MetaCatholic

Why isn’t evaporated milk the same as condensed milk?

The mysteries of real world language should always make those working with a dead language admit a certain humility about meaning.

Someone on an InDesign mailing list came up with a new (I think) word. I’m not sure if it was a typo for “fluke” or an intentional punning neologism, but what they actually typed, to indicate an unfortunate accidental problem was”fluck”. So there you have it:

fluck (noun) a seriously annoying accident, an unfortunate happenstance.

Thank goodness Doctor Who is not an evangelical!

A warning: this post contains …

In the excellent two-parter Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead the Doctor hits the solution to a puzzle by reflecting on the English language. Donna Noble and 4022 people before her “have been saved”. But who, wonders the Doctor, talks like that. We might say someone is safe, but not that someone is saved. No … There’s a dead giveaway there: “saved” is computer speak. They’ve been virtualised onto the biggest hard-drive in the universe. But just think, if the Doctor had been an evangelical Christian, he’d never have thought it weird to say “Donna Noble has been saved.”

Given that this is a fairly major plot point, it seems like a fairly stark reminder that if Christians want to be understood, they should learn to speak the language as everyone else does. And maybe not sound quite so weird.

A private email has made me aware that the recent discussion on metaphors has included language which some people are uncomfortable with. I would not have regarded any of the language I’d used or read in that category, but I am (now) aware that others do. This also touches on issues raised by Paul’s use of the S word. So I should warn you now that this post for the purposes of discussion contains some words some people will find offensive.

It seems to me that this could seem like a natural case for applying Paul’s principle about not causing the weaker in faith to stumble. The problem, of course, is that we’re not entirely agreed about who the strong and weak were, and how much these were cultural issues between Greek and Judaean, and how much social issues between rich and poor. If the former then we do have a scriptural text to ponder in this regard, but if the latter then it’s a bit more opaque.

The social unacceptability of certain words and phrases varies tremendously from one cultural group to another. In mainstream English culture “bloody” was once a fairly strong word, whereas it now carries very little taboo or intensive force. Certain words, most noticeably “fuck” and its variants were never spoken in front of women and vicars without an apology. Now they are printed in quotations in at least some national newspapers, though never in the ones read by those for whom “fucking” is the only intensifying adjective they use. Ironically those who most employ the adjective are left under the misapprehension that it is spelt “f*@%ing.

There is a perception that swearing and religion shouldn’t mix. An atheist friend of mine was assumed to be “religious” by workmates, simply because he rarely swore. This perception perhaps has more to do with constructions of religion as feminine and middle-class than with ideas about the morality of language, and it is verging on obsolescence. Another irony is that people will still sometimes apologise to a minister for saying “fuck” but virtually never for saying “Christ”. Other cultures are no doubt significantly different about taboos and acceptability.

In the wired world it is probably impossible genuinely to deal with all the issues of linguistic sensitivity around taboos. It so happens I’m of the opinion that it’s not particularly big or clever to show how many naughty words I know. At the same time, I don’t worry overmuch about their occasional use. I am aware that others feel differently, and I hope that we can across our cultures, histories and personalities be sensitive to each other.

In part, however, I cannot help but feel that too narrow a focus on the use or non-use of swearwords misses the point. From time to time I have dropped in on an Anglican blog discussing one or other of the many evils of gay sex and bishops. (It’s too depressing to read them regularly.) The language on the liberal blogs sometimes uses a rude word. The language on the conservative blogs rarely does. Yet I am amazed at just how much sheer anger and hatred is expressed in the name of defending Christ by people who want to insist that they are the only true Christians left in the world (or at least the Episcopal Church). In the most recent one I looked at, one commenter suggested that getting beaten up for being gay was the person’s own fault for being so stupid as to be gay in Nigeria. Another said that it was strange to complain about straight people beating up gays while saying nothing about gay men giving each other diseases. No-one seemed to think there was anything to take exception to in these remarks. No-one suggested that the lack of charity (to put it no more strongly) in these remarks might be sinful. Rather it seems that each commenter was urging the next one on to a yet more outrageous condemnation of someone else.

I would suggest that being careful about how we use words in the multi-sensitive and worldwide web that embraces so many different cultures is an ethical matter. I see the issue of swearing as a very minor component of that discussion.

Tim after using the word “that” four times in thirteen words remarks on the nature of English. That’s nothing. Punctuate this so that it makes sense.

John where Mary had had had had had had had had had had had their teacher’s approval.

I don’t mean to pick on him particularly, but I feel obliged to haul Claude Mariottini over these metacatholic coals, pour encourager les autres. In an otherwise good post (read it), he says:

In late Judaism, the Messiah was considered to be God’s agent who would bring restoration to Israel. The New Testament used the title and applied it to Christ to designate him as the savior of the world. (my emphasis)

But if Judaism was late 2,000 years ago, what on earth is it now?

I am aware that this used to be a standard and commonplace phrase of a Christian scholarship that operated in complete isolation from Jewish scholarship, with a completely supercessionist theology, and quite commonly with an anti-Semitic ideology. But I had thought the phrase had been pretty much stamped out nowadays. I will put its use on this occasion down to carelessness caused by reading too many worthy but now ancient tomes of Christian scholarship on the Second Temple period.

I really think we ought to stop using the phrase “late Judaism” to describe something that has continued to flourish for 2,000 years after the period being described as “late”. It’s not even middle-aged at that point. Arguably, in any sense that we know it today, it’s not Judaism either, but a common ancestor of Christianity and Judaism.

Let’s be clear. “Late Judaism” is a theological construct, not a descriptive one, when it is applied to the late Second Temple period, and in many people’s ears (including mine) it carries anti-semitic baggage. (I am not accusing Claude of that, but only of using a phrase carelessly. I am quite sure Claude didn’t mean to be insulting to contemporary Judaism at all.) Christians need to stop saying “late Judaism” and say something else.

Prompted by reading James McGrath’s post (and expanding a comment I left there) I make a brief contribution to the Blog Co-op requested by April DeConick (who I hope will yet respond to being tagged with the Excellent meme).

Tertullian indulges in rhetoric, both in saying “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (Prescription against Heretics 7) and his other equally famous and as frequently quoted word “And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And he was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.” (On the flesh of Christ 5). In fact, Tertullian regularly indulges in the disciplines of rhetoric and logic The death and resurrection of God’s Son should be believed, because it is so absurd and impossible nobody could possibly invent it. If someone of Tertullian’s education and skill in philosophy is saying such an absurd thing, that in itself should be enough to make the listener think twice. It is rational apologetic disguised as the refutation of reason. (One only has to read the wide ranging references of his Apology to realise how well-educated a man Tertullian was.)

Actually, and beside the point, this is my favourite example of Tertullian’s rhetoric (Apology 40):

If the Tiber rises to the heights of the city walls,
if the Nile does not rise to cover the fields,
if the heavens give no rain,
if there is an earthquake,
if there is famine or plague,
straightway the cry goes up, “The Christians to the lion!”
What! All of them?
To just one lion?

Back to the point, Tertullian is in many respects following Paul. The opening chapters of First Corinthians (and much else) are rhetorically skilful even while they deny reliance on skill. Tertullian and Paul were, I believe, both aware of and delighted in this paradox. Tertullian simply took it further. The overt denial of Athens is cloaked in Athenian dress. The apparent denial of logic is used to drive home a logical point.

There is no gospel that does not wear cultural clothes, no simple faith that owes nothing to general education for its expression and understanding. It is a necessary corollary of the Word made flesh, that the message of Jesus wears the clothes of Jerusalem and Athens, Illinois or Cambridge.

What person among you will quote Tertullian in defence of sola scriptura? That person condemns themselves.

Humans are very fond of labels, especially as a tool for dismissing people. There’ve been a couple of recent blog examples of this. First there was the all-too-typical-of-a-certain-mindset discussion (I’m sure there ought to be a single German word for that) of whether Mike Bird was a Christian. Theo Geek Andrew picks up on that and adds some further examples, concluding:

But then, what would I know, since apparently I am by definition not a Christian. Oh well, at least I’m in good company, along with most Catholics, most people who thought they were ‘Christians’ prior to the 11th century, St Paul, and apparently the Calvinist scholar Michael Bird.

The implication of this kind of (typically) very conservative Protestant labelling of people as “non-Christian” is always: “They’re “them” not “us” and therefore we don’t need to listen to their arguments.”

But from the other end of the spectrum Jim West exhibits a somewhat similar behaviour by labelling people (on this case Darrell Bock and Dan Wallace) as fundamentalist. At least Jim offers some arguments on his way to dismissing their work, so it’s not quite mirror behaviour, but I can’t escape the feeling that Jim attaches this label as a way of dismissing their arguments.

Challenged to a definition of the term fundamentalist, Jim comes up with this:

A fundamentalist is a person who believes that the Bible is inerrant or infallible.

Now Jim and others will know that I think belief in inerrancy is simply wrong. But I don’t think this definition works. There are plenty of people who wish to maintain the language of inerrancy or infallibility, sometimes drawing a sharp distinction between them, while reinterpreting it quite drastically. Among them surely is Jim West’s personal devil friend Chris Tilling. For a whole variety of reasons, a number of broadly evangelical scholars want to maintain the language of infallibility while being committed to a generally accepted critical methodology. I happen to disagree with them, but they provide a good reason why Jim’s definition doesn’t work.

I’m not entirely sure that any definition does work. The fundamentalist label doesn’t, in my view, convey that much information: rather it usually establishes in-groups and out-groups, and so I’m inclined not to use it. The definition of the term depends on who’s using it. On the lips of Darrell Bock or Dan Wallace, it means one thing, whereas on Jim’s lips it means something else. It’s a useful insult, and an “out-group” classification, but it’s not a word that bears any useful information, or has a meaning that can be defined.

I heard again today someone referring to the possibility of speaking about the Holy Spirit as feminine. Now at one level I have no problems with referring to our Creator as the one who mothers us, or to God’s good self by the pronoun “she”, although I think that our traditional Christian readings of scripture mean that this will of necessity always be contextual, occasional, and supplementary to the more common use of masculine pronouns.

My objection is that if we speak of the Spirit as feminine, whether primarily or exclusively, we are beginning to gender God’s being, and the implication is that Father and Son are masculine. The mediaeval tradition, by contrast, in tending to refer to Jesus as our Mother, epitomised by Julian of Norwich and St Anselm, is far more constructive, both because it treats the Godhead as incorporating qualities we might otherwise assign to different genders, and because it underlines the metaphorical nature of our language about God. It is, arguably, also more of a piece with the feminine personification of Wisdom in the OT being identified with the creative Word who is the second person of the Trinity.

Feminine pronouns may rightly be used of God when exploring some of the feminine metaphors for God in Scripture, and they are a useful corrective to those who mistakenly take God to be masculine rather than beyond gender. But assigning them primarily or exclusively to the Holy Spirit will do the opposite, and entrench gender in people’s conceptions of God.

I have sometimes found myself regretting that (a) the tradition of referring to priests as “Father” was not widespread in the Anglican Church, and (b) that we didn’t start using this as a form of address for women ordained to the priesthood. I hope, when we start ordaining women as bishops, that the liturgies of ordination will continue to address the bishop as “Reverend Father in God”. I can’t think of a more powerful way to raise awareness of metaphor and stimulate a deeper appreciation of the ungendered Fatherhood of God.

One exercise I have sometimes set both students and groups of adult learners is thinking what we mean by salvation. They have to say what we are saved from, but they are not allowed, initially, to use the answer “sin”. (At a later stage of the exercise we move on to allow the use of the word “sin” but then have to say what we think it means.)

People find this extraordinarily difficult, although eventually a whole range of answers emerge, including death, ignorance, ourselves, moral imperfection, injustice and oppression, estrangement from God, and more. Some of these include things we commonly mean by sin, others do not.

Apart from stimulating thinking about what on earth we mean when we speak of salvation, the exercise reveals exactly how much we not only depend on jargon in our faith, but how much that jargon holds us back from really working at our understanding of it.

I have nothing against using technical or specialist language, as readers of this blog well know, although I seek to avoid it in most of my daily pastoral contacts and preaching, except to help people explore the meaning of the terms as appropriate. However, I find, especially through exercises like this, how much our Christian language can represent the tribal symbolism of belonging, and prevents, instead of develops, people’s understanding.