Further Morning Musing

Picking up on the theme from yesterday morning…

In my almost two decades of academic training in the interpretation of Scripture, I’ve met quite a lot of methods and techniques for doing so. Not all methods are equal. That’s fairly obvious and nowhere moreso than when trying to teach students how to preach.

The fundamental goal of interpreting the Scriptures is forming Christian habits within the community of the faithful. Not all interpretive methods tend towards this goal.

As I reflect on the matter, I believe that:

  • some methods are edifying: that is, they are good and efficacious ways to nurture Christian habits within congregations.
  • some methods are stultifying: that is, they become a comfortable means of ignoring the text to maintain a status quo. (I think of parish Bible studies that seem to consist purely of “This is how this text makes me feel” coupled with hearty wallops of “everyone’s entitled to their opinion”…)
  • some methods are pointless: that is, their aims and abilities are so removed from the goal of forming mature Christian communities that it’s a waste of time of attempt to engage them with parish realities.
  • some methods are destructive: that is, they are fundamentally incapable of contributing to Christian maturity in any way, shape, or form.
  • some methods are corrosive: that is, in small doses they may be helpful, but when used habitually and with out adequate safeguards they become destructive.
  • some methods are complementary: that is, some methods need to be paired with one or more other methods in order to be edifying—some methods work well in combination that would function poorly are negatively in isolation.

Having said that, we get to the truly hard part and the place where I find myself pondering the most. To what degree can various interpretive methods be assigned to these categories flatly and to what degree does the assignment depend on the character and composition of the congregation?

I think there are a certain number that can be classed absolutely (i.e., structuralism moves straight to “pointless”), there are some that can be classed conditionally, and yet others that require judicious classification and application.

Like I said, I’m still pondering… What do you think?

New Café Piece

I’ve got a new post up at the Café. Given the state of things I’ve found it difficult to collect coherent thoughts, so this is more of a spur-of-the-moment reflection based on a bit of NPR. Since I was driving to and from storage with stack of boxes, I heard the report twice and each time noticed myself yelling the same things at the radio—so I decided to write it down…

Posts containing more substance are in the works.

Morning Musing

You can observe a clock. Then you can deconstruct it, find out what it’s made of, how it fits together, take out and observe each individual piece, consider what parts make it function, which are decorative, which are essential, and which are not. Then you can put it back together and observe it again.

You can observe a cat. Then you can deconstruct it, find out what it’s made of, how it fits together, take out and observe each individual piece, consider what parts make it function, which are decorative, which are essential, and which are not. But you can’t put it back together and observe it again.

Now, how are spiritual texts like clocks—and how are they like cats?

RBOC: Moving Edition

  • I’ve been away for a while. I’m not quite back yet, but at least hooked up.
  • We’ve been caught in a protracted move. We’re finally in the new place but haven’t settled (so it’s not fully ours yet) and are nowhere near settled (we’re still stuck in a morass of boxes and misplaced furniture—and I still have another two storage units to finish emptying out…)
  • Blogging and most everything else will be light until things have settled out.
  • I’ve been having thoughts about the blog, blogging, and next steps which I’ll share as they become more firm in my head.
  • One change that is coming will be a shift of effort over to the St Bede’s Breviary blog. Based on the last update, much that’s over there is out of date, so I’ll be mostly deleting it and restarting. Once it restarts, however, it may be getting more material there than over here—for a time at least.
  • Too, I’ve got two presentations to get ready for in November, and I have no doubt there’ll be a certain amount of spill-over from thinking about those things into the blog.
  • So—I’ll still alive, I just won’t be around much for a while…

Random Thoughts on Monastic Bishops

The kids are already on vacation and we go to join them tomorrow meaning that M and I got to run together this morning (I just did a light 10 then relaxed while she did another 8 miles…). In the process, I found myself pondering once again Sulpicius Severus and the transmission of the monastic tradition from East to West. In particular, I’m considering the shift of the ascetic ideal from, essentially, hermits to bishops.

Consider–the main texts of the monastic movement in its initial eastern flourishing were Athanasius’s Life of Antony and the various collections of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. These were then translated into Latin by Jerome & friends. Suplicius who, in an unguarded moment in the Dialogues, lets slip that he hopes to replace Jerome altogether writes the Life of Martin, the Dialogues, and the Epistles. He shifts the ideal away from the unlettered desert hermit and places it onto the noble Gaulish bishop. Likewise, among Jerome’s correspondents are a number of letters to bishops–like those to Paulinus of Nola who turns out to be a friend of Sulpicius as well.

I’m not making an argument at the moment, more lining up some evidence and seeing what patterns emerge. It is fair to say, though, that both Sulpicius and Jerome seem to assimilate monasticism into the western hierarchies more firmly than what we see in the first generations of monastic writings from the East.

Furthermore, I’m now suddenly intrigued by the Celtic bishops. Authentic classical “Celtic Christianity”–as we’ve discussed before–was far more similar to desert asceticism than other models, and one of its most recognizable features is that the bishops were usually abbots. Is this some kind of anomaly or is this the logical outcome of the strand of tradition that runs through Sulpicius Severus?

Still pondering…

Astounding Moments through Modern Technology

I was doing some random reading around in Anglican liturgical texts contained in the Google Books archives. I came across this little gem. It is to be filed under: “Holy Crap! How totally random was that!”

Just after the title page in Vincent’s Chant-Book Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (1880) is a scrawled note by Harvard Library’s processing department when they received this particular volume on May 24, 1939. It reads “Estate of Rev. Charles Hutchins”…

As in, the Rev. Charles Hutchins who edited the Church Hymnal and, in 1897 produced the official authorized-by-General-Convention Church Psalter. Now I’m going to have to go back and look at Hutchin’s chant choices in a whole new light!

Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded…

Neither M nor I have been able to access the breviary this morning from our computers. We’re operating over a slow and limited (at times intermittent) internet connection. However, I’m getting word that others are having similar problems. If you’ve had issues like these, add a comment.

I’m looking into root causes. Tightening the code may help some, but I fear we’re encountering server load issues. I may need to upgrade the host to fully resolve the issue. I’ll keep looking into it and keep you posted.

Forced Hiatus

I haven’t been online much and will continue not to be. We’re in the process of moving but have hit some snags. The place where we’re staying has inconsistent internet so I can only occasionally get on. So—consider this the first part of my summer vacation. I know I have some piled up emails and hope to get through them soon as time and conditions allow…

New Post at the Cafe

I have a new partial post up at the Episcopal Cafe. This one is on the Blessed Virgin and, specifically, the arguments around the word “virgin.” The way Jim divided the piece, today’s chunk focuses on the virgin birth of Jesus which means tomorrow or—more likely—Wednesday’s section will deal with the issue of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the arguments over whether Mary had more children after Jesus. If today’s seems a little skimpy, that’s because the heart of the discussion and the pay-off is located at the end of the next chunk.

AKMA on the Open Source Textbook

AKMA writes today on the Open Source Textbook. This is an idea whose time has definitely come.

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find myself wondering strange thoughts like, “Hmm. You know, one of these days I should buy a Qur’an and maybe a decent scholarly introduction to it just to read through it for myself… I wonder what version and introduction scholars of religion use?” Occasionally these thoughts makes it all the way into a Google box which then tends to devolve in aimless search and eventual wish-list maintenance at Amazon.

I don’t believe in any of my wild-hare moments that I’ve seen a basic wiki from the American Academy of Religion that covers that topic—but wouldn’t that make sense?

Closer to home, I’ve written the occasional piece here, often in response to requests from folks like Tony or Brandon on a basic plan of study for the Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha or Basic Homiletics for Medievalists. And those things are fine for the readership here, but if somebody googles in, they have no idea if I know what I’m talking about or if I’m just spouting off.

AKMA is absolutely right about the textbook, but here’s my suggestion. It takes a hell of a lot of work to get a textbook up and going as he notes (and I concur having survived a couple from the research assistant side!), so why not utilize a practical intermediary step? Begin with a wiki. Have a general plan for what kinds of things you’d like to see, then start gathering bits—pieces like mine above. Or a quickie intro to who Gregory the Great was, what he wrote and why he matters. Or an overview on arguments over Gospel Chronology. Host the site at an identifiable location with its own built-in credentials. Like the Disseminary. Gather together people to contribute material. Encourage Graduate faculty to have their students send in some of their seminar prep assignments which, if they’re like mine, often consisted of an overview of a classic work or studied a particular angle of a classic problem. Once the very specific articles come in, more general pieces can be written that link to them and give an order, framework, and context to these snapshots. From those contributors, start gathering an informal editorial board. Then, as the project (hopefully) picks up steam, look at what’s there, what’s getting accessed, what works and start constructing the textbook from these pieces.

A place positioned like the Disseminary has the advantage of being able to go in two key directions: it can speak to academics and the university/seminary setting but also can occupy an identifiably confessional theological position (confessional in the broad sense…). It can provide a trustworthy resource for clergy and interested laypeople who want an informed opinion coming from a known theological position. (Would this represent two different resources or two portals that draw from roughly the same material but with different points of entry? Who knows…)

So that’s my proposal. Definitely open source textbooks. But let’s start with wiki that can be used as a stepping stone.