9th Day of Easter:
Monday March 31
Joshua & Judges
‘Conquest & Settlement –
Oh, Yeah?’
Sure, Joshua and Judges flow from the Torah smoothly: some call it a Hexateuch, others a Deuteronomistic collection. What’s the difference between the ‘law’ and the ‘prophets’, the ‘halakah’ and ‘haggadah’, the ‘black fire’ and ‘white fire’ of printed words and blank spaces? I join George Grant in challenging the ‘fact/value’ distinction.
Browsing, triumphal tone and violence might be off-putting to us. God appears to tell people to massacre their enemies in the land, and one tradition of interpretation used this the justify genocide of aboriginal people in America or Australia. Chaplaincy of any war has relied on these texts. Must it be read from power, for power? I think not.
Would it matter to you if the stories of triumph and conquest were told by people who knew their condition to be powerless, in the context of others’ empires? Imagine a Leaf’s fan telling of victories, any ethnic minority telling tales of past glories, or our own mainline, now sideline, churches?
How many stories of strong hero/ines can you recognize here? What do you make of Rahab, Jael,, Deborah, Gideon, Othniel, or Samson, or the tragedy of Jephtah and his daughter? What if we tell these like the stories of heroic martyrs, rather than imperial beginnings? What if we retold the story of mainline Protestantism?
Stories of decentralized near-anarchy affirm judges rising up as needed against external enemies. However, the story turns later to confess internal dissension among the tribes, particularly with Benjamin. Instead of reading this as the beginning of empire, what if we read it as tribal memories of minorities seeking sources for pride?
Matthew’s gospel knew these stories, and included Rahab, Tamar, and Ruth, irregular women in the stories of Jesus’ male ancestors, in the tribe of Benjamin. When did we forget the importance of claiming our scandalous roots?
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Monday, March 31, 2008
Joshua & Judges: Conquest & Settlement?
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Histories: High Stakes Stories
8th Day of Easter:
Sunday March 30
Histories
High Stakes Stories…
This stuff matters, since people use it to prove contemporary political or national claims. We tell the history to justify our agenda today. The maps above are examples of overlays of ancient and modern boundaries – but stop short of intifadah and current crises. You can google that yourself: cruise some maps, old and new.
If we have no sense of the history and geography, let alone of the ‘spin’ being given in the storytelling in the contexts of original writing and later editing, we are part of the problem. North American Christians and Jews fuel and fund conflicts in today’s Holy Land, and our silence makes us seem to acquiesce to others’ versions of history. Find your perspective or voice this week!
We are accustomed to reading the stories as ‘conquest and settlement’, ‘founding of a nation’, ‘golden age of united monarchy’ and ‘decline and fall’. These readings motivated pioneer European settlers in North America, shaped British and American imperialism – but how do they map to globalism today? Perhaps it’s time to reread ‘our’ books.
Our editions of these histories took shape when the writers were remnants under other empires, not in the days of the stories told. We were on the western edge of Persian and Seleucid, later Byzantine empires, the eastern edge of Ptolemaic, Roman, and later European empires. We were not the centre of the universe in 2nd temple and early common era – nor are we now, again!
The rest of the article goes here.
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Heretics Browsing Week 2: Histories: High Stakes Stories
Heretics Browsing Bibles -
Easter Week 2:
March 30 to April 5
Histories:
High Stakes Stories
After the Torah, before the Psalms, browse the ‘histories’ of nations, peoples, and lands this week. From the prehistory and legendary origins of a people in Eqypt and Mesopotamia, our story becomes easier to place in secular time and space. However, history is written by the winners, or at least by the survivors, and recycled in successive time and space contexts.
Call the next 6 books ‘former prophets’ as tradition does, and you won’t forget that these are not documents following our rules for historiography. These are prophets preaching about a God’s-eye perspective on the story, not academics seeking objectivity. They are closer to epics, melodramas or historical romances, in our terms.
Call the 4 books following ‘writings’ according to tradition, and you’ve suggested the modestly lower ranking of these efforts in the canon of Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Wisdom Writing). The last books this week are called ‘apocrypha’ and ‘deutero-canonical’, included in some bibles, and not others. The issue is one of weight, not admissibility. Which versions matter more?
Heretics like us browsing bibles know TV better than we do the medium of scripture, so I’m suggesting analogous terms to classify these books. Some of the definition comes from the content and message, but some comes by association with a channel, or network, or delivery system. McLuhan’s point about ‘the medium’ is not that new, as those who collected the canon demonstrate.
Histories
High Stakes Stories
9th Day of Easter: Monday March 31
Joshua & Judges
Conquest & Settlement: Oh Yeah?
10th Day of Easter: Tuesday April 1
1 & 2 Samuel
Founding a Nation: Oh, Yeah?
11th Day of Easter: Wednesday April 2
1&2 Kings
Decline & Fall: Oh, Yeah?
12th Day of Easter: Thursday April 3
1&2 Chronicles
Just a Re-make?
13th Day of Easter: Friday April 4
Ezra & Nehemiah
Now a Mini-Series?
14th Day of Easter: Saturday April 5
Esdras & Maccabees
Saturday, March 29, 2008
J, E, D, P: Spin Doctors
#6 Easter Day:
Saturday
March 29
J,E,D,P:
Spin Doctors
You browsed Torah for a week – try a lifetime and you’ll find that redundancies, discrepancies, parallels and inter and intra-relationships endlessly fascinating. Since the 19th century, scholars use a ‘source hypothesis’ to describe how we got this edited form of Torah. It doesn’t require actual source documents to be helpful. It can simply recognize different ‘voices’ in the chorus of Torah.
The diagram acknowledges early oral sources, the ancient campfire tales of origins, of meaning and purpose and human nature and destiny. Early written sources include the law codes of neighbours such as Hammarabi in Egypt, closely copied in some portions of Torah, but also edited in critical ways. We don’t need verbally inspired single authors to write any of the Torah scrolls, but groups or traditions of editors and rewriters: spin doctors.
Calling God ‘Jahweh’ or ‘Elohim’ flags 2 voices, the J or E sources. The J God is earthy, active in the world, and the E God tends to use angelic manifestations. Speculation associates these voices with farmers, shepherds, and nomads, expressing a folk religion of a personal God in relation with the world and the people, passionate and compassionate. Theories can cut verses into J or E or N – or we can simply lump them together as a JE voice, as the diagram suggests. These may be the voices of the national religious traditions of Israel (north) and Judah (south) before disaster.
Israel and Judah fail before imperial invaders, Israel to Assyria in 750BC, then Judah to Babylon in 597BC. They had to rethink their religion and faith, after deportations and exile, scattered in diaspora, or as a remnant in the land. The voices of D, the Deuteronomist, and P, the Priestly line, are recognizable in portions of Torah. Yesterday I suggested that ‘we had it coming’ is D. Today I’ll claim that ‘God’s in charge with a plan’ is P.
When Persians permit a 2nd temple to be built, those returning from exile mingle with those who stayed, and the voices of JE, D, and P are like the party lines of Progressive Conservatives, NDP and Liberals, contributing to the chorus of my story, our story, and God’s story, with harmonies and some irreconcilable inconsistencies. There is enough stability, though, to edit and then copy Torah scrolls with new authority and weight, largely as we get it.
Torah written in only one voice wouldn’t work – the book of Deuteronomy shows what happens when you silence the other voices. Mostly P voice gets you too much Leviticus and ritual detail obsession. Perhaps JE gives to much folk tale, open to each one interpreting as she sees fit. Our own religious tradition includes voices that are conservative and liberal, pietistic and political – often harmonizing, and sometimes irreconcilable. Torah illustrates how we need not silence voices, or reduce them all to unanimity.
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Friday, March 28, 2008
Deuteronomy: Rewriting the Rules
#5 Easter Day:
Friday, March 28
Deuteronomy:
Rewriting the Rules
Deuteronomy means ‘second book of law’ – despite being the 5th scroll of Torah. It’s clearly a restatement and reorganization of many elements already written. Tradition claimed that Moses wrote it all – even the accounts of his own death. We tend to imagine other writers and editors in other contexts than Moses’ deathbed.
Browsing Deuteronomy may be sorted in 5 bits: retelling Israel’s story (1-4), summarizing the law (5-11), political programs (11-28), sales pitch closing (29-33) and epilogue (34). It works as a series of sermons or speeches by Moses, in literary shape.
God provides, Israel messes up, and says sorry in my reading of the 1st 4 chapters of Deuteronomy. After all God does for us, we still just don’t get it – there are consequences in who gets what, and why we should follow the laws. This is not only about the Exodus, but also provides a pattern for the Exile of Israel to Assyria or Judah to Babylon, according to Deuteronomy’s argument, attributed to Moses.
Get with the program, to do better in the future is my reading of c.5 and so on. The Decalogue comes early, then the shema in c.6, through to phylacteries and mezusah’s in c.11, all based on the risks and rewards demonstrated in history, and motivating with promises and threats for the future. This kind of moral reasoning is simplistic, but clear.
Political and legislative program are unrolled through half the scroll, c12-28. There are detailed provisions demanding respect for legitimate authority, for property and civil rights, family law, criminal law, taxation and distributive justice programs and public heath measures. This may be hard to recognize given the diction of theocracy.
Deuteronomy repeats an old sales mantra ‘ABC’ ‘always be closing’. The text keeps exhorting, promising, threatening, forcing a choice and a decision as if the options were clear and polar opposites, from 29 to 33. Most of us adults know that this is not how the world works when you try to apply the law to life, but there is something comforting about the sales pitch. I suspect that the hearers of this word have always known of ambiguity and interpretation.
Deuteronomy closes with Moses’ death, and his burial in Moab, before Joshua carries on. The closing image, though, is of a guy who has been granted a glimpse – having been to the mountain top and seen the other side once more – the classic image used by Martin Luther King from late in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy is associated with King Josiah’s reforms around 621BC, after the north fell, and before the south fell. This voice tries to make sense of these events as ‘we had it coming’. Tomorrow, visit the other voices in Torah.
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
Numbers: Anecdotal Archives
#5 Easter Day:
Thursday, March 27
Numbers:
Anecdotal Archives….
Numbers gets its name from its census lists opening the books. It reads like archival records and legislation, which appeal only to a few heretics like us. However, a breezier browser can find a few great narrative nuggets tucked between the dry enumerations. I think that like any archives, there are stories to go with each list, which we forgot.
Try browsing Numbers in 4 sections: resumption of the Exodus story, wandering time, the book of Balaam, and preparing to move into the promised land. Compare this to the imaginary time of any emigrant or immigrant community’s memory, retold after the fact as if our movement was planned rather than a series of reactions.
Chapters 1 to 10:10 linger longer at Sinai, offering demographic, legal, and narrative bits about getting organized before setting out again. Compare this to asking what the ‘fathers of confederation’ intended in 1867, or as each province in turn was added, and the distribution of taxation and resource sharing shifted in hindsight.
Chapters 10:11 to 20:1 wanders through strife with tales of generational succession. Miriam and Aaron die, and Eleazar and Joshua step up as the leaders for the next phase. The spies or scouts of chapter 13 sound like a ‘joint needs assessment’ committee of planning. What are the promises and challenges of entering the promised land of milk and honey – and of giants?
Chapter 22:2 to 24:25 is also a narrative nugget with the tales of reluctant obedience. Even the talking donkey knows better than Balaam! Read the prophetic oracles as you would the propaganda wars in any conflict. Whose side is God on? Perhaps even Balak’s own hired spokesman is unable to curse us if we are in the right!
Chapter 25:1 to 36:13 prepares for invasion, a bit like the first hours of the John Wayne movie Longest Day about D-Day and the assignments of each group to a particular objective. The offerings have less to do with charity than distributive justice. Male patriarchy is qualified by the daughters of Zelophehad (c.27), women’s competence to conduct business (c.30) and the marriage of female heirs (c.36). We made little progress on that until the 20th century.
This is more than military and legal history – tales of militancy express more than violence, and recitations of rules convey more than authority trips. Learning to talk about us rather than me, and about conflicts and their resolution, are necessary source material for any civil society, forgotten at our peril.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Leviticus: Challenging Consumers, Scientists, and Regulators
#4 Easter Day: Wednesday, March 26
Leviticus:
Challenging Consumers,
scientists, and regulators
Leviticus is full of stuff people claim to hate – the ritual purity code, and the misogynist and homophobic verses people love to quote. However, it’s also the source of ‘love your neighbour’ and secures the challenge of sabbatical and jubilee to our driven culture. Maybe heretics like us should browse this book!
Nobody proposes we literally obey these rules - even the most orthodox agree that many of the rules are suspended since the destruction of the 2nd temple in 70CE, until another temple is built, or God reigns in power. However, generations of midrash and Talmud teach us how to learn from the patterns of these laws, to critique our own cultural norms.
I suggest browsing Leviticus in 3 portions, relating the portions to familiar contemporary cults: consumerism, scientism, and proceduralism. This may simply be an argument for posterity, more intelligible to our children than it is in our own generation – but I invite you to try it on for size.
‘Leviticus’ names a purity code of Levites. Who are our priests? How do we organize ourselves and our stuff to seek civil order? For my money, we need to consider economists, scientists, and lawyers as our Levitical priests. We need to be as critical of their claims to power as we are of the claims of the originals here.
‘Leviticus’ names a purity code of Levites. Who are our priests? How do we organize ourselves and our stuff to seek civil order? For my money, we need to consider economists, scientists, and lawyers as our Levitical priests. We need to be as critical of their claims to power as we are of the claims of the originals here.
Sacrifice is a kind of consumption, c.1-11. Rules of sacrifice sort the distribution of material goods among deity, priesthood, and laity. In our priesthood of economists, managerial and political elites, the talk of ‘productivity’ raises issues of distributive justice amog elites and masses, pratrican and plebeians, proletariat, or better.
Purification is like scientific process, c.11-16. Rules of kasruth respond to ‘unclean’ breaches of our skin and health, matters of bleed and phlegm nad discharges – medicalized an dassociaed with public health neo, the scientists demand our blind trust in the face of our fears. These texts open with consumption, and end with scapegoats.
Sanctification is like our regulation, c.17-26. These are rules of right relation with each other, and with God. There are moral imperatives, but not all in the ‘if-then’ frm of casuistry. This stuff ends with sabbath, sabbatical and jubilee, each one a more fundamental challenge to any claim of worth or entitlement, with a ‘rule of law’.
Consumerism begs the issue of ‘the good’, appealing to ‘the market’ to bear the weight. Science claims too much for its ‘truth’, as if facts could be divorced from values. Legal procedures promise more than they deliver - neither rules, nor natural, nor just in their proceduralism. What if Leviticus offers countercultural alternatives?
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Exodus: Wrecking & Remaking Normal
#3 Easter Day:
Tuesday, March 25
Exodus: Wrecking and Remaking Normal
The sequel to Genesis is mostly Moses’ story: beginning with the affirmation that ‘there arose a king in Egypt who did not know Joseph’, that is a ruler without a memory. Slavery comes from amnesia in this story, as Pharaoh forgets how Joseph served and saved Egypt in famine time.
Legendary tales of Moses open chapters 1-10: surviving genocide as adopted child of Pharaoh’s daughter, he’s a hot-headed youth who kills a foreman and becomes a fugitive. God’s burning bush calls Moses to lead a people, with miraculous powers and Aaron as mouthpiece, and from slavery Moses demands Pharaoh ‘let my people go’, amplified by 9 plagues up to the end of chapter 10.
Passover tales get us out of Egypt in c. 11-19: the 10th plague is death of the first-born, save for those with blood on their doorposts, then flight through the parted Red Sea mires Egypt’s armies, and pillar of fire and cloud lead and rearguard the refugees, or ‘hapiru’. Miriam sings triumph songs, God provides water and manna and quails, and the people reach Mount Sinai in Arabia.
God gives Moses a law on Mount Sinai c.20-31: the 10 commandments begin a much bigger message on the mountain, about general moral and social order matters, including Sabbath, sabbaticals, festivals, and promises of land, with ritual celebrations. Aaron and 70 elders wait halfway for more, mostly cultic rules about tabernacle, altars, and priesthood. If your eyes are glazing over, wait till these laws are repeated!
Implementation of the Torah is difficult c 32-40: Moses finds that folks made a Golden Calf while waiting for his report from Sinai. Plague and atonement follow, as they usually do, eh? Moses gets another glimpse of God, but just God’s backside in the cleft of a rock, and new tablets to replace what he broke. Building a tabernacle for the road proves a challenge of atonement to move on.
Exodus is about ‘wrecking normal’ first: Bruce Cockburn sings ‘the trouble with normal is it always gets worse’, and Pharaoh forgets Joseph, and Moses messes up, and people whine and complain, and then build a golden calf in the desert which has to be wrecked in turn. We keep building our towers, and rebuilding, and trying again – but we never get started without wrecking normal first.
Exodus is also about rebuilding normal: adolescent righteous rebellion just makes us fugitives and desert exiles. Then we need to make a new normal, reorganizing ourselves like Jethro or Aaron and their elders, or restating our rules like Torah tables made, smashed, and remade. Moral laws are only part of the story – ritual behaviours take up more space than ethical ones in Exodus.
What’s your slavery? What’s our desert like? Metaphors for wrecking and rebuilding normal can be of as much use to us as Genesis’ narratives of meaning, purpose, and human nature and destiny. These are the ‘how’ questions, of learning good judgment from experience, which comes from bad judgment. Exodus gives us stories to share.
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Monday, March 24, 2008
E Day 2: Genesis: Generations
#2 Easter Day:
Monday, March 24
Genesis: Generations
Go ahead, open a bible at its beginning to read in Genesis: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day…. ”
Put your finger in the spot, flip ahead to the end of Deuteronomy: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land., and for all the mighty deeds and the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel”
From creation to the death of Moses in Moab, Torah tells stories of before here and now and us, all we need to know about here and now and us. Everything else is commentary and elaboration – belatedness, echoes of what God said at creation an to Moses at Sinai. We just have to read the words, and read between the lines, ‘white fire’ between black fire, oral torah and haggadah stories developing the basic halakah laws. That’s Torah.
Take time to browse Torah this Easter Week – God knows you won’t read it all – but you can begin just as God began from chaos, to find order or light. There are said to be 613 laws in Torah, but when a student flinches at it, a rabbi says ‘start with one’. Thomas Carlyle said ‘do the duty that lies next nearest unto you – and your next duty will become clearer to you’. Try to get started this week.
Each weekday, browse 1 of 5 ‘books of Moses’: Genesis (generations or ‘toledot’), Exodus (wrecking and remaking normal), Leviticus (according to Hoyle), Numbers (anecdotal archives), and Deuteronomy (rewriting the rules).
Saturday we’ll consider the ‘voices’ present throughout all 5 books: Jahwist (calling God Yahweh), Elohist (calling God Elohim), Deuteronomist (justifying the exile and return), and Priestly (imposing hierarchy and order on it all).
Don’t get bogged down in the 'begatitudes' – generations of sincere readers have begun strongly in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, only to lose their pace in the rest of that book, or begun with Moses’ early days, only to get lost in the desert – let alone the endless ritual laws in Leviticus, or census lists in Numbers, or apparent repetition in Deuteronomy.
Remember, heretics like us browse bibles – we don’t need to add to the ranks of the obsessive religious readers of scripture. You read as you are, and become ever more yourself as your read more.
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Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter Day: Opening a Bible at the Beginning
#1 Easter Day:
Sunday, March 23
Torah:
Creation to the Edge of Promise
Go ahead, open a bible at its beginning to read in Genesis: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day…. ”
Put your finger in the spot, flip ahead to the end of Deuteronomy: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land., and for all the mighty deeds and the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel”
From creation to the death of Moses in Moab, Torah tells stories of before here and now and us, all we need to know about here and now and us. Everything else is commentary and elaboration – belatedness, echoes of what God said at creation an to Moses at Sinai. We just have to read the words, and read between the lines, ‘white fire’ between black fire, oral torah and haggadah stories developing the basic halakah laws. That’s Torah.
Take time to browse Torah this Easter Week – God knows you won’t read it all – but you can begin just as God began from chaos, to find order or light. There are said to be 613 laws in Torah, but when a student flinches at it, a rabbi says ‘start with one’. Thomas Carlyle said ‘do the duty that lies next nearest unto you – and your next duty will become clearer to you’. Try to get started this week.
Each weekday, browse 1 of 5 ‘books of Moses’: Genesis (generations or ‘toledot’), Exodus (wrecking and remaking normal), Leviticus (according to Hoyle), Numbers (anecdotal archives), and Deuteronomy (rewriting the rules).
Saturday we’ll consider the ‘voices’ present throughout all 5 books: Jahwist (calling God Yahweh), Elohist (calling God Elohim), Deuteronomist (justifying the exile and return), and Priestly (imposing hierarchy and order on it all).
Don’t get bogged down in the begatitudes – generations of sincere readers have begun strongly in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, only to lose their pace in the rest of that book, or begun with Moses’ early days, only to get lost in the desert – let alone the endless ritual laws in Leviticus, or census lists in Numbers, or apparent repetition in Deuteronomy.
Remember, heretics like us browsing bibles – we don’t need to add to the ranks of the obsessive religious readers of scripture. You read as you are, and become ever more yourself as your read more.
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Torah: Creation to the Edge of Promise - Introduction
Torah:
Creation to the Edge of Promise
Heretics Browsing Bibles -
Easter Season 2008 -
notes at www.hereticslikeus.com
The first 5 books of the bible are the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in our bible, the sacred scrolls of Moses in any synagogue, and the opening books of the Jewish bible ‘Tanakh’. These books have a role and weight in the Hebrew bible analogous to that of the gospels in the Christian scriptures to follow.
Look at some maps today, of the Middle East between Egypt and Arabia on the left below the Mediterranean, and Iraq’s Tigris-Euphrates on the right below the Black Sea, and above the gulf. Back off, and see the land poised between Africa, Europe, Asia, and South Asia. Imagine the empires that have crossed this frontier in turn.
Look at some timelines today, of human history that flow from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, or ancient Greece and Rome – through this bottleneck of the Axial Age into our Common Era. Imagine the ebb and flow of cultures and empires over time, passing through that land bridge of our Holy Land – about what time, for what time, was Torah written?
Oriented in time and space, we may read Torah: which begins with prehistory creation myths, builds legends and epics of people and places, and concludes on the brink of our own space-time continuum in geography and recorded history. Expect less factual correlation than allusive truths – we don’t care if this is what actually happened!
Imagine telling stories of meaning and purpose, about human nature and destiny, that make sense of life and death to children’s children. Tell stories around campfires in the desert as nomads, or as shepherds and farmers in settled lands, or as urban cosmopolitans, as people among other peoples. What’s worth teaching your children’s children?
Ancient stories were told, retold, spun or edited to tell the same truths in different times and places. This edition of Torah comes from about 500 years before Jesus, as the 2nd Temple was built, telling of the people in the land, the 1st temple of 1000 years before Jesus. The voices of tradition sing harmony and countermelodies, for those with ears to hear.
Torah:
Creation to the Edge of Promise
#2 Easter Day: Monday, March 24
Genesis:
Generations
#3 Easter Day: Tuesday, March 25
Exodus:
Wrecking and Remaking Normal
#4 Easter Day: Wednesday, March 26
Leviticus:
Challenging consumers, scientists, and regulators
#5 Easter Day: Thursday March 27
Numbers:
Anecdotal Archives
#6 Easter Day: Friday March 28
Deuteronomy:
Rewriting the Rules
#7 Easter Day: Saturday March 29
JEDP:
Spin Doctors
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Heretics Browsing Bibles: Introductions
Heretics Browsing Bibles
Easter Season 2008 -
notes at www.hereticslikeus.com
Through Lent 2008, Heretics Like Us daily blogged stories of early church leaders and ideas, weekly changing centuries of the beginning of the Common Era, a week at a time. It was a long confession of sin and confession of faith, admitting the particular and peculiar perspectives of one clergy from a progressive liberal context.
People appear to be reading along with me – according to ‘hits’ on the blog, and hard copies printed and distributed from our local church. There appear to be enough heretics like us to keep up a virtual community of discourse, at least through the ‘great 50 days’ of Easter season 2008, Easter Day on March 23 to Pentecost on May 11.
Heretics Browsing Bibles canvasses scripture, inviting you to breeze through ‘the book we trust and dust’, the ‘pliable biable’ of glib liberals. People tell me they’ve tried to read it, but got stuck early on in the ‘begatitudes’. Others claim to have read the whole thing several times, or to know others who know it all backwards. I haven’t, and don’t.
Start each week with an introduction to a chunk of the book, reading from front to back. Take some time during the week to flip through some pages in that part of the collection, or ‘canon’ with heretics like us, not sure we ‘buy’ the whole thing, but willing to shop, or browse, dilettantes and consumers used to choice, and glad for privacy for this fishing trip.
Torah: Creation to the Edge of Promise
Easter Week 2: March 30 to April 5
Histories: Nations, Peoples, Lands
Easter Week 3: April 6 to 12
Psalms: Soundtracks & Greatest Hits
Easter Week 4: April 13 to 19
Wisdom: Writings from Mom to MBA
Easter Week 5: April 20 to 26
Prophets: Voices to be Reckoned With
Easter Week 6: April 27 to May 3
Gospels: Jesus Lives, Dies, and So What?
Easter 7: May 4 to 10
Church Stories: After Jesus, then What?
Pentecost: May 11
Apocalyptic Revelations…
You’ll need a bible – or better, a stack of bibles - to read along with this season’s blog. Most heretics like us can find one or more of these books in our homes or hotel rooms, where the Gideons invite us to ‘steal this book’, as Abby Hoffman would say. Before we rush off, collect your copies.
A bible is a collection of books bound together. Imagine a shelf of different kinds of books, that we’re going to pile in 7 stacks. Your ‘bible’ may only have ‘New Testament and Psalms. It may include or exclude a stack called ‘apocrypha’. It may add reading helps at the beginning or end.
Bibles with thin paper, small print, gold edges, and King James’ Authorized language from 1611, may not be perfect for this browsing. Try to add a paperback or bigger print or newer translation version, for this comparison shopping exercise. Don’t spend a lot of money – you don’t have to!
If you read online, you’ll find bibles there too – there is a proliferation of websites offering different translations. Like the hard copies, you’ll find some easier to read, and lots of explanatory material like this blog – if you can keep a healthy skepticism, which is easy for heretics like us.
Choosing Translations
The bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, translated into most languages of the world over the past 2 to 3 millennia. If you read languages other than English, you will enjoy tracking copies in those language as we go along. In English, there are a number of readily available translations:
• King James (Authorized Version) KJV 1611 – King James (who was no ‘Saint James’!) got scholars in teams at Cambrige and Oxford to get him an English copy for his English church, breaking away from a Roman church with a Latin bible. Great poetry, basic to English diction and literature – grab a copy (and read Nicholson’s story of the making of the book, God’s Secretaries)
• Revised Standard RSV 1951 was a modern effort by 20th century Protestant churches, interrupted by wars, to update the KJV with good scholarship and better sources – further updated for gender inclusivity and other improvements in 1991
• Jerusalem Bible JB is the Catholic modern bible, from the French Douay version, used widely in Roman Catholic churches, with wide currency and good options
• Good News GNB or Today’s English TEV or Contemporary English CEV come from 1960’s efforts of the Bible Societies to make accessible readable versions for people of more limited literacy
• New International NIV bibles are American evangelical efforts, with credible scholarship justifying different translation choices than the other translators above.
• Paraphrases or vernacular options multiply since New English, Moffatt, J.B.Phillips led to The Way, Living Bible, The Message and others – enjoy comparing them all!
Translations make choicesT, implicit and explicit, so it helps to imagine who was working for whom when they made your translation, and what biases they may have. Bibles with extensive footnotes, amplifications, commentary, introductions or essays will reveal the interpretive tendencies more clearly. Don’t take any of us too seriously – listen to us all!
The Book & The Word
People say that ‘the bible is the word of God’. That means something about the authority and weight of this writing compared to other books. Fundamentalists claim that God wrote scripture, verbally inspiring writers to give us an infallible guide to life and faith.
My denomination claims the word is in the book and that God can speak through the book, but denies the equivalence of ‘Word’ and ‘Book’. We speak of ‘plenary inspiration’ of each step of writing and reading and hearing, as people express their experience of God – our accounts of God-stuff.
Heretics like us expect good stuff and god stuff to be revealed in creation, in history and people, not exclusively owned by anybody. Anything is admissible, but weight is given to tradition, reason, religious experience, and scripture. We also acknowledge how our subjective readings vary.
Hermeneutics and semiotics study meaning and interpretation, in academic disciplines developed beyond the reading of religious writings. How does language work? Northrop Frye, a United Church minister and a heretic like us, called this bible book The Great Code but literature Secular Scripture.
Who wrote a text when, where, to whom – those questions of ‘exegesis’ presumed to imagine what a writer once intended, before imagining what that author would say now, here, to us. Post-modernist theories privilege the readers’ take on a text. Who is the subject and what is the object of any word?
I’m still more Marxist materialist than Freudian or Jungian psychologist. My bible comes from public discourse and speech acts, and resonates well in open applications to community context. Those of us most parochial are, in a sense, most cosmopolitan in our appreciation of scripture.
Tread gracefully into this browsing with me – remember William Blake’s warning:
While mine has a snub nose like unto mine,
Both read our bibles day and night
But you read black, while I read white!
What word do you have for our hearts, O God –
Give us ears to hear – and voices to echo in turn.
Amen – so be it.
Read more...
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Celtic & Christian: Barbarians 'R' Us
Day 40 of 40:
Easter Eve
Saturday March 22:
Celtic & Christian
Barbarians ‘R’ Us
Patrick ended last week, & belongs here. The 6th century, the 500s, is tribal and barbarian in focus. The old faith is degenerate and defensive, the new versions more direct, but hardly naïve or stupid. Northern European barbarians like us reoccupied the faith and led the organization in the west, while in the east, Islam rose and began a millenium of dominance from the Pyrenees through Africa and into Asia.
Anathemas of Council of Constantinople nearly parody our usual pejorative use of the term ‘heretic’ – exhorting folks to stay away from people unlike them.
Remember the ‘heretics like us’ of the 500s, the 6th century, as the barbarians converted, or did their own converting:
• Clovis & Clothiled
• Boethius
• Justinian
• Gregory the Great
• Recared
• Benedict
My tribe believes
your tribe should be avoided.
What if the king listened to the queen?
Is there consolation
between degenerates
and barbarians?
Bounce in a bear market,
or last gasp of another last Roman?
What’s so Great about Gregory?
Rounding out a century of barbarian conversion, who converts whom?
Whose rule will organize people and stuff
to best effect?
It’s time for Easter, and the end of Lent. If you’ve been provoked or stimulated to think or to read on, I’m going to stop this exercise and begin another, not with a bang, but a whimper.
The Great 50 Days of Easter, Easter Day to Pentecost (March 23 to May 11) I will be blogging daily on ‘Heretics Like Us Browsing Bibles’.
Try it with me!
Read more...
Friday, March 21, 2008
Orthodox & Christian: Byzantine Solutions
Day 39 of 40:
Good Friday March 21:
Orthodox & Christian
Byzantine solutions
The 5th century breaks east and west: Jerome and Augustine, the great doctors of the western church, wrote great summaries just as the barbarians we gathering at the gates to sack the empire that had defined the world and the faith. The testiness between Alexandria and Antioch, between doing and being, set the fault lines for a later break. The empire divided east and west as context for church. Constantinople became the imperial capital, not Rome.
The Orthodox or Byzantine churches, are rooted in this ancient realignment, and the different relationship that tradition develops in relation to the power of secular rulers. Like the Coptic traditions, they can claim deeper roots in continuity than our western Roman Catholic and Protestant forms of the faith. They also survived the brunt of the rise of Islam in the coming centuries, while the western church became “barbarians ‘R’ us”, as I’ll remind you tomorrow.
The Athanasian Creed, reflecting the Chacedonian council, began the week. Extensive and exhaustive expression of the faith, with threats and promises to those who bought or rejected the prose affirmations, probably turned most of you away – heretics that you are.
Remember the ‘heretics like us’ of the 400’s, the 5th century, an empire split east and west, with pressure on all sides:
• Jerome
• Augustine
• Pelagius
• Nestorius
• Cyril of Alexandria
• Patrick
Can you strengthen a weak chain?
What’s your confession,
And your city of God?
What’s your righteousness
And your responsibilities
Mother of God,
What’s the big deal?
I hear you,
But I’m not listening!
How did the Irish save civilization?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Roman & Christian: Constantine's conversion
Day 38 of 40:
Thursday March 20:
Roman & Christian
Constantine’s conversion & Christendom
It's Maundy Thursday -
Maundy comes from 'maundere' -
Latin for 'command' -
Jesus commanded us to wash each other's feet....
Constantinian Christianity just commands generally!
Constantine wanted to be emperor – starting as a usurper in Britain, he fought his way across Europe, increasingly plausible as a candidate for power. The legendary tale of his dream of a cross leading him into battle is associated with this form of cross. The chi and rho, the first two Greek letters in Christ, were painted on shields, and the army prevailed. Ever since, Christian crosses and images are associated with power and violence and warfare.
Christianity as the religion of the state also called Christendom, or Constantinian Christianity, changed the stakes in ‘heresy’. It’s said to be nearly over now – but we still enjoy a lot of privilege and power in our context – the ’Lord’s Prayer’ opens the Ontario Legislature every day!
The Nicene Creed opened this week – reflecting the brokered convention of leaders, the first church council, which endorsed it, as fine-tuned in subsequent councils. Did the addition of more words to talk about Christology and Trinity help you?
Remember the ‘heretics like us’ of the 300’s, the 4th century, dealing with power and faith, now that more was at stake in material and political terms. The ‘orthodox’, aka the heretics whom the state prefers, can coerce others with carrots and sticks.:
• Constantine
• Arius & the Arians
• Apollinarus
• Athanasius
• John Chrysostom
• Pneumatomachi
How long is your party line?
Is normative necessarily normal?
What would Jesus do –
And why don’t you?
What’s the fundamental element
of being human for you:
Heart, mind, or soul?
It doesn’t make
one iota of difference to me –
Does it?
Are all poets and preachers
bad at politics?
What about the Spirit
In this economy of
Jesus and the Trinity?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Martyred & Christian: persecuted, not perfected
Day 37 of 40:
Wednesday March 19:
Martyred & Christian
Persecuted, not perfected
Persecution shaped this century's context (the 200’s) and content. Severus, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian and Maximian were emperors with axes to grind, and Christians paid with their lives, or saved themselves and faced the purists and their consciences. Some of the issues had to do with a purer fellowship of believers and leaders – other issues had to do with Jesus’ humanity and divinity, and our representation of both.
Was Jesus a martyr? Should we be? How do we treat those less heroic in their piety and righteousness – ironically, martyrs end up persecuting the cowards!
The faith is restated in Greek and Latin diction, culture and philosophical constructs from its Semitic origins, however they had been expressed in marketplace Greek, ‘koine’ language. Now, categorical issues of Christology and trinity are being named – how human was Jesus, and how divine is Christ, and what does that mean for me, especially in the face of death?
Christ in me, or Christ for me, how is my ultimate situation changed by Jesus’ life, or death, or resurrection? How is the one God re-presented to humans, and how can humans re-present God to each other?
Do you remember ‘heretics like us’ from this 3rd century of the common era? Notice that they are still mostly African, with a couple from Asia Minor:
• Donatus
• Cyprian of Carthage
• Dionysius v Dionysius
• Sabellius
• Paul of Samasota
• Anthony the Hermit
The Apostle’s Creed affirmation began the week, with a fairly familiar summary of the faith, taking sides more on the issues of Jesus’ humanity and divinity than on the other issues of this age. How does it sound to you now, after a few weeks of longer and more laboured Trinitarian efforts?
How did 3 questions
become a dozen answers?
Do we good people
really have to put up with
backsliding clergy?
If there’s no salvation outside the church, make a revolving door!
What do our fights look like
from the outside?
If God is one,
then do we just see different faces?
If God is one,
how does the adoption of Jesus work?
If we just go off alone to be holy,
whose feet shall we wash?
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Coptis & Christian: African Original
Day 36 of 40:
Tuesday March 18:
Coptic & Christian
African originals
Africa and Egypt are wombs of our faith, along with Syrian and Turkish Asia Minor, as much as what we call the ‘Holy Land’. Stories of the early centuries are mostly located in Africa and Asia, not Europe. Coptic churches today trace a heritage from these roots with more continuity than ours. Look around you in our city, and see how many Coptic churches, usually associated with particular ethnic groups and national origins, are our unknown neighbours.
‘The Boys and the Book’ heretics like us were selected to illustrate Elaine Pagels’ thesis in The Gnostic Gospels that the 2nd century saw the ascendancy of bishops, and a canon of writings, and repression of local autonomy, ongoing revelation, and not coincidentally, suppression of women.
The affirmation that began the week was Hippolytus’ 3 questions, a baptism test of the early church in which a person seeking baptism needed to say ‘yes’ to propositions asserted by a leader. Re-view those questions, and see of you read them differently at the end of this Lent season than you did at the beginning.
Sure, persecution early in the century justified some of the militaristic discipline, and the next century would bring more eternal imperial oppression – but much of the story of this century was about some heretics like us winning, and other heretics losing. Did you recognize any of them, or can you flip through the days of that week and recall your favorites?
• Ignatius
• Montanus
• Marcion
• Iranaeus
• Tertullian
• Origen
• Hippolytus
Can you say ‘I believe’?
Can I get an ‘Amen’?
Did Jesus really suffer,
and will I?
If the Spirit is in me,
then you’re not the boss of me!
Is the God of law
not the God of grace?
How big is this club,
and how complicated is the test to get in?
Sophistication is fine, but what about
when push comes to shove?
What’s really real,
and what’s ideal,
in this matrix of ours?
Read more...
Monday, March 17, 2008
Jewish & Christian: Siblings from the same roots
Day 35 of 40:
Monday March 17:
Jewish & Christian
Siblings from the same root
Jesus was a Jew of the 2nd temple period and not a Christian who believed in himself. The destruction of the temple in 70CE ruins not just a building, but religious construction which defined groups in relation to Torah, land, nation, king, oral law, and temple: Pharisees, Saduccees, Essenes, and Samaritans all had to be redefined after 70.
It is anachronistic to distinguish cleanly between ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ in this first century of the common era. Like today, there was more difference within groups than between groups. Synagogue or rabbinic Judaism was being construed in Javneh, and Talmud was being written. Paul, Peter, and others were inventing or negotiating an emergent Christianity.
‘Axial Age Artists’ introduced in context some of the original ‘heretics like us’: Paul, the writer of Luke/Acts, evangelists of the ‘lost gospels’ and ours, apocalypticists, legalists, and charistmatics. Rereading these voices in our post-christendom context, we hear them as few have heard them for millennia, as ‘heretics like us’.
Rather than rebels in stable orthodoxy, those writing midrash collected in Talmud, and those writing letters or gospels later canonized as Christian scriptures, are equally reworking the same tradition into what would later emerge as two great religions, like ‘twins separated at birth’.
Rather than rebels against authority, perhaps our own roles should be recast in turn as those conserving and transforming our heritage of faith into what may emerge as post-modern equal movements, as different from our modern traditions as from each other, but building legitimacy, beyond adolescent apoplexy against patriarchy.
Sages and apostles, contemporaries and rivals, had harsh words for each other, pronouncing maledictions and anathemas under the shadow of an empire which made no pretence to be faithful or even tolerant toward the faith traditions. They also had great words, shared words, for their communities seeking meaning and purpose, and ways to belong, believe and behave.
Who do you say that I am?
Are we united (by what)
or untied (from what) ?
Can you choose and change
who you are, and whose you are?
What will end, and what will last
in our legacy?
Which voices do you tune in,
and which do you tune out?
How big is ‘my story’, and ‘our story’,
in ‘God’s story’?
How do you balance
authenticity & sincerity,
freedom & order?
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Palm / Passion Sunday: belonging, behaving, believing...
Sunday March 16:
Palm / Passion Sunday
belonging,
behaving,
believing…
What’s a heretic? Somebody who believes the ‘wrong’ things? That’s me! Somebody who’s not blindly obedient? That’s me, too! I opened this Lenten reflection by claiming a confession of faith, in a denomination without orthodoxy: heretics like us.
We don’t apply the ‘heretic’ to people of other faiths or of no faith – just to people who claim our faith tradition. People do their belonging, behaving, or believing differently. It’s not a heresy for us if they don’t claim our name or identity, and change it.
We do associate ‘heretic’ with victims of abuse of power inflicted by the orthodox powers that be against those who belong, behave, or believe in ways that leave them marginal or minorities. God forbid that we should continue such suppression.
‘Heretics Like Us’ is a long confession: it’s a confession of faith – and one of sin. I’m claiming my particularity, my mortality, by reflecting on others with whom I identify or from whom I distinguish myself entirely. Take care what you oppose, for it shapes you in reaction – find what you can affirm!
We live amid penultimate choice betwixt good and better, or bad and worse, rarely the easy ones betwixt good and bad. We try to express things more truly, and less falsely, and seek aesthetic experiences of greater beauty, again penultimate choices anticipating or echoing some ultimates. But if we want clean choices, we’re not choosing for this world.
Which of 6 Sunday affirmations can you remember, let alone affirm? Re-view them:
Transfiguration: ‘Who do you say that I am’
Lent 1: Hippolytus’ 3 Questions
Lent 2: Apostles’ Creed
Lent 3: Nicene Creeds
Lent 4: Athanasian Creed
Lent 5: Anathemas of Constantinople
Which of 6 centuries of context can you identify with most readily? Re-view them:
1st century: Jesus’ century: Axial Age Artists
2nd century: 100’s: the Boys & the Book
3rd century: 200’s: Cruder Creeds
4th century: 300’s: Deliberation & Deception
5th century: 400’s: Education & Elaboration
6th century: 500’s: Fussing with Filioque
Which of the heretics seemed familiar – similar to you in their affirmation or context, or reminiscent of our contemporaries? I’ve tried to suggest some of those who seemed ‘heretics like us’, as thumbnail sketches to guide your own googling, to find patterns of their belonging, behaving and believing – and ours.
This Holy Week, re-view the last 6 weeks, and imagine with me how each century, with its characteristic affirmation and heresies, are reflected in another faith group, of siblings and cousins of ‘heretics like us’. Those who have been waiting for answers or resolutions in some comprehensive synthesis will be disappointed. Those who are re-enchanting their universe will be OK.
Read more...
Introducing Holy Week
7th Century of Common Era
The 600’s
The Price of Pettiness
The life and death of Mohamed and the rise of Islam defined this next century. Was it crude Christian ignorant bullying or orthodox byzantine political dogmatics, our barbarism or our decadence, that contributed more to the rapid collapse of Christianity in the face of the alternative offered by Islam?
Through Holy Week, try to re-view Lent, and to anticipate Easter. Palm/Passion Sunday, recap the affirmations of the last 6 Sundays, and the themes of the last 6 weeks. Then for the rest of the week, remember the heretics of each week, orienting them to a continuing related religious community and tradition.
I’m not just a tour guide, but a resident within a particular tradition and community of faith: heretics like us. So are you – known by the company you keep. You could be anything, starting out, but in the end, you will be something – or nothing.
Supercessionist stories replace bad old religious regimes with brave new ones. Progressive modern folks asserting evolutionary models of survival of the fittest often adopt supercessionism in religion: Christians supercede Jews, then ‘we’ supercede Copts, martyrs, Romans, Orthodox, Celts – 'they' are old-fashioned, or passé, but 'we' are better, we say.
That disrespect for others’ obsolescence comes back to haunt us as we in turn are superceded by Muslims, Mormons, Baha’I or New Age movements claiming to offer ‘new, improved’ options that cover all we do, resolving problems and adding benefits. Secularism makes the same claim that we can now be above religion, or beyond it.
‘Heretics like us’ affirms my particularity among other particularities, without claiming to supercede them. The old image of the blind men and the elephant works this way: it’s like a wall, like a tree, like a rope, or a hose, and it can dump stink on you- and each report is true! What’s your heresy?
Belonging, behaving, believing…
Day 35 of 40: Monday March 17: Jewish & Christian
Siblings sharing roots…
Day 36 of 40: Tuesday March 18: Coptic & Christian
African originals
Day 37 of 40: Wednesday March 19: Martyred & Christian
Persecuted, not perfected
Day 38 of 40: Thursday March 20: Roman & Christian
Constantine’s conversion and Christendom
Day 39 of 40: Friday March 21: Orthodox & Christian
Byzantine solutions
Day 40 of 40: Easter Eve Saturday March 22: Celtic & Christian
Barbarians ‘R’ Us
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Benedict: Whose rule?
Day 34 of 40:
Saturday March 15:
Benedict
Whose rule will organize
people and stuff
to best effect?
Benedict belongs sooner in this week – but I’ve tried to place monastics on the weekends. Benedict is the ultimate, the reformer of monastic life with a Rule that forms our vision of religious orders in medieval life.
Benedict was born about 480CE, became a hermit but drew so many fans he had to take over a local monastery. By 529CE, he founded Monte Cassino monastery, and wrote a Rule to reorganize monasticism from its roots with Anthony. He was no recluse, and died in 547CE negotiating truces with the Visigoths.
Benedictine monastic organization gave abbots rule of self-contained communities of work and prayer: ‘Idleness is the enemy of the soul.’ This monastic reform carried monasticism through feudalism with enormous economic success, moderation, and stability.
Benedictine monasticism contrasts with the more mystic Celtic Irish movement, and with the continuing tendencies to extreme asceticism and hermit-like withdrawal in earlier forms of monasticism. Benedictines ran on a clock, with prayer and work scheduled throughout 24 hours, and lectionaries scheduling bible reading daily, weekly, and in annual and triennial cycles. The balance of constructive labour with worship and reflection generated significant economic capital.
If the nation-states are yielding to global patterns that seem feudal and fragmented, what will the religious response be? Choices to put assets into charitable trusts resisting the claims of governments are made by Bill Gates and other billionaires, as a flip side to their corporate interests inflating their private interests beyond the control of the same governments. They keep control, by naming beneficiaries. This is hardly a new Benedictine Rule!
Our ‘third sector’, complementary to the private sector and public sector, is being transformed. The distribution of control, benefit, and burden is still contentious – moral outrage follows when trusts pay to much ‘overhead’ to fundraisers or managers and people like national church staff confuse their contextual communities with managers and bureaucrats in private or public sectors. We need a Benedict!
Whose rule will you follow:
Private profit?
Public service?
Charitable benefit?
Read more...
Friday, March 14, 2008
Recared: who converts whom?
Day 33 of 40:
Friday March 14:
Recared
Rounding out a century
of Barbarian conversions…
who converts whom?
The Visigoths were Arian barbarians, based in the Iberian peninsula. They had expanded as far as the Balkans in the 5th century, and in these days, still held much of what we would call the south of France. For Recared to convert to Trinitarian faith was as significant for Spain as was Clovis’ earlier conversion for France. He didn’t do it for Gregory, but with Gregory – for his own reasons and his own people.
Filioque was Recared’s change to Nicene creed faith. The original creed said that the Holy Spirit ‘proceeded from the Father’. Recared insisted that the creed change to ‘proceeded from the Father and the Son’. He wanted to oppose Arians who demoted Jesus to demi-god heroic status, like barbarian animist visions of a world ruled by enchanted semi-divine figures. However, his solution seemed to demote the Spirit.
Filioque in the 500’s, like iota in the 400’s seems esoteric and arcane in our time. Anglicans in the 1980’s agreed to abandon the filioque clause, in a spirit of ecumenical reunion with the east. Who in our denomination notices, or understood, or took a side? In our barbaric pride, we thought we were too smart for either side. None of us is as astute as Recared.
Some say that Recared was anti-Semitic. Jews had lived in Iberia for centuries, and had enjoyed some freedom in the culture of competing gods. As Recared consolidated one Trinitarian faith, Spanish Jews were excluded from the new consensus. They would do better under Islam in the coming centuries. But Recared was not as anti-Semitic as Gregory. Like his filioque position, he opposed one sin, risking another – like any heretic, like us.
The Spanish Inquisition comes later – much later, no easier to tie to Recared than the reformation wars of religion can be pinned on Clovis. Heresy is like that – starting with sincere choices, a choice between good and better, bad and worse, not always tied to power and violence. If you’re looking for clean choices, you’re not choosing for this world, but some other one.
Who converts whom?
Dialogue changes both sides –
So does adversarial opposition –
Engagement transforms –
Disengagement stifles –
The opposite of love is not hate –
The opposite of love is indifference.
Give me more barbarians like Recared!
Read more...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Gregory the Great: What's so great about Gregory?
Day 32 of 40:
Thursday March 13:
Gregory the Great
What’s so great about Gregory?
Patron saint of choirboys and singers, Gregory probably didn’t invent Gregorian chants – but the image suggests Byzantine influence and western attitutude. He was Benedict’s biographer (see Saturday) and the last of the ‘Doctors’ of the western church after Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome.
Senator’s son, Governor of Rome at 30, Gregory had a midlife crisis, tried the monastery, but soon returned to active public life, and ended his life and century as Pope Gregory, the Great.
Organization and diplomacy, not ideas, made Gregory great. He was stronger than the emperors of declining Rome, and challenged the power of the Patriarch of Constantinople in the east/west turf wars. Gregory regained authority in Spain and France, and sent missionaries of England.
Realigning barbarian allegiance to Rome from their Arian alliances shaped medieval Europe. Gregory say Franks, Lombards and Visigoths aligning with Rome in religion, if not subservient politically. Gregory asserted the primacy of the Roman see, establishing papal power for the future.
Not only a capella chants, but purgatory doctrine are associated with Gregory. There we’ve got the soundtrack for the age which followed him, and the disciplinary threat which would motivate obedience, and ultimately motivate reformation of his order.
Gregory won in the west, in his lifetime, and left a legacy for ages to follow. Ironically, when he was 30, Mohamed was born, the beginning of a new age that would sweep over the east, and Africa, and into the same Iberian peninsula Gregory had coaxed into Trinitarian Roman orbit.
What’s so great about Gregory?
What’s the value of papal order?
What’s the cost of that construction?
Read more...
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Justinian: Bounce in a Bear Market?
Day 31 of 40:
Wednesday March 12:
Justinian
Bounce in a bear market,
or last gasp of another last Roman?
Justinian was a successful emperor – compared with others of declining empire. He cut a deal with the Sassanids, Persians pushing at the east, which freed up energy to recover the west: Italy from Ostrogoths, Spain from Visigoths, Africa from Vandals. Not a bad record for reversing decline, or as traders call it, ‘a bounce in a bear market’.
Justinian is not remembered for his wife, a dancer or ‘courtesan’ 20 years his junior whom he picked up at a circus performance – but for a legal code, Corpus Juris Civilum which is the basis for civil law in Europe and in the province of Quebec. He didn’t write it, or anything else – he was a politician, good at making deals, not on theories.
Justinian’s attempt to negotiate truces extended to theology, and he backed a proposal called ‘Three Chapters’ to compromise between the Byzantine east and the Roman west in theology. The deal pleased nobody, and embarrassed all of us. Theology does not operate according to political or market rules alone.
Justinian was a hiccup in the story - or a stumble in the march, a chirp in the dirge of the decline and fall, or barbarian invastions. They call it the Byzantine restoration, and the image is a mosaic from Ravenna – he’s a last gasp of a last Roman, and the Lombards sweep in after him, in the next wave of barbarian ascendancy.
Our denominational hierarchy often reminds me of Justinian’s situation. They can huddle in a bunker of national offices, or try to reclaim lost turf or moral or political capital or control – but even if they succeed they are bucking a trend. They churn out reams of paper, like Justinian’s code, legalistic and largely ineffective, if elegant.
Similarly, civil liberal proceduralism reminds me of Justinian’s plight. Rawlsian ethics may work for academic or political elites of neo-liberal or neo-conserviative ilks but they are not as rich as Habermas’ ‘thick’ lifeworld. I have written for over 25 years a mantra that ‘the rules of natural justice’ are ‘neither rules, nor natural, nor just’!
Tactics, charm, or unprincipled alliances all work in the short term, and change the longer term. But ultimately there seem to be movements in history with momentum too big to ‘manage’. We may be living in such an age, just as Justinian and the other heretics of this week and this century did. Supposing that we are already on our way to the dustbin of history, how will be live our day and generation?
What examples do you see,
Of a ‘bounce in a bear market’ –
Religious revivals of ‘back to the bible’?
If we are the ‘last of the Romans’ –
How will we be faithful in our turn?
Read more...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Boethius: Is there consolation to be found between degenerates and barbarians?
Day 30 of 40:
Tuesday March 11:
Boethius
Is there consolation
to be found
between degenerates
and barbarians?
Boethius, ‘last of the Romans’, highborn in Rome, first employed by Theodoric the Ostrogoth in occupation of the former imperial capital, had a long way to fall. Accused of conspiring with the Byzantine east by his barbarian boss, he was jailed, and wrote Consolations of Philosophy.
Imagine talking with a Queen of Sciences or Philosophy, about what really mattered. Boethius tries to preserve and popularize the riches of Greek philosophy and Roman imperial civilization in the face of barbarian threats, and remnant degeneracy. His book survived him, through the ‘Dark Ages’, like the work of Bede in England often cited as ‘the venerable Bede’.
Boethius was not original, or orthodox – recent scholarship denies him martyr status and suggests he was not even Christian. His summaries of borrowed Platonic and Stoic ideas suggest a sort of pantheism. He reminds me of pop bestseller philosophers today, like John Ralston Saul, skating close to ‘dumbing down’ great thoughts of others.
What do you do if you find yourself in an illiterate culture with no memory, which values action and strength, and has the vanity to assume that because it has economic, military, and political ascendancy over the remnants of older cultures, that therefore they have nothing to learn from those others? Can you imagine? Of course you can – you are living that story!
Perhaps, like Boethius and Bede, you try to bridge the gap with popularized versions of what you treasure, written for your own beloved ‘barbarian’ peers. Perhaps you try to restate the out-moded museology of your degenerate elites, pending revelation of a new expression of what will make sense of our world, with meaning and morality. I do.
We live in an anti-intellectual age, and in an anti-institutional culture with a smug consensus dismissing the theological heritage and religious traditions. Our glib liberal assumptions about progress are barbaric in relegating all old things to the trash, and valorizing novelty. Degenerate elites who purport to be the legitimate heirs and successors of our culture are worse.
Our generation is like Boethius’ – empire shattered a century ago, and implications now becoming clearer. Those born in the late 400’s, mature in the early 500’s, remind me of my own generation born in the 20th century, living in the 21st. Living between barbarians and degenerates, what is our consolation, if we fall from privilege?
Is there any consolation to be found,
Between barbarians and degenerates?
Imagine talking with the Queen of wisdom –
What would she tell you to teach?
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