Vanderbilt University, where he met Robert Penn Warren. He was a member of the Fugitive Poets with John Crow Ransom, and is most often labelled a Southern Agrarian, along with Caroline Gordon, his sometime wife, and the previous two, Warren and Ransom. Wendell Berry is considered a contemporary descendant of this literary movement.
What were Allen Tate’s views on Aesthetics?
I’ll make Balthazar proud and first assert that Tate’s Catholicism is the most important facet of his aesthetic theory. Of the Southern Fugitives in general, Francesca Murphy writes: “The history of the ‘earth’ of the South became the archetypal image through which the Fugitives perceived the transcendentals. This earth acts on its inhabitants as a concrete given: a fence, and a boundary for the imagination, as well as a means of transcendence. To imagine it is to be drawn into a dense, singular fact” (Christ the Form of Beauty 70). For Tate, the particulars of a location are as important to the theological view as the universal. In fact, the particulars are the door through which the universal may be encountered. Siding with T.S. Eliot, as a voice of conservative modernism, Tate et al were ticked off at the Scopes Monkey trial, and though they didn’t hold to literal 7 day creation, they thought there was more at stake. I see them envisioning this trial as an influx of northern liberalism on a political level, which took the right to free thought, as a right to conquest. The trial represented “colonial” aggression from the north that was about to wipe away what they saw as the sin of tradition. To Tate, tradition represented something else: the memory of a history of encounters with a place, with particulars. Tradition in this sense is a house of the memory of interaction with God. To scrap tradition and move on with the modernity of the northern eastern seaboard was not an option. Somewhere during the debates about civil rights and racism in the 60s, we have lost the secondary argument, that liberalism has a way of undermining local particularities while it extends the rule of individual rights and “equality”.
Tate would call this impulse “The Angelic Imagination”, in an essay of that title, bearing the secondary clause: “Poe as God”. The distinctive mark of this imagination is that it: “Surges toward essences without touching upon the mater in which they are enclosed... Poe’s disembodied mind is said to parallel that of the Cartesian dualism. Poe’s imagination is an absolute: it flies directly up into beauty, without crossing the material world” (Murphy 95)
In Tate’s words:
“The reach of our imaginative enlargement is no longer than the ladder of analogy, at the top of which we may see all…that we have brought up with us from the bottom where lies the sensible world. If we take nothing with us to the top but our emptied, angelic intellects, we shall see nothing when we get there. Poe as God sits silent in darkness. Here the movement of tragedy is reversed: there is no action” (Murphy 96).
In Poe, Tate sees Descartes. In Tate we should see Jacques Maritain. In Maritain we should see Aquinas and Dante (not to mention Beatrice). Back to Poe: Tate’s problem: like Descartes, the angelic imagination “ends in solipsism” (96). Where Descartes’ skepticism lead him to doubt the very existence of the world, Poe’s angelic imagination does away with the world so as to live in thought. Descartes’ had a crisis; whereas Poe’s nationals see an economic opportunity. To quote David Bowie ( but it's Kurt Cobain I hear): “You’re face to face, with the man who sold the world”. The second stanza highlights the predicament that Tate feared:
I laughed and shook his hand,
I made my way back home,
I searched for form and land,
Years and years I roamed,
I gazed a gazely stare,
We walked a million hills -- I must have died alone,
A long long time ago.
The death of the world, the real, leads to the death of the self. What is the fix? Murphy leads us to Dante and Beatrice: “The radiance which shines through this feminine figure (Beatrice) gives its beholder a sense of reality, but only when the witness binds themselves to this one, single form” (97).
The theory of being-in-the-world that pre-figures much of this conception is decidedly anti-cartesian, anti-Kantian, pro-Thomistic. For Maritain, we engage the world through the intellect. We see a flower. Our mind forms a phantasm or an image of that flower. Our illuminative intellect then activates the phantasm and the intellect-in-act encounters the phantasm of the flower-in-act, revealing a glimpse of the essence, or form of the flower (for more on this see Maritain’s Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, p. 70-74, or Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, q. 84). Catherine Pickstock calls this process “hylomorphism” : “the form of the thing is already synthesized before it ‘informs’ the mind (even though the active intellect must bring out its full coherence)... the thing fulfills itself in and through its comprehensibility. Such a view regards the knowing of a thing as commensurate with the known thing’s own constitutive repetition. For when the species is formed in our mind, the thing perceived happens again (since being is an event), or repeats itself, though in a different mode” (After Writing 131). What all of these thinkers are defending is the convertability of knowledge to being and to beauty. One will notice that using the post-modern variants of Kantian representation, beauty becomes disengaged with reality, the real, God. Beauty is purely cultural, and not the penetration of God in culture, the incarnation. Tate and others were attempting to preserve the Thomistic tradition of essence, participation and analogy, which, as we all know, is assailed from all sides.
In Part three of Theological Aesthetics I will consider Karl Barth's contention that Beauty is not a front running concept of God.
One of the questions I will need to answer for my upcoming comprehensive exam is on theological aesthetics. Hans Urs von Balthazar has drawn a harsh line across this field of study by claiming that theology must be the adjective and aesthetics the noun, and not the other way around. To inquire into aesthetic theology is to free a conception of beauty from the tradition of theology, only to apply it to theology itself, thereby twisting theology towards a non-theological conception of beauty. In opposition to this, theological aesthetics weds Christian claims with a conception of beauty. We essentially refuse the difference between God and beauty, while asserting the truth of Christian dogma. The transcendental of beauty finds it's home in the trinity and not the other way around.
How is the father revealed to the world? Through the son as logos and as Jesus the Christ. Here we run smack dab into Isaiah's account of the messiah: "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him" (Isa 53:2b). Christ was not beautiful of body, but beautiful in action, in obedience, in spirit. Beauty, if it is linked to the trinity, must have an aspect in it that can hold both the apex and nadir of the kenotic passage in Phil. 2:6-11. We have Christ the humble, who was willing to become horrendous on the Cross, but who was raised up in his true light...a light that is too radiant for fallen eyes. We see a foretaste of this in the transfiguration of Christ, and we see the analogical fulfillment of this beautiful, awesome Christ in Rev. 1:12-16. This is Christ as he was uttered before time: the cosmological Christ who shines like the sun, speaks with words that sound like running waters, holds seven stars in his hand, has hair like wool, eyes like blazing fire, wearing a golden sash. John of Patmos then goes on to rhetorically unfold this figure, but if we move too fast to the hermeneutics of apocalyptic secrets, we miss the most important point of all. This analogical image of Christ is one that ascends and descends. The beauty of Christ is explained through the sensuous particulars of creation, all of which are brought together in a constellation that mediates Christ's beauty. We ascend to the glory of the son through an appreciation of the materials of the world.
Here is the central tension of theological aesthetics. It must orient us toward the beauty of the trinity, while also demonstrating how it is that the trinitarian beauty is transcendentally present in the world. If we cut off the world, we lose the flesh to a variation of gnosticism, and as we know from the crucifixion and resurrection, Christ valued humanity so much that he sought to redeem his "very good" creation (Gen. 1:31).
In part two I'm going to look at Allen Tate's conception of the universal in the particular, as articulated by Francesca Murphy in Christ the Form of Beauty.
Hugh Hood is a Canadian Catholic novelist and essayist. He is from TO, but I taught at U of Montreal. He sound's like he was quite the character. Here are some quotes from his 1991 publication Unsupported Assertions. A modest title for a text that bears the subtitle "Genius is only a series of unsupported assertions".
"This Sunday a grander ceremony was in progress, the dedication and opening of the first McDonald's in the Emilia Romagna, perhaps in the whole of Italy. Right here on the northeast corner of roadways sacred to independence and to the heroic monk and apostle of revolution...Naturally the restaurant is packed ...there is a boy here with five burgers an two Big Macs, but what are these among so many? To the Christian the table of the Eucharist is the first and the greatest of fast-food service" (Hugh Hood, "Cher in Bologna: McLuhan Revisited", 41-2). [Holly, if you're reading, you'd like this essay - remind me to get you a copy]
"Is there a corner of Canada free from authoritarian submissiviness?...Somebody described the American intelligentsia as a herd of independent minds. The Canadian publicist belongs to a gaggle of Canada geese. What causes this perpetually undignified posture? A few guesses might be made about its historical sources. Too-long-continued colonial status. Second rank status among North American nations. (Foreign journalists always refer to the USA as 'America' and now Canadians are starting to do the same.) The unwholesome predominance of authoritarian Christianity - Scots Presbyterianism and French Catholicism - in our morals and manners. I speak as a believing and practicing Catholic. The root of the matter requires careful attention, but the fact of the behavior, the outward and visible cringing, remains undeniable." (Hugh Hood, "Authority in Canada" 7-8, 1991)
Is Hugh Hood right? I'm not sure. In this essay he continually points to Canadian submissiveness, which doesn't really ring true to me. Still, I love a good essay that waltzes around the rhetorical ring with skill, dancing toward its subject like the shit eating opponent it is, swinging wildly at times, yet causing the reader to stand up and roar. Yeah, I'm a sucker.
"Do we have the will and the commitment to real, genuine, rooted personal freedom to get rid of the from the-top-down domination of our corporate bodies, big governments, grants boards, take-it-or-leave-it marketing men? In many ways Canada is the freest country in the world, but perhaps our freedom is made of fairy gold. Nobody will come and take me away in the night for writing this essay; there are other and subtler penalties I may be subject to: dismissal as a crank and an attention-seeking egoist, refusal to publish what I write about these matters. We have to keep telling ourselves that our magazines and newspapers and broadcasting networks and educational institutions and our government departments are out of our control. I'm supposed to take my orders from the top down like everybody else, and in my mind I always hear the stern admonition of the policeman. We don't want any trouble here!" (ibid 9).
So I was reading about compact street racing cars this weekend. I've got a bad father in law. Anyway, he was telling me about this Mitsubishi Evo 8 that is the hottest "cheep" car on the road. Here it is cornering better, and straighting faster then an all-wheel drive Lamborgini. All this in a "4 door saloon". Watch topgear talking head drive the poop out of this thing (it's a bit of a frankenstein of a car really). Enjoy.
Here is a great quote from a great essay on invisible religion by Marcia Ian:
# It would be truer to say that on the contrary America has marched from its founding vision of itself as a liberal society guided by the light of right reason, away from Puritan "abstractions concerning virtue," toward an ever more diffuse and yet ever more concretely embodied religion at once personal and global. [3] By concretely embodied, I mean "materialized" in ways intrinsic to consumer capitalism, with its tendency to worship the material as if it were spirit made manifest, and the spirit as if it were matter made immortal. What Colleen McDannell has called our "material Christianity" solidified during the 19th century. Material Christianity is "affectionate religion," Protestantism softened and sentimentalized, with its iconoclasm, its antipathy toward, and laws prohibiting, images, relaxed. During the nineteenth century, for example, the Holy Bible was re-invented and made available as a kitschy mass-market commodity, illustrated, commodified, and mass-produced. The family Bible linked faith to fantasy and commodity to spirit as "the saving text" evolved into the "saving object," a standard feature of most Protestant households, a sign at once of domestic sanctity, divine paternity, and mainstream American identity (McDannell 68, 73, 74).
# Such objects blur the boundary between sacred and secular, but in so doing they reproduce and re-iterate logos in commodity form; they perform for the zillionth time the original "blurring" putatively achieved by the Incarnation. A supposedly one-time event "infusing . . . the divine into one man," the incarnation theoretically made it possible for the divine and the human realms to become, if not exactly one, at least not discontinuous (McDannell 18-19). In Christ, the secular and the sacred melt into that uncanny proximity which Lacan calls the "extimate," namely the appearance of "the real in the symbolic" (Miller 75). Christ is "the real in the symbolic"; he embodies the extimate as the object of worship and the point of identification for the subject; he is the nonexistent point where one side of the möbius strip becomes continuous with the other; he is the immanent transcendence of material nature become the signifier of culture--American culture. I can think of no better apologist for this point than Henry James, Sr., known to most of us mainly as the father of William James the philosopher/psychologist, Henry James the novelist, and Alice James the diarist, but known during his own time as a prolific if idiosyncratic public intellectual, a Swedenborgian Christian mystic, and Fourierist proponent of radical spiritual democracy.
Rome has been sacked. After two seasons HBO has pulled the plug. It was only intended to be a mini-series - 4 shows. But because of the quality of scripts and the viewers, the show was extended. I have quite enjoyed the show, though I have reservations about some of the extremes of HBO representations - sex and violence. The two characters that drove the story were Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson). They were soldiers in Caesar's army, but the writers managed to put them in the most amazing places, making them perhaps the biggest movers and shakers in Roman history. Of course, Caesar, Augustus, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Cicero, Brutus, Casius, Cato all got their due. But the writers brought an interesting element into the story when they began to follow the feud between Rome's leading women Servillia, Brutus' mom, and Atia of the Julii, Augustus' mom. Yes HBO put roman women on the map. These two fought a stronger, more spiritual battle then any of the men. Servillia was having an affair with Caesar and long awaited his return from Gaul. Upon that return Servillia and Caesar continued their affair, but Atia wanted a piece of the action. Through a series of events she managed to seduce Caesar. Servillia then cursed Atia, in one of the most eerie scenes I've ever seen on TV. At one point Atia had Servillia tortured. At another point we see Servillia on her knees outside of Atia's house, wearing death robes and ashes, crying "Atia of the Julii I call for justice" for what seems like 48 hours. Quite the scene.
Anyway, I must say, I've enjoyed the show. It has been interesting to watch while reading Cicero, Augustine, Virgil and generally trying to get a grip of the ancient Roman world. I can't say that I trust HBO to represent Rome as it was, but I do think they captured the pagan "ontology of violence" and honour culture well. I also think that they did a pretty good job bringing Roman cults to life. They showed Rome for what it was, a place dominated by worship, where logic walked a lower road then religio, and politics was always rapped up in both. Augustus is portrayed as the preemimant realpolitician of the last 2000 years. Caesar, played by Ciaran Hinds, seems a noble man, rather then a tyrant, with a generous heart. Cicero seems a bit on the queer side, and Brutus is simply, well, Hamlet.
There is a reason why Rome was made now. Rome has been adopted as a analogical setting by the left (as opposed to the right of the sword and sandal flicks) to work out state problems of the same manner that West Wing would tackle. Let's say that Rome is West Wing after Michael Ignatieff's publication of Empire Lite.
I'm not a fan of ideal types, however I do think that there is something like an ideal type that emerges within similar traditions. We can begin to outline this type by using analogy to build a list of similar tendencies of these characters. The type I'm interested in is the angst ridden post-Christian religious studies prof. This is how you can tell them. They are invariably using methods that are thematic rather then tradition based. Most of their methods are univocal, especially when they speak about Christians. That is they read all Christians of a certain type the same: evangelicals, fundamentalists, liberals. So here is a typical comment: All evangelicals are a bunch of material consuming, 'attached' world destroyers, who harbour hate towards minorities be they ethnic/racial, sexual or religious (and religious-ethinic); while they proclaim belief in spirit they are so attached to world that they make all of their doctrine look ridiculous. [notice the total misreading or erasure of the incarnation, trinitarian dynamic]
I ran into a prof spouting this type of univocal, stereotypical type crap this week. The interesting thing about this "type" is that they usually rant about Christians when the topic is actually focused on something else. Last year I was critiquing a presentation on walmart's staff rituals, saying that walmart attempts to create community in the store - smile, laugh, buy - while it erodes community outside the store. In this way walmart manufactures a symptom - lack of community, and then treats it. My prof immediately looked at me and said "Well isn't that what evangelists do with sin?" And he looked at me in such a way that his connection seemed obvious. The thing is, the debate was about walmart, not evangelists - however much they may share sales tactics, the two traditions are very different, though they do have a base southern culture in common. His comment was a Freudian slip that betrayed a stewing hate for evangelicals. Likewise the prof this week exposed his own hate for Christians by claiming that most capitalism is propelled by Christians, while responding to a lecture on non-attachment in a 8th century buddhist monk's writing. The fact is that most capitalism is propelled by seculars who may be able to trace Christian roots in their families. This is a given: Bush does encourage consumerism and southern Christians are certainly disciplined to mix faith and consumer fix together - witness: Jerry Jenkins and Tim Lehaye; Rick Warren and his Purpose Driven bs; packaged fast food Christianity. The thing is that scholars need to be able to get a grip on their object of critique - and they certainly don't do this through stereotype. [I say this while I'm critiquing a type. The thing is I could list out genealogies of individuals here, traditions, and prove analogical similarities.] This broad based bashing of Christians just mystifies the whole thing. The truth is that many Christians are fed up with consumerism. Many Christians, like my next door neighbour have adopted lifestyles that evade overconsumption. My neighbour has two families living in his house. Friends who got together after Uni and said: hey lets live together, save some overhead, and some energy, have a good time, prove community can work. Lets also help the downtrodden, the shit on, and the shitting, to get back into community in a healthy way, where they might avoid turning other people into shitters (by which I mean pedophiles). These people are Mennonite, close faith relatives to Baptists. You know, some Christians don't run over people with tanks or drive SUV's until the next ice age. In fact those that perpetuate this later model usually have developed alternative ideologies and traditions that are incompatible with Christianity and they live in a certain place in the world. We might say their very Christianity is nominal. However, we might add that this certain country actually only has a about a 25-30% Church attending population.
Which means this: Secularity is the problem, not necessarily bad Christians, but a government ruled by the desire for profit and progress(rather then Christ), a desire that many Christians are caught up in.
So here is my comment to the type of RS prof that I've run into: Quit projecting the wrath you feel toward whoever it was in your lifetime that turned you off of Christianity on to me. Quit writing about stereotypes. Quit promoting some naive type of liberalism that leads to the thinnest subject position around: consumer.
So I've been super busy lately and neglecting this blog. I'm on a search committee at Renison college, which is great experience, but it eats a lot of time. Earlier this week I gave my first solo lecture to a class of 150. It was on Love and Film and I gave a materialist reading of film. I told the class that they needed to do the "descent" in order to understand the intertextuality of film. I screened Dogville (the night before), used clips from Happy Feet, and worked with a critique of Fox and the Hound as supporting racial segregation. I was arguing that these films work as secular myth.
Last night I went to a lecture by Saba Mahmood on the Islamic emancipation genre in North America - Reading Lolita in Tehran, Irshad Manji's diatribes against Islam. Great talk. Mahmood demonstrated how most of the authors she referenced were in bed with Neo-conservativism, usually through economic links.
Today I attended a lecture by Terry Eagleton on "The Death of Criticism". I couldn't hear very well, and I was dead tired from two days of interviewing and the late night coming back from the Mahmood lecture. Eagleton is still arguing for a dynamic notion of nature - pushing against the thesis that we are culture all the way down.
I've been meaning to mention that I went to a The Shins concert about three weeks ago now in TO. Very good stuff. Though I was remarking that I think they would be as good in a classical concert hall as they are in a rock venue.
I also put the finishing touches on an essay that I'm going to shop around to Journals for the next little bit. "There is no Outsider".
Wow did Marxist Critic Eagleton ever tear Dawkins a new one! His review of Dawkins God Delusion, begins:
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Eagleton isn't that bad a theologian either:
Dawkins, who is as obsessed with the mechanics of Creation as his Creationist opponents, understands nothing of these traditional doctrines. Nor does he understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us. Dawkins’s God, by contrast, is Satanic. Satan (‘accuser’ in Hebrew) is the misrecognition of God as Big Daddy and punitive judge, and Dawkins’s God is precisely such a repulsive superego. This false consciousness is overthrown in the person of Jesus, who reveals the Father as friend and lover rather than judge. Dawkins’s Supreme Being is the God of those who seek to avert divine wrath by sacrificing animals, being choosy in their diet and being impeccably well behaved. They cannot accept the scandal that God loves them just as they are, in all their moral shabbiness. This is one reason St Paul remarks that the law is cursed. Dawkins sees Christianity in terms of a narrowly legalistic notion of atonement – of a brutally vindictive God sacrificing his own child in recompense for being offended – and describes the belief as vicious and obnoxious. It’s a safe bet that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t agree more. It was the imperial Roman state, not God, that murdered Jesus.
Find the debate here. The Wiki article on TE also has a link to the above article and a response by someone. Sorry I'm too lazy to find out who. Also, Wikipedia - I still love you man. Those idiots who actually want to you be THE source of truth, are just bone heads anyway. I know that you are in the connection business, not the prophet/profit business. Hugs and kisses.
So I've been playing with facebook these days. A friend participated in some email harrasment until I caved. But I'm glad I did cave. Facebook is everything email isn't . You don't loose connection everytime your internet provider squashes up your piddely little email - I'm looking at you Rogers Yahoo.
Anyway, I've connected with two long lost buds from high school on there. We used to have some good times - too good perhaps. I used to get dragged behind Mark's Ford Ranger in highschool. Not as bad as it sounds. For shits and giggles we would drive to this icy road near the school, two of us would get out and hang onto the tailgate, and the other would drive down the road. I've been up over 60km/h using this method. Faster then I've ever traveled on a mountain bike, thanks to the slick soles of doc Martens. One time Mark wanted to try, so another friend took the wheel. We ended up doing a 720, with Mark hanging on the back of the tail gate. At one point in the spin he was pinned between the truck and the snowbank. We almost rolled the truck. I climbed out of shotgun, slamming the door into the snowbank until I could get out. The truck was off kilter. We ran to Mark who was rolling around in pain, holding his ribs. I thought we had killed him. But low and behold, he only had the wind knocked out of him. That person was never allowed to drive the Ranger again. The end.
"man all this racism is making me thirsty" what a great line...when it's not true. What is this genre now anyway? The whole Borat, Sarah Silverman, Dave Capelle thing? Don't forget the office. One thing to be said for multiculturalism - it gets funny.
This is a funny little film on asian stereotypes, with great delivery. I love the asian mom bit.
Just saw All the King's Men (2006). I haven't yet read the novel, but rest assured, I will. The film was panned by critics though I think it did a bit of box office. I loved it. We have the Christopher Marlowe Faustus tale, mixed in with the American democratic metanarrative, combined with individuals with disordered goods, Neitzsche, Dante, Beatrice and Sean Penn. What more can you ask for? Oh, and I forgot the Freud (killing the father), the Rene Girard (violence), the Kennedy assassination, and the great camera work. Wow, did the critics suck hole on that one!
