Augustine
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An Early Christian Philosopher on Civil Disobedience
"There is never an obligation to be obedient to orders which it would be pernicious to obey."
-- St. Augustine, _Confessions_, I.vii. (Henry Chadwick trans.)
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Augustine once said that a key to his conversion was when he met St Ambrose. Augustine had regarded the Bible as full of flawed and problematic texts. As Augustine put it, "by taking them literally, I had found them to kill."(1) Ambrose taught Augustine that the texts of the Bible may have more than one sense. The scriptures might speak to him in more than one way. When he heard this, and heard it from a man who thought it important to study science and the liberal arts, Augustine found his spiritual home in Christianity.
In recent years authors like Norman Wirzba, Bill McKibben, and Scott Russell Sanders have written about the relevance of Biblical texts for thinking about ecology. To me, they have been a little like St Ambrose. I've found one passage in Sanders to be quite helpful personally as I think about the management of my little suburban fifth-acre plot.
In his A Conservationist Manifesto, Sanders writes about the story of Noah and the Ark. He remembers that Noah was given the task of saving not just himself but every other species as well. And once they were on the ark, it was his job to care for the animals and to keep them alive. Sanders talks about books, and communities, and practices that can be like small arks in our time. One such "ark" may be the little plots of land we maintain around our homes:
*****
(1) Augustine, Confessions. Henry Chadwick's translation. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 88.
(2) Scott Russell Sanders, A Conservationist Manifesto. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009) p. 16.
*****
All of these images were taken by David O'Hara in the fall of 2013. You may use them elsewhere but please mention where you found them and give credit where it is due. Thanks.
My Backyard Ark
Augustine once said that a key to his conversion was when he met St Ambrose. Augustine had regarded the Bible as full of flawed and problematic texts. As Augustine put it, "by taking them literally, I had found them to kill."(1) Ambrose taught Augustine that the texts of the Bible may have more than one sense. The scriptures might speak to him in more than one way. When he heard this, and heard it from a man who thought it important to study science and the liberal arts, Augustine found his spiritual home in Christianity.In recent years authors like Norman Wirzba, Bill McKibben, and Scott Russell Sanders have written about the relevance of Biblical texts for thinking about ecology. To me, they have been a little like St Ambrose. I've found one passage in Sanders to be quite helpful personally as I think about the management of my little suburban fifth-acre plot.
In his A Conservationist Manifesto, Sanders writes about the story of Noah and the Ark. He remembers that Noah was given the task of saving not just himself but every other species as well. And once they were on the ark, it was his job to care for the animals and to keep them alive. Sanders talks about books, and communities, and practices that can be like small arks in our time. One such "ark" may be the little plots of land we maintain around our homes:
"Every unsprayed garden and unkempt yard, every meadow, marsh, and woods may become a reservoir for biological possibilities, keeping alive creatures who bear in their genes millions of years; worth of evolutionary discoveries. Every such refuge may also become a reservoir for spiritual possibilities, keeping alive our connection with the land, reminding us of our origins in the green world."(2)Lately I've been surveying my yard more closely, looking to see whom I'm sharing it with, and how. I've been trying to do some phenology, like Thoreau did. I also wander my garden with lenses: a hand lens for close inspection; my phone camera and my SLR for keeping records of what lives and grows there; and I've recently set up an infrared game camera to see who passes through at night. For the curious, I've posted some photos below of what I've seen there.
*****
(1) Augustine, Confessions. Henry Chadwick's translation. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 88.
(2) Scott Russell Sanders, A Conservationist Manifesto. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009) p. 16.
*****
All of these images were taken by David O'Hara in the fall of 2013. You may use them elsewhere but please mention where you found them and give credit where it is due. Thanks.
∞
What Are Philosophy's Flaws?
Last week I suggested to one of my students that she would make a good philosophy major. A few days later she came to my office and asked me, "What are philosophy's flaws?"
She wanted to know, she said, because she was thinking seriously about studying more philosophy, and for her, thinking seriously about something means considering something from all angles. She knows that ideas give birth to other ideas, and to practical consequences.
I don't think I gave her a very good answer at the time, but I've continued to think about it because it strikes me as a good question asked for a good reason.
Not long ago I was re-reading the Stoic philosopher Gaius Musonius Rufus. Of the four major Roman Stoics, he's probably the least well-known. Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius all left substantial writings, but Musonius did not.
Rather, Musonius is known chiefly through the notes his students left behind. In fact, this is one of the reasons I like him so well: whatever became of his writings, his life made a difference for his students. His teaching mattered so much that they refused to let his life vanish from history.
There's another reason I like Musonius: he insisted that philosophy is for women, not just for men. Since the student whom I invited to study philosophy is also a woman, I want to try to give a better answer to her question by turning to Musonius now.
Once, when Musonius made the bold invitation for women to join the Stoic philosophers, someone asked him: won't studying philosophy make the women obstinate, independent, and opinionated?
He replied that in fact, it might do just that. Musonius recognized that the question was a question about the same thing my student was asking about: philosophy's flaws. Philosophy often makes us better thinkers, but it can also make us obnoxious to our neighbors when we care more about the ideas than about the people whose lives are connected to the ideas.
Musonius then quickly pointed out that the question is irrelevant, however, because what is true of women is also true of men in this regard. Like Augustine several centuries later, Musonius argued that women and men have equal intellectual powers. If philosophy entails the development and strengthening of our native intellect, then surely women will benefit from it just as much as men.
It would appear that the questioner wasn't concerned about people becoming opinionated, independent thinkers, but about women becoming opinionated, independent thinkers. What began as a question about the vices of philosophy quickly exposes itself as a question that reveals the bias of the questioner -- a bias that philosophy would be more than happy to correct.
This brings me to my student's question: Yes, philosophy has flaws, and one of its chief flaws is that when it is combined with a lack of kindness, it can amplify that unkindness.
But it also has the power to expose that unkindness in a pretty keen way. And when it is combined with kindness and positive regard for our neighbors -- with what we sometimes call agapé, or love -- it can be something that causes kindness to grow.
I don't mean that philosophy is a panacaea, or that it will do all good things for us, all on its unattended own.
But I do mean that you, my student, have very real native intelligence, and it pleases me to see it in you. And I would love to see it grow. To point to Augustine once more: Augustine found philosophy to be helpful for his own self-understanding, for his seeking after God, and for keeping his church from descending into irrationality. He regarded it as a way to "love God with his mind."
I wouldn't ask you, my student, to give up your nursing major. Quite the opposite! Just as surely as women need philosophy, I think nurses and business majors and scientists and poets need philosophy, too. I think that studying philosophy will make you a better nurse, one more able to improve the nursing profession and to improve your workplace.
And let me add one more thing. When you came into my office the other day to ask me that brilliant question, one thing was quite clear to me: whether or not you choose to make philosophy your formal major, you are already becoming a philosopher. And that makes me very happy indeed.
She wanted to know, she said, because she was thinking seriously about studying more philosophy, and for her, thinking seriously about something means considering something from all angles. She knows that ideas give birth to other ideas, and to practical consequences.
I don't think I gave her a very good answer at the time, but I've continued to think about it because it strikes me as a good question asked for a good reason.
Not long ago I was re-reading the Stoic philosopher Gaius Musonius Rufus. Of the four major Roman Stoics, he's probably the least well-known. Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius all left substantial writings, but Musonius did not.
Rather, Musonius is known chiefly through the notes his students left behind. In fact, this is one of the reasons I like him so well: whatever became of his writings, his life made a difference for his students. His teaching mattered so much that they refused to let his life vanish from history.
There's another reason I like Musonius: he insisted that philosophy is for women, not just for men. Since the student whom I invited to study philosophy is also a woman, I want to try to give a better answer to her question by turning to Musonius now.
Once, when Musonius made the bold invitation for women to join the Stoic philosophers, someone asked him: won't studying philosophy make the women obstinate, independent, and opinionated?
He replied that in fact, it might do just that. Musonius recognized that the question was a question about the same thing my student was asking about: philosophy's flaws. Philosophy often makes us better thinkers, but it can also make us obnoxious to our neighbors when we care more about the ideas than about the people whose lives are connected to the ideas.
Musonius then quickly pointed out that the question is irrelevant, however, because what is true of women is also true of men in this regard. Like Augustine several centuries later, Musonius argued that women and men have equal intellectual powers. If philosophy entails the development and strengthening of our native intellect, then surely women will benefit from it just as much as men.
It would appear that the questioner wasn't concerned about people becoming opinionated, independent thinkers, but about women becoming opinionated, independent thinkers. What began as a question about the vices of philosophy quickly exposes itself as a question that reveals the bias of the questioner -- a bias that philosophy would be more than happy to correct.
This brings me to my student's question: Yes, philosophy has flaws, and one of its chief flaws is that when it is combined with a lack of kindness, it can amplify that unkindness.
But it also has the power to expose that unkindness in a pretty keen way. And when it is combined with kindness and positive regard for our neighbors -- with what we sometimes call agapé, or love -- it can be something that causes kindness to grow.
I don't mean that philosophy is a panacaea, or that it will do all good things for us, all on its unattended own.
But I do mean that you, my student, have very real native intelligence, and it pleases me to see it in you. And I would love to see it grow. To point to Augustine once more: Augustine found philosophy to be helpful for his own self-understanding, for his seeking after God, and for keeping his church from descending into irrationality. He regarded it as a way to "love God with his mind."
I wouldn't ask you, my student, to give up your nursing major. Quite the opposite! Just as surely as women need philosophy, I think nurses and business majors and scientists and poets need philosophy, too. I think that studying philosophy will make you a better nurse, one more able to improve the nursing profession and to improve your workplace.
And let me add one more thing. When you came into my office the other day to ask me that brilliant question, one thing was quite clear to me: whether or not you choose to make philosophy your formal major, you are already becoming a philosopher. And that makes me very happy indeed.
∞
Scripture's Trajectory: You Are Known; Be Holy
Everybody interprets texts. Interpreting texts means, among other things, determining the trajectory of the texts. Where are they coming from, and where do they point us?
When it comes to the Bible, we've all been shaped by it, and we all have ways of responding to the pressures it has exerted while shaping us.
The early creeds try to maintain considerable latitude for how we regard the scriptures. For instance, the Nicene Creed says "We believe in the Holy Spirit...who has spoken through the prophets." Just how has the Spirit spoken, and what are we to make of that?
I'm grateful for those early Christians who, like St. Augustine, acknowledged that the scripture may have several senses. The Spirit does not speak in monotone, but in harmony, and the scriptures may sing several parts at once.
I was born into a churchgoing family, but we didn't spend much time talking about scripture. As a teenager I joined an independent church with charismatic and evangelical theology, and it was there that some of my strongest impressions of scripture were formed, in the presence of people who believed that the Spirit's voice in scripture could still be heard timelessly. While I've since grown away from that church, the idea that God speaks through scripture has stuck with me.
So not only has it shaped my life indirectly, I have sought to make myself open to it, to let it teach and guide me. Its songs and poems comfort me in hard times, and give me words when I want to express my joy and gratitude. The prophets help me to name the compass-points toward which my heart stretches. Its narratives offer opportunities for reflection on lives lived well, and poorly. And while I've made no attempt to keep all of its commandments, I find in them rules and principles that help me to live a life of "long obedience," to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche.
They give me doctrines, too, ideas about the world that make sense to me and that I don't think I could have formulated on my own. Creation, fall, and redemption; nurturing love, sin, and grace. I doubt I could explain any of these in perfectly clear and agreeable terms, but even in their vague forms (perhaps especially in their vague forms) they help me to make sense of the world.
But there is more. I take the Bible to be not just a collection of books, but a collection that holds together. The Tower of Babel in Genesis and the Tongues of Fire in Acts go together just as the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the tree-lined streets of the New Jerusalem go together. The stories of fathers and sons from Adam to Abraham, from David to Joseph, all fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; no two are alike, but taken as a whole, a larger picture forms.
This, I believe, is why the work of studying scripture matters to the communities that claim to be people of those scriptures. Putting together the puzzle is the work of our lives together.
Which is not to say that I think God is a cruel puzzle-maker. To say that would be already to have sorted out the puzzle. I'm not fond of jigsaw puzzles--when I was younger I couldn't understand why I would purchase and subject myself to an unnecessary problem. Why not just buy the picture before it's cut up? But there is real joy in playfully and willingly choosing to tackle a problem together.
So here is my small contribution to our work together: I don't think the scriptures are simply about rules and doctrines. Let's assume that God inspired the Bible; if so, and if God only wanted to deliver doctrines, God is not a very good writer. There's a lot of fluff in there that doesn't contribute directly to our list of rules.
If, on the other hand, God wanted to create a community of love and wisdom, I'm not sure there's a better way than by giving stories and poems, and by getting personally involved in that community, sharing its joys and its sorrows and its work. And if God wanted to make people who would not just obey but grow up into love and wisdom, all the more so.
This is why I take the Bible to be giving us a set of narratives that hang together, forming not a complete story but a story that is like a set of signposts, or a finger pointing in the direction we should travel. We are not static automata, nor should we strive to be. We are pilgrims with progress yet to be made. As in the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, a loving maker wants a lover, not a lifeless statue.
More than once I've heard facile criticisms* of the Bible saying, in effect, the Bible got slavery wrong, therefore the Bible is wrong. But this is as flatfooted as saying that the U.S. Constitution got slavery wrong, and therefore the Constitution is wrong. I take the Constitution to be a good document, and part of its goodness is the way in which it allows us to grow in our understanding. As Thomas Aquinas said, no positive human law will ever suffice for all time; we will always need to be legislators striving to codify and live what is good. We should not expect to arrive at our destination under our own steam; but we must try. As the Talmud says, "It is not your job to finish the work but you are not free to walk away from it."** There is still interpretive work to be done.
When I was younger, I took the Bible to be saying that women should not hold positions of ecclesiastical authority. As I have grown older, I've learned more about the cultures in which those texts were written, and it seems to me that quite the opposite conclusion could be drawn. In Genesis 3 God tells the woman, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." But this is in the midst of a curse, not a blessing. The text that precedes it tells us that both man and woman were made in God's image, and that they walked the same ground as God. This is the intention, the blazed trail. Somehow we have walked in another direction, and that's what Genesis 3 describes: the horizontal relationships have been turned on end, and just as God has become hidden to us, so equality has eluded us. Now we know the task is to seek God; surely, then, our task is to seek to restore all of those broken relationships, to practice tikkun olam, the healing of the world.
The Book of Job illustrates this same principle regarding women: in the beginning, before he sees God, Job's daughters have no property. After he sees God's face, Job gives his daughters an inheritance equal to their brothers'. In John's Gospel, Jesus obeys a woman, his mother, in performing his first miracle. Who is the first missionary Jesus sends out? It is a woman, and one rejected by her society because of her sin. Who first announces the Resurrection? Women.
Even stodgy old St Paul acknowledges he was taught by a woman. And some of those passages of his that have been used to justify inequality strike me as taken very seriously out of context. The famous line in The Epistle to the Ephesians, "Wives, submit to your husbands," comes in the context of a long passage about everybody submitting to everyone else, and is followed by a very long passage about husbands acting as their wives' humblest servants. And that line where St Paul says to Timothy "I do not permit a woman to speak in church...women must learn in quietness and full submission" is directed to a culture where boys went to school and girls did not. The boys already knew how to learn "in quietness and full submission" to the one reading the text. It looks to me like St Paul is saying "tell the women that their education matters every bit as much as the men's education; don't let them miss out on this opportunity just because their culture has told them they are inferior. Their culture is wrong."
I could be wrong about all this, but I'd rather be wrong on the side of giving people too much credit, too many opportunities, and too many rights, than on the side of giving others too little. If I have to stand before God and apologize for what I believe (as I imagine I will) I'd rather apologize for having too much love and too much trust than not enough. Was I wrong for receiving the Eucharist from a woman priest? I'm sorry, but I trusted God was able to deliver the sacrament through all sorts and kinds of unworthy vessels. After all, as Paul writes elsewhere, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ. The old distinctions that seemed to matter so much? Once we, like Job, see the face of God, we might see that we are all made in God's image, regardless of outward appearances.
Which brings me to my conclusion. Last week, a young woman in my community wrote a stirring blog post about marriage. I don't think I know enough to say very much that is wise about this matter other than what I've already said. The story of marriage in the scriptures is, it seems to me, a story that comes to us in pieces that need to be fitted together carefully, by a community. Marriage, after all, is not just about the marriage partners, but about the community that endorses, acknowledges, and protects it. In my church, at least, when two people are married, they act as priest to one another in making their vows - making this a unique sacrament - but this is usually done in the presence of a gathered community that then promises to honor and support their union. The "pieces" of marriage found in the pages of the Bible include polygamy, forcibly taking war brides, marriages of political convenience (e.g. Solomon), marriages predicated on economic necessity (e.g. Ruth), arranged marriages, marriages of love. And even divorce and remarriage - though the Bible often has particular vitriol for divorce and for the "hardness of heart" that may sometimes cause it. We don't get a rule; we get a trajectory.
That "first missionary" I mentioned? You can find her story in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. She had been married five times, and was living with another man when Jesus met her. As far as John tells us, Jesus didn't rebuke her for this, or command her to live differently. Instead, he just let her know that he knew about her, and he continued to speak to her - something no one else in her town would do, apparently. (Even Jesus's partially enlightened disciples were astonished to find him speaking to such a woman.) He let her know he knew her, and for her, this was revelation enough. She returned to her town and told her townspeople that she was known by the Messiah. This was her Gospel.
And what a Gospel it must have been to her, that she was willing to go into the town that rejected her and tell everyone she met, everyone who hated her, that there was Good News. You may hate me, but I am known, and I am loved. Go hear for yourselves.
As I said, I'm no Biblical scholar, and I'm swimming in deep waters here. But what if we saw the stories in the Bible as offering not a simple rule but pieces of a puzzle, arrows pointing in the direction of knowing and loving one another? I'm not arguing that same-sex marriages would be free from sin; I am arguing quite the opposite, in fact, because I imagine that probably every marriage of every sort (including those that aren't called marriages) is full of unkindness and the other fruits of sin. So the task before us is, once again, to love one another, and to try to be holy.
Perhaps, rather than trying to shape laws, the church should be trying to speak a word of grace, one spoken with our lives more than anything: be holy. As you know holiness--as you are known by Holiness--work to embody it in your deepest loves. When we focus on trying to shape laws, it makes it seem that laws and power are what we most love. When our focus is on singing the joyful song of those who have chosen to try to be holy because they believe they are known by their Maker, we cannot be mistaken for people who are trying to control others. We become people who are captivated by the beauty of holiness and grace.
Again, I might be wrong, but might it not be that the whole creation is groaning to hear such a word as this? You are known. Be holy.
* Dan Savage made this claim last year; I don't think he's altogether wrong in his conclusions, and I think he's trying to do a lot of good, but he and I have different approaches to scripture, and his strikes me as hasty and dismissive. This is unfortunate, because there are few texts like the Bible when it comes to power to transform societal beliefs; and because attacking the Bible doesn't help win over those who believe it. If you don't like the popular interpretation of a text, attacking the text is not as helpful as offering a serious, scholarly rival interpretation.
** Pirke Avot 2:21
When it comes to the Bible, we've all been shaped by it, and we all have ways of responding to the pressures it has exerted while shaping us.
The early creeds try to maintain considerable latitude for how we regard the scriptures. For instance, the Nicene Creed says "We believe in the Holy Spirit...who has spoken through the prophets." Just how has the Spirit spoken, and what are we to make of that?
I'm grateful for those early Christians who, like St. Augustine, acknowledged that the scripture may have several senses. The Spirit does not speak in monotone, but in harmony, and the scriptures may sing several parts at once.
I was born into a churchgoing family, but we didn't spend much time talking about scripture. As a teenager I joined an independent church with charismatic and evangelical theology, and it was there that some of my strongest impressions of scripture were formed, in the presence of people who believed that the Spirit's voice in scripture could still be heard timelessly. While I've since grown away from that church, the idea that God speaks through scripture has stuck with me.
So not only has it shaped my life indirectly, I have sought to make myself open to it, to let it teach and guide me. Its songs and poems comfort me in hard times, and give me words when I want to express my joy and gratitude. The prophets help me to name the compass-points toward which my heart stretches. Its narratives offer opportunities for reflection on lives lived well, and poorly. And while I've made no attempt to keep all of its commandments, I find in them rules and principles that help me to live a life of "long obedience," to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche.
They give me doctrines, too, ideas about the world that make sense to me and that I don't think I could have formulated on my own. Creation, fall, and redemption; nurturing love, sin, and grace. I doubt I could explain any of these in perfectly clear and agreeable terms, but even in their vague forms (perhaps especially in their vague forms) they help me to make sense of the world.
But there is more. I take the Bible to be not just a collection of books, but a collection that holds together. The Tower of Babel in Genesis and the Tongues of Fire in Acts go together just as the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the tree-lined streets of the New Jerusalem go together. The stories of fathers and sons from Adam to Abraham, from David to Joseph, all fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; no two are alike, but taken as a whole, a larger picture forms.
This, I believe, is why the work of studying scripture matters to the communities that claim to be people of those scriptures. Putting together the puzzle is the work of our lives together.
Which is not to say that I think God is a cruel puzzle-maker. To say that would be already to have sorted out the puzzle. I'm not fond of jigsaw puzzles--when I was younger I couldn't understand why I would purchase and subject myself to an unnecessary problem. Why not just buy the picture before it's cut up? But there is real joy in playfully and willingly choosing to tackle a problem together.
So here is my small contribution to our work together: I don't think the scriptures are simply about rules and doctrines. Let's assume that God inspired the Bible; if so, and if God only wanted to deliver doctrines, God is not a very good writer. There's a lot of fluff in there that doesn't contribute directly to our list of rules.
If, on the other hand, God wanted to create a community of love and wisdom, I'm not sure there's a better way than by giving stories and poems, and by getting personally involved in that community, sharing its joys and its sorrows and its work. And if God wanted to make people who would not just obey but grow up into love and wisdom, all the more so.
This is why I take the Bible to be giving us a set of narratives that hang together, forming not a complete story but a story that is like a set of signposts, or a finger pointing in the direction we should travel. We are not static automata, nor should we strive to be. We are pilgrims with progress yet to be made. As in the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, a loving maker wants a lover, not a lifeless statue.
More than once I've heard facile criticisms* of the Bible saying, in effect, the Bible got slavery wrong, therefore the Bible is wrong. But this is as flatfooted as saying that the U.S. Constitution got slavery wrong, and therefore the Constitution is wrong. I take the Constitution to be a good document, and part of its goodness is the way in which it allows us to grow in our understanding. As Thomas Aquinas said, no positive human law will ever suffice for all time; we will always need to be legislators striving to codify and live what is good. We should not expect to arrive at our destination under our own steam; but we must try. As the Talmud says, "It is not your job to finish the work but you are not free to walk away from it."** There is still interpretive work to be done.
When I was younger, I took the Bible to be saying that women should not hold positions of ecclesiastical authority. As I have grown older, I've learned more about the cultures in which those texts were written, and it seems to me that quite the opposite conclusion could be drawn. In Genesis 3 God tells the woman, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." But this is in the midst of a curse, not a blessing. The text that precedes it tells us that both man and woman were made in God's image, and that they walked the same ground as God. This is the intention, the blazed trail. Somehow we have walked in another direction, and that's what Genesis 3 describes: the horizontal relationships have been turned on end, and just as God has become hidden to us, so equality has eluded us. Now we know the task is to seek God; surely, then, our task is to seek to restore all of those broken relationships, to practice tikkun olam, the healing of the world.
The Book of Job illustrates this same principle regarding women: in the beginning, before he sees God, Job's daughters have no property. After he sees God's face, Job gives his daughters an inheritance equal to their brothers'. In John's Gospel, Jesus obeys a woman, his mother, in performing his first miracle. Who is the first missionary Jesus sends out? It is a woman, and one rejected by her society because of her sin. Who first announces the Resurrection? Women.
Even stodgy old St Paul acknowledges he was taught by a woman. And some of those passages of his that have been used to justify inequality strike me as taken very seriously out of context. The famous line in The Epistle to the Ephesians, "Wives, submit to your husbands," comes in the context of a long passage about everybody submitting to everyone else, and is followed by a very long passage about husbands acting as their wives' humblest servants. And that line where St Paul says to Timothy "I do not permit a woman to speak in church...women must learn in quietness and full submission" is directed to a culture where boys went to school and girls did not. The boys already knew how to learn "in quietness and full submission" to the one reading the text. It looks to me like St Paul is saying "tell the women that their education matters every bit as much as the men's education; don't let them miss out on this opportunity just because their culture has told them they are inferior. Their culture is wrong."
I could be wrong about all this, but I'd rather be wrong on the side of giving people too much credit, too many opportunities, and too many rights, than on the side of giving others too little. If I have to stand before God and apologize for what I believe (as I imagine I will) I'd rather apologize for having too much love and too much trust than not enough. Was I wrong for receiving the Eucharist from a woman priest? I'm sorry, but I trusted God was able to deliver the sacrament through all sorts and kinds of unworthy vessels. After all, as Paul writes elsewhere, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ. The old distinctions that seemed to matter so much? Once we, like Job, see the face of God, we might see that we are all made in God's image, regardless of outward appearances.
Which brings me to my conclusion. Last week, a young woman in my community wrote a stirring blog post about marriage. I don't think I know enough to say very much that is wise about this matter other than what I've already said. The story of marriage in the scriptures is, it seems to me, a story that comes to us in pieces that need to be fitted together carefully, by a community. Marriage, after all, is not just about the marriage partners, but about the community that endorses, acknowledges, and protects it. In my church, at least, when two people are married, they act as priest to one another in making their vows - making this a unique sacrament - but this is usually done in the presence of a gathered community that then promises to honor and support their union. The "pieces" of marriage found in the pages of the Bible include polygamy, forcibly taking war brides, marriages of political convenience (e.g. Solomon), marriages predicated on economic necessity (e.g. Ruth), arranged marriages, marriages of love. And even divorce and remarriage - though the Bible often has particular vitriol for divorce and for the "hardness of heart" that may sometimes cause it. We don't get a rule; we get a trajectory.
That "first missionary" I mentioned? You can find her story in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. She had been married five times, and was living with another man when Jesus met her. As far as John tells us, Jesus didn't rebuke her for this, or command her to live differently. Instead, he just let her know that he knew about her, and he continued to speak to her - something no one else in her town would do, apparently. (Even Jesus's partially enlightened disciples were astonished to find him speaking to such a woman.) He let her know he knew her, and for her, this was revelation enough. She returned to her town and told her townspeople that she was known by the Messiah. This was her Gospel.
And what a Gospel it must have been to her, that she was willing to go into the town that rejected her and tell everyone she met, everyone who hated her, that there was Good News. You may hate me, but I am known, and I am loved. Go hear for yourselves.
As I said, I'm no Biblical scholar, and I'm swimming in deep waters here. But what if we saw the stories in the Bible as offering not a simple rule but pieces of a puzzle, arrows pointing in the direction of knowing and loving one another? I'm not arguing that same-sex marriages would be free from sin; I am arguing quite the opposite, in fact, because I imagine that probably every marriage of every sort (including those that aren't called marriages) is full of unkindness and the other fruits of sin. So the task before us is, once again, to love one another, and to try to be holy.
Perhaps, rather than trying to shape laws, the church should be trying to speak a word of grace, one spoken with our lives more than anything: be holy. As you know holiness--as you are known by Holiness--work to embody it in your deepest loves. When we focus on trying to shape laws, it makes it seem that laws and power are what we most love. When our focus is on singing the joyful song of those who have chosen to try to be holy because they believe they are known by their Maker, we cannot be mistaken for people who are trying to control others. We become people who are captivated by the beauty of holiness and grace.
Again, I might be wrong, but might it not be that the whole creation is groaning to hear such a word as this? You are known. Be holy.
*****
* Dan Savage made this claim last year; I don't think he's altogether wrong in his conclusions, and I think he's trying to do a lot of good, but he and I have different approaches to scripture, and his strikes me as hasty and dismissive. This is unfortunate, because there are few texts like the Bible when it comes to power to transform societal beliefs; and because attacking the Bible doesn't help win over those who believe it. If you don't like the popular interpretation of a text, attacking the text is not as helpful as offering a serious, scholarly rival interpretation.
** Pirke Avot 2:21
∞
I often turn to Peirce not just for technical philosophical matters but also for insights like this one. What sort of people am I interested in surrounding myself with? It is most comfortable to surround myself with people who share my views and who espouse them with the air of certainty. But as Peirce reminds us in "The Fixation of Belief," the great danger there is that in so doing I cut myself off from seeing my own errors and from improving my thinking.
As with so many things worth remembering, it is hard to keep this in mind. We need not just people who think differently from the way we think but also communities that will help us return to those words and ideas that sharpen us and provoke us to thought. This is the challenge of theology and of philosophy, and of liturgies, both sacred and secular - to remind us of what we ought to remember while at the same time challenging us to resist the comfort of resting in what seems sure. As Augustine writes, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord." Until then, until our hearts find rest in the absolute, we should be wary of certainty, which is so often the enemy of learning.
The Comfort of Certainty
"Only once, as far as I remember, in all my lifetime have I experienced the pleasure of praise--not for what it might bring but in itself. That pleasure was beatific; and the praise that conferred it was meant for blame. It was that a critic said of me that I did not seem to be absolutely sure of my conclusions."
--Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers 1.10. (1897)I often turn to Peirce not just for technical philosophical matters but also for insights like this one. What sort of people am I interested in surrounding myself with? It is most comfortable to surround myself with people who share my views and who espouse them with the air of certainty. But as Peirce reminds us in "The Fixation of Belief," the great danger there is that in so doing I cut myself off from seeing my own errors and from improving my thinking.
As with so many things worth remembering, it is hard to keep this in mind. We need not just people who think differently from the way we think but also communities that will help us return to those words and ideas that sharpen us and provoke us to thought. This is the challenge of theology and of philosophy, and of liturgies, both sacred and secular - to remind us of what we ought to remember while at the same time challenging us to resist the comfort of resting in what seems sure. As Augustine writes, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord." Until then, until our hearts find rest in the absolute, we should be wary of certainty, which is so often the enemy of learning.
∞
Reading and Writing and Gratitude
It’s easy to get too busy to read, and too busy to write. My sporadic blog posting reflects the cycles of the academic year: some times I’m full of time to post and full of ideas for writing; other times, I’m simply too busy to write. Those too-busy-to-write times seem to come more often than the other times.
Still, I make myself promise to write – books, articles, reviews, essays – as a means of self-discipline. If I’m reading, I’m learning. If I’m writing, I’m learning even more.
But I am busy. So all this posting will do is acknowledge the giants upon whose shoulders I have been sitting this past week: Plato’s Phaedrus; Augustine’s City of God; Mooney’s Lost Intimacy in American Thought; West’s Prophetic Fragments and American Evasion of Philosophy; Apuleius' De Deo Socratis and his Asinus; a handful of Rorty’s essays; Royce’s Problem of Christianity; a handful of books on environmental philosophy (trying to sort out both some ethical issues and the practical matter of next spring’s syllabus!); and, as always, a smattering of Peirce.
No, I don’t usually read quite that many books in a week. (Actually, I think I’m leaving out a half-dozen or so - oh, yeah, there was some Rauschenbusch in there, and some Martin Luther King, too. Lots of social and political thought about religion, politics, freedom, and creativity, mostly.)
Last week was a marathon of reading and writing. The result was a book chapter and sketches of about ten other articles. Not sure they’ll all get written - I only have so much time, remember? But the most important part of this has been not the words on the page, but the way those words have served as a tool for thinking. For that, and for the life that allows me to do that at all, I am very, very grateful.
∞
American mythology tells us that Washington said that. Of course, if someone says "I never lie," you cannot tell from that statement whether it is true or not. And if they say "I always lie," it's hard to make sense of what they are saying. But that is beside my point here. There are a number of ethicists and theologians who tell us that we should never lie. Kant, for instance, says that lying is a violation of the Categorical Imperative. That is, when you lie you are acting according to a rule that you wouldn't want others to adhere to, and you're manipulating what others believe, which is a way of using them as means rather than respecting them as ends. Augustine and Aquinas both tell us that all lies, even "jocose" or humorous lies, are sinful because they are ways of bearing false witness, something we're commanded not to do.
Are they right? Is there never a time when lying is justified? What do you think?
I Cannot Tell A Lie
American mythology tells us that Washington said that. Of course, if someone says "I never lie," you cannot tell from that statement whether it is true or not. And if they say "I always lie," it's hard to make sense of what they are saying. But that is beside my point here. There are a number of ethicists and theologians who tell us that we should never lie. Kant, for instance, says that lying is a violation of the Categorical Imperative. That is, when you lie you are acting according to a rule that you wouldn't want others to adhere to, and you're manipulating what others believe, which is a way of using them as means rather than respecting them as ends. Augustine and Aquinas both tell us that all lies, even "jocose" or humorous lies, are sinful because they are ways of bearing false witness, something we're commanded not to do.
Are they right? Is there never a time when lying is justified? What do you think?