Meaningful propositions behind meaning-vague sentences

If I believed in propositional knowledge, this one would pose a problem for me.  As if the post title weren’t enough to confuse, check out this absolutely brilliant sentence:

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

This sentence, depending on how you take the definitions, can be restated:

“Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.”

or,

“THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.”

A more simple explanation can be found at wikipedia.

(HT: Robin Parry)

“The Boy in Striped Pyjamas”: The point?

Steph and I watched this film last night and I was left with a feeling of ‘oh’.  This was no profound sense of ‘ohhhhhhh!’ or stilted shock of ‘Oh!’, but a mere ‘oh’.  I actually dreamed a different ending to the film which would have been definitively more riveting.  [PLOT SPOILER COMING]

In the end, the movie has a cast of oppositions.  The husband and wife, the Nazi commander and his mother, the junior officer and his father, the brother and sister, and the inner turmoil of the main character fighting between two conceptions of ‘Jews’.  The ending, however, was just bizarre clearly expecting a mildly credulous audience.

The story just didn’t make sense.  I’m not sure what it’s meant to accomplish.  What was the moral of the story?  Here are some possibilities that I worked through:

1. Don’t marry a Nazi.
2. Don’t make friends with imprisoned Jews.
3. Don’t be so naive.
4. Don’t gas Jews because your kid might accidentally get gassed with them.
5. Don’t be a Nazi, because unexpected consequences can be ultimately bad.

It’s almost as if the end of the movie was a big ‘I told you something like this would happen’ from the mother to the father.  The reason I’m struggling to grasp the point is that the movie is clearly meant to play on the tension between the characters, but the audience would surely identify with only one side of that tension.  Are we seriously ever meant to empathize with the Final Solution or the soldiers who carried it out.  No! We hear the voices of the mothers and the children who clearly identify the incredulity of the Solution.

So we enter the film knowing that Nazism is very bad and are never enticed to think otherwise.  We leave the film thinking that Nazism is bad particularly because it killed two innocent people: Shmuel and Bruno (the Jewish boy and Nazi’s son respectively).  A story about a car accident could have had the same effect.  What was the Nazi’s reason for they intending to kill Shmuel but not Bruno?  It was because Shmuel was Jewish.  Nothing new about that.  The only interesting twist to the plot is the climax where the irony of their friendship entangles leading to their shared deaths.

Interestingly, the tutor’s inculcating speeches about how Jews are the ruin of Germans comes to full fruition when Bruno is killed by coming into the camp in order to help Shmuel find his presumably dead father.  This particular German actually was ruined by this particular Jew.  And while his Nazi father is attempting to exterminate the evil Jews, his own evil ends up exterminating his own son.  But this irony doesn’t save the movie as a whole. It only makes the movie mildly engaging.

My wife noticed that the only ‘walk away’ point she took was that if the parents had talked with their children honestly about what they were doing, then that would have at least prevented Bruno’s death.

The movie was good overall.  But the vagueness of time and place make it hard to swallow.  There are no names or incidents that would help you connect it to an historical event.  Normally, that would be forgivable, except for the fact that the entire movie is set around one of the most infamous events in world history.  You could take this plot and play it out almost step for step in any setting to the same effect–actually, to greater effect.  If the Jews were cows, the place were Texas, the death camp a feed lot and the gas chambers a slaughter house, then the rhetorical effect would draw on the audiences mixed feeling about the whole scenario.  But because Nazism is generally recognized as a heinous form of badness, that tension is absent and the film falls flat.

blogs = narcissism

I found a very interesting “10 warnings to theobloggers” blog.  I would agree with its impetus minding two caveats:

1. Why stop at blogging?  Couldn’t most academic theology fall prey to much of this critique?  Or even worse, don’t many academic pastors follow in suit?

2. The abusus non tollit usus clause should always be heeded when we are inclined to be binary and caustic.

But for the 10 reasons listed, I have pretty much stopped blogging.  But for reason number 2 above, I have not stopped reading good blogs.

myopia or macropia in biblical studies

Michael Bird does a great job of summarizing the need for generalists in biblical studies.  In reading this co-authored article, I realized how audatious my goals are in light of the generalism he describes.  But I think there may be a return to generalism, aside from the implicit desire most of us share to be a MJA.

The Bible and Epistemology

This post refers to this book.

While I would love to delve into each chapter of this book, I realized that it would be an inappropriate use of blogdom.  Rather, this is a book one should read for themselves if they are even mildly interested in such things.  So I will offer here a table of contents and brief summary.

First, it was wildly refreshing and personally satisfying to see that these biblical scholars were coming to some of the same conclusions that I was narrowing in on.  It makes me feel less like the mad man waving my arms in the corner about the importance of considering a native epistemology (to borrow Doug Yoder’s term) in the canon. So let me offer a few highlights to whet your interests.

Ryan P. O’Dowd comes to a few summary points in his exploratory of Deuteronomy.  Knowledge is repetition.  Knowledge is fundamentally socio-generational (my term), it is ‘performative’.  This sociological aspect of epistemology is that which I am keen to develop.

Thomas D. Stegman examines the duotext of Luke-Acts. He frames this exam under the light which Luke himself marks his own task, ‘that the reader may know with confidence’ (certainty is such an epistemically loaded and DesCarto-perverse term that it cannot be given as a meaning in the mind of Luke per me).   The question Stegman asks is: Given what Luke has epistemically promised, what do we end up with?  I have often answered that question within the Gospel itself, but not of the two texts conjoined.  I won’t give away the answers here, but whatever answer Stegman lands on, the question is infinitely better than ones about propositional and veridical content of truth claims so often still ringing in every epistmologist’s ear.

Many brilliant scholars (especially in Philosophy of Religion) could stand to take heed to Stegman’s opening caution about inquiry, “The drawback here is that one might ask the wrong questions, or at least questions that Luke’s text does not intend to address.”

Mary Healy rounds out the biblical scholarship section with an analysis of Pauline epistemology.  The meat of this is the decisive turn she takes in dealing with knowledge and revelation.  Again, I will not spoil her conclusions, but she does an excellent job of systematizing Paul’s thoughts.

Murray Rae and D.C. Schindler provide the biblical theological and philosophical layers respectively. I must say that I think Murray Rae is spot on in his handling of the whole.  I feel sometimes that I’ve run my thoughts into the ground about the somatic and relational aspects of knowing, but then I read someone else who takes it as an starting point: “Knowing is irreducibly bound up with being in relation as the Hebrew euphemism to ‘know’ one’s husband or wife attests.”

I loved this collection of essays and if I were to teach on anything remotely related, it would be required reading.  Out of my gratitude to the editors, I will not give the “Cliff’s Notes” version here in a blog.  It’s worth the price and I hear that more copies are coming out in the US soon.

That said, I do think there is much work to be done here and the authors should be commended for ‘digging up the buried lines’ that will lead the church towards this necessary discussion.  It is nothing less than a total reorientation of our epistemology.  That likely sounds more outrageous than I mean it, but not really.  Unless biblical scholarship comes to grips with the body and knowing in this more full sense (think: built in, dwelled in, words as tools, body knowing, body telling, emotionally discrete knowing, etc.), then we will be stuck in modern/pomo squabbles that circle reality like rudderless buzzards.

Here is the TOC:

Part I: Biblical Soundings on the Knowledge of God

Ryan P. O’Dowd, “Memory on the Boundary:Epistemology in Deuteronomy.”

Gregory Vall, “An Epistemology of Faith: The Knowledge of God in Israel’s Prophetic Literature.”

Francis Martin, “The Word at Prayer: Epistemology in the Psalms.”

Ryan P. O’Dowd, “A Chord of Three Strands: Epistemology in Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.”

Thomas D. Stegman, S.J., “‘The Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding’: Epistemology in Luke-Acts.”

Cornelis Bennema, “Christ, the Spirit, and the Knowledge of God: A Study in Johannine Epistemology.”

Mary Healy, “Knowledge of the Mystery: A Study of Pauline Epistemology.”

Part II: Theological and Philosophical Reflections

Murray Rae, “‘Incline Your Ear So That You May Live’: Principles of Biblical Epistemology.”

D.C. Schindler, “Mystery and Mastery: Philosophical Reflections on Biblical Epistemology.”

Coming soon…

I have been generously gifted a copy of The Bible and Epistemology and have read through most of it.  I will be posting some reflections on this inexplicably companionless text from Paternoster (which is a must read for those interested in such things or otherwise).    Also, I will be discussing a dissertation by Kevin Diller who is now a post-doc fellow at Notre Dame.  His shrewd analysis of the Plantinga-Barth nexus in epistemology does alot of work in an economy of words (something both Doctors could learn). 

Plug for reading (of the prolegomenal stripe)

re Alan Torrance, “Auditus Fidei: Where and How Does God Speak?”

Part of the audaciousness of biblical theology is the inherent claim to understand the Word of God, and in a particular way.  Despite the historical debate regarding Ramist presuppositions and Enlightenment leanings in the WCF, there are lower prolegomenal considerations that support the higher exegesis.  

“Just interpreting the text” brings a tidal wave of presumptions to bear on the interaction between human and text or Spirit and human.  This tidal wave is what Torrance appeals to as a primary matter of concern for serious exegetical work.  While this is not a novel nor peculiar appeal, he approaches us with a robust and terse history of the theological/philosophical portals that have been brought forward in the history of exegesis.  

The reason this is advocated biblical theological reading is that he frames the discussion in God’s self-disclosure.  But he moves quickly toward a constructive approach to talk about knowers committed to that self-disclosure.  The essay does a good bit of epistemological prolegomena by elucidating entry statements like: “It is imperative to appreciate here, however, that this kind of epistemic reorientation does not assume an irrational “leap in the dark.”  

Here, he explores the roots of understanding scripture through a Christological-Pneumatological epistemology that fundamentally reorients the reader.  For Torrance, the crossroads of the self-revelation of God and the exegete meet at metanoia.  

The reason I am offering this chapter as a reading is that it cuts across several pedagogical needs.  First, it can be used to stir thought and prepare students to think about epistemological assumptions of their own presumed prolegomenon.  Second, the essay can challenge us to explore the outworking of a particular theologian in the biblical theological tradition.  Third, this essay makes active use of the philosophical traditions that have sometimes muddied the conversation, but doesn’t abandon them all to frivolity.  There are ‘ways out’ that can make use of similar biblical strands of epistemology found in certain regions of philosophy.  So there is some apologetic engagement going on.

Finally, students who are new to biblical theology (like me) might benefit from the challenge to support this approach with a beefy understanding of how we might faithfully render anything from the text at all.

 Alan J. Torrance, “Auditus Fidei: Where and How Does God Speak?” in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, eds. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter (New York: T & T Clark, 2005), 27-52.

The Body in Eastern Orthodoxy

I just read Scott Prather’s article in American Theological Inquiry entitled: “The Body and Human Identity in Postmodernity and Orthodoxy”.  It’s really a condensed read on somaticism’s reach into theology.  The article is roughly divided into three parts that I would call 1) why reductions and ‘isms’ won’t give Christian theology the impetus needed to work out somatic issues, 2) why orthodoxy can give us guidance on the body as a relative yet not subjective being, and 3) how our relativity to the Body of Christ is our body’s natural estate.

The first part appears to me to be obligatory for the author.  The second and third parts are a nice peer into the work of Eastern Orthodoxy of late and parsed statements about how we can view anthropology without flinging ourselves into the pure subjectivisms described in part one.  Here’s a nice quote from part 2:

“To be human is to be made “in the image of God,” a body made from “the dust of the earth” enlivened by and united with God through the soul. In this tradition, the soul is itself not a disembodied “part” of the human being, but embodied aspects of the person which reflect and tend towards the image of God (the logos of the Father) including intellect, will, and desire.”

The euangelion here is that the whole journal is free online at: atijournal.org.

We are moving to Scotland.

We have finally gotten around to making the announcement to our families and the church. So now I can publicly admit that we’re all moving to St. Andrews in January for me to begin my Ph.D. studies under the supervision of Prof. Alan Torrance (nephew of T.F. Torrance, who happened to be good friends with Michael Polanyi).

All the excitement has worn off, so now I am just very busy fixing up the house for sale and terrified about the prospects of failure.

If you want to read my dissertation proposal, it is here.

Advantages of Christian Morality per Nietzsche

This is an extended quote from Nietzsche’s Late Notebooks (p 116, the italics reflect Nietzsche’s underlining in his hand written notebooks):

What advantages did the Christian moral hypothesis offer?

1. It endowed man with an absolute value, in contrast to his smallness and contingency in the flux of becoming and passing away.

2. It served the advocates of God by conceding to the world, despite suffering and evil, the character of perfection, including that ‘freedom’ – evil seemed full of meaning.

3. It posited that man knows about absolute values, thus giving him adequate knowledge precisely of what is most important.

It shielded man from despising himself as man, from taking sides against life, from despairing of knowledge: it was a means of preservation – in sum, morality was the great antidote to practical and theoretical nihilism.

I take it for granted that points 1 & 2 can both be correct and uncontroversially used to argue for or against Christian morality. However, point 3 is quite remarkable, for I tend to agree with Nietzsche here and see this as a current sin of the Church. My only concern would be that man can know absolute value versus knowing about absolute value. It we take him to mean the Christian morality can equip us with a kind of knowledge that is absolute, then I’m not sure what biblical warrant or situation we will be able to find in support of this.

The great deceit of certainty extends into our sense of the moral and the Body of Christ must be clear as to what our epistemology is like. What sense does it make to say that we can know some moral in an absolute way when every law of morality has to be transgressed in order to maintain its coherence (sans the worship of God)? As I often point out, the command to ‘not murder’ is given by a God who just murder thousands of children and Egyptian soldiers and is planning the systematic slaughter of the people of Canaan. Further, this God gives that commandment through the hands and prayers of a man who is established an enraged murderer himself. What absolute value do we gain from such a narrative and its embedded codes?

If the goal is to walk away from canon with a knowledge of absolute values transferred to your mind, then Nietzsche’s words here ought to cut you to the bone. That kind of knowledge can only act as an illusory antidote to nihilism. But I will suggest that our retort to Nietzsche is to argue against abuse of absolutism in favor of an epistemology that does allow us to know what is moral, but not contain or domesticate that morality. In the end, our morality is based in the worship of Yahweh, His Son through the Spirit given to us. That is, after all, the intent of the first commandment. All attempts at absolutizing morality will rightly fall under Nietzsche’s admonition here.