CLYDE EDGERTON'S 'THE BIBLE SALESMAN'

There are a plethora of southern writers like Clyde Edgerton who continue the particular tradition of southern fiction that William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor really established in the 20th century. What these authors and this tradition has in common, besides their clear immersion in Southern culture is the deep indebtedness to the Biblical narrative and an ongoing recognition of the importance of that narrative to Southern culture, and their ability to see both the serious and humorous side of this indebtedness. Edgerton is a Professor of Creative Writing at UNC- Wilmington. A native North Carolinian (born in Durham),there is clear enough evidence in his work that he has imbibed lots of good ideas from other North Carolinians like Thomas Wolfe, O. Henry, Doris Betts, Reynolds Price to mention only a few. One of the things he clearly shares with these writers is the ability to spin a good yarn, and in my estimation 'the Bible Salesman' is his finest effort thus far.

Here is Publisher's Weekley's brief summary of this brief (238 pages) novel---

"In this rollicking, rambling road novel of the post-WWII South, Preston Clearwater, a dead ringer for Clark Gable, steals cars and passes himself off as an undercover FBI agent. His mark is naïve 20-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, whom Preston convinces to drive the cars to various paint shops (telling Henry that they have infiltrated a car-theft ring), while Preston follows in his own legally registered Chrysler. Preston undertakes more audacious forms of crime, while earnest Henry has a reunion with his fundamentalist family, listens to his cousin's scheme to market a new ad gimmick (called the bumper sticker), falls in love with roadside fruit-stand proprietor Marlene Greene and even manages to sell a few Bibles along the way. The hitch is his involvement with Preston: Henry will have to get wise to preserve all he has gained. Too many flashbacks to Henry's Baptist roots slow him down on the way to the novel's suspenseful climax and moving epilogue, but the result is one of the better takes on Southern Bible salesman buddy stories since Moses Pray and Addie Pray of Paper Moon."

I quite agree with the critique there are too many flashbacks, and the prose is very sparse. Not a lot of description, but then this may reflect that the book is basically from the point of view of young Henry Dampier who, while smart in some respects, is certainly not well educated. I remember well the door to door Encyclopedia Britannica and Bible salesmen. In fact I had friends in college who did this in the South for a summer job, and as they said, "it's an education" in people and coping if nothing else. Henry is a person who certainly has a Christian upbringing, and Edgerton gets right the way that permeates much of Southern culture in the 1930s-through 50s which is the time frame of the book. Henry however is also a bit of a rascal. He orders free copies of Bibles, cuts out the front page indicating they are complimentary copies, and then sells them to make a living. And his sales skills are pretty good.

But Henry is also extremely naive and so is literally taken for a ride and then enlisted as a driver by a car thief vet of WWII who calls himself Preston Clearwater. Their various adventures across the South are interesting and sometimes comical, but what makes this book a must read for Christians and especially those who teach the Bible are Henry's life long struggles with trying to reconcile what they taught him the Bible says in church at home on the one hand, and what the Bible actually says on the other. The Bible, especially if you start at the front and with the patriarchs can quite readily trip a Christian up, and if you get to something like Song of Solomon it may make the wheels come off the car altogether. Henry ponders why the two creation stories in Gen.1-2 differ (one says animals then humans created, the other says the reverse order), why it seemed fine for Abraham to have sex with Sarah and also with Hagar, why it was apparently o.k. for Solomon to have all those concubines, why Song of Solomon was even in the Bible and so on. In other words, Henry's version of Christianity was the southern genteel sort he learned at home and Sunday school, which did not very readily match up with some of the more R rated stories in the Bible, especially when he began to experience raging hormones and was looking for a Biblical justification to do what he felt the urge to do with his first major girl friend-- Marleen Green.

I appreciate that Edgerton gets the Southern cultural aspects right, including the whole inlaws and outlaws and extended family nature of the culture, and one has growing sympathy for Henry whose mother abandoned him and he was raised by an Aunt who did her best. The humor in this novel is Southern humor and it hits the mark it is aiming for, certainly. If you are looking for fiction like this that is laugh out loud funny I would recommend Ferrel Sams short stories entitled "The Widows Mite" (which all by itself is worth buying the book), and if you are looking for more serious and profound reflection on Southern religious culture read the short stories of Flannery O' Connor.

But Edgerton paints well and paints true the portrait of the old South white culture in the period he attends to and ably shows its ironic, paradoxical, and humorous side all the while letting us see that the Bible is a book which will challenge the socks off of even a culture as profoundly influenced by Christianity as that ole Southern culture. As Henry would put it-- "there's stuff in the Bible they could never show in a PG rated film, and which nobody talks about". It shore is confusing for those who dip into the Bible only now and agin.

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE—THE ISSUE OF CONVERSION AND EMOTION PART TWO

By common consent amongst scholars, and others as well, by far the greatest theologian in American history thus far was Jonathan Edwards (1703-58). Yet if we ask the question of which of his works have had the most influence and made the most impact on American and in fact on Christian life world wide, it is not his great tomes on Original Sin or the Freedom of the Will. Rather it has been: 1) his chronicles about the first great Awakening; 2) his Diary of the Indian missionary David Brainerd; and 3) his work on Religious Affections and Conversion. For those who are students of 19th century revivalism it will seem an odd paradox that in the New England revivals of the mid-18th century it was the Arminians who opposed revivalism and the focus on new birth experiences, and it was the Calvinists who took the lead in said revival. This was just the opposite of what happened in the 19th century revivals and camp meetings that spread throughout the South and middle portions of the country. It is interesting that the three Edwardsian sources listed above kept being reprinted by the American Tract Society, often expunged of their more Calvinistic tinges to make them serviceable as guides and encouragement for the 19th century revivals.

Philip Gura in his fine "Jonathan Edwards. America's Evangelical" (N.Y.: Hill and Wang, 2005) in assessing the lasting and broadest impact of Edward's thought even unto today says the following: "For the past two and a half centuries people have gone to Edwards to understand what it means to embody spirituality and make it evident in their daily lives. He did nothing less than script how modern American evangelicals understand these concepts." (p. 230). "What Edwards had privileged, first through his interaction with those going through 'the work' [i.e. conversion] and later in his writings about the awakenings, was nothing less than the final, unassailable significance of an individual's emotions-- his or her feelings--to genuine religious experience. Concomitally, while Edwards urged his countrymen to conceive of the self as the locus of truth, he also insisted that this belief bear tangible fruit within the Christian community and not lead to mere self-indulgence or solipcism." (p. 231).

By focusing on 'the religion of the heart' Edwards had set in motion an unintended social consequence. As Gura puts it, the idea of individual right of conscience or individual human agency when it comes to one's own spiritual life, was set in motion. "No more would parishioners be held to artificial or dogmatic standards as they struggled with their religion. Rather Edwards had told them that spiritual knowledge was available to any, the lowest as well as the wealthiest, and was, verified internally, not by some autocratic clergyman." (p. 232). If you want to know where the rather extreme focus on interiority, on the inner light, on the inner spiritual experience, and on conversion thereto and on the "you ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart" focus comes from, we owe this in no small measure to Edwards and his influence on American Evangelism.

For Edwards true religion consisted in large measure in 'holy affections'. But what did he mean by that phrase? He defines religious affections as follows--" the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the will of the soul", not mere emotions or passions, nor even outward manifestations of excitement. Rather he is talking about something at the very core of a person's being, the core of our motivation which has been transformed by the grace of God-- call it the heart, call it the will, whatever one calls it, it is not a mere matter of the changing of ones understanding or ideas, though that is involved. It has to do with the renovation of the control center of a human personality which previously had been self-centered, and now could be God-centered, which previously had been bound in sin and inclined to sin, but now had been set free from the bondage of the will and was able to do that which was virtuous. Edwards most certainly did not see conversion as a human self-help program. He saw it as the life of God in the soul of a human being, or as the transforming grace of God which invades the human life and changes it from the inside out. He stresses that neither light without heat, nor heat without light, is the result of God's inner work. He puts it this way---"where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations, with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light, that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things....If the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart." (quote in Gura, p. 130).

But there was so much of an emotional outpouring at Edwards revival meetings in the 1730s and 1740 to the outside skeptic, even other Christians who saw such outpourings of emotion as over the top, or even dangerous, that there was a tendency to conclude that what was going on was mere emoting, mere sentimentalism, mere psychological manipulation of people's feelings. This reaction was only reinforced when Edwards most famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" was published, which sounded, to the outsider as though someone was trying to scare to death the listener and force them to repent and have an emotional conversion experience---OR ELSE GO TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET.

In the Boston weekly paper his critics drew up a caricature of Mr. Edwards recipe for 'a new kind of convert': "Take the green leaves of Pretension, Hypocrisy, and Ambition, of each three Handfuls; Spirits of Pride, three drams; the seeds of Discord and Dissention, one Ounce; the Flowers of Formality, half a pound; Roots of Obstinancy, Ignorance, and Controversy, five Pounds...; and then beat them all into a Mortar of Vain Glory with the Pestle of Contradiction; add a fee drops of crocodile tears mixt with the Water of Strife, infused over the fire of blind Zeal; add to the Composition four ounces of the Spirit of Self-Conceit more than lukewarm, and let the presuming Brother take a spoonful of it, Morning and Evening, before his Devotion." (quoted in Gura p. 116).

This of course was an unfair assessment, but the emotional excess of some of what went on in Northampton and the Connecticut valley at the instigation of Edwards preaching and that of his fellow revivalists, led to such a caricature. When Edwards quite specifically pointed to emotional experiences of a child and his wife and one other woman to provide a template or example of what he saw as genuine, this did nothing to further convince the skeptical, not least due to the prejudices about women and children being too emotive and irrational anyway.

Edwards described the conversion process as follows-- first individuals are awakened to "a sense of their miserable condition by nature" and so become aware of their dreadful sinful state. Then followed a realization that they were in danger of going to Hell or perishing eternally, a stage in the process that often left people despondent and crying out "what must we do to be saved", and realizing they had nowhere to turn but to God. Finally, to some God brought a "conviction of their absolute dependency on his sovereign power and grace, and the universal necessity of a Mediator" and this realization often led to a wonderful calm. (Gura, p.88). Edwards of course realized that by so focusing on the inner experience and the emotional reaction to it that he was letting the genie out of the bottle, opening himself to charges that what was happening was 'mere enthusiasm' (which was the 18th century buzz word for fanaticism). Some critics even called what Edwards seemed to be stirring up,'distemper', but he continued to stand by the genuineness of various of the conversion experiences, even the ones where people claimed to have visions and see Christ's blood or his dying on the cross. To those familiar with Catholic literature on the beatific vision of various saints (e.g. Hildegard of Bingen), some of of these descriptions will sound very familiar. It is also not a surprise that some accused Edwards of fostering 'mysticism' or 'mere superstition', and he was at pains in his subsequent writings to explain, and defend what had happened as genuine religious experience. Thus the revivalist had to turn apologete thereafter.

Was the net effect of the First Great Awakening too much emphasis on emotion, and a private individualistic experience of salvation of a particular dramatic sort? Perhaps so, but the positive effects in changed lives cannot be denied. Unwittingly however, by this strong emphasis on a lay person's testimony and theologizing about it, Edwards also unleashed a kind of anti-clericalism as well as anti-intellectualism. If the Holy Spirit could prompt a simple uneducated vessel to truly explain what had happened in their soul, what need was their of external guidance or 'mere learning'. Edwards, who went on to be the third President of Princeton did all he could to correct such misimpressions, but he could not deny the great leveling effect of the work of the Spirit on all kinds of human lives, whether well educated and well heeled or not.

When I have reflected on revivalism and conversion, a few things have become apparent to me over the decades of my ministry: 1) for those who have genuine experiences of conversion to Christ, the experience is more profound than our ability to articulate it properly . My grandmother was a profoundly committed and converted Christian woman but she could not adequately articulate with theologically appropriate language what had happened to her in that Baptist Church when she was converted. She could just repeat the verse from Amazing Grace, and let it go at that; 2) the genuine work of God is not demonstrated by how dramatic (or lack of drama) there is in the instant or process of the change. Some people cross over Jordan and don't realize it until they find themselves happily standing on the far shore. 3) conversion is an event which leads to a process or simply a process, initiation is not the same thing. Initiation by baptism can be done in a short span of time, but this should not be confused with conversion. We have too many tales in Acts and elsewhere where you have: a) people who are converted but have not experienced Christian baptism (e.g. Apollos in Acts 18); 2) people who are initiated but don't yet have the Holy Spirit, which according to Luke is the litmus test of whether one is a Christian at all or not (see Acts 8); and of course 3) we have stories where initiation and conversion happen basically simultaneously. It is always interesting to me how the case of St. Paul is singled out as an example of instanteous conversion, but in fact the event on the Damascus Road led to several days before the scales fell from his eyes and he was baptized. Even in the case of Paul, conversion involved both an event and a process thereafter before he came to Christ. The big bang theory of conversion needs some qualifications. God can of course cause a conversion however God wants to, whether slow or fast, dramatic or quiet. Its not for us to decide such matters. 4) conversion is only the beginning of salvation, not the whole-shebang. To use traditional language the new birth and justification by grace through faith are the door into the body of Christ, and the house of salvation. But thereafter one has to work out one's salvation with fear and trembling. There are in fact as many verses in the NT about 'salvation' which comes after conversion (especially in reference to final salvation when we receive the resurrection body and are conformed fully to the image of God's Son), as there are references to the new birth as salvation. The Christian has to say "I have been saved, I am being saved, and I shall be saved to the uttermost". Until one gets through all three tenses of salvation, the situation is still not fully and finally resolved, and salvation in full has not been completely obtained.

Think of these things.

BW3

BIBLICAL CURSE GENERATOR!

Have you ever had that sad feeling that you just missed your opportunity for a good bit of repartee or a zinger or come backer, and then you rehash in your mind what you should have said or wished you had said? Well, my friends, fear not. Help has arrived. We now have the Biblical Curse Generator! Here below is the necessary link. With this tool you will be able to say 'a plague on both your houses' in a more effective and Biblical way without having to muster up your own rhetoric.


http://ship.saintsimeon.co.uk/curses/index.html


Kudos to Michael Thomson for sending me this revelation.

BW3

P.S. What did the turkey say when it was wrapped up and stuck in the oven---

Answer: "Curses! Foiled again!"

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE—THE ISSUE OF CONVERSION AND EMOTION PART ONE

I am currently reading a fine treatment of the First Great Awakening by Philip Gura entitled Jonathan Edwards, America’s Evangelical (Hill and Wang, 2005). Unlike George Marsden’s more comprehensive and definitive life of Jonathan Edwards, Gura contents himself with focusing on the issue of religious experience, about which Edwards has reams to say. No one who has read Edwards 'a Narrative of Surprising Conversions', could doubt that Edwards was very much interested in the ‘inner change’ the inner life of someone who becomes a believer, and the signs that it is so.

The controversies of the eighteenth century in New England between the Old Lights vs. the New Lights will ring very familiar to those who have experienced in this era the endless controversies about ‘charismatic’ gifts, spiritual experience, and what amounts to genuine Christianity. It has been ever thus, and of course one part of the issue is power and control. Ministers don’t like feeling like someone has come to town and stolen their congregation (called sheep stealing), by some sort of dramatic preaching mission. Itinerants have always been seen as threats to located ministers, in various ways. This is one reason why the Billy Graham crusades were so different from others as they not only enlisted the local ministers in the work, but insisted that those coming Christ then needed to join a local church, not follow the Pied Piper around from one revival to another.

In short, there are many many issues that revivalism, the new birth, Christian religious experience raises for us today, all the more so since we live in a very affective age (not to be confused with an effective age), by which I mean it is often thought that no one (but God) can challenge the genuineness of someone else’s experience, since that is subjective and private. What is missed in that assumption is that an experience can be profound and real, without being good or from God. Lots of people have genuine, deep, and life changing experiences all the time that are neither good nor from God. The genuineness of an experience tells us nothing about its character or goodness or truth. In short, even when it comes to religious experience there has to be some criteria by which the experiencer and others can evaluated its nature, character, and validity, if one wishes to say it has come from God.

So let us first offer some cautionary words. Firstly, there is a fine line between a persons’s spirituality and their sexuality, and people who are passionate in one aspect of their being are likely to be passionate in the other. And when one is in the midst of trauma or crisis, it is easy to confuse one sort of experience for the other, or to use spiritual terminology to describe and indeed sanctify merely sexual feelings and longings. Not long ago, I received an emergency email from a man whose wife was cheating on him, and justifying it with various Scriptures, saying he was not God’s man for her. Now the situation was complex, and there was plenty of blame to go around, but here I would like to remind one and all that even Christians have an infinite capacity for self-justification and rationalizing things. When one gets involves in a heightened emotional experience it is often confused with a religious experience, or justified on that basis. The rationale is “nothing that feelings this good, could be bad. It must be from God”. This leads to a second warning.

Feelings are notoriously unreliable guides to the goodness of something. Many things that feel good in the moment of experience are hideously bad for you and wicked in themselves. If you’ve ever talked to a crack addict, you will know what I mean. That high feeling, that soaring sensation feels so good…. But alas it is a deception. I am not for as moment suggesting that feelings in themselves are to be avoided (indeed they are unavoidable), but I am suggesting that they are not a reliable moral guide to much of anything, especially when one realizes that human beings are fallen and self-centered creatures, and even converted ones can get confused by powerful feelings. Feelings come and go. They can be prompted by a myriad of stimuli, and many of them are not good. Here is one guide I would stress when you are evaluating an experience--- you can tell the root of it when you see the fruit of it. By this I mean that an experience which genuinely comes from God and by means of the Holy Spirit makes you a better person, and your life and conduct will reflect the change. Paul speaks of how the inner life is changed when God pours his love into our hearts. He speaks in Gal. 5 of the fruit of the Spirit--- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control… If you see the genuine fruit of the Spirit in the life of a person, if you see clear evidence recognizable and attested by many, then you can have a good certainty it is the work of God in the soul of a human being.

It is of course also true that a genuine religious experience may be accompanied by a fresh spiritual gifting of a person, and other changes as well, but ‘the changed life’ has in the first instance to do with being a new creature in Christ, having a new character, not merely new spiritual gifts, and as John Wesley long ago said, the gifts must be normed by the fruit, especially the fruit called love. Read closely 1 Cor. 13. Paul says quite clearly there that the fruit called love is far more important and better evidence than any spiritual gift of the character of the change in a person’s life.

Let’s now turn to the issue of the varieties of conversion experiences, of which there are many. One of the major mistakes made in revivalism is the cookie cutter approach, namely the assumption that everyone needs to have the same sort of conversion story and experience, or else it is not genuine. Sometimes people are even more definitive and insist one needs a Damascus Road kind of darkness to light sudden experience. This is frankly false, and it has caused no little damage to many genuine Christians who have been brow beaten over the head for not being converted, when they are, simply because they did not have one particular kind of emotional religious experience. I have a friend who came out of the Wesleyan revivalistic tradition and as a youth was implored to come to the altar so many times (which he obligingly did) that he later said he felt like he had stretch marks on his soul--- being born again, and again, and again, and again. You get the point. When this happens it is clear that the preacher has in mind some sort of specific religious manifestation as evidence of conversion, say for example speaking in tongues. The NT however does not suggest that speaking in tongues is always the initial evidence of conversion, though clearly it sometimes is. And herein lies the problem—God can do it however God wants to, and there are as many different conversion stories and experiences as there are people.

Some conversions are joyful and quick, some are mournful and slow. I am thinking of the famous story of C.S. Lewis who in essence says that God finally backed him into a corner and Lewis gave in and then said words to the effect of “on that day I became the most reluctant convert to Christianity in human history”. Some conversions are even quiet and when a person is alone, some happen in a crowd of many being converted. Some come with dramatic spiritual experiences (being slain in the Spirit), some do not. Some of this has to do with the spiritual and emotional makeup of the individual, and some of it has to do with circumstances, and social situations. Obviously God can do it many ways. Consider the terminology of the new birth or being born again, which of course involves analogy. Some labors are really long and painful, and even require intervention. Some labors are remarkably short and quick. Some involve a lot of preliminary signs, some come about quickly as suddenly the waters break. The issue is not so much how or how dramatically one was born of God, but rather whether it is so. The evidence that it has happened is not only the growing and telltale signs of reformed character, the fruit of the Spirit. The evidence also clearly involves a renewed mind, a different world view, especially about one’s relationship with God in Christ. Read Romans 10.8-10—real conversion involves a new found faith in Christ and the inner experience of the love of God which casts out all fear and cleanses one from sin. One can genuinely confess that Jesus is one’s own Lord and he is the risen Lord.

In other words in a genuine Christian conversion there is: 1) a change in relationships, particularly with God and Christ; 2) a change in beliefs and understandings in regard to God, Christ, the Bible, life etc.; and 3) a change in character involved in a real conversion. There may or may not in addition be dramatic emotional experiences and sudden giftings in evidence.

One of the problems which the Old Lights had with New Lights like Jonathan Edwards was that they placed too much emphasis and trust in the evidence someone was coming unglued or unhinged and having an overwhelming emotional experience, which Edwards believed surely came from God. The Old Lights realized these things can be copycatted and even counterfeited, and that the 3 criteria listed above would more obviously reveal who had been genuinely converted. Edwards, to be fair realized this as well but he gave strong credence to people who seemed to have had a dramatic spiritual experience and were saying things like they had had an “intense and lively, and refreshing sense of divine things…I appeared myself to float or swim in the bright sweet beams of the love of Christ…my soul remained in a kind of heavenly Elysium”. Edwards saw swooning, falling out, sweating, yelling, shaking as well as the sort of interior experiences described above as evidence, strong evidence of conversion.
But in fact those same sort of phenomena are in evidence at an exorcism and other sorts of dramatic spiritual experiences, some of which transpire long after conversion. And again, the psychological dynamics of a revival are such that there is a good deal of wanna-be phenomena and copy-catting. One is wise to wait and see if the 3 evidences mentioned above manifest themselves over the course of the following weeks and months. This is why I would not encourage a minister to have people join the church during a revival. I would let them be discipled or catechized for a while first.

One more thing. Religious or genuine spiritual experience is one thing, the emotional response to it, another. Sometimes spiritual experiences do not prompt dramatic emotional outbursts, sometimes with some people they do. It is a mistake to judge the genuineness of a spiritual experience on the basis of the dramatic nature (or lack there of) of the emotional response to it. Sometimes, secular chroniclers have tried to psychologize revival phenomena and say that it is simply people with lots of pent up emotions and anticipation longing to go through some sort of release, or catharsis experience. However true this may be, this is only an analysis not of the spiritual experience itself, but rather of the human response to it. Think on these things and comment.

DESCARTES BONES-- CAN YOU DIG THEM?

Perhaps if you know any Latin at all, you will know the little phrase 'cogito ergo sum' or 'I think/cogitate therefore I am'. It is perhaps one of the most famous sentences ever uttered in modern history. The first time I ever heard this phrase was, oddly enough, whilst listening to one of my favorite Moody Blues albums, when all of a sudden either Justin Hayward or John Lodge said in one of their more ethereal songs "I think, therefore I am" to which they added "at least I think I am." The irony of that is that they added 'doubt' to the one proposition that Descartes said could not be doubted-- the thinking subject cannot doubt that he exists or else he wouldn't be thinking. Descartes was on a quest for what a person can know with certainty. It was a lonely quest, and in the end it landed him in Sweden freezing to death and dying of a fever, as a guest of Queen Christina of Stockholm.

But that ending on Feb. 11th 1650 was the beginning of not only a story about his bones and their various bizarre travels, but really the story of modern intellectual history and how it broke free from medieval feudalism and the control of one state church after another. It is a story that in one sense led to the American and French revolutions, and if for no other reason, it is a story Americans ought to study closely if they want to understand not merely the origins of their intellectual freedom to speak and believe freely as they feel led and are persuaded, but also the origins of the modern tension between faith and reason, church and state, mind and body, certainity and doubt, objective and subjective evidence, and we could go on. The basic antinomies of modern thought, whether secular or sacred, whether religious or profane can in one way or another be traced back to Descartes reflections in his most famous of all works--- "A Discourse on Method".

Here is a brief synopsis snagged from the Wiki article which I find, in this case to be fundamentally accurate---

"René Descartes (French pronunciation: [ʁəne dekaʁt]), (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form),[2] was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy," and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which continue to be studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Cartesian coordinate system allowing geometric shapes to be expressed in algebraic equations being named for him. He is accreditied as the father of analytical geometry. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the Early Modern version of what are now commonly called emotions, he goes so far as to assert that he will write on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before". Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like St. Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differs from the Schools on two major points: First, he rejects the analysis of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejects any appeal to ends — divine or natural — in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God’s act of creation.

Descartes was a major figure in 17th century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well. As the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system, Descartes founded analytic geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the invention of calculus and analysis. Descartes' reflections on mind and mechanism began the strain of Western thought that much later, impelled by the invention of the electronic computer and by the possibility of machine intelligence, blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His most famous statement is: Cogito ergo sum (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am; OR I am thinking, therefore I exist), found in §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (Latin) and in part IV of Discourse on the Method (French).


Descartes is often regarded as the first modern thinker to provide a philosophical framework for the natural sciences as these began to develop. In his Discourse on the Method he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt, sometimes also referred to as methodological skepticism: he rejects any ideas that can be doubted, and then reestablishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge.[7]

Initially, Descartes arrives at only a single principle: thought exists. Thought cannot be separated from me, therefore, I exist (Discourse on the Method and Principles of Philosophy). Most famously, this is known as cogito ergo sum (English: "I think, therefore I am"). Therefore, Descartes concluded, if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting, therefore the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. "The simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence, that is in and of itself proof that he does exist." [8]
René Descartes at work.

Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been proven unreliable. So Descartes concludes that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing. Thinking is his essence as it is the only thing about him that cannot be doubted. Descartes defines "thought" (cogitatio) as "what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which he is immediately conscious.

To further demonstrate the limitations of the senses, Descartes proceeds with what is known as the Wax Argument. He considers a piece of wax; his senses inform him that it has certain characteristics, such as shape, texture, size, color, smell, and so forth. When he brings the wax towards a flame, these characteristics change completely. However, it seems that it is still the same thing: it is still a piece of wax, even though the data of the senses inform him that all of its characteristics are different. Therefore, in order to properly grasp the nature of the wax, he cannot use the senses. He must use his mind. Descartes concludes:

“ And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind. ”

In this manner, Descartes proceeds to construct a system of knowledge, discarding perception as unreliable and instead admitting only deduction as a method. In the third and fifth Meditation, he offers an ontological proof of a benevolent God (through both the ontological argument and trademark argument). Because God is benevolent, he can have some faith in the account of reality his senses provide him, for God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, he finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception. In terms of epistemology therefore, he can be said to have contributed such ideas as a rigorous conception of foundationalism and the possibility that reason is the only reliable method of attaining knowledge.

In Descartes' system, knowledge takes the form of ideas, and philosophical investigation is the contemplation of these ideas. This concept would influence subsequent internalist movements as Descartes' epistemology requires that a connection made by conscious awareness will distinguish knowledge from falsity. As a result of his Cartesian doubt, he viewed rational knowledge as being "incapable of being destroyed" and sought to construct an unshakable ground upon which all other knowledge can be based. The first item of unshakable knowledge that Descartes argues for is the aforementioned cogito, or thinking thing.

Descartes also wrote a response to skepticism about the existence of the external world. He argues that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Descartes goes on to show that the things in the external world are material by arguing that God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted, and that God has given him the "propensity" to believe that such ideas are caused by material things.

Descartes was also renowned for his work in producing the Cartesian Theory of Fallacies. This can be most easily explored using the statement: "This statement is a lie." While it is most commonly referred to as a paradox, the Cartesian Theory of Fallacies states that at any given time a statement can be both true and false simultaneously due to its contradictory nature. The statement is true in its fallacy. Thus, Descartes developed the Cartesian Theory of Fallacies, which greatly influenced the thinking of the time. Many would-be philosophers were trying to develop inexplicable statements of seeming fact, however, this laid rumors of such a proposition impossible. Many philosophers believe that when Descartes formulated his Theory of Fallacies, he intended to be lying, which in and of itself embodies the theory.

Dualism


Descartes suggested that the body works like a machine, that it has the material properties of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics. The mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics. Descartes argued that only humans have minds, and that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism or duality proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional.

Descartes suggested that the pineal gland is "the seat of the soul" for several reasons. First, the soul is unitary, and unlike many areas of the brain the pineal gland appears to be unitary (microscopic inspection reveals it is formed of two hemispheres). Second, Descartes observed that the pineal gland was located near the ventricles. He believed the animal spirits of the ventricles acted through the nerves to control the body, and that the pineal gland influenced this process. Finally, Descartes incorrectly believed that only humans have pineal glands, just as, in his view, only humans have minds. This led him to the belief that animals cannot feel pain, and Descartes' practice of vivisection (the dissection of live animals) became widely used throughout Europe until the Enlightenment. Cartesian dualism set the agenda for philosophical discussion of the mind-body problem for many years after Descartes' death. The question of how a nonmaterial mind could influence a material body, without invoking supernatural explanations, remains controversial to this day."

--------------
My concern in this post is not to debate Cartesianism, which has even been used to support the ontological argument for the existence of God, my concern is with the really splendid and well written book released last year by Doubleday by Russell Shorto with the title DESCARTES BONES; A SKELETAL HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON.


In the first place this is a beautifully produced and first rate read. It is one part detective story (instead of where's Waldo, we seek to discover-- where's Descartes skull?), one part intellectual history of the West since Descartes, one part investigation of why there has been so much fascination with and concern about Descartes bones and legacy over the past 350+ years. Shorto, it must be said,tries to accomplish too much in some 253 pages of this well written investigation, but like imbibing a good gumbo, if you simply drink in whatever he is serving up, you will find the final product nourishing and tasty. Had the story really been limited to the detective bit of tracking Descartes bones through Europe, it would have been too short a story for a full book.

The question for us as Christians to ask about Mssr. Descartes, who was himself a devout Christian, is--- why should so many non- and anti-Christians of various eras have taken him to be their intellectual hero? Richard Watson, one of the foremost authorities on Descartes in the world, and perhaps the foremost in North America explains:

"Descartes laid the foundations for the dominance of reason in science and human affairs. He desacralized nature and set individual human being above church and state. Without Cartesian individualism, we would have no democracy. Without the Cartesian method of analyzing material things into their primary elements, we would never have developed the atom bomb. The seventeenth-century rise of Modern Science, the eighteenth century Enlightenment, the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, your twentieth-century personal computer, and twenty-first-century deciphering of the brain--all Cartesian. The modern world is Cartesian to the core." [Watson Cogito ergo Sum. The Life of Rene Descartes, (Boston: Godine, 2002), p. 3].


I would say, as the British do, this is over-egging the pudding a bit, but still it gives you some degree of understanding of the impact of Cartesianism on the modern western world. To the Christian it is hard to avoid hearing echoes of the primeval story of Eden lost in the reflections of Descartes.

What I mean by this is you will remember what happened to Adam and Eve, according to Gen. 3.7 when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil-- "and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked" Here we have not merely self-awareness, the realization that one exists, but self-consciousness in the negative sense, the heart turned in upon itself, the beginning of self-centered, selfish existence. The beginning of isolation from God and all other creatures or things. The beginning of doubt, as opposed to faith ("Did God really say.......?").

Cartesianism in some ways sounds as if it is the ultimate philosophical playing out of that primeval story, for good or ill, and mostly the latter. What we need to know about the story is that both modern radical atheism and modern fundamentalism with its anti-intellectual spirit are in fact over-reactions to Cartesianism in various ways, either on the faith side of the equation or the reason side of the equation. Shorto, insightfully puts it this way:

"'Reason vs. Faith' may be the chronic fever of modernity, but if the Western world caught it in the period of the Enlightenment the division was not as clear as some today might like to believe. There seems nowadays to be an ingrained notion that people of that era set reason firmly against faith and the two have ever been locked in a death struggle. [which Shorto rightly goes on to say is absolutely false, especially in the case of Descartes himself] Maybe this idea comes from our desire to simplify things, our hunger for sound bites and text crawls. Maybe it gives clarity to both the hard-core believers and the antireligion faction, both of which are very much alive today. People who want to drive society and politics via the motor of their religious views-- whether they are Muslims, American evangelicals, Roman Catholics, members of Indian's nationalist Hindu party-- have been particularly vocal in recent years. But the other side-- political atheists, you might call them--are voicing themselves, too, as evidenced by the titles of recent books: 'The God Delusion....' etc. The root of these atheist manifestos is the belief that society woke-up three or four centuries ago to the realization that God doesn't control the universe, that rather blind forces of nature do, but that many people around the world are still caught in the trap of religion and are threatening, with violence and intimidation, to drag humanity down the drain. If the hard-core faithful have their ancient texts to rely on for foundations, the new atheists have the Enlightenment." (pp. 79-80). But in fact both extremes of this debate and ongoing struggle have their history wrong.

As Shorto goes on to show, Descartes was not part of the radical Enlightenment, and his legacy was never a matter of repudiating faith in order to exalt reason, and make humankind and human thinking the measure of all things. His legacy has more to do with the ability to distinguish between soul and body, or even more particularly between mind and brain (the latter being the hardware and the former being the software so to speak, and without the software there is no real thinking or consciousness. A corpse still has his full material brain the instant after death, but the mind and with it consciousness has left the building). Descartes was interested in distinctions and categorizations that help us better understand ourselves, the world, and even God. He was not interested in radical dichotomies between faith and reason, and indeed to the end of his life he wrote about and looked for ways to connect the soul and the body or the mind and the body. "In his last book, Descartes states that in effect there must be a third substance, which is not really a third substance but a compound of mind and body...'I should treat it as a code, an encoding, which allows mind to react on body and body on mind." (Shorto p. 251. The quote within the quote is from Father Jean-Robert Armogathe, a Roman Catholic priest of Paris and one of the premiere experts in Descartes).

There is so much more to Shorto's stimulating book, including what happened to Descartes skull and body, which I will leave to your own peregrinations. What I would like to do here at the close of this little discussion is point out what Descartes seems to have really thought and believed.

He believed that nature is not defiled by inquiry, and so for example the examination of corpses to help us advance medicine and knowledge of human beings is not a sacrilege. Precisely because he believed in a Creator God distinct from all of his creation, he believed one was not defiling a deity when one examined nature or human nature. He could point to the story in Genesis of human beings naming and classifying the animals, of their filling the earth and understanding as well as ruling over it. Descartes, in others words, would not see most of modern empirical science as in any ways at odds with Christian faith. Indeed, he would see it as a natural outcome of such faith, believing there really is a world outside the human mind that can and ought to be examined and understood.

Secondly, Descartes did not believe that reason in itself was at odds with revelation or faith. Indeed, he believed that 'right reason' and proper faith should be seen as complementary things, though often they had different spheres of inquiry. Reason and understanding were good gifts of God, as was faith. He would no more have approved of modern atheism than he would have approved of the modern anti-intellectual spirit of Protestant fundamentalism.

Shorto in his book goes on to show how it was the Enlightement of Descartes, not the Enlightenment of the radical figures which led to the American Revolution, led to notions of intellectual freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, but a continued strong faith in God. This could be contrasted with the French revolution which was the brain child of the truly godless or sometimes even pantheistic radical Enlightenemnt (see e.g. Spinoza).

I think he is right in this analysis, and here is what it means. As both Americans and Christians, we need to come to better terms with Descartes. We need to understand why Descartes' call to critical thinking without in any way jettisoning one's trust in God is the crucial via media between being benighted and blessed, between being at odds with our Maker and using all the spiritual and intellectual gifts he has given us, between bowing down to the spirit of repression and anti-intellectualism in the name of God, or the spirit of suppression of all those who would want to exorcise all religion from our intellectual history. If revering God is the beginning of all wisdom, then loving God and all others and all of creation with our entire minds must be said to be the continuation of that wisdom.

It was not natural human inquiry and intellectual curiosity which killed the Adamic cat--- it was disobedience to a clear command of God.

TWO YEAR OLD CHRISTIAN IDOL STAR

Here's a video sent to me by Marc Axelrod of Zoei Toh, a two year old that American Idol should check out, not least 'because He lives'.

Tales from Frostbite Falls-- Part Eight-- Sugar Mapling

It would be difficult to exaggerate the beauty of New England in October, and nothing is more beautiful than the maple trees, but their beauty is not confined to the outside of the tree. Within is a treasure as well, and nowhere in the U.S. is more famous for its maple syrup than Vermont (Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth need not apply. Don't trust that watered down sugar water).

This morning our house cleaner Debbie Wright, who with her husband does sugar mapling, gave me a short course in maple syrup of which there are various grades and configurations depending on when one taps the tree and where one is in the rising of the sap process. In general the darker the syrup, the more actual maple it has in it and the less pure sugar. The grades are fancy (least dark and most sugary, at least to some tastes), medium, amber, dark amber, and grade B (i.e. the coarsest). Its almost like the way ales are judged in terms of their amber color. Maple syruping happens in late February in southern Vermont where I am, and further north it can run as late as sometime in March. It also depends on what sort of winter it has been. Estimates say that upwards of 350,000 gallons of maple syrup are produced in this state every year. That's a heck of a lot of pancakes to soak that up--- say several million.

The Vermont Living website has the following to say: "Many maple sugarmakers now use plastic pipelines and boil down the sap in modern stainless evaporators, but some still gather and boil the old fashioned way; with horse drawn wagons and wood fired evaporators. The sugar shack steam is a welcome sign of spring to come.


Visiting an operating maple sugar shack is an unforgettable experience. The aroma of boiling sap and the taste of fresh maple syrup are guaranteed to bring a smile. Try old fashioned sugar on snow, or warm maple syrup over ice cream. A Vermont sugar-season tradition is a "sweet and sour" - maple syrup followed by a bite of pickle."

Somehow I can only imagine extreme mouth puckering after having maple syrup on ice cream and then trying to eat a sour pickle there after--- YIKES! What is wonderful and more common is to have a Vermont apple pie with Vermont cheddar on top warm up. Yummm..... They even have it on the breakfast menu around here!

If you want to understand why real maple syrup is costly, consider the man hours required to tap the sap, do the boiling, do the distilling, do the bottling etc. Its not a cheap process. But people have been coming to Grafton and other nearby villages for their cheese and syrup for centuries.

Grafton used to be on the old stage coach road, and the Old Grafton Inn and Tavern were a regular stop from 1801 on. It was visited by U.S Grant, Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, to name but a few. The well heeled loved to come to these inns in the 19th century for a little R+R.

There was however after the beginning of the 20th century a sharp decline in both the Inns and the native cheese and syrup industries around here, due to the sharp decline in visitors. Why? The automobile. When you could travel so much faster, you could zip through Vermont in a relatively short period of time (even with the many dirt roads, which still proliferate around here). Like with so many things, the cost of progress was regress in the old values, the old verities, the old industries. Some of them are making a comeback though (hooray). If you ever get to come to Vermont in February, then I suggest not only a visit to the Grafton Cheese Factory, but hooking up with the genuine hard core sugar mapling folks and going and watching this amazing process. I'm betting your reaction will be like mine----SWEEEETTTT!

BW3

STONE WALLED

The old stone wall’s a miracle
Uneven rocks row on row
Without a bit of mortar
Yet each with a place to go.

How did the mason reckon it
So that the top would be on the level
Did he just suddenly start assembling
Or use a line and bevel?

And what faith he had whilst building
That malice or weather would forego
The temptation to topple it over
Tumbled all down in the snow.

It set me in mind of a Builder
Working with just mere flesh and bone
To put his Body together
When commonsense would leave it alone.

Each person’s uneven, irregular
No two are exactly the same
And yet in composing his Temple
He stamps each one with his name.

Without cement, or mortar
Only care in construction would do
Whenever your raising God’s household
Only love will serve as glue.

I slowly inspected the rock wall
And how large and small both alike
Had been piled apparently haphazard
Yet each bit rose up the same height.

I guess it’s a lesser miracle
Than the one more difficult to see
How a Builder joined us together
From now, ‘til eternity.

I decided to stop scrutinizing,
Criticizing its funny ole shape
And just celebrate the marvel
Of how the Rock repaired our landscape.

Feb. 1, 2009
Grafton, Vermont

DEPARTURE

The picture at the top is the famous portrait of Daniel Boone at the end of his life in Missouri painted by Chester Harding from Boston in 1819. The second picture is the famous one of Boone leading men through the Cumberland gap and Boone's Trace, the path he hacked through the wilderness to get to Kentucky. Notice no coonskin cap (a later invention of Hollywood and TV, if you remember Fess Parker). I have been enjoying reading Robert Morgan's (a Tar Heel alum)fantastic, thorough, and careful biography of Boone, simply entitled "Boone. A Biography" (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008). I relate to ole Dan'el because we both lived for long period in N.C. and Kentucky. The book inspired the following....

DEPARTURE

Moving, departing, going on ahead
Quitting, exiting, leaving it for dead
Forward, motion, progress in a line
Known for the movement, what you’ve left behind.

Straight as, an arrow, now the border bound
Face like a flint set, never looking ‘round
Heading, for horizon, always gathering speed
Horse and a saddle, all the things you need.

Go west, frontiersman, search for better land
Survey, explore, compass in your hand
Scratch the itch, the urge, for going yet again
Never returning, where you once had been.

Facing the sunset, heading now due west
Get there by sundown, or just do your best
Camping out, sleeping rough, now a daily deed
Finding the bluegrass, settling with all speed.

Marksman, surveyor, friend of Indians too
Tar Heel, Kentuckian, knew just what to do.
Boon to humanity, and all those he met
A Genuine American, few have equaled yet.

Quaker, hunter, lover of the land
Mason, commander, rifle in his hand.
Trapper, trader, family man and then,
Pull up stakes, and do it all again.

Born in Penn’s woods, died a patriarch,
Missouri the last frontier, but bluegrass in his heart,
Many came after, without succeeding him
Ole Dan’el the original, shan’t be seen again.


Jan. 31 2009

Tales from Frostbite Falls-- Part Seven-- Windham Hill Inn

So as I have been saying its just me and the big dogs and a cat up here on top of the Green mountain above Grafton. It should make for a truly interesting Super Bowl Party-- "So what did you think of that last great catch by Fitzgerald Boo and Ben (the dogs' names)?" Response: "Woof" "How about You-- Clio (the cat on my lap?" "Purrrrrfect". (I think I'll sing 'Who Let the Dogs Out' about now).

Yesterday was a decent weather day so I went up to Rutland some 40 miles north to the Norman Rockwell Museum. I was not disappointed. It is the one which opened not long before he died (there is also a good one in Stockbridge Mass.). What is interesting is that he used local Vermonters (he lived for decades in Arlington Vt.) as his models, for his many drawings. I had no idea he had done so many Magazine covers, including famous Boy's Life ones (the Scout magazine I took when I was in Scouting). He did a bunch of Presidential portraits, and Astronaut portraits in the 60s-- some stunning ones of the moon landing Apollo days. He also did a rock album cover in 1968-- Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield. I will post a bunch of pictures when I get home from the trip and can download them from the camera.

Last night I went to a truly magical place-- the Windham Hill Inn, one of the few 5 star Inns anywhere in the U.S., never mind New England. You can see a picture of it above complete with its current 40 inches of snow. In case you do not remember, this is really where Windham Hill Music got its start. Will Akerman was a handy man who actually helped rebuild the place and get it open for business in the 70s, and Windham Hill Music was born. This Inn is just above Townsend and one of Akerman's early recorded songs for his own label was the Townsend Shuffle. Windham Hill music featured the ethereal-- lots of echoing pianists (George Winston, Scott Cossu, Liz Story, and the more mainstream and still going Jim Brickman), and acoustic guitarists (the fantastic late lamented Michael Hedges, Akerman himself, Bela Fleck from Lexington Ky. and others), and some wonderful if quirky groups like Shadowfax (their The Odd get Even CD is terrific). The genre of the label was pure music, acoustic and nature music without artifice and lots of synthesizers in the age of over-sythensized and over disco-ed everything. Try their wonderful 4 Cd sampler or their 2 CD sampled called Sanctuary. You will not be disappointed if you need something to mellow you out.

Well the Inn has turn into a fancy shmancy B+B, and not cheap either. Their evening 3 course meal is $60 plus tax and tip. That does not count beverages and desserts. It was however a treat to celebrate the finishing of the Doxa book on worship as well as the two volumes of Indelible Image. What did I have-- I had a roasted mushroom cap with prosciutto in it (yum) a smoked duck and seafood (salmon, mussels, scallops etc) salad, and pork tenderloin on yummy black risotto and cabbage. It was excellent and the portions allowed for a doggy bag (and with 2 150 dogs hanging on me, I could use it. A good time was had by all. If you're going to buy a Windham Hill CD and you have to choose one, try Michael Hedges amazing live CD-- Live on the Double Planet. If you are a guitarist like me or just a music lover, its a treat.

Yours until the Vermont Maple Syrup stops dripping,

BW3

TWO NEW ENGLAND GREATS-- NORMAN ROCKWELL AND JOHN UPDIKE

Growing up my favorite magazine, other than sports was The Saturday Evening Post, for one reason. The amazing paintings and drawing of a true New England original--- Norman Rockell (1911-78). For decades Rockwell drew the covers for this magazine, and often they were bought just for the covers. Above you will see five of his famous religious paintings. I especially like the Easter Morning one. There is now a museum for Rockwell's work in Rutland (he used to live in Arlington, as well as several places in Massachusetts (Stockbridge), though he was born in NYC. Rockwell had a wry wit which comes through in so many of his paintings, and his new realism inspired many other artists, perhaps most obviously Andrew Wyeth.

I must also at this point report the very sad news of the passing of John Updike (1932-Jan. 27 2009) of Ipswich, Mass. this week. He was a remarkable writer early on for the New Yorker and then later in his many novels and short stories, mostly about New England. He was also a practicing Christian, a theme in various of his novels almost as frequently as the theme of sex. He won the Pulitzer twice for two of his famous Rabbit novels (Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest I believe). I've read most of them and they very accurately chronicle certain aspects of life in the 60s-80s. Readers of this blog may well remember the review of his exciting last novel--- The Terrorist. I learned a lot about writing from reading Updike. As a small tribute below I offer his famous poem on resurrection.

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

MARTIN VS. BARTON ON HISTORICAL CRITICISM AND THE ISSUE OF MEANING

Two recent books have begun to cause a lot of stir in the guild of Biblical studies, one as an attempt to suggest a change in direction in seminary curriculum, the other more of an apologia for the nature and importance of historical criticism as a means of getting at the meaning of the Bible. The former of these is by a Yale (and former Duke) Professor of NT Dale B. Martin (Pedagogy of the Bible. An Analysis and Proposal, Louisville: Westminster/J. Knox, 2008), the latter by an Oxford Professor of OT John Barton (The Nature of Biblical Criticism, (Louisville: Westminster/J. Knox, 2007). Both are written by seasoned scholars whose previous writings have been well received. Martin tends to be more of an agent provocateur in some respects, Barton more of a defender of scholarly rigor and each book has its own merits and demerits. There is some overlap between the two books, but in some fundamental ways they are at odds with one another especially when it comes to the issue of ‘meaning’ which will be the focus of this critique and review. Martin is weary of the hegemony of the historical critical method as the method which is taught at seminaries and divinities schools as the fundamental tool for getting at the meaning of the Biblical text. He is of course right that there are other ways to read the Biblical text ranging from pre- or even anti-critical readings to what some now call post-critical readings of the text. But in his survey of American seminaries he came to the, for him, gloomy, conclusion that the hegemony of historical criticism has by no means been eclipsed or deposed, whatever his desideratum may be.

There is in fact a good reason for this in fact. Most scholars, and indeed most people of faith believe that in fact contextual study (the historical, literary, rhetorical, social etc. contexts) of the Bible is crucial to its understanding. As I like to put it—a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean. An overwhelming majority of them also believe that Biblical texts have meaning and it is important not to read our own meanings back into the text willy nilly.

Now this last assertion may seem non-controversial to you, but if so, you haven’t been listening to literary theorists and Derrida fans much in the last two or three decades. Nor have you realized or assessed the considerable impact of folk like Stanley Fish (late of Duke) on such discussions. But Martin has decidedly felt the impact of such discussions and when it comes to the issue of meaning, he has come to agree with Fish and others on a variety of subjects. The following are a series of quotations from his recent book:

Martin say “one of my favorite slogans [is]: Texts don’t have meaning; people mean with texts.” (p. 31)

“I am convinced that the emphasis on the differences between exegesis and eisegesis currently does more harm than good in teaching students about biblical interpretation. It reinforces a notion about texts and meaning that is false in itself….It reinforces the commonsensical but mistaken idea that texts simply have meaning as a property within themselves, that texts dispense their meaning themselves, or that texts may constrain interpretations of themselves.” (pp. 29-30).

“All readings of texts are in fact the making of meaning.” (p. 30).

“[T]extual meaning is something created by human beings practicing rather complicated socially learned skills we call ‘reading’. The most famous advocate of these ideas was Stanley Fish.’ (p. 31).

“[R]eaders make sense of texts; texts do not dispense their meaning, nor is meaning dependent on authorial intention.” (p. 32)

Now there are serious epistemic and semantic and indeed even theological reasons for rejecting this whole approach to the issue of meaning, but it will be well to say a couple of things about Stanley Fish and how he came to his conclusions. He is not in fact a historian or indeed a student of ancient historical texts, rather he is someone whose expertise is in modern literature, and perhaps to a lesser degree modern art. He is deeply indebted to folks like Foucault and Derrida and his agenda is in part to deconstruct the whole approach to reality known as modernism or the legacy of the Enlightenment, or even the scientific method which assumes that there is an objective world out there which can be known and distinguished from the knowing subject.

Martin in fact in his book makes the signal mistake of suggesting that abstract art or even more abstract poetry provides a clue as to how meaning happens and where it comes from--- namely from the eyes of the beholder or the reading subject (see. pp. 32-34). Now at one level he is right--- we are not blank blackboards on which texts write their meanings. No, to one degree or another we are active readers of texts and we bring our own knowledge, hopes, fears, expectations, faith or lack there of to the reading of the Biblical text (or any other text for that matter). We need to be aware of this fact, but it does not in fact provide the key to understand where the meaning of texts comes from. It is a factor to be taken into account, and indeed often to be corrected for. Why?

Well at one level it has to do with respect. I do not have the right to make the Biblical writers or Shakespeare or any other writer say whatever I please. I don’t have the right to read my own agendas into their texts. I did not produce them, and they are not mine. I cannot make a claim on them as if I was the one who encoded the meaning into them in the first place.

And this brings up a crucial point. The very reason I would be agreeing with John Barton and not Dale on various matters pertaining to meaning is because I want to know what those Biblical authors inspired by God are trying to tell me. I am not merely interested in finding out the multiple ways I can use the Bible as an inkblot to create my own meanings in life. In fact it is important to make a threefold distinction between: 1) meaning (something the text has); 2) significance (something the text may have for me, but which is grounded in the plain sense of the text if I am reading it right); 3) application, which is a further step removed.

Let’s listen now briefly to what John Barton says about these same matters.
Barton is a defender of the importance of what he calls Biblical criticism (read historical criticism, by which of course he does not mean being critical of the Bible, but rather reading it with a keen and discerning eye in order to get at its meaning). In quoting and following W.H. Schmidt he says:

"A text is an assertion of a human person, transmitted in writing—a person who can no longer defend himself against misunderstanding. Who can step forward as his advocate if not historical criticism? Criticism tries, as well as it is able, to preserve the rights of the text, and in its name to counter misinterpretations. Indeed, there is no other possible way of allowing a text, as the word of another person, the freedom to speak for itself.” (p. 72).

Barton then does not believe ancient texts like the Bible are like modern abstract art or poetry. They have a latent or inherent meaning, and we need tools to find out what it is--- one such important tool is historical criticism. Why? Barton goes on to explain…

“[B]iblical criticism has always taken for granted that the meaning a text has is connected with its origins in a particular historical and cultural setting—what some would call its ‘original’ sense… This is most obvious at the level of language. Words are not constant in their meaning across time. To take a simple example in the novels of Trollope we often find a female character saying that a male friend ‘made love to her the whole evening.’ It is crucial in understanding Trollope to realize that in his day this expression meant showing a romantic or sexual interest in someone, not having sexual intercourse with them. Otherwise, we would get a very distorted idea of what happened in Victorian drawing rooms.” (p. 80). In other words, every responsible interpreter of any text has a duty to take into account the lexical system and range of meanings that were in fact possible at that time, in that place, in that text. This is just as true of interpreting Biblical texts as it is in interpreting Trollope.

Barton goes on to give the excellent example of Ps. 102.12 where the psalmist speaks of God reigning ‘for ever’ (le’ olam).Later Jews and Christians have often taken the psalmist to be referring to the eternality of God, and his existence outside the constraints of time, however that is not what the psalmist had in mind. What he means is that God’s reign will know no end However long time endures, God will still be reigning. In other words the text speaks to God’s ongoing rule not his ontological nature or eternality. We might well entirely miss this if we did not do contextual study of the Psalm verse in question.

Barton goes on to make a further crucial point. The meaning of a text does NOT change across time while of course its interpretation may well do so. “It is not that the text changes its meaning, but that meaning is differently evaluated,, appropriated, or weighed.” (p. 84).. Meaning is historically conditioned. The object of studying the Bible in context is not to determine what it used to mean, but rather what it always has meant. For example, Barton takes the famous phrase ‘by the skin of my teeth’ found in Job. The fact that it is still a familiar idiomatic phrase today and is used differently than it was used in the book of Job does not after all determine the original or plain sense meaning of that text which its author gave it. “It is not that Job means A but it now means B; rather Job means A, but I am using the words that occur in Job to mean B.” (p. 84).

Exactly. The meaning of the text is one thing, its modern uses or the significances we find in it another. Barton points to a helpful distinction made by Umberto Eco between interpreting a text and using it, arguing that use is of course a free-for-all, but that to interpret one needs to attend to the cultural and linguistic background against which the work is written. (p. 85 n. 28). This is right and is a guiding principle for historical criticism.

Against Martin and his kin Barton says forthrightly “what the text meant is what it still means. The fact that it can be used as a vehicle for many other meanings does not undermine this.” (p. 86). Barton goes on to stress that the logically prior activity to preaching, teaching or applying the Bible in any way is finding out what it means. This is exactly right.

‘Meaning before application’ (p. 103) should be our watchword as he urges. “[E]xegesis and application must be separated in the interest of two freedoms: the freedom of the text from the concerns of the interpreter and the freedom of the interpreter to ask questions not envisioned by the text,” (p. 103).

Barton is also right to stress that not only do words only have meaning in contexts (consider for example the word ‘row’ which can be a verb or a noun depending on the context), but even more importantly one has to attend to the larger genre of literature in which a sentence or paragraph occurs. In other words, one needs to interpret any document, and especially the Bible carefully taking into account is literary genre.

The task of a Biblical scholar, says Barton, is to act as a tour guide of the text helping us see the parameters of what the text does or could mean within its original contexts, before assessing its applicability in our own contexts. “Exegete’s guided tours of the text will involve noticing many blooms that are not part of its literal content, but also being able to distinguish them from the weeds that come from their own imaginations.” (p. 116). Sometimes we need tour guides more than others, but in the case of the Bible we especially need them because of its sheer volume of use and familiarity. Let me illustrate the problem.

Forty years ago I was driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the beautiful N.C. mountains when the clutch blew out and as the Bible says, ‘my countenance fell” because of course there are no gas stations anywhere on the Blue Ridge. My friend Doug and I got a push off an exit ramp from another car, into a gas station, but alas, he was unable to fix the thing. We decided to hitch hike the three hours back to High Point, and then I would have to tell my father the bad news. So, we stuck out our thumbs, and pretty quickly a very elderly couple picked us up in a black 1948 Plymouth. My friend Doug (who is now a lawyer in N.C.) decided to make conversation with the driver. He asked what he thought of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and all those beautiful pictures sent back of the revolving earth. The man’s reaction was instanteous—‘That’s all fake’ he said “Everyone knows the world is not round and does not revolve. That was just a liberal Hollywood trick.”
Doug, perhaps not recognizing invincible ignorance when he first saw, badgered the man--- “Why do you think that?” I kept whispering ‘Shut up Doug, we need this right to North Wilksboro.” The man’s answer was plain and simple---
“It says in the book of Revelations (you always know you are in trouble when someone calls the last book of the Bible Revelations plural) that the angels will stand on the four corners of the earth. Earth can’t be round if its got four corners, now can it?” The man took this to be invincible logic which settled the matter altogether.

What was wrong with the man’s reasoning? It was not that he took the Bible seriously. It was that he had made a major genre and category mistake in interpretation. He had taken a figurative utterance in an apocalyptic prophecy to be a literal cosmological description of the earth. In fact, by doing so, he had violated John’s intended meaning in that text. John was trying to say that the angels would come from all major points on the compass. He was not doing cosmology but suggesting comprehensive coverage. But of course our driver was innocent entirely of such learning about the genre and character of the book of Revelation, and therefore ironically, he violated the very meaning and spirit of the text all the while trying to uphold its truth! This often happens in fundamentalism.
No text deserves more respect or the absolute best efforts of the interpreter than the sacred text of the Bible. Its meaning makes a mark, indeed a claim on us, and can be life changing.

As I have argued in The Living Wrd of God we do not honor the Bible if we naively think we can just open it up and always understand it without serious study of it in its various contexts. That involves at least three major fallacies: 1) the assumption that modern and ancient cultures, modern and ancient languages, modern and ancient meanings are not different in any significant way; 2) it assumes that just because the Bible may be perspicuous or clear that it will therefore be clear to me without effort or study--- the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 119 knew this was false, and simply a lazy approach to God’s Word. ‘Study to find yourself approved' and don't forget you have a fallen intellect; 3) it assumes that just because I have the Holy Spirit in my life to help me understand God’s Word that I am obviously on the same wavelength and listening perfectly to the Spirit’s illumination. I don’t need any outside help.

What is interesting to me is that none of the Biblical writers thought this way. They knew study and good teachers were critical, and even after Easter study was crucial. Notice how Luke begins his Gospel by says he had to consult various of the eyewitnesses and original preachers of the Word to get the story of Jesus straight. I put it to you this way—if even the inspired writers of the NT knew they needed to do their homework to understand the Christ event and the Bible, it follows that so do we.

Biblical or Historical Criticism is not the enemy of a high view of Scripture, indeed it is a very useful aid in getting at the meaning of the Biblical text. And I agree with Barton that Job One is to find out—what the text says and means. Job Two is then to ask--- ‘In what sense is this meaning true?” Take again the example from above with the ‘flat lander’ and the book of Revelation. Angels on the four corners speaks a truth, but what sort of truth—is it meant to be a literal description of the shape of the earth? No, it is not but you would not know this unless you had studied early Jewish apocalyptic literature and were sensitive to its literary signals. Or take another example, When the Bible reports a particular person (say King David) telling a lie, in what sense is this report--- true? Not in the sense that he wasn’t lying, but rather in the sense that it gave an accurate or truthful report of the lie.

Job Three after Job One and Two is to assess the significance and possible application of the Biblical text for yourself, or your congregation etc. And of course sometimes ‘significance happens’, but I would stress that a significance of a text for me is not the same as the meaning of the text. I grow weary of the self-centered phrase ‘this is what the text means to me’. You are not the meaning maker of the text, nor do you have a right to decide what the text means for you. The text means what it always has meant. It is your job to understand it, embrace it, submit to it as a Word from God and seek to apply it. And no amount of anti-intellectualism can get you out of your obligation to study it contextually. But back to significance.

In August of 1979, my wife was put into Durham hospital three weeks before our first child was due, with elevated blood pressure. Now you have to realize that my wife is a biologist. She did not want the ‘knock em out and drag em out method of delivery’. She wanted ‘au naturel’ and so there was no little angst that came over her when she was told on August 13th they were going to have to induce her. Her problem was she knew as much about the dangers and biological processes once that drug went into her and the baby as the doctors did. On that evening I tried to cheer her up, but it was difficult because we were reading through the Bible together, and were stuck in the middle of the doom and gloom chapters of Ezekiel who was addressing his fellow exiles and trying to give them some hope. But in the midst of all that doom and gloom about coming judgment, there were these words we read that night--- “and I will multiply your kindred, and I will keep you safe, and you will come home soon”. Well, a light went on in my brain and I felt led to say—“Well honey, things are going to be o.k. That baby is going to come all by itself.” She looked incredulous and said “You really think so?” I said I did. I went home that night and simply paced the floor waiting for the call to come saying the baby was on the way. Sure enough, there was a knock on my door about 4, and in about six more hours, Christy was born.

Now I knew perfectly well that those verses in Ezekiel were not written as a prophecy about me and my wife. They were literally intended to tell the Israelites they would get back to Jerusalem one take and thrive once more. But through the serendipity of experience God used the text to show us how he was working in that situation, and so those verses took on a significance for us (not a new meaning, a significance) as God himself applied those words to our lives. And we are ever so glad he did! It helped us trust God and be ready for the coming of Christy.

There is much more I could say along these lines but let me sum up--- 1) Biblical texts have meanings; 2) we need help to understand them; 3) historical criticism is not the bogeyman, it is a good Sherlock Holmsian process that helps us understand the meaning of these texts; 4) we should not listen to those who suggest ‘meaning is in the eye of the behold’ or in the ‘act’ of the reader’, if by ‘meaning’ we mean the plain Biblical sense of the text, not what I would like to find in there; 5) historical criticism is in many ways the best hedge against misunderstanding and misinterpreting the text, and we should be glad for that if we care about the truth of the Word God, and desire to handle it prayerfully and carefully.

The Word of God is indeed like a two edge sword which cults both ways—you can either use it to cut people to ribbons, or to do the necessary surgery on them so their hearts will open and they will receive the Good News. LET THE READER UNDERSTAND THE INSPIRED MEANING OF THE BIBLICAL TEXT. It should be the goal of all who seek to interpret it.