The Historical Jesus

The first time I heard of J.D. Crossan his name was said pejoratively.  Crossan for those who are not aware is known as the ring-leader of The Jesus Seminar.  When I was a clueless freshman studying the Bible, I was alerted toward the end of my freshman year about this wolf in sheep's clothing, who was devouring the faith of many-a-good hearted theology student.

We spent many weeks learning the proper apologetics to safeguard our faith against this man's tactics to steal our salvation.

So, now, years later, I decided it would be the smart thing to do to actually read his book.  Outlandish idea I know.  I can't really say I approached it with the ready-made polemic I was endowed with back in 2000, and I must admit that in doing so I've seen the reason we were so heavily forewarned:  he knows what he's talking about.

I don't think I plan on getting any posters of him for my room, and I certainly wouldn't put him on par with Kung (as though it's really fair to compare a theologian with a archeological historian), but I like the guy.  I'm about half way through his book, which is rather thick.  So far he doesn't strike me as a bad person or someone who has it in mind to destroy Christianity.  He does strike me as someone who is very well educated and really just wants to give an adequate explanation for the socio-cultural context which Jesus was born in and shaped by.

This might be further evidence amassing to an indictment that I have lost my faith, though I don't really think I have.  Still, if so, losing faith is fairly anti-climactic.  It's not near the catastrophe I had thought it would be.

Soon, I might write a blog about what I actually do believe at this point (to attempt to stick with the effort to avoid negative definition identity).

Anyway, I recommend Crossan.  It's a little boring at points, as all good non-fiction is, but enlightening for those who can manage.  If you've been trained to equate all Jesus Seminar affiliates with the incarnation of Satan, don't believe the hype.

Amen.

My Current Discontent

Lately I've been attempting to familiarize myself with a philosopher named Ludwig Wittgenstein (said with v-sounds replacing the w's).  Multiple people I've read refer to him as the most important philosopher of the 20th century.  He's one of those philosophers that defied being fit into any particular mold, though every contemporary school attempted to claim him as 'one of their own.'  

Wittgenstein somewhat pioneered the field of linguistic philosophy, or at least was the cardinal philosopher whereby the "linguistic turn" began.  His thinking is largely responsible for the trendy phenomena we would refer to as pluralism.   I could go on, but this post is about me, so I won't.

Wittgenstein's thought is what provides people like Richard Rorty with a method to declare that philosophy is dead.  He severely critiqued the capacity of philosophic inquiry to arrive at truth.  Yet, I don't know if there is a single person who would dare to consider him postmodern.  In fact, a book I've been reading lately suggest that he would be the very philosopher who implies that postmodern thought is bankrupt, which gets to what I've been generally frustrated by lately.

Postmodern culture rests on the denial of what is, but offers nothing other to fill in the void.  In fact, it seems bent on a sort of nihilistic deconstruction (a la Nietzsche) of all constructs old and new.  As soon as people offer a fresh idea of how to live, it is instantly criticizes ad nauseum for any number of reasons.  We can lash out and "free" ourselves of all the constructs of modern society, but in the process we lose all sense of identity or meaning.

Personally I'm tired of the feeling of being defined purely in negative terms:  by what I'm not.  I think this has been the case for much to long, and I'm bored with it.  This is difficult, because the things I negate as part of my identity, I negate for good reason.  Yet, it seems so often that for too many of my friends and for myself, we spend so much energy declaring what we're not, that we have precious little to say about who we are.

There's nothing in me that wants to revert to the old banners that used to offer me identity.  Only I'm ready to be something more than post_______.  

Wittgenstein once said "if you tried to doubt everything, you would not get very far in doubting anything.  The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty."  I find that to be the funny thing with postmodernists, they basically use modernism (the only certainty they have) to fight modernism.  As one book I read pointed out, "postmodernism requires the presence of a modernist discourse for its very existence - an existence we must assume will fade away as it reduces and deconstructs modernism to a groundless and pointless trace, thereby erasing itself".  Postmodernism is merely a reincarnation of modernism, with a suicidal bent.  

That's not to say that I have turned against postmodernists.  I love their points.  I'm just ready to move on to something more than an identity based on the negation of the things in the world I dislike.

Richard Rorty and a bunch of words related to the idea of language.

So, a couple months ago I read a book by Richard Rorty.  He's one of those evil postmodernists who adamantly deny that they are postmodern and probably don't consider themselves evil either.  Now I'm reading a book that is a collection of essays on his legacy.  Half the essays laud him for his brilliance and innovation, the other half deplore him as a shallow prophet of Western liberalism.

I love the guy.  I say this as someone who has read a single book by him.  Yet, in terms of philosophy, he writes in a very straight-forward way.  I don't get the feeling he is inventing a new language simply to obfuscate his meaning, allowing only scholars the opportunity to understand him.  

I also love him for the fact that he comes across as someone who is anti-authoritarian by birth.  (One heart to another, I guess.)  He shows a general disregard for the positions of professional philosophers as generally scholars of trivia who try to maintain their salary by overstating their own importance to society at large.  He claims that generally the last century followed the death of God with the death of Philosophy.  Funny that a philosopher would profess the demise of his own discipline.  Yet, I love it, for his intent seems to be one of liberation.  He claims his purpose in undermining philosophy is freeing social and political structures from the crutch of philosophy as a means to self-justification.

I feel this is quite pertinent to theology as well.  It seems that theology in modern day waivers in its search for some ground to rest on.  Half the time it reverts to Scripture and exclusive revelation epistemology; the other half it seeks to justify itself by philosophy.  Hans Kung who I have infinite respect for is even somewhat guilty of this.   He tries to establish philosophical grounds to justify his theological claims, starting with Kant.  Not that he does a bad job, just I found it ironic that we would justify our talk of God by referring to an absolutized Philosophy.

Rorty dispenses with absolutized philosophy by a variety of means, but from what I've read he mostly attacks language as a means of conveying truth . . . at least Truth.  (This is where people start attacking him as a postmodernist, which he finds a bit preposterous.)  For Rorty, the meaning of all language is historically contingent, depending on the lost experiences of a bygone age.  He denies any point where our words actually connect with reality, but rather claims that the meaning our words carry is always completely contingent on the words that surround them.  Not merely that meaning is contingent on context, which we all know, but that everything is context and therefore there is no such thing as a settled meaning of a word.

The basic idea is that every experience is one that we instantly interpret upon having it.  There are no uninterpreted experiences.  The next point is that all interpretation is language.  Therefore all experience is only known through language, but that we have no direct, non-linguistic experiences.  Rather what we experience is largely pre-determined by what language we speak and the categories our linguistic culture has made available to us.  The point then becomes apparent that there is no such thing as a "correct" way of speaking of an experience.  In short, no one gets "it" right.  All language is plastic and determined by the context we live in, and therefore a "correct" description today will likely be wrong tomorrow.  

The point is that there is no such thing as a "right or wrong" way of speaking on a subject, only useful and useless ways.  Thus, returning to the previous discussion, theology does well to refer to philosophy to find useful ways to speak of God, but when it makes an attempt to appeal to philosophy to prove who is and who is not speaking correctly of God, it has bastardized its own discipline and asked philosophy to do what it has no capacity to do.  Philosophy is impotent to help us get anything "right".  Especially God.  Yet philosophy is infinitely helpful in aiding us to find useful ways of speaking of God or spirituality, as well as dismissing the forms of speech that have become useless.

I'm enthusiastic about the possibilities that Rorty opens up for living differently (even as a theologian, which is a discipline Rorty has little respect for).  I have not even begun to consider all the detrimental possibilities which his philosophy might have, and I'm sure there are plenty.  Still, I do find that his ideas connect with many of the ways I have thought about God for some time.  I have long thought it ridiculous that we consider our verbal formulae sufficient to describe an infinite God.  "Infinite" being a verbal category whose point seems to imply that which is impossible to understand of fully experience (!).  

Jesus needed the bar all to himself . . .

After work tonight me and a few friends decided to go to happy hour at a local bar.  These are work friends who care nothing for religion and are self-professed agnostics leaning toward atheism.  We arrive at the bar only to find out that we had 30 minutes before we would be evicted from the only open seating area because it was reserved . . . by a church.  

Now, I've been a part of evangelical culture for most of my life, I'm a former missions major, but even in my most fundy-friendly times I would have said loudly what I'm about to say:

What a dumbass idea!!!

If you think you're message is something people need to hear, then go to where those people are, start up a relationship, and talk about it.  But don't effing kick them out of the bar, so you and your "progressive" Christian friends can feel cool sipping beer and talking theology over a loudspeaker.

So thank you Uptown Church for driving out all other patrons in the name of Jesus, so you could chat about outdated theology to a crowd that you filtered to make sure they would already believe what you were saying.  

They titled the thing "Ale and the Almighty".  wtf?