AKMA’s Random Thoughts

The sermon is now finished, such as it is, with time for me catch seven hours of sleep before the 6:40 AM departure time for Gurnee (if you want to catch a ride, be here early; Jennifer and Margaret are rolling out with me, so we only have three or four empty seats). Time to walk Bea, Fierce Warrior Puppy, and crash.

Dave Rogers Music Alert:“Egoverride,” Bob Mould.

If I were perpetuating the discussion of hermeneutics, I’d point to what Marek just wrote in a parable. He and Des (scroll down, the link parable appears toward the bottom of the page) both respond, appropriately, to questions about meaning by telling stories.

Well, I’m the winner, because my external hard drives are now harmonious with occasional sleeping by my CPU. But the winner of the “helpful advice to AKMA” sweepstakes was Kevin “mediAgora” Marks, who casually asked whether my drivers were up to date. “Of course,” I thought, “I installed the drivers when my last drive arrived, that was, err, four or five months ago.” Ah, but how old was the model of the drive? And did I check the company website?

Now I have. Thanks, Kevin.

I wrote half a sermon at Kim’s this afternoon, but I’m not sure it’ll work into a full sermon. I don’t see the hook. But it was good to sit down and write stuff on deadline, and I have tomorrow for some writing, too.

DMRA:“Treachery,” Kirsty MacColl; “I 76,” G. Love and Special Sauce

Today should be busy with sermon preparation (I’ll be at The Annunciation of Our Lady Episcopal Church in Gurnee, Illinois, this Sunday) and essay-writing. I may head over to Kim’s Kitchen on Noyes Street or some other distraction-free environment. I’ll be with you later.

Or at least, “twelve years of a government act intended to bring about accessibility.” The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed twelve years ago today, despite the efforts of iron-hearted “compassionate conservatives” and the mockery of commentators content to cash in on a cheap laugh at the expense of blind or deaf or wheelchair-bound jobseekers. We have a long way to go (I know this blog isn’t accessible), but we can no more afford to ignore the exclusion based on mobility or audition or visual perception than we can on the basis of race or religion or affection. We mustn’t stop now.

Makes me feel pretty cosmopolitan to notice the number of referrers who point to this page from foreign-language sites (the same sort of feeling as having heard that I’m a bigger deal scholar in Finland than I am in the USA). At least, it feels cosmopolitan until I realize how few of the pages I can read. Now, my academic field imposes a certain limitation by requiring attention more to ancient languages than to contemporary ones. I doubt that Italian, Swedish, and (I think) Danish, Modern Hebrew, and Japanese would make my Top Ten Languages to Learn Soon list anyway. (Luckily, Jordon and Wendy, I already speak Canadian.) But I want to say hey to Gaspar and Gustav anyway, and Xaire, “greetings,” to everyone else.

DMRA: “Deep Ellum Blues,” Jimmie Dale Gilmore et al.; “First I Look At the Purse,” the Contours; “Mothership Connection,” Parliament; “Elvis is Dead,” the Forgotten Rebels; “Caravan of Love,” the Housemartins; “Tennessee,” Arrested Development.

Has anyone else noticed an uptick in the quantity of spam recently? Or did I just get lucky with some spammer’s harvesting bot? I won’t mention what I’ve been offered, lest I get some misdirected Google hits, but let’s just say that they’ve got absolutely the wrong audience.

DRMA: “All My Little Words,” Magnetic Fields.

I know I’ll feel dopey for asking, but is there something I should be remembering to avoid giving my external USB hard drive a migraine every week or so, when I forget to dismount it nicely before my PowerBook goes to sleep? It seems so massively counterintuitive that Apple should have written the system software so that one has to dismount the drive manually before going to sleep, that I figure I must have missed some option built-in to the OS (I’m running 9.1 now, but this has been happening for ages).
If Apple dropped this ball, hasn’t someone written a utility to watch for this? Please?

DMRA:“The Sins of Memphisto,” John Prine; “Plastic Man,” the Kinks.

Juliet’s archive problem seems to have cleared up (blogger blogger) and that puts me back on the spot to respond to her (just as I was telling David in email that maybe we should wind this thread down). I’ll try to strike a happy medium between boring the non-hermeneutics fans out there (on one hand) and short-changing Juliet (on the other).

So: Juliet observes, partway into her blog, that “One of the issues that has snagged my thinking about the differential option, however, is the imaginative configuration that places the concept of meaning outside of the text rather than somehow corresponding to the unique dance that occurs between the text and reader. Far from a criticism, it is a stuck point in my own reflections on how reading occurs.” I’m not quite sure how to read that last sentence—I could have asked her this afternoon, but at that point I didn’t know her archives were operational again, and besides, her intention in composing that sentence is part of the question we’re investigating. In her first sentence, though, she rightly catches the differential-hermeneutic insistence that “meaning” resides not inside the text, as a vein of gold in a rock stratum, but in the interaction between reader and text in a particular situation (I’m adding the specific setting to Juliet’s “text and reader”).

I’m not surprised when she reports that a classroom of politically-attuned readers resisted Steve Fowl’s point that ideology does not reside in the text. I’ve been raked over the coals in professional meetings by colleagues who found that suggestion theoretically ridiculous and politically retrograde. (I suppose I don’t think I was coal-raked, as I had sound rebuttals to all the objections I faced; in fact, I had explicit counter-examples for every ominous interpretive threat that my interlocutors posed.) The no-ideologies argument affronts readers who want not only to point out ways that a text can persuasively be interpreted in ways that oppress, limit, or threaten particular constituencies of readers—they want also to say that hte problems they point to are intrinsic to the text. In a similar way, though an opposite orientation, other readers want to claim that “traditional” values and theological teachings are intrinsic to the biblical text.

Augustine really does help with these matters. He believes without question that God can appropriately claim authorship of the Bible, and that the Bible reveals God’s identity and plan. At the same time, Augustine the semiotician and rhetor recognizes that the Bible will inevitably engender different interpretations, that indeed the fullness of God’s providential will requires a plenitude of legitimate interpretations. So long as these various interpretations build up the love of God and of neighbor, and cohere with other pertinent texts, the interpreters have rightly understood Scripture.

I’ve probably said more than enough on this topic for now. My gang of critical interrogators has helped me see where readers are likely to doubt my claims, and to see where I should make the positive side of my position clearer and more explicit. Thanks to everyone who chipped in, and here I want to note Joe Duemer too (though I haven’t really followed up his observations on language games, imagination, fancy, and why AKMA is right and Pat Robertson wrong, though I do appreciate his confidence on the last-mentioned topic). If I go on any longer, though, these insightful critics may instigate a further round of discussion, and that would transgress against the patience of long-suffering visitors. So tomorrow I’ll try not to talk about hermeneutics at all. I’ve been itching to open up on trust and especially on how trust fares online.

Thanks for your attention, and I’ll keep y’all in prayer, and I ask your prayers also.

DRMA:“Ça Plane Pour Moi,” Plastic Bertrand; “Honeysuckle Rose,” Fats Waller; “Say Man,” Bo Diddley; “Rough Side of the Mountain,” the Rev. F. C. Barnes and Janice Brown; “Nobody’s Fault But My Own,” Beck; “Number Nine Dream,” John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band; “Day After Day,” Badfinger; “Joyful Girl,” Ani DiFranco; “Touch Me Lord Jeus,” Angelic Gospel Singers.

What more fitting conclusion could our thread reach than this breaking story, from America’s Finest News Source?

I’m going to keep this short, not out of disrespect for my wonderful conversation partners (whose patience and persistence I greatly admire and appreciate) but first, because I don’t want to go on indefinitely about the topic, ’cause I have the distinct feeling that very few people care, and second, because I don’t want to slight Juliet, who’s been waiting patiently for my response, and by responding to whom I’m likely to engender another whole round of this carousel. So a very brief response to David Weinberger’s morning post at this point goes like this:

(a) David’s point about “imagining” and “attributing” set me back a pace or two, but in the end those words don’t differ with respect to the activity of the interpreter. That’s one reason I’ve been so tediously persistent about the metaphor of the web as shared imagination; I don’t construe “imagination” as a sort of solitary dreaming-up-without-connection-to-anything-else, which is what David’s use of the term sounds like to me.

(b) (This is the biggy.) How does my conviction that I understand God’s intention in Scripture differ from Pat Robertson’s conviction that he understands God’s intention in Scripture?

If there’s no cogent way of comparing those intuitive convictions — and I’m Wittgensteinian enough to believe there isn’t, though I hope Joseph Duemer will check me on this — then I maintain that my assertion, “But I really do understand God’s authorial intention,” (the asseveration for which David is waiting) is syntactically blank. It puts my waving fist into words, but it doesn’t say any more than “I’m right ’cos I know I am.”

If there is a cogent way of comparing my degree of rightness with Pat Robertson’s, or for that matter for comparing it to The Big Truth, then I hope someone will show me. So far as I’ve been able to tell, all I can do is compare arguments and interpretations with Pat (or David, or whomever), and make an informed (imaginative) judgment about which is the most satisfactory.

In other words, if I’m wrong about this, I’m wrong in a big way — I’m ignoring, almost deliberately, an avenue to the truth that others on the road traverse easily. At least I’m not alone, though, because the other wanderers must include some sponsors of integral hermeneutics who are absolutely sure they’re on the right track, but who are misled, with no way to account for their erring.

Whoops! I was going to promise Juliet she was next, but her Blogger misfortunes seem to have 404’ed her archives. That’s a lousy way to get out of an argument, but perhaps she’ll remind me of the weaknesses she saw in my argument.

DRMA: “Double Crossing Blues,” Johnny Otis Quintet; “I’m So Bored With the USA,” the Clash; “Down on Me,” Eddie Head and his Family; Theme from Albert Campion, PBS TV; “Marrow,” Ani DiFranco; “When You’re Alone,” Bruce Springsteen; “2000 Man,” the Rolling Stones.

Two more quick excerpts on hermeneutics, in both cases especially Scriptural hermeneutics:

[Scripture] cannot as it were be mapped, or its contents catalogued; but after all our diligence, to the end of our lives and to the end of the Church, it must be an unexplored and unsubdued land, with heights and valleys, forests and streams, on the right and left of our path and close about us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasures.
John Henry Newman

No interpreter’s articulation of meaning abrogates somebody else’s structure of meaning, provided that what each of them says agrees with a sound profession of the Catholic faith.
John Dun Scotus (both quotations as cited in Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis vol. 1)

Thanks, by the way, to the Tutor’s acknowledgement of my persistent efforts to clarify how my hermeneutics accords with my theology; would it be importunate for me to persist in affirming that my understanding of truth and salvation can’t be “noncommittal,” but that everything most important in my life hangs on these premises and that my life will be risible, ludicrous, if my faith in a Way that leads us toward Truth always by the ambiguous path of interpretation be shown false?