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I can’t help but draw your attention to a wonderfully thought-provoking post here.

The opening:

The age of Christendom, then the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, then the Moderns. The age of religion, the age of reason, the age of industry. What will our own age be called once we’ve finally grown out of it?

I say the later half of the 20th and the 21st will be The Age of Everything. An age when everything was possible, everything was done, everything was made and everything was purchased. In a thousand years, it will be said, “A thousand years ago, there was a time when you could buy anything you wanted. Big yellow couches shaped like bananas. Cars as big as houses. Houses as big as cities. Switchblade hair combs. Machines that could put you anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. Magic powder that could make a forty year old mother look like a new bride. Pills that made Herculean muscles grow on the arms and legs of a man. There used to be a time when a doctor could cut you open, pull out a diseased organ, and a man could live another twenty years.” And there will be some who don’t believe such stories, but for those who do believe these stories, the response will not be jealousy, but vertigo and terror at the thought of living under such conditions.

I just picked up the companion volume, The Art of Biblical Poetry, at the used bookstore. These notes are over 9 months old now though and I doubt I’ll ever get around to blogging more about them.

On how the Bible assumes that God’s purpose and the acts of men are tangled up throughout history.

The implicit theology of the Hebrew Bible dictates a complex moral and psychological realism in biblical narrative because God’s purposes are always entrammeled in history, dependent on the acts of individual men and women for their continuing realization.

p.12

On how the Bible explores what is going on inside of people’s heads way more than any other literature that came before. We discover the truth through that medium. This is old hat to our modern minds, but it was really out there with the OT was penned.

Indeed, an essential aim of the innovative technique of fiction worked out by the ancient Hebrew writers was to produce a certain indeterminacy of meaning, especially in regard to motive, moral character, and psychology. Meaning, perhaps for the first time in narrative literature, was conceived as a process, requiring continual revision – both in the ordinary sense and in the etymological sense of seeing-again – continual suspension of judgment, weighting of multiple possibilities, brooding over gaps in the information provided.

p.12

On the style of Hebrew scripture writing being intentionally over and against pagan mythology literature:

Shemaryahu Talmon says:

The ancient Hebrew writers purposefully nurtured and developed prose narration to take the place of the epic genre which by its content was intimately bound up with the world of paganism, and appears to have had a special standing in the polytheistic cults. The recitation of the epics was tantamount to an enactment of cosmic events in the manner of sympathetic magic. In the process of total rejection of the polytheistic religions and their ritual expressions in the cult, epic songs and also the epic genre were purged from the repertoire of the Hebrew authors.

What makes a novel good? Foreshadowing and reveal. The Bible does this really well all over the place! This stuff is no mistake, but a careful craft.

Much of art lies in the shifting aperture between te shadowy fore-image in the anticipating mind of the observer and the realized revelatory image in the work itself, and that is what we must learn to perceive more finely in the Bible.

p.62

On how the Bible goes out of it’s way so often to be verbal. Even general descriptions that may be handled by the narrator in other writings are instead put in the mouth of one of the characters.

Spoken language is the substratum of everything human and divine that transpires in the Bible, and the Hebrew tendency to transpose what is proverbial or nonverbal into speech is finally a technique for getting at the essence of things, for obtruding their substratum. In a mode of narration so dominated by speech, visual elements will necessarily be sparsely represented. And even in the exceptional case when a scene is conceived visually, the writer may contrive to report what is seen through what is spoken.

(See example of David talking with the watchmen looking out for Absolom’s forces.)

-.p.70

On how the Bible (compared to many other religious texts) has a very “untidy” view of God. Again is this idea of his purpose and promises being thickly integrated with human acts and history.

The monotheistic revolution of biblical Israel was a continuing and disquieting one. It left little margin for neat and confident views about God, the created world, history , and man as political animal or moral agent, for it repeatedly had to make sense of the intersection of incompatibles – the relative and the absolute, human imperfection and divine perfection, the brawling chaos of historical experience and God’s promise to fulfill a design in history. The biblical outlook is informed, I think, by a sense of stubborn contradiction, of a profound and ineradicable untidiness in the nature of things.

-p.154

On how modern expectations are the primary obstacle to understanding really old writing. Loss of language nuance is not even a big of problem as this!

One might imagine the Bible as a rich and variegated landscape, perfectly accessible to the observer’s eye, but from which we now stand almost three millenia distant. Through the warp of all those intervening centuries, lines become blurred, contours are distorted, colors fade; for not only have we lost the precise shadings of implication of the original Hebrew words but we have also acquired quite different habits and expectations as readers.

-p.185

On how much work good bible study is!

In has been my own experience in making a sustained effort to understand biblical narrative better that such learning is pleasurable rather than arduous.

-p.188

C.S. Lewis on the perfect day:

For if I could please myself…I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the taproom the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them.

The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude…for eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies, there is no reasons why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is an essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock.

Such is my ideal, and such the (almost) was the reality of “settled, calm, Epicurean life.” It is no doubt for my own good that I have been so generally prevented from leading it, for it is a life almost entirely selfish.

-C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p.143

Every once in a while, one of these days comes along! I found this silly representative pic from back in May of 2009.

One year ago today, Michael Spencer, AKA “The Internet Monk” died very prematurely of cancer.

His wife Denise has written a moving and short post about his life here.

Michael may not have been that interested in most of what I blog about here and we only ever conversed a handful of times via email. Nevertheless, he is probably the #1 reason I write anything at all. Also, his wise advice tempered both my doubts and enthusiasm during some of the most difficult stretches of my life. It completely sucks that he’s gone.

Along those lines, here is a beautiful piece from my favorite musicians, Pierre Bensusan. It was written after the passing of Michael Hedges, a brilliant guitarist who also died very prematurely.

Let me sum up for you some of what I think Kierkegaard is trying to get across in Fear and Trembling, one of his first major philosophical works.

Let me find something for you that cannot be explained via any of the usual methods. This is not just an isolated anomaly, but the firstborn of a new race of peoples who cannot be explained away. I find this in the faith of Abraham. You think you can categorize it, but you’re wrong. It’s way crazier than you realize.

For some good general notes, see this:

http://www.leithart.com/archives/003317.php

Here the necessity of a new category for the understanding of Abraham becomes apparent. Paganism does not know such a relationship to the divine. The tragic hero does not enter into any private relationship to the divine.

-Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, EK p.100

I’ve mentioned a snippet of this before in a couple other posts on magic, but I absolutely love this passage on the similarity of magic and science, as far as man and his motivations is concerned.

I have described as a `magician’s bargain’ that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood.

You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.

If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe’s Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. `All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command’ and `a sound magician is a mighty god’.³ In the same spirit Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself: this, for him, is to use as a mistress for pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit.⁴ The true object is to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible. He [the scientist] rejects magic because it does not work;⁵ but his goal is that of the magician.

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p.86

Photo credit

For the first several chapters of Mere Christianity, Lewis argues for a generic theism, choosing to leave anything distinctly Christian out of the discussion until later so as not to turn away an audience who may be averse to hearing about Jesus.

In the Abolition of Man, he actually spends the entire book arguing for a generic theistic basis for morality. Here, he actually invents a definition for the word “Tao” and uses it to encompass the bulk of world religious (and even non-religious!) beliefs, in addition to Christianity. He can do that because of how narrow the point he is arguing. His adversary is brand or relativism that refuses to issue a judgement, positive or negative, about ANYTHING. It’s an interesting technique. I wish it could be used in other conversations without so much set up.

In this section, he discusses how it is impossible for outsiders to a religion to “get it” enough to be truly critical. Hostile, yes, but not properly critical as they don’t really know what they’re talking about.

Those who understand the spirit of the Tao and who have been led by that spirit can modify it in directions which that spirit itself demands. Only they can know what those directions are. The outsider knows nothing about the matter. His attempts at alteration, as we have seen, contradict themselves. So far from being able to harmonize discrepancies in its letter by penetration to its spirit, he merely snatches at some one precept, on which the accidents of time and place happen to have riveted his attention, and then rides it to death—for no reason that he can give.

From within the Tao itself comes the only authority to modify the Tao. This is what Confucius meant when he said ‘With those who follow a different Way it is useless to take counsel’.⁵ This is why Aristotle said that only those who have been well brought up can usefully study ethics: to the corrupted man, the man who stands outside the Tao, the very starting point of this science is invisible.⁶ He may be hostile, but he cannot be critical: he does not know what is being discussed. This is why it was also said ‘This people that knoweth not the Law is accursed’⁷ and ‘He that believeth not shall be damned’.⁸

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man’s mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else. In particular instances it may, no doubt, be a matter of some delicacy to decide where the legitimate internal criticism ends and the fatal external kind begins. But wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.

The legitimate reformer endeavours to show that the precept in question conflicts with some precept which its defenders allow to be more fundamental, or that it does not really embody the judgement of value it professes to embody. The direct frontal attack ‘Why?’—’What good does it do?’—’Who said so?’ is never permissible; not because it is harsh or offensive but because no values at all can justify themselves on that level. If you persist in that kind of trial you will destroy all values, and so destroy the bases of your own criticism as well as the thing criticized. You must not hold a pistol to the head of the Tao. Nor must we postpone obedience to a precept until its credentials have been examined. Only those who are practising the Tao will understand it. It is the well-nurtured man, the cuor gentil, and he alone, who can recognize Reason when it comes.⁹ It is Paul, the Pharisee, the man ‘perfect as touching the Law’ who learns where and how that Law was deficient.¹⁰

In order to avoid misunderstanding, I may add that though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become sceptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more ‘realistic’ basis, is doomed. Whether this position implies a supernatural origin for the Tao is a question I am not here concerned with.

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p.59

Taking this idea a bit further, we find doubting philosophers “explaining away” anything and everything of certainty. Well, that’s all well and good, but you can’t go doing that forever.

The kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on `explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through⁵ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through’ all things is the same as not to see.

-p.91

Lewis spends much of the book applying this idea to education. The book (which is only about 100 pages) should be required reading for all college freshman.

All those bottles lined up at the bar look so pretty.
Stately, sensuous, or nostalgic.
Who isn’t curious about what’s inside each colourful glass?
Just more of the same.
I’m certain the blind drink fewer cocktails.

Photo Credit

Is there anything special about waiting in line at Les Schwab?

Bly said recently in the introduction to an anthology that we’ve had enough of the mundane domestic in contemporary poetry these days. He’s probably right. Why write about a shop full of tires? Don’t Write about the people that come in.

It’s a proper swath of the local folks growing here. A nice slice of the strata, with every class represented. On welfare or retired with millions and a huge RV. A college student with a backpack and hoodie as well as a grey-haired vice president in a European-made suit. Subaru driving professor-woman and Dodge Caravan driving mother-woman. IT professionals and M.D.s. Racing non-professionals and truckers. Dirt bikers, dirt bags, dirt movers, and dirt chemists.

Our city is too large to walk across, but too small and rural to own a single sizable public bus. Atheists and unitarians and Trinitarians – what we all really have in common is four tires spinning underneath, tread wearing thin.

Can you really help yourself? There are many aisles of the bookstore that want you to try. Archimedes said that if you gave him a lever long enough, he could move the world. If you wish to apply a lever to yourself however, you are going to need somewhere to stand. You can’t stand on yourself without breaking your own legs. Ouch. Better to let someone give you a push, even if it hurts.