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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?
Posted by AKMA at 04:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
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.
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
Posted by AKMA at 09:11 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
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.
Posted by AKMA at 09:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
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.
Posted by AKMA at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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?
Posted by AKMA at 02:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
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.
Poaching on Zion: Biblical Theology as Signifying Practice
[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 |
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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:I’m with Meg: “What about a bumper sticker that says, ‘Your failed business model is not my problem’?”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.).
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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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