Fallen Into Knowledge

I went looking for the Bull of the Woods wilderness, and found snow. I actually didn’t get anywhere close to the wilderness. I was stymied by snow after driving 10 miles up a gravel road, and then continued walking for several more, all in search of the pristine old growth forests - some of the last still standing in western Oregon. I didn’t quite make it, but at least got to eat lunch in the wild:

I also discovered that I can, in fact, sleep in the back of my station wagon. If I lie diagonally. Barely.

David, who I tagged (once upon a time, in a land far far away), has tagged me back. Apparently he thinks that after two years my list might have changed. Quite so.

Actually, over the last couple of years I have spent less time in theology and more time studying literature and philosophy: though, it must be said, I am ready to return to theology. However, my revised list may not be the “most influential books ever,” but these are some books (and thinkers) that I am mulling over right now.

1. John Milton: “Paradise Lost.”

When I first read this (over two years ago) I did not like it. But Milton is dealing with some serious theological ideas. Specifically, I have thinking about the role of language after the Fall and how that Fallen language changes the ways we relate to each other.

2. Louis Althusser: “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”

Perhaps Althusser stands in here for a whole school of thought that I have been thinking about: The Frankfurt School. This text is particularly pessimistic about “culture,” but Althusser most clearly describes the process in which we are shaped by “culture:” we are “always already interpolated as subjects.” That is, and to borrow from Heidegger, we find ourselves thrown into a culture, and find ourselves as having been shaped by it.

3. Dick Hebdige: “Subculture: The Meaning of Style”

Along similar lines as above, I have been thinking about how sub- and counter-cultures interact with the “mainstream” culture. The reason should be clear: on the whole, the church functions like a sub-/counter-culture in the societies in which it find itself. Hebdige thinks about how artifacts of a culture are re-invested with meaning by a counter culture, thus allowing a counterculture to distance itself from the “mainstream.” It seems to me that Christianity in America has been largely been overwhelmed by the values of the “mainstream,” and if we are to distance ourselves we have to act thoughtfully in order to make that distancing representative of our beliefs to those from which we are distancing ourselves.

4. Giorgio Agamben: “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”

So, part of being “Post-whatever” is distancing ourselves from the Enlightenment. One of the most enduring legacies of the Enlightenment is Humanism: the belief that humans have intrinsic values, are fundamentally equal, and have “inalienable rights.” Much good has come from this belief, to be sure. But, strictly speaking, its not quite biblical. Agamben is wrestling with just how we are to think about humans as we leave Humanism behind. And we are, like it or not. Much of Christian theology, also, in the last couple of centuries have assumed Humanism: they did not need to defent their humanism, nor, probably, even thought much about it. But now, a Christian Anthropology needs to cease riding on the coattails of the enlightenment.

5. Wendell Berry: “Home Economics”

This book pretty much stands in for all of Wendell Berry’s work. As you may know, I have been concerned about “ecology:” How we live on God’s earth. My concern, partly thanks to Wendell Berry, has been widened beyond simply “conservation;” it has been widened toward sustainable communities.

What I am reading now:

I am reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” somewhat half-heartedly, and also De Lubac’s “Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture.”

Post-Critical: (the exciting conclusion to the hermeneutical saga)

Okay, so not a conclusion: I most certainly have reached such an end. In fact, it seems that every answer won begets, hydra-like, even more prickly questions. By the time I had finished three years at Multnomah, I was ready to move on: while it would take a few more years to get across town, I needed to go back to PSU. I needed to go back to PSU because they had the resources (classes, faculty, etc) that would allow me to further explore the hermeneutical questions I was pursuing.
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Went for a hike today, on Larch Mountain.  A perfect day for a hike.  So perfect, in fact, that I think I’ll take another Monday.

Critical: (a continuation of my hermeneutic story)

Having wetted my appetite for things hermeneutical during my first year at PSU, for unrelated reasons I left there for Multnomah Bible College: having read Homer and Plato, I wanted to learn greek and at that time PSU did not offer the language. While I wasted no time jumping into my greek studies, all Multnomah students take Bible and Theology classes, and so I soon found myself in a class called, “Bible Study Methods.” Bible Study Methods was, and is, an embodiment of the New Critical approach to texts which I had been attracted to at PSU. While the class was chiefly directed at teaching students specific tools, I particularly relished the times when the class discussion turned philosophical - having been pre-prepared for such discussions at PSU. I soon found out that the New Critical approach was not the only hermeneutical approach represented on campus: in fact, there seemed to be two factions. There were those who followed the ‘cutting edge’ (sic) “text-centered” approach” and those who retained the more traditional “authorial intent” (hisorical/literal/grammatical) approach. Functionally, at Multnomah, this meant that those who favored the “text-centered” approach eschewed any “historical background” material or research, which the “authorial intent” folks embraced it.
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Having been inspired by Dave’s (rather lengthy) post on hermeneutics, I would like to tell a story. So gather round, grab a cup of cocoa, because I, too, am going to tell a story of Hermeneutics.
Specifically, mine.
See, I have been driven by primarily hermeneutical questions: the directions I have taken theologically and, even the educational roads that I have traveled have been - mostly - dictated by questions that are hermeneutical in nature. So, this is hermeneutics as story. There are three parts to this story - as there must be - and three posts, starting now.

Pre-Critical: (Yes, I know. But really, did I have any choice?)

My awareness of hermeneutical questions began in high school, and while I had already spent some time teaching and even preaching, I had not considered that process between my reading of the text and understanding or “applying” it at all - let alone considering it to be fraught with problems. And so, I left for college, to study English.

During my first year at Portland State I took an upper division class entitled, “Critical Approaches to Literature,” or LitCrit. I was introduced to a plethora of reading strategies: author centered, New Critical, feminist, marxist, freudian, reader-response, deconstruction, and so on. Some of these struck me then, as now, as not having much at all with the text in question.
I came out of that class pretty confident that the New Critics (W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and company) had it right: by analyzing the text itself, rather than the the author’s psychology or historical situation on the one hand, or trying to make the text about my pet cause on the other, I thought that by focusing on the words on the page I might avoid “reading into the text” As it turns out, at the ripe old age of 19, I was somewhat naïve.

On Easter Sunday we celebrated Jesus’ Resurrection as both a vindication of his victory over death and as inaugurating the Kingdom which he spent his ministry announcing. The Church is that Kingdom.
So, the next, and logical question is this: How do we then live? What is this people to look like? We seem very clear that the church should be markedly different in form and action than the world out of which it is supposedly called, We aren’t so clear about the details. At least, that is my perception of from the proverbial pews: We have succeeded in convincing people of the first thing, but given no real direction to follow. Call it a failure of imagining.
I know that I am supposed to be living differently, but all of my time is still spent providing shelter for myself and filling that shelter with stuff. We speak of “God’s economy” but give me the details.
Why are the leaders of the church hazy about the details? A couple of thoughts:
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Easter was, as it should be: a day of celebration.  Perhaps the highlight of an already great day was the arrival of the Foster Family Jeep.  What it is:  a 1945 Willys Jeep that left government service to be abused further by the - then young - Foster Family.  It is being restored by my cousin, who is a talented mechanic - it now has a Nissan engine.  When it rolled up, the stories came out: hunting stories, getting stuck, rolling it, getting arrested  and going to jail in it (that would be my mom!):  to hear the stories and to see the joy brought by this old thing was truly wonderful.  Oh, and its really cool!  Some families have heirloom furniture and pictures, we have a jeep.

So, I’m done, Easter is here, we leave the introspection of Lent and enter the joyousness of Easter: Christ is Risen.
I would be lying if I didn’t feel some relief to be finished with my Lenten activity. Don’t get me wrong, reading the text and pondering it is both something I value and enjoy: its the schedule. Because I set for myself a schedule I was not free - as I usually am - to read according to my inclinations. I think, though, that such rigor is actually helpful for me: the structure helped me both accomplish the reading and to focus it. A habit I would like to maintain.
At the beginning, when I wrote my first post on Genesis, I had not planned on blogging through the Bible. I did so because I knew that I could not not finish if I (even implicitly) thought people were coming along on the reading with me. So, thank you for holding me accountable, whoever you are.

I think that I learned more from being constrained to read, from the experience of giving up a significant chunk of time (as if it was mine to begin with!) every day than I did from the text. That sounds horrible, I know, and it might be different if this were my first reading through the Bible. A couple of things stand out, however:

1. I need to sit down and study Ezekiel and Jeremiah. I am really not at all familiar with these major books.

2. I need to spend some time working on understanding Apocalyptic literature: I feel paralyzed by these books. The main problem is that the I find reading strategies I was surrounded by growing up unsatisfactory, yet I don’t have the foggiest with what I might replace them.

3. Balaam shows up everywhere in scripture - his chunk of Numbers is not forgotten by the other biblical authors. I want to study how he functions as a symbol of disobedience in the Bible.

Well, here it is, Holy Saturday: an appropriate time to read the Apocalypse of John. I still haven’t the faintest idea what it means. As I wait for Easter, I am encouraged by the promise that God will right all wrongs, that the Resurrection is the vindication of a life sacrificed to Him. As we watch through this dark night, on the cusp of Easter morning, we can act in the Hope of the promise, that however dark, Morning will come.