In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that there are significant limitations as to what language can actually say. Language, Wittgenstein argues, is only meaningful when it is used descriptively, as a model of reality. Any attempt to say anything beyond such things is nonsensical (i.e. lacking in meaning, having no sense). Consequently most of philosophy and theology is revealed as just that sort of nonsensical language. What we say when we speak theologically cannot be described as true or false, it simply lacks meaning altogether.
Naturally, this seems to strike the Christian reader as a disturbing conclusion. Surely we want to be able to say something meaningful about God, or about ethics, or about metaphysics, or whatever. However, just as we must wrestle with Wittgenstein's argument, and his conclusion (part of which is: “whereof one cannot speak, about that one must remain silent”), we must not also be too hasty to suggest that Wittgenstein intends his argument to be an assault on Christianity or on faith. Wittgenstein actually has no desire to limit human imagination, yearning, feeling, or thinking, he is simply suggesting that there are limits on the meaningful expression of thought.
In this way, it could be argued (indeed, it is argued by Alfred Nordmann in his introduction to the Tractatus) that Wittgenstein is following the trajectory of critical philosophy established by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Kant argues against the ability to gain certain knowledge about God because knowledge is always knowledge of objects or appearances. Thus, to attempt to gain knowledge about God would transform God into just another object. Consequently, Kant draws the limits of knowledge so narrowly that God is beyond them. Kant concludes: “I had to deny knowledge to make room for faith.”
Wittgenstein does not deny knowledge of God per se, but he does deny that any such knowledge could be expressed meaningfully. Nordmann aptly summarizes Wittgenstein's position when he writes: “Those who believe that they can talk just as sensibly about absolute or ethical value as they can about cars an cookies are actually conflating them.” The problem, according to Wittgenstein, with taking an absolute (whether that be an Absolute Being, or an absolute Value) and making it “just a fact like other facts” is that everything absolute is then drained from that Being or Value, because all facts are necessarily contingent. Therefore, Wittgenstein denies meaningful expressions of the absolute, not in order to deny faith, but in order to make room for faith. Therefore, by drawing a line which language cannot cross, Wittgenstein situates God beyond language, and allows God to exists as God.
Of course, the notion of situating God beyond human speech should cause the reader to think of another major influence on 20th century thought — Karl Barth. Writing at the same time as Wittgenstein, Barth described God as God who is “distinguished from men and from everything human, and [who] must never be identified with anything we name, or experience, or conceive, or worship, as God.” God, he went on to say, “is that which lies upon the other side.” Consequently, when God is encountered, he is always encountered in his hiddenness, breaking forth like “a flash of lightening, impossibility and invisibility.”
Of course, there are some significant differences between Barth and Wittgenstein but it is interesting to begin by exploring where they overlap. Indeed, the differences only gain their proper significance once we understand the similarities (actually, it's pretty interesting to note the biographical similarities of these two men, but I'll save that for another time).
The Dying Seeds
Recently I have found myself returning again and again to the parable of the sower and the seed in Mt 13 and Lk 8. I have been struck by how the odds are stacked against being the sort of seed that bears fruit. The seed that falls on the road (lacks understanding), the seed that falls on the rocky soil (too afraid of suffering), and the seed that falls among the thorns (too much money and worldly concerns), all of these seeds die. It is only the seed that falls on the good soil that bears fruit. It worries me that the absence of understanding, the fear of suffering, and an overabundance of money and worldly concerns seems to define much of the contemporary Western church. No wonder our churches are dying. However, this is a tangent to the point that has recently struck me, so I'll turn to that point now.
For the longest time I read this parable as though it contrasted abundant life (the seed that falls on the good soil) with the sort of life that is destroyed by the powers that are pressed into the service of death (all the other seeds). I have only just realized that this is a false dichotomy. I began to understand the parable differently when I began to read it in light of Jesus' words in Jn 12.24:
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
The seed that falls on the good soil has not escaped death. It too will die, just like the other seeds! The contrast between the seeds in Mt and Lk is not a contrast between life and death, it is a contrast between fruitful dying and fruitless dying!
Of course, as the context of Jn 12 makes clear, Jesus himself is the good seed, and his death produces many more seeds, it produces the crop that is “a hundred times what was sown.”
If we, then, are to live as those rooted in the good soil, we too must live a life that is oriented towards death. We too must set our faces towards Jerusalem. This orientation has nothing to do with morbidity, rather it is the inevitable outworking of the love commandment. Because we are so committed to loving God, and loving our neighbour, we choose to die to ourselves. Furthermore, this orientation is normative for Christians because those who are “in Christ” share in his death. To be in Christ is to be crucified with Christ (Gal 2.20). As Jimmy Dunn says, “[Paul's] gospel is not that the trusting sinners escape death, but rather that they share in Christ's death.” Naturally, the only way we can live with this orientation towards death is in the power of the holy Spirit that provides us with hearing, understanding, a true heart, and the ability to persevere (the characteristics of the seed that fell on the good soil).
Thus, the supposed contrast between abundant living and suffering death, that I first imagined existed in the parable of the sower, is revealed as a false dichotomy. All seeds will die. All of us will die. The question is what sort of dying we will experience. And we must remember that our type of dying determines whether or not we will bear fruit or remain fruitless.
"We have no king but Caesar": A Manifesto of Christian Relevance?
In his latest book (Evil and the Justice of God), Tom Wright spends some time addressing how the crucifixion of Jesus is the climactic revelation of evil. The story of Jesus' death is the story of “how the downward spiral of evil finally hit the bottom.” As a part of this event, Wright also argues that the cross is the climactic expression of corruption within Israel. The Israel that has longed to become “like all the nations” (1 Sam 8.5, 20) is now reduced to declaring that it “has no king but Caesar” (John 19.15).
This movement from longing to be “like the nations” to declaring “no king but Caesar” is quite troubling. It seems to suggest that if one longs to be like the nations, one inevitably ends up so much like the nations that one now lives in a way that completely contradicts the true identity of the people of God (which is rooted in the proclamation that “there is no king but God“).
This movement should cause us to reconsider many of our contemporary desires for “Christian relevance.” I wonder: to what extent is our desire to be relevant simply a desire to be like the nations? If this is the case then we may have deceived ourselves into thinking we are living faithfully when we are actually decarling that we, too, have no king but Caesar. Indeed, I suspect that our scramble for relevance has lead us to serve the same lords as those around us, instead of leading us to proclaim the “there is one God, the Father almighty, and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8.5-6).
The Power of Shopping (and is it really all that bad?)
When the the children grow up, try to keep them busy. Try to see that they become addicted only to legal substances. That's about it.
~ Wendell Berry, “The Joy of Sales Resistance”
I have often wondered about this:
Within social services, shopping is often offered as the way in which one can overcome the power of drug addictions. This may sound odd but it makes a lot of sense and it seems to actually work more than some other approaches. Thus, the addict, who is often coming from a fairly rough and poor environment, is taught the joy of buying and owning nice things — nice clothes, nice music, nice electronics, and so on and so forth. When addicts are first coming out of addiction they are encouraged to quickly spend their money on other things so that they cannot spend it on drugs. Then, whenever the urge to use comes up, the addict is encouraged to go out on a bit of a shopping spree. Now I've seen this approach work quite well (at least for certain periods of time). It seems that shopping is actually more powerful than crack or crystal meth. Odd, Bush tells us to go shopping so that we can win the war on terror… and social workers tell us to go shopping so that we can win the war on drug addiction.
However, I find this a little unsettling (not least because it seems that the Christian gospel is weaker than the power of shopping! Am I totally off base to wonder if shopping is more powerful than drugs simply because it is a bigger idol in our culture?!). Here is my issue: it seems to me that what we have done is simply transition people from a socially unacceptable addiction (consuming crack or meth or whatever) to a socially acceptable addiction (consuming clothes or electronics or whatever). And, while we have perhaps raised their standard of living, we have not addressed the root causes of their addictions. Because, based upon my experiences, I quite emphatically believe that addiction is almost always a symptom that has arisen from a deeper issue — addictions are those things which allow people to survive in states of brokenness even though they then go on to perpetuate that state of brokenness. Thus, by engaging in the movement from drugs to shopping, we are simply teaching people how to hide their brokenness and survive in their brokenness in a more socially acceptable manner — we're not doing much to address the brokenness in and of itself. In then end, moving people in this direction can lead them to simply embrace their brokenness as their natural, or normal, or only possible, way of being.
Now I'm probably going to sound crazy to suggest that this movement is disconcerting — after all isn't being a shopaholic with a nice house, a nice car, and a nice family infinitely better than being a junkie with no home and no clean clothes sharing needles down on the corner of Main and Hastings? Well, to be honest, I'm not sure that one is any better than the other. Certainly one is more socially acceptable than the other but this is precisely what I am challenging. The first addiction is more insidious, and the second is more immediately vicious, but both are overwhelming and trap us in a less than human state. Indeed, it seems to me that the first is actually more difficult to overcome than the second, in part because it is so acceptable and because the harm it causes isn't immediately apparent on our own bodies. If I go on a speed run, I'll end up breaking out in sores. If I go on a run at the GAP, I don't have to see the bodies of the children that were broken when they made my clothes. If I shoot heroin I feel great… but I remember my brokenness when I come down and I can't accept my state as “normal”; but if I go shopping I feel great… and somewhere along the way I tend to normalize my brokenness and just accept my state as “the way things should be.
So, at the end of the day are we doing our addict friends any favours by turning them into shopaholics? Sure, I suppose we are, but it might not be much of a favour. It's sort of like offering somebody a slow death instead of a quick death. It's not really offering any sort of genuine transformation or new life. But isn't it at least a step in the right direction? A stage along the way that we can later discard? Maybe. I don't know… but I suspect not.
Where the Wild Things Are
Homo Homini Lupus.
~ Plautus (translation: “man [sic] is a wolf to man”)
But I send you out as sheep among wolves.
~ Jesus, Mt 10.36
The other night I was walking down one of the streets by my house and a group of crack dealers asked me if I was looking for anything. I said, no. One of the dealers wasn’t convinced so he followed me for a block or so holding a few crack rocks out in his hand where I could see them. He really thought I was an addict.
I have been struck lately by the fact that Jesus sends his disciples out to the places where the “wolves” are. Jesus does not send his disciples away to form their own safe little community nestled away somewhere isolated from the rest of the world, nor does he send his disciples back to the lives that they once knew — he does not send the tax collectors back to being “better” tax collectors, he does not send the fishermen back to practicing a “more moral” form of fishing. Instead, Jesus sends his disciples out as “sheep among wolves.” They are sent, in the words of Maurice Sendak, to the places “where the wild things are.”
If such a call is still applicable to Christians today it would carry two implications: (1) we are to be sent out of the Christian bubble; and (2) we are to be sent out of the comfortable lifestyle to which we are accustomed.
So how does all this relate to the episode I narrated at the start of this post. Perhaps not in the way in which we first imagine. You see, in my neighbourhood one probably thinks that it is easy to spot the “wolves.” The wolves are the dealers, the pimps, the johns, the collectors and maybe even the cops who, collectively, are all of these things at one time or another. But I’m not convinced that this is so. I think Plautus got it wrong, I think that the real wolves are the drugs, the illness, and the evil powers and principalities that maintain a stranglehold over my neighbourhood. The man who followed me offering me crack held a wolf in his hand, and that wolf would have devoured me if I had stopped to smoke it.
We are sent out as sheep among wolves in order to find the lost sheep and ensure that they are not devoured. And the lost sheep are not only the prostitutes and addicts, the lost sheep are also the pushers and the gang-bangers. Our battle is not with flesh and blood, for all those who are flesh and blood have been bought by the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus.
All I ask is that a few more Christians would consider taking Jesus seriously and coming to journey with all the sheep who live (and die) in the presence of these wolves. After all, these wolves are strong and they’re vicious — and they will only be defeated when the Church, as a corporate body, is roused to action. Because I’m tired of hearing Christians say, “sure that’s one way of following Jesus… it’s just not my way.” Well, great. I’m glad your way is that much more comfortable, but know that my friends are dying because this way is not your way. Know that these scattered sheep are the ones who are paying the price for your comfortable living.
Paul's Chains
Remember my chains.
~ Paul in the Epistle to the Colossians
I wonder, when I read this passage, how it is that we today remember Paul's chains. Do we remember Paul's chains and thank God that we are not persecuted for our faith or do we remember Paul's chains and wonder why it is that we fit so comfortably into the society around us? Do we even remember Paul's chains at all? Why is it that we are not struck by the oddity of the fact that Paul — who said such supposedly positive things about the state in Romans 13 and who wasn't afraid to appeal to his Roman citizenship when he found it to be useful — spent so much time in prison and ended up being executed by the Roman authorities? Sure, Jesus had to die to save the world, but what the hell happened with Paul?
Here's the thing: Jesus wasn't killed to save the world — nobody killed Jesus thinking “hey, I'll kill this guy and that way everybody who believes in him will go to heaven.” Perhaps God ended up using Jesus' death for greater things but none of Jesus' executioners were in on the plan. Ultimately, Jesus was killed because the political authorities identified him as a rebel — which is why he was crucified (crucifixion was the form of execution that Rome liked to use upon those who tried to rebel against her power). Furthermore, Paul's death, and his chains, were not accidental or incidental to his understanding of what it means to live as a follower of Jesus. Indeed, if one spends any time reading Paul, one quickly discovers that he seems to think that suffering, and specifically political persecution and oppression, is essential to the Christian identity.
Thus I remember Paul's chains and I wonder about our lack of chains. But then I remember the American Mennonites who have been jailed because they refused to pay taxes — because all those who pay taxes in America support the war in Iraq and these Mennonites felt that they could not, as Christians and as Mennonites, sponsor that war (or any war). Consequently they have been jailed. I remember the chains of Paul and I remember the chains of our Mennonite brothers and sisters and I still maintain hope for our North American church.
God, help us to remember Paul's chains. Help us to remember the chains of our brothers and sisters. Help us to remember the chains that await us if we end up faithfully following Jesus. And help us to find our current lack of chains to be shocking and odd. Convert us, Lord, to the type of life the ends up in chains. Ad majorem Dei gloriam — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
On Being With Others
Some months ago, I got to be friends with a young woman (late teens, early twenties) who was living in a residential program — let’s call her Jane Doe (I’ve changed her name and a few other minor details in the story so that Jane — and others — can remain anonymous).
Jane was one of the ones who really break your heart. She tried so hard and so had such a tender heart for the people around her… it’s just that she was addicted to crack, and — since she was staying in a residential program that operated on something like a “three strikes and you’re out” system — her love for her drug was causing her some problems with her housing. I mean, she was trying hard to stay clean but she still enjoyed getting high too much. So, despite the fact that she cleaned up for several months, I learned one day that Jane had started going out in the evening and not coming back all night because she was using. I always worried when Jane went on her binges, she’s a young and beautiful woman and she would walk alone through the alleyways in the downtown eastside searching for her next hit. Not a good place for her to be.
One night I was at work and I heard that Jane had disappeared again. All night I waited for a call to tell me that Jane had come back but morning came and she was still missing. I decided that I would go and look for her. I figured I would do a run through the parks and alleys and down the main strip before I went home to bed. In fact, every now and again I get the feeling like the Spirit is really hassling me to do something and this was one of those times.
So, after I finished work, I headed to the park across the street in order to cut from there into one of the major alleys. Lo and behold, Jane was sitting alone on one of the benches in the park. I had been looking for less than a minute and I had found her (again, I think the Spirit was at work)! I sat down beside her and we started to talk. She told me about being robbed that night, she told me about nearly getting raped in a hotel room, she told me that she had been sitting on that bench for hours debating between going back and trying to beg for her bed (she was worried that she had lost her room permanently since she was out of strikes) or saying “forget that” and going out and continuing to use. She was unable to make any decision and so she had sat there, feeling paralysed, and watched the sun come up.
“You know, Dan, when I walk down those alleyways, the cops will roll by and they’ll lean out the windows and call to me, ‘go home, little girl, go home.’ Because, I don’t look like I belong in an alleyway in the downtown eastside. And that’s what always gets me into trouble. The guys will give me free drugs and neglect their women hoping to get with me and, because of this, the women are always looking to start things with me.”
I thought about that for a moment and said:
“It’s true, Jane, you don’t look like somebody who would be in an alley in the eastside at night. But I’ll tell you this much, if you spend a little more time down there, you’re going to start looking like you belong there and pretty soon the cops will drive by you without saying a word because you’ll no longer be that blue eyed, blond kid, you’ll just be another junkie scanning the cracks in the asphalt hoping to find a lost [crack] rock.”
We both stopped talking for a little while after that — I think we were both scared that what I had said would come true. Then the conversation started up again and Jane decided she would go back to her program after I guaranteed her that I would make sure that she wouldn’t lose her bed (and, thank God, she didn’t lose her bed). Just after making this decision, a fellow sat down on the bench beside ours, pulled out a pipe and started smoking a rock. We got out of there pretty quick. I realized that if I had come even fifteen minutes later, Jane would have been lost, there’s no way somebody in her state can resist the pull of the drug when another person lights up right beside her.
We walked around a bit, I bought Jane a pack of smokes, and then took her back to her program.
A few weeks later Jane left for a treatment program on the east coast and that was the last I saw of her. A few months went by, and then one morning I got a phone call at work. It was Jane and she was doing amazingly well. She had gotten clean and she was training to be a mentor in the program she had joined! She wanted me to know that she was doing well, and she wanted to say thanks to me for coming out and finding her that night. She told me that’s what pushed her over the edge and made her start putting her life back together. I was speechless. It did my heart a world of good to hear from Jane. It reminded me of the story in the Gospels that tells about Jesus healing ten lepers and only one coming back to say thanks. Maybe, I thought to myself, maybe there is more transformation going on here then I dared to hope. Maybe for every Jane there’s another nine who have made it that we never hear about (of course, the analogy doesn’t totally work, I’m not Jesus, and I’m not healing people like Jesus healed people — when anything good comes out of my actions it is because of the Spirit, and not because of me).
Such a simple gesture of love — going out to find a person, be with them and bring them home when they’re ready — had quite a profound impact. And here’s the thing: when I think back to my time of being street-involved, and when I think about the ways in which people tried to care for me, the one thing that stands out, far above everything else, was something my best friend “Curty” did for me. I was living with him at the time but I was pretty messed up. I couldn’t really handle being around groups of people and so, when we would have people over, I would usually wait a bit and then sneak out the door and just walk the streets. Curty would always notice that I had left and he too would sneak out and find me. He would never really say anything, he would just fall into stride with me and we would walk around all night, not really talking, just being together. I never felt more loved than I did when he caught up to me, walked with me, and eventually walked me home.
Curty found me, stayed with me, and came home with me; I found Jane, stayed with her, and walked home with her — and it seems that those events have transformed both Jane and I. Maybe if Christians started practicing a little more of this kind of love — instead of getting completely absorbed in programs, objectives, pragmatics, and goals (which aren’t bad in and of themselves, but which also are not the all in all of journey with those on the margins) — maybe then we would see a little more of the transformation for which we long. Let us become like the Father in the story of the prodigal son, let us run out on the road to meet those whom God loves so dearly. Let us go to where the wolves are so that we can find the lost sheep and help them to come back to the shepherd.
Home: A Few Snapshots
A few weeks ago, I was reading in the park two blocks away from my house and a knife fight broke out. I was reading a book and chatting on and off with a couple of older prostitutes and a few crack dealers when all of a sudden there’s a two foot blade flashing around about ten feet away from me. Nobody was too surprised and, after the business was concluded, everybody went back to talking as though nothing had happened.
Then, just last week, I was walking home past the working girls about a block away from my house. Generally the women who work the stroll in my immediate neighbourhood are older and drug-addicted. Consequently, I was a little shocked when I ran into a fresh-faced kid (maybe fifteen or sixteen years old?) working on this stroll. It’s not that fifteen year old kids are uncommon in prostitution (they’re actually quite common) it’s just that one doesn’t usually find them in low-track neighbourhoods — they work the high-track strolls, or the kiddie strolls. There were several men standing across the street watching the kid and there was another man leaning on the wall behind her (one of them was probably her pimp, there’s no way a girl like that is being left unattended in a neighbourhood like mine).
Finally, the other night I was walking to work and a woman walked out of the alley by my house… and she wasn’t wearing any pants. It was around 9:30pm. She didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.
This is the neighbourhood in which I live. It has the wonderful privilege of being the poorest postal code in Canada. It also has the highest concentration of people living with HIV/AIDs in all of the Western world. It is the home of more than 5000 active needle drug users (this stat excludes the number of users who take drugs through other means) and surveys show that more than 50% of the people who live here have mental health issues.
I live here because I think that this is where the people of God should be rooted. Not to say that we should not also be in other neighbourhoods, it’s just that our presence in those neighbourhoods should exist as branches from our roots in the groaning places of the world.
August Books
Well, since I had no classes during August I was free to read a little more haphazardly. I took the opportunity to finish up a few books I had started awhile ago, read a few biographies, dive into some longer fiction, and read a few things that came completely out of left field. August was a good month. Alas, back to class and on to the thesis proposal (i.e. goodbye all extraneous reading). Anyway, here are August’s books:
1. Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God by Karl Barth.
Well, I’ve finally begun to dive into Barth’s Dogmatics. Long overdue, I know, but this is a good time for it as I think I’m finally ready — I’m not afraid! This volume deals with a lot of Barth’s introductory material — dogmatics as science, the role dogmatics plays within the Church, the material appropriate to dogmatics, the nature of faith, the interplay of revelation, scripture, proclamation, dogmatics, and so on. As he explores these themes, Barth consistently critiques Roman Catholic and Liberal Protestant theologies in order to advocate for an “evangelical” theology. Throughout, Barth consistently emphasizes the Lordship of God and also the “triunity” of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Within this volume Barth also spends a good deal of time relating the spoken word (preaching) and the written word (Scripture) to the Word of God. Preaching and Scripture both remain human words and, therefore, only exist as witnesses to the true Word of God — Jesus. It is only through the working of the Spirit that Scripture or proclamation become true witnesses to the Word in the here and now of our daily lives. There is much more that could be said about this book but I shall move on. I am excited to continue to journey deeper into Barth’s thinking and writing as he explores the nature and content of the Church’s proclamation.
2. We Drink From Our own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People by Gustavo Gutierrez.
This book is an explanation of a Latin American “spirituality” rooted in the experience of the poor and the oppressed. The term “spirituality” is defined by Gutierrez as the path one travels as one follows Jesus. Therefore, there are many different legitimate Christian spiritualities because following Jesus looks different in different contexts. Furthermore, this emphasis upon following Jesus also leads Gutierrez to assert that all theology is spiritual theology because “our spirituality is our methodology.” This furthers the emphasis that Gutierrez and other liberation theologians place upon theology as second order reflection based upon primary ecclesial praxis. We Drink From Our own Wells is divided into three parts. The first section describes the Latin American experience from a spiritual (as opposed to strictly social or political) perspective. The second section maps out key components of all Christian spiritualities (encounter with Jesus, life in the Spirit, journeying towards the Father). The third section brings together the first two sections and develops themes within a Latin American spirituality. These are conversion to solidarity, efficacious gratuitousness, joyful victory over suffering, spiritual childhood and simplicity, and community out of solitude. I enjoy Gutierrez, but I can’t say that there was too much within this book that I have not already encountered in his other writings, or the writings of other liberation theologians. Still, it was a pleasant refresher.
3. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Given my ongoing engagement with “postliberal” theologians, it was only a matter of time before I got to reading Wittgenstein (can one study Lindbeck or Hauerwas and not read Wittgenstein?). Although published posthumously, this is Wittgenstein’s most famous work and the one which (I believe) brought the term “language game” into public discourse. Wittgenstein uses the term “language game” to describe how meaning/truth is applied to any given word. He argues that all meaning is determined by the contextual use of a word as that use is dictated by the rules (i.e. grammar) set by a particular community. It should be mentioned that this book was published posthumously because Wittgenstein delayed publication because he was unhappy with the disjointed structure of the book — although he was unable to imagine the book being arranged in any other way. This means that the argument often jumps all over the place as Wittgenstein records the thought process as it occurs to him. Indeed, following Wittgenstein’s earlier writings, it seems that the Investigations is a heuristic device; the reader learns by thinking through, and experiencing, the thoughts as they occur to Wittgenstein. I hope to return to this book in the future, as I develop my thoughts on Barth and Wittgenstein.
4. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Reading Wittgenstein in reverse order, I moved from the Investigations to the Tractatus, the first and only book Wittgenstein actually published during his lifetime (and a book that Wittgenstein later critiques in some significant ways). This book is very short, very concise, and very dense (indeed, I am currently reading some secondary lit to help me to understand both the Tractatus and the Investigations). However, it seems to me that there are two major things that Wittgenstein does within this book. First of all, he establishes a pictorial model of language. Language that is meaningful provides us with a picture of reality. It does this by having its components relate to each other in the same way that the components of reality relate to each other. Therefore, the individual words do not have any one meaning, what is meaningful is the contingent relation of words to other words (compare for example these three uses of the word “is”: “God is”; “John is skinny”; “two plus two is four”) and this relationship only has any truth-value when it can be said to correspond to the relationship of reality’s contingent components. Therefore, this leads to Wittgenstein’s second major point. Because language is only meaningful when it is descriptive, philosophy, and language itself, must recognize its limitations and refuse to speak about that which is beyond its limits. When language is understood pictorially most philosophical statements (statements that attempt to do with concepts what can only be done with particular objects) are revealed as nonsensical — they do not have any truth-value because they do not say anything at all. Thus, according to Wittgenstein, to say “I love you” makes as much sense as saying “all twos are colour” — most philosophy is simply gobbledygook and we must admit that such nonsense is all that we can say about the “deep” issues of life. I’ll have more to say about this later this month.
5. The Fragile Absolute — or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? by Slavoj Zizek.
I picked this book up on a whim while browsing a bookstore because Zizek seemed to be coming up more regularly in some of my other readings and because I thought the title was interesting. A Serbian psychoanalyst and social theorist, I have since discovered that Zizek is known for having a rambling style of writing that is notoriously difficult to follow. Couple that with Zizek’s reliance on Jacques Lacan (with whom I am barely familiar) and Sigmund Freud (with whom I am only generally familiar) and this book was a pretty tough read for me — I just wasn’t familiar enough with a lot of the terms and concepts Zizek takes for granted and so I had to constantly turn to other sources in order to understand what was being said (this appeal to other sources also included looking up various pieces of art and watching a couple of movies so that I could understand other sections of the text). However, the additional work was mostly worthwhile. Zizek writes as a Marxist and as an atheist but his central thesis is that Marxists, instead of attacking Christianity, should be allying themselves with Christianity in order to counter the spiritual neopaganism of Capitalism. As he wades into this social conflict, Zizek upholds (his understanding of) the Pauline concept of agape as the proper radical means of engagement. Furthermore, he upholds the New Testament models of community as the desired goal. While the neopaganism of free-market democracies maintains the order of the universe through justice understood as violent punishment, Zizek argues that Christianity liberates people by upsetting all the pagan balances and by elevating the poor as it grants all people access to the Absolute — God. It is this that allows Christianity to then create communities of people who are truly treated equally, over against the charade of equality that dominates today. Pretty interesting stuff, especially coming from an atheist and a Marxist! What I find particularly intriguing about reading Zizek is that he reverses the Christian-Marxist trend found within some liberation theologies. While liberation theologians start with Christianity and then use some elements of Marxism as tools along the way, Zizek begins with Marxism and ends up using Christianity as a tool along the way.
6. The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud.
After reading Zizek, I thought I should get around to reading some Freud first hand — especially since he is referenced by so many people (not for his particular theories per se, but for the role he played in shaping contemporary culture). I was actually quite surprised by how easy and pleasurable it is to read Freud. He writes very well and very clearly (unlike many who have gone on to write about Freud). Within this book, he beginss to look at the role religion plays within the development of the human person and the development of culture (these thoughts are more fully formed in his later work, Civilization and Its Discontents). Although he somewhat explores the issue of the birth of religion in Totem and Taboo, Freud largely focused on the notion of God as “Father” within that earlier work. Within this book, Freud explores religion as an “illusion” (by using this term Freud does not mean that religion is fictional, he simply means that it is motivated by wish fulfillment and, therefore, cannot necessarily be related to reality in one way or another — aside: this leads quite naturally into Wittgenstein’s discussion of religious statements as nonsensical statements… although Wittgenstein would see much of Freud’s statements as nonsensical as well). In the end, Freud concludes that religion may have served its purpose in the development of humanity and now, as humanity comes of age, science and reasons must operate as the foundations of culture. However, Freud is careful to note that science is quite limited in what she can offer us. Science cannot become another religion, and we must be content with the lack of answers that result in relation to many of life’s big questions. As Freud concludes, “our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere” (aside: it is interesting to note once again that this parallels the conclusion of the Tractatus).
7. Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa by Stephen Lewis.
This book, a copy of the CBC Massey Lectures that Lewis delivered in 2005, is Lewis’ report on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals as they relate to his experiences as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Simply put, Lewis’ report is devastating as he systematically shows why the goals will not be met — not for a lack of resources but for a lack of compassion. The result will be the loss of millions of lives — including the lives of many people that Lewis knows, or did know, personally. The authors passion, his grief, frustration, and anger, fill these lectures and he is a talented orator (he actually moved me to tears when I watched a clip of the lectures on a TV report). Particularly damning is Lewis’ critique of the International Financial Institutions (especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) although his critique of some sovereign States (especially the USA, although the other G8 nations, including Canada, are never far behind) is almost equally harsh. And rightly so. Furthermore, Lewis doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to criticizing the UN although he speaks as a person committed to the UN. Indeed, he speaks out precisely because of this commitment, for he believes a critique-from-within is necessary. Let me quote just one passage from the conclusion of Lewis’ final lecture. I watched Lewis deliver this passage. His voice was breaking and the frustration, rage, and grief were visible all over his face and body as he said:
In 2005, the world will pass the trillion dollar mark in the expenditure, annually, on arms. We’re fighting for $50 billion annually for foreign aid for Africa: the military total outstrips human need 20 to 1. Can someone please explain to me our contemporary balance of values?
8. The Junkie Priest: Father Daniel Egan, S.A. by John D. Harris.
This is the biography of a Roman Catholic Priest who was affectionately known as the “Junkie Priest” because of his work with female addicts and prostitutes in New York during the 1950s and ’60s. Father Egan played a significant role in helping hospitals to treat addicts just as they treat other patients, and played a role in developing halfway houses and treatment centres — something that was not even on the radar at the time. He also played a prominent role in NA (Narcotics Anonymous, a 12 step program based upon the AA model) when it was birthed. The Junkie Priest sounds like an inspiring and wonderful example of what a priest can be… unfortunately this book is written in a melodramatic shock-journalism, almost Harlequin-ish, tone that detracts from the subject matter (although it did make me laugh more than once).
9. The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Sarah Churchwell.
I have always been struck by the legacy of Marilyn Monroe and have wondered about the implication her story might have for the formation of a contemporary ethical theological aesthetic. Churchwell’s biography does an excellent job of examining the other biographies of Monroe and the ways in which her person and her legacy have been co-opted by various (and competing!) ideologies. Thus, we have Marilyn the embodiment of natural pleasurable sex, Marilyn the objectification of Norma Jeane, Marilyn the victim, Marilyn the feminist, Marilyn the suicide, Marilyn the martyr, and so on and so forth. Of course, I can’t help but think about how Monroe’s legacy parallels Jesus’ legacy. Both have had many (and often contradictory) biographies written about them, both have been studied as split personalities (the “fictional” Marilyn Monroe vs. the “actual” Norma Jeane; and the “fictional” Christ of faith vs. the “actual” Jesus of history) and both died shocking, controversial deaths while they were still in the prime of life. It would be interesting to play around a little more with this idea. This book was a welcome tangent from the more academic realms of theology, philosophy, and psychology.
10. Demons/The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
This is perhaps the most tragic of Dostoevsky’s great novels. While redemption plays a large role in both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov it is notably absent here — and although it is also absent in The Idiot (perhaps my favourite Dostoevsky novel) the tragedy in Demons occurs on a much larger scale. Demons is Dostoevsky’s read on the changing socio-political climate within the Russia of his day. He draws his title from the episode in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus drives demons out of a possessed man and into a herd of pigs who then stampede into a lake. In Dostoevsky’s novel, the possessed man is Russia and the central characters within the narrative are the herd of pigs. The climactic political murder and some of the central characters are based upon actual events and real people that Dostoevsky read about in the paper. I greatly enjoyed this book. Dostoevsky is my favourite author of fiction and, although this book not quite up to the same level of quality as The Brothers Karamazov or The Idiot, it is still well worth reading.
11. Silence by Shusako Endo.
This book has been on my to-read list for a number of years and so I was glad to stumble onto in the bookstore at my school. It is based upon the true story of Portuguese missionaries who continued to work within Japan in the 17th century, even after the Jesuits had been expelled and Christianity was being violently persecuted. Silence bases its narrative upon the story of one of those missionaries who, unlike most of those who had been tortured before him, apostatized and renounced his faith. The motif of God’s silence in the face of suffering is one that runs through the entire book, and it is striking what God finally says when he breaks his silence and speaks at the climactic moment of the story. This book had me thinking for some time after I had finished reading it — and that’s always a good thing.
More Wittgenstein (and Barth)
To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true.
(One can understand it, therefore, without knowing whether it is true.)
It is understood by anyone who understands its constituents.
~ Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.024
In relation to this particular point, I am not sure whether or not I am entirely in agreement with Wittgenstein. Here is why I think I disagree:
I am inclined to accept Wittgenstein's initial statement that understanding a proposition means knowing what is the case if that proposition is true. However, I have trouble with the next two statements because I am inclined to believe that to know what the case is if any proposition is true requires us to experience something of that case. Or, to translate that into more Christian language, knowledge of the truth is premised upon an encounter with the truth. Thus, I am inclined to argue that there is actually no understanding of a proposition that is not true, for one cannot even understand a proposition's constituents apart from an encounter with the truth, and false propositions cannot provide such an encounter. All false propositions are as comprehensible as the statement, “this circle is a square.” Furthermore, apart from an encounter with the truth, what we imagine the case to be if a certain proposition is true, and what the case actually ends up being if a certain proposition is true, will always end up being radically different.