Over at OFB

Well, since I've been a little slow posting here, let me mention what's going on over at Open for Business:

• FotoMagico is Pure Slideshow Magic — my review of a really amazing Mac software program. If you have a Mac and are a picture taker, checkout this review, you probably need this program.
• Desktop FreeBSD (Part 7) — Ed continues the second edition to his much acclaimed FreeBSD series.
• Clicking Off Interaction — My commentary on PowerPoint and similar products.

TQ: More Personal Stuff

Hat tip to Mark, as usual.

How do you sleep? Left side, right side, back or stomach.
Varies. Usually slightly on my side, mostly on my stomach.

How do you brush? Toothbrush, electric, tree bark, etc.
Only the freshest tree bark. Good stuff that tree bark.

Ahem. I have a regular and an electric toothbrush. I prefer the regular, though.

How do you do your hair? Air dry, blow dry, Head out of car on highway, style, no style.
Towel dry a bit, then air dry. I only stick my head out of the car to see if I can understand what it is that dogs enjoy so much about that experience. So far I have only been confirmed in my position of the superior nature of cats.

How do you wake yourself in the morning?
An alarm clock, when necessary.

What is the first thing that you do when you awake?
Preferably get a cup of coffee and read the Post-Dispatch.

What do you sleep on? Waterbed, spring, foam, floor, outside, etc etc.
A spring mattress with foam pillow top.

Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).

Running on Empty, But Still Going

I feel beat. After being in a fairly intense Greek class for over two months, preceeded by a three week vacation, preceeded by a full academic year of classes, I am tired. I'd like a break, but the next real break is in December. I am looking forward to the fall semester in as much as it will provide some academic variety again. Don't get me wrong, I've learned some great stuff in the Greek classes, and while Greek is still daunting, I can note a sense of feeling more comfortable with the language thanks to these classes, but I'm looking forward to spending some time on systematic theology (Covenant Theology I) and historical theology (Presbyterian History). It's just nice when my mind is feeling burnt out with many miles to go before I sleep, that I can at least change gears. That is only made better by the fact that those two fields are really “my” loves in the theological world.

Nevertheless, I cannot complain about this week, there have been good things mixed in with the work. The hot weather has the pool water warm, and I've taken some breaks to go swimming. And as a special, unexpected bonus, a non-descript box arrived from Roxio on Monday. I tried to figure out what it could be while I completed some work, and I remembered that I had entered an iPhone launch day contest at Roxio's site. The contest required one to send in a picture of oneself standing in line for an iPhone; the first 25 entries would receive a free copy of Roxio Crunch and there would be a grand prize winner of a fifth generation (a.k.a. video) iPod. I decided that the box must contain a boxed copy of Crunch. Surely, it couldn't be, could it? Well, actually it could. When I opened it, I found a black, 30 GB fifth generation iPod inside, with its sealed packaging carefully bubblewrapped. I must admit I was so sure it couldn't be that it took awhile for me to realize I had won. I'm listening to it right now. It sounds much the same as my 20 GB fourth generation iPod, but its fun playing around with the bright color screen, and the larger drive that supports photo syncing is a nice bonus.

Surely a week that includes winning a grand prize is a good week!

Zose Canaan Days I Use to Know

Well, I went to the Muny last night, and saw Joseph. It was spectacular. And if you haven't yet seen it, you should go get a ticket, or get there early and enjoy one of the free seats up on top. Though the sets were more subdued then the Fox Theatre's performance a few years back (with the Fox's broadway tour-ready stage), the Muny's talent actually outshone the Fox's performance, I thought.

What a show!

I've been spending the last week in partial sabbatical from the Internet as other things consumed my time. I'll be back to normal posting soon.

On Reading, Part III.2: Reader Response

Continuing from Part III.1 on Reader Response

A few more words, perhaps, should be said about Reader Response criticism. What did I mean when I said that Reader Response is not permission to interpret the text anyway that I might want? That's a good question. What Reader Response does is look, as I said, at certain types of “readers” that it creates to analyze the text. The control on this is that we are not interested in one individual, but in a comprehensive interpretation.

So, for example, I might create a Freudian reader, and look at how on average, using a Freudian model, I would interpret the text. A liberation theologian or Marxist would create an oppressed reader and look for key parts of the text as they appeal to the downtrodden. As for me, in as much as I would participate in Reader Response, I would likely provide a Jungian model of interpretation.

It has been my long term assertion that the Jungian model is better placed in the next school that we will look at, Mimeticism, but for the sake of argument, consider it here. If we assume that there are certain key archetypes embedded in humanity (whether you wish to call them part of natural law or be truly Jungian sounding and dub them the “collective unconscious”), then it stands to reasons that the text will be read with the reader constantly searching and meeting the text where the text can enter into the archetypal roles. Hamlet is the famous prince he is because we can read into him the role of the tragic hero, or — with only a little stretch of the imagination — a savior figure.

Norman Holland talks of “subjectivity questioning objectivity.” The good part of reader response is its focus on a dialectic. The text and the mind are in a constant conflict to create the poem (used in the looser sense, not the sense of verse). This explains why we enjoy texts that conflict with our views and we are prone to forget about simplistic texts that have no ambiguity or depth. There is little dialectical value in those texts. No text is completely free of dialect to be sure, otherwise it would be a mirror image of our mind, but certainly some texts are so poor as to come close.

The important point that this all leads up to, which a wonderful professor I studied under kept re-enforcing because it is so tempting to forget, is that Reader Response is not about how much I enjoy the text. While we can formulate that certain characteristics that will lead to people enjoying the text, such is totally irrelevant to the school's goal. This school is about applying systematic models of readers to the text, not about becoming a newspaper book reviewer who must give new books so many stars and suggest whether her readers will enjoy the book. To pull this whole series back into its starting point at exegesis, note that higher criticism is about interpretation, not reviewing.

With that said, I think we can now move on to Mimeticism with a fuller understanding about why I will argue shortly that one should reject Reader Response and argue that Mimeticism follows similar themes much more fruitfully.

On Reading, Part III.1: Reader Response

Continuing from Part II on the New Criticism

If New Criticism's formal method focused entirely on the text to the point of losing context, I would assert that Reader Response is its polar opposite. Reader Response makes two good assertions: first, it notes, as does formalism, the impossibility of really knowing the author. Certainly, once we admit that an author is not required to present himself as himself — and that is hard to deny, for writers often adopt personae in their writings either intentionally or unintentionally — this seems like common sense. Second, we cannot really know the text as the text either, for we can only know the text such as it interacts with us and we interpret it. This too is hard to deny.

If you sense that modernism is quickly slipping away as we move through critical schools, you would certainly not be far off. Reader Response rejects the idea of objective truth in the text. Instead, what is of interest is the meeting of the written word with the mind to form “the text.” Whenever I read something, I do not read it with the same connections between the words as the author did, but rather my own ideas and connections. I read into the text my hopes and aspirations, my fears and doubts. I find T.S. Eliot particularly appealing at times because I can connect with his characters — or rather I can connect with how I read his characters — that may not be the same thing.

Now, reader response is not a free for all. It is not permission to read whatever I want into the text. But, as a critical method, we might look into how a particular hypothetical audience would read the text. In religious studies, in particular, of interest is often the feminist or liberation readings of the text. These can thrive on Reader Response, since the emphasis can be placed on the text interacting with their modern concerns, rather than trying to keep the text as the text or as the author's intended result.

To be sure, some Reader Response critics come up with some interesting ideas, and I appreciate how they see that the reader is a significant participant in the reading process. Both as a writer and a reader, it is hard to deny the importance of the audience — intended or not — that reads the text. As will become clear in part V and VI, there is good reason for many of Reader Responses' arguments.

Nevertheless, I believe particularly in the realm of Scriptural interpretation, Reader Response is highly dangerous. By rejecting the quest to bound meaning within the guidelines of what historically or formally the text might have meant, even with careful, scholarly methods, Reader Response is a free pass to provide vastly wilder interpretations than are desirable. And not only with Scripture, but also with literature.

When studying the school, more than any other, I was left questioning the exact usefulness of its pursuits. It remains the least objective school in my estimation, and while it is interesting to consider how the words and person meet to form some kind of poem, it is not terribly helpful in a quest for meaning or being.

To get closer to that, we must move on.

Deja Vu

I'm driving home last night from class, listening to a familar song during the mild summer evening. A slight mist is in the air and the streetlights shine with clear beams to the ground. The song hits a familar yet somehow distant note — apparently it has been longer than I thought since I heard this song — and suddenly a particular day from October 2004 comes vividly to mind. I was coming home on a damp, mild autumn evening as the street lights shone down. Real, it is almost real. And with it, a familiar ache from that time, and, again, a different one almost wishing it was that time.

How time flies. Too slowly when the mysteries of upcoming days are yet to be unmasked, but too fast in retrospect of the days already revealed.

Authenticating our Faith

Last week, Brad posted a link to an interesting discussion that started over a critique of believers often circular reasoning in arguing for the faith. As so many unconvinced people will say, “please don't quote Scripture to prove Christianity to me.”

It is true that the Scriptures have excellent historical witnesses, and textually speaking we can vouch for what the Evangelists wrote with more certainty than we can, for example, say what William Shakespeare wrote. With that in mind, along with other ancient authorities, we can argue for the existence of a man named Jesus and a kingdom named Israel. What we can never do is prove that Jesus is God incarnate or that Israel was God's chosen people using that methodology.

As I have said before, Calvin and Barth both understood this quite well, and emphasized grounding Scriptural authority in God's revelation to us through the Holy Spirit. Christianity is ultimately a relational faith — it springs from God's relationship with us — and so we ought to place our foundation squarely there.

While rational grounding is good and necessary, and relational grounding cannot prove an iota to someone who has never felt the presence of God, the latter is the only grounding that can provide a reason to believe the extent of Christianity. Perhaps we are embarrassed of this grounding and that is why we constantly seek to prove Scripture (and Christianity in general) with Scripture, but let's get over the embarrassment and admit it: our faith comes from God reaching out to us. Any other basis simply won't work.

If we admitted that, would we have any annoyed atheists tired of circular reasoning? Likely not — perhaps they could even understand why we believe what we believe a bit better.

On Reading, Part II: the New Criticism

Continuing from part I on Old Historicism.

After the Great War, people started to realize that meaning was not cut and dry, and history was not a perfect record. Disillusionment reigned king, especially in Europe, and this had a big impact on not only politics and social mores, but also literature, literary theory and religion. If history and news was written by the will of the victors and the powerful, and often misled people into ill advised pursuits such as the “glories” of going into war for the fatherland, clearly using history to interpret texts was merely grabbing at the wind.

The New Criticism (Formalism) arose in literature, but I would contend a very similar movement arose within the core Fundamentalist tradition that was galvanized in the modernist debate that appeared in places such as Princeton Seminary. As Fundamentalism emerged, it claimed not only the priority of Scripture, but also generally isolated Scripture in a way I would suggest is fundamentally different from the intentions of the Reformers to whom they claimed to be the defenders (and, indeed, in some areas were).

An inside joke among students of literature is the famous freshman English Comp paper expression when the said freshman is writing about a text; when it comes time to paraphrase, the student will say, “what the author is trying to say is [such and such].” Nonsense. That suggests two things that no one, much less someone early in literary training, should suggest: first, that a worthwhile author was so poorly equipped at writing that he or she needs the freshman to clarify what the work is saying and, second, that anyone, much less a person who likely has very little knowledge of the author, can actually know what the author intended based solely on the text that was a result. We are not the author, and so the author's intentions can never be truly fathomed.

That is the essential starting point of the New Criticism. New Criticism and Fundamentalism both believe that a text can be read in and of itself; indeed, that is the only way to truly read it, since we cannot know the author's intentions. I respect the New Critics, which include two of my poetic heros — T.S. Eliot and Archibald MacLeish — and it would be a mistake to see them as Fundamentalists. New Criticism is highly nuanced, and encourages a close reading of the text using solid insights into the objective nature of emotion in poetry (the objective correlative), the fundamental adherence to genre in writing (generic criticism) and a love of allusion. New Criticism places the text on a pedestal and says, we cannot understand the author's intent, and it really does not matter; what matters is the text, which we can read and we can know if we read it carefully and avoid eisegesis. Notice that I have switched referencing and am only talking about New Criticism; Fundamentalism, I would assert, wants to take the text as the text, but ignores such important parts of a close reading as generic criticism, and this can lead to errors such as Dispensationalism.

Nevertheless, despite my admiration for New Criticism (and, indeed, my habit of naming Formalism as one school in my eclectic style of criticism), both they and Fundamentalism have made a critical error insomuch as they reject the need to provide historical context to understand a work. “I am going to perform open heart surgery tomorrow” can only be understood to be a crime if you happen to know that I am not an MD. One important nuance among New Critics (but not Fundamentalism) was the emphasis on being over meaning. “A poem should not mean/But be.” This is a focus on the text. The New Critic does not see the text as a resource meant to be scavenged for specific nuggets of meaning, and so avoid part of this concern. When Archibald MacLeish wrote those words, he was putting to words the notion that our focus should be on the experience of reading the text and not on what we can extrapolate directly from it.

I would suggest the Fundamentalist reaction to Modernism parts company with New Criticism at this juncture and does generally see a text as only a means to propositional ends. Clearly, when it comes to theology, we do not want to say that Scripture is being and not meaning — unless we want to get all Tillichian! On the other hand, extracting meaning while loosing oneself from historical context is highly dangerous.

One cannot loose a text from context. If we ignore its original context, we merely allow ourselves to lazily place a text in the foreign context of our own socio-linguistic situation. Remember that language is merely a set of signs and symbols. When we fail to place those signs and symbols within their original interpretive context (or the nearest thing we can manage to posit), a problem arises. Instead of seeing the New Testament as primarily Hebraic writings with Hellenistic influence written to people who think in the way people would in first century Palestine and have a set of shared experiences, expressions and so on that we lack, we start to see Paul as writing to Americans and sharing our experiences and expressions. And while there is no doubt Scripture provides us with useful instruction today, that instruction is best derived by trying to find out Paul's real point (in context) is and then finding how that point can then be applied to our situation. It serves neither as a respectful attitude toward God's Word, nor our own purposes, to place Paul out of context in an ill advised attempt to find him directly speaking to specifically modern problems (this is what liberation theology, for example, seems to do).

To the point, Formalism is an important discipline, but it must be included in a larger, more eclectic system for it to work in a proper, honest fashion. Those who adopted some or all of its methods in the twentieth century were reminding us of important truths that we ought not ignore. However, what Formalists are not honest in — if they are pure formalists — is that language is always understood in a context, because language without a context is nothing but random gibberish.

The Immovable Rock and Silent Tree

Jennifer mentioned the ever present discussion of whether God can create a rock that He cannot move and the (even more pressing) question of whether a tree falling with no one to hear it would make a sound. That gave me an idea, what if Aquinas had answered that first question and Anselm, the second? I think it'd sound like the following.

Of course, Thomas — being the Angelic Doctor — already actually deals with the issue in Summa Theologica 1.9.1 under the first article of the question concerning immutability. But, I decided it would be more amusing to have Aquinas deal with the issue directly, so hear is how I expect it would have gone:

We thus proceed to the first article.

Article 1. Whether God can create an object too large for him to move?

Objection 1. It seems that God can create an object too large for him to move. For as the Philosopher says (Metaphysics ii) “matter is in everything which is moved.” However, as was already admitted in an earlier objection (ST 1.9.1), there exists things that are not made of matter. Therefore it seems God could create an immovable, immaterial rock.

Objection 2. Further, it seems that movement belongs to only things that are not already perfected, but it cannot be said that nothing God creates is already perfect. Therefore it seems that God can create an immovable rock.

Objection 3. It is clear from the Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium of the Church that God is perfect and all powerful, for as the Evangelist reports, the angel said to the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Therefore it seems that God can create an immovable rock.

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Nat. Boni. i), “God alone is immutable; and whatever things He has made, being from nothing, are mutable.” Therefore no creation of God can be immutable.

I answer that, although God is all powerful, He is also simple (ST 1.3), therefore all of God's essence and existence are one. If God's essence and existence are one, He cannot do anything in His will that would cause His essence to be in conflict with His existential actions. The resultant action of discord from God creating something that He Himself could not move would bring his existence into conflict with His essence, but a thing cannot be and not be in the same substance.

Moreover, a thing that is in conflict with itself is not as perfect as a thing that is not in conflict with itself, but we know that God is perfect, for as the First Principle, He is pure act and pure act is most perfect. If He were not pure act, He would not be the First Principle, but rather a Second or Third Principle, as is clear from the Philosopher. But, it is written “Be you perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Therefore God is perfect and, as pure act, can move anything that is not pure act, which is everything other than Himself.

Reply to Objection 1. As I have related before, the immutability of something depends not only on the physical movement of matter, but also the ability of the object to be made more or less act. Everything that is not the First Principle does not have necessary existence, therefore, there is some time that the rock did not, or will not, exist. Therefore, because philosophers treat conversion from potency to act as movement, the immovable rock is only immovable so long as God grants it act, which he may cease to grant it at any time.

Reply to Objection 2. Although something may achieve its ends, and therefore cease movement, it only achieves it thusly as God has intended it. Nevertheless, anything that can possibly not be, will not be at some point, whether prior or future, and therefore the rock is not immovable regardless of whether it ceases movement at the achievement of its end.

Reply to Objection 3. Nothing is impossible with God, but the impossible cannot be because it is nothing. For something that conflicts with its own nature cannot actually exist, and therefore does not actually exist, nor can the idea of its existence even be pondered. Anything that has existence neither in potency or actuality can be said to truly be “nothing” and therefore, is not something that is impossible with God.

Anselm's Lost Appendix in Fides Quaerens Intellectum Dealing with Falling Trees

“The fool says in his heart, 'if no one is around to hear a tree fall, it does not make a sound.'”

O most perfect newly fallen tree, how marvellous it is that you should fall with clarity and make it so that even a fool can see his folly in this statement! For it is clear that you could not have fallen without making a sound. For you are the most perfect fallen tree that can be imagined. However, the most perfect fallen tree that can be imagined is a fallen tree that has made a sound as it fell. For if the most perfect fallen tree fell but did not make a sound, then a more perfect fallen tree, which did make a sound, could be imagined, and you would not be the most perfect fallen tree.

But you are the most perfect fallen tree, not because someone happened to be around to hear you fall, but rather because your status as the most perfect fallen tree made it necessary that you should make a sound as you fell. The fool denies the obvious when he makes the claim, for to say that the most perfect tree could fall and not make a sound, because he was not there is foolishness! To suggest that the most prefect fallen tree is only most perfect because of something outside of its perfect falleness is contradictory to the idea of the most perfect fallen tree, for if the most prefect fallen tree were only perfect because someone was there to hear it, I can easily imagine an even more prefect fallen tree that was perfect without need for someone to hear it.