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Problems and Significance of Interpretations of 1st Corinthians 11 – Part 1

01 Jan

Table of contents for Unveiling Paul’s Glory

Problems and Significance of Interpretations of 1st Corinthians 11 – Part 1
Because of the Angels
Ideological Considerations
Body and Class in Antiquity
The Parousia Paradigm
The Body Balance
The Literary Legacy
Who Wrote 1 Cor 11:3-16?

Paul of Tarsus vexes his interpreters with respect to women. At times he is the champion of modern feminist, at others he locks women back into their cages from which they had been liberated by Jesus. [1] On the whole, his genuine letters appear to be radically egalitarian compared to the temporally and geographically adjacent cultures and it is clear that he worked closely with women leaders in the Church. [2] However, his most influential early interpreters, the writers of the Pauline letters [3] and early Church fathers, are progressively patriarchal compared to the same cultures. The easiest and most commonly appealed to explanation of this shift is enculturation. The pressure of Greco-Roman culture which was steeped in patriarchal logic was so great that it was impossible for the egalitarian bubble erected by Jesus and maintained by Paul to be free from pagan diffusion of gender roles. As such, we have the adoption of Roman household codes in the Pastorals [4] and persecution of egalitarian Pauline traditions by the Church fathers. [5]

This neat divide between the egalitarian Paul and patriarchal later interpreters breaks down towards the end of 1 Corinthians. In chapter eleven of this letter to the Christian assembly in Corinth, Paul advises the Christians on matters of public worship, including matters of women prophesying. During this discussion, Paul makes series of clear statements concerning ontological priority of the genders, [6] the epitome of which is “And I want you to know that Christ is the head of all men, and man is the head of woman, and God is the head of Christ.” [7] This statement is in stark contrast with the baptismal formula quoted by Paul in his letter to the assembly in Galatia: “Neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female is among [you all], for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” [8] It is however, much more in line with statements made in the Pastorals, such as 1 Timothy 2:12-14: “But I neither permit a woman to teach nor have authority over a man, but to be in stillness.” [9] Prima facie, Paul is being blatantly inconsistent here.

In the next post, I will further explore problems with this text, including the bizarre reference to “διὰ τοὺς ἀγγέλους” or “due to the angels” in verse 10, and offer up my hypothesis for setting the problems.

Here is the text of the passage in question:1 Corinthians 11:1-22

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you.

Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head. In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

Next in series

For a discussion of Jesus’ treatment of women, see Elisabeth Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 10th (Herder & Herder, 1994), Part II. [↩]
The term Church will refer to what Paul calls the “body of Christ” and local Churches will be referred to as assemblies. For a discussion on real women in the genuine Pauline letters, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Reading Real Women Through the Undisputed Letters of Paul,” in Women and Christian Origins, ed. Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (Oxford University Press, USA, 1999), 199-220. [↩]
This list includes both the deuteropauline and pastoral letters [↩]
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon, 1st ed (Westminster John Knox Press, 1983), 78-80. [↩]
Tertullian, On Baptism. in Ross Shepard Kraemer, Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004), 261 [↩]
While Paul is describing sex here not gender, this helpful modern distinction is not directly applicable to Greco-Roman discourse. This will be addressed in detail later in the paper. [↩]
“Θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς εἶδέναι῾ὅτι παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν, κεφαλὴ δὲ γυναικὸς ὁ ἀνὴρ, κεφαλὴ δὲ ψοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ θεὸς” – 1 Corinthians 11:3. [↩]
“ οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἑλλην, οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ε}λευθεροη, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν δαὶ θῆλυ· πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἶς ἐσιε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ” – Galatians 3:28. [↩]
“διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρόσ, ἀνδρός, ἀλλʼ εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ.” -1 Timothy 2:12-14 . [↩]

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Posted in Christianity, Religion

Heretic Henry

14 Nov

I guess I am a false teacher who will bear the wrath of God for leading my students astray:

But, if you have difficulty believing in the power of God to create this universe as he said he did, without some millions of years’ worth of trial and error, then you are worshiping a false and weak god, who would leave it to mankind to compile a "canon" of scripture; that by religious power-plays and politics, we ended up with what we call the Bible. This link is an example of the sort of teaching going on, in case you don’t believe me.

Wow, I am the very example used to illustrate the “worshiping of a false and weak god”! Looks like I need to head out to Hillshire Farms for a millstone fitting.

But, in all honesty, I like and hate when these charges are leveled against me. I am trying my hardest to be faithful to both God and the historical record. As a religious scholar and a person of faith who studies and works in a secular university, the line between my job and my faith can be difficult one to traverse. It is so very easy to slip into full secularization mode, with my hermeneutic of suspicion in overdrive, Crossan style. I painfully recognize this problem – it is something I am wrestling with in the last few unpublished posts in my series on the Theclan Christian tradition. The historical evidence points me in one direction, but my faith points me in another.

I fully maintain that there is no distinction between the truth of God’s story and what we see in history and science. However, just as the Bible used to insist on a flat earth, perhaps we need to mold our expectations of the text to fit what we see in the world and in history. In a very intimate way, I am inspired by Galileo’s motivations. He was afraid that scores of souls would leave the Church when they discovered that the world was indeed round while the Church was insisting it was flat. I’ve seen our tightly constructed theological shells crack and fall away because we insist on shutting out all other viewpoints, even those of other Christians who are just as dedicated to God and his Word as we ourselves are. I seek to understand and foster an understanding of the text unbeholden to anyone – secularists or past interpretations be damned.

As I indicated a couple of posts ago, if we interpret the world and the Word from a position of theological comfort, then we have a serious problem.

The word of God is like a roving lion – untamable and majestic in its beauty and power; it destroys both woman’s wisdom and man’s deeds. The moment you think you have tamed the great lion is the moment you should fear for your life.

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Posted in Christianity, Personal, Philosophy, Religion, history

A few things

17 Sep

So far this semester I have turned in my second thesis chapter and gave my first lecture. I did the former a few weeks ago; the latter this afternoon. It went quite well. Overall, I think I am pleased with how it went. There was definitely enough material to work with as I had to cut out several parts [1] and shorten others. [2] I really had to cut short my description of the Acts of Philip and the Acts of Thomas’s depictions of the Jews as a religious other. That I think is my largest self-criticism. That was really important and I just did not give myself the time to explain it fully. What should have taken 5-8 minutes had to be done in 2. The other thing that I worry about is if I talked over their heads. I had a hard time knowing what a freshman in college would get and not get. I might post the audio of it online sometime – if I like what I hear. I am trying to edit my notes into a post, or perhaps a post series. We’ll see how that goes.

Mega-Man 9 is a coming out soon! I am pretty stoked about that one. It is being released in a week in Japan and over here shortly after. [3] The bosses are looking good, the art is looking good, and they even have a nostalgic press kit which features a game box as an NES cartridge.

I really wanna try out The Force Unleashed. Money is a bit tight right now, [4] so dumping $60 on a game is a bit frivolous. Man, I wish the 360 version had multiplayer on the 360. I guess the 360 and the PS3 just can’t handle the three independent physics systems in the game over an Internet connection. I wish there was a way you could revert to some old physics engine or something when you played online. Oh well. I could always go for the Wii version that has dueling saber battles.

What else is going on? I hope to get more than 4 hours of sleep in a given night… Oh, that reminds me. I am really looking forward to this weekend. Meredith, Scott, Sarah, Alan, Patty, JR, and Amanda are coming down to Meredith’s parent’s house for the weekend. We will just hang out. That’s it. [5] And I have a sermon I’ll be giving at Meredith’s dad’s church. It should be a great time.

Ok, Meredith should be calling me soon, so I’ll end things here. Oh, wait a tic. I wonder what Shakespeare would say if he were alive today? (Thanks Digg)

such as the distinction between popular and official religion and how that impacts early Christian scholarship [↩]
such as a discussion of how we can reconstruct liturgical elements of early Xian practice from the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, such as the Acts of Thomas [↩]
I’m too lazy too look up the date [↩]
I get paid in the rears, so I won’t get paid for TA’ing until the end of this month for the first time since school got out last year [↩]
well, and grade quizzes and respond to paper drafts [↩]

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Posted in Blogging, Christianity, Personal, Religion, Video Games

Restoring the Myth of the Roman Republic

30 Aug

reading: On the Life of the Caesars [1] - Suetonius

listening: The American – Martin Sexton

Is the myth of the Roman Republic employed much in American culture? The founders certainly meditated and drew off of the Roman res publica and their desire to retain the benefits of the rex without falling into the most hated of ruling methods, the despotism that comes with kingship. Do we retain any of the story of the roman republic and its fall into empire in our political myths? It seems like a perfect cautionary tale, given how we imagine ourselves. Is it employed by our internal and external critics? Or are we too scared of naming our imperialistic tendencies and power structures as such to invoke Rome? Has Rome become a great satan in our popular culture? I know many Xians that only employ Rome in terms of the Roman Empire and the internal tyranny of its emperors and the imagined tyranny it held over those that it ruled. Now, to be sure, the myth of the Roman Empire is a useful one, but I sometimes get a sense that this is the only way we see Rome and that in doing so, we miss out on some powerful story-telling and teaching.

If we aren’t doing these things in our ~~enculturation~~ education, I think we should include this. It’d require a distinction between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. And creating the myth of a republic breaking away from kingship, building an unprecidented power sharing system, and decending back into despotism.

Anyway, if you have any input you wanna share on this – drop me a comment below. I really don’t know what I am talking about – I am just thinking out loud.

Yeah, the modern English title is The Twelve Caesars, but it’s real title is De Vita Casesarum [↩]

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Posted in Notes, Politics, history

Dear Al,

11 Aug

I know you are a big-wig among Southern Baptists. I get that. But something has been a buggin’ me for some time. Every once and a while I’ll visit your site. I don’t go there for instruction, but to get and idea where other Christians are coming from and I usually leave frustrated. It’s not just just the content of your posts that frustrates me, it’s something much more subtle that, when recognized, produces a glaring hole in my happiness that cannot go untended. Please, please, for the love of the tubes, stop calling the previous posts “blogs.”

A blog is a collection of posts, the sum of the parts. A post is a individual item on a blog, a part of the whole. I know you are out of touch with modern notions of science, marriage/reproduction, and the like, but this switch is an easy one. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Change the word “blogs” to “posts.”

Pretty easy huh?

While you are at it, call me up and we can talk about other changes to make.

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Posted in Christianity, Humor, Technology

The Influence of Thecla in Popular Christian Thought

02 Aug

In my previous post I introduced us to the Acts of Thecla and suggested that it played a powerful role in early popular Christian thought. Next, I wanna talk about the devotion that sprang up around this figure. Today, we will talk a bit about the material culture that we have from the Thecla devotion and its geographical location and finally, the literary words associated with the cult.

Before we get into this, I wanna take a few minutes and talk about the terms “popular religion” and “cult.” Given the problems we have had over other technical terms such as myth, a brief discussion here will be helpful.

Roundel: Saint Thecla with wild beasts. From Egypt. From Women of Byzantium By Carolyn Loessel Connor. Page 9

The term “popular religion” refers to the practices, structures and beliefs that the common people have. This is usually contrasted with the official religion of a group, which refers to the beliefs, practices and structures (hereafter: religion) that those in charge of the group hold. To use a present day example, the official religion of a Southern Baptist church would consist of the religion that the head pastor and board of deacons and elders publicly endorse. The popular level would refer to the religion that is actually being practiced by the laypeople. For example, when I was a member of the Crossing in Columbia, [1] the leadership of a church were strong advocates of calvinism, but in their membership class, they admitted that the majority of the members were not calvinists. Here is the messy part: what constitutes the official religion of a group? Can’t we contrast the top-level endorsed religion of the Southern Baptist convention with the religion endorsed by the leadership of the/a member congregation(s)? You absolutely can; the popular/official distinction applies to any two elements which have an authoritative/subordinate relationship. This speaks to the need for context and subtlety when studying a religious phenomena. Here, when we are talking about the popular Christian religion, I am contrasting the popular level of cults and their devotees with the official religion which consisted of the religion of the early church fathers. You could contrast the official religion of the cults with the religion of the devotees, but that is not what I am looking at today.

Ampulla with Saint Thecla between beasts. From Egypt. From Women of Byzantium By Carolyn Loessel Connor. Page 10.

Now lets turn to the term “cult.” In popular culture, and in some religious academic contexts, the term “cult” refers to any group [2] that has a set of belies, practices, and structures that the official culture [3] rejects wholesale. For example, take the Branch Davidians, the Peoples Temple, and (for the majority of Americans throughout history) Mormonism. However, in the academic study of religion and antiquity, a cult is something much different. It refers to an established organization with the duty of running the a religious site, usually a temple. Thus, when we talk about the “Temple cult” in Jerusalem, we are not talking about those “damn dirty Jews and their false beliefs.” I am doing nothing of the sort! Instead, we are only referring to the structures, practices, and personnel employed at this religious site. Therefore, when I talk about the Thecla cult, I am only referring to shrine and church, the people associated with these places, and the rituals and practices that these people employed.

She is mentioned by authors and shows up in material culture in Asia Minor, Armenia, Cyprus, North Africa, Gaul, Germany, Italy, Palestine, and Egypt. [4] Among the material culture that references Thecla are oil lamps, combs, flasks, wall paintings, shrines, and limestone graves. [5] These materials date from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE. Due to the favorable environmental conditions, most of the material evidence comes from Egypt; however, there are remnants of this material culture from all over the Roman Empire, such as a fourth century gold flask bearing her image in Germany and wall carvings in Armenia. [6] This abundance of material culture shows the widespread popular influence of Thecla. People came from all over the Roman empire to visit her shrine. The Thecla cult and the values behind it was a powerful early influence in the first few centuries of Christianity.

The cult was centered at Seleucia in Asia Minor. It is here where her great shrine, Hagia Thekla, was located. [7] Two locations of the shrine have been located, and the site has an interesting history that includes the lives of Roman emperors. Most of the manuscript traditions can be traced back to this area. Two important ones in addition to the Acts of Thecla are the Life and Miracles of St. Thecla ((Hereafter the Life and Miracles of St. Thecla will be referred to as Life and Miracles. When referring to the first section of the work, I will use the title Life, and Miracles when referring to the second part.)) and an extended version of the Acts of Thecla-Seleucia. The Life and Miracles of St. Thecla is a two part work that contains a paraphrase of the Acts of Thecla and a listing of forty-six of her purported miracles which was written in the 450’s CE. [8] The Acts of Thecla-Seleucia is an extended version of the Acts of Thecla that details her life after arriving at Seleucia that serves to provide an aetiological explanation for the shifting location of the Hagia Thekla shrine. [9] While a great deal of space could be consumed cataloging and discussing the multitude of manifestations of the Thecla cult in the Roman Empire, we will focus on the Seleucia cult. In examining this manifestation of the Thecla cult, we will be able to get a glimpse of why the cult was so popular in Roman Empire. We will look at this issue in the next post.

which is not a Southern Baptist Church, but is of the reformed tradition [↩]
Here I am talking about religious groups [↩]
or the culture of the group that is using the term [↩]
Ibid. see chapters 3 and 6. [↩]
Ibid., 150. [↩]
Ibid., 85. [↩]
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), 91. [↩]
The author mentions the death of prominent priest named Serverus who died in 444 CE and presupposes a local living bishop named John who died in 448CE. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity, 41. [↩]
Ibid., 45. [↩]

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Posted in Christianity, Religion

Reforming Propaganda

27 Nov

The use of persuasion by Reformation-Era Christians and their Spiritual Successors

Public displays of images used in conjunction with lines of symbolic rhetoric are powerful tools of propaganda.[1] As moving as printed propaganda can be, they are unintelligible and therefore without power unless the viewer has access to the proper context. Propaganda seeks to encapsulate and communicate a group’s worldview in a compact space. Necessarily, the propaganda pieces boil down the presenting group’s worldview to the components that are most important to those seeking to foster change. Two such instances of religious propaganda are a 2007 Baptist parade float and a 16^th century Lutheran woodcut entitled The Contents of Two Sermons. This paper will seek to explore each of these images and to structurally compare the two. Structures work to create effective propaganda through spatial and relational juxtapositions; these structures are reliant on their situation within larger, over-arching structures for meaning, and serve to expand or restrict the presenting groups’ social borders.

On Relations: A Guide to Structuralism

Structuralism is an approach to the study of phenomena that places the emphasis on the relation between objects as its primary source of analysis. Jensen, in his chapter entitled “Structure” in The Guide to the Study of Religion, describes structure as “…a set or network of relations which gives a phenomenon an identity as a closed system or interdependent parts.”[2] Structures are rule-laden; internal rules govern how elements within the structure behave and are defined against one another. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Christianity, Religion

Of Frogs, Priests and Cultural Critiques:

18 Nov

An Interpretation of RigVeda Hymn 7:103

One of the more fascinating Vedic hymns is the The Frogs.[1] It is interesting because of the multitude of complex issues that the hymn touches upon. Essentially, the hymn compares the chanting of frogs with the chanting of Vedic Brahmin priests. Is this a positive comparison? For a modern American reader, the meaning is not clear. At first light, one can easily imagine this hymn being composed by either a rival group of priests or disgruntled laypeople. If so, it seems as though the composer, if he was a non-Sanskrit speaker, could have been lampooning rival Vedic priests and comparing their nonsensical chanting, i.e. in Sanskrit, with those of frogs. Perhaps stanza five speaks to the perception among the composing community that Brahmin priests and all Vedic followers are mindlessly repeating what has gone on before them without truly understanding it.

Is this really the case? The transmission and content of the hymn question this surface analysis. In the poems, the Brahmin priests and the frogs were responsible for the upkeep of the world. They are both inspired by Parjanya, the god of the rainstorm.[2] Through the chanting of the frogs and the Brahmins the people receive real-time benefits.[3] Therefore, the hymn is can be seen as one of reverence, comparing the sacred and sustaining sounds of Sanskrit with the sacred and sustaining sounds of the frogs; each is drawing off of the power of the divine sound. In addition, stanza six emphasizes the frogs’ particular variety and essential unity, hardly a tactic of the lampooner. All content aside, the transmission of the text must be considered.[4] No matter the identity of the composer, the hymn was definitely transmitted through successive generations solely by Brahmin priests orally. Because the hymns were in the sole possession of the people potentially being critiqued, it is unlikely that the Brahmin priests would include a hymn that was overtly antagonistic towards them. It is even possible that the use of frogs is a rhetorical device designed to hook the listener with humor and hammer them with truth. So perhaps it is the case that the hymn was a positive one. The gulf of time, culture, and worldview is too great to bridge with the tools that accompany a surface reading of the text.

In order to unravel the meaning and function of the hymn, several things must be accomplished. First, the authorship of the hymn needs to be addressed. For instance, did the author speak Sanskrit? Was he from a rival group of indigenous priests? Understanding the author is crucial to understanding how he intended to affect his listeners. Next the perception of frogs in Vedic culture needs to be identified, in order to open a window as to how the listener would have understood the hymn. Once these preliminary questions are answered, the hymn can be analyzed in light of its context. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Religion

Branches of the same length reach just as high

18 Sep

Overall, I found Durkheim’s theory on religion fascinating. It was very interesting to see how his youth paralleled other revolutionary thinkers. Newton, Galileo and several major philosophers shared several aspects with him. First, each was an exceptionally bright youth that came from religious backgrounds. They all went to prestigious schools, but found themselves either bored or at odds with the established methods, theories, and systems of study. Both Newton and Galileo thought the Aristotelian method and ideas that the European schools were teaching were terrible and did most of their productive study on his own. This freedom in thought was instrumental in their intellectual breakthroughs. It was the same with Durkheim.

For Durkheim, everything was split into the sacred and the profane. There was no good/evil distinction between the two. Religion did not replace magic as Frazier had thought. Instead, magic was a private matter; religion on the other hand, was a social concern. He rebelled against Müller and Tylor’s evolutionary views of religion. Durkheim thought that this was the wrong approach. Durkheim thought that Müller and Tylor had tried to de-evolve religion of the day into a primordial religious state. Instead, Durkheim thought that the proper approach discovering the basis of religion was to locate the most elementary form of religion and study it scientifically. He ended up using a massive and detailed study of Aborigine tribes by Spencer and Gillen. From this study, he concluded that the totem was not magical or animalistic in nature, but was a social construct that served to promote the continuance of the tribe. This was his founding principle. Everything else flowed logically from this premise. For instance, it is easy to see how the soul originally was seen as “fragment of the ‘clan within” when one is operating off the idea that
the totem is a symbol of the personification of the clan. Once one understands where the idea of the soul comes from, the idea that the clan continues through time irrespective of its members is a simple inference. Likewise, since the soul is a personal piece of the immortal clan, it too must also continue through time after the death of its host.

Without going into more detail about Durkheim’s theory, it should be noted that it is not without its flaws. The first problem pertains to his data set. If Spencer and Gillen’s report was flawed, then it follows that Durkheim’s analysis would also be flawed. This is not to criticize his method, just his results. Next is his assumption that there is a single cause of religion. Although it was good that he did not attempt to de-evolve present day religion into a primordial one, it might be the case that there are independent causes for the rise of independent religions. Also, Durkheim assumes that what looks to the European eye to be the most primitive religion is actually the most primitive religion. In fact, all present day religions, all of them, have all evolved the same amount. Christianity in Europe had adapted to its surroundings just as the Aborigines had adapted their religion to their current situation. Each is a branch from the evolutionary tree that is equal in length. Time has not frozen over for the Aborigines and thus it would be foolish to assume that there have been no changes to their religion over time. In addition, the Australian outback is a unique environment. It would be foolhardy to assume that religions situated in another environment would look the same.

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Posted in Religion

What religion IS(n’t)

29 Aug

When I started this program last year, my primary training had been in philosophy. My view of the study of religion consisted primarily of the study of what W.Z Smith’s calls systems. As such, I actually thought that my time in the program would consist of intimately learning about the various systems of ideas (whoops). The ensuing reality has been quite a departure from this earlier perception.

An influential axiom from undergrad was Aristotle’s dictum that “without the same set of definitions, nothing can be agreed upon.” As such, a universal definition of “religion” is highly desired. Such a definition would make the study of religion all the easier. W.C. Smith does a good job outlining not only the commonly used definitions of religion, but also outlining a history of the development of those ideas in the “West.” However, as W.C. Smith points out, any such definition of religion encounters problems. Not only is the term polyvalent and therefore without careful distinctions there is confusion, but also the hard categories ascribed within the term often do not correlate with what others would call “religion,” indeed, if these others even have a similar term in their language. In ancient Rome, religion primarily meant something like “duty” and this duty to the gods was not for personal gain, but rather for the good fortune of the community. Similarly, the closest term to religion in Sanskrit is “dharma” and while its meanings are more polyvalent than the West’s “religion,” none of the possible reasons closely resembles the definitions ascribed within the term religion. After all of this (and more) is considered, there is no easy, hard definition of what religion is, this leaves in its wake a considerable conflict with this paragraph’s opening dictum.

Not only are there the pragmatic concerns with the defining of religion, there is, in addition, moral concerns that need to be addressed in the creation of the definition. Primarily, there are moral implications of the effects of the definition on that which is defined that have been and easily can be overlooked. The process of the defining religion inscribes it with certain attributes. When one then studies the “religions” of other peoples, these certain attributes are then inscribed onto the people studied. This inscription of attributes onto the essences of other peoples raises white flags. What if these inscriptions are rejected by the people they are inscribed upon? What if no one bothers to ask them if they accept or reject these attributes? How does one name the other? Does one ask the subaltern for their permission? These are still do’s and how’s. There are still should’s that need to be considered. If one says that an atheist couple is performing a religious function when they are getting married at the courthouse and if you were to ask them and they deny it, what happens then? Are they merely deluded, fools, or worse? Is W.C. Smith right? Should one disavow the term religion?

Despite the above problems, it would be hasty to drop the term completely. While W.C. Smith is correct in saying that the term has a slippery definition, he is not correct in calling for its removal. The need for careful distinctions, subtlety, and nuance with a term is not warrant for dropping it from use. That is tantamount to intellectual laziness. J.Z. Smith rightly notes that religion is a term that describes a particular aspect of what the scholar is studying, not a wholly independent category. Operating from this approach allows the scholar engage people in a much more valuable manner.

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Posted in Religion

The Hidden Transcripts of Edessa

24 Jul

Resistance within and by the Edessan Christian community 150-250 CE

Introduction

The apothegm, “Dead men don’t tell tales,” is especially relevant in the study of vanished peoples. The purpose of this paper is to construct a method to uncover the lived religion in the everyday lives of a people-group located in the past, specifically, the people-group behind both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas. One only knows this group from the text that was left behind. However, this in and of itself is a lucky break. The text at least alerts us about this group. Otherwise, their voices would be completely lost. A surface-level, or prime facie analysis of the text only reveals the beliefs and ideas utilized by the groups, or more specifically, about the leader or teacher’s beliefs and ideas. One cannot imagine that the texts were built with the consensus of the community as a whole. They are what James C. Scott called “official transcripts” of the community.

I am approaching this people-group and texts from a great distance, spatially, temporally, and culturally. Without further inquiry and qualification, the risk of importing my culture and beliefs onto the texts and as an extension, the people-group, is insurmountable. In the absence of intimate or first-hand knowledge of their culture, one must take great pains to reconstruct it from the ground up before analyzing the texts. It is also paramount to note that every people-group is located in a specific space at a specific time, even if the people-group persists through the before mentioned spaces and times. At every moment, their culture is being negotiated and transformed. Each text represents one such attempt at negotiation of the group’s values, beliefs practices, morale, and so forth. Thus, while a text can tell us about an instance of the negotiation process and as an extension, the phases before and after the text, one cannot assume that the text merely represents a static reconstruction of the community. It is also a record of an instance of the creative process of culture formation. It is with this attitude that texts will be approached.

Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas originated from the same community, Edessa, located in ancient Syria. (Klijn, p. 70) (Bernard, p. 161) The Gospel of Thomas date from the second half of the second century and the Acts of Thomas originate around 60-100 years later. Because of their proximity in both space and time, the two texts provide an excellent opportunity to look at snapshots of the same community in two periods of time. However, the question still remains of how to go about analyzing these texts. I will draw heavily on the theory of James C. Scott and the method of Burton Mack with the hope of obtaining an accurate comparative look at each community in their specific time period.

The paper will begin with an opening discussion of the theory of James C. Scott, moving on to an evaluation of Burton Mack’s attempt to reconstruct a lost community. Then a brief background on the historical record of the Christian Church at Edessa during the first two hundred and fifty years will be given. Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas will be analyzed in search of their hidden and public transcripts. The two sets of transcripts will then be compared to see the choices each community faced and the path they ended up taking. I will show how the Edessan Christian community not only created a space for itself in opposition to the surrounding culture, but also institutionalized rapidly. This created room for a hidden transcript within their hidden transcript that were protests against the institutionalization. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Christianity, apocryphal literature, history

I’ll have to take her word for it

26 Mar

In reading both Material Christianity and Parlor Piety, I had mixed reactions to Colleen McDannell’s claims. At first glance, she presented two clear arguments for the change of Christian American attitudes towards the home over time and the change in how the social sciences viewed American Christianity over time. She did a great job looking at issues and tying them to the larger picture. However, there were also some minor issues that kept creeping up, such as the backing of claims and the lack of distinction amongst religious groups.

The question of relevance has been one of the themes of the semester so far. At what point does an ethnographic study of religion cease to be linked to larger themes and become a curiosity? McDannell was obviously aware of this and was quick to bypass the problem in both her articles. I noticed that she was quick to make her studies relevant to the larger whole of scholarship very early on in both articles. In Material Christianity, she links her study of the photograph as a case study of American Christianity, saying , “..throughout American history, Christians have explored the meaning of the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the experience of the body by interacting with a created world of images and shapes.”(1) In her other article, she immediately states that her cases in the article are “quintessential examples” of the larger American picture of Christianity. (2) By her linkage of the specific to the general, McDannell attempts to demonstrate how ethnographic sketches, even ones done over time, can be relevant to the larger picture.

In her articles, I kept running into what felt like unfounded claims. They were not outright falsehoods, but were just too much of a stretch for me without concrete examples. For instance, she claimed that “bad architecture encouraged sinfulness.”(3) While this might have been the case, she only quotes one or two architects in support of the converse of the above quote. How can the reader be sure that such a quote is representative of the general attitude of Christian America at that particular time? It might be more sensible that the architect that said the structure of the home influenced morals was speaking instead from a sales pitch instead of encapsulating the attitudes of Christian America. Another instance of this was later on in the same article where she stated, “Merely believing was not enough. Christians must visually demonstrate their piety. They must make their homes sacred.” (4) Perhaps this was not the only reason for how they decorated their homes. Perhaps it was in their belief that having such a home was an outward sign of an inward faith instead of making their homes sacred. Another issue that kept creeping up was the lumping together of all the denominations into a single group. While she was upfront about this, it still seemed as though there might be more at work behind the scenes besides the issues she described. I am not saying that she is incorrect in these statements, but a more careful approach is needed to convince me completely of her claims.

Overall, I would have liked a more careful look at the issues she raised. At the same time I realize that if she had looked as carefully as I would have liked, I would be reading two books this week instead of four articles.

Footnotes

McDannell, Material Christianity, p.24.
McDannell, Parlor Piety: The Home as Sacred Space in Protestant America, p.162.
Ibid. p. 165.
Ibid. p. 170.

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Posted in Christianity

Grace in Reformed Theology

02 Feb

This is the second post in my response to Henry Thomas’ post asking what Grace was. My first post tried to look at how Catholic theologians looked at grace. Like that post, this one draws off of Gareth Reese’s book, New Testament Epistles:Romans.

In a nutshell, in Reformed theology, grace is something that God does to a person to save him or her. However, there are several distinctions that need to be made in regards how the process of a human receiving God’s grace works out.

The first distinction that needs to be made is between Common grace and Special grace. Common Grace is something that God grants to all persons. It refers to the blessings and favor that God shows mankind. Outworkings of this type of grace are to be found in our good deeds, our art, our philosophy, among other things. This grace allows humans to live in harmony to each other. It needs to be noted that this grace does not affect human’s need to be saved; it is merely a blessing, or favor that God shows us out of His love for us. Calvin saw our depravity as something that completely affected humans and due to this, we could do nothing correctly. In addition to this, saving grace was particular to the elect. Still, humans did, on occasion do good works and build great societies. Therefore, there must be some action on God’s part that allows humans to do these things. Common grace is the answer.

Next there is Special Grace. This grace only affects the “elect”. Special grace has several attributes, it is:

Prevenient – allows one to want to respond to God, without this, no human on earth even wants to seek God.
Efficacious – the grace that is given works, it cannot fail. If God gives one this grace, the grace produces the effect it was intended to effect.
Irresistible – the giving of the grace cannot be rejected.
Sufficient – the grace is enough, it is adequate for the believer. Those that are called and do not believe are therefore not given this grace, they are merely called.

There is no synergism, or co-operation here. The act is done completely and solely by God. The person who is elected is a passive recipient to this grace. Grace precedes belief. Grace enables one to believe. Reformed theologians find evidence of this in the lines of Ephesians 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” They see this as evidence that 1) Grace comes before and is a causal agent in the belief of the elect and 2)that absolutely nothing can be done on a human’s part or that would be a work that saved a person.

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Posted in Personal

A Review of America’s God

23 Jan

Mark Noll’s work, America’s God, was primarily concerned with showing the unique interplay that occurred between American views of religion, political theory, and ideas of knowledge. He was primarily concerned with how the latter two ideas affected the first. The account is distinguished others in that Noll attempted to show 1) how unique and unexpected this development was, and 2) the role that the development of the commonsense theory of knowledge played. Noll focuses on the dominant trends in the above categories, specifically, Protestantism, republicanism, and a commonsense, or intuitional, theory of knowledge. None of these were uniquely American developments. Whether it was Protestantism from Europe, republicanism from France, or notions of commonsense from Scotland ; each was inherited. The combination of these factors resulted in the widespread adoption of Protestantism in America. The adoption of Protestantism reversed fortunes from their decline in influence in the mid to late 1700s to an adoption rate of 85% in 1860. Noll sees Jonathan Edwards as the premier shaper of American Theology. Everyone either utilized or had to respond to his work. The great north/south schism of Evangelicalism in early parts of the 1800’s aided the national rift over slavery and was a contributing factor in America’s decent into civil war. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Christianity, Religion

The Quick Change Artist

19 Jan

Was Augustine’s transition from a libertarian to a determinist?

Abstract:

This post is taken from a paper submitted for my class on the life and works of Augustine. It posits a forum where three people are invited to give their interpretations of Augustine’s works. The papers are then followed up by a discussion on how or if Augustine’s thought developed throught his life.

Opening Remarks

Henry:

This morning opens the 1st Annual Augustine and Philosophy Conference (APC) held in Columbia, MO on December 12, 2006. The topic for this years’ conference is: Augustine and his views on free will and determinism. Due to time constraints, please limit your presentation to fifteen to twenty minutes, or three to five pages of material. Three papers have been selected, one from his early, middle, and late writings. There will be a discussion section following the presentations on how Augustine viewed these matters along with an emphasis on how his thought developed. It is hoped that with the papers and the following discussion, a clear view of Augustine’s positions and their corresponding developmental process will be clarified.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Christianity, Religion

Orientalism Critiqued

19 Dec

This paper is an evaluation and critique Edward Said’s work, Orientalism[1] and will answer its principal concern of how Western Scholars should approach other cultures. Orientalism was first used to denote a section of scholarship that dealt with the examination of the geographic regions including the Middle East and India. Since its inception it was refined to the Middle East, or Arab studies, as more and more subfields were developed and broke off of from the field, dividing what was called the Orient[2] into smaller and smaller geo-cultural regions of study[3]. In 1973, the twenty-ninth International Congress of Orientalists decided to drop the name altogether[4]. Edward Said used the term to describe a relationship between the scholarship of the Orientalists and the colonial domination by the imperial powers. Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident, but employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the Orientalists[5].

I will examine the following claims of Orientalism. First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, the knowledge it generated was used to justify the power behind the political domination of the East by the West[6]. Secondly, the Orientalists employed a essentialist way of viewing the Near East, this essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups and their culture. Lastly, since the Orientalist scholars were the product of the system they came from they could not cannot help but to misrepresent the “Other.” Therefore, what was needed was for the subaltern to speak for itself. I will argue that while a significant portion of this theory is valuable and an useful way of viewing part of the Imperialist/Orientalist framework, it too was essentialist in nature and was more indicative of the nature of the Imperialists than the nature of the Orientalist scholars.

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Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Reading Reviews, Religion, history

Said’s Postcolonial Theory: Orientalism

08 Nov

This post is an attempt to flesh out Edward Said’s postcolonial theory of Orientalism:”(When set off in italics, the term “Orientalism” will refer to the book by Said, when merely capitalized; it will refer to Said’s theory.)”:. It has drawn from Said’s best-known work, Orientalism and incorporated several articles written in response to or are reviews of the work. These articles included “Orientalism Reconsidered” by Edward Said, and “Review of Books: Orientalism” by C. Earnest Dawn. These articles were utilized to help add clarity to a complex theory.

The four central claims of Orientalism are as follows. First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, it was used to justify the political domination of the East by the West. Secondly, Orientalism was actually more about defining itself through the mirror of the East than it was about objectively studying it :”(The very terms “East” and “West” are rejected by Said as valid descriptions; however, they will be used as terms of convenience for the purposes of this paper.)”:. Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a homogenous group. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups and their culture. Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident, but employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the Orientalists:”(Edward Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Cultural Critique, No. 1, 1985, p. 90. )”:. Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Due to this, they cannot help but to misrepresent the “Other.” Therefore, what is needed is for the subaltern to speak for itself. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Ethics, Science

High John the Conjurer

15 Oct

The chapter in the latter half of Conjuring Culture I found the most interesting was the chapter on Wisdom. The beginning question of the chapter, “What is the relationship between African, American and European elements in this [Black folk tradition] experience?” intrigued me. The idea of wisdom literature as not being very concerned with historical narration is relatively new to me. It is a very different way of looking at the world. I have always employed the narrow scope of viewing things either through the historical narrative or the abstract philosophical lens. Thus the ethos and cosmos would always remain separate. I found the following quote to sum up the idea of wisdom:

“Wisdom fulfills one of religions fundamental functions which is to bind together ethos and cosmos, the sphere of action and the sphere of the world. It does not do this by demonstrating that this conjunction is given in things, nor by demanding that it be produced by our action. Rather it joins ethos and cosmos at the very point of their discordance: in suffering and more precisely, in unjust suffering. Wisdom does not teach us how to avoid suffering, or how magically to deny it… [but] how to endure, how to suffer suffering.”

I found a similar truism in Dixon’s problem with the either/or distinctions that are used so commonly in the West. In binary opposition there is always a preferred element. When the least preferred element is attached to actual groups of humans, it leads to a dehumanization of the loosing group, which in turn usually leads to atrocities. It was very reminiscent of Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities by Albert Bandura. What I liked the most was that the categories themselves are not the problem, but the either/or distinction was the problem. Adopting a both/and approach will allow one to maintain distinctions which really appear to be there that does not result in atrocities and injustice.

I also found the idea in the latter part of the chapter, the idea of High John the Conqueror, to be a fascinatingly creative construct.

“He was a wisper, a will to hope, a wish to find something worthy of laughter and a song. Then the whisper put on flesh. His footsteps sounded across the world in a low, but musical rhythm as if the world he walked on was a singing drum. The black folds had an irresistible impulse to laugh.”

I found a curious resemblance to the “whisper of a hope putting on flesh” with the way The Gospel of John describes the Word becoming flesh. High John served to sow the seeds of hope in the midst of their suffering and to conjure their freedom. Once again this concept was expressed most clearly in the following quotation:

“My mama told me, and I know that she would not mislead me, how High John Conqueror helped us out. He had done teached the black folks so they knowed a hundred years ahead of time that freedom was coming. Long before the white folks knowed anything about it at all… A heap sees, but a few knows. ‘Course the war was a lot of help, but how comes the war took place? They think they knows, but they don’t. John the Conqueror had done put it in the white folks to give us our freedom, that’s what. Old Massa fought against it, but us could have told him that is wasn‘t no use. Freedom just had to come. The time set aside for it was there. That war was just a sign and a symbol of the thing.”

That passage embodies all that Smith has set up in chapter five. It displays the Monkey-Lion dueling with the Monkey employing “wit over force” to accomplish his aims. The Monkey/John is not deceitful, but in his struggle over Old Massa/Lion he has to use his wit to turn the tables and bring about justice.

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Posted in Christianity, Religion

Augustine and the Trinity

21 Sep

Augustine wrote On the Trinity around 419 C.E.. This was after the Church had established the doctrine of the Trinity and now people were trying to defend the doctrine against heretical formulations. Besides the common charge of tri-theism, the greatest challenge came from the formulation of the trinity as presented by Arius. This Arianism, not to be confused with the Indian and Nazi idea of Aryanism, was very concerned with the authority of the Father. Arius promoted this so far as to make the Son lesser than the Father in their essential natures. After all the Son was begotten; since He was begotten, He must have been created. As something created, there was a time before He was created. Augustine sought to dispel these claims and to show how each member of the trinity have the same essential natures and how the Trinity was a necessary configuration of God. He did this in an interesting manner.

Augustine starts out book eight On the Trinity by stating some simple postulates of the Trinity:

the greatness of the father + the greatness of the son = the greatness of the hs.
the greatness of the son + the greatness of the hs = the greatness of the father
the greatness of the father + the greatness of the hs = the greatness of the son
God is the greatest Love
God is the greatest Word
God is the greatest Knowledge.

It is at first odd that two parts of the trinity are not greater than the remaining part. To put it in mathematical terms Augustine maintains the following:

2p = 1p.

How can this be the case? While I don’t think he explicitly says this, but if we take p to equal ∞, or infinity then I think it can work:

2∞ = 1∞

Each aspect of God is infinite. But wait, if they are each infinite, then would they not be equal to each other? Yes. That is were Augustine demonstrates the idea that each member of the trinity shares the same nature.

Augustine then uses a argument from grammar to prove that God must have a triparte nature. He examines Love. In order to have love, there must be a lover, a loved, and the action of love. Since God is the very embodiment of love, and he loved himself, he must have the three natures. In order to be love, God must at the same time be the object, the subject and the verb. Restated:

God is the highest love
Love has three parts
∴ God must have three parts

Augustine repeats this basic line of reasoning for the ideas of Word and Knowledge. Since each part of the equation is dependent on the other parts of the equation, no combination is greater than the remaining part and vice versa. Likewise, the distinctions between the parts are imbued in the very nature of Love, Word, Knowledge and God. In order for their to be the word (Jesus), there must be the speaking of the word (the Spirit) and the Speaker (the father). There is no before and after here. There is no speaker until there is the speaking and their is no word until the speech and or the speaker. In this sense, we can consider the word to be begotten from the speaker and at the same time co-eternal with it. This is how Augustine by-passed Arius’ charge that the son was created and therefore was lesser than the father.

Why is all of this such a big deal? Why does one have to have a correct view of God and therefore the Trinity? Augustine thought that in order to love something, one must know it. How can I love my wife if I do not know who she is? Likewise, if one does not know what God is really like, then one’s love is misplaced. Augustine says in chapter 4 of book eight, “But indisputably we must take care, lest the mind believing that which it does not see, feign to itself something which is not, and hope for and love that which is false.” In other words, if your view of God does not match the reality of God, you do not really love God and your faith is a false faith!

All of this begs the question of how one can know God. In looking around, I cannot see Him, much less observe his trinitarian nature. Augustine says we can. He draws off of the idea of imago dei, the idea that humans are made in the image of God. This, coupled with his Neoplatonism, led him to think that with the turning inward of the intellect, one could grasp the reality of God. We have a mind and we know our own mind. In order to do this, there must be a mind, the knowledge of the mind and the mind that the mind knows. This parallels God. It is this way that we can realize that as we have three parts, God also has three parts. We are a lower image of God’s true image. Augustine is quoted as saying, “As far as we know God, we are like God.” This process brings about mystical overtones. With enough introspection and prayer, one can get glimpses into the reality of God. These flashes are fleeting, however and soon we are brought back to the material world.

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Posted in Christianity

Emile Durkheim

18 Sep

(Notes taken from Eight Theories of Religion on Emile Durkheim)

“The idea of society is the soul of religion.”
Introduction

He was the Father of sociology, much like Freud was the father of psychology. It was a fundamental shifting of how to look at everything.
Before systems focused on the individual, now name just about anything and you can place social in front of it: Social Sciences, Social engineering, social psychology, ECT…
Society was seen as a collection of individuals. See Freud, Descartes, ECT… Now to viewing things from a social perspective is almost our default setting
He really created the rules of the science that enabled serious study of societies – gave it legs, not just speculation on how it could be done.

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Posted in Notes, Religion