THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

Pixar’s Wall-E (2008) tells the story of an impolite robot, a world that is collapsing in every imaginable way (biologically, socially, economically), and a human race that has divorced itself from that world. The demi-god of the ruling commerce culture declares that the planet is toxic and forbids the return of the exiles. Freed from the tragic cost of doing business terrestrially and floating aimlessly in space aboard their interstellar pseudo-ark, the Axiom, humans decline into overweight, non-ambulatory automatons, divorced even from each other, aside from superficial conversations via the heads-up video display inches from their faces that filters out the real for the virtual, the simulacra. The fact that the H.U.D. is transparent is more a salve to their eroded consciences than it is a legitimate window to the real. In one of the most poignant scenes of the film, the robot Wall-E, having stowed aboard the Axiom, interrupts several of the ship’s denizens in their dematerialized reverie, and introduces himself. And for many on the Axiom, robot and human alike, the introduction of this personal, conversant presence is unwelcome. Wall-E does not accept, or rather can not fathom the terms of their anti-dialogical existence. He lives for relationship and, even in this alien environment, can not help but make friends. But, at times, even making friends can be an impolite act – to contest what in Wall-E was really toxic, the exchange of real conversation for a fetish with commercial simulacra.

This is the kind of impoliteness that Graham Ward calls for in The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Post-Material Citizens. The act of being a citizen does look crass next to the polished acquiescence to consumerism and endless materialism. But for the theologian, who is not a citizen of this world, Ward’s is a call to a radical kind of impoliteness, the scandal of the Christ.

The true politico-economic nature of Globalism

What is evident is that globalization is not at the vanguard of of democratization. Indeed, it cannot be because no one controls the unbounded market and therefore no one is accountable to it, whereas democracy’s requirements for checks and balances demands means whereby a public governance can be made. Globalization is transforming democracy, undermining what makes democracy flourish – a vigorous civil society. As mentioned in the last chapter, one of the key characteristics of the postdemocratic condition is the increasing government of state policy by economic matters. Does, then, the correlation between aggressive democratic states and aggressive multinational corporations come about because of copycat managerial strategies or because, where power is increasingly understood in terms of economic and military strength, negotiations have to be made between international leaders of commerce and key national governments implicated in empire?

Admirable as it may be, man’s capacity to manufacture and produce useful objects even of the highest quality, such as the machines of our modern technological civilization, is not to be directly associated with human personhood. Perhaps on this point the contrast we have been making here between man as a person, on the one hand, and man as an individual thinking or acting agent, on the other hand, becomes more evident. The ‘creation’ of a machine requires man’s individualization both in terms of his seizing, controlling and dominating reality, that is, turning beings into things, and also in terms of combination of human individuals in a collective effort, that is, of turning himself into a thing, an instrument and a means to an end. Hence, it is only natural that the more collectivistic a society, that is, the more it sacrifices personhood, the better the products it achieves. But when we say that man is capable of creating by being a person, we imply something entirely different, and that has to do with a double possibility which this kind of creation opens up. On the other hand, ‘things’ or the world around acquire a ‘presence’ as an integral and relevant part of the totality of existence, and, on the other hand, man himself becomes ‘present’ as a unique and unrepeatable hypostasis of being and not as an impersonal number in a combined structure. Un other words, in this way of understanding creating, the movement is from thinghood to personhood and not the other way round. That is, for example, what happens int he case of a work of real art as contrasted to a machine. When we look at a painting or listen to music we have in front of us ‘the beginning of a world’, a ‘presence’ in which ‘things’ and substances (cloth, oil, etc.) or qualities (shape, colour, etc.) or sounds becomes part of a personal presence. And this is entirely the achievement of personhood, a distinctly unique capacity of man, which, unlike other technological achievements, is not threatened by the emerging intelligent beings of computer science. The term ‘creativity’ is significantly applied to art par excellence, though we seldom appreciate the real implications of this for theology and anthropology.

John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 216

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington DC has declared that they will pull their social services to city residents if the same sex bill, currently being considered by the Washington DC city council, is passed as is. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem,” said Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese.

So, essentially, those in the Archdiocese who are making this decision are saying that, contrary to what we might have believed, agape is not unconditional, but dependent on the Archdiocese’s imprimatur of City Council policy.

Tell me, where does Christ append an anti-secularity clause to his “do it to the least of these, you do it to me”? What kind of Church is this that demands compatibility with bureaucrats before it will do the work of Christ?

Read the whole story here.

PS. Vox Nova has picked up on the discussion here.

Like Mercy

This poem came out of studying The Cappadocians, three men and one woman who were 4th centery Eastern, Greek speaking xtians who had a huge part in the formation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. They were affirming the goodness of Creation in the midst of all the muck and dung that we seem to endlessly make out of our lives and world. This has often been a great struggle for me. So there are Hebrew and Greek words referring to various human, social realities. Nietzsche has breathed in my ear in times of agnostic, nihilistic struggle in the past so he shows up dueling with Macrina. I wrote it during a rain storm outside the GF Java Cafe in my hometown of Jamestown, TN. Continue reading ‘Like Mercy’

The following is a paper that is in progress.  Any comments or criticisms are welcomed. Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, composed in 1930 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50^th anniversary, is in the vein of some of his earlier works, such as his groundbreaking and controversial The Rite of Spring.  But Stravinsky’s symphony is doing more than reminding the listener of his earlier work.  Rather it plays against and challenges rigid distinctions between sacred and secular music and gives insight into not only his approach to this dichotomy as a composer but may also reveal hints of his own spiritual complexity and ambiguity. Continue reading ‘Igor Stravinsky and sacred/secular music’

The following is an *under construction* excerpt from a paper that is even more in the works than the excerpt. I’m sharing it as is because of a comment Matslacker made in the pervious post from AD, regarding orienting ourselves to the Spirit through activities like catechumenate that seek not necessarily for intelligibility but rather for points of connection “between dogma and life through the difficult practice of amending one’s life, of practicing humility, prayer, virtue in general, that is, of attaining purity of heart and thereby attracting the life-creating Spirit, whereby one’s “eyes” might truly “see”–even the eyes of the simple (cf. here the catechesis of Paul the Simple as an extreme case–or Aquinas’ last considerations upon his theologizing).” I thought his point was great, and happened to be a line of thought I’m trying to pursue in my own work. I heartily recommend that you read his comment, and offer the following only as an inchoate step toward a “systematic” account of the role of church practice.

As a philosophical historian of ethics, Alasdair seems almost obsessively concerned with recounting the development of practical rationality through the emergence of late modern liberalism. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality? MacIntyre argues that the loss of a teleological orientation in the account of social formation necessarily results in competing practical rationalities. Pursuant to which, modern social science lacks the ability to recognize much less help redress the fracture in practice and rationality caused by the loss of ends-based reasoning. Continue reading ‘An ill-formed Primer on “practice” in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre’

I’m sorry we’ve been so absent lately. I know you miss us, a lot. But we’ve been really busy, and we know you’re a patient folk. Besides, we gave you that lovely Bulgakov Blog conference, and we know you still haven’t read every post yet, and you certainly haven’t read every comment made by your fellow readers. Come now, can’t you make at least one comment yourself?

This would be an excellent opportunity for me to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the conference. Whether you made a large or small contribution, we are in your debt for what turned out to be a fascinating and thought provoking event!

In any event, we were busy. I was in Chicago with many of you at AAR. However, Aron seems to have joined that contentious group of protesters who haven’t quite come to terms with the AAR/SBL estrangement. Fear not, they’re getting back together, maybe even by 2011. Aron made up for his absence by attending the Chesterton Conference in Niagra, Ontario. Look for his paper to appear here soon once I steal it from his laptop.

I’ve recently become interested in the Bible again after reading Irenaeus’ Against Heresies and teaching the Revelation unit in my advisor’s Seminarian course a couple times.I’m currently writing a paper on the regula fidei, and at Joshua’s suggestion began reading up on some literary theory, including Northrop Frye (although I wonder what you had in mind when you made that recommendation, JADR). Anyway, I stumbled across this bit in Frye that made me laugh, and for lack of anything substantial to post at the moment, I thought I’d toss this one out there:

It took me some time to hit on the right formula for a course in the Bible. I consulted the curricula of other universities, and found that they gave courses called “The Bible As Literature,” which involved chopping pieces out of the Bible like the book of Job and the parables of Jesus, saying, “Look, aren’t they literary?” that approach violated all my instincts as a critic, because those instincts told me that what a critic does when he is confronted with any verbal document whatever is to start on page one at the upper left-hand corner and god one reading until he reads the bottom right-hand corner of the last page. But many people who have attempted to do that with the Bible have flaked out very quickly, generally somewhere around the middle of Leviticus.

- Northop Frye from Northrop Frye and Jacy McPherson, Biblical and Classical Myths

“A Discussion in Sophiology and Magic:  Renaissance Precursors to Bulgakov” — PART TWO, cont.

Meanwhile, the Longest Overtly Sophiological Poem I know
by Janet Leslie Blumberg (Deep Grace of Theory)

Meanwhile, let me regale everyone with two passages from the longest overtly Sophiological poem I know. Or so I will posit… to see what you think. (It ought to further our discussion of precursors to sophiology among the Renaissance humanists, at any rate.)

This poem was written by an acquaintance of Giordano Bruno and a fellow renegade, John Donne, although Donne chose to go under cover so as not to die as Bruno did. Or to die as Donne’s own brother had died during the Elizabethan anti-Catholic purges of the 1590s.

In 1611, Donne was asked to commemorate the untimely death of his patron’s adolescent daughter, and Donne seized upon the occasion to write not only about Elizabeth Drury, but also about what he called “the Idea of a Woman.” And while he was eulogizing the young woman who had died (and also eulogizing the passing of more than she), Donne performed an “anatomy” upon the “corpse” of the desolate world that “Shee” had left behind her at her passing. The poem is called “The First Anniversary: An Anatomy of World,” and it turns out to be, among other things, a prescient lament for the “death” of Sophia in the coming mechanistic age. Continue reading ‘Bulgakov Blog Conference, Day 12′

“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”- T.S. Eliot

I have admired the greatness of Eliot as a poet, but never expected to use a bit of his work for a meditation of education such as this. However, it seems to me that this quote from Eliot is filled with profundity and enormous implications for our practice as educators and continuing students. I must say from the outset that my reflection on this quote is not an exegesis of Eliot’s poetry (though certainly such an venture is a worthy endeavor and has been embarked upon by interpreters much more able than I), but rather a contemplation of these words as they stand on their own, detached from the context of his work in which it is originally embedded.

I will begin with a memory. Continue reading ‘The Wisdom of Eliot’s Turn of Phrase’