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April 30, 2005

Puzzle

Between 1:30 and 3:15 this afternoon, a series of different web surfers came to this site after Goodle-searching for the phrase “luminous poison,” the trick murder implement in the 1950 film noir classic D.O.A. I alluded to this plot device last year, so I can explain why this page shows up in the Google results; what I can’t explain is, Why would a dozen or more people suddenly feel moved to look up “luminous poison” in the middle of Saturday afternoon?

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April 29, 2005

Things To Come

Several things will happen within the next eighteen months or so. (So far, I’m on safe ground.)

One seems increasingly likely: the Episcopal Church USA will find a polite and careful way of declining to accede to the Windsor Report. It will take this as a matter of justice, of the development of doctrine, of the Holy Spirit doing a new thing, of resistance to bullying. It seems moderately likely that the rest of the Anglican Communion will determine that the ECUSA has not adequately attended to its requests (with some resistance from parts of the UK, and I don’t know about Canada well enough to say). The decision-makers involved will decide that ECUSA has decided to “walk apart.”

Some body of US Anglicans will receive formal recognition from the remainder of the Anglican Communion. This presumably would not constitute a simple replacement of ECUSA, since I doubt anyone wants to annihilate the bridges that might in a beautiful world lead to a rapid reconciliation — but it will be clear that the on-going work of the Anglican Communion in the USA is being done by an agency other than ECUSA.

Some catholic-minded Anglicans may be blessed with Benedict XVI’s permission to join the Church of Rome while retaining Anglican patterns of life and worship (corrected, of course, to reflect the magisterium’s teaching). The extent of this inclusion could vary from simple encouraging the Anglican Use of liturgical forms, to establishing an Anglican Rite Roman Catholic Church, with an infrastructure that reflects typically Anglican ecclesiastical order (again, aligned toward Roman authority).

Of course, all of this may be rendered moot; ECUSA may meet the expectations of the Primates and Consultative Council and Lambeth bishops. The signs of the times, however, seem to be pointing otherwise; a significant proportion of voices I hear express a sense of possibly being well shut of communion partners who don’t share ECUSA’s current sensibilities.

Hence the prospect of my uneasy dilemma: although I take very seriously my vow of obedience to my bishop, yet I don’t understand my ministry as deriving its sacramental basis apart from a lived connection with an arguably catholic communion — and if ECUSA opts out of communion with other Anglican bodies, I’m in a fix. Here are some alternatives, none ideal.

• I could just sit tight, with my bishop and diocese, in what will have become de facto another Protestant denomination. In that instance, I’d be dissenting from the notion that such a situation suffices for the sacramental life of the church and its people, even though I agreed with the policies and practices of this group at the surface level.
• I could try to align myself with whatever supplementary or replacement body maintains its connection with the Anglican Communion. That would be awkward, since I’d be dissenting from the presenting basis of that group’s claim more truly to be sustaining the catholic faith in the Anglican tradition. Formally speaking, though, it would be no different from being a dissenting Episcopalian of ten or a dozen years ago; I could always have joined a Protestant denomination that recognized the theological legitimacy of same-sex relationships, but that would have entailed repudiating my allegiance to the church catholic. At the time, I was unwilling so to do, and the fact that the church(es) changes around me doesn’t necessarily alter my sense of priorities and obligations.
• I could seek a canonical relationship with a non-ECUSA, non-American-substitute diocese. I know some English clergy and bishops who might conceivably be willing to enlist me as serving under them. (I don’t know about the canons at this point, but since plenty of clergy serve in situtations where they aren’t canonically resident, it seems possible so long as I’m not rector of a parish).(Or I could move to Britain, or somewhere else.) In that circumstance, I’d be dissenting from the overall theological position of the Anglican Communion, but doing so from within an unambiguously Anglican situation (again, as the pre-recent ECUSA).
• I could look into the Anglican-Use/Rite Roman Catholic body. In that case, I’d be removing myself from the distinctly Anglican tradition altogether, which would make me feel queasy and upset my wife horribly (don’t worry, Margaret, I’m just talking through the alternatives), but would with a stroke resolve tons of problems about doctrine and polity. In that case, I’d be dissenting from a broad array of magisterial teachings disciplinary rubrics, but I’d be doing so in a context in which the ground rules for obedience and dissent were at least quite clear.

Whatever I do, the bonds of solidarity that weave my life with those of the saints to whom I’m answerable will be impaired; some will be cut off altogether, others frayed.

On especially vexing aspect of this mess lies in the peculiar polarization to which I’ve adverted before, whereby participants in this struggle occlude the extent to which “being the church” has always involved reasoned disagreements about what the church is and should be about. Instead, many all around me are dead set on winning, vindicating their sense that theirs is the exclusive tenable vision of which the church should be like. But the church has never been a place where a single vision of itself prevailed; the church has always dealt with internal dissent. The question is, which dissents are tolerable, on what terms, to whom? (The least likely, most outlandish possibility above — that of joining the Roman Catholic church on some terms — actually might entail the greatest latitude for intelligible dissent, under the peculiar circumstances; thoughtful contemporary Roman Catholic theologians espouse views very similar to those I advance, with the recognition that that’s not what the church itself teaches [yet].)

Whatever happens, I’ll end up something of an inexplicable oddity to people around me, whether as a bereft catholic spirit among those who have become comfortably Protestant, or as a “reassessing” committed Anglican among ascendant “reasserters,” or as an Anglican heart in a Roman world. I’ll be testifying to the theological soundness of catholic allegiance (with its attendant frustrations and injuries) to sisters and brothers who value their vision of justice over a commitment to bearing with predominant, disagreeing sisters and brothers — or testifying to the theological soundness of an understanding of human sexuality that affirms the sanctity of particular relationships that the church to which I’ve pledged fidelity and obedience itself rejects.

Good thing I didn’t get into this racket for the sheer fun of it. For the time being, I’ll pray that we remember that the church has strayed into very swampy terrain before, that God will guide us out, through, past, and even within the swamp if we open our hearts to the Spirit, and that on the whole, I’m a relatively insignificant part of a salvific purpose much greater and wiser and more encompassing than I can imagine. . . .

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April 28, 2005

Nature Stories

I woke this morning to the strangely thrilling news that the ivory-billed woodpecker may not be extinct. I’ve been aware of ivory-bills from my childhood; I have a vague memory (Mom can check me on this) that the family copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds included a picture of the ivory-bill beside the pileated woodpecker, with a pencilled “X” beside it. (Margaret and I saw a pileated woodpecker in our neighbor’s back yard in Princeton; it was a wonderful, exciting moment.)

And from the sublime to a pond in Germany, toads are exploding for no discernible reason. “[C]ity residents have been warned to stay away from the pond” — advice that I imagine is pretty easy to obey.

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April 27, 2005

As Advertised

Some random thoughts: First, I thought the clerical attire answer would be the less volatile of the two ecclesiastical entries I was contemplating. Little did I anticipate the attention it would draw.

Second, Tom Coates is pumping out buckets of wisdom in his entries on pointing at things and on the fate of Trackback and comments. Don’t let the vari-colored highlighted links throw you.

Third, I should have figured this out years ago, but I’ve begun filling out the end-of-term evaluation sheets for my classes as I go, so that by the end of the term they’ll already be mostly filled out. It’s a no-brainer, which reflects negatively on my practice up to this point (at least I figured this out eventually).

As advertised: random thoughts.

Posted by AKMA at 07:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Harmonic Convergence, Eh?

So, friend Chris Locke from Blogaria turns up quoting from an article by Margaret’s friend and Duke professor Amy Laura Hall in his latest Chief Blogging Officer entry. That’s a convergence I wouldn’t have anticipated.

Posted by AKMA at 07:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 26, 2005

What I Wear

I’ll start with the easier of the two questions: When do I wear clerical garb, and why?

My current practice is to wear clericals when I’m exercising the ministry to which I was ordained — that is, when I’m serving in liturgical or educational ministries (or stand available so to do). In practice, that means I wear black on Sundays and on days that I teach, and other days if I’m leading worship (or exercising my teaching ministry in a non-classroom way).

The arguments against wearing clericals involve — insofar as I understand them — the implied claim that a clergyperson is someone special. Clerical attire signifies (on this account) privilege and power, a staked claim on a disproportionate share of heavenly goods. Someone dressed in clergywear can be seen to ask for special attention from the world: “Notice me, respect me, I’m holy.” That not only reflects poorly on the ordained person, but also disables lay ministry; if I, as a priest, am special and notable, then I can naturally be expected to exercise special and notable functions. A non-ordained observer plausibly concludes that she or he need not participate in leadership, in active outreach, in theological reflection, and so on; that, after all, is the special ministry of the ordained.

That’s what they call “clericalism.” It’s a Bad Thing, on even the most charitable account. Everything in the paragraph above contravenes the ideals expressed in Scripture and in the best and wisest of the church's tradition.

At the same time, it’s more complicated than just that.

If it be granted that some clergy wear their clothes as a claim to privilege, my experience of wearing clericals differs. Often as not, my black clothes and funny collar make me a target for a variety of people’s off-kilter projections. I don’t expect anything different from people when I’m in black, but I wear my uniform since that’s part of a signifying system by which I’m marked as “available for help, spiritual counsel, listening to long explanations of why you don’t go to church any more,” and so on. If it’s a claim to privilege, these are privileges that don’t appeal much to me.

I wear clericals for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s the uniform. I don’t feel any imperative to conceal the fact that I’m a priest, nor to make a big deal about it. It’s my job, as the UPS carrier’s job is to carry packages, and she wears brown, and I wear black.

Should clergy wear uniforms? I can see arguments both ways. For the time being, I’m inclined to think it’s good that people can spot a priest if they feel the need. It’s worth signaling to the world that some people take this stuff seriously enough to make themselves answerable to the world’s outlandish expectations. It’s worth putting myself in the line of ideological fire. And plain clothes don’t ensure clerical innocence; clergy can certainly still manage to be self-important, manipulative, passive-aggressive, abusive rats even without black clothing. Humble is as humble does, in black or in blue jeans or in a natty suit.

If there’s a special-treatment factor, it’s much less a matter of something I expect, but something with which people can surprise me. If my being a priest gives others an occasion to be kinder or more generous than they would otherwise be, I suppose that's good for them. If they’re extra kind to me one day, it might contribute to their being extra kind to someone else another day. That sort of generosity can be habit-forming.

Does my being visible disempower non-ordained people? Quite possibly so, if they already have a malformed idea of what a priest is. All the more reason, then, that they should see me and observe that I’m not trying to put something over on them, to order them around, to make them gofers for gratifying my self-indulgent whims. All the more reason for them to be able to know that I as a priest am encouraging them, exhorting them to exercise the fullness of their ministries.

People who want a priest can identify me as someone to ask for money, for prayers, for a hand, for directions, for advice. That’s what I volunteered to cope with eighteen years ago (almost nineteen now, making me feel very old). People who resent a priest’s wearing clericals can vent their frustrations at me.

At the end of the day — or more precisely, first thing in the morning, when I get dressed — it’s a matter of a signifying practice. I don’t control the signification of my attire, but I venture that sign because I’m committed to the best of what it signifies. I’m willing to be judged for the extent to which I comply with the pernicious significations (and I certainly don’t want to try to evade responsibility for those significations just by dressing differently). I’m a servant, of a particular kind, and I took on this service willingly; it’s the right thing for me to do. And I don’t mind if you can tell by looking, and I don’t mind if that irks you, and I’m sorry if you read my clothing in the light of poor examples of my colleagues (I try not to hold all police to blame for the bad ones). By wearing a black shirt and collar, I signify my willingness to deal with the complications of a clerical vocation head-on, the bad with the good, and to let you draw your conclusions about how that pans out.

Posted by AKMA at 08:36 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Br. Bruce

“Most of my music is probably, at this point, a lot of it is traced back to the gospel roots, you know. ‘Promised Land,’ ‘The Rising,’ I use a lot of gospel which is where a lot of rock music came from. The first front men were really the preachers. So I was drawn to music that addressed the spirit, probably because my own needed to be addressed!”
— NPR interview with Renée Montagne

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April 25, 2005

Full Day

After having somewhat gathered the forces of my concentration over the weekend, I had a very full day today tackling the backed-up papers that I’d been ignoring while I worked on my lecture from last week. Consequently, I don’t have anything particular left over to say here today.

I devoted a lot of my spare cycles to thinking about (a) clerical attire, when I wear it and why, in response to a question from Francis Watson, and (b) how I will have to think about my orders if any of a variety of foreseeable outcomes arises relative to the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the Roman Catholic Church. Short answer: I’m not inclined to try to subsist in a national Protestant church, which seems likely to portend headaches.

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April 24, 2005

Sorry, Kyle

During Question Time at the end of my lecture, Tim Safford (whom I knew from old times in seminary) asked me what I meant by “emergent church” (did I mean, you know, emergent-church as in candles-and-coffee-shops, or something else)? I explained that I meant Emergent as in Emergent/emerging church, the kind of congregation I’ve learned about and talked about with friends from Reconciler and with Jordon (who preached his 500th sermon today) and with. . . um. . . that guy from Oklahoma. What’s his name?

Sorry, Kyle; I totally blanked on your name, at a moment I could have been shining the spotlight on you.

Posted by AKMA at 08:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Word!

I thought I’d heard it all, about the new Pope — until I read Fr. David’s story.

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Wondering Aloud

What ever happened to hook shots? Did they change the rules, or the way games get called, in a way that made hook shots less legal? Did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar make the Skyhook so much his own, that lesser mortals don’t even try hook shots? Or are they still plentiful enough, and I happen not to have seen any this year?

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April 23, 2005

Catching Up

It’s been a long, busy week. I finally finished up my Winslow Lecture, and delivered it to a very full house on Thursday. It went well — a number of people gave very kind feedback about it — and I’ll post a summary in the “Extended” window below (it’s probably too long to post the whole thing, but I’ve uploaded a pdf of the complete text of my lecture, with notes).

Trevor came out from Ohio to stay with us during the series, which was terrific; we don’t get to see enough of him, now that he’s far away. We got to see a little of Steve, less than we’d have liked, but it was complicated since Francis and Kevin were here on equal standing as lecturers, though not such long-term friends. It was excellent getting to talk at greater length with Kevin and Francis, and at lunch yesterday Kevin allowed that my more loosely-joined hermeneutics (more loose than his) make more sense to him when he sees the shape of community life here.

At dinner Thursday night, at Koi in Evanston (home of the “Mongolian Plates,” which the menu describes: “The major staple of this dish is its wok-seared characteristic”), we learned that not only did Francis not know about blogging and tofu, but he didn’t know what a dumpster was, either. Steve helpfully equated “dumpster” with a British “skip,” so that was easily solved. “And another thing word I didn’t recognize,” Francis added, “was — ‘mojo’?” That was a little harder for us to explain, especially with a degree of circumspection concomitant with Francis’s dignity and decorum. I suggested that he might have heard of Muddy Waters, and he, at the other end of the table, said, “Oh, it means ‘to muddy the waters’?” At that point, we were nearly helpless at the incongruity of the situation.

I’m very relieved to have finished this up, and a little embarrassed at how much less-well-developed my thoughts were in South Bend last week, compared to the way I ordered them in my formal lecture this week.

[I began with a general retrospective view of the discourses of biblical theology. My survey pointed out the way that the topic of biblical theology has served as a tool in theological and ecclesiastical controversies. If you can claim that your theology is more biblical than your opponent’s, you have a significant rhetorical advantage in church debates. What follows is part transcription, part summary.]

Discourses of biblical interpretation (including “biblical theology”) have also assimilated themselves to their ancestral responsibility for biblical translation. As a translation formally permits only one gloss-expression for each unit of original-language expression, so discussions involving biblical interpretations tend to imply — if not to state outright — that each biblical passage allows only one best interpretive equivalence. No matter how sophisticated our theories of translation, we tend to treat biblical theology as a matter of arriving at correct answers.

The paradigm that identifies all the work of biblical interpretation more or less forcefully with translation exercises further power over our imaginations to the extent that we assent to the conduit metaphor for language. According to many figures of speech in English, words serve as vessels of meaning, containers or pipelines through which one pipes a meaning that one can distinguish from the pipe that contains it. We say, “I can’t get into that book,” or “I couldn’t get anything out of it”; we commonly define “exegesis” as “leading meaning out of the text” (as opposed to eisegesis, “reading meaning into the text”); we discuss interpretation as though meaning were within the words we exchange, and as though we arrive at a successful understanding by siphoning the meaning out from its containment in words.

The combination of the translation paradigm, the conduit metaphor, and the ethos of interpretive competitiveness bring about a sort of enclosure of meaning. On the accounts of meaning that prevail in biblical theology, the church should permit only expert biblical scholars determine the meaning of scriptural texts; these experts alone can correctly translate the best possible representation of the text’s meaning into the language of the contemporary church. These scholars should study the text impassively, with no partiality, but if scholars communicate their interpretive conclusions in a way that doesn’t evoke fervent affirmation of the gospel, then – apparently – something is lacking. That sense of “lack” haunts biblical theology to this day.

It’s odd that anyone might perceive a lack in biblical interpretation, since the Bible must be one of the most-interpreted texts in the world. The sheer staggering plenitude of biblical interpretation may to some extent account for scholars’ artificial restriction on attention-worthy interpretations: if we wall off the sorts of interpretation to which we need to pay attention, we stand a slightly better chance of managing the flow of interpretations. We can carve out a space where the rules are clearer, the price of entry higher, the permitted gestures more limited. Once we’ve established this manageable domain of hermeneutical tidiness, we can name it “True Biblical Theology,” or “Legitimate Theological Interpretation,” or what we will.

This safe zone of orderly biblical interpretation will remain, however, a fortified outpost isolated from the teeming flux of signification outside its secure walls. While cloistered biblical theologians debate the developmental pattern of the Pauline epistles (or lack thereof), emergent-church congregations gather and grow, flourish and dwindle, worship and preach and argue. Theological interpretation thrives outside the walled precincts of academic biblical theology even as biblical theologians wonder how they lost their mojo.

The “enclosed” version of biblical theology aptly illustrates Michel de Certeau’s analyses of reading and meaning (in “The Scriptural Economy” and “Reading as Poaching”). Certeau notes that intellectuals tend to establish informal regimes that regulate interpretive legitimacy; schools, public criticism, lectures such as this series, inculcate the sense that there’s a right way of reading, to which the highly-trained, sensitive interpreter is privy. These interpreters commonly represent such a restrictive gesture as necessary due to the nature of the text, or the well-being of less expert readers (who might be misled without help from accredited scholars).

The use made of the book by privileged readers constitutes it as a secret of which they are the “true” interpreters. It interposes a frontier between the text and its readers that can be crossed only if one has a passport delivered by these official interpreters, who transform their own meaning (which is also a legitimate one) into an orthodox “literality” that makes other (equally legitimate) readings either heretical (not “in conformity” with the meaning of the text) or insignificant (to be forgotten).

Certeau argues that readers are not bound by the conventions that privileged interpreters impose on the text; they are more like nomads than like a lockstep military formation. Where biblical theologians try to seclude the meaning of Scripture in a closed field to which only the scholar has legitimate access, Certeau reminds us that the Bible remains open to unauthorized readers, who traverse the textual landscape as poachers, or perhaps more fittingly as gleaners. While the privileged interpreters fastidiously redecorate the landscaping inside their gated community, unlicensed readers of the Bible continue to discover precious meaning in the dumpsters of academic criticism.

In order to recuperate from what ails us, biblical theologians need to recognize that our experience of lack derives to a great extent from the self-imposed constraints on our discourse. Even if those constraints now seem obvious, natural, or theologically necessary, we may find that we simply can’t have the vibrant, profoundly biblical theology for which our essays lament at the same time that we stipulate a series of exclusions, qualifications, and preconditions for our discourse. If Augustine rightly asks, “what more liberal and more fruitful provision could God have made in regard to the Sacred Scriptures than that the same words might be understood in several senses,” then the biblical theologian’s task must more appropriately involve learning how to flourish in that divine abundance than in devising conventions whose function is to attenuate the variety God provides for our well-being.

For these purposes, the inherited mandates of biblical theology will persistently betray us. Though scholar after scholar proposes new and improved ways of doing the same interpretive thing, we will not thereby attain different results. A theological hermeneutic that develops out of the translation model, relies on the conduit metaphor, and relegates interpretive ventures to “either/or” characterizations will not equip its advocates to deal productively with semiotic abundance. A hermeneutic that respects the full catholicity of meaning needs to start by accepting abundance as a positive condition.

As the interpretive imaginations of so many readers have been formed decisively by the habits that enclose meaning, they recoil from the confusing prospect of semiotic abundance. Such readers adhere to this approach, which Stephen Fowl has categorized as “determinate interpretation,” and I as “integral hermeneutics,” for plausible theological and philosophical reasons. If the familiar rules do not apply, these readers wonder whether one can say that texts mean whatever one likes. They wonder what criteria one might apply if the familiar criteria no longer determine legitimacy in interpretation.

These problems derive most of their force from the sheer unfamiliarity of critical interpretation outside the precincts of the cloister. As Steve and I have argued, however, interpreters have always applied criteria for evaluating interpretations, and – contrary to parodic representations of pre-modern hermeneutics – those criteria do not simply amount to fanciful caprices. The rule of faith, the spiritual senses of medieval interpretation, the reader’s engagement with a network of other readers, as well as various other aesthetic and ethical criteria, abound to ensure that interpretation doesn’t float free of its accountability to standards. Indeed, even conventional critics tacitly appeal to a tremendous array of hermeneutical norms; the risk of arbitrariness dwindles markedly once one brings to conscious awareness the range of norms against which disciplined, faithful readers may check their interpretations.

The aforementioned allegorical approach to interpretation has long suffered the primary burden of modern deprecation. According to the reformers, allegorical interpretation made of the text a wax nose, “and wrest[ed] it this way and that way.” Yet Henri de Lubac’s analysis of medieval exegesis underlines the extent to which medieval interpretation ranged far indeed from arbitrariness, and recent studies have brought to the foreground ways in which de Lubac’s account of medieval interpretation might strengthen contemporary discourses of theological interpretation. David Steinmetz, Lewis Ayres, Margaret Adam, and Graham Ward have launched various complementary accounts of the value of allegoresis for contemporary biblical interpretation. These represent only a thin selection from a growing body of scholarship that shows how we can take allegorical interpretation seriously as a contemporary possibility for critical reading.

These, however, remain bounded by the captivity of our interpretive imagination to the representation of meaning in words. The world around us, however, teems with meanings expressed in non-verbal visual, auditory, gestural signs. Indeed, the more one attends to the ways we encounter and reason through meaning in non-verbal understanding, the more parochial and limited the domain of words seems. To the extent that we suggest and infer meaning in countless non-verbal modes of expression, a hermeneutics that takes verbal communication as the definitive case of evoking and apprehending meaning inappropriately generalizes from the most formalized and unusual sphere of meaning-making to the more common and less specific spheres.

Two side notes: First, this point marks one basis for my dissent from the way theologians have appropriated speech-act theory’s commendable advocacy of construing verbal and non-verbal communication together for philosophical and ethical evaluation; their version of speech-act theory still takes speech as the central focus of its analysis, tending to relegate “action” to the margin of meaningfulness. Second, the urgency of taking non-verbal meaning more seriously grows as an increasing proportion of communicators have access to increasingly refined tools for the production and transmission of audio and video expression online.

Our hermeneutics should begin from the general phenomena of semiosis, of meaning-making. Once we have learned what we can say about meaning and interpretation in non-verbal domains, we can take on the special case of verbal communication with less risk that this outlying example of semiosis provides the key for all interpretive discourses.

In the context of theological hermeneutics, this attention to all the dimensions of meaning and communication obliges us to acknowledge that the windows that surround us exemplify biblical interpretation, that the worship for which this space is customarily used constitutes an exercise in biblical interpretation, that the architecture, the musical accompaniment or lack thereof, all these and more take part in a the expansive, diverse, practice of re-presenting the significance of the Bible in words, images, sounds, and gestures.

Hence, I propose that we think of biblical theology not on the model of translation, not on the basis of a conduit metaphor, but as a signifying practice. On this account, biblical theology would not involve just, or primarily, the verbal interpretation of verbal texts, but as a way of living that deliberately enters into the ocean of signification that encompasses us, and seeks out a way to learn, to perpetuate and to propagate the significance of the biblical proclamation. The signifying practice of biblical theology will include a great amount of textual interpretation, no doubt – but this practice will conduct its textual exploration toward the end of submitting visible, tangible, audible, effectual claims concerning the Bible’s importance for our lives.

[Here I describe the history of the term “signifying practice,” and I’ll probably expand this section in the print version of the paper.]

In Stuart Hall’s account, we participate in reciprocal social activities (including, but not limited to, speech and writing) in ways that affirm, amplify, and perpetuate meanings for our behavior; a particular integrated set of these words and actions constitutes a signifying practice, a complex tapestry of expression by which we assert the sorts of meaning by which we (and the culture around us) define our identities. Dick Hebdige applies this cultural semiotics to the ways that non-dominant social groups define themselves over against the networks of meaning that prevail in the dominant social groups. Thus gangstas, punks, goths, and various subcultures use their appearance, the sounds with which they make their presence audible, their distinct vernacular, the gestures by which they interact with one another and with outsiders – making meaning by the ways that they signify, in dress and music and speech and action.

As a provocative digression, I will here propose in one paragraph my working axioms of semiotics: First, that everything signifies: our dress, our posture, our tone, our stride. In a Word-created world, everything signifies. Second, signification can’t be controlled. We often make to control signifying under the rule of intention (“I didn’t intend to scandalize you, so it’s not my responsibility if you’re hurt by what I did.”). The rule of intention has long been known to lead to Hell, though, and no other mode of policing signification has proved more effective. If I wear an orange jacket through the wrong neighborhood on St. Patrick’s Day, that’ll signify, whether I intend it to or not, and the significance may be enforced with sanctions that pay no respect to refined arguments about the nature of human intention, or the legitimacy of reader-oriented interpretation. If my word or gesture hurts you unintentionally, you’re still injured regardless, and I’m complicit in that injury. Third, then, there is no ethic intrinsic to signification – the signifying Spirit blows where it will, and we know not whence it comes or whither it goes – but only in our practices of expression and apprehension. We interpret significance in particular ways, and we speak and gesture certain ways, relying on provisional expectations and conventions. Those derive their sanction, however, not from the nature of signification, but from our understanding of how we ought to live in a world that’s more complex than we’re capable of controlling. As surfers, we do not control the waves of signification, but we negotiate their flux, riding forces we cannot command. (That’s for Frank Yamada.)

The benefits of adopting the terminology of “signifying practice” for biblical theology are manifold. First, when we frame biblical theology as signifying practice, we point away from an exclusively verbal model of signification and expression, toward a model that encompasses all our activity. We break out of the circle of texts interpreting texts interpreting texts, into a world in which every sphere of human action expresses our biblical interpretations, and invites critical analysis. Biblical interpretations formulated as stained-glass windows or paintings, as oratorios or praise songs, as eucharistic prayers or indeed as ecstatic pentecostal utterance take a coherent place in our reflection on the theological meanings of our Bible. Moreover, when we take up biblical theology as a signifying practice, we direct our attention toward ways that our lived practice as biblical interpreters constitutes an on-going interpretation of the Bible. Since the God of the Bible (in the varied forms in which Christians and Jews receive it) expresses especially vivid interest in how one orders one's life, and since most biblical theologians profess some sort of allegiance to this God who was made known to Israel, to whom Jesus of Nazareth pointed as uniquely good and holy, we have strong reasons as biblical theologians to not separate our lived interpretive practice from our academic, verbal interpretive deliberation. The segregation of ethics, or homiletics, or liturgics, from biblical interpretation dissolves into a critical study of the ways that particular expressions and practices fittingly or inappropriately bespeak the meanings we infer from biblical precedents.

Once we adjust our expectations to regard biblical theology as a signifying practice rather than as puzzle in an arcane code, pieces of the theological vocation that have fallen apart come together again in gratifying and challenging ways. Interpretive disagreement no longer requires that we slug it out until one reader’s proposal show all others to be inferior; indeed, we must expect disagreement as an authentic representation of biblical theologies that emerge from divergent contexts, represented by divergent practitioners; just as any two harpsichordists will perform a shared score differently, so two biblical theologians will perform their shared scriptural score differently. The biblical theologian studies Scripture for the cues for his or her particular performance, imbibes the characteristic directions and gestures, the prohibitions and requirements, and improvises a biblical response to the congregation, the pastoral situation, the social circumstances she confronts. Some degree of innovation will prove intolerable to us, and we will resist and oppose it; other degrees of innovation will seem appropriate to our text, and we will welcome the fresh light they shed on Scripture.

Our exemplifications, our embodiments of biblical theology will always in some respects depart from their biblical precedents, so that we cannot simply assert that our practice fulfills the mandates of our biblical score. Our practice of biblical theology will express our sense of Scripture more or less faithfully, more or less recognizably, and observers of our practice will assess it differently depending on their own apprehension of biblical theology. This befits the Bible, which itself is not monophonic, but comprises a tremendous variety of material for us emphasize, defer, mute, harmonize, and resolve in ways that themselves always change; in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar, “truth is symphonic.” We who are Anglicans may appropriate this criterion to the instruction in Article XX of our Articles of Religion, which stipulates that the church may not “so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.” Confronted by possibly ugly perplexities in the score of our performance, we may not simply adopt one passage and reject the other, citing one passage as the basis for negating the other. Instead, the Articles instruct us to seek the way of reading by which our exposition resolves apparent discord into a more profound, unexpected harmony.

In order soundly to signify Scripture, we need to know the Bible well, studying the Bible steadily and faithfully. In contradistinction to the ways that many prominent biblical theologians have framed their definitions and axioms, that entails studying the canonical biblical text. While speculation about precanonical sources may nuance our appreciation of the canon, Q is not a substitute for Matthew (as Francis suggested in his lecture). Similarly, we have much to learn from post-canonical commentary, particularly commentary from the saints who wrote during the time (described in Steve’s lecture) when Sacra Doctrina comprised all the theological specializations, but commentary does not substitute for the Bible. Perhaps above all, the signifying practice of biblical theology depends on our reading Scripture together, in conjunction with our lives of discipleship and worship. By hearing the Word together, by responding to the Word together, by conversing about the Word together, we encounter and embody at least a beginning measure of the richness that arises when different servants of the same Word practice together.

Thus, our worship – in a certain sense, the signifying practice of biblical theology par excellence – best serves our vocation when we tone down the liturgical expression of our selves and devote our energies to focusing attention on a gospel that we did not invent, in ways that direct attention away from us, away from our ingenuity, away from the urgent messages we need to convey, away from our resourcefulness, and toward the God whom we praise. Romano Guardini advises, “the priest of the late nineteenth century who said, ‘We must organize the procession better; we must see to it that the singing and praying are done better’ [should have rather] asked himself quite a different question: how can the act of walking become a religious act, a retinue for the Lord progressing through his land, so that an epiphany may take place?”

Our processional walking, however, must take our lives, fortified by the ritual expression of orchestrated praise, outward into a dissonant and disordered world. As biblical theologians, we endeavor to recognize God’s ways at work around us and to lend our lived testimony to strengthening, making more nearly visible and audible, the gospel Way. We shape our lives after the patterns we discern in Scripture, so that others may see our good works and give glory to God. We take up the imitation of Christ, the imitation of Mary and Moses, of Abigail and James, so that their significance resonates in the paths we walk. We study Scripture here not simply to learn a set of rules we must follow, but to learn a repertoire of rôles we enact. And by taking up the whole of our lives as a signifying practice of biblical theology, we make ourselves accountable to our neighbors. Without entrusting our signifying practice to the loving criticism of our sisters and brothers, we fall prey to the fallacy of assuming that we signify only what we intend. If we share our lives with reliable friends, their good examples can encourage our persistence in prayer and service, and they can help catch us when our intentions no longer match what our lives signify.

So – to conclude – our friends make us better biblical theologians, and our congregational worship makes us better biblical theologians, and the wisdom of the saints makes us better biblical theologians; and thus my opening litany of thanksgivings was no idle rhetorical convention, but a necessary affirmation that all that is true has come to us this afternoon as a gift. Since we have been so graciously surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, we squander our energy if we construct a hothouse of artificial scarcity within which to sit in splendid disciplinary isolation, bemoaning our lack; instead, as biblical theologians we process confidently, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, into the abundant flux of meaning that surrounds and suffuses us, practicing at every turn the harmony, the diligence, and the gratitude by which our biblical theology testifies to the grace of Christ.

Posted by AKMA at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)

April 21, 2005

Winslow Day Two

Lecture done. Went OK. More tomorrow.

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All In the Family

Theological humor from Adam family life:

Margaret: Si sounds like Barth!
Pippa: Simpson?

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April 20, 2005

Winslow Day One

Today marks the first day of the lecture series in which I’m giving a presentation tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been pretty reticent online, because I’m busy and edgy; my co-lecturers know their stuff really well, and I want to maintain the high standard that they’ll surely be setting.

Or, as the case turns out to be, that they’ve already begun to set, since Steve Fowl gave his talk this evening. He provided a knock-your-socks-off exposition of the way Aquinas works with the literal sense so that it entails multiple divergent meanings — an argument that sets me up beautifully for my talk tomorrow. Of course, it also raises the expectations for me, but I’ll endeavor to live with that.

It turns out that another co-lecturer, Francis Watson, revealed to us at dinner that he had never heard of “blogging” before today, so he and Kevin Vanhoozer (fourth lecturer) probed me to find out more about what I actually blog about. I didn’t say “I blog about dinner companions who ask me what I blog about” lest life get too recursive, but I tried to explain what goes into the several minutes a day I spend typing into MarsEdit. Then too, he didn’t know what “tofu” was, so Steve and I had to try to explain that he had just eaten some of it for dinner. “No, honest, Francis, it was that white stuff.” Whatever else comes of this lecture series, we’ve expanded the cultural horizons of a theologian from Aberdeen.

Last word: Steve teaches at Loyola College in Maryland, where (of course) the theology department bears a vivid interest in who the new pope turned out to be. I get the sense from him that they receive the news of Benedict’s elevation with a degree of satisfaction. Though he be “more conservative” than they, he’s a theological intellectual, and after all doesn’t have that much further right to steer the magisterium.

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April 19, 2005

Ratz

I’ve heard, and Margaret has reported, a high degree of dismay that Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope. For clarity’s sake, I should say that he was very far from being my favorite candidate, and the decision to elevate to the pontificate the cardinal who was Rome’s point man relative to the priest-pedophilia scandal in the U.S. strikes me as an indicator of the Vatican’s characteristic deafness on this issue.

On the other hand, I’m a little perplexed that anyone feels shocked at this turn of events. The Vatican is not a hotbed of liberalism, and the cardinals whom John Paul II appointed reflect his characteristic conservatism (if not his personal magnetism). If the world honored John Paul II with weeks of attention and veneration, in what respect do we anticipate that Benedict XVI — a personal friend and theological soul mate to John Paul II — will be any less praiseworthy? I’m with Hans Küng, who has as much reason as anyone to mistrust the new pontiff: “he compared it to an American presidential election and said people ‘should allow the pope 100 days to learn’.”

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Excuse Me?

For all the intuitive appeal of working in Apple’s Pages application, I can’t believe that they didn’t supply a keyboard command for inserting a footnote. I can call the Colors menu with a keyboard shortcut, but to insert a footnote I have to reach for the mouse and pull down a menu item. Hmph!

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Power of Incumbency

I’ll admit that mine was an outsider candidacy from the start, but when Cardinal Ratzinger wasn’t elected on the first two ballots, my supporters in the conclave drew encouragement. Unfortunately, the idea of a non-Roman-Catholic, married pope was just too radical for the College of Cardinals. Since Ratzinger was already on the scene, and everyone knew him, and he was sort of next in the line of succession, the tiara went to him. Good thing I didn’t quit my day job.

To show my heart is in the right place, permit me to extend earnest gratulatory wishes to Benedict XVI. Let’s do lunch sometime!

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April 18, 2005

Blurred Eyes

I’m not hiding out from you; I’m just squeezing out the revised version of my talk from last week that I’ll polish and refine for Thursday’s lecture. I sure wish I had a decent work-free interval before this occasion (in fact, before last week’s talk at Notre Dame, too, which seems in retrospect to have been even more disorganized and incoherent than it felt at the time).

Meanwhile, go check out Dave and Micah’s Anglican Wiki, and add such wisdom as you have to share. Keep it helpful, please! “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

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April 17, 2005

Sign of Truth

Kendall Harmon points to a comment (#5) over at Leander Harding’s blog in which Dr. Harding says something (about the “Connecticut Six” controversy) that promises great possibilities: “this will be an extreme test of charity and require the willingness to live with uncorrected injustice for a defined interim period” (my emphasis).

I’m not going to say anything about the Connecticut situation since so far I haven’t heard anything that suggests even the thinnest rationale for applying the “departure from communion” canon, and charity forbids my thinking that Bishop Smith is acting without even a flimsy reason.

I will note Dr. Harding’s vision of an interval of uncorrected injustice — not because I’m in favor of injustice, nor because I don’t care about those who suffer it, but precisely because there’s a large group of people who care very much about the Anglican venture*, who as an aggregate do not know where our present path leads. In these circumstances, almost everyone needs to live with uncorrected injustice for a while, until we reach together a clearer vision of what “justice” entails. It would take a lot of persuading — the kind typically associated with biblical miracles — to convince me that justice in the church should involve one party prevailing over the other in an unambiguous way. Under the circumstances, though I know no one will like it and everyone feel wounded, it looks to me as though the only way that leads closer to God involves us all enduring for a while in uncorrected injustice, and having faith that the God in whose grace and love we put our whole trust will bring a church of frayed-but-bound-together affections to a fuller understanding of what justice requires of us.

* With regard to this affection for Anglicanism as a lived test of an ecclesiastical hypothesis, I quote John Henry Cardinal Newman: “I doubt not Roman Catholics themselves would confess, that the Anglican doctrine is the strongest, nay the only possible antagonist of their system. If Rome is to be withstood, this can be done in no other way” (“Retractation of Anti-Catholic Statements,” from the Advertisement at the beginning of Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, cited online at the Newman Reader). I have no interest in “withstanding” Rome, nor in acting as an “antagonist” to magisterial governance, but as I have been given to understand the call of Jesus Christ to follow in an articulated community of differentiated ways of serving, I share Newman’s estimate that the trajectory of the Church of England, at its truest, best serves the liberty and guidance of the people of God (thought I otherwise, I’d be a Roman Catholic, or Orthodox, or whatever).

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A Foolish Quiz On A Worthwhile Topic

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% Yankee

35% General American English

25% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

For the record, that 25% must come mostly from the fact that I comfortably appreciate the contribution that “y’all” makes to the English language. I’m also lobbying gently for the return of “ain’t,” but that unjustly maligned construction will probably not be rehabilitated in my lifetime.

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Deaconing Again

The staff at St. Luke’s was short-handed this morning, so as Pippa and I walked in, a friend indicated that it would be helpful if I would deacon for the rector. I was happy to pitch in, but it was a special privilege this morning, as it involved me in sharing the special ministry of Jane, Rebecca, and Jeff — and Stephen, of whom we read today, and of all who have dedicated their energies to the serving work of feeding, healing, clothing, defending, and visiting. This morning evoked a vast, deep, overpowering sense of how we’re knit together, in our communion and in our distinction from one another, into a vital network of small pieces, loosely joined, doing great things.

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April 16, 2005

Grim Humor

Pippa pays close attention to the news, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that she was on top of the finger-in-Wendy’s-chili story. She did catch me off guard by reading aloud some of the details, though, and by noting that they were offering $100,000 for “tips” (she thought they had one too many of those already) and that they were looking for “the finger’s original owner” (she wondered if that meant that Wendy’s owns it now).

Meanwhile, I felt sympathy for the real Wendy and her namesakes. . . .

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April 14, 2005

Just Asking

I’ve had a number of inquiries lately about churches using blogs, and I’ve answered as best I could — but you may be able to help me further. There’s a lot I don’t know well, since I’ve been principally a remote-hosted Moveable Type guy for years, now.

Question One involved which software/system to use. I suggested starting out with Blogger/BlogSpot, to see whether it suits; someone bridled at the terms of service, and we wondered about advertisements (whether a parishioner might be dissatisfied about ads that Blogger associated with their parish). I pointed to TypePad, noting that it isn’t very expensive for an experiment, but “a little expense” is still a lot for some churches. I commended Blogware, but I don’t know anything about the particular ISPs that offer Blogware service. And I mentioned Textdrive, too. WordPress and (soon) WordForm are open-source, but don’t necessarily come pre-packaged with hosting (yes, WordPress is available on TextDrive).

You’d think that a quick entrepreneur would launch an ISP oriented toward churches, with a free six-week trial period or something — but these are my quick answers.

Question Two involved congregations that presently use a blog as a main web communication channel. I thought of Holy Innocents and Reconciler right away, and tracked down a few more.

If you have thoughts on congregations making particularly effective use of a blog, or on the relative benefits of various software packages, or of particular ISPs or services that make a congregational blog practical and inexpensive, please leave a comment!

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Name is a Name is a Name

Jeanniecool pointed me to the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator, which was entertaining in its way, but it made me think that instead, I should be busily praying and reflecting on what choice I should make were the College of Cardinals to phone me up in a few days, to let me know that I had to choose a papal name.

Tell you what: “John Paul III” would be right out. Above and beyond theological differences, the comparisons would be unendurable; even as a tribute name, it wouldn’t work out. John XX would be an interesting option, rectifying the centuries-old confusion. I could signal my Dominican sympathies by choosing an OP-oriented name. . . . So much to consider, while keeping the phone line open. I sure hope Cardinal Ratzinger has my cell number; Si isn’t good on taking messages, and I’d hate to miss out on a history-making opportunity because an eighteen-year-old forgot to write down that a German theologian called.

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Yesterday's Paper

How did the colloquium at Notre Dame go? Well, I think it was okay. I should have organized my presentation better — it inclined heavily to the miscellaneous — and I’ll have to whip my ideas into a more orderly shape before next week’s lecture.

The driving to and from South Bend wore me right out, especially since I’d been sleeping poorly as I tried to imagine how to present my notions about biblical theology to a roomful of sharp, critical grad students and faculty. Everyone was polite, though, and a number of people seemed to have appreciated the presentation. In conversation after dinner, I got the sense that UND has been trying to help their grad students integrate a degree of theological alertness to their already-strong historical skills; my sorts of argument should at least enrich the discussion, even if I wasn’t coherently persuasive.

Meanwhile, Pippa was hard at work, painting a picture of Bea lying under the table, making me a series of bookmarks, constructing a paper carrot and a cork-and-twist-tie figure, and making dinner for Si.

And in Biblical Theology class, one of my students proposed a graphic summary of the biblical perspective on peace and conflict in salvation history; that was a lovely complement to a vigorous, thoughtful discussion of the topic among the three other presenters.

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April 13, 2005

Long Day

Home safely.

Sleeping.

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April 12, 2005

Two Down

Josiah just decided that he was ready to decide between College One and College Two, and has chosen — Marlboro College, in Marlboro, Vermont. We’re intensely proud of him, glad that he’s headed for New England, and relieved that he’s not still up in the air. And we don’t have to live through this whole process again for another seven years or so

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No Sooner Requested

I love it — I want the t-shirt even more than the bumper sticker!

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April 11, 2005

Sweekstakes

Did I mention that I’m trying to work on my presentation for Wednesday? These are “Prospective Student Days” at Seabury, so I have a couple of meetings with applicants; I presided at mass today; I woke up at 5:00 to drive Margaret to the airport; we had a Technology Committee meeting this morning.

So the good part of all this is that I won a free iTune with my lunch bottle of Diet Pepsi, and when I entered the code I noticed that the confirmation screen suggests that I’ve been entered in an Apple-sponsored “sweekstakes.” Is that a real word? I see it in a couple of places online, but when I saw it on the Apple page I assumed it was just a typo. And why is this possessing my intellectual curiosity today, when I should be wrapping up my presentation for Wednesday’s colloquium?

Posted by AKMA at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

Lessig and Tweedy on Downloading

You may have read the kinds of thing I typically say about digital distribution and copyright; may I simply point to a story in the New York Times (sorry, registration required) which reports a discussion between Lawrence Lessig and Jeff Tweedy on the topic. Several choice fair use morsels:

“[W]here the band's previous album, Summerteeth, sold 20,000 in its first week according to SoundScan, Yankee [Hotel Foxtrot] sold 57,000 copies in its first week and went on to sell more than 500,000. Downloading, at least for Wilco, created rather than diminished the appetite for the corporeal version of the work.”

“Mr. Tweedy suggested that downloading was an act of rightful ‘civil disobedience.’ ”

As Meg observes (commenting on yet another Scalia inanity),

There are two things happening with online file sharing:

1. It's the market's way of saying not that it doesn't see profit, per se, as legitimate but that the prices charged, for example, by BMG for Shakira's CD don't reflect its perceived value.

2. People are willing to pay when there's a means available for them to do so that embraces what's great about the digitization of media (easy access, portability, recommendations/sharing with friends and family, etc.).

I’m with Meg: “What about a bumper sticker that says, ‘Your failed business model is not my problem’?”

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April 10, 2005

Cause for Thanks

After Pippa crept behind me and roared an unearthly tiger-girl growl, thereby giving me a whole new population of white hairs, she said: “Well, it’s a good thing I wasn’t a real tiger, Dad; I’d have eaten you.”

True enough.

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Speaking of Medical

The X-rays of Krista’s ankle make me queasy every time I look.

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Neither Left Nor Right

With the expectation that no one really wants to hear these observations firmly in place, and with full respect to those spokespeople who defy the gross generalizations I make hereinafter, with great sympathy for those whose feelings are quick from long-term irritation at the hands of an unsympathetic church, I nonetheless make bold to poke the eyes of the Episcopalians with whom I agree and those with whom I disagree.

First, I’ll note that the ECUSA has tended to respond somewhat equivocally and defensively to the Windsor Report and the Primates’ Meeting. ECUSA (rightly, but awkwardly) points out that it observed correct process in reaching its recent decisions, but that’s not quite the point that concerns the Primates and our neighbors in the Communion. The leaders of ECUSA keep repeating formulaic assurances that “the Lord is making a new thing,” or that “the Spirit is leading us into new truths” — but not arguing the case for why people ought to share the discernment that these are newly-recognized truths or that the Lord is behind these new things.

And on another side, I see repeated assertions that the sexuality debate is not like all those other hitherto-unquestioned topics on which the church changed its mind markedly: not like barring Gentiles from fellowship, or usury, or slavery, or the Wife’s Sister’s Act, or (for some) the all-male priesthood. Now, without pre-judging the question of whether any or all of these constitute legitimate analogies to current deliberations about sexuality, it strikes me that the more pertinent question is how we would know whether these constitute legitimate analogies. After all, when these past controversies were troubling the church, the various parties to the debate invoked the imminent doom of the faith, the moral corruption of the people of God, and the stifling of the preaching of the true Gospel as the consequences of the impending change; were all those who cautioned against these changes quite deluded about their significance? If so, should we rule out their testimony about sexuality, too (since if they were wrong about the Wife’s Sister’s Act, we can’t be very sure that they may not be wrong about sexuality)? When we’re in the midst of a conflict, those with whom we disagree about heated issues tend always to look wronger and less intelligent than our heroes, and our arguments always tend to look natural, plain, and obvious. That we’re having an argument about the issue should itself provide a reason for thinking that “self-evidence” and “plainness” aren’t the most pertinent categories for resolving this mess; at least it would be if the Left were more actively involved in offering reasoned argument.

And to return to my criticism of the Left, the Right is onto something when it submits that ECUSA has been retreating from a willingness to stand for any particular thing. I hold no brief for coercion or oppression, and it should be obvious that I’m no darling of the American Anglican Council, the Institute for Religion and Democracy, or any of the various displacement groups — but over the past few decades, the Episcopal Church has in the aggregate drifted away from holding to a coherent theological identity, toward a notional inclusiveness that (sadly) evaporates when subjected to close examination.

And one more time, to fault the Right (actually, all concerned): doesn’t it seem odd that when one properly-constituted body of church leaders votes in a way we disapprove of, they’re heretical pretenders — and when a different body votes in a way we commend, they’re angels of sound judgment? (And vice versa, of course, for ECUSA — where General Convention stands in for the heroes, and the Primates Meeting for the villains.) How much does this reflect faith in the church’s discernment processes, and how much is it a reflection of parochial ardor for one’s own conclusions?

I should have figured this all out ages ago. In the meantime, mark me down with Gamaliel, give it some time, and give us enough time to look at these days with retrospect.

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Diagnosticism

Almost three years ago (really? yes) Margaret was diagnosed with an acute case of Grave’s Disease. At the time, her endocrinologist said something to the effect that she’d only seen three living people with thyroid as active as Margaret’s, and it took some pretty brutal drug therapy to pound her thyroid into relative docility.

Then last December, she and her endocrinologist decided to nuke the thyroid, I spent a few nights on the day bed downstairs, and we hoped that her soon-to-be-ex-thyroid would wither away and leave her alone. Unfortunately, in a relatively unsurprising development, the radioactivity kicked her thyroid into even higher activity — she tripled the dosage of her thyroid suppression drugs after the iodine treatment. She kept going back for her monthly blood test, and the text kept indicating that her evil-genius thyroid gland was still determined to take over the world, beginning with Margaret.

Yesterday afternoon (on a weekend!), Margaret’s endocrinologist’s office called to say that her latest blood test showed her thyroid hormone levels plunging, and that she had to cut her meds way back — and when she comes back in a couple of weeks, she’ll be tested again to see whether she’s got any thyroid activity at all. It’s been a long, exhausting struggle for her, but it looks as though she may have defeated SuperThyroid.

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April 08, 2005

After the Funeral

In the aftermath of Pope John Paul II’s funeral, I wanted to leave two links: one to Cardinal Ratzinger’s sermon, which (I think) may play a role in my lectures of the next ten days — and the other to the moment early in John Paul II’s papal vocation that most vividly held my attention: Don Novello’s side-splitting sketch from the second season of Saturday Night Live, announcing the “Find the Popes in the Pizza” context. Me? My button says, “I read about the Pope on the Internet.”

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April 07, 2005

Memo to Copyright Holders

As Dean reminded me in a whimsical email the other day, people pay ludicrously inflated prices for water.

Free downloading doesn’t spell the end of payment-for-creativity. It changes the marketplace — but observe that it’s the oligopolists who still make money from selling water.

There is and will continue to be a viable business in the packaging and distribution of movies, music, books, whatever. “Viable,” that is, for operators perceptive and nimble enough to negotiate the change in the ecology of commerce.

Posted by AKMA at 10:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Schweitzer, Cahill, and Wojtyla

Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus (whose German title, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, is much less dashing and merchandisable — older English edition available online here) includes the memorable line, “[H]ate as well as love can write a Life of Jesus, and the greatest of them are written with hate. . .” [my emphasis]. Why? Because

[i]t was not so much hate of the Person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround Him, and with which He had in fact been surrounded. They were eager to picture Him as truly and purely human, to strip from Him the robes of splendour with which He had been apparelled, and clothe Him once more with the coarse garments in which He had walked in Galilee.
And their hate sharpened their historical insight.

I remembered Schweitzer’s premise this morning when Micah pointed me to the op-ed in this morning’s New York Times by Thomas Cahill. I don’t know whether Cahill hates the late John Paul II, but his focused dissatisfaction certainly sheds a less flattering light on a figure regarding whom the opinion-makers have given a genial thumbs-up.

Cahill’s dyslogy over the sleeping Pope doesn’t only venture to strip away the flattering robes of splendor from a many-faceted theologian, activist, and politician; it also reveals one of the problems with Schweitzer’s axiom. Schweitzer notes that hatred of Jesus’ sanctity costs its sponsors their livelihood, their social standing, the satisfaction of seeing their work commended and advanced by sympathetic colleagues; Jesus research born of hatred was incorruptible, since it brought no rewards but only obloquy. Cahill’s denunciation, though, costs him little or nothing — and one may fairly wonder about the extent to which the holy martyrs of historical-Jesus research found their notoriety quite so odious as they enthusiastically advertised.

Yes, John Paul II showed a proclivity for promoting sympathizers; I don’t know enough to assess the extent to which he represents an extreme in this regard, but I’m confident that he didn’t promote only cardinals whom he could count as yes-men, and I guess that other popes may have tended to promote sympathizers as well (though they didn’t have as long a tenure with which to define the whole College of Cardinals). I doubt that the John Paul whom millions of people are flocking to venerate in death is ultimately responsible for the attendance levels in Roman Catholic parish churchs, and I see some congregations that appear to be flourishing. Perhaps distaste for one’s subject brings not only critical historical insight, but also a different, opposite sort of blindness. Cahill’s attempts to write historical work (I’m thinking of Desire of the Everlasting Hills, a shoddy work of wishful historical thinking, and of the romanticized picture of early church decision-making in the later paragraphs of his op-ed — notice Cahill’s unaccountable knowledge of St. Peter’s “frequent and humble confession that he was wrong”).

Maybe antipathy and sympathy emerge in almost everything that human creatures endeavor, and maybe we ought not be shocked, shocked, to learn that there is partisanship in papal appointments or historical retrospect.

Posted by AKMA at 10:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 06, 2005

Headlines

Margaret arrives tomorrow for the weekend, huzzah!

This evening, after three and a half years of hard service, my TiBook encountered disaster: the bezel around the screen cracked through at the hinge. It’s sitting, open, on the dining room table. Who knows what’ll happen.

This year’s Biblical Theology class is using a blog for extramural discussion of our thematic sessions and case studies. I’ve included several Seabury alums in the discussion, and tonight post an entry about how Gilbert and Sullivan illuminate narrative theology.

But really, it’s rather late, I’m tired, and I must figure out the destiny of the trusty TiBook.

Posted by AKMA at 11:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 05, 2005

Dawn Breaks On Marble Head

I experienced an epiphany this weekend, a bleated epiphany, and not the liturgical-kalendar type. I saw at a glance how the social discursive physics effects a Gresham’s Law of reasoned argument on controversial topics.

I had been wondering how prominence in media (and in arrant defiance of Jeneane’s strictures, I’ll say both MSM and Blogarian media) (by the way, our prayers and best wishes are with you and George and Jenna today, Jeneane) correlates to genuine agreement. That is, do people who associate with/apparently approve of/link to (with positive vote links) Extreme Representatives really hold to everything the spokesperson advocates?

Well, in short, no.

Let’s say we have two parties. I could call them “Cyan” and “Orange,” but readers would eventually make them out to be liberals and conservatives anyway, so I’ll just tag them Left and Right, and add that nothing I am about to say amounts to an unambiguous attribution of characteristics to anyone. I’m working something out, and just at the beginning.

Now, let’s say I belong (roughly) to the Left side of an argument, but that I see some of the wisdom behind a Right way of looking at the problem. The hard-core Lefties have an interest in masking my respectful dissent (it might lend aid and comfort, and it might erode the univocity of Left support), so while they may acknowledge my conclusions — “He’s one of us” — they have a definite reason to ignore my arguments. Likewise, the hard-core Right has reason to ignore my arguments, since if I can appreciate their premises and still arrive at Left conclusions, I might persuade some otherwise loyal Rightists to change their minds. The same applies, backwards, to the Rightists; both parties benefit from the appearance of unanimity, regardless of the realities behind the appearances.

Moreover, each partisan center benefits from eliding the differences among their opposite numbers, to the extent that the more monolithic the opponents seem, the more important unanimity and solidarity on “our” side of the problem become. Again, this helps account for the over-simplification of controversial discourse: the more vigilantly a partisan stays on message (“inclusiveness” or “no gay agenda” or whatever), the less the risk that any of the possible divisions, nuances, disagreements within the partisan bloc will distract ardent supporters.

So, for instance, if I were to lambaste the Left for a repetitive, shallow, anti-intellectual institutional practice that sacrifices depth of reasoning in order to maintain a comfortably superficial, appealing message of “inclusiveness,” — whereas all too often the Right actually mounts awkward things like arguments to ground their case — neither Left nor Right could afford to notice the critique.

(Now, it’s always quite likely that I’m just a clanging gong unworthy of attention; that’s not by any means ruled out. For the purposes of argument, though, I’m supposing that the criticism in question rests on some sound evidence.)

By the same token, if I were to call to attention some problems on the Right’s side, or propose ways forward that don’t play into the all-or-nothing will-to-power games of who wins and who loses, we should not expect Extreme Spokespeople to attend. They’re already affirmed by their own (carefully groomed) constituencies, and they’re awfully busy. Who has time to wrangle details when so much is at stake, and when the people with good sense have already endorsed the urgency of Our Side’s struggle?

So I no longer expect anyone to pay much attention when I point out the loose threads in various sides’ positions.

Posted by AKMA at 11:11 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

On That Day

On the day that someone decides there’s a benefit (whether temporal or eternal) to gathering up, encouraging, and promoting reasoned theological reflection online, they’ll need to name Fred “Slacktivist” Clark as their first columnist. (I’m not saying I’d turn down an invitation if they hadn’t tapped Fred first, but I’d nag them at every staff meeting.)

I’ve linked to his page-by-page reviews of the dire literary and theological cataclysm that constitutes the Left Behind franchise (now regularized, we hope, as a weekly Friday feature), but really, I’ve never known him to post a trivial or ill-considered idea.

Posted by AKMA at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 04, 2005

How Can This Be?

The morning was frantic, as usual; I was behind on some academic obligations, and am always behind in personal communication, and the sermon wasn’t quite set. I was supposed to bring over incense from our personal stock to use at Seabury’s Annunciation mass, but I forgot so I had to go home and pick it up, etc. etc., etc.

But the time came, I squared away my very most pressing administrative debts, checked in with my sweetheart, burnished the sermon (appended below) with some coherence and precision, and the service went well. Seabury doesn’t usually practice quite elaborate liturgy, so we negotiated some unplanned dialogues and maneuvers. God was praised, the congregation fed, and now I’m only just ordinarily behind, which feels almost like a vacation this afternoon.

The languorous courtship between the ardent, patient Creator and the fickle, capricious Creation advances by slow smooth strides, and stumbles by maladroit, abrupt stops. For long ages, the tempo of courtship remains predictable – a Law, as it were, of obedience or resistance, of diffidence or attraction. God and people go steady – whether going together or drifting apart. But then the tempo shifts. The relationship intensifies, and the partners move less predictably, more passionately; a people rejects the God who loves them, who raised them; or a people cries out from exile, to return to their God’s embrace. Sometimes their God sends outlandish gifts of prophecy to win the hearts of this inconstant beloved; and sometimes this God closes the door, slams the shutters, and leaves a heedless people outdoors in the bitter cold and rain.

Sometimes, this God and this people might as well be from different planets: Humans are from Earth, God is from. . . Heaven. Other times, this God and this people draw together so close, so ardently, so feverishly that the human heart beats with wild divine rhythms, the human flesh moves with divine strength, the joy and vigor and elation and sweat raise us from the death of dailyness into a life so free, so vital that our mortality itself must die in order for us to attain this true, timeless, limitless life.

This heavenly mystery play irrupts into the random paces of our work-a-day walk with a rhythm that draws us into a cadence that echoes God’s pace. Angels among us hum the refrain as the Spirit quickens our pulse, our steps stagger into synchrony, and at the right moment Gabriel takes our sister by the hand: “May the God who created heaven and earth have this dance?” And Mary answers on our behalf, speaks so that we need not offer souls to be pierced, our children crucified: “Let it be.”

This morning I must tell you, my friends, that I have seen the sonogram, I have heard the heartbeat. If we were not so diligently scrupulous about boundaries I could touch your belly, your heart, and feel the kicking of God’s power at work within you, for I promise you, sisters and brothers that in you a new life has begun. A new life has begun, engendered not by the mystery dance of fevered flesh, not this time by the Power of the Most High’s overshadowing Spirit, but this new life is begun in your receiving the flesh of Jesus into your flesh. The given body and the poured blood conceive within you something more than mortal, something not quite of your matter. Though you respond, “How can this be?” God balks not but sends a child, a bread man to nourish us, with wine milk to nurse us, and in the utmost intimacy of our own flesh, God begets a body, the Body of Christ, greater than each of us and yet holding us, in our very selves, in passioned embrace at God’s own heart. This morning, here, forever – let it be!

Posted by AKMA at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 03, 2005

Temporizing

I’ve been wrestling with tomorrow morning’s sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation (well, they’re supposed to be no more than five minutes, so “homily” would be a more precise term). (I know that Annunciation comes on March 25, but it had to be transferred out of Holy Week, so this year it’s observed tomorrow.) I had a very vivid idea of what to do yesterday, at the installation of our new priest-in-charge at St. Luke’s, but on reflection it seems a bit too vivid in the mode I originally imagined for it. I need to rework the beginning bit so as to evoke the premise less explicitly; the conclusion can be pretty direct, but the opening needs to unfold more gently.

So while I try to work that out, I’ll tell you what Pippa and I thought of at the supermarket yesterday. We walked down the aisle with office supplies, to see whether I needed any of the goodies for my new digs, and as we surveyed the offerings, we noticed the clock array. “In this era of consumerism,” we thought, “are there any superficialities that haven’t been taken advantage of? Maybe just one. . . .”

“What if you sold special clocks pre-adjusted for Daylight Savings Time?” (You can sell the “Standard Time” models in the fall, and can quickly branch out into special clocks pre-adjusted for each time zone, too.) Now, don’t tell us that American consumers are too sophisticated for an idea such as that — Pip and I just take our cues from the advertising industry.

Posted by AKMA at 11:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 02, 2005

Her Own Tag

I was chatting with Joi this morning to thank him for his [qualified] endorsement, and he wished there was an RSS feed just for posts that involve Pippa (I’m setting aside what that (and the “usually”) imply about the rest of my posts).

At first, I thought that I should break down and begin using the MT Categories, but I’ve never liked those much. I pointed out that I tag Pippa’s pictures on flickr with her name, so he can subscribe to that feed anyway.

Then it occurred to me: I checked to see whether anything but her pictures showed up when I treated her name as a Technorati tag; no, no other “Pippa”-tagged posts or pictures. So I went back, tagged the last few posts that involved her, and now the world of Pippa fans can subscribe to the RSS feed of the Technorati tag page for Pippa. And you other Pippas of the world, sorry, you’ll have to devise modifiers for your own tags.

[Update: I’m going through the archives and adding tags now for Josiah and Nate — will work one up for Margaret sooner or later.]

Posted by AKMA at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 01, 2005

F-Bombs and S-pletives — Nuts!

Since the Freedom to Connect conference concerned itself (among other things) with the FCC’s recent Reign of Prudery, many speakers went out of their way to emphasize their points with emphatic profanity. More than once, the speaker accompanied that with an explicit (or muttered) apology to me, as though I were unaccustomed to hear such language. (They don’t spend enough time around seminarians and teenagers — though Pippa tsk-tsks Si when his language turns colorful). Word: I’m not that fragile. Profanity provides vivid prose with some of its most vivid moments, especially when the profanity is well-rendered (though I’m not convinced that Matt really needed to adopt a metaphor that implies that men uniquely possess the physiology for technological innovation. . . ).

Posted by AKMA at 08:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What Then Of Boasting?

What of boasting? It is committed.

Josiah has heard from schools number two through four among his five applications, and Two College and Three College both wait-listed him, and Four College admitted him with a generous offer. That leaves Five College, a sort of wild-card; but not only is he a wanted undergraduate, but he’s wanted by more every institution to which he applied, and two of them want him enough to admit and fund him. You go, boy!

Margaret’s getting positive feedback from all around her; she’s doing great work in her classes, thinking hard with her profs and a wonderfully positive presence for her colleagues. She and Nate are studying hard and doing well, though since they’re both in remote locations, and since academic work involves fewer obvious occasions for laud, but they’re both spectacular.

Pippa continues making wonderful images with paint and pen and keyboard (Margaret and I cherish her email messages). At F2C, Dave isenberg brought out a t-shirt he’d been given by his print shop; it read in big letters, “God Bless America,” with an American flag imprint. He reckoned that the clergy delegate was the right conferee to get the shirt, so he threw it out to me. (This story does get back to how proud I am of Pippa.) I sat with the shirt displayed beside me through Thursday’s program, and brought it home, uncertain of what should become of it. When I explained the situation to the family, Pippa quickly pointed out some of the theo-political problems with the shirt; her first reaction was that it should be a prayer, but that instead it reads as a command. But she volunteered to take it, perhaps to wear inside-out or use for her painting shirt. Fifteen minutes later she came back. . . .

I’m so proud of them, it makes my heart pound. What, as Dick Leonard says, did I do to deserve this? [Don’t worry; you probably don’t know Dick. But he always used to say that when he lived with us, so the family always quotes him.]

Posted by AKMA at 12:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Height of Absurdity

Clay “They Ought Know Better Than To Mess With Me” Shirky calls in to Boing Boing with a demonstration of the corrupt incoherence of writing copyright protection into hardware and software.

Yes, those who make our lives marvelous with their creativity must be supported.
Yes, the advent of digital reproduction changes the fundamental conditions that apply to such support.

No, that does not mean perpetuating obsolete mechanisms to protect the vestiges of a [deliberately dysfunctional] legacy system of distribution and rewards.

Posted by AKMA at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack