Tickling the Ivories

…writing to figure out what I think

Some of what I’ve gleaned from N.T. Wright’s article “How Can the Bible be Authoritative?”

We have often muted Jesus’ stark challenge, remaking him in our own image and then wondering why our personal spiritualities have become less than exciting and life changing

A resonse to the point of view, “We already know everything about the Bible that we need to—knowing Jesus in a historical way is useless…”

Many devout Christians…content themselves with an effortless superiority: we know the truth, these silly liberals have got it all wrong, and we have nothing new to learn.”

On how to approach the Bible…

For me, the dynamic of a commitment to scripture is not “We believe the Bible, so there is nothing more to be learned,” but rather, “We believe the Bible, so we had better discover all the things in it to which our traditions have made us blind.”

Wright perceptively notes that the heresy of Gnosticism is alive and well—perhaps even more than ever. How many times have you been encouraged to “find yourself?” How many people do you know who believe that if they can only find one key piece of knowledge that is currently hidden to them, they will have fulfilled their purpose? That’s what the Gnostics mentioned in the New Testament were all about—salvation through secret knowledge.

On the importance of knowing who Jesus was…

…whenever the church forgets its call to engage in the task of understanding more and more fully who Jesus was, idolatry and ideology lie close at hand.

On the importance of understanding the Bible as a whole, embracing all of its hard edges and messiness.

I remember a well-known preacher saying that he thought a lot of Christians used the Bible as an unsorted edition of Daily Light. It really ought to be arranged into neat little devotional chunks, but it happens to have gotten all muddled up.

…sensitivity to the whole nature of the story and to the ways in which it would be inappropriate simply to repeat verbatim passages from earlier sections…did we ever imagine that the applications of biblical authority ought to be something that could be done by a well programmed computer?

Are we, as followers of Christ sometimes guilty of actually belittling the Bible when we attempt to apply it to our lives?

The world is always trying to lure the church into playing the game by its rules…And the church is all too often eager to do this, not least by using the idea of the authority of scripture as a means to control people, to force them into little boxes. These little boxes often owe far more…to cultural conditions of this or that sort than to scripture itself as the revelation of the loving, creator and redeemer God.

This one is a mega ouch for just about every church I’ve ever been to.

God forgive us that we have taken the Bible and have made it ordinary, that we have cut it down to our size, so that whatever text we preach on it will say basically the same things.

This last illustration almost brought tears to my eyes it’s so right.

“Sit at a piano, hold down the loud pedal, strike a low note loudly, and listen. You will hear all kinds of higher notes, harmonics, shimmering above the note originally struck. In te same way, the retelling of the story that the Bible actually contains is to function as the striking of the low note, the basic fundamental note of God’s story with his world. As we retell this story there will be harmonics audible, for those, at least, with ears to hear. The problem, of course, is that historical criticism of the Bible has insisted on striking the fundamental notes with the soft pedal on, as though by thus screening out the harmonics it might ensure that the fundamental really made its own point—and then Christians have grumbled that such criticism makes the Bible irrelevant. The equal and opposite danger is that pious Christians have only been interested in the harmonics themselves, and then by actually striking them instead of the fundamentals have produced a narrower range of tone, making up in shrillness what it lacks in historical depth and basic substance.”

I think I’ll let that statement be the final word.

I’m reading an essay (How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?) by the British theologian N.T. Wright. I’m not familiar with the range of his work or where he fits into the larger theological spectrum, but I can appreciate his thought provoking points.

Let me ruin the suspense right away and say that Wright’s argument concludes that evangelicals actually give too little weight to Scripture—this isn’t a thought that is intuitive to me given my experience and insider knowledge of an evangelical’s approach to the Bible (those last 5 words sound like some sort of self-help manual). It’s comforting to know that he’s affirming the “authority” of scripture—it’s intriguing to know that he’s re-thinking the definition of “authority.”

But much of what we call the Bible—the Old and New Testaments—is not a rule book; it is narrative. That raises a further question: How can an ancient narrative text be authoritative? How, for instance, can the book of Judges, or the book of Acts, be authoritative? It is one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began, “Once upon a time”?

More as I read more.

…here is how the article turned out that I was telephoned to quote for yesterday.
Contraception giveaway aims to educate

…The Castle by Franz Kafka. Kafka wrote in the early 20th century, died in 1924, but gained only posthumous recognition for his surviving novels and short stories, against his wishes. Kafka wrote to his close friend Max Brod that, after his demise, he wanted all of his papers to be destroyed. What a tragedy that would have been! His writing is so unique and so compelling to read. If it did not seem to you that early modernist writing could be anything aside from a slug-fest, read The Trial or The Castle and tell me if they do not grab you instantly and propel you through their pages. Kafka has a way of keeping his reader continually disoriented. He is always tossing in phrases that force one to reevaluate the nature of everything he has written up to that point. It might seem that such a technique would foster frustration, but what results is a refreshing quality in the writing—it is not a freshness that brings lightness and joviality—it is a freshness like a snake that is perpetually shedding its skin;—it feels like the work is being birthed over and over again as one is reading. The result, for Kafka, is that the reader identifies with K., the main character, simply through the act of reading. One does not have to make any mental leaps into a character’s perceived point of view;—everything we need to interact with the writing is given without us noticing.

Two quick notes on punctuation…I recently attempted reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! I failed—but I did learn something while doing so. Faulkner liked to use some strange punctuation in his writing, and I am not at all sure I know why he chose the marks he did. One in particular that I noticed often was this… ;— …a semicolon followed by an em-dash. Why use the two together? Why not just one or the other? Was Faulkner anticipating the winking smily face? I doubt it. Whatever his reasons, I like the combination and if I think of it I will use it from time to time. Kafka wrote in one of his journals (which must make for amazingly fertile material for psychologists):

“Omission of the period. In general the spoken sentence starts off in a large capital letter with the speaker, bends out in its course as far as it can towards the listeners and with the period returns to the speaker. But if the period is omitted, then the sentence is no longer constrained and blows its entire breath at the listener”

I can see this idea evidenced in his sentences. Most of his constructions would probably get steamrolled without a second thought in an undergraduated writing workshop.

I think Merton is right on with these thoughts…as a note, I have edited out a few segments (indicated by ellipses) to save my fingers from death by typing.

The greatest temptation that assails Christians is that in effect, for most of us, the Gospel has ceased to be news. And if it is not news it is not Gospel: for the Gospel is the proclamation of something absolutely new, everlastingly new, not a message that was once new but is now two thousand years old. And yet for many of us the Gospel is precisely the announcement of something that is not new: the truths of the Gospel are old, deep-rooted, firmly established, unchanging and in some sense a refuge against all that is disturbing because it is new. . . . The message of the Gospel when it was first preached was profoundly disturbing to those who wanted to cling to well-established religious patters, the ancient and accepted ways, the ways that were not dangerous and which contained no surprises…
What makes the Gospel news? The faith, which is created in us by God and with which we hear it as news. This acceptance of faith, this new birth in the Spirit, opens up a new dimension in which time and eternity meet, in which all things are made new: eternity, time, our own self, the world around us…
Those who preach the Gospel as if it were not and could not be news, as if it never could be news again, are saying in their own way, and much more terribly than Nietzsche, that “God is dead.” They are declaring it officially, they are proclaiming it not just as the paradox of an eccentric, but as the doctrine of their church…
The Gospel is the news that, if I will, I can respond now in perfect freedom to the redemptive love of God for man in Christ, that I can now rise above the forces of necessity and evil in order to say “yes” to the mysterious action of Spirit that is transforming the world even in the midst of the violence and confusion and destruction that seem to proclaim His absence and His “death.”

According to the OED, the word ‘gospel’ descends from the old English phrase ‘god spel,’ which was adopted as the regular translation of the Latin ‘evangelium,’ which means ‘good message.’ Why is the Gospel message sometimes thought of as bad news? And if it isn’t thought of as bad news, why do some people ignore it altogether?

my new page. i found this site and it seems to me that the lack of ads and absence of half-naked girls promoting dating services can work in my favor.

has anyone out there ever read any books by william faulkner? i had to read “the sound and the fury” for two different classes while in college. i only made it through once, which was plenty. i checked out “absalom, absalom!” from the library. it’s a very sluggish read, to say the least. stream of consciousness writing has its occasional thrills, but for the most part it acts like a dumptruck—continually heaping up piles of words onto the reader.

anyway, when i checked out the faulkner book, i also checked out a book called “conjectures of a guilty bystander.” it’s by thomas merton, an american who lived as a trappist monk in the ’60s. when i’m at the library, i think something in the air (possibly the smell of thousands of pages of type) makes me feel as if i am capable of more than i really am—so i check out three or four books, of which i hardly ever finish one.

i think the most appropriate thing that can be said about merton is that he is a deep thinker. maybe too deep. i guess that’s what happens when a guy who wrote a master’s thesis on william blake and hobnobbed in circles of artists and intellectuals retreats into self-imposed seclusion—conveniently right around the time of the U.S. entry into WWII. anyway, this book i’m reading contains some great nuggets of insight, some of which i plan on transferring onto this site. my hope is that retyping will help me (and you) better understand. here’s one:

“The Christian faith takes hold on each one of us when each one sees himself no longer in the perspective of individual fulfillment and satisfaction, but in the light of the Cross. This implies the renunciation of one attitude toward sin and death, and a completely new understanding of these realities. In the first case, you implicitly accept death as an inevitable but incomprehensible fact, from which you resolutely turn away in order to make the best you can out of time, and to live as if, in fact, you were never going to die. This implies a firm will to ignore death, and it may also imply an equally firm will to ignore sin and guilt. You come to terms with life and with your society, and you make the most effective possible use of the means which are offered, here and now, to achieve a relative happiness, a relative sense that you are a real and meaningful being.

The Christian faith on the other hand demands a recognition that this view of life is in reality a delusive form of wilfulness and of despair, since in fact it cannot make the moral effort to confront the most important and inscrutable realities of life. Christianity recognizes that these realities cnnot be understood by reason alone, but it accepts from God, on faith, a revelation of their true import. Death and sin are inextricably involved in one another: they are in fact two aspects of the same mystery—man’s separation from God by the wilful assertion of his individuality as ultimate, and by the determination to live as if, in fact, it were ultimate. In the end, this false view tends to assert, at least implicitly, the complete autonomy of the individual, who is no longer responsible to anyone, who is able to choose for himself any one of an unlimited number and quality of possibilities, and who is, in fact, free to do exactly as he pleases without rendering an account to anyone and without taking into consideration the moral and physical consequences of any of his acts.

This implicit claim to complete autonomy for man, dressed in various mythical trappings, constitutes the various beliefs by which modern man attempts to explain his existence.

An essential and obviously characteristic element of the Christian faith is the admission that this clam to autonomy is in fact rooted in despair and death. While appearing to be an affirmation of life and hope, it is actually a fallacious construction of the mind of man, by which he hopes to create for himself some kind of meaning in a life which will be resolved into meaninglessness by death. Furthermore, Christianity sees that a society that justifies its behavior and bases its existence on this supposed autonomy of man does, in fact, devote to destruction and death the very resources and energies which it claims to be using for the affirmation and improvement of life.
…
The basic Christian faith is that he who renounces his delusive, individual autonomy in order to receive his true being and freedom in and by Christ is ‘justified’ by the mercy of God in the Cross of Christ. His ’sins are forgiven’ in so far as the root of guilt is torn up in the surrender which faith makes to Christ. Instead of my own delusive autonomy I surrender to Christ all rights over me in the hope that by His Spirit, which is the Spirit and Life of His Church, He will live and act in me, and, having become one with Him, having found my true identity in Him, I will act only as a member of His Body and a faithful citizen of His Kingdom.”

merton is not saying we aren’t free to choose our own path, but he is saying that the purest form of freedom comes through Christ.
see John 8:31-47.

—A