AKMA’s Random Thoughts

It’s snowing.

The Homeland Security people haven’t made any headlines about this, so I’ll break the scoop myself: it turns out that the Transportation Security people have discovered evidence that the next strike against our nation’s infrastructure will involve turtleneck jerseys.

Margaret was absolutely sure she packed a turtleneck jersey when she flew north to spend a week with her daughter and husband. When she arrived here at home, however, the turtleneck was nowhere to be found in her luggage. Presumably, an alert defender of our nation’s airways spotted the turtleneck as a potential double-use object, and confiscated it to protect everyone from the dire consequences of allowing Margaret to wear a turtleneck. So beware, everyone — leave your turtlenecks at home, or empty them into the convenient “turtleneck collection bins” at security. Fly smart, fly safe!

(Either all that, or she forgot to pack it. We’ll find out soon, cause Margaret’s flying back to Durham tomorrow.)

I’m preparing for tomorrow morning’s Gospel Mission class, and in our reading (chapter 4 of Darrell Guder’s Missional Church) I saw an interesting footnote (p. 94, n. 22). Guder observes that although the NRSV that he relies on uses “kingdom” to translate the Greek basileia, he uses “reign” “because it better captures. . . the dynamic meaning of basileia, which refers to the reigning itself and thus secondarily the realm incorporated under such reigning.”

I don’t have a beef with a permissive reading of that note — “sometimes ‘reign’ better captures the sense of basileia as an abstract noun for ‘kingship’ rather than a term for a geopolitical entity.” A less elastic reading of Guder’s note, though, suggests that basileia “really means” something dynamic and non-spatial, rather than something spatial and political.

I have several objections to that less elastic reading. First, I can cite a goodly number of cases in which basileia seems manifestly to refer to an earthly geopolitical regime, rather than to a disembodied activity of “reigning.” In many more cases, the sense could go either way. Since I attribute meaning more to usage than to etymology or association, I’m impressed with the likelihood that basileia — which could clearly be used to indicate a political unit — tends in colloquial writing to refer more to “where So-and-so is in charge” than to “So-and-so’s condition of majesty.” Neither is excluded, but I see many more uses for the former than the latter in the literary ambiance of the New Testament.

Guder himself devotes fair attention to the spatial aspect of the basileia, and discusses at length the relation of the two aspects of the term. Since he’s quoting texts that refer to the “kingdom,” I don’t quibble with his choice to use “reign” where he’s not quoting. Still, the better solution would identify cases in which basileia refers to a kingdom, and those in which basileia refers to “reign” or “kingship” or “majesty,” and translate each accordingly.

Hey, Jeneane, feel like coming over for a visit?

I often harrumph about not participating in the quiz-game-thingummybobs that propagate on the Web — you know, “Where was your first kiss?” “What’s your favorite Perry Como single?” and “If you could be a species of grapevine, which would you be?”

I nonetheless participate from time to time, either because it seems to involve actually important information (quizzes involving music, for instance) or because the fancy strikes me, or because a personal or political link to the person who tagged me outweighs my general antipathy to quizzes.

So when I noted that Beth had tagged me for a “Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me” quiz, I winced a little. There’s a worthwhile political impulse involved, and Beth’s a terrific student assistant, wonderful friend to Pippa and Si, and all-around commendable person, and it was her birthday Friday. Still, I might have resisted answering, since her post itself provided the escape clause “(who I don’t expect will actually take it up, but whose response I’d love to hear).” But out of idle curiosity, I clicked around to see what her other correspondents said — and not one of them had taken up the challenge. “What Feminism Has Done For Me” seems worth at least one response, so I’ll take it up (and see if that motivates the other slackers to get going).

First, I’d say that feminism has played instrumental role in making the world a more humane place by bringing to explicit awareness the extent to which social systems tend to produce and exploit categories of less-privileged people who contribute much more labor, commitment, and vital energy than the society itself recognizes — so that more-privileged categories can enjoy the benefits of exploitation. The exploited need not be women (we could fill in the blank with “untouchables,” illegal immigrants, of course African Americans, or children). Still, since so many societies cast women into that category, and women constitute a part of every society, feminism calls to our attention to men’s exploitation of women as a paradigmatic case of this phenomenon.

Second, I’d cite the impetus that feminist scholars gave to the critical study of ways that language and social organization affect one another. In most cases, you can call me a traditionalist and I’ll be proud of the epithet, but I thank feminist social critics for teaching me to be more careful about how I use pronouns such as “he.”

Third, feminism has raised to prominence a bracing array of vigorous, challenging, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued and sharp-penned writers, speakers, personalities. Luce Irigaray (my favorite), Julia Kristeva, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, bell hooks, Judith Butler (despite her writing style), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sarah Coakley, A.-J. Levine, Mary McClintock Fulkerson, and Mary Daly: I don’t by any means always agree with them, but their participation enriches our discourses immensely (and if our society were so organized as to stifle their participation, that silence itself would shout aloud a damning indictment).

Fourth, the prominence of such figures as I named above brings about great good for us all, by encouraging women to write out loud, by opening doors for further women to rush in through, by showing subsequent generations of women what it might look like for women to occupy a stage set by and for men, without accepting men’s terms for how and why they might be there. Because they’ve gone first, Pippa may have a surer sense of where she wants to go, and why, and how it may differ from the courses they took.

Fifth, feminist critics (along with critical scholars of race) stand to remind me (and most of us) how very eager we are to let ourselves off the hook for the persistence of sexism and racism. When I wrote about “White Guy Theology, the emphasis should have fallen as heavily on the “guy” part as on the “White” part — though if readers felt the impact of the latter more than the former, it may be a reminder of how urgently we need to keep listening to feminists.

I wince when people use the term “post-feminist”; even people who dissent from the arguments that characterize feminist criticism benefit from thoughtful engagement with feminism. Hard as I might try, I do not envision a day when any culture with which I’m acquainted will be able to dispense with its feminist challengers.

In honor of Margaret’s impending return to the family home from her (congenial) exile in North Carolina, I’m pointing today to a favorite song of our family. The Abe Lincoln Story (watch out for annoying Flash pop-up), Silverlake’s premiere swing punk soul band, performs a song entitled “I Don’t Need a Bag,” protesting the hyperbolic overpackaging of America’s groceries. (I’m listed as its only fan on last.fm.)

It’s not only witty, but catchy and impressively-played as well; it reminds me of the early, jazzy phase of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (though with safe-for-work lyrics, in this case at least). The website suggests that they offer free downloads, but I don’t see any — just gird up your loins for some Flash, start the jukebox, and select “I Don’t Need a Bag (Live at KXLU).” And just you try not to think about it next time you go to the store.

While I was at McCormick on Monday, Bob Cathey raised an interesting question related to Margaret’s conversation with me about Bultmann and Barth. “What if,” asked Bob, “the continental philosopher who had so pronounced an influence on New Testament studies had been Wittgenstein, rather than Heidegger?”

It’s an interesting speculative exercise, especially since it’s not outrageously unthinkable. Neither Heidegger nor Wittgenstein was an explicitly theological thinker (though each has found theologically-committed exponents). Both were recognized as extraordinarily important during their lifetimes. Wittgenstein’s position at Cambridge would certainly have situated him propitiously to affect the biblical faculties there (if they had been so inclined).

I’m not cut out for this sort of counterfactual supposition, but were providence to have preferred Wittgenstein to Heidegger as the 20th century’s philosopher-of-choice for biblical studies, the discipline would surely look very different now. (And I might be writing about ways that Heidegger’s philosophy could clarify problems bequeathed to us by Wittgensteinian theological epigones.)

Billy Bragg gets it right again, posting a video message to MTV that calls on them to amend their outlandish terms of service relative to the planned “MTV Flux” programming. Now, if only Billy provided permalinks to items on his front page.

ZOMG! My visit to McCormick this year went even better than the previous times! They put up with my customary monologizing; I began by showing them the slides from my SBL presentation of November 2003. They asked good questions, laughed heartily at my folly, and encouraged me to keep working on these ideas.

At the break, many of them actually bought my new book (not What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism?, the book they’d been assigned for class) and asked me to sign both the new book and their copies of What Is Postmodern?. One woman showed me the copy of she’d obtained secondhand from Amazon: it bore the familiar signature of Stanley Hauerwas.

We decided that I not sign it on the same page that Stanley had hallowed with his mark, so I chose to sign it on the page toward the middle on which my signature already appears. Meanwhile, I enjoyed flipping through the pages, reading his marginalia, spotting his underlines.

BTW, a warmly positive notice of Faithful Interpretation from James K. A. Smith over at the church and postmodern culture website.

Frank is now a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church. The service went fine; the offertory was a particularly exquisite rendition of Ralph Vaughn Williams’s setting of “The Call.” I saw a number of former students (both Seabury alums and Princetonians), and the sermon itself (below, in the extended section) was generously received. Now, off to a reception at Frank’s home, and tomorrow morning to a faculty meeting, then leaving early from there to McCormick for book-signing and a class, then back to Seabury for the week’s teaching, including a Seabury sermon on Friday.

Idle hands being the devil’s workshop, I’d say I’m on the fast track to sanctity. If only I didn’t have so very far to go. . . .
Continue reading “Yes, Minister!”

Since my lead in the fantasy baseball league has dwindled to a half-point, and two or three of my star players have succumbed to injuries, I’d like the electronic record to show that with two days left in the season, my team was in first place. If the apparently inevitable happens, well, I was hanging on by my fingernails to the end.

This fall, I was planning to hand out to my students in Early Church History photocopies of pages from some tawdry billion-selling hack novel, for them to compare with their readings in textbooks and primary sources. I have to put that off for the moment, but eventually I’ll be adding below here a series of page numbers and short quoted claims that a student in an int4ro class in church history could easily recognize for her- or himself as false or misleading.

Later:

From Margaret Mitchell’s response among other sources,

p. 231 — Jesus “inspired millions to better lives” [sc., while he was alive?]
p. 231 — “more than eighty gospels” “the Bible, as we know it today, was collected by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great”
p. 232 — “Rome’s official religion was sun worship”
p. 232 — Constantine invented the divinity of Jesus and excluded all gospels but the four canonical ones; Constantine made Christianity “the official religion” of the Roman Empire
p. 233 — “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet”
p. 234 — Constantine coined the term “heretic”
p. 234, 245 — “the earliest Christian records” were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (including gospels) and Nag Hammadi texts
p. 234 — the Nag Hammadi texts “speak of Christ’s ministry in very human terms”
p. 234 — “Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike”
p. 244 — the marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus is “a matter of historical record”
p. 245 — the Nag Hammadi texts represent “the earliest Christian records”
p. 245 — “Jesus was a Jew, and the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried.”
p. 248 — Apocryphal texts were “unaltered gospels”